At the conclusion of the recent semester, I prepared the following theses for students as a summary of what we had learned. The theses are an attempt to restate early Lutheran christology in the context of contemporary concerns. At the request of the students, I am putting them forward for public discussion. Please bear in mind that theses are distillations of large arguments, reduced to their logical and material essentials. Disputation about theses is meant to sharpen understanding, then, of what is logically and materially essential. It is not meant to replace those larger arguments but to provide a roadmap through them.

The Biblical Basis and Trinitarian Context of Christology

1. The Father’s judgment in the resurrection of His crucified Son (Rom. 1:2-4), who “died for our sins and was raised for our justification” (Rom. 4:25), is the condition for the possibility of contemporary hearing of Jesus’ claim and promise. Christology begins with the Father’s Easter judgment on His crucified, dead and buried Son.

We deny then that human judgment about Jesus establishes Christian faith in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God.

2. This judgment about the identity of Jesus as God’s beloved Son has reference, then, to Jesus’ vocational trial and testing by Satan (Luke 4:1-13; 23:35, 39) and hence His righteousness achieved by faithful obedience to His Father (Rom. 5:18-19) in living and dying in loving solidarity with sinners (Mark 10:45).

We deny then that Jesus’ teaching or ministry, divorced from the gospel narrative of His life, death and resurrection reflecting the Father’s Easter judgment, establishes Christian faith in Jesus. There are historically such other relations to Jesus, but they are not Christian faith in Him.

3. The name “Jesus” refers to the first-century Jew who was born of Mary and crucified under Pontius Pilate, as the early baptismal creeds tersely note. In the gospel narrative, this is the Jesus whose proclamation of His Father’s imminent reign (Mark 1:14) paradoxically present with and for “sinners and tax-collectors” (Mark 2:1–3:5) was the catalyst of disbelief, rejection and finally crucifixion (Mark 3:6).

We deny then that “Jesus” is transubstantiated by the Resurrection kerygma to become a contentless cipher filled in with human speculations (Mark 13:5-6, 21-23). The earthly sending and coming of the Son is the “beginning of the gospel” (Mark 1:1), even though christology proper cannot arise until the sealing of Jesus’ biographical identity by His death on the cross.

4. The proper predication of the title “Christ,” or “Son of God” to Jesus, then, is the Father’s word of confirmation and vindication of the earthly Jesus’ claim to authority (Mark 1:11 and 9:7, anticipated by Mark in the centurion’s confession, 15:39).

We deny then that anyone can deal with the so-called “Jesus of history” by bracketing Jesus’ claim to authority as if to deal with Him in the secure posture of disinterested objectivity. What matters for christology is that the historian’s Jesus  corroborates material necessary for the construction of the Easter gospel’s narrative, i.e. for the vindication of Jesus’ claim of authority to forgive and retain sins as the “keys” to His Father’s Kingdom which He proclaimed.

5. As Jesus was raised from the dead and revealed the Son of God in power by the Holy Spirit (Rom. 1:2-4), it is likewise the Holy Spirit who predicates the title, “Christ” or “Son of God,” to Jesus in the church’s preaching of the Father’s gospel in time and space.

We deny then that we can have God as our Father apart from the union by faith with the Father’s Son, nor union with the Father’s Son apart from the Spirit’s work, putting the sinner to death and raising up the new creature of faith.

6. Since no one can say “Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit” (I Cor. 12:3), it is the Spirit who chooses (“where and when it pleases God,” AC 5) in giving the gift of repentance and faith in the Father’s gospel by preaching that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God (John 20:31). Christology and the trinitarian dogma entail each other.

We deny then that human nature is able to overcome the “scandal of the cross” (I Cor. 1:23) and by its own wisdom or willpower predicate the title “Christ” to the Crucified One (I Cor. 1:21).

The Dogma of the Person and Work of Christ

7. In the preaching of the Father’s gospel by the Holy Spirit, the crucified but risen Jesus Christ becomes really present “for me/us.” In that the person of Christ is inseparable from His work, what Christ gives is Himself, not “benefits” somehow detachable from His person. As Jesus Christ is “the Man for Others” (Bonhoeffer) who fulfilled the double love commandment, He is true to Himself in being really present for us in the preached word and visible words of the evangelical sacraments.

We deny then that we can have “benefits” of Christ here “below” when Christ himself is away “above.” This separation is a version of the Nestorian error, separating into two veritable persons the spiritually omnipresent divine Son and the locally confined man Jesus. We deny then that either the divine nature or the human nature acts on its own by a merely external conjunction with the other, for this implies a double personhood which subverts faith in the singularity of Jesus Christ present for me/us as the very man born of the Virgin Mary and crucified under Pontius Pilate.

8. When Christ gives Himself to us in faith, then, He gives neither abstract Deity nor abstract humanity, but Himself as the One “who died for our sins and was raised for our justification.” Hence, Christ gives Himself to us in the present and effective act of taking on our actual sin as His own responsibility and in turn giving to us His achieved righteousness as our own standing before God.

We deny then that the mystery indicated in christology is a confusion of divine and human natures, when it is rather the mystery of the eternal Son’s personal decision to love the unlovable by giving Himself for them. Such confusion of natures is the Apollinarian, Eutychean or Osiandrian error.

