1201 the Figure of Jesus Through the Centuries

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1201 THE FIGURE OF JESUS THROUGH THE CENTURIES

Course Description

Jesus of Nazareth is agreed to be one of the most important figures in the history of the world. The major Christian churches teach not only that he was the foremost of the prophets, but that he is eternally the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity. They also teach that his work as a man included not only his public miracles and his oral teaching but an invisible ministry of reconciling human beings to the God from whom they had been estranged by sin. Even for Christians who do not subscribe to traditional teachings, he remains a moral exemplar and an object of devotion. Moslems revere him as the sixth of seven great prophets, a number of Jews and Hindus have found a place for him in their faith, and he has been a frequent subject for poets and novelists, whatever their religion.

This paper therefore considers Jesus of Nazareth not only as a subject of Christian proclamation, but also as a subject of imaginative or philosophical reflection in Christian and other traditions. The examination will be divided into two sections, A and B: candidates will be expected to answer two questions from one section and one from the other.

Questions in Section A will concern the nature, ministry, teaching and example of Jesus as these have been understood in the public teaching of the chief Christian denominations. Students will be expected to be familiar with the ecumenical doctrines of the Trinity and the incarnation of Jesus Christ as second person of the Trinity. They will also be expected to know how these doctrines have informed different understandings of the redemption of the world through his death and resurrection, and how Christians have understood the ends and duties of life in the light of this redemption.

The majority of questions in Section B will concern the relation between the Jesus of the gospels and/or ecclesiastical dogma to Christian devotion, philosophy, literature, culture, aesthetics and social policy. There will also be questions on the place of Jesus in other religious traditions.

Aims and objectives

Aims:

• to introduce students to the study and practice of Christian doctrine through the figure of Jesus as the universal focus of theological reflection reasoning
• to promote awareness of the significance of Jesus in all spheres of Christian life, reflection and church practice;
• to introduce students to the religiously plural context in which the doctrinal significance of Jesus is considered
• to promote reflection on the relation between theology and culture, both within and outside the Christian sphere

Objectives:

A student who has attended the lectures and prepared thoroughly for eight tutorials may be expected:

• to be aware of the content of the ecumenical creeds of the Church;
• to have some understanding of the relation between scriptural exegesis and the formulation of doctrine;
• to be aware of ways in which belief has informed life and conduct for Christians over the centuries;
• to be aware of some responses to the religiously plural context in which Christian theology is studied and practised.

Lectures will review important literature in sections A and B; tutorials will allow tutors and students to choose special areas of study.

Course delivery

• 16 lectures
• 8 tutorials

Assessment

Assessment for this paper will be by three-hour examination in the Trinity Term.

Lectures (Michaelmas and Hilary Terms)

Weeks / Topics
MT 1 / The Jesus of History versus the Christ of Faith?
Gospel of John, Hebrews
MT 2 / The Christ of the Creeds, 200-500 A.D.
Athanasius, Nicene Creed, Chalcedonian Definition
MT 3 / The Suffering Christ of the Mediaeval Church
Anselm
MT 4 / Christ in the Life of the Byzantine and pre-Reformation Church
Cabasilas
MT 5 / Christ set free? The Gospel of the Reformation
Luther, Calvin
MT 6 / Jesus in Doubt: the Enlightenment and after
Strauss, Renan
MT 7 / Jesus and the World Wars
Bultmann, Barmen Declaration
MT 8 / Many Churches, one Christ? The Modern Situation
Verbum Dei, Schilllebeecx
HT 1 / The Apocryphal Jesus
Early apocryphal and gnostic gospels
HT 2 / Jesus the conqueror
Gospel of Nicodemus, Langland, Milton
HT 3 / Jesus the mystical bridegroom
Origen, Bernard, Teresa, John of the Cross
HT 4 / Jesus in English poetry
Spenser, Donne, Marvell, Blake, Browning
HT 5 / Jesus on Trial
Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche
HT 6 / The Life of Jesus in novels
George Moore, Robert Graves, Kazantzakis, Saramago, Philip Pulman
HT 7 / Jesus in Islam
Koran, Gospel of Barnabas, Ibn Arabi, Rumi
HT 8 / Jesus and India
Thomasine traditions, Jesus and Buddha, Jesus and Krishna, “Hindu Christianity”

