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How and why is the Christology contained in EITHER the Pauline corpus OR Hebrews distinctive?

Introduction

Christology is a discipline that reflects on the person, works and significance of Jesus in Christian thought and tradition. Christology, Bultmann (1972) argues began with the events of the first Easter and in some Christian thinking, particularly in places of the Pauline corpus, Christ is synonymous with God. Some scholars argue that this was a necessary reaction to Jesus' death by crucifixion because to die that way was regarded as a scandal, it was a death usually imposed on thieves and murderers rather than someone of Jesus' stature. The post-Easter faith was a way of transforming the scandal of the crucifixion into a saving event (Bultmann, ibid). Thus Paul writes in Romans of a Jesus, who was put to death for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

This paper will document the major facets of the Christology that is present in the Pauline corpus. It will then assess how this Christology might be said to be distinctive.

Paul and the development of his Christology

The Apostle Paul was not a contemporary of Jesus and at first glance it might seem that his Christology has little to do with the living human being who walks the pages of the Gospels. In spite of this impression most scholars will concede that the Gospel that Paul preaches is very closely allied to what Jesus taught in the four Gospels. As is usual with Paul it is difficult to interpret his thinking without reference to the circumstances of his life as many of his letters were written with particular churches and situations in mind. The facts about Jesus that Paul would have been familiar with are that he was born a Jew, that he exercised a ministry in and around Galilee and that he was betrayed by one of his followers and suffered death on the cross. Paul would also have known that Jesus was believed to have risen from the dead and to have appeared to some of his followers (O'Collins, G. 1995).

Many scholars take the view that Paul's Christology developed as a direct result of his conversion on the road to Damascus. This most particularly relates to the doctrine of justification by faith as it is found in the letter to the Romans. A central concern of Paul is his Christology and what God has accomplished in the Christ event (Ruemann, 1991:85). Central to Paul's argument is Jesus' death on the cross, Paul preaches Christ crucified. For Christians this is the basis of faith and of life in the Spirit. Paul's Gospel or good news is founded on Jesus' death and subsequent resurrection. Paul acknowledges Jesus' message of the kingdom but it is secondary to his Christology. For Paul the kingdom of God is Righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit (Romans 14:17).

The primary content of what Paul has to say is that concerning justification through faith. Because of the legalistic behaviour of some Jewish Christians Paul was keen to demonstrate that righteousness and justification before God was not achieved through adherence to the Law but through faith in the risen Christ. In the Hebrew Bible the law reveals God's righteousness but in Paul this righteousness is only revealed in the Gospel and through faith in Christ. Through the Christ event justification takes place now rather than at some point in the future and for the Christian there is no more condemnation. The justification of the Christian leads to a life centred on Christ and to the baptism in the Holy Spirit. It was this feeling of being justified in the sight of God that Paul experienced through his conversion at Damascus and which he was intent on communicating to others. Bultmann (1964) says of Paul's Christology that:

Paul proclaims the incarnate, crucified and risen Lord; that is, his kerygma requires only the 'that' of the life of Jesus and the fact of his crucifixion. He does not hold before his hearer's eyes a portrait of Jesus the human person, apart from the cross ( Gal. 3:1), and the cross is not regarded from a biographical standpoint but as saving event. The obedience and self-emptying of Christ of which he speaks ( Phil. 2:6-9; Rom. 15:3; 2 Cor. 8:9) are attitudes of the pre-existent and not of the historical Jesus . . . the decisive thing is simply the 'that' (Bultmann, 1964:20).

We have seen however, that although Paul does not place great emphasis on the details of Jesus' life he certainly does acknowledge certain of the known facts. In other respects Paul's Christ is similar to that of the fourth Gospel in that Christ is seen as pre-existent with the Father. The early Church moved through a number of different phases in trying to work out the meaning of Jesus and his life. The early followers in Galilee and Jerusalem concentrated on what Jesus had done in his time on earth and they looked forward to the Second Coming (Reumann, 1991). In the book of Acts the general New Testament Christology develops through the idea of God's sending of his Son who now reigns as the Christ. It was leading up to and during Paul's time that the idea of the pre-existent role of Christ in creation became dominant all though each of these developments can be found in the Pauline corpus. The Hellenistic Church were the first to name Jesus Lord (or Kyrios, a term which Paul uses often) and also the Son of God. Bultmann (1972) says that this came to mean the divinity of Christ, his divine nature by virtue of which he is differentiated from the human sphere; it makes claims that Christ is of divine origins and is filled with the divine power. Bultmann (ibid) further argues that this development meant that the Early Church were forced to defend the fact of Jesus'humanity against the Gnostics who regarded flesh and matter as evil. In view of this Paul's theology could not be said to be Gnostic (as some early commentators maintained) because his is an anthropological view i.e. his theology is based on man's (humanity's) condition and his own experiences as a man. In Paul's thinking the presence of Jesus in a believer's life is confirmed by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Thus he writes in his letter to the Romans that the Divine Spirit bears witness to our spirit that we are God's children (Romans, 8:16). This points to another feature of Paul's Christology where Christ and the Spirit are closely intertwined and at points almost indistuingishable.

