Untitled

Religion in Philosophy and Theology
Editors
Helen De Cruz (St. Louis, MO) · Asle Eikrem (Oslo)

Thomas Rentsch (Dresden) · Hartmut von Sass (Berlin)
Heiko Schulz (Frankfurt a. M.) · Judith Wolfe (St Andrews)
106
Petr Gallus
The Perspective
of Resurrection
A Trinitarian Christology
Mohr Siebeck
Petr Gallus, born 1979; studied protestant theology in Prague, Marburg, and Tübingen; 2005
PhD; 2005 − 2006 assistant professor at Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg; 2006 − 2016
vicar and pastor; since 2016 assistant professor at Charles University, Prague; 2021 habilitation
(in progress).
ISBN 978-3-16-160109-5 / eISBN 978-3-16-160110-1

DOI 10.1628/978-3-16-160110-1
ISSN 1616-346X / eISSN 2568-7425 (Religion in Philosophy and Theology)
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie;
detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.
© 2021 by Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, Germany. www.mohrsiebeck.com

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Printed in Germany.
Preface
In 1993, John Hick stated that there is an “intense flurry” of christological

discussions on the significance of Jesus Christ. 1 Ten years later, Markus
Buntfuß notices in his habilitation lecture on Christology that there had been
over 500 books on Christology in the last ten years. 2 In recent years, the sit-
uation has been noticeably different. While there is a lively christological dis-
cussion in catholic theology, the protestant production counts only a few
items.
Therefore, I hope to fill a certain gap with this study. From my perspective
of a continental protestant theologian, I try to present my own conception of
Christology in its whole extent and in an intense discussion with different
theological traditions of old as well as from today. Among my main discus-
sion partners are traditional and liberal protestant theologians, catholic theo-
logians of various directions, and also the eastern orthodox tradition. Alt-
hough I am following up many important ideas from the riches of the theo-
logical tradition with thankfulness and profit, in the end, I try to elaborate an
original outline of a contemporary Christology, which could stand the chal-
lenge of the current postmodern situation. The following study is thus primar-
ily V\VWHPDWLFDO, not historical or biblical. I try to identify the important piec-
es of biblical and historical theological tradition and rearrange it. In addition
to some original ideas and new accents, I reimagine some traditional accents
in order to put together a new picture, which critically deals with the tradition
in a way that keeps and maintains the fundaments of Christian faith and, at
the same time, provides a reasonable theological stance for our current time.
This may result into a critique from both sides: for the rather conservative
ones, it may be too little conservative and traditional; for the rather liberal
ones, it may be still too conservative and traditional and too little progressive.
Every time I took into my hands the next book on Christology that I have
not read yet, I realized, how much I am still at the beginning. Nevertheless, I
hope to contribute at least a little to the discussion, being continually aware
1
J. HICK, 7KH 0HWDSKRU RI *RG ,QFDUQDWH (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press,
1993), 1.
2
M. BUNTFUß , “Verlust der Mitte oder Neuzentrierung? Neuere Wege in der Christolo-
gie”, 1=67K46 (2004), 348.
VI 3UHIDFH
and awaiting the legitimate critique of what I have omitted and not men-
tioned.3
I cannot name all to whom I would like to express my gratitude and thank-
fulness for inspiring and critical questions and remarks on my thoughts. Sub-
stitutionally for all, I want to thank: my students and colleagues in Prague,
esp. to those from the graduates-seminar in philosophy led by Prof. Dr. Lenka
Karfíková; Prof. Dr. Malte D. Krüger and his students in Marburg, to whom I
could repeatedly present my ideas; the publishing house Mohr Siebeck, in
particular Tobias Stäbler and Matthias Spitzner, for editorial assistance and
publishing my text as a nice book; Dr. Raymond E. Perrier, who did the
proofreading – without him, my text would be far from being an English text.
What is left, is my “Czenglish”.4
And last but not least, I want to thank Prof. Dr. Ingolf U. Dalferth, dr.h.c.,
who helped me in many respects – my thanks to him concern not only the
possibility of publishing this study in the RPT-Series, but they go beyond
what he himself may guess.
This text is a result of the grant project Nr. 18-00355S “Humanity of God as
God’s Accommodation to the World” provided by the Czech Science Foun-
dation (GAČR).
Prague, in March 2021 Petr Gallus
3
What I did not manage to read anymore, was, in the first place, the newest handbook
of Christology by H. ASSEL, (OHPHQWDUH&KULVWRORJLH, 3 vols (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Ver-
lagshaus, 2020).
4
If not quoted from an English source, all translations into English are mine.
Table of Contents
Preface ......................................................................................................... V
List of Abbreviations ............................................................................... XIII
Part One
Chapter 1: Christology as the Centre of Theology .......................... 3
&KULVWRORJ\DVWKH%DVHIRUWKH7ZRIROG)RFXVRI7KHRORJ\ ....................... 3
1.1. Divinity and Humanity ...................................................................... 3
1.2. Liberal Theology: An Opposite Conception? ..................................... 4
1.3. Jesus Christ as the Self-Revelation of God ........................................ 9
7KH0HWKRGRORJLFDO%DFNJURXQGV ............................................................ 19
2.1. The Postmodern Situation: Diagnostic Rationality within Plural
Perspectives..................................................................................... 19
2.2. Semiotics ......................................................................................... 24
2.3. Internal Realism .............................................................................. 28
Chapter 2: The Object of Christology .............................................. 36
7KHµ4XHVWV¶IRUWKH+LVWRULFDO-HVXV ....................................................... 37
7KH6HDUFKIRUWKH+LVWRULFDO-HVXVIURP7RGD\¶V3HUVSHFWLYH ................ 53
&KULVWXVSUDHVHQV..................................................................................... 60
Chapter 3: The Field of Christology:

The Chalcedonian Frame ..................................................................... 65
VIII 7DEOHRI&RQWHQWV
7KH&UHHGRI&KDOFHGRQDQG,WV3UREOHPV ............................................... 65
1.1. The Definition ................................................................................. 67
1.2. The Problems of the Definition........................................................ 78
7KH6WUXJJOHZLWK&KDOFHGRQLQWKH+LVWRU\RI7KRXJKW ........................... 89
2.1. Communicatio idiomatum ............................................................... 89
2.2. Enhypostasis.................................................................................... 99
2.3. John of Damascus .......................................................................... 111
2.4. The Western Medieval Christology ............................................... 116
2.5. Martin Luther ................................................................................ 118
2.6. The Protestant Orthodoxy .............................................................. 129
2.7. Kenoticism .................................................................................... 137
2.8. Schleiermacher and His Critique of the Traditional Dogma ........... 142
:KDWWR'R:LWK&KDOFHGRQ7RGD\" ...................................................... 154
Chapter 4: The Perspective of Christology:

The Resurrection .................................................................................. 166
7KH5RXWHRI&KULVWRORJ\7KHUHDQG%DFN$JDLQ................................... 166
1.1. Resurrection as the Starting Point .................................................. 166
1.2. The Fundament for the Speech of Resurrection ............................. 169
1.3. There and Back Again ................................................................... 175
7ULQLW\DVWKH1HFHVVDU\%DFNJURXQG ..................................................... 177

2.1. The Importance of the Trinitarian Approach .................................. 177
2.2. The Challenges of a Consistent Trinitarian Speech of God ............ 180
Part Two
Chapter 5: Divine Preexistence: The Accommodation .............. 185
7KH,PPXWDEOH*RGRIWKH7KHRORJLFDO7UDGLWLRQ ................................... 186
7KH&KULVWRORJLFDO&RPSOLFDWLRQ ........................................................... 188
7KH3UREOHP........................................................................................... 190
7DEOHRI&RQWHQWV IX
7KH'\QDPLF6SDFHZLWKLQWKH'LYLQH,PPXWDELOLW\ ............................... 192
7KH$FFRPPRGDWLRQDVWKH)XQGDPHQWDO2QWRORJLFDODQG5HJXODWRU\
7HUP .................................................................................................... 203
Chapter 6: The Incarnation ................................................................ 216
$FFRPPRGDWLRQLQ3URFHVV$Q$WWHPSWZLWKWKHHQK\SRVWDVLVRU1HZ
:LQHLQWR2OG:LQHVNLQV ...................................................................... 217
9HUHKRPR .............................................................................................. 226

2.1. Person and Personality within One’s Identity ................................ 226
2.2. Identity and Name ......................................................................... 231
2.3. Imago Dei...................................................................................... 234
7KH,GHQWLW\RI-HVXV&KULVW .................................................................... 239
Chapter 7: The Death of Jesus Christ ............................................. 250
,GHQWLW\DQG'HDWK.................................................................................. 250
1.1. The Conception of Immortal Soul and Its Critique ........................ 251
1.1.1. The Conception................................................................... 251
1.1.2. Application to Christology .................................................. 255
1.1.3. The Critique of the Conception of Immortal Soul ............... 256
1.2. Total Death.................................................................................... 259
1.2.1. The Conception................................................................... 259
1.2.2. Death of Jesus Christ as Human Death................................ 265
1.2.3. Critique of the Total-Death Theory ..................................... 266
'HDWKRI-HVXV&KULVW±'HDWKRI*RG .................................................... 269

2.1. The Cross of Jesus Christ .............................................................. 269
2.2. Death of God? ............................................................................... 272
2.2.1. The Old Church .................................................................. 273
2.2.2. Martin Luther...................................................................... 276
2.2.3. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel .......................................... 277
2.2.4. Karl Rahner ........................................................................ 287
2.2.5. Eberhard Jüngel .................................................................. 287
2.2.6. Jürgen Moltmann ................................................................ 290
X 7DEOHRI&RQWHQWV
'HDWKRI-HVXV&KULVWDV'HDWKLQ*RG ................................................... 294

3.1. The Trinitarian Consequences of the Death of Jesus Christ ........... 294
3.2. The Ontological Relocation of Death............................................. 297
Chapter 8: Salvation: The Cross as Vicarious

and Representative Sacrifice? ........................................................... 299
6RWHULRORJ\DQG,WV&XUUHQW&KDOOHQJHV.................................................. 299
$WRQLQJ6DFULILFH.................................................................................... 301
9LFDULRXV5HSUHVHQWDWLRQ ....................................................................... 305

3.1. Exclusivity and Inclusivity ............................................................ 305
3.2. Some Traditional Solutions............................................................ 308
3.3. Problems of Traditional Solutions ................................................. 313
3.3.1. Problems of Traditional Exclusive Aspects ......................... 314
3.3.2. Problems of Traditional Inclusive Aspects .......................... 314
3.3.3. Further Problems of the Conception of Vicarious
Representation .................................................................... 315
7ULQLWDULDQ7UDQVIRUPDWLRQRIWKH7UDGLWLRQDO&KULVWRPRQLVP ............... 321

4.1. The Christological Key Point: Bearing of Fate .............................. 321
4.2. Christological Grounding of Salvation........................................... 328
4.3. Pneumatological Communication of Salvation .............................. 332
4.4. Trinitarian Soteriology of History.................................................. 336
Chapter 9: The Resurrection ............................................................. 338
7KH+HUPHQHXWLFVRI5HVXUUHFWLRQ ......................................................... 338

1.1. Three Hermeneutical Questions ..................................................... 338
1.2. The Fundamental Hermeneutical Structure .................................... 343
7KH+LVWRULFLW\RI5HVXUUHFWLRQ .............................................................. 345
%RGLO\5HVXUUHFWLRQ7KH(PSW\7RPE ................................................... 354
:KDW:DVWKH5HVXUUHFWLRQRI-HVXV&KULVW" .......................................... 360

7DEOHRI&RQWHQWV XI
$VFHQVLRQDQGWKH(QULFKHG*RG............................................................ 366
&RPPRQ5HVXUUHFWLRQDQGWKH/DVW-XGJHPHQW ...................................... 368

6.1. Common Resurrection ................................................................... 368
6.2. The Last Judgement ....................................................................... 369
Chapter 10: God, Time, and Eternity.............................................. 372
(WHUQLW\DQG7LPH................................................................................... 372
1.1. The Traditional Conception: God above Time ............................... 373
1.2. Alternative Conceptions: God in Time........................................... 378
7ULQLW\7KH2QWRORJ\RIWKH(WHUQLW\7LPH5HODWLRQ .............................. 383
Chapter 11: Christology in Postmodern Plurality ........................ 394
2QWKH:D\WRZDUG3RVWSOXUDOLVW+XPLOLW\ ............................................. 394

1.1. Christianity among Other Religions............................................... 395
1.1.1. Pluralism............................................................................. 396
1.1.2. Inclusivism ......................................................................... 409
1.1.3. Exclusivism ........................................................................ 414
1.2. The Particularity and Universality of the Christian Claim .............. 416
'LDORJXHRI3DUWLFXODU3HUVSHFWLYHV"..................................................... 418
$FFRPPRGDWLQJ3UDFWLFH........................................................................ 420
Bibliography ............................................................................................. 425
Index of Names ......................................................................................... 453
Index of Subjects ....................................................................................... 459

