ROME

CHRISTOLOGY TO-DAY:

DEVELOPMENTS SINCE VATICAN II

AND EMERGING TRENDS

It is already twenty years since the publication of my book Gesù di Nazaret, storia di Dio, Dio della storia (1981), which has gone through a number of printings and has been translated into several languages. This book was published at the end of a very fertile decade of Catholic Christological reflection. Authoritative works, such as those of Cardinal Walter Kasper's Jesus the Christ (first published in German in 1974 and subsequently in several translations and editions) and numerous works by Professor Jean Galot of the Gregorian University, appeared at this time. The 1980s were equally productive for reflection on Christ, especially in deepening the trinitarian aspect of Christology as is clear from works such as Kasper's The God of Jesus Christ (1982), Marcello Bordoni's Gesù di Nazaret. Presenza, memoria, attesa (1988) (and its equally important follow-up La cristologia nell'orizonte dello Spirito published in 1995), and my own book Trinità come storia. Saggio sul Dio cristiano (1985). It was against this background that the International Theological Commission published a number of documents on the subject of Christology: while the document Some Questions Concerning Christology (1979) may be said to mark the end of the "Christological decade" of post-conciliar Catholic theology, other documents emerged during the 1980s such as Christology, Anthropology (1981) and La coscienza che Gesù aveva di se stesso e della sua missione (1986). The 1990s also saw the publication of two important documents on the relationship between Christology and universal salvation: one entitled On Certain Questions Concerning The Theology Of Redemption (1995), the other called Christianity and Religions (1996), reiterating the uniqueness of Jesus Christ. This latter document is decisive for the correct development of dialogue with other religions. In the same context, the declaration Dominus Jesus, published during the Jubilee Year by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, sets out a solemn profession of faith in Jesus Christ who, in person, is the truth that liberates and saves.

From its outset, the magisterium of John Paul II has displayed noticeable Christological/trinitarian traits as is clear form the important cycle of encyclicals Redemptor Hominis (1979) dedicated to the Son, Dives in Misericordia (1980) devoted to God the Father, and Dominum et Vivificantem (1986) on the person and work of the Holy Spirit. The same Christological/trinitarian structure significantly re-appeared again with the proposed preparation for the celebration of the Great Jubilee in Tertio Millennio Adveniente (1994). It could be said that the entire teaching of this pontificate revolves around this same basic theological principle: in its reflection on anthropology as contained in the above mentioned encyclicals as well as in Laborem exercens (1981) on the dignity of human work, in the Apostolic Letter on women, Mulieris dignitatem (1988), on moral questions Veritatis Splendor (1993) and Evangelium Vitae (1995), in the encyclicals on social questions, Sollicitudo rei socialis (1988) and Centesimus annus (1991). The same fundamental principle underlies John Paul II's teaching on ecclesiology, which is delineated in the light of the uniqueness of the Redeemer and trinitarian communion in Redemptoris Missio (1991) and Slavorum Apostoli (1985) on the Christian East, and in Ut unum sint (1995) on the subject of ecumenism. Redemptoris Mater (1987) is a particularly significant reflection on the Mother of Our Lord in which the different aspects of the Christian mystery are venerated in the profound icon of her, in whom everything refers to the work of the triune God and to His glory, and to the service of the mission of the eternal Son who took flesh in her virgin womb.

In the vast contribution of theological reflection and the Magisterium of the Church to Christology from the Second Vatican Council up to the present some significant currents can be discerned, which indicate just how completely the pre-conciliar scholastic manual De Verbo Incarnato has been completely surpassed by the recovery of the of the biblical basis for our understanding of the faith, of the soteriological relevance of the message of Christ and of his centrality to any exact understanding of all the other aspects of theology and of Christian praxis. The developments which have taken place in Christology over these decades can be grouped under three headings: a). more properly trinitarian; b). more distinctly historical; c). more clearly paschal in its aim at confessing to the uniqueness of the Crucified and Risen One for the salvation of the world.