In Paul's Christology Christ is a distinct person thus he writes in his letter to the church in Galatia:

For through the law, I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me (Gal. 2:19-20).

At the same time, when Paul speaks of the Christ event he is not so much referring to the person of Christ as the situation and events that were connected with his life (Knox, 1958). So in Paul's Christology, although the person of Christ comes first it is inextricably tied up with what Paul calls the Christ event. For Paul the two things are closely intertwined because it is only through life events that we can truly see and appreciate the character of a person (Knox, 1958). What is a clearly distinctive feature of Paul's Christology is his Christological way of speaking about Jesus. Jesus is the Judge of the world. Romans 14:9 says For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living and as Bultmann (1972) maintains contains within it the idea of Jesus as Judge of the world and which co-inheres with the apocalyptic Jewish view of the Son of Man as Messiah. However, Paul's Lord and Judge is the crucified Jesus of Nazareth There was a prevalent view in the early church that the death of Jesus took place to expiate or wipe away the sins of humanity. Bultmann (ibid) contends that this view of Jesus' death was not specific to Paul but can be seen in a number of writings of the time. This has been interpreted in a number of different ways, as a kind of Passover sacrifice that availed for everyone and also for the individual. It is from this latter that the idea of Jesus as personal saviour (prevalent in contemporary evangelical thinking) developed.

Human beings avail themselves of this sacrifice through the act of faith. Faith in Paul's terms is acceptance of the message that he delivers what Bultmann (ibid) says is the Evangel. In this way faith was not simply a matter of belief but came to denote humanity's relationship to the Divine.

Paul believed that we could only take part in justification and in what Christ had to offer as a result of our faith. The message of the Christ event is what generates faith in the hearts and minds of believers, thus for Paul faith in God is God given. It is only through this faith that humanity can be free from sin. This was where some of the Jews had made their mistakes. They believed that if they strictly observed the law then they were righteous but instead they had made themselves a slave to the law and thus to sin because they tried to achieve justification in their own right. Bultmann says:

Sin's deceit (Rom 7:11) consists in deluding man to think that if he follows his 'desire' he will gain life, whereas he only acquires death. Victimised by this deceit, man does not know what he is doing: for what I am bringing about I do not know (v.15a) i.e. he does not know that by what he is doing he is only reaping death (Bultmann, 1972:248).

In Paul's thinking Christ is viewed as the second or last Adam. The first Adam brought sin into the world and the second came to redeem the world from sin. Bultmann (ibid) contends however that in this area Paul who may have come under Gnostic influence because of the view that all mankind has suffered for the sin of one, avoids this pitfall by saying that sin came into the world because of sinning. He further contends that in spite of this sin has been understood in the earlier form and that this poses an ethical problem if all are viewed as guilty for the sin of one. Sin came into the world and death was the consequence. It was to redeem humanity from the full consequences of this death that Christ came and died on the cross. As the new Adam Christ represents a new form of God's relationship to humanity rather than a specific person (Bultmann, 1972). It is arguably the case that although Paul's Christology may be seen in terms of the wider benefits to the whole of humanity, it may also be that the macrocosm is reflected in the microcosm, and as Bultmann suggests the human situation and relationship to God is also that of the individual. In this way the coming from death to life of which Paul speaks about in his own experience may be the heritage for each individual Christian.

Conclusion

Paul's thought is not always easy to decipher and many scholars attest to this. It is also difficult to give an adequate account of Paul's Christology in such a short paper. However, based on the evidence presented here it would seem to be the case that the distinctiveness of Paul's Christology lies in the notion of Jesus as the second Adam. It is the second Adam that brings and end to the law or perhaps in Jesus' own terms, brings it to fulfilment and through his sacrifice on the cross and his subsequent vindication establishes a new covenant between humanity and God.

Bibliography

Bultmann, R. 1964 The Primitive Christian Kerygma and the Historical Jesus in Braaton, C. and Harrisville, R. (eds) The Historical Jesus and the Kerygmatic Christ New York, Abingdon, 1964 pp 15-42

O'Collins, G. 1995 Christology: A Biblical, Historical and Systematic Study of Jesus Oxford, Oxford University Press

Knox, J. 1958 Jesus Lord and Christ New York, Harper and Brothers

Reumann, J 1991 Variety and Unity in New Testament Thought Oxford, Oxford University Press

Romans 4:25

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