List of Abbreviations
AAS Acta apostolicae sedis

ACO Acta conciliorum oecumenicorum
BHTh Beiträge zur Historischen Theologie (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck)
BSLK Bekenntnisschriften der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche
BThSt Biblisch-Theologische Studien
Cath(M) &DWKROLFD (Münster: Aschendorf-Verlag)
DBWE Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works [English]
DH &RPSHQGLXP RI &UHHGV 'HILQLWLRQV DQG 'HFODUDWLRQV RQ 0DWWHUV RI )DLWK
DQG0RUDOV, ed. H. DENZINGER and P. HÜNERMANN
DoMo Dogmatik in der Moderne (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck)
FC SD Formula concordiae, Solida declaratio
HThK AT Herders Theologischer Kommentar zum Alten Testament (Freiburg: Herder)
HUTh Hermeneutische Untersuchungen zur Theologie (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck)
KD K. BARTH, 'LHNLUFKOLFKH'RJPDWLN, 14 vols, Zürich: TVZ, 1932–1967
KGA F.D.E. SCHLEIERMACHER, .ULWLVFKH *HVDPWDXVJDEH, 18 vols, Berlin: De
Gruyter, 1972–
LPhR G.W.F. HEGEL, /HFWXUHVRQWKH3KLORVRSK\RI5HOLJLRQ, 3 vols
LThK /H[LNRQIU7KHRORJLHXQG.LUFKH, 11 vols, 3rd ed., ed. W. KASPER, Freiburg:
Herder, 1993–2001
MJTh 0DUEXUJHU-DKUEXFK7KHRORJLH (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt)
NZSTh(R) 1HXH =HLWVFKULIW IU 6\VWHPDWLVFKH 7KHRORJLH XQG 5HOLJLRQVSKLORVRSKLH
(Berlin: De Gruyter)
QD 4XDHVWLRQHV'LVSXWDWDH (Freiburg: Herder)
PG 3DWURORJLDHFXUVXVFRPSOHWXV6HULHVJUDHFD, 166 vols., ed. J.P. MIGNE, Par-
is, 1857–1866
PL 3DWURORJLDH ODWLQDH FXUVXV FRPSOHWXV, 221 vols., ed. J.P. MIGNE, Paris,
1844–1864
RGG 5HOLJLRQLQ*HVFKLFKWHXQG*HJHQZDUW, 9 vols, 4th ed., ed. H.D. BETZ et al.,
Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998–2005
RPP 5HOLJLRQ LQ 3DVW DQG 3UHVHQW, 14 vols, ed. H.D. BETZ et al., Leuven: Brill,
2006–2013
RPT Religion in Philosophy and Theology (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck)
SJT 6FRWWLVK-RXUQDORI7KHRORJ\ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)
STh THOMAS OF AQUIN, 6XPPDWKHRORJLDH, 4 vols
TBT Theologische Bibliothek Töpelmann (Berlin: De Gruyter)
ThLZ 7KHRORJLVFKH/LWHUDWXU]HLWXQJ (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt)
ThWNT 7KHRORJLVFKHV :|UWHUEXFK ]XP 1HXHQ 7HVWDPHQW, 10 vols, ed. G. KITTEL,
Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1933–1979
TRE 7KHRORJLVFKH 5HDOHQ]\NORSlGLH, 36 vols, ed. G. MÜLLER et al., Berlin: De
Gruyter, 1993–2006
XIV $EEUHYLDWLRQV
VChS Vigiliae Christianae Supplementa (Leiden: Brill)

VWGTh Veröffentlichungen der Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft für Theologie
WA “Weimarer Ausgabe”: ' 0DUWLQ /XWKHUV :HUNH .ULWLVFKH *HVDPWDXVJDEH,
121 vols, Weimar 1883–2009
WUNT Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament (Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck)
ZThK =HLWVFKULIWIU7KHRORJLHXQG.LUFKH (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck)
Part One

Chapter 1
Christology as the Centre of Theology
1. Christology as the Base for the Twofold Focus of Theology

&KULVWRORJ\DVWKH%DVHIRU7KHRORJ\
'LYLQLW\DQG+XPDQLW\
Theology is the rational and critical reflection of the Christian speech of God,
which tries, at the same time, to think it out to the end.1 The Christian speech
of God is an expression of the Christian life of faith. Faith understands itself
as a life FRUDP 'HR, in a world where God is present and active. Christian
faith counts on God because, in its self-understanding, faith can only emerge
when God meets human. This presupposes that God and human FDQ meet.
Moreover, in the search for to what extent God and human can meet, at least
from the perspective of Christian faith, it comes to the fundamental and
grounding insight that God and human GLG already meet in a decisive way.
The fundamental and unique point of intersection between divine and human
for Christian faith and, hence, also for theological reflection is the person of
Jesus Christ. In him, following the intuition of the traditional Chalcedonian
Christology, true divinity meets true humanity, unconfused and undivided at
the same time. In him, in his person, God did not only PHHW human, but, as
the tradition states, God ZDV this human. This is the basic fact and notion for
1
Theology in my view is, therefore, not only the “grammar of the Christian life of
faith” (cf. I.U. DALFERTH, -HQVHLWVYRQ0\WKRVXQG/RJRV'LHFKULVWRORJLVFKH7UDQVIRU
PDWLRQ GHU 7KHRORJLH, QD 142 [Freiburg: Herder, 1993], 216–313; IDEM, &UXFLILHG DQG
5HVXUUHFWHG5HVWUXFWXULQJWKH*UDPPDURI&KULVWRORJ\, trans. J. BENETT [Grand Rapids:
Baker Academic, 2015], xxi; H.-P. GROSSHANS, 7KHRORJLVFKHU5HDOLVPXV(LQVSUDFKSKL
ORVRSKLVFKHU%HLWUDJ]XHLQHUWKHRORJLVFKHQ6SUDFKOHKUH, HUTh 34 [Tübingen: Mohr Sie-
beck, 1996], 233), but it tries also to critically formulate the contents of faith in their onto-
logical relation to reality. Thus far, theology as a function of faith itself presupposes that
faith has an internal rationality based on an analogical structure of reality. It is this internal
rationality of faith, which theology tries to disclose and reconstruct critically. This means
that this reconstruction can get into a tension with the actual praxis of faith. Theology,
therefore, can (and should) serve as its critical, although theoretical, pendant. It can (and
should) permanently accompany faith because theology as the critical and rational reflec-
tion of faith lies on another level than the lived faith. Concerning the relationship of theol-
ogy and faith cf. P. GALLUS, “Theologie – eine Glaubenswissenschaft?”, in 'LH5ROOHGHU
7KHRORJLHLQ8QLYHUVLWlW*HVHOOVFKDIWXQG.LUFKH, VWGTh 36, ed. J. SCHRÖTER (Leipzig:
EVA, 2012), 55–67.
4 &KDSWHU&KULVWRORJ\DVWKH&HQWUHRI7KHRORJ\
the Christian faith as well as for the Christian theology and, at the same time,
a point, which needs further explanation and consideration.
This is exactly what I intend to do in the following text. Regarding the
theological structure this implies that Christology as the theological reflection
of the person of Jesus Christ lies on the point of intersection between the doc-
trine of God and of anthropology. Hence, it has from the very beginning a
twofold focus: God and human. And, moreover, both in mutual relation.
Which means, considering the factual unity of the person of Jesus Christ, that
both divinity and humanity have to be thought in a mutually SRVLWLYH rela-
tion.2
With this setting, Christology has to fulfill two fundamental goals: First, it
should show how to think of WKHSHUVRQRI-HVXV&KULVWDQGRIKLVLPSDFW and
effect (the tradition called this the “person and work of Jesus Christ”, or
Christology and soteriology). I will try to maintain that if the divinity of Jesus
Christ himself and the outreach and effect of his salvation should not be di-
minished, this cannot be done without trinitarian background. The result
should then be a WULQLWDULDQ&KULVWRORJ\. At the same time, I will argue that
the most appropriate starting point and leading perspective for this goal is WKH
SHUVSHFWLYHRIUHVXUUHFWLRQ, which binds together Christology and soteriology
as well as the divinity and humanity of Jesus Christ.
And second, because the person of Jesus Christ stands for the fundamental
point of intersection between divinity and humanity, this christological con-
cept could become a WKHRORJLFDOIRXQGDWLRQIRUDOOGLYLQHKXPDQUHODWLRQV as
they emerge in the perspective of the first (creation) or the third article (just i-
fication, church, Christian life). In other words, such trinitarian Christology
could prove to be an appropriate foundation for a pneumatological anthropol-
ogy in the wider context of the doctrine of creation.3 This twofold goal with
all its presuppositions, consequences and context is the main objective to be
elaborated in detail and argued for in this study.
/LEHUDO7KHRORJ\$Q2SSRVLWH&RQFHSWLRQ"
In my view, Christology due to the unique unity of divinity and humanity is
the very FHQWUHRIWKHRORJ\, just as the confession of Jesus Christ is the very
core of the Christian faith. With this thesis, hence, I start with the centre and
2
I.e., not diminishing or even excluding one another, as it was the case often in the his-
tory of Christology. See below, Ch. 3.
3
A second volume following this study should be therefore a pneumatological anthro-
pology where I intend to develop more the particular thesis that all acting of God in the
world proceeds always according to its christological foundation. God enters the created
categories in whose he remains unconfused and from whose he remains undivided and in
this way, he can employ his full divinity with full respect to the creation and its finite
forms.
&KULVWRORJ\DVWKH%DVHIRU7KHRORJ\ 5
in the centre of theology. Therefore, some clarifications of my fundamental

presuppositions and of principal decisions are necessary. For to start theolog-
ically with Christology is no self-evident step; it needs some justification. Of
course, there are alternative ways. One could develop the whole theology
from the perspective of the first article as theology of creation (or even solely
from a theistic point of view following classical theism), or from the perspec-
tive of the third article following God’s presence in the world in the Spirit.
The most opposite alternative to trinitarian concepts though – at least as it
is traditionally put and although being differentiated into a variety of concep-
tions – was and is OLEHUDOWKHRORJ\. Here, the subject of theology is not God
and human speech about God but the human and one’s religion. In the mod-
ern history of protestant theology, these two positions – the trinitarian and the
liberal – traditionally mark two almost opposite attitudes to theology. Within
the history of theological tradition, they both focus on different source-times
as the most important measure for all theology. While the trinitarian and
revelational theology sees the most important source in the biblical scriptures
and in some fundamental texts and theological decisions of the old church as
a genuine expressions of the fundaments of Christian faith, which are, then,
critically reflected as the measure for everything else, the liberal tradition re-
curs back to the Enlightenment, its critique of religion and its anthropological
turn, which is, then, the measure for the whole Christian tradition including
biblical texts and traditional theological interpretations.4 And indeed, in par-
ticular concepts and in some particular accents, both traditions are in opposi-
tion to each other.
Of course, there are many other possibilities for the foundation of theology; and there are
also concepts which try to unite the above-mentioned and partly opposite ways of doing
theology. Many catholic theologians follow the transcendental starting point of Karl Rah-
ner and, developing it further, they try to show in a kind of philosophical prolegomena,
that human in his freedom, in a hidden way, asks the question of God, which is then explic-
itly answered by the revelation.5
On the protestant side, :ROIKDUW3DQQHQEHUJ came up with a conception, which presup-
poses that humans are per definitionem religious, God-related beings and God is necessary
4
Cf. radically CH. DANZ, *UXQGSUREOHPHGHU &KULVWRORJLH (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck,
2013), Vorwort (without pagination): “The European Enlightenment and its reception in
Protestant theology have dissolved the traditional old-church Christology.” In this perspec-
tive, the traditional Christology is considered for “großkirchliche Einheitsphantasien”
(A. VON SCHELIHA, “Kyniker, Prophet, Revolutionär oder Sohn Gottes? Die ‘dritte Runde’
der Frage nach dem historischen Jesus und ihre christologische Bedeutung”, =174 [1999],
29), or for “a historically unlikely illusion“ (DANZ, *UXQGSUREOHPH, 30).
5
Cf. K. RAHNER, )RXQGDWLRQV RI &KULVWLDQ )DLWK, trans. W.V. DYCH (New York:
Crossroad, 1998), 31–41; TH. PRÖPPER, 7KHRORJLVFKH $QWKURSRORJLH, vol. I (Freiburg:
Herder, 2012), 488–564; cf. also below. Ch. 3.3. On the protestant side cf. in his specific
way P. TILLICH, 6\VWHPDWLF7KHRORJ\, 3 vols. (Chicago: Chicago UP, 1951–1963), vol.I,
62, and vol. II, 13.
for a right human self-understanding. And therefore, God has to prove himself within the
process of history as God, as the ultimate truth. Since the history is not over yet, human
claims for truth – including the Christian one – can only be particular. Then, “the testing of
the [Christian] claim must take the form of a systematic reconstruction of Christian teach-
ing from its starting point in the historical revelation of God which it asserts”, namely “that
the God of the Bible will prove himself to be the one God of all people, or has already
shown himself to be this one God in Jesus Christ”. Accordingly, in his methodological
procedure, Pannenberg switches the view “from the phenomenology of the experiences of
revelation which are richly attested in the religious world to the theme of the revelation of
the deity of the God of Israel as the one God of all people”, takes this perspective on the
scientific level as a hypothesis and tests its plausibility. 6
The problem of these otherwise highly appreciated approaches is that their alleged pre-
theological analysis of human freedom or religiosity is in fact led by a hidden Christian
understanding of the general term of religion where basic human phenomena are interpret-
ed as leading to the question or reality of the Christian God. The whole method is hence a
hidden SHWLWLR SULQFLSLL. Moreover, the concept of religion proves to be rather a western
construct than a universal concept, which could include all ‘religions’ and ‘religiosity’. 7
Nevertheless, the discussion and the self-reflection within theology go on.