a.). A Trinitarian Christology: The revelation of God in Jesus Christ

The revelation of the history of God's accompanying man can be recognized in the earthly events of Jesus of Nazareth, especially at the time of his resurrection in which He manifests himself as the God of history, Redeemer of man in all his aspects. All of his earthly existence, as the history of the Son who dwelt amongst us, involves the entire life of the Trinity, and implies a relation to the Father in the Holy Spirit. The resurrection testifies that the two subjects of the divine "history" who did not become incarnate, the Father and the Paraclyte, are not just external spectators of the life and works of the Word made flesh: they lived these events with Him, each according to the specific relation with characterizes them as distinct persons. Hence, from the Paschal event on, it can be said that the history of Jesus is the revelation of the trinitarian history of God, a human glimpse of the existence and self-offering of the Three in the various relationships which unite them and which they have with the world. In Jesus we have contemporaneously a revelation of the trinitarian face of God and of His relationship with the world, while at the same time manifesting and giving the Spirit of trinitarian unity and the reconciliation of God and man. Thus we begin to understand why any theology which overlooks the link between Christology and the mystery of the Trinity, a point frequently encountered in the pre-conciliar manuals because of the fragmented nature of their overall outlook, produces, on the one hand, an abstract, arid and conceptual Christology, and on the other, a speculative trinitarian doctrine that makes little reference to the concrete revelation of the triune God in the economy of salvation. The recovery of the trinitarian dimension of the story of Jesus opens the way to an understanding of the faith which leads to our opening to the depths of God, and allows us to have an authentic Christian idea of Him which is quite distinct from that merely intellectual idea of Him which is so alien when confronted with the scandal of the Cross and the light of Easter.

Recovery of the trinitarian dimension of the incarnation of the Word shows how the Word relates to the Silence of the beginning, to the depth from which He comes eternally and in which He remains eternally: God made visible to the invisible God, the Son to the Father. As Ignatius of Antioch says "he revealed Himself through His Son Jesus Christ, who is the word proceeding from the Silence" ((ad Mag. 8,2). The Word of revelation, who is Christ, must be "transcended", not in the sense that it can be eliminated or placed in parentheses since this would preclude any access to the depths of God, but in the sense that it is the truth and the life because it is the way (cf. John 14,6), the threshold opening unto the eternal Mystery, a light that come into the darkness so as to be the light by which we see the light (cf John 1,9; Ps 36,10). Due to the trinitarian dialectic of Word and Silence, oneness and hiddenness, in the event of revelation the divine transcendence is not consigned to the immanency of the world and the historical form of the divine self-communication refers us to the inexhaustible riches of the holy mystery.

The etymology of the Latin word "revelatio" (and analogously of the Greek word "apokalupsis"), contains the same dialectic structure of revelation: the prefix "re-"also conveys the sense of repeating the same thing (as in re-capitulation), as well as the opposite sense (as in re-probo). "Re-veal" means the act of going from the veiled to the unveiled, the unveiling of what was previously hidden, but never completely excludes the persistence of the veil, nor even excludes the possibility of its becoming more dense. The dialectical word-play is lost in the German "Offenbarung", "offenbaren" where the idea concentrates only on the act of opening, and hence the idea of open and transparent. In this sense the Hegelian interpretation of revelation as the total expressive and constitutive self-manifestation of God evidently derives from the etymology of the German word "Offenbarung". Only a Christology based on the "re-velatio Dei" -dialectically understood- can convey the original trinitarian nature of revelation: hence, we have to move more decisively towards a more "theological" Christology, and hence towards a more "trinitarian" Christology so as to learn how to hear in the Word that Silence from which it comes and which it opens, and hence how to hear the revelation of the Father and the Holy Spirit in the Word.

St John of the Cross writes: "The Father spoke a word, that was His Son and continually repeats it in eternal silence; hence this must be listened to in silence" (Sentences, n.21). To accept the word by hearing in it the divine silence is to remain in the divine sanctuary of adoration, allowing oneself to be loved by the silent God and to be drawn to Him by an indispensably necessary meditation of the Word: "No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14,6). Here we come to understand how much a Christology oriented towards the faith is deeply rooted in the faith experience of the living God of Biblical revelation and therefore in the spirituality of listening nourished by prayer. Hence, to separate Christology from spirituality would be equivalent to depriving it of its necessity to hear the revealed word by hearing in it that basic Silence from which it comes and to which it gives access. The rediscovery of this unity between Christological thought and the lived faith of the believer, which outstrips the aridity introduce into theology from the period of rationalism up to recent times, implies a return to the original and constitutive hermeneutical context of reflection on the faith.

Here we also encounter the necessity of situating Christological reflection within the living ecclesial transmission of the Word, which from witness to witness, from obedience to obedience, has ensured the transmission of the waters of life to ourselves. Once Christology separates itself from the living tradition of the Church's faith -especially that relating to what lays beyond the "threshold", that is those matters dogmatically defined- it tends towards unacceptable digressions, doubts and contradiction. This has nothing to do with theology which is constrained by dogmatic definition ("Denzinger-Theologie"), which is a condition for the vitality of the believer's faith, which is called to explain its hope, which is founded on the truth of faith. Far from being merely a mechanical repetition of what is long since passed, tradition is life which transmits life. The revelation of God in Christ raises up a people of pilgrims for the faith, which is called to transmit the memory of the eternal to every generation. This memory is bound to the text of inspired scripture and also to the context of the proclamation and praxis of the believer, in which the Holy Spirit works to bring the Church to the fullness of divine truth. A faith oriented Christology is not only biblically based and nourished by the spiritual life, but is also ecclesially responsible and careful to avoid subjective exploits by reference to the objectivity of the received and transmitted "fides Ecclesiae".

b). an historical Christology: continuity between the Jesus of History and the Christ of Faith.