Recommended Reading

General / Reference Works

Markus Bockmuehl (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Jesus (Cambridge: CUP, 2001)

Delbert Burkett (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Jesus (Oxford: Blackwell, 2011)

Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, SJ, and Gerald O’Collins, SJ (eds), The Incarnation: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Incarnation of the Son of God (Oxford: OUP, 2002)

Daniel J. Harrington, Historical Dictionary of Jesus (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2010)

J. Leslie Houlden (ed.), Jesus in History, Thought, and Culture: An Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2003)

Francesca Aran Murphy (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Christology (Oxford: OUP, 2015)

Jaroslav Pelikan, Jesus through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture (New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1985)

New Testament—General

Dale C. Allison, Constructing Jesus: Memory, Imagination and History (London: SPCK, 2010)

Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament’s Christology of Divine Identity (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2008)

Maurice Casey, From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God: The Origins and Development of New Testament Christology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1991)

Oscar Cullmann, The Christology of the New Testament, trans. Shirley C. Guthrie and Charles A.M. Hall (London: SCM, 1959)

James D.G. Dunn, Christology in the Making: A New Testament Inquiry into the Origins of the Doctrine of the Incarnation (London: SCM Press, 1980)

——, Did the First Christians Worship Jesus? (London: SPCK, 2010)

Paula Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ: The Origins of the New Testament Images of Jesus (New Haven: Yale UP, 1988)

William Horbury, Jewish Messianism and the Cult of Christ (London: SCM Press, 1998)

Larry W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003)

Andrew T. Lincoln and Angus Paddison (eds.), Christology and Scripture: Interdisciplinary Studies (London: T&T Clark, 2007)

C.F.D. Moule, The Origin of Christology (Cambridge: CUP, 1977)

E.P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Allen Lane and Penguin, 1993)

* Christopher M. Tuckett, Christology and the New Testament: Jesus and His Earliest Followers (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2001)

N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (London: SPCK, 1996)

Gospel of John

John Ashton (ed.), The Interpretation of John (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997)

——, Understanding the Fourth Gospel (2nd edn; Oxford: OUP, 2007), 238–380

C.K. Barrett, Essays on John (London: SPCK, 1982), 1–36

Richard Bauckham and Carl Mosser (eds), The Gospel of John and Christian Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008)

Rudolf Bultmann, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, trans. G.R. Beasley-Murray (Oxford: Blackwell, 1971)

Maurice Casey, Is John’s Gospel True? (London: Routledge, 1996)

R. Alan Culpepper, ‘The Christology of the Johannine Writings’, in Who Do You Say That I Am? Essays on Christology, ed. David R. Bauer and Mark Allan Powell (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1999), 66–87

Mark J. Edwards, John, Blackwell Bible Commentaries (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004)

Barnabas Lindars, The Gospel of John, New Century Bible (London: Oliphants, 1972)

James F. McGrath, John’s Apologetic Christology: Legitimation and Development in Johannine Christology (Cambridge: CUP, 2001)

Jerome H. Neyrey, An Ideology of Revolt: John’s Christology in Social-Science Perspective (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988)

Paul A. Rainbow, Johannine Theology: The Gospel, The Epistles and the Apocalypse (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2014)

Herman Ridderbos, The Gospel of John: A Theological Commentary, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997)

D. Moody Smith, The Theology of the Gospel of John (Cambridge: CUP, 1995)

——, ’Jesus Tradition in the Gospel of John’, in Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus, ed. Tom Holmén and Stanley E. Porter (Leiden: Brill, 2010), vol. 3, 1997–2040