Could the liberal theology be defined as “grasping of a transcendent dimen-
sion of reality, incited from without”,8 then both these attitudes and traditions,
6
W. PANNENBERG, 6\VWHPDWLF7KHRORJ\, vol. 1, trans. G.W. BROMILEY (London/New
York: T&T Clark, 2004), 196; IDEM, 7KHRORJ\ DQG WKH 3KLORVRSK\ RI 6FLHQFH, trans. F.
MCDONAGH (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976). Cf. also P. GALLUS, “Mluvit o Bohu
v sekulární společnosti podle Wolfharta Pannenberga [How to Speak about God in a Secu-
lar Society According to Wolfhart Pannenberg]” in 3URPČQ\ PDU[LVWLFNRNĜHVĢDQVNpKR
GLDORJXYýHVNRVORYHQVNX [7UDQVIRUPDWLRQVRIWKH0DU[LVW&KULVWLDQ'LDORJXHLQ&]HFKR
VORYDNLD], ed. I. LANDA and J. MERVART (Praha: Filosofia, 2017), 275–296.
7
Cf. G.A. LINDBECK, 7KH1DWXUHRI'RFWULQH5HOLJLRQDQG7KHRORJ\LQD3RVWOLEHUDO
$JH, 25th ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 26: Regarding the presup-
posed notion “that there is an inner experience of God common to all human beings and all
religions”, it is to say: “There can be no experiential core because […] the experiences that
religions evoke and mold are as varied as the interpretive schemes they embody. Adherents
of different religions do not diversely thematize the same experience; rather they have dif-
ferent experiences.” Cf. P.F. KNITTER, ,QWURGXFLQJ 7KHRORJLHV RI 5HOLJLRQV (Maryknoll:
Orbis Books, 2002), 178–190; and below, Ch. 11. Cf. also the plastic and colorful repro-
duction of different religious experiences, practices and rituals, which determine the pa r-
ticular everyday life of different religious traditions in N. MACGREGOR, /LYLQJ ZLWK WKH
*RGV2Q%HOLHIVDQG3HRSOHV (London: Allen Lane, 2018).
8
J. LAUSTER, “Liberale Theologie”, 1=67K550 (2007), 295. Unfortunately further on,
Lauster conceives religion in a very narrow individualistic sense, located “only subjective-
ly in the human conscience” (297) which is obviously the (only) point of immediacy of the
Absolute. But any religious expression, which is always a human work, can never reach to
what founds it (ILQLWXPQRQFDSD[LQILQLWL) so that the theology remains nothing more than
³GRFWDLJQRUDQWLD” (298). Here, theology cannot know what it is related to because every
self-expression of a religious individual is insufficient. Theology mutates into anthropolo-
gy or into a theory of culture because transcendence is paradoxically too far and always
abstract and cannot come closer (LQILQLWXPQRQFDSD[ILQLWL).
trinitarian theology and liberal theology, could be conceived complementary,

as two possible theological ways with different focuses. If the objective of
theology is a reality incited from without and somehow experienced by hu-
mans, then it is possible or even necessary to raise not only one but rather WZR
TXHVWLRQV: on one hand the question of this “from without”, on the other the
question of the human experience of it. Both these questions are legitimate
and it is not possible to reduce theology only to one of them because they
both need one another: it is impossible to grasp an external point without an
internal reception and it is analogically impossible to speak about a reception
if it would not come from an external source.9
For this insight that liberal theology would need a bit more of christologi-
cal foundation and trinitarian theology in the opposite a bit more of dealing
with religious experience and the earthly Jesus, 6FKOHLHUPDFKHU DQG KLV
&KULVWRORJ\ could be an interesting example, which, at the same time, brings
important questions for the position of Christology within the whole of theol-
ogy. It is well known that Schleiermacher conceives the Christian dogmatics
as “accounts of the Christian religious affections set forth in speech”10. The
main objective of his theology is therefore the piety, that is “a modification of
Feeling, or of immediate self-consciousness”,11 which is, at the same time,
the place of immediate God-consciousness. 12 Theology is hence an account of
the contents of a pious conscience. Schleiermacher tries to maintain this prin-
ciple in his Christology as well when he states that Christology expresses “all
propositions concerning Christ which are immediate expressions of our
Christian self-consciousness”.13 Yet, in fact, his Christology is divided tradi-
9
Cf. W. KASPER, -HVXV WKH &KULVW (London: T&T Clark, 2011), 11–12. And lately D.
EVERS, “Combinatory Christology”, +76 7KHRORJLHVH 6WXGLHV 7KHRORJLFDO 6WXGLHV 72
(2016), 2: “Traditionally, there has been a fundamental divide between liberal or expressiv-
ist, and conservative or doctrinal Christologies. This debate has reached a kind of stalemate
situation: either Jesus is nothing but a human being, a prophet, a teacher, a role model as
believer or religious individual, or Jesus Christ is understood as a supernatural divine-
human being, the son of God walking on earth. I still think that this difference between
liberal and doctrinal Christology is valid, but I am even more convinced that we have to
transform this disjunction into a distinction between different aspects of Christology that
have to be held together. If we are able to see Christology as an interrelation of different
perspectives on Jesus Christ which are not mutually exclusive, this might allow for the di-
versification into Christologies that differ in foci but can become positively related.”
10
F.D.E. SCHLEIERMACHER, 7KH &KULVWLDQ )DLWK, 2nd ed. 1830/31 (London: Blooms-
bury T&T Clark, 2016), § 15, Thesis, 76.
11
Ibid., § 3, Thesis, 5.
12
Ibid., § 4, Thesis, 12.
13
Ibid., § 91.2, 372. Cf. also ibid., § 29.3, 125: “[N]othing concerning Him can be set
up as real doctrine unless it is connected with His redeeming causality and can be traced to
the original impression made by His existence. Whatever falls outside these limits either
must have its proper place elsewhere or can make good its position only in virtue of some
tionally into two parts about the person of Christ and about his work.14 In the
first part, Schleiermacher treats the person of the Redeemer not as a content
of human self-conscience but as an external reality, a historical fact, which
causes the Christian faith and the believing conscience.15 “There is no doubt
that, for Schleiermacher, the person of Jesus is not a content of conscience.” 16
In this view, Schleiermacher’s Christology is indeed “the great disturbing el-
ement” in his doctrine, not allowing it to be a circle with one focus, but
Christology, being a second focus, forces his system to be rather “an ellipse
with two foci”.17 The interesting question would be how this notion of the ex-
ternal source of human faith should affect the foundation and the structure of
such theology, i.e., what would it mean if Schleiermacher himself would take
more seriously his starting point as expressed in the thesis of § 11:
“Christianity is a monotheistic faith, belonging to the teleological type of religion, and is
essentially distinguished from other such faiths by the fact that in it everything is related to
the redemption accomplished by Jesus of Nazareth.”18
more distant relationship to be demonstrated in a special way.” In his program, Schleier-

macher wants obviously to conceive Christology mainly in its soteriological dimension. In
his factual procedure, however, provoked by the tradition he criticizes, he deals a lot with
the ontology of Christ’s person. Concerning the danger of reducing Christology only to
soteriology cf. below, Ch. 3.2.4., fn. 246.
14
Ibid., § 92.2, 376.
15
Ibid., § 14.1, 68.
16
R. SLENCZKA, *HVFKLFKWOLFKNHLWXQG 3HUVRQVHLQ-HVX &KULVWL6WXGLHQ]XUFKULVWROR
JLVFKHQ 3UREOHPDWLN GHU KLVWRULVFKHQ -HVXVIUDJH (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1967), 210, cf. 209–211. Similarly D. LANGE, +LVWRULVFKHU-HVXVRGHUP\WKLVFKHU&KULVWXV
(Gütersloh: Mohn, 1975), 141: “[T]he central position of the doctrine of Christ in The
Christian Faith is identical not with the position of the exalted one but with the position of
the earthly, historical [geschichtlich] Jesus”. Or R. NIEBUHR, 6FKOHLHUPDFKHU RQ &KULVW
DQG 5HOLJLRQ D 1HZ ,QWURGXFWLRQ (New York: Scribner, 1964), 212 and 220: “[T]he re-
deemer is the historical person”, therefore the Christian faith and Christology as well are
“dependent upon historical fact”.
17
K. BARTH, 3URWHVWDQW 7KHRORJ\ LQ WKH 1LQHWHHQWK &HQWXU\, 2nd ed. (Valley Forge:
Judson Press, 1976), 431–432. Ibid., 464, Barth adds: “[T]he ellipse tends to become a cir-
cle, so that its two foci have the tendency to coincide in one centre-point. But at the same
time it is unlikely that this centre-point will lie mid-way between the two foci, since the
power of attraction of the first focus is from the outset much stronger than that of the sec-
ond, and since the second, once the circle has been achieved, might perhaps have vanished
altogether, having succumbed entirely to the first.” Cf. also NIEBUHR, 6FKOHLHUPDFKHU,
212, who, therefore, calls Schleiermacher’s concept not “Christo-centric” but “Christo-
morphic”. This – already traditional – critique of Schleiermacher mentions also M.
REDEKER, 6FKOHLHUPDFKHU /LIH DQG 7KRXJKW, trans. J. WELLHAUSER (Philadelphia: For-
tress Press, 1973), 151. Against it J. MARIÑA, “Schleiermacher’s Christology Revisited. A
Reply to his Critics”, 6-7 49 (1996), 177–200.
18
SCHLEIERMACHER, 7KH&KULVWLDQ)DLWK, § 11, Thesis, 52. Therefore, for Schleierma-
cher, Christian faith is always christological. However, he refrains from any proof of this
And indeed, in the Second Letter to Lücke, Schleiermacher considers very

seriously the possibility that in the second edition, he would start his Chris-
tian Faith with the second part, i.e., with Christology:
“Would it not, therefore, have been most natural and orderly for me to begin from this
point and to view everything from this perspective, especially since I have so definitely
asserted that Christians have their complete consciousness of God only as it is produced in
them through Christ? […] In short, the entire doctrine would have been treated as it is now,
but in reverse order.”19
It is obvious, anyway, that Schleiermacher knew about the centrality of Chris-

tology, although there were other theological centers and foci, which were
stronger in the end – in the structure as well as in the material explication.20
Famous is his wish to arrange his dogmatics so “that at every point the reader
would be made aware that the verse John 1:14 is the basic text for all dogmat-
ics, just as it should be for the conduct of the ministry as a whole”.21
-HVXV&KULVWDVWKH6HOI5HYHODWLRQRI*RG
Although the stress on the historicity of the person of Jesus Christ can look
disturbingly in Schleiermacher, it is no wonder in the traditional view. Chris-
tology traditionally plays a key role for the question of the external reality
and of the external source and foundation of Christian faith. It is the funda-
mental answer of the Christian tradition to the question of from where the
faith comes and where is it anchored.22 The external anchor and foundation of
fact appealing simply to the presupposition “that every Christian, before he enters at all
upon inquiries of this kind, has already the inward certainty that his religion cannot take
any other form than this” (ibid., § 11.5, 60). According to his “Second Letter to Lücke”, in
IDEM, 2QWKH *ODXEHQVOHKUH 7ZR /HWWHUV WR 'U /FNH, trans. J. DUKE and F. FIORENZA
(Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1981), 55 (= SCHLEIERMACHER, .ULWLVFKH *HVDPWDXVJDEH,
Abt. I/10, ed. H.-J. BIRKNER [Berlin: De Gruyter, 1990], 338), “every Christian” refers to
“every mature Christian who came to clarity”, not to the young people for whom the form
of catechism with another set up is appropriate.
19
SCHLEIERMACHER, 2QWKH*ODXEHQVOHKUH, 55–56 (= .*$ I/10, 338).
20
Cf. ibid., 68–69 (= .*$ I/10, 358–359). The centrality of Christology in Schleierma-
cher’s dogmatics stresses also M. SCHRÖDER, 'LH NULWLVFKH ,GHQWLWlW GHV QHX]HWOLFKHQ
&KULVWHQWXPV 6FKOHLHUPDFKHUV :HVHQVEHVWLPPXQJ GHU FKULVWOLFKHQ 5HOLJLRQ, BHTh 96
(Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996), 55–56, but he refuses Barth’s critique of Schleiermacher.
21
SCHLEIERMACHER, 2Q WKH *ODXEHQVOHKUH, 59 (= .*$ I/10, 343). Cf. H. FISCHER,
)ULHGULFK'DQLHO(UQVW6FKOHLHUPDFKHU (München: C.H. Beck, 2001), 117.
22
This answer is, however, based also already on faith, it is an answer from within. And
there is no other standpoint possible. “There is no way to escape this common argument for
turning away from Christian realism to religious idealism”, as EVERS, “Combinatory
Christology”, 8, rightly states. It is so because the Christian faith is not a belief among oth-
er beliefs of the human life, “but an organizing and orientating principle” of the whole
Christian conduct. One who believes cannot answer but from within of his or her faith.
faith, the fundamental external reality for faith is grasped nowhere else than
in Jesus Christ as the UHYHODWLRQRI*RG.23 Revelation cannot be understood as
revelation of something, of some doctrines, of some fundamental contents of
faith or of some holy words or texts, in which one would be required to be-
lieve in, as liberal theology rightly and often points out. 24 Faith is not based
on accepting something as true but on a new perspective, on a newly under-
stood reality as reality FRUDP 'HR. Revelation happens when God reveals
himself in the conditions of the world as God and humans understand such
moments as revelations of God. This means that in the epistemological re-
spect, revelation is basically not a new reality but rather a new perspective
and a new dimension of reality, which can be understood not only as it seems
to be at first sight but also with more complexity when it is seen from a dif-
23
Cf. W. PANNENBERG, “Einführung”, in 2IIHQEDUXQJDOV*HVFKLFKWH, ed. IDEM (Göt-
tingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1961), 8, where Pannenberg states a theological con-
sensus already in the 1960s that “revelation is essentially the self-revelation of God”. Simi-
larly IDEM, -HVXV ± *RG DQG 0DQ, trans. L.L. WIKLINS and D.A. PRIEBE (London: SCM
Press, 1996), 127. I.U. DALFERTH, “Introduction: Understanding Revelation”, in 5HYHOD
WLRQ, Claremont Studies in the Philosophy of Religion, Conference 2012, ed. I.U.
DALFERTH and M.CH. RODGERS (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 20–25, shows in detail
that this statement – developed originally in Hegel’s philosophy and later in a different
way in K. Barth’s theology as “the two most accomplished types of understanding the idea
of God’s self-revelation to this day” (ibid., 24) – is still valid, although we live today in a
shifted postmodern paradigm of irreducible plurality of particular approaches (cf. below in
this chapter, subch. 2). Cf. also DALFERTH, &UXFLILHG DQG 5HVXUUHFWHG, 172–176; CH.
SCHWÖBEL, “Particularity, Universality, and the Religions. Toward a Christian Theology
of Religions”, in &KULVWLDQ8QLTXHQHVV5HFRQVLGHUHG7KH0\WKRID3OXUDOLVWLF7KHRORJ\
RI5HOLJLRQV, ed. G. D’COSTA (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1990), 34.
24
However, mostly in order to destroy the traditional concept of revelation entirely.
This tendency starts already with H.S. REIMARUS, “Zweites Fragment: Unmöglichkeit
einer Offenbarung, die alle Menschen auf eine gegründete Art glauben können”, in G.E.
LESSING,:HUNHXQG%ULHIH, vol. 8, ed. A. SCHILSON (Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klas-
siker-Verlag, 1989), 189; it is being mentioned by the liberals often in connection with Lu-
ther’s attack on ILGHVKLVWRULFD (cf. M. LUTHER, “Von der Freiheit eines Christenmensch-
en”, in :$ 7 [Weimar: Herrmann Bohlaus Nachfolger, 1897], 29; W. HERRMANN, 'HU
9HUNHKU GHV &KULVWHQ PLW *RWW LP $QVFKOXVV DQ /XWKHU GDUJHVWHOOW, 7th ed. [Tübingen:
J.C.B. Mohr, 1921], 87). Today cf. e.g. DANZ, *UXQGSUREOHPH, 216 and 193: “Christology
based on the theology of revelation as a special dogmatic doctrine is dissolved.” A middle
position defends P. SCHMIDT-LEUKEL, *RWW RKQH *UHQ]HQ (LQH FKULVWOLFKH XQG SOXUDOLV
WLVFKH 7KHRORJLH GHU 5HOLJLRQHQ (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2005), 212–226,
who stresses as well that revelation is not an acceptance of some instructions or informati-
ons but rather a matter of communication. In his conception, revelation as the self-
revelation of God plays a central role (more to his position see below, Ch. 11.1). In the
exact opposite to the claim of protestant liberal theology, catholic theology sees itself to be
based on revealed truths, which are defined in dogmas, cf. C.V. POSPÍŠIL, -Håtã]1D]DUHWD
3iQD6SDVLWHO >-HVXVRI1D]DUHWK/RUGDQG6DYLRXU@, 2nd ed. (Praha: Krystal, 2002), 30–
35.
ferent perspective. Revelation opens a new dimension of reality and with it a