A second trend to emerge in Christology since the Second Vatican Council is historical Christology: In terms of Christological reflection, the return to sources called for by the Council, has given rise to a renewed interest in the concrete history of Jesus of Nazareth, as recounted in the Gospels, and also to the so-called "mysteries" of his life which are approached through a solid historico-critical methodology. In his true and complete humanity, Jesus Christ is the revelation of God - hence the importance of arriving at the profound mystery contained in the traces of the historical Jesus. This is not an attempt to portray a minutely detailed picture of Jesus, reflecting to a greater or lesser degree the concerns and sensibilities of the present. Neither is it an attempt to psychoanalyse the personality of Jesus, which must necessarily be a completely arbitrary exercise given the concrete historical details available to us. Rather, this is an attempt to investigate the human dimension contained in the "mysteria vitae Jesu", and through which we have the revelation of the living God, by reading the "kerygma" in history, and history in the "kerygma", thereby grasping in its totality that rich continuity between the historical Jesus and the Christ of Easter to which New Testament bears witness. This effort involves reconstructing the history of the consciousness and liberty of Jesus, the man, together with his experience of finitude which he lived out personally through suffering and death, in the conviction, based on the light of Easter, that everything that comes from the true and complete humanity of our Saviour, comes also from the revelation of his divinity.

The human face of God is offered to us in Jesus of Nazareth. His gestures, every aspect of his human condition, every instant lived by him on earth is an appearance of God amongst men and is therefore of importance for the faith and for Christian reflection. A profound aspect of the Christian paradox can found in the tender love for the humanity of our Saviour displayed by so many of the saints. This concentration on the "Dominus humanissimus", conserved almost exclusively by Christian piety, appears to have become something alien to the theology of the last few centuries. Beginning with Suarez the tract on the "mysteries of the life of Christ" disappeared from the "De Verbo Incarnato". In Jesus of Nazareth, God is not in competition with man: on the contrary, the human is completely assumed and valued in the history of the Son of man, where it becomes an effective vehicle, the "sacrament" of the eternal Son who has entered this world. Hence it becomes easy to understand just how defectively Christian are those forms of theology and piety which overlook the concrete historical event of the Saviour, its realism and the scandal which characterizes it. In this context the traditional doctrine of the causality of the humanity of Christ assumes a particular significance. St Thomas devoted a particularly fertile theological attention to the concrete existence of Jesus of Nazareth: "All things accomplished by the body of Christ are for our salvation because of the divinity united to it" (Compendium Theologiae 239). The actions of Jesus are similar to a living parable of God's action.

Christ's presence to to-day's pain and suffering is thus made recognisable by those who love in his name: "Thus shall they know that you are my disciples, love one another" (John 13, 35). God's love is revealed by love of one's neighbour: "He who does not love his brother whom he can see, cannot love God whom he does not see" (i1 John 4,20). In such love, Jesus is present in His Spirit and speaks His words of eternal life. In the Spirit, one's neighbour is a sacrament of encounter with the Lord Jesus: the place to which he comes, our appointment with salvation (cf Mt 25, 31ff). A Christology which is not measured against the demands of charity and justice becomes distorted and exposed to all the dangers of ideology. The "Christologies of praxis" (Christologies of liberation, political Christologies of hope and of the eschaton) clearly show both their dangers and their positive potential, to the degree that they are received and developed, interpreted and lived in accord with action of the Holy Spirit in the communion of the Church. A more "militant" Christology -especially at the level of charity and the demands of justice for all and respect for God's creation- would seem necessary for the same effort correctly to situate our reflection on the following of Jesus of Nazareth within the mission of the Spirit.

c). An Easter Christology. The Uniqueness Of Jesus Christ And The Salvation Of The World.

A third trend to be noted in Christology as it has developed since the Second Vatican Council is that linked to dialogue and inter-change with other religions: this might be described as an Easter Christology which bears witness to the uniqueness of Jesus Christ in respect to all other possible ways of acceding to the divine mystery and to the eternal salvation of man. New Testament faith does not hesitate in regarding the "Christ event" as the locus for encountering the fullness of the divine self-communication: Jesus not only speaks the words of God, he is the Word of God, the eternal Word who has become flesh, who communicates himself and gives us access to the vivifying experience of the divine life in the gift of the Holy Spirit. With this conviction, Christianity becomes aware that it is the bearer of an universal message addresses to all men. In this same light, the disciples of Christ set out the conditions for discerning the possibility of a divine self-communication in other religions and for dialogue with them.