Letter to the Hebrews

Harold W. Attridge, The Epistle to the Hebrews: A Commentary, ed. Helmut Koester, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1989)

Richard Bauckham (ed.), A Cloud of Witnesses: The Theology of Hebrews in Its Ancient Contexts (London: T&T Clark, 2008)

C.K. Barrett, ‘The Christology of Hebrews’, in Who Do You Say That I Am? Essays on Christology, ed. David R. Bauer and Mark Allan Powell (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1999), 110–127

Raymond Brown, The Message of Hebrews: Christ above All (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1982)

Eric Farrel and Kevin B. McCruden (eds), Reading the Epistle to the Hebrews: A Resource for Students (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature), 2011

* R.P. Gordon, Hebrews, Readings (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000)

Daniel J. Harrington, What Are They Saying about the Letter to the Hebrews? (New York: Paulist Press, 2005)

L.D. Hurst, The Epistle to the Hebrews: Its Background of Thought (Cambridge: CUP, 1990)

Craig R. Koester, Hebrews (New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2007)

Luke Timothy Johnson, Hebrews: A Commentary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2006)

Jon Laansma and Daniel J. Treier (eds), Christology, Hermeneutics, and Hebrews: Profiles from the History of Interpretation (London: T&T Clark, 2012)

Barnabas Lindars, The Theology of the Letter to the Hebrews (Cambridge: CUP, 1991)

Revelation

Mark Bredin, Jesus, Revolutionary of Peace: A Nonviolent Christology in the Book of Revelation (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2003)

Richard Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation (Cambridge: CUP, 1993)

Peter R. Carrell, Jesus and the Angels: Angelology and the Christology of the Apocalypse of John (Cambridge: CUP, 1997)

Matthias Reinhard Hoffmann, The Destroyer and the Lamb: The Relationship between Angelomorphic and Lamb Christology in the Book of Revelation (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005)

Loren L. Johns, The Lamb Christology of the Apocalypse of John: An Investigation into Its Origins and Rhetorical Force (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003)

Judith Kovacs and Christopher Rowland, Revelation: The Apocalypse of Jesus Christ (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003)

Dan Lioy, The Book of Revelation in Christological Focus (New York: Peter Lang, 2003)

Mitchell G. Reddish, ‘Martyr Christology in the Apocalypse’, Journal for the Study of the New Testament 33 (1988): 85–95

Christopher Rowland, The Open Heaven: A Study of Apocalyptic in Judaism and Early Christianity (London: SPCK, 1982)

Loren T. Stuckenbruck, Angel Veneration and Christology: A Study in Early Judaism and in the Christology of the Apocalypse of John (Tübingen: Mohr, 1995)

Nicaea and Chalcedon

Henry Bettenson, Documents of the Christian Church, ed. Chris Maunder (3rd edn; Oxford: OUP, 1999)

J. Stevenson (ed.), A New Eusebius: Documents Illustrative of the History of the Church to AD 337 (London: SPCK, 1957)

Khaled Anatolios, Retrieving Nicaea: The Development and Meaning of Trinitarian Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011)

Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: OUP, 2004)

John Behr, The Nicene Faith (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2004)

Leo Donald Davis, The First Seven Ecumenical Councils (325–787): Their History and Theology (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1988)

Alois Grillmeier, Christ in the Christian Tradition, vol. 1: From the Apostolic Age to Chalcedon, trans. John Bowden (2nd edn; London: Mowbray, 1975)

Stephen W. Need, Truly Divine and Truly Human: The Story of Christ and the Seven Ecumenical Councils (London: SPCK, 2008)

Basil Studer, Trinity and Incarnation: The Faith of the Early Church, ed. Andrew Louth (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993)

Frances M. Young, From Nicaea to Chalcedon: A Guide to the Literature and its Background (London: SCM Press, 1988)

——, The Making of the Creeds (London: SCM Press, 1991)

Athanasius

Athanasius, Against the Gentiles – On the Incarnation, ed. and trans. Robert W. Thomson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971); other editions: On the Incarnation, ed. and trans. John Behr (Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2012); Contra Gentes, ed. and trans. E.P. Meijering (Leiden: Brill, 1984)

Khaled Anatolios, Athanasius (London: Routledge, 2004)

——, Athanasius: The Coherence of His Thought (London: Routledge, 1998)

David Gwynn, Athanasius of Alexandria: Bishop, Theologian, Ascetic (Oxford: OUP, 2012), 55–103

R.P.C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy, 318-381 AD (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988)

Peter J. Leithart, Athanasius, Foundations of Theological Exegesis and Christian Interpretation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011)

Andrew Louth, ‘Athanasius’ Understanding of the Humanity of Christ’, Studia Patristica 16 (1985) 309–323

J. Rebecca Lyman, Christology and Cosmology: Models of Divine Activity in Origen, Eusebius, and Athanasius (New York: OUP, 1993)

E.P. Meijering, Orthodoxy and Platonism in Athanasius: Synthesis or Antithesis? (Leiden: Brill, 1974)

Jon M. Robertson, Christ as Mediator: A Study of the Theologies of Eusebius of Caesarea, Marcellus of Ancyra, and Athanasius of Alexandria (Oxford: OUP, 2007), 137–216

Thomas G. Weinandy, Athanasius: A Theological Introduction (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007)

Peter Widdicombe, The Fatherhood of God from Origen to Athanasius (2nd edn; Oxford: OUP, 2001), 128–249

The Council of Chalcedon

The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, trans. Richard Price and Michael Gaddis (Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2005)

Pauline Allen, ‘The Definition and Enforcement of Orthodoxy’, in The Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 14: Late Antiquity: Empire and Successors, AD 425–600, ed. Averil Cameron, Bryan Ward-Perkins, and Michael Whitby (Cambridge: CUP, 2001), 811–34

Ernest L. Fortin, ‘The Definitio Fidei of Chalcedon and Its Philosophical Sources’, Studia Patristica 5 (1962), 489–98

Richard Norris, ‘Chalcedon Revisited: A Historical and Theological Reflection’, in New Perspectives on Historical Theology: Essays in Memory of John Meyendorff, ed. Bradley Nassif (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), 140–58

Richard Price and Mary Whitby (eds), Chalcedon in Context: Church Councils 400–700 (Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2009)

Aaron Riches, Ecce Homo: On the Divine Unity of Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2016)

R.V. Sellers, The Council of Chalcedon: A Historical and Doctrinal Survey (London: SPCK, 1953)

Dorothea Wendebourgh, ‘Chalcedon in Ecumenical Discourse’, Pro Ecclesia 7 (1998), 307–32

Augustine

Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford: OUP, 1992), Book 7, pp. 111–132; critical Latin edition with commentary by James J. O’Donnell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992)

Brian E. Daley, SJ, ‘A Humble Mediator: The Distinctive Elements in St. Augustine’s Christology’, Word and Spirit 9 (1987), 100–17

Brian Dobell, Augustine’s Intellectual Conversion: The Journey from Platonism to Christianity (Cambridge: CUP, 2009)

John Peter Kenney, The Mysticism of Saint Augustine: Re-Reading the Confessions (London: Routledge, 2005)

William Mallard, ‘The Incarnation in Augustine’s Conversion’, Revue d’études augustiniennes et patristiques 15 (1980), 80–98

David Vincent Meconi, ‘The Incarnation and the Role of Participation’, Augustinian Studies 29 (1998), 61–75

John Thomas Newton, Jr., ‘The Importance of Augustine’s Use of the Neoplatonic Doctrine of Hypostatic Union for the Development of Christology’, Augustinian Studies 2 (1971), 1–16

John M. Quinn, A Companion to the Confessions of St. Augustine (New York: Lang, 2002)

Kim Paffenroth and Robert Peter Kennedy (eds), A Reader’s Companion to Augustine’s Confessions (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2003)