new and surprising perspective and meaning of things. It happens through an
otherwise “normal” reality, in which – and this is the important point – God
reveals God-Self not as something else but as God. Revelation is therefore
always revelation VXEFRQWUDULR. It is
“the experiential process in which he [God] allows us to experience himself as he is, both
in, with, and as part of what is other than himself, with the result that we are able to per-
ceive and recognize God in truth as we reflect on this experiential process.” 25
It brings a new understanding of reality and with it a clarifying differentiation

because the basic semiotic DV-GLIIHUHQFH remains valid: what is understood is
a different thing from how it is understood. Neither side of the process of
revelation and of our experiencing and interpretation of revelation can be ab-
sent or reduced to the other.
This means, at the same time, that revelation is always revelation for
somebody. On the human side, this new understanding provokes faith, which
is fundamentally an “experience with the experience” within this new and
more complex perspective FRUDP'HR.26 Faith is therefore not a condition for
recognition of something as a revelation of God. On the contrary, faith itself
is EDVHG on this new perspective opened from outside. Theologically speaking
from the internal perspective of faith, the understanding of God as God is
mediated also by God-Self.27
25
DALFERTH, &UXFLILHGDQG5HVXUUHFWHG, 174; cf. ibid., 176, where Dalferth, following
an important point of Hegel, points out the necessary interconnection of God and our
thinking of God: “God is only truly conceptualized when the structure of the idea of God is
determined by the reality through which, according to the Christian faith, God has revealed
not just one of his specific realities but his essence, which defines all his realities.”
26
Faith is “Erfahrung mit der Erfahrung (experience with experience)”. This phrase
comes from G. EBELING, :RUWXQG*ODXEH, vol.III (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1975), 22,
and was also used and made known by E. JÜNGEL, “Drei Vorbemerkungen”, in IDEM, 8Q
WHUZHJV]XU6DFKH (München: Kaiser, 1972), 8.
27
‘God is recognized by God’ says since Hegel an old premise of theology of revelation
(cf. G.W.F. HEGEL, 9RUOHVXQJHQ EHU GLH 3KLORVRSKLH GHU 5HOLJLRQ, vol. 3, ed. W.
JAESCHKE [Hamburg: Meiner, 1995], 177–178, fn.; BARTH, &KXUFK 'RJPDWLFV II/1, 179;
TILLICH, 6\VWHPDWLF7KHRORJ\II, 14. In Hegel and Barth, this premise has a christological
point). However, this sentence needs to be corrected in a sensitive semiotic way in order
not to sideline humans and their understanding (which is a common problem in both Hegel
and Barth). Faith confesses its foundation by God-Self, but not in the sense that God would
arrange or even force the understanding. An understanding is always a contingent process,
always a little surprising, which arises from actually given possibilities. God in his Spirit
takes part in this contingent process providing opportunities for human understanding but
not forcing or making humans understand. Cf. I.U. DALFERTH, (YDQJHOLVFKH7KHRORJLHDOV
,QWHUSUHWDWLRQVSUD[LV (Leipzig: EVA 2004), 77–113; P. GALLUS, “Orientující teologie”, in
IDEM and P. MACEK, 7HRORJLHMDNRYČGD (Brno: CDK, 2007), 56–67; P. GALLUS, “Was ist
Already the first witnesses and many after them until today recognized in
Jesus Christ God-Self; they understood and understand him thus as the VHOI
UHYHODWLRQ RI *RG. Self-revelation means, on its basic level, as Pannenberg
puts it,
“that the Revealer and what is revealed are identical. God is as much the subject, the au-
thor of his self-revelation, as he is its content. Thus to speak of a self-revelation of God in
the Christ event means that the Christ event, that Jesus, belongs to the essence of God hi m-
self.”28
Then, God cannot be understood without or apart from Christ. On the contrary,
“[i]f God is revealed through Jesus Christ, then who or what God is becomes defined only
by the Christ event. Then Jesus belongs to the definition of God and thus to his divinity, to
his essence. The essence of God is not accessible at all without Jesus Christ.” 29
Therefore, according to semiotic distinctions, the central sentence should be

put this way: Christian faith interprets the human Jesus Christ as a person, in
which <God> reveals himself as ‘God’; because for what we mean with
<God> (as the intended reality) we have no other signs and terms than ‘God’
(as our term). We can never have <God> (as any other thing in itself), we can
have only ‘God’ as referent to <God>. Yet, if it is <God> who reveals KLPVHOI
in the human Jesus, i.e., who reveals himself in the wholly human categories
as who he is – as <God>, then, when searching where to ground our interpre-
tation of <God>, we are directed to the experience and interpretation of the
human Jesus Christ. Therefore, presupposed with the Christian faith that it is
<God> who reveals himself in Jesus Christ, it is ‘God’ what we experience in
Jesus Christ. When we thus want to speak about <God>, the only door leads
through the experience and interpretation of Jesus Christ. His person is the
necessary and normative bound between <God> and ‘God’. At the same time,
obviously, the difference between <God>, Jesus Christ, and ‘God’ remains
valid and must not be forgotten. It must be rather thoroughly theologically
elaborated.
This fundamental notion of the Christian faith is the fundamental justifica-
tion of the central position of Christology also within theology.30 And it sim-
ultaneously requires a trinitarian background.
der Mensch?”, in -DKUH5HIRUPDWLRQLQGHU6ORZDNHL, ed. M. NICÁK and M. TAMCKE

(Berlin: LIT Verlag), 239–256.
28
PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 129.
29
Ibid., 130.
30
Cf. ibid., 19. Therefore, DALFERTH, -HQVHLWV YRQ 0\WKRV XQG /RJRV, 3, stresses the
necessary christological character of all theology: “If Christian theology wants to keep a
distinct voice in the contemporary process of pluralization in culture and religion and not
only to contribute to the general religious hum, it has to stress its own characteristic. That
is &KULVWRORJ\. Christology is more than a part of theology: Christian theology is Christol-
ogy. […] Insofar everything what Christian theology treats has christological foundations.”
At the same time, this is the principal point of difference to all theologies, which take the
confession of Jesus Christ rather metaphorically and which, therefore, do not conceive Je-
sus as the self-revelation of God but rather as an image or picture of God, which is to be
transcended, in the end, toward God-Self. These theologies, as it is the case with the mod-
ern liberal theology, instead of being founded on the very concrete profession of Jesus
Christ as true God and true human, they are rather grounded on the anthropological pre-
supposition of a general human religiosity without being able or willing to think revelation
at all, or only in a conditioned way. The question for liberal theology in this context would
thus be, whether liberal theology can think God, the Absolute or the Unconditioned as be-
ing able to enter really into the world, or whether God, although all reality is conceived
panentheistically as in God, remains in fact so far away (e.g. as the “horizon” of human
life) that we as humans do not have and cannot achieve anything more than relative pic-
tures (where Jesus himself is one of such) 31 or symbols,32 which need to be transcended at
last if one would like to come closer to God. Then, the final result and the final possible
theological achievement seems to be a sort of a negative theology. 33 Simply said: is there
besides the human attempts to come closer to God also – and if, then much more im-
portantly – the other direction: God’s coming into the world and human forms DV*RG?34
For the most extreme, yet, at the same time, nicely clear liberal position stands $YRQ
+DUQDFNwith his famous thesis that “[t]he Gospel, as Jesus proclaimed it, has to do with
the Father only and not with the Son“.35 Here, Jesus is not the Son of God: “The sentence
Cf. programmatically also W. PANNENBERG, “Christologie und Theologie”, in IDEM,

*UXQGIUDJHQV\VWHPDWLVFKHU7KHRORJLH*HVDPPHOWH$XIVlW]H, vol. 2 (Göttingen: Vanden-
hoeck & Ruprecht, 1980), 129–145; further cf. e.g. N. PITTENGER , 7KH :RUG ,QFDUQDWH
$6WXG\ RI WKH 'RFWULQH RI WKH 3HUVRQ RI &KULVW (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1959),
284; F. WAGNER, “Christologie als exemplarische Theorie des Selbstbewußtseins”, in
IDEM, :DVLVW7KHRORJLH"6WXGLHQ]XLKUHP%HJULIIXQG7KHPDLQGHU1HX]HLW (Gütersloh:
G. Mohn, 1989), 329–333; J. MOLTMANN, 7KH&UXFLILHG*RG, trans. R.A. WILSON and J.
BOWDEN (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 7; J. MACQUARRIE, -HVXV&KULVWLQ0RGHUQ
7KRXJKW (London: SCM Press, 1990), 3.
31
Cf. the philosophical background in the late J.G. Fichte, 1DFKJHODVVHQH:HUNH, vol.
II, ed. I.H. FICHTE (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1962), 335 and 365; and a current German
protestant concept in M.D. KRÜGER, 'DV DQGHUH %LOG &KULVWL (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck,
2017), 489–514.
32
P. TILLICH, 6\VWHPDWLF 7KHRORJ\ I, 132–137, 235–241; cf. P. GALLUS, 'HU 0HQVFK
]ZLVFKHQ +LPPHO XQG (UGH 'HU *ODXEHQVEHJULII EHL 3 7LOOLFK XQG . %DUWK (Leipzig:
EVA, 2007), 82–90, 139–149, 212–214.
33
Thought out to the end, however, negative theology destroys itself, as I.U.
DALFERTH, 'LH:LUNOLFKNHLWGHV0|JOLFKHQ (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 517, point-
edly notices: if God is radical different than everything we can think, then we cannot think
God at all. Then, “negative theology becomes a negation of theology” and, in fact, “the end
of theology”.
34
Cf. EVERS, “Combinatory Christology”, 8: “[L]iberal accounts have difficulties to
express the basic Christian belief that God is effectively present in, with and under the
formations of creation, including objectified reality.”
35
A. VON HARNACK, :KDW LV &KULVWLDQLW\", trans. T.B. SAUNDERS (digital ed. 2006),
95. To Harnack’s Christology, cf. also CH. AXT-PISCALAR, “Adolf von Harnack’s Chris-
tology”, in -HVXV&KULVW7RGD\6WXGLHVRI&KULVWRORJ\LQ9DULRXV&RQWH[WV, ed. S.G. HALL
(Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 2009), TBT 146, 159–177. Axt-Piscalar tries to interpret
‘I am the Son of God’ was not inserted in the Gospel by Jesus himself, and to put that sen-
tence there side by side with the others is to make an addition to the Gospel.“36 Rather, Je-
sus is the unique “personal realization” of the divine Gospel – not of God or divinity! – “in
as pure form as it can appear on earth”, which still shines through the message of his disci-
ples.37 In Harnack, no Christology is actually needed. 38 Jesus is fully human, not divine,39
and therefore only an ideal example to be followed. Christian religion in its original form
as witnessed by the Gospels concentrates on the teachings of Jesus, not on his person.
Hence, it is theological Christology, starting already with Paul and resulting into an “acute
Hellenisation” of the Gospel,40 which is the biggest enemy of the Gospel: “If redemption is
to be traced to Christ’s person and work, everything would seem to depend upon a right
understanding of this person together with what he accomplished. The formation of a cor-
rect theory of and about Christ threatens to assume the position of chief importance, and to
pervert the majesty and simplicity of the Gospel.”41
Harnack in a more orthodox way. Therefore, she weakens some of his radical theses (i.e.,
theses regarding Christology and Trinity in the first place, cf. ibid., 169–174) and blurs
some fundamental differentiations (ibid., 170–171, where she tries to interpret Harnack’s
Jesus as God in person, whereas Jesus in Harnack is rather “the personal embodiment of
the Gospel, not of God”, as rightly sees EVERS, “Combinatory Christology”, 6). Neverthe-
less, Axt-Piscalar points rightly out that Harnack’s criticism of Christology and formation
of dogma in the old church, led by falsely determined soteriological interest (AXT-
PISCALAR, “Adolf von Harnack’s Christology”, 166) does not mean that he would reject
the importance of the person of Jesus and dogma as such. As an example, the so-called $S
RVWROLNXPVWUHLW in 1870s in Germany can be mentioned, where Harnack did not want to re-
ject the Creed as such but “he argued for the formulation of an up-to-date confession”
(ibid., 163, footnote 8; cf. also R. LEONHARDT, “Die Bedeutung von Bekenntnissen in
Theologie und Kirche zwischen Anspruch der Tradition und aktuellen Herausforderungen,
in 'LH5HGHYRQ-HVXV&KULVWXVDOV*ODXEHQVDXVVDJH, ed. J. HERZER et al. Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 2018], 74–82).
36
HARNACK, :KDWLV&KULVWLDQLW\", 96.
37
Ibid.
38
He writes the word “Christology” only in the quotation marks, cf. ibid., 94.
39
Ibid., 84.
40
Ibid., 134. This thesis about the hellenization of the Gospel is one of Harnack’s most
famous and therefore also most controversial. Cf. A. GRILLMEIER, “Christus licet uobis
inuitis deus. Ein Beitrag zur Diskussion über die Hellenisierung der christlichen
Botschaft”, in IDEM, )UDJPHQWH]XU&KULVWRORJLH6WXGLHQ]XPDOWNLUFKOLFKHQ&KULVWXVELOG,
ed. TH. HAINTHALER (Freiburg: Herder, 1997), 81–111. Both positions of Harnack and
Grillmeier are corrected as oversimplified by CH. MARKSCHIES, +HOOHQLVLHUXQJGHV&KULV
WHQWXPV, ThLZF 25 (Leipzig: EVA, 2012); IDEM, “‘Hellenisierung des Christentums’? –
die ersten Konzilien”, in 'LH$QIlQJHGHV&KULVWHQWXPV, ed. F.W. GRAF and K. WIEGANDT
(Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2009), 397–436.
41
HARNACK, :KDWLV&KULVWLDQLW\", 120. Hence, the whole history of dogma is actually
a history of “decline” from the original simple Gospel (cf. K.-J. KUSCHEL, %RUQ%HIRUH$OO
7LPH" 7KH 'LVSXWH RYHU &KULVW¶V 2ULJLQ, trans. J. BOWDEN [London: SCM Press, 1992],
56–57).
In the liberal theology, Jesus plays therefore still an important role, yet not as the Son
of God but rather as the “exemplary character of a God-devoted life”.42 With this concep-
tion, liberal theologians often refer to Schleiermacher, but in Schleiermacher, Jesus is more
than the best example to be followed and the only mediator of God-consciousness (cf.
above in this chapter, subch. 1.2.1). According to Schleiermacher, the power of God-
consciousness in Jesus is so strong that “to ascribe to Christ an absolutely powerful God-
consciousness, and to attribute to Him an existence of God in Him, are exactly the same
thing”. Therefore, we can posit “this perfect indwelling of the Supreme Being as his pecu-
liar being and His inmost self”. 43 Schleiermacher seems, therefore, to count on Jesus’ di-
vinity much more than the liberal tradition, which arose from him and refers to him as one
of its important sources.44
Another extreme position within liberal theology is represented by theologians who try
to conceive Christology radically as a form of subjectivity theory. Such a concept was pre-
sented in a programmatic way by )DON:DJQHU. Standing firmly in the Enlightenment tra-
dition of Kant (with his differentiation of the “good principle” and its “personification” 45),
Hegel (with his conception of the objective Spirit as the community46) and Strauss (with
his idea of the divinity bound not only to one individual but to the whole mankind 47),
Wagner in his earlier phase tries to establish Christology as an “exemplary theory of the
self-consciousness”.48 Christology is for him rather an “argumentation figure”, a general
speculative theory of self-explanation of the self-consciousness.49 The person of Jesus
Christ fits into this theory because he is, following the idealistic tradition, a “unity of the
particular and general self-consciousness”.50 Wagner tries here to reinterpret the traditional
42
U. BARTH, “Hermeneutik der Evangelien als Prolegomena zur Christologie”, in
=ZLVFKHQ KLVWRULVFKHP -HVXV XQG GRJPDWLVFKHP &KULVWXV, ed. CH. DANZ and M.
MURRMANN-KAHL, DoMo 1 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 303.
43
SCHLEIERMACHER, 7KH &KULVWLDQ )DLWK, § 94.2, 387 and 388. Cf. the liberal com-
plaint of C.-D. OSTHÖVENER, “Dogmatik II: Materiale Entfaltung der ‘Glaubenslehre’”, in
6FKOHLHUPDFKHU+DQGEXFK, ed. M. OHST (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 366: “The fact
that he, nevertheless, finds his way to the formulation ‘that the God-consciousness dwell-
ing in him [sc. in Christ] was God’s true being in him’ does not make the evaluation of his
Christology any easier.” (Osthövener quotes here F.D.E. SCHLEIERMACHER, 'HU FKULVW
OLFKH*ODXEH ±, KGA I/7.2 [Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 1980], § 116, 27.)
44
Radical liberals, however, criticize Schleiermacher that that his decision to go a mid-
dle way between preservation and abandoning of the traditional dogma is “half-hearted”,
cf. B. DAHLKE, “Die Christologie in Schleiermachers Glaubenslehre”, &DWKROLFD 70
(2016), 290.
45
Cf. below, Ch. 2.1, footnote 26.
46
Cf. G.W.F. HEGEL, 3KlQRPHQRORJLHGHV*HLVWHV (Hamburg: Meiner, 1988), 498, 511.
47
Cf. below, footnote 113.
48
WAGNER, “Christologie als exemplarische Theorie”, 309–342. Cf. also Wagner’s
Lectures on Christology from 1989/90, F. WAGNER, “Vorlesung über Christologie (Win-
tersemester 1989/90 in Wien)”, in =ZLVFKHQ KLVWRULVFKHP -HVXV XQG GRJPDWLVFKHP
&KULVWXV, ed. CH. DANZ and M. MURRMANN-KAHL, DoMo 1 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck,
2010), 309–401.
49
WAGNER, “Christologie als exemplarische Theorie”, 309–310: “Christology repre-
sents nothing else than an encoded expression of the fact of self-consciousness” (ibid.,
310).
50
Ibid., 314.
two-natures Christology as a meta-theory in abstract theoretical terms of self-consci-