9. By taking on once and for all the likeness of sinful flesh, and coming as this same Person under word and sacraments to sinners still today, Christ gives Himself to us in faith by His own free personal act, hence by what the ancient church called the “communication of idioms” executed by the Person, this unique individual, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The general predicates of deity and of humanity, by which we distinguish divine and human natures, may then be really and concretely predicated of this One person. This man forgives sins. This same Son of God has no place to lay His head.

We deny then that either divine or human nature acts as if it were the Person; it is rather the Person who decides and acts according to the potentialities of either nature in the fulfillment of His mission. This “personal” nature of the union is what early Lutheranism called the first category in christology of “the communion of natures.”

10. Since in the performance of His own personal decision act, there is in this Person a real use of the properties of divine and human natures, there is also a real communion and interpenetration of the natures in Him, so that it is also true to say in reality: the eternal Son of God humbled Himself to death on a cross. The man Jesus created the world.

We deny then that the state of humiliation described in Phil. 2 can be attributed only to the humanity or the state of exaltation there only to the deity, but rather affirm that the one Incarnate Son was humbled for us in order that we may be exalted in Him, that from before the foundation of the world the eternal Son was determined to become that man Jesus in time. These real communications of divine and human attributes in the Person Jesus Christ are what early Lutheranism designated respectively the categories of “humility” and of “majesty” respectively.

11. Since Christ gives Himself to us in this way of Luther’s “joyful exchange,” and since this self-giving can and must be conceived as a free, personal action, we affirm with the ancient church that Christ is true God (for “to be God is to give”), yet in the way of being a Son. The Son of God is God by way of receiving His being and returning filial love and obedience to the Father. This is how the incarnate Son personally is and does the divine giving of forgiveness, life and salvation.

We deny then any sub-evangelical claiming of Christ’s deity, Him “who counted not equality with God a thing to be held on to, but emptied himself…” The affirmation of the full and equal deity of the Son does not eclipse His personal distinction from the Father, nor the essentially redemptive purpose of His coming. No one rightly affirms that Jesus is God in order to inferiorize Moses or Mohammed or the Buddha as teachers of wisdom and prophets of divine justice in God’s economy. Jesus’ deity belongs in an altogether different category as the deity of the saving God of the gospel who comes under the law to redeem those under its curse.

12. Since Christ gives himself to us truly in this way of the Son’s joyful exchange with the sinner, we affirm with the ancient church that Christ is true Human, yet in the way of being born of the Virgin, the New Adam, the new creation of our humanity from out of the stock of Adam’s dying race. This is how Christ suffers our human penalties of rejection, death and damnation, yet without being sinful or defeated by them.

We deny then sub-evangelical ways of claiming Christ’s humanity, “He who knew no sin was made to be sin, that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” This true humanity of Jesus exposes our fallenness apart from Him, for He is like us in all things except sin. No one rightly affirms that Jesus is our brother, then, in order to excuse or justify faithlessness, lovelessness and hopelessness. Jesus’ humanity belongs to an altogether new creation, the humanity which God is creating in Him for the Beloved Community to come.

13. Since Christ’s presence in the joyful exchange is hidden to the world and perceptible only to Spirit-given faith in the field of the assembly called out by the preaching of His resurrection, and since the believer is yet bound by the body to the world and so remains afflicted by sin, death, and the devil, this Jesus Christ has yet to fulfill the work of redemption by the final defeat of the contra-divine powers, the judgment of the living and the dead, and the public coming of His kingdom without end. The public validation of christological faith is Christ’s coming in glory. In the interim, the believer’s righteousness basically and for the most part consists in the forgiveness of sins.

We deny then the error of Christian perfectionism, which depends on no final act of redemption and hence underestimates the on-going affliction of the world by the powers of sin, death and devil against which Christ in His earthly body strives. This error exalts ecclesiology over christology in thinking of the church first as an agent of redemption (Christus prolongatus) rather than as that part of the sinful and dying world where the promise of redemptive love is heard and believed and manifested in foretastes of the Beloved Community.

14. Since Christ’s reign is yet embattled, it takes form in this interregnum as the assembly of those called and gathered by the gospel. As the foretaste of the Beloved Community, Christ’s koinonia in His own body and blood with believing sinners till He comes again is a good in its own right, not merely or chiefly an instrumental good. The church as this koinonia of forgiven sinners is the “polity/politics” of the gospel of Christ.

We deny then that anyone may draw the sword in the name of Christ or in any way confuse His reign with the rulers and powers of the present age. We deny that church in turn may be ruled in any other way than in the name and by the power of the present and active Lord Jesus Christ. We deny that the church can effectively represent Christ under the false supposition of His actual absence. But the church truly and effectively represents the present Christ as sinners forgiven in His name; it is active only as His agents by virtue of this very same and abiding grace.

Conclusion

15. The church of Jesus Christ is obligated to test the claims of all who speak in Christ’s name for conformity to His Person and Work. Christological doctrine functions as the articulation of criteria for testing the spirits within the sphere of the church’s visible existence and pilgrim way.

We deny then that christology is a speculative expression of religious feelings or a construction of healing metaphors or the ideological justification of the privileges of an ecclesiastical institution, since christology is at the center of the rigorous discipline of critical dogmatics. Christology is the subject (head) and ecclesiology is the predicate (body) and the work of critical dogmatics in christology is the safeguarding of precisely this relation.

Paul R. Hinlicky is the Tise Professor of Lutheran Studies at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia.