Christology and Emerging Church

Christology has been a major theme of my week. I've been teaching/supervising various aspects of it with undergrad and postgrad students as well as in Chapel, and off-duty it's come up in blogs and emails from various Emerging Church people. Christology - or what we believe about Jesus Christ - is an absorbing and complex study, and although it's not the whole story, the belief that Jesus is both fully human and at the same time the son of God is precisely what lies at the heart of Christian theology.

The accusation has been levelled from time to time against various figures in the Emerging Church that they have an inadequate Christology - that all this incarnational talk makes Jesus human, but not divine. Are Emerging Church Christians really the Arians of the 21st century?

It's been a fashionable thing in both academic and emerging conversation in recent years to explore the sociality of the Trinity - a really interesting angle which I have written on myself, in the way this can cash out in literary form, hooking it up with some ideas from French philosophy, notably the amazing Luce Irigaray. Undeniably it would be possible, if Christology were never attended to at all, to migrate by degrees into a kind of post-Christian Trinitarianism. For the Christian, Trinity is more than just sociality; it must be related to Christology and Pneumatology (for the beginner, that means the doctrine of what we believe about Jesus Christ, and what we believe about the Holy Spirit).

But equally, for those who live as Christians in a culture that despises religion, there may be good reason to have a thorough-going orthodox Christology but not wear it on your sleeve in everyday conversation. Why would that be? Because if you frequently find yourself as the only Christian in a group of people you work or socialise with, you cannot help but be alive to the fact that the language of religion fails to connect people to any lively interest in Jesus or Christianity. For those of us who live in that kind fo culture (and I'm speaking here of 21st century England), however important an orthodox Christology is to me, it's not the first thing that arises when debating religious issues with those who are strangers to the faith. In my experience, people are more interested initially in whether and why observing religion at all is a viable possibility in 21st century Britain. In such conversations, I find myself describing what religion is not, and making connections between other people's spiritual experience, not to say they are all the same, but to say that in my experience true Christianity is not the outmoded museum piece people imagine, but precisely the kind of spiritual reality that we long for.

Not that any of this is particularly new, or even postmodern, mind you.  A couple of hundred years back, a theologian called Schleiermacher was accused of having a weak Christology when he tried to communicate the essence of religion to a changing culture. Schleiermacher's immediate circle of friends and colleagues viewed the Church as cold and rational, but saw the spiritual richness they longed for in music and literature and art and philosophy. Schleiermacher, who came from a pietistic background, devoted a good deal of energy and thought to how to get these people to understand that true Christianity was not the passionless affair they thought it was, but precisely what would meet their deep longing for spiritual truth. So in the first instance, he didn't pay a whole lot of attention to delineating the dual nature of Jesus Christ as divine and human. I don't think for a moment that Schleiermacher denied the divine and human characteristics of Jesus Christ; it was simply that the focus of his attention was how to communicate to this specific mindset. Brian Gerrish describes Schleiermacher's intent as trying to avoid the usual "Christological schizophrenia" (a problematic description in itself, I suppose) but with this memorable phrase, pointing out that Schleiermacher was moving in a world that was innured against religion because arguments about the two wills and two natures of Christ had begun to sound like nothing more than a debate like how many angels you can fit on the head of a pin. If Christological debate drives people away from Jesus, then we need to ask whether we're having that debate in the right venue.

As Schleiermacher tells it, when people encounter God they do not first of all become aware of God as a doctrinally complete concept, nor of a three-personed Trinity. It takes time and patience to understand the God one initially encounters, and doctrines like Trinity and Christology are ways of learning to understand and articulate that encounter.

If Christology doesn't get much of an airing in public debate, though, it does need to maintain its right place in the Church's understanding of faith. It mustn't get lost along the way! I'm very glad that I observe my faith in a setting where I get to say the Apostles Creed out loud several times a week - for me, this is like an anchor for the soul and a plumbline against which all experiences and assertions about faith can be lined up and measured. 

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried, he descended into hell. The third day he rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy, Catholick Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting, AMEN.

(edit: Neale intelligently points out in the comments below that it is precisely this archaic language that makes the creeds difficult for many people. I think it needs another post to open up that question... )

Comments

[Tony B]

But what is God? Ten Christians, ten different explanations. What does "Son of God" actually mean? Does it mean literally that God impregnated Mary and Bob's your uncle (!?) I thought the "Born of a virgin" thing was widely regarded as a mythical addition? So what does "Son of God" mean? What is hell, and in what sense is it "down"? What is heaven, and in what sense is it "up"? In what sense will he judge?