ousness and present this pattern, with a high ambition, also as a general and universal phil-
osophical model.51 To achieve this, according to Wagner, it is necessary (following
Reimarus, Strauss and Baur52) to remove the secondary and particular Christian images
produced by the church and to liberate the general self-consciousness from all historical
bounds. It is necessary to go beyond history and beyond all church production to the Un-
produced.53 The Unproduced in this form is still a human idea, but it is only thinkable in a
“reversal of the religious consciousness”: as a self-production of the Unproduced in a hu-
man production. In theological terms: It is only thinkable as the self-revelation of God in
human terms. Translated into Christology: In Jesus Christ, the general self-consciousness
becomes particular.54 And exactly this becoming, the constitution of the unity of the exem-
plary self-consciousness of Jesus Christ is the point of interest for Wagner. Therefore, he
refuses to start with incarnation and with the traditional two-natures doctrine, because the
constituted unity is already presupposed there.55 Instead, he seeks the point of God’s inter-
nal self-differentiation and the point of the constitution of the God-man-unity in Jesus
Christ (i.e., he seeks in fact a kind of theogony). However, he does not do it in an ontologi-
cal way but in terms of (or more sharply: in the reduction to) self-consciousness. From this
perspective, Wagner reinterprets the classical christological tradition, asking the triple
question of how the general self-consciousness develops within the particular, how the par-
ticular self-consciousness develops within the general, and how these two processes can
create a unity.56 At the end of his treatise, he turns back to his initial question and widens
the christological focus to the human self-consciousness in general: according to Wagner,
it came out that in the search for a self-explanation, the self-consciousness cannot refer
only to itself but it needs to refer to its ground. A finite self-consciousness needs the gen-
eral self-consciousness for its explanation. The interest of the self-consciousness in itself
is, in the end, grounded in its foundation in God.57
In his later period, Wagner abandoned his earlier attempt of a theory of the Absolute
and became much more critical toward the traditional theology as well as toward his own
earlier work. He attacked the traditional concept of God’s sovereignty, denied the idea of
incarnation as an “imaginary play (vorstellungshafte Spielerei)”, and a “fairy-tale imagina-
51
Ibid.
52
Ibid., 320.
53
Ibid., 321.
54
Ibid., 329. Cf. WAGNER, “Vorlesung über Christologie”, 342–343. This reversal
pointing to the divine self-revelation is obviously the central point of Wagner’s theory of
the Absolute: “The human knowledge of God and the human term of God is to be trans-
posed into the self-term of God, and the human qualification of God into the self-
qualification of God. This theo-logical turn of Christology is to be made in order that the
christological subject does not remain dependent on the facticity of the recognition and
production of the community. The transformation of the knowledge of God, as it is implied
in the way of Jesus, matches therefore the reformulation of the ontological proof of God:
the human term of God is to be understood from the self-qualification of God.”
55
Ibid., 330, 333.
56
Ibid., 333–341. In this context, he can surprisingly appreciate e.g. the Chalcedonian
distinction or the Christology of K. Barth (ibid., 334).
57
Ibid., 341–342.
tion (märchenhafte Vorstellungsart)” 58 and interpreted the God-human relation within his
(clearly Hegelian) concept of the “revolutioning of the idea of God” as a symmetrical one:
God needs human for his being God so that the originally asymmetrical relation turns out
to be symmetrical. God-as-God – i.e., God in his superiority – dies and human remains “as
the only power of his worldly existence”. 59 The whole process results into a picture of
symmetrical human relations, i.e., into a social ethical concept, in which the real human
freedom can be constituted and where any absolute instances are not acceptable any
more.60 For religion, this means – and this is Wagner’s most radical point – the “de-
theologizing of religion”, going hand in hand with “de-dogmatizing, de-substantializing,
de-supranaturalizing and de-mythologization of the traditional Christian concepts”. 61
Similarly, &KULVWLDQ'DQ]criticizes heavily the traditional two-natures Christology and,
following and even radicalizing the christological conception of F. Wagner, he interprets
the Christology as a mere instrument for a self-enlightenment of a finite individual free-
dom. 62 “Theological Christology has the sole function of a self-description of faith and of
its historical integration. Therefore, systematic theological Christology is to be understood
as a necessary expression of the self-understanding of the Christian religion about itself.”63
For Danz, God is identified with the process of self-enlightenment of one’s self: “The
knowledge of God is the self-knowledge and the self-knowledge is the knowledge of
God.”64 Hence, the human self-understanding as such “has throughout a soteriological di-
mension”.65
In this outcome, he meets 1RWJHU6OHQF]ND, who takes all christological statements only
as statements on the level of language, which do not express anything about the objects of
such speech but solely about the speaking subject. Christological statements are objectifi-
cations of human internal experiences. “The specifically Christian ‘speech of Christ’ turns
out to be a moment of the Christian’s speech of himself.”66
58
F. WAGNER, 0HWDPRUSKRVHQ GHV PRGHUQHQ 3URWHVWDQWLVPXV (Tübingen: Mohr Sie-
beck, 1999), 162.
59
Ibid., 163.
60
Ibid., 166.
61
Ibid., 165.
62
DANZ, *UXQGSUREOHPH, 193.
63
Ibid., 9, cf. 193–240. Similarly IDEM and M. MURRMANN-KAHL, “Der Problemhori-
zont der Christologie in der Moderne”, in =ZLVFKHQKLVWRULVFKHP-HVXVXQGGRJPDWLVFKHP
2010), 1: Christology becomes “a description of the actual individual process of faith and
of its inner structure”. The same states F. WITTEKIND, “Christologie im 20. Jahrhundert”,
ibid., 7–45. I will deal with this position more in detail below in Ch. 2.1.
64
65
Ibid., 220. Then, faith is directly identified with revelation. And because “the subjec-
tive and the objective moment in the term of revelation originate simultaneously (glei-
chursprünglich) with faith”, God (but only as the mere thought of God) originates with
faith as well (ibid., 211–212).
66
N. SLENCZKA, “Problemgeschichte der Christologie”, in 0DUEXUJHU-DKUEXFK7KHRO
RJLH;;,,,: &KULVWRORJLH, ed. E. GRÄB-SCHMIDT, MThSt 131 (Leipzig: EVA, 2011), 60. Cf.
also IDEM, “Die Christologie als Reflex des frommen Selbstbewusstseins”, in -HVXV
&KULVWXV, ed. J. SCHRÖTER, Themen der Theologie 9 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014),
181–241. It seems to be no coincidence that in Christology, Slenczka shows some sympa-
thies for Arius (ibid., 192–196).
In these conceptions, Jesus Christ is only an image or an expression and projection of

faith67 and, hence, Christology is reduced to anthropology or to a kind of a self-therapeutic
process of the faith toward a better self-understanding or toward a “successful human self-
relationship”.68 All processes, which the traditional Christology describes as coming from
H[WUD PH (knowledge of God, God-consciousness, atonement, salvation, redemption and
even the reference to the historical person of Jesus Christ himself 69) are, in the end, pro-
cesses within one’s individual consciousness, within one’s self-enlightenment (i.e., self-
consciousness, self-atonement, self-salvation, self-redemption).70 Either way, this means
that Christology as such (if not the whole theology itself) is off the table.71 What remains,
is individual religious anthropology.
Christology, or a principal theological decision, whether positive or negative

about the VWDWXVRI&KULVWRORJ\, defines thus the grammar of the whole of the-
ology. It is the approach to Christology, which decides about the shape of the
particular theological concept and within of it about the position of God, of
humans, of the world, and of their mutual relations. 72 Without Christology in
the strong sense, which takes Jesus Christ as true human and true God, the
liberal approach would be the most fitting, seeking to explain human religios-
ity from an anthropological perspective. Yet, if in Jesus Christ is God-Self,
then Christology turns the table; then, Christology becomes the foundation of
theology and structures its grammar. Then, there is no alternative to it.
67
For a believer, then, Jesus Christ is “das Andere seiner selbst” (SLENCZKA, “Prob-
lemgeschichte der Christologie”, 108). But exactly as such, and that is the problem, he is
no real other, he is only one’s projection. Herein, the principal weak point of any theory of
subjectivity comes clearly out: the inability to provide a possible space for a real otherness.
Cf. DALFERTH, 'LH:LUNOLFKNHLWGHV0|JOLFKHQ, 425.
68
SLENCZKA, “Problemgeschichte der Christologie”, 99.
69
Cf. DANZ, *UXQGSUREOHPH, 192: Christology can move forward only “if the christo-
logical reflection is unburdened of all reconnections to the empirical history of the man
from Nazareth”. Similarly F. WITTEKIND, “Christologie im Kontext der systematischen
Theologie religiöser Rede”, in 'RJPDWLVFKH &KULVWRORJLH LQ GHU 0RGHUQH, ed. CH. DANZ
and G. ESSEN (Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 2019), 290.
70
Therefore, EVERS, “Combinatory Christology”, 6, calls this approach “from within a
first-person perspective”, which lacks the ability to “give enough credit to what the re-
formers called the dimension of ‘H[WUDQRV’” (ibid., 8).
71
Either sublated in a left-Hegelian or even Straussian way into pneumatology (M.
MURRMANN-KAHL, “Die universale Bedeutung der Person Jesu”, in 'RJPDWLVFKH &KULV
WRORJLHLQGHU0RGHUQH, ed. CH. DANZ and G. ESSEN [Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 2019],
195–196), or totally abandoned (WITTEKIND, “Christologie im Kontext”, 290, where he
states explicitly that the aim is “a modern religion without Christology”).
72
Cf. R.J. WOŹNIAK, “The Christological Prism. Christology as Methodical Principle”,
in 7KH 2[IRUG +DQGERRN RI &KULVWRORJ\, ed. F.A. MURPHY (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2015),
527.
7KH0HWKRGRORJLFDO%DFNJURXQGV 19
2. The Methodological Backgrounds

