Just to follow on from Byron's mention of Karl Rahner in an earlier discussion, an interesting quote from him:
Rahner: “Christology is the beginning and the end of anthropology, and this anthropology in its most radical realization, namely Christology, is in all eternity theology”. Schriften zur Theologie (1960), Vol IV, p.151
Wolfhart Pannenberg (in Jesus- God and Man) lists these ways in which Jesus’ humanity has been held to be of exemplary significance for humanity in general:
a. the incarnation of the Logos consummates the nature of man as living being having the Logos. Only through the incarnation of the Logos does the true man come into existence. (Irenaeus, Athanasius)
b. Jesus is the man who brings the universal striving towards an imitation of God – ethical perfection – to its goal. Ethical perfection, in other words. (Paul of Samosata and the Antiochenes)
c. Jesus fulfills the duty of obedience incumbent on all human beings and the duty of satisfaction through his death. (Anselm and the medieval church)
d. Jesus is the prototype of God’s dealings with humanity and thus of justification by faith. On the cross he upholds the right of God who judges and yet remains righteous before God. (early Luther)
e. Jesus realizes true humanity in that in him the consciousness of god that establishes the unity of human existence is dominant. (Schleiermacher)
f. Jesus is the prototypal man who as the one completely obedient to God was completely dedicated to his fellow man. (Barth)
g. As the Son, Jesus is in a prototypal way what all people ought to be: the reality of sonship that it intended for all in trusting obedience to the Father and in free responsibility for the inheritance of the creation entrusted to him. (Gogarten)
h. Jesus is eminently the believer who exposes himself directly to God’s future. Jesus is the essence of faith and faith is the essence of what he did. (Ebeling)
i. Jesus is the highest perfection of the human: he is the fulfillment of that unlimited openness which is constitutive for being human and whose truth is openness for God. (Welte, Rahner)
An intriguing list, with several of the items overlapping somewhat...
Pannenberg asks: in all these “is the change of Christological conceptions perhaps explained as a change in the image of man?” Haven’t the universal ideal images of man hidden the uniqueness of Christ? At
MJ says: yes, isn’t the trouble here that we begin with some idea of what human aspiration and destiny and meaning is and then determine how Jesus fulfils that? Is this valid? Does the Bible do this? Shouldn’t we rather decide what Jesus is and so see what humanity ought to be from there?
4 comments:
Could I request blank lines between your paragraphs? I'm finding it a little hard to read.
"Shouldn’t we rather decide what Jesus is and so see what humanity ought to be from there?"
Excellent point. But to be fair, I think this is exactly what some of the people on Pannenberg's list are trying to do -- this characterises Barth's approach above all, but it's also a distinctive feature of the approaches of Luther and Ebeling.
Shouldn’t we rather decide what Jesus is and so see what humanity ought to be from there
Do you just mean morally?
Also, fully agree with Karen regarding lines between paragraphs! Another helpful tip is to use justified text - blogger now supports this option...
I agree with karen and ben!
A further thought: of all the options, none seem to include embodiment as an aspect of true humanity. Perhaps the "living being" of (a) is more condusive to this, but even so, it's possible to conceive of a view of humanity as living being that nonetheless falls foul of Nietzsche's critique of "otherworldiness". I wouldn't say embodiness is sufficient alone (indeed, are any of the options sufficient alone?), but think it's got to fit in there somewhere...
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