HISTORY OF CHRISTOLOGY

Christology Encarta 

Christology:
From Chalcedon to Anselm

Robert D. Crouse, 1997

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NOTE: This article is part of a conference report of the Atlantic Theological Conference (Christology: The Mission and Person of Jesus Christ, ed. Greg Shepherd), and available from St. Peter Publications.

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I. CHALCEDON
The definition of Chalcedon, in 451, and the arguments of the associated Tome of Leo, constituted a turning-point in the history of Christian thought about the person and work of Christ; on the one hand giving an authoritative resolution of debates which had engaged fathers and heretics since apostolic times, on the other hand involving problems of interpretation and implications which would occupy the attention of theologians all through the subsequent centuries.^{[1]  more} 


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CHRISTOLOGICAL ERRORS   IN THE EARLY CHURCH

The church is no stranger to false and distorted representations of the Christian faith. It started from the time of the apostles and has not let up to the present. History has a funny way of repeating itself. The old saying what crawls in one generation walks in the next, is a accurate description of error birthed and growing mature. Its also been said, error dies a slow death and must be killed. As we take a peek at just a small section of the timeline in the growth of the church, we find there is nothing new under the sun. What we have today is no different than before. Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat its mistakes.  MORE 

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Christological controversies in a nutshell 

Modern Criticism of Chalcedon.

Orthodox Chalcedonian Christology has been assailed on various grounds. Modern theologians have noted its dependence on a precritical understanding of the Gospels. The christological pluralism of the New Testament is not recognized by the Chalcedonian formula, which is supported solely by the Gospel of John and the conception of the virgin birth expressed in Matthew and Luke. Another criticism, articulated by the German New Testament scholar and theologian Rudolf Bultmann, hinges on the fact that the Chalcedonian conception of Christ is based on antiquated mythologies (Jewish messianism and apocalypticism and perhaps Gnosticism) and on an obsolete metaphysics, in which the terms person, nature, and substance are understood in ways that are fundamentally different from the way these terms are understood today. The use of Chalcedonian christological definitions in interpreting the Gospel portraits of Jesus has tended to restrict the access of modern Christians to the man Jesus in his historical actuality. Thus, Bultmann has advocated “demythologizing” the New Testament and reinterpreting the mythological elements that lie behind early christological formulations, in order to make the proclamation (kerygma) and Christ’s saving work meaningful to modern persons. Some theologians advocate using alternative christological models to explain the doctrines of preexistence and incarnation, preferring the New Testament metaphor of God’s “sending” his Son to the later, entirely intellectualized Christology of the Council of Chalcedon. A few contemporary Roman Catholic theologians, such as Edward Schillebeeckx (1914–    ) and Walter Kasper (1933–    ) have chosen to begin their christological inquiry “from below” rather than “from above”; they start with the fully human Jesus and then go on to discover and confess the saving presence of God in him.   more 

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Christology Bibliography