2. The Methodological Backgrounds
On the level of scientific methodology, this central position of Christology
with its claim for truth – a claim, which is based on the Christian faith – re-
mains disputable until its eschatological confirmation, which is, however, al-
so a theological presupposition that is a part of this theological perspective
itself and, therefore, stands under the same reservation of disputability. 73
In my opinion, this hypothetical scientific status of theology and the
above-mentioned double focus of theology – the external reality of God in
Jesus Christ and the human religious understanding and experiencing of this
reality – can be maintained the best on the background of WKH VHPLRWLFFRQ
FHSWLRQRIKXPDQXQGHUVWDQGLQJFRPPXQLFDWLRQDQGUHODWLRQWRWKHH[WHUQDO
UHDOLW\.74 Altogether, my starting point against this backdrop with Christology
as the centre has two important consequences for the general principles of
theological work as understood in this study, both of which are marks of cur-
rent postmodern times with its stress on necessary SDUWLFXODULW\ of every per-
spective and, hence, on the unavoidable SOXUDOLW\ of perspectives: GLDJQRVWLF
UDWLRQDOLW\ and LQWHUQDOUHDOLVP. These consequences are based on the princi-
pal insight into the semiotic fundaments of human understanding and com-
munication.
7KH3RVWPRGHUQ6LWXDWLRQ'LDJQRVWLF5DWLRQDOLW\ZLWKLQ3OXUDO
3HUVSHFWLYHV
Contrary to the modern view that presupposed the unity of everything and
tried thus to bring all plurality to an original unity (in a kind of a metanarra-
tive, whether in the transcendent absolute subject or in the transcendental
human subject) and which tried, on the theoretical level, to search for ulti-
mate justification that, however, proved impossible,75 the postmodern para-
73
This was an important emphasis of W. Pannenberg, which I share. Regarding the sci-
entific status, PANNENBERG, 6\VWHPDWLF 7KHRORJ\ 1, 56 (cf. 48–61), conceived therefore
the whole adventure of systematic theology as a hypothesis. Cf. also IDEM, 7KHRORJ\DQG
WKH3KLORVRSK\RI6FLHQFH.
74
For a deeper introduction into semiotics, as founded by Ch.S. Peirce (cf. IDEM,
“Some Consequences of Four Incapacities”, in 7KH &ROOHFWHG 3DSHUV RI &KDUOHV 6DQGHUV
3HLUFH, vol. V, ed. CH. HARTSHORNE and P. WEISS [Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1931–
1935], 5.264–5.316) see e.g. U. ECO, $ 7KHRU\ RI 6HPLRWLFV (Bloomington: Indiana UP,
1976); IDEM, =HLFKHQ (LQIKUXQJ LQ HLQHQ %HJULII XQG VHLQH *HVFKLFKWH, trans. G.
MEMMERT (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1977). For the theological use of semiotics cf.
DALFERTH, (YDQJHOLVFKH7KHRORJLHDOV,QWHUSUHWDWLRQVSUD[LV; GALLUS, “Orientující teolo-
gie”.
75
Cf. DALFERTH, 'LH :LUNOLFKNHLW GHV 0|JOLFKHQ, 336–430. Nevertheless, as
LINDBECK, 7KH1DWXUHRI'RFWULQH, 28, states, “[t]he old theories may still hold perfectly
well in their primary areas of application”, i.e., in systems or unities, which yet turned out
digm76 focuses on the individual within his or her particular world and, hence,
starts with the irreducible plurality and particularity of each perspective. 77
“There is no such thing as a bird’s-eye view of postmodernity because there is no such
thing as a bird’s-eye view of anything. We can never rise above – or transcend – the loca-
tion where we are standing in order to see all the other locations. We are always looking at
other places from VRPH SODFH. Therefore, bird’s-eye views are – excuse the pun – for the
birds. We are hmans. That means we are place-bound. That is what our ‘modern’ world
seems to have forgotten. And the forgetfulness is rooted in the powerful influence that the
in the postmodern paradigm as particular unities. For the big picture, however, holds, what
D. TRACY, 2Q 1DPLQJ WKH 3UHVHQW *RG +HUPHQHXWLFV DQG &KXUFK (Maryknoll: Orbis
Books, 1994), 10–11, asserts: “[N]one of the models of modern self and the present time of
modernity can any longer suffice: neither the purely autonomous self of the Enlightenment,
nor the expresionist self of the Romantics, nor the anxious self of the existentialists, nor
the transcendental self of the transcendental philosophies and theologies of consciousness.
All such models are inadequate: for all are too deeply related to the embattled and self -
deluding self of modernity.”
76
Regarding the paradigm of postmodernity cf. TRACY, 2Q 1DPLQJ, 3–24; S.
COAKLEY, *RG6H[XDOLW\DQGWKH6HOI$Q(VVD\µ2QWKH7ULQLW\¶ (Cambridge UP, 2013),
31; R. HAIGHT, -HVXV 6\PERO RI *RG (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1999), 330–334; Z.
BAUMAN, 3RVWPRGHUQLW\ DQG ,WV 'LVFRQWHQWV (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997). J.-F.
LYOTARD, in his classical text 7KH3RVWPRGHUQ&RQGLWLRQ$5HSRUWRQ.QRZOHGJH (Min-
neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979), 10, referring to Wittgenstein’s language
games, puts well the difference of the postmodern pragmatics compared to the modern
search for the ultimate reason (in the 19 th century in the way of verification, in the 20 th cen-
tury in the way of falsification, ibid., 24): The rules of a particular language game “do not
carry within themselves their own legitimation, but are the object of a contract, explicit or
not, between players (which is not to say that the players invent the rules)”. The “demand
for legitimation” is even a symptom “of cultural imperialism” (ibid., 27). This notion is
employed theologically in the cultural-linguistic conception of religion and theology in
LINDBECK, 7KH 1DWXUH RI 'RFWULQH, 18–27. In the sociology of religion, reacting on the
secularization debate, cf. S.N. EISENSTADT, “Multiple Modernities”, 'DHGDOXV 129/1
(2000), 1–29.
77
Cf. DALFERTH, 'LH :LUNOLFKNHLWGHV 0|JOLFKHQ, 337–338, and IDEM, “Introduction:
Understanding Revelation”, 24, where he characterizes the postmodern paradigm in the
terms of “particularity”, “plurality”, “differences”, “diversity” and “depth or mystery”
(originally all terms italicized). Cf. also GROSSHANS, 7KHRORJLVFKHU 5HDOLVPXV, V–VI,
who names also the fundamental problem of postmodernity: “To the markers of ‘post-
modernity’ belongs the recognition of SOXUDOLW\: there is no longer RQH reality, which could
be understood through RQH reason, but both the term of reality as well as the term of reason
are to be thought of LQDSOXUDOZD\. However, if we give up a unified term of reality and a
unified term of reason so that they cannot be presupposed in cognition, research, and
communication anymore, the term of reality itself seems to be questioned. Something real
cannot be claimed as objectively given: therefore the reality is understood as an invention,
proposition or construction of humans.”
historical period of the Enlightenment has played on all of Western thought throughout the
modern period.”78
On the other hand, no particular perspective stands alone and isolated. With
all inevitable particularity of our perspectives, we still live in one shared
world and are preformatted by the society we live in and by its structures. A
particular perspective, therefore, cannot exist but in the encounter and clash
with other perspectives, in a communicative process of subsequent mutual
influence, correction and clarification in order to find mutual understanding
and mutually shared perspective. Unity is, then, not something from which
we come already and always but something we need to search for and create
through mutual understanding and communication. 79 Yet this also implies, at
the same time, that unity is a plural and partial phenomenon: what we can
achieve from our particular perspectives, are always plural unities, on differ-
ent levels, to different extents, and with other different particular positions.
Thus, no more from the universal to the individual (or from the individual as
a case of the universal) but, on the contrary, from the individual with all its
specifics and irrevocable differences to the other, from the concrete and par-
ticular phenomena and then as far as it might go leads the way of thinking in
the postmodern times; through mutual correction and clarification in the quest
for mutual understanding, yet still being aware of the particularity of one’s
own perspective. With respect to the disputability of all theological claims on
the scientific level and to this plurality of perspectives and without any possi-
bility of a justifiable claim of ultimate truth or ultimate perspective, what re-
mains is one’s own particular perspective and certain pragmatics. One must
VWDUW ZLWK KLV RZQ SRVLWLRQ and must try to develop it in order to make that
position interesting for the others, clear in argumentation, critical in reflection
of one’s own presuppositions, rationally reconstructable, and therefore plau-
sible. 3ODXVLELOLW\, and not necessary reasons, is the highest goal that a theory
or an explanation can achieve.80
78
KNITTER, ,QWURGXFLQJ, 173–174, cf. 173–178.
79
Cf. COAKLEY, *RG, 16: Applied to theology this means that theology “must be a
form of intellectual investigation in which a VHFXODU, universalist rationality may find itself
significantly challenged – whether criticized, expanded, transformed, or even at points re-
jected. In other words, an Enlightenment-style appeal to a shared universal ‘reason’ can no
longer provide an uncontentious basis for the adjudication of competing theological
claims.”
80
Cf. DALFERTH, 'LH :LUNOLFKNHLW GHV 0|JOLFKHQ, 429. To this conclusion came also
the reflection of the historical work within the quest for the historical Jesus, cf. below Ch.
2.1, and G. THEISSEN und D. WINTER, 7KH 4XHVW IRU WKH 3ODXVLEOH -HVXV, trans. M.E.
BORING (Lousiville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002).
That the postmodern paradigm has its severe ULVNV is known from its beginnings.81 The
most severe danger is often seen in the fact that the postmodern paradigm seems to justify
simply any particular perspective because there are no more shared values and criterias for
differentiating the legitimate perspectives from the illegitimate ones. As if now anybody
could claim anything (or even would have a right to do it). 82 And it is a fact that the irre-
ducible, unavoidable and also often chaotic plurality of perspectives provides space not
only for rational discussion but in the exact opposite for ideology, manipulation, and lie.
Our mutual communication can become – and becomes indeed, every day – an instrument
of power and control over the others because the space, in which it exists, is far from being
neutral.
Against the justification of a vast arbitrariness aims the tendency to emphasize that QR
SDUWLFXODUSHUVSHFWLYHVWDQGVDORQH. We are already always placed in a common world, in a
process of communication. Any particular perspective cannot exist only as a particular per-
spective but in a clash with other particular perspectives. Therefore, although in an imagi-
nary beginning all perspectives are equal, it is necessary in the communication process to
argue, clarify, and correct the particular perspectives. In this process, some perspectives
will prove more valid, convincing, plausible or powerful than others, some will prove as
legitimate and some as illegitimate. Every particular perspective is a part of a bigger
whole, of a society, of a culture and there are already always some shared criteria, rules or
norms (laws, moral, habits, patterns of rationality), which allow one to judge and sort par-
ticular perspectives. These criterias, however, are not external and absolute but they are
outcomes and subjects of mutual discussion as well.83
Therefore, there is another important point to be stressed: no one with his or her pa r-
ticular perspective starts from a zero point. Every perspective LVDOUHDG\DOZD\VSRVLWLRQHG
in a particular context, which has a history where some perspectives are already more es-
tablished and reasonable, while some others, on the contrary, are refused as inacceptable. 84
It still holds that the reasons for judging particular perspectives should be a matter of con-
tinuous critical reinvestigation. However, it is not possible to hold that, in a first step, any
perspective is as acceptable as any other. There have been historical experiences and a r-
guments, there have been judgments passed regarding other perspectives. This develop-
ment cannot be ignored, although it cannot be simply and uncritically accepted either. To-
81
Actually, it was the new social problems (as e.g. the computerization of human life,
the influence of capital and technology on truth), which was the very reason for the diag-
nose of a paradigm-shift; cf. LYOTARD, 7KH 3RVWPRGHUQ &RQGLWLRQ, 1–9, 41–53. Open
questions, with which the postmodern paradigm has to deal, names TRACY, 2Q 1DPLQJ,
18. Regarding religions and their problems in the postmodern (or in his terms: postliberal)
world cf. also LINDBECK, 7KH1DWXUHRI'RFWULQH, 118–120.
82
This impression intensifies the open and often wild space of the internet and of the
social networks in particular, which is the primary field for fake news, presented some-
times as “alternative facts”. These unstructured informations without any norms, limits and
criterias are one of the biggest problems of today’s societies.
83
Cf. GALLUS, 3UDYGDXQLYHU]LWDDDNDGHPLFNpVYRERG\ [7UXWK8QLYHUVLW\DQG$FD
GHPLF)UHHGRP] (Praha: Slon, 2020), 64–69.
84
In this sense reminds very fittingly TRACY, 2Q1DPLQJ, 20, that also the conception
of postmodernity and postmodern paradigm is a western particular conception remaining
thus “too self-centered and narrow”. That is the curse of any particular perspective. The
only possibility is to know about it, speak appropriately and treat the others in their other-
ness appropriately.
day, this context cannot be skipped when trying to establish a new perspective. It must be
done in a critical discussion with the historical developments so far. It is not true that any-
thing goes or that any perspective should have the right to be defended. There are perspec-
tives, which are not viable, and for good reasons. And there are perspectives, which are
preferred, for good reasons – although these reasons in both cases must be reconsidered
and confirmed again and again. Nevertheless, they cannot be ignored.
This is also very important due to the fact – which is in accord with the semi-
otic background of my concept and with the position of internal realism, as I
will show below – that every one of our understandings and conceptions of
reality has necessarily a FRQVWUXFWLYHGLPHQVLRQ. Our perception, understand-
ing and thinking is always a creative and contingent mixture of outer inputs,
of what can be considered for a fact, and of our constructive phantasy and
imagination. No interpretation, no theory, therefore, is a mere description. In
every interpretation, there is an unavoidable element of constructivity. 85
Therefore, no interpretation can want to be more than a plausible theory con-
structed on what can be considered for facts and plausible arguments.86
Considering the plurality, contigency and constructivity of all our under-
standing and conceptions, the most important instrument within this frame is,
therefore, the diagnosis, the GLDJQRVWLFWKLQNLQJ.87 A diagnosis critically pro-
cesses the starting principles, axioms and facts – which themselves are mostly
85
Cf. HABERMAS, 7UXWKDQG-XVWLILFDWLRQ, trans. B. FULTNER (Cambridge: MIT Press,
2003), 32: every knowledge is an “interpenetration of constituting activity and experi-
ence”, cf. also ibid., 26: in every knowledge, “the passive moment of experiencing practi-
cal failure or success is intertwined with the DFWLYH[orig.: NRQVWUXNWLY] moment of project-
ing, interpreting, and justifying”. The problem of constructivity arose clearly in the search
for an appropriate method within the quest for historical Jesus. Cf. below, Ch. 2.1, and J.
RÜSEN, “Faktizität und Fiktionalität der Geschichte – was ist Wirklichkeit im historischen
Denken?”, in .RQVWUXNWLRQYRQ:LUNOLFKNHLW, ed. J. SCHRÖTER and A. EDDELBÜTTEL, TBT
127 (Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 2004), 19–32; CH. LANDMESSER, “Der gegenwärtige
Jesus. Moderne Jesusbilder und die Christologie des Neuen Testaments”, .HU\JPD XQG
'RJPD56 (2010), 119–120.
86
Cf. J. SCHRÖTER, “Von der Historizität der Evangelien. Ein Beitrag zur gegenwärti-
gen Diskussion um den historischen Jesus”, in 'HUKLVWRULVFKH-HVXV7HQGHQ]HQXQG3HU
VSHNWLYHQ GHU JHJHQZlUWLJHQ )RUVFKXQJ, ed. J. SCHRÖTER und R. BRUCKER (Berlin/New
York: De Gruyter, 2002), 206–207, who says the same analogically in the view on the his-
torical Jesus: “The result is a historical construction with the claim to be plausible under
the current conditions of knowledge.”
87
Cf. LINDBECK, 7KH 1DWXUH RI 'RFWULQH, 117: “In short, intelligibility comes from
skill, not theory, and credibility comes from good performance, not adherence to inde-
pendently formulated criteria. In this perspective, the reasonableness of a religion is largely
a function of its assimilative powers, of its ability to provide an intelligible interpretation
of its own terms of the varied situations and realities adherents encounter.” Regarding di-
agnostic thinking cf. GALLUS, “Was ist der Mensch?”, 246–247; IDEM, 3UDYGD, 69–74; G.
SAUTER, =XJlQJH ]XU 'RJPDWLN (OHPHQWH WKHRORJLVFKHU 8UWHLOVELOGXQJ (Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1998), 356–357.
an outcome of certain interpretations or perspectives – it considers the rele-