I'm not trying to be funny. it's just that my experience has often been of Christians (even clergymen) who state with absolute certainty that Jesus is the Son of God, but become somewhat more vague when asked what the phrase actually means. And I genuinely want to know! I genuinely want to engage with this thing, I've felt that so deeply that I even feel I am being called to engage with it.

It's a genuine question. unfortunately I'm really up and down about it, and feel that call more strongly at some times than at others. And sometimes feel disillusioned with it.

[maggi]

and this is a genuine answer, Tony B., not a glib one - that that's exactly my point! It takes a lifetime to figure out what we MEAN when we say God, Son of God, Born of the Virgin Mary, etc etc., or that Jesus CHrist was fully divine and fully human at the same time. ANs even after a lifetime you still can't answer all the questions (unless you're God...). But the truth is that you don't have to understand it all before you encounter GOd - that's what the Kierkegaardian "Leap of Faith" is all about - not a leap that ignores rationality, but one that acknowledges that you can't understand unless you jump in before you do understand. Jump first. Understand later.

[Tony B]

Hi Maggi,

Yes, I can see that's what you're trying to say, it's just that if you ARE unsure, what kind of sense does an "orthodox Christology" actually make?

Funnily enough the Trinity is something I have no problem with whatsoever - it makes perfect sense to me that God has made herself known to us in three different ways, even if I am uncertain of the precise definition of one or more of those ways!

[Mike R]

I think part of the problem for me as an individual is that the emerging church has, in the main, negotiated away from a "penal substitution" version of the place of Jesus Christ.

This is fine - I'm glad to see the back of that form of theology, frankly. But unless you're studying Christology at college, the average punter in the pew, (or.. umm.. how would you describe an emerging church-er..? "Sitter-in-the-dark"?) ends up feeling a little un-sure of what to do with Jesus.

In this position, a sociality/trinitarian understanding of God is very useful to me, but a proper explanation of Christology would be very useful.

The Schleiermacher angle that you outline above is a good start. Where do I go next? Are there any books would you recommend?

[Mark Bennet]

Refreshing thoughts encountered in a dull moment. Thanks Maggi.

The number of characters in the New Testament who required an orthodox Christology is ... ? But they knew who Jesus was. The development of Christology has itself been a response to the social context in which Christians have found themselves. But the ferocious and painful debates which refined the doctrine involved the wider church as well as the local context - maybe that's where emerging church is going.

[Sarah Dylan Breuer]

Very well said! I find that people often behave as though the Great Commission were "go and yell at people about theological correctness" rather than "go and make disciples." Jesus' first move with people is generally (especially according to the synoptics) to heal, confront the powers that oppress, and invite people to dinner -- not to lecture them about the meaning of "one substance."

[Neale Adams]

I don't understand the leap to the last paragraph, Maggi. We are rightly concerned with trying to give the essence of who Jesus is to a changing culture in language we can understand. Then you say you take comfort in a creed in 2nd-4th century language I can barely understand, which turns off most people completely. I agree with Tony B that to modern ears it just makes no sense: Jesus is conceived by a non-human spirit, in a biologically impossible way, he went down somewhere, he rises to the sky, he sits on God's right hand-God has hands?, etc. How does this creed (or any of the orthodox creeds) help? Why and how does this language inspire you to take a lifetime to figure out what is meant by all this strange language?
(This is actually a live issue in our diocese. We have a bishop who insists we say the orthodox creeds, so we do-certainly when he's around; we have a lot of priests who say they're getting in the way.)

[christina]

I appreciate the thought that God as Trinity is not necessarily an accompaniment to the early days of reaching faith, and it may well be that this is the reason that it does not seem to feature loudly in EC discussions. However, the journey of discipleship has to raise the issue, as the bible is too perplexing to read without some understanding/wondering about How Father, Son and Spirit fit together. I am particularly interested in this topic as I am working on a paper about the prominence of the Trinity in the emerging church scene in Australia. I have wondered if Christology overshadows pneumatology, and at that, an unbalanced Christology that is less interested in death and resurrection (concepts that miss the fullness of meaning outside a Trinitarian context) and the miraculous. The EC Christology seems interested in the life of Jesus - who he hung out with etc, and less in his spiritual being. I make these comments as someone experimenting with expressions of church that could be described as "emerging", with feet grounded in mainstream church also...

[maggi]

Neale, you are right about this - and I think it will take another post (or book even!!) to open that up properly; however, I think that while we must attend to issues of incomprehensibility we mustn't dispense with the Creeds any more than we do with reading the Scriptures, breaking bread, or any of the other major planks of tradition that make Christianity Christian...