Philip Rigby, The Theology of Augustine’s Confessions (Cambridge: CUP, 2015)

Colin Starnes, Augustine’s Conversion: A Guide to the Argument of Confessions I-IX (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 1990)

Rowan Williams, ‘Augustine’s Christology: Its Spirituality and Rhetoric’, in In the Shadow of the Incarnation: Essays on Jesus Christ in the Early Church in Honor of Brian E. Daley, S.J., ed. Peter W. Martens (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008)

Anselm of Canterbury

Anselm of Canterbury, Why God Became Man, trans. Janet Fairweather, in The Major Works, ed. Brian Davies and G.R. Evans (Oxford: OUP, 1998)

David Brown, ‘Anselm on Atonement’, in The Cambridge Companion to Anselm, ed. Brian Davies and Brian Leftow (Cambridge: CUP, 2004), 279–302

Daniel Deme, The Christology of Anselm of Canterbury (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003)

G.R. Evans, Anselm and Talking about God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 126–71

——, Anselm and a New Generation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 154–73

——, Anselm (London: Chapman, 1989)

Thomas V. Morris, Anselmian Explorations: Essays in Philosophical Theology (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989)

R.W. Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge: CUP, 1990), 197–227

Sandra Visser and Thomas Williams, Anselm, Great Medieval Thinkers (Oxford: OUP, 2009), 213–39

Martin Luther

Martin Luther, ‘The Freedom of a Christian’, trans. W.A. Lambert and H.J. Grimm, in Luther’s Works, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T. Lehmann (Philadelphia: Muehlenberg and Fortress, and St. Louis: Concordia, 1955-86), vol. 31, 343–77

Matthieu Arnold, ‘Luther on Christ’s Person and Work’, in The Oxford Handbook of Martin Luther’s Theology, ed. Robert Kolb, Irene Dingel, and L’ubomir Batka (Oxford: OUP, 2014), 274–293

Hans-Martin Barth, The Theology of Martin Luther: A Critical Assessment, trans. Linda M. Maloney (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2013)

Oswald Bayer, Martin Luther’s Theology: A Contemporary Interpretation, trans. Thomas H. Trapp (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008)

Marc Lienhard, Martin Luther’s Witness to Jesus Christ: Stages and Themes of the Reformer’s Christology, trans. Edwin H. Robertson (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1982)

Bernhard Lohse, Martin Luther: An Introduction to His Life and Work, trans. R. Schultz (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986)

——, Martin Luther’s Theology: Its Historical and Systematic Development, trans. Roy A. Harrisville (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999)

K. Mühlen, ‘Christology’, in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation, ed. H. Hillerbrand (Oxford: OUP, 1996), vol. 1, 314–22

Dennis Ngien, ‘Chalcedonian Christology and Beyond: Luther’s Understanding of the Communicatio Idiomatum’, Heythrop Journal 45 (2004), 54–68

Ian D. Kingston Siggins, Martin Luther’s Doctrine of Christ (New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1970)

John Calvin

John Calvin, The Gospel according to St John: 1–10, trans. T.H.L. Parker, ed. David W. Torrance and Thomas F. Torrance (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1959), 7–26

——, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. J.T. McNeill, tr. Ford Lewis Battles (London: SCM, 1961), II.12–17

Paul van Buren, Christ in Our Place: The Substitutionary Character of Calvin’s Doctrine of Reconciliation (Edinburgh, 1957)

** Stephen Edmondson, Calvin’s Christology (Cambridge: CUP, 2004)

John F. Jansen, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Work of Christ (London: J. Clarke, 1956)

* Cornelis van der Kooi, ‘Christology’, in The Calvin Handbook, Herman J. Selderhuis, tr. Henry J. Baron (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 257–66

Richard A. Muller, Christ and the Decree: Christology and Predestination in Reformed Theology (Durham, NC: Labyrinth, 1986)