vant phenomena and their particular interpretations and tries to give an ap-
propriate, fitting, and current interpretation for the actual situation (or, in oth-
er words: a plausible theory or explanation) and tries to offer, hence, a useful
orientation or a leading perspective for thinking and life (as actually every
good medical diagnose does).88 A diagnosis is, therefore, not speculation; on
the contrary, it needs to know some fundamental facts or convictions and
their existing interpretations and then, it needs to bring rational arguments for
its claims. It is right though, at the same time, that a diagnosis also has to in-
volve imagination and speculation into the process of creating new interpreta-
tions.89 However, it has to do so, at least within a scientific methodology,
while also using rational arguments or diagnostic skills.90 (Afterall, the para-
digm shift from the modernity to postmodernity is based exactly on the better
diagnostic power of the postmodern paradigm – and is, hence, at the same
time itself disputable, i.e., a subject of further discussion.)
Overall, in order to bring it to a short expression, what I try to maintain
with these considerations is the already known notion that, methodically
speaking, theology should proceed by DEGXFWLRQ.91
6HPLRWLFV
The diagnostic thinking aims to provide a plausible and useful explanation of
experienced facts, phenomena and their interpretations. It is a logical result of
the basic anthropological insight that human life is a permanent sequence of
88
Concerning the orientation in thinking and life cf. DALFERTH, 'LH :LUNOLFKNHLW GHV
0|JOLFKHQ, 34–46.
89
Thinking as a process, which proceeds always in signs (cf. below), is therefore very
often thinking in metaphors or “image-thinking”, as I.U. Dalferth puts it for the theological
thinking referring to A. Farrer and J. McIntyre. Cf. I.U. DALFERTH, “In Bildern denken.
Die Sprache der Glaubenserfahrung”, (YDQJHOLVFKH .RPPHQWDUH 30 (1997), 165. Cf. also
IDEM, “Mit Bildern leben: Theologische und religionsphilosophische Perspektiven”, in 'LH
8QYHUPHLGOLFKNHLWGHU%LOGHU, ed. G. VON GRAEVENITZ et al. (Tübingen: Narr, 2001), 77–
102.
90
The criteria of rationality are themselves a part of such an emerging critical dis-
course. In correspondence with what was said above, neither rationality is a universal and
univocal term but rationalities exist also in plural only. However, this notion does not lead
to the complete abandoning of rationality and argumentation and to their replacement by a
purely individual and subjective emotionality, which in a manipulative way refuses argu-
mentation as an aggression disturbing one’s own privacy, as it is sometimes falsely
claimed.
91
Cf. U. ECO, =HLFKHQ, 132–135; IDEM, $7KHRU\RI6HPLRWLFV, 131–133; IDEM, 6HPLRW
LFV DQG WKH 3KLORVRSK\ RI /DQJXDJH (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1984), 39–43; GALLUS,
3UDYGD, 69–74. Again, this concurs among others with the results of the historical Jesus
quest, cf. D.C. ALLISON, JR., &RQVWUXFWLQJ -HVXV 0HPRU\ ,PDJLQDWLRQ DQG +LVWRU\
(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010), 22.
interpretations of signs. Human is an DQLPDO VHPHLRWLFRQ. We perceive the

world in signs and we communicate and think in signs while we interpret the
signs with other signs. 92 This interpretation happens on the theoretical as well
as on the practical level, we understand the world somehow in our thinking
and we live according to it. There is no preinterpretative point, there never
was a point where we could decide to start to interpret the world. 93 We com-
municate already always and cannot decide, whether we will or will not
communicate. We can only decide how we will or will not communicate, be-
cause we have already always understood something somehow. It means, at
the same time, that we have, from the very beginning, each one’s own per-
spective from which we understand and communicate. This perspective is
fundamentally influenced by the culture we live in, providing us with some
basic structures of our understanding of the world, mainly with the language
we speak, which gives us the most important shared signs for understanding,
thinking, and communication: the words and terms. And, simultaneously, in
this way it preformats our understanding of the world. In this mutual intersec-
tion of our individuality and our sociality, everyone understands and speaks
from a unique perspective and searches understanding with the perspectives
of others within and with the help of these shared and common structures.
92
According to PEIRCE, &3 2.228, a sign has this structure: “A sign, or UHSUHVHQWDPHQ,
is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity.” If,
then, we relate to the reality always through signs, because “all thought is in si gns” (&3
5.253) and, hence, all our communication happens in signs, this given definition of sign
has far-reaching consequences: First, if we relate to the reality in signs, the reality has for
us always the as-structure. Therefore, the first important difference to be made is the semi-
otic difference between our signs for reality and the intended reality we try to signify with
our signs. Second, if we relate to reality, we pragmatically presuppose, there is something
like objective reality (this presupposition uses to be confirmed mostly when our practice
fails, in negative experiences, when we realize that the reality is different than we thought,
cf. PEIRCE, &3 5.311; HABERMAS, 7UXWK DQG -XVWLILFDWLRQ, 12; GALLUS, 3UDYGD, 31–40
and 48–55). Therefore, the second important difference to be made is the pragmatic and
ontological difference between our conceptions of reality and the reality itself, which we,
however, can never have apart from signs and our conceptions of it. Third, every thought is
bound to a certain perspective of a certain human, to a certain understanding in a particular
situation. Plurality of perspectives is therefore inevitable. And, finally, a sign expresses
something in some respect, i.e., we can never grasp the whole reality but only a certain part
or structure of it. Therefore, plural descriptions and significations are also inevitable. This
means, at the same time that plural and parallel claims for truth are possible without the
necessity to exclude one another (cf. more in detail at the end of this chapter).
93
This is the problem of all transcendental foundations of philosophy or theology,
which propose human freedom as a condition of possibility of human free will and, hence,
a neutral point before all willing, deciding and acting. Here, modern catholic theologians
often meet with protestant liberal theologians, cf. DALFERTH, 'LH:LUNOLFKNHLWGHV0|JOL
FKHQ, 343–344, there also further literature.
Therefore, there is no neutral position above all perspectives or an absolute

perspective possible and no particular perspective can claim such position. As
such, Christian faith (being in itself plural and internally differentiated) is,
therefore, one perspective among other different perspectives with similar
claims. Theology should know it and be aware of the fact that theology itself
cannot claim such elevated position either. The PHWKRGLFDOPHWDOHYHO of ra-
tional reflection, from which theology speaks, does not mean a PHWD
SHUVSHFWLYH above different religious perspectives and faiths. Theology also
speaks always from a particular perspective and if it wants to be Christian
theology, it should speak knowingly from the perspective of Christian faith.
Nevertheless, it is not the task of theology just to reconstruct and defend
what faith believes. First, Christian faith itself is a plural phenomenon, which
hopes to be related in all cases to the one and only God but which is very dif-
ferent in its expressions and descriptions of this relation. Theology, based ex-
actly on this differentiation between significations and their referent(s), has
therefore to decide critically, which form of faith and which significations it
takes as its starting point. Second, faith cannot prescribe anything to theolo-
gy; it cannot set any limits to the theology, which theology would not itself
accept. Theology is a function of faith, it should speak from perspective the
perspective of faith, but this does delimit neither the field of theology nor its
internal structure. Such limitation would mean that theology would have to
stay on the same level as faith and within limits set by faith. This is the dan-
ger of a too narrow concept of theology, which sees theology only as a func-
tion of the church. 94 Although the Christian faith is never a matter of an indi-
vidual only but is principally shared and has its genesis always in a communi-
ty of faith, the internal perspective of Christian faith is wider than a perspe c-
tive of a particular church and has to be reflected on more levels: next to the
church level is always, on one hand, the perspective of the individual believer
and his or hers life of faith and, on the other hand, there is the methodically
and critically reflected perspective of academic theology.
Theology is thus not only rational repetition and reconstruction of faith, it
does not stand on the same level as faith. Theology is rather a specific com-
bination or rather integration of two perspectives, of the internal perspective
94
This narrow concept of theology as a church theology only represents in the first
place K. Barth. In his view, theology is only the “reflection on the &UHGR that has already
been spoken and affirmed”. “And just because the beginning and the end are already given
in faith, and because all that has to be settled regarding the LQWHOOLJHUH that we are seeking
is the gap between these two extremes, this LQWHOOLJHUH is a soluble problem and theology a
feasible task” (K. BARTH, $QVHOP)LGHV4XDHUHQV,QWHOOHFWXP$QVHOP¶V3URRIRIWKH([
LVWHQFHRI*RGLQWKH&RQWH[WRI+LV7KHRORJLFDO6FKHPH [London: SCM, 1985], 27, 25. Cf.
also IDEM, &KXUFK'RJPDWLFV I/1, 1. Similarly G. SAUTER, =XJlQJH]XU'RJPDWLN. Cf. my
critique of this approach and a more detailed explanation of the different levels of theology
in GALLUS, “Theologie – eine Glaubenswissenschaft?”).
of faith and of the external perspective of philosophical reason, which are,