Redemptoris Missio (1990) states: "God, who desires to communicate the fullness of his revelation and love to all nations, calls them to Himself in Christ. He does not fail to be present in many different ways not only to individuals, but also to entire nations through their spiritual heritage, of which religions are special and essential expressions, although they contain lacunae, inadequacies and even errors"(55). Other religions therefore are not only expressions of man's self-transcendence towards the holy Mystery, but are also possible loci of divine self-communication: the encyclical states as much since those who "have not had the possibility of knowing or accepting the revelation of the Gospel and of entering the Church", because "they live in socio-cultural conditions which preclude it, or because they have long been educated in other religious traditions" have access to the salvation of Christ "by virtue of a grace which, through its mysterious relationship with the Church, does not lead them to formal membership of the Church, but illuminates their internal and external condition. This grace comes from Christ. It is the fruit of his sacrifice and is communicated by the Holy Spirit:it offers the possibility to reach salvation through the free collaboration of every man (10). The encyclical further states that "the presence and activity of the Holy Spirit touch not only individuals, but also society, history, nations, cultures, religions,... The Holy Spirit is the sower of the "seeds of the Word", that are to be found in diverse religions and cultures, and prepares to bring them to fruition in Christ"(28).

In this light, it is legitimate to hold that non Christian religions contain some authentic elements of the divine self-communication, whose discernment is possible for the disciples of Christ by referring them to the revelation which has been accomplished in Him: hence we begin to understand why we cannot share the purely negative evaluation of non Christian religions of the world and their religious texts which is sometimes connected with an "exclusivist" position based on an absolute identification of Church and Kingdom (as for example in Karl Barth). On the other hand, neither can we accept the indiscriminate pluralism of some theologies of religion which empties the absoluteness of Christianity and ignores the lacunae and opposition of other religious experiences, so as to abandon the idea of the superiority and definitive nature of Christ, and move towards recognition of other independently valid ways (of arriving at divine life), a position exemplified in the writings of theologians such as John Hick and Paul F. Knitter. Between these opposing positions we mush have a discernment which - without abandoning the proclamation of grace and the singular scandal of the good news- recognises the action of the Holy Spirit, oriented towards the Word, wherever this occurs: "In as much as the Spirit operates on the hearts of men and in the history of nations, cultures and religions, the Spirit assumes a role of evangelical preparation which can only refer to Christ, the Word made flesh through the power of the Holy Spirit" (Redemptoris Missio, 29).

Recognition of this fact in no way reduces the missionary responsibility of the disciples of Christ, rather it spurs it on all the more, because in the absence of the criteria of the uniqueness of the Lord Jesus and His Gospel, it is not possible for the Christian to discern and appreciate the values contained in other religions, in their sacred books, and even the value of religious experience which they offer. "While the Church willingly recognises that which is true and holy in the religious traditions of Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam- since it reflects the truth enlightening all men-, that does not in any sense diminish her duty and her determination to proclaim Jesus Christ, the way, the truth and the life, without hesitation" (Redemptoris Missio, 55). Therefore, dialogue with other religions "must be conducted and realized in the conviction that the Church is the ordinary means of salvation and that she alone possesses the fullness of the means of salvation"ib. Neither is this dialogue -in so far as it is linked to the duty of proclaiming the Gospel- to be regarded as instrumental because it equiparates the indispensable fidelity to the identity of the disciple of Christ with recognition of the "semia Verbi"which are present everywhere, and which is made possible only in reference to that fidelity.

****

A more theological Christology, a more historical Christology, and a Christology with a greater capacity to integrate these two dimensions while confessing the singularity of Jesus Christ, which implies simultaneously an urgency to proclaim the good news and a need to dialogue with others, whosoever they might be or wherever they might come from. These would seem to be the three things to emerge from post-conciliar Christology: it reflects that permanent demand of faith in Christ which acknowledges an union of divine and human in Him, without confusion or mixture, without division or separation (Council of Chalcedon 451). This is a reflection in faith which unites fidelity to heaven with fidelity to earth, fidelity to the present world with fidelity to the world to come, as has already happened in Him who is personally Covenant. United with the entire Church, the theologian invokes him, so that the "logos" of critical faith might be united with the "hymnos" of adoring faith, which hears, celebrates, proclaims and lives the Mystery revealed in Him, the Word come amongst us, and in whose hands we have placed our entire lives by following Him.