An important shift in Christology was made during the time of Reformation. New protestant movement understood Jesus more by what he did, not just by what he was. Calvinists, for example, brought to the fore the threefold office of Christ as prophet, priest and king.
The 20th century, especially its second part, was particularly remarkable with the trends of humanizing Jesus. Let’s see look at the statements of some modern theologians.
“His [Jesus’] life is more than a mythical event. It is a human life which ended in the strategy o crucifixion,” wrote Professor Bultmann in his essay that aroused a storm of controversy.
The German theologian, professor Wolfhart Pannenberg stated that “in the contemporary science it no longer seems remarkable that Jesus was a real man… The only question is where the uniqueness of this man in distinction from other man is to be seen”
Dr Nels F. S. Ferré , professor of Christian Theology at Andover Newton Theological School, declared that “Jesus was human as anyone else. If anything, Jesus was not less man but more. He was human the way God means us all to become human. We may even say that in a real sense he was the first fully human being” [1]
Interesting to note, that Catholic scholars today generally tend to take an “inclusivist” attitude, and in this regard they shifted more than most Protestant churches.
Several prominent theologians, like John Hick, Don Cupritt, Michatl Goulder, Dennis Wiles, and others, are convinced that the major theological development from the last part of the 20th century, arising from growing knowledge of Christian origins, involves a recognition that Jesus was “a man approved by God” for a special role within the divine purpose, and that the later conception of him as God incarnate, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity living a human life, is a mythological or poetic way of expressing his significance to us. This recognition is not only connected with the search for truth, but has also has increasingly important practical implication for the relations to the people of other great world religions. These theologians assert that “modern scholarship has shown that the supposed unchanging set of believe is a miracle. Christianity was from the first very diverse, and has never ceases developing in its diversity… ‘Orthodoxy’ is a myth, which can and often does inhibit the creative thinking that Christianity sorely needs today… Christianity can only be believable by being continuously open to the truth”[2]. And a growing number of Christians, both professional theologians and people, have been thinking along these lines.
Christianity is often described as an incarnational faith. According to Maurice Wiles this can be understood in two ways. “The looser meaning characterizes Christianity as a religion in which man’s approach for God is through the physical world [I believe, Wiles means that God reveals Himself to us through the nature and, most fully, through the human beings]. In its narrower sense it constitute a description of Christianity as a faith whose central tenet affirms the incarnation of God in the particular individual Jesus of Nazareth. In his research, “Christianity without Incarnation” Wiles tries to answer the question whether incarnational faith in the second, narrower, sense is in fact essential for the Christianity. He concludes that, at least, this question is a proper, a necessary and a constructive one.
Why it is a proper question? Incarnation in its narrower sense is an interpretation of the significance of Jesus. In the course of the Christian history it has become so dominant that ‘incarnation’ and ‘Christianity’ have often functioned as virtually interchangeable terms. But they are not synonymous. Several analogies can be seen from the Christian history. First, in the Middle Age, the Eucharist, the central act of Christian worship, was understood to involve the transformation of the concentrated bread and wine into the actual body and blood of Christ. Second, for much of Christian history the authority of scripture was absolute and, therefore, this divine source cannot be other than wholly divine. Third, the virgin birth was regarded as the only way by which incarnation was effected. Yet today the different or opposite views in all three cases became viable concepts.
Why it is a necessary question? First, incarnation, in its wider sense, is not something directly presented in scripture. It is a construction built on the variegated evidence to be found in scripture. So it is more reasonable to see the doctrine as the interpretation of Jesus appropriate to the age in which it arose rather than to treat it as an unalterable truth binding upon all generations. Second, throughout the long history of attempts to present a reasoned account of Christ as both fully human and fully divine, the church has never succeeded in offering a consistent and convincing picture.
Why it is a constructive question? Will the abandonment of traditional incarnation doctrine have a destructive or negative outcome? It is not easy question because it cannot be dealt simply on intellectual level. Within Christianity much of the greatest religious significance is intimately linked with the images and ideas of incarnation. To answer it Maurice Wiles consider three ideas that are closely connected with incarnation, but can actually exist without that connection. First, the idea of incarnation could still remain, but can be seen from a wider perspective using the doctrine of creation as a conviction that the physical world can be the carrier of spiritual values. Second, the significance of Jesus a human ideal or true pattern of human living is not directly effected by the way in which his relationship with God is understood. Third, the importance of Jesus as a Savior, the one in whom we meet God and through whom God has acted decisively for the salvation of the world, will not be altered, as “the absence of incarnational belief will not simply destroy mediatorial function. It would still be possible to see Jesus only as one who embodies a full response of man to God, but as one who expresses and embodies the way of God towards man”.
According to Wiles “the particular direction of change which would result from the abandonment of the incarnation model cannot easily be predicted in advance… The most likely change would be towards a less exclusive insistence on Jesus as the way for all people and for all cultures… Such a change can be regarded as a gain”[3].
[1] Kim, Young Oon. Unification Theology and Christian Thought. [HSA-UWC], pp.123-125
[2] The Myth of God Incarnate”, ed. John Hick. [Philadelphia: The Westminister Press, 1977], p.3
[3] Maurice Wiles. “Christianity without incarnation?” in The Myth of God Incarnate”, ed. John Hick. [Philadelphia: The Westminister Press, 1977], pp. 6-9
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