however, not considered as opposites one would have to choose from or one
would have to mediate between but which are both integrated into a (third)
theological perspective based on the perspective of faith. 95 The fundamental
difference of the internal and external perspective is here understood as a WKH
RORJLFDO dilemma, thus once again as an internal theological differentiation. 96
It still keeps the basic perspective of Christian faith, yet within a much more
complex structure, which, at the same time, provides for theology the neces-
sary distance from the level of faith and hence allows theology to be really a
self-standing critical reflection of faith.
Yet still, a necessary part of the theological speech and critical reflection
of faith has to be, simultaneously, the discussion of what defines the Christian
faith, what are its fundamental points. As any theologian of this time can ex-
perience in the discussion with other similar thinkers who consider the m-
selves to be Christian theologians, neither in this point can theology get be-
yond a plurality of possible perspectives, claims, and concepts.97 Its task is,
therefore, to choose critically, to differentiate, and to present a reasonable di-
agnose of what is Christian and how it should be theologically thought of in
95
This is the irritating point in the view of liberal theology, which works only with the
first two perspectives and is convinced that the perspective of reason is more universal
than the perspective of faith and requires, therefore, that the “contents of faith” have to be
translated “into the contents of reason” (J. ROHLS, “Sprachanalyse und Theologie”, 7KHRO
RJLVFKH 5XQGVFKDX 55 (1990), 216–217; cf. P. GALLUS, “Verschiedene Wege, ähnliche
Resultate? Barth-Rezeption bei Ingolf U. Dalferth”, in 8PVWULWWHQHV (UEH /HVDUWHQ GHU
7KHRORJLH.DUO%DUWKV, ed. M. GOCKEL, A. PANGRITZ and U. SALLANDT [Stuttgart: Kohl-
hammer, 2020], 250–252). However, the liberal view with its presupposition of one tran-
scendental reason underestimates the factual plurality of rationalities and reasons.
96
In this view, the threefold structure of the theological perspective is so complex that
“it cannot be escalated anymore, but only repeated and varied again and again, every time
in new ways”, as I.U. Dalferth showed dealing with the theological method and structure in
the late Karl Barth: I.U. DALFERTH, “Theologischer Realismus und realistische Theologie
bei Karl Barth”, (YDQJHOLVFKH7KHRORJLH46 (1986), 421. This article of Dalferth is not only
a contribution to the critical reflection of K. Barth’s theology but has a much higher im-
portance for the thinking about principles of theology in general. Cf. GALLUS, “Verschie-
dene Wege”.
97
This is a principal difference to the catholic view, which is based on the “authentic
interpretation of the word of God” (POSPÍŠIL, -Håtã]1D]DUHWD, 27) and of the Tradition as
“the bearer of the revealed truth” (ibid., 28) through the Magisterium, which alone defines
what is Christian and what should be – in the form of a legitimate theological pluralism –
presented further on to different recipients (ibid., 35). Hence, the official catholic approach
is, in the end, founded in one superior perspective with the authority of revealed truth, cf.
TH.G. WEINANDY, “The Doctrinal Significance of the Councils of Nicaea, Ephesus, and
Chalcedon”, in 7KH 2[IRUG +DQGERRNRI &KULVWRORJ\, ed. F.A. MURPHY (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2015), 563–564; G. NARCISSE, “What makes a Christology Catholic?”,
ibid., 582–595.
the context of today’s world and its relevant rationalities. As any such diag-
nose and perspective, every theological concept is a contribution to the con-
tinuous debate. This would be also the best outcome and fulfilled goal of a
theological conception: to remain disputable, worth of dispute and therefore
somehow useful.
,QWHUQDO5HDOLVP
With this view, I share Putnam’s position of internal realism, which, in my
opinion, is a very tenable position in the postmodern paradigm.98 Hilary Put-
nam has shown in the problem of brains in a vat, what I tried to substantiate
above: that no one can get beyond the perspectivity of all human understand-
ing and thinking. 99 No tenable meta-perspective or God’s-eye view or the ul-
timate legitimation is possible. On the contrary, everyone speaks from a cer-
tain perspective shaped by the conceptual scheme of the society one lives in
and this conceptual scheme preformats both the signs and the “objects”:
“‘Objects’ do not exist independently of conceptual schemes. :Hcut up the world into ob-
jects when we introduce one or another scheme of description. Since the objects DQG the
signs are alike LQWHUQDO to the scheme of description, it is possible to say what matches
what.”100
98
H. PUTNAM, 5HDVRQ 7UXWK DQG +LVWRU\ (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1981), 52. In
IDEM, 7KH0DQ\)DFHVRI5HDOLVP (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1987, 17, Putnam calls his
position also “internalism” or “pragmatic realism”, which should be able to maintain a
“common sense realism”. In the German philosophy, J. HABERMAS, 7UXWK DQG -XVWLILFD
WLRQ, 22, came with a similar concept of “weak naturalism” with explicit reference to and in
discussion with Putnam (cf. ibid., 8, 34, 213–235). Concerning both Putnam’s and Haber-
mas’ positions cf. also M. MOXTER, “Wie stark ist der ‘schwache’ Realismus?”, in .RQ
VWUXNWLRQHQ YRQ :LUNOLFKNHLW, ed. J. SCHRÖTER and A. EDDELBÜTTEL (Berlin/New York:
De Gruyter, 2004), 119–133, and GALLUS, 3UDYGD, 40–55. In the British theology, a simi-
lar position holds M. MCCORD ADAMS, &KULVWDQG+RUURUV7KH&RKHUHQFHRI&KULVWRORJ\
(Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006), 10–13. I agree with her methodical approach, which
she calls a “sceptical realism” (ibid., 10), but not with her proposal to solve christological
questions with “a return to metaphysics” (ibid., 81).
99
PUTNAM, 5HDVRQ, 1–21. Cf. A.F. KOCH, +HUPHQHXWLVFKHU 5HDOLVPXV (Tübingen:
Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 1–9, who points already to Descates’ Meditations and his dream ar-
gument.
100
PUTNAM, 5HDVRQ, 52. Cf. in regard of religious speech similarly LINDBECK, 7KH1D
WXUHRI'RFWULQH, 21: “A comprehensive scheme or story used to structure all dimensions of
existence is not primarily a set of propositions to be believed, but is rather the medium in
which one moves, a set of skills that one employs in living one’s life. […] Thus while a
religion’s truth claims are often of the utmost importance to it (as in the case of Christiani-
ty), it is, nevertheless, the conceptual vocabulary and the syntax or inner logic which de-
termine the kinds of truth claims the religion can make.”
No neutral objectivity is therefore possible, or rather: a kind of intersubjec-

tive objectivity in the form of coherence of understandings is possible only
within the given scheme or system, only LQWHUQDOO\.101
This means for theology that it may speak from a particular position be-
cause it PXVW speak always from a particular position, but theology needs to
do it knowingly and in a critical reflection of this position. To claim a meta-
perspective would mean to pretend something theology can never achieve be-
cause no one can jump over one’s own shadow, and it would mean to raise a
claim, which necessarily would have to prove as false and, after all, even ar-
rogant.
But at the same time, this perspectivity does not imply that we have to re-
main closed in our insufficient perspectives and resign from our attempts at a
proper description of the external reality, from mutual communication about
it and hence from the struggle for truth. This position stresses not only the
internality of every perspective, but it is at the same time internal UHDOLVP.102
In this realistic impetus, it is pragmatically presupposed that the reality as we
perceive it is the external reality, although it is perceived always internally. 103
It is important to keep the main distinction between the signification and the
signified, between the sign and the intended thing, on both the semiotic and
the ontological level, although we do not have the intended thing apart from
our signs and significations. 104 We can never have the external reality in an-
101
Putnam defines thus the truth as “some sort of (idealized) rational acceptability”
(PUTNAM, 5HDVRQ 7UXWK DQG +LVWRU\, 49) or “ultimate goodness of fit” (ibid., 64, orig.
italicized). Cf. LYOTARD, 7KH3RVWPRGHUQ&RQGLWLRQ, 29, who focused on the science and
its legitimation: “It is recognized that the conditions of truth, in other words, the rules of
the game of science, are immanent in that game, that they can only be established within
the bonds of a debate that is already scientific in nature, and that there is no other proof
that the rules are good than the consensus extended to them by the experts.”
102
Cf. GALLUS, 3UDYGD, 17–55; GROSSHANS, 7KHRORJLVFKHU5HDOLVPXV, 104–163.
103
M.D. KRÜGER, “Die Realismus-Debatte und die Hermeneutische Theologie”, in M.
GABRIEL and M.D. KRÜGER, :DV LVW :LUNOLFKNHLW" (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), 26,
calls the position of the internal realism “a relatively plausible solution”, but 32–33, he
expresses his hesitation: “Isn’t the internal realism only a wish? After all, I owe the prop o-
sition ‘In my understanding, I relate to something real which does not merge into this un-
derstanding’ to my understanding again, resp. it is accessible to me only through my un-
derstanding. Therefore: How can our understanding limit itself in a way that has not
crossed this border already?” It is the point of internal realism that to this internal VHPLRWLF
intern-extern differentiation it adds this intern-extern differentiation once again as an RQWR
ORJLFDO differentiation with the pragmatic presupposition that we relate to an external reali-
ty, although we are not able to relate to it outside of our internal perspective (cf. I.U.
DALFERTH, ([LVWHQ] *RWWHV XQG FKULVWOLFKHU *ODXEH 6NL]]HQ ]X HLQHU HVFKDWRORJLVFKHQ
2QWRORJLH[München: Chr. Kaiser, 1984], 34; MOXTER, “Wie stark ist der ‘schwache’ Re-
alismus?”, 122).
104
Nicely apostrophizes it U. ECO, 7KH 0\VWHULRXV )ODPH RI 4XHHQ /RDQD, trans. G.
BROCK (Orlando: Harcourt 2005), 419–420, referring to Putnam’s brains in a vat: “That is
other way than always in plural perspectives of individual understanding. :H

UHODWHWRH[WHUQDOUHDOLW\EXWDOZD\VLQDQLQWHUQDOZD\.105
Within the given scheme, there exists thus a kind of intersubjective ‘objec-
tivity’, although it will never be a real objective objectivity: what we consider
objective, at least in our daily praxis and orientation, is based on intersubje c-
tive agreement arrived at through communication and the struggle for truth.
(There is thus no space and reason for the other extreme either, i.e., for the
conviction that every subjective opinion has its own private truth and that,
hence, no common objectivity is possible. This would lead to a complete in-
dividualization and privatization of truth and would be, in fact, the end of all
communication.)
The same is valid for theology: theology has also to do with an external re-
ality; it is hence not only a theory of religious conscience, religious imagina-
tion, individual piousness or morality. On the contrary: it was always Chris-
tology, which stood for the relation of faith and theology to the external reali-
ty. The person of Jesus Christ is the realistic anchor of both faith and theolo-
gy, although from the particular testimonies and facts about him we can never
get some objective picture of him. 106 It is the task of Christology to propose a
critical, complex, and compact current understanding and conception of his –
traditionally speaking – person and work in wider context. Despite all per-
spectivity, Christology should therefore have the ambition to propose an RQ
WRORJLFDO &KULVWRORJ\, of course while being aware of its own perspective
and, hence, of a certain particularity of every such attempt.107 Nevertheless,
how we do it in normal life, too: we could suppose we have been deceived by some evil
genius, but in order to be able to move forward we behave as if everything we see is real. If
we let ourselves go, if we doubt that a world exists around us, we will stop acting, and
within the illusion produced by the evil genius we will fall down the stairs or die of hun-
ger.”
105
Cf. in this respect the conception of “New Realism” or “ontological pluralism” by
M. Gabriel, which pays respect to the postmodern plurality of perspectives and “fields of
sense” and conceives reality not as a metaphysical category but rather as an epistemologi-
cal category, as a “furnishing function” for a certain space of objects (M. GABRIEL, in
IDEM and M.D. KRÜGER, :DV LVW :LUNOLFKNHLW", 76–77, 97; generally cf. M. GABRIEL,
)LHOGVRI6HQVHD1HZ5HDOLVW2QWRORJ\, [Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2015]). Cf. also the
“hermeneutical realism” of A.F. Koch (KOCH, +HUPHQHXWLVFKHU5HDOLVPXV).
106
See also below, Ch. 2.1.
107
With “ontological Christology”, I mean here, therefore, something different from
catholic theology in its use of this term where it stands for the doctrine of the person of
Jesus Christ next to the doctrine of his work (cf. POSPÍŠIL, -Håtã]1D]DUHWD, 18–19). I do
not use it as a specific term but rather as an indication of the intended outreach of Christol-
ogy. My stress does not lie that much on the question :KR is this person, but on the ques-
tion who LV he. With this stress, I see myself in harmony with W. KASPER, “Christologie
von unten? Kritik und Neuansatz gegenwärtiger Christologie”, in IDEM, -HVXVGHU&KULVWXV
this is exactly, what in my view should theology have the courage to do: to
provide a reasonable conception of the reality FRUDP'HR, to say, how things
are and why, although from a certain perspective. In christological terms:
Christology should say, who LV this Jesus Christ in whom the Christians be-
lieve.
D. Bonhoeffer asked his famous question, which uses sometimes to be taken as the funda-
mental christological question: “[W]ho is Christ actually for us today?” 108 To me, this
question is too narrow. Christology deals neither only with Jesus Christ today, nor with
Jesus Christ for us, but with his whole person, with its past, present, and future. It is not
possible to do this than from a certain perspective (I or we) and in a certain time (today).
But the answer has to go beyond the sole actual meaning. That is the provocative point of
Christology from a particular perspective with a universal claim.
In this respect, there is one important differentiation, which has to be made

now: the differentiation between a universal claim and an absolute claim. 109
An DEVROXWHFODLP would mean that one particular perspective poses itself as
a unifying meta-perspective above other perspectives exclusively as the only
true perspective. As already said above, such claim is illegitimate, false, and
arrogant because it disrespects the plurality of perspectives and the particular-
ity of one’s own perspective.110 Nevertheless, even in the situation of irreduc-
ible plurality of perspectives, it is possible to raise from a particular perspec-
tive a XQLYHUVDOFODLP. That is exactly what Christian faith does: it claims that
(Leipzig: St. Benno, 1981), 410, and with DALFERTH, -HQVHLWV, 312–313, who sees an “es-
chatological ontology” as the ultimate task of theology, which has its centre in Christology.
108
D. BONHOEFFER, /HWWHUVDQG3DSHUVIURP3ULVRQ, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol.
8, trans. I. BEST, L.E. DAHILL, R. KRAUSS and N. LUKENS (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,
2010), 362; cf. e.g. J. MACQUARRIE, -HVXV &KULVW LQ 0RGHUQ 7KRXJKW (London: SCM
Press, 1990), 337; or J. MOLTMANN, 7KH :D\ RI -HVXV &KULVW, trans. M. KOHL (London:
SCM Press, 1990), 64.
109
Cf. DALFERTH, “Theologischer Realismus”, 414.
110
This shows J.-F. LYOTARD at the very end of his short essay “What is Postmodern-
ism?”, in IDEM, 7KH3RVWPRGHUQ&RQGLWLRQ, trans. R. DURANT (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1979), 81–82, with a clear antireligious sting: “Finally, it must be clear
that it is our business not to supply reality but to invent allusions to the conceivable which
cannot be presented. And it is not to be expected that this task will effect the last reconcili-
ation between language games (which, under the name of faculties, Kant knew to be sepa-
rated by a chasm), and that only the transcendental illusion (that of Hegel) can hope to to-
talize them into a real unity. But Kant also knew that the price to pay for such an illusion is
terror. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries have given us as much terror as we can take.
We have paid a high enough price for the nostalgia of the whole and one, for the reconcili-
ation of the concept and the sensible, of the transparent and the communicable experience.
Under the general demand for slackening and for appeasement, we can hear the mutterings
of the desire for a return of terror, for the realization of the fantasy to seize reality. The
answer is: Let us wage a war on totality; let us be witnesses to the unpresentable; let us
activate the differences and save the honor of the name.”
the salvation in Christ is valid for the whole creation. Such claim is legiti-
mate, but it means at the same time that there can be (and indeed are) more
universal claims from different perspectives next to each other. In the case of
an absolute claim, there is no possibility of any plurality. Universal claims
can exist at once, together, parallel in plural.111
From an external view, the religious claims are often interpreted as absolute. I do not say
that there are not any absolute religious claims (also from the internal perspective of reli-
gions). What I try to say is that they are not defensible, at least not theologically. What can
be theologically defended as legitimate is only a universal claim. If thus a religion wants to
propose a claim concerning the totality of humans (or even of the whole universe) in a the-
ologically defensible way, it has to propose it as a universal claim, not as an absolute one.
Therefore, it is necessary for theology to explain the difference between absolute and uni-
versal claim and to propose at least the claim of the Christian faith as universal, not as ab-
solute. Afterall, the certainty of this claim is not based on an absolute experience or evi-
dence but it is the certainty of faith and thus a certainty of hope. Faith cannot guarantee the
ultimate truth of itself and of its own perspective, only God can. The universal claim of
Christian faith (and of Christian theology) remains, therefore, under the reservation of the
eschatological justification.
Christian faith and theology with its christologically anchored universal claim
is thus a part of a plural and diversified world where different universal
claims exist, meet, and compete with each other. In this plurality, the christo-
logical foundation seems often to be actually a disadvantage. The person of
Jesus Christ seems to be too particular, too narrow and too exclusive for a
foundation of a universal