[maggi]

Christina, I think that Emerging "Christology" such as it is, is not so much incomplete because it's "Arian" but incomplete because it hasn't really been addressed yet, with the exception of a series of correctives to an e Evangelical Christology - which Emergers on the whole have found to be equally incomplete...

[Alan Wilson]

I don't think it works for me to view the creeds as simply propositional — these things are the things you have to believe or else... The creed works for me as clear historical, social and narrative deposit to which I commit myself, as the map by which I journey. It's historical because the obscure terminology captures precisely something that can be defined in relation to other historical alternatives. The contrast between then and now unlocks the whole question of "if this is what they found to believe, and we know why, where do we sit, as members of the same pilgrimage?" It's social because it's the anthem of a community. If on Sunday morning you gave every individual a lightbulb that came on Uncle Fester style when the Spirit connected a reality signified in the creed with the person, there'd be very few phrases with everybody's light on, but also very few with nobody's. Finally it works for me as narrative — a story of the sorts of things God does and how, as well as, even more than, a set of doctrinal assertions.
That way creeds aren't boundaries to close down exploration, but an underlying framework to support our improvisations. Creeds are to Christianity as Eight Bar blues are to jazz. Hang on tight, and you really can improvise...

[maggi]

I don't think they are propositional as much as confessional - what we mean exactly by what we say (in propositional terms) is something to be teased out later; but to say regularly that these are the foundations of our faith reminds us that - whatever doubt or new thought or re-visiting of the understanding comes along - we can't and shouldn't dispense with these things. These are the elements of our faith, and while they are subject to sense-making, they are not negotiable in the sense that you can choose which bits to believe in.

I like the fact that we say these Creeds in the confessional part of the liturgy - we confess our faith, our praise and our sin (and our Absolution is pronounced) - the saying-out-loud and communal affirming is the point here. Later over breakfast we can discuss the meaning...

[Rachelle Mee-Chapman]

As a post-modern minister, if there's one thing I get dinged for it's my...shall we say, flexible...Christology.

Growing up in the faith I learned the creeds in Lutheran Catechism. In seminary, Eugene Peterson encouraged us all, in times of doubt, to "say the creed."

But now, as I near 40 years of faith, the creeds are of little help to me. Most days I cannot say them with conviction, and only the most holy and trasncendent cathedral moments allow them to seem factually true.

The creeds are beautiful to me-- because they are story-telling part of a long history -- which I am grateful to be a part of. But as a statement of fact, or actual belief, they are hard for me to utter.

This place of honest questioning -- around the virgin birth/ressurection/divinty of Christ -- is whatprevents me from getting published with evangelical houses(even those that have 'emergent' lines,) and sometimes bumps me off the guest list. Which makes me wonder, is the emerging movement as open to honest questioning as they think they are? (But that's another topic altogether....)

At any rate, thanks for taking on the question(s) Maggi!

[Simon S]

Over the last few years I have realised a movement within my own articulation of God and Trinity. I left theological college beleiving that Trinity was an outdated outmoded concept that was both unhelpful and cumbersome. I started to develop an understanding of God as Alterity (re: Emmanuel Levinas). To describe God as Other enabled me to engage with contemporary spiritualities and models of faith much better. But then I had to deal with the question of how The other and I relate and how Alterity is understood and articulated within a community. This led, suprisingly (considering where I started), to Perichoresis. Rather than concentrate on the 'in-dwelling' nature of God. I concentrated on the dynamic movement and inter-penetration of God. It did not necessarily matter that I could not picture or see this because Otherness can't be pictured or articulated in any real sense. The idea that God 'dances' through creation and calls me to dance (Sydney Carter-esque) has enabled me to move on in my understanding of God, but, I have now landed in the place that I was trying to avoid. If God is to be dance in any dynamic, penetrable sense then I have to speak of more than one. What your post has highlighted for me is how my Christology (which is generally Jesus, the poor, rural liberator) does not sit well with my understanding of Trinity. I have usually referred to Jesus as 'dance teacher' i.e. The One who teaches the dance of The Other, but I have always known that is not enough. Thanks for the post and I'll be interested in what people offer as an emerging church Christological bibliography in the next post

[lorna (see-through faith)]

Thank you for such an interesting and thought-provoking post Maggi

"the language of religion fails to connect people to any lively interest in Jesus or Christianity."

in my limited experience we so often end up talking about church rather than Jesus anyway. they aren't the same thing. I'm sorry that's not very profound but it just struck me. We lose church goers precisely because they want a safe place to ask questions without being condemned for 'doubting' and we fail to attract (keep) the un-churched because the language and theology and practice is so far from where they are.

I don't have any solutions but as I said your post made me think and that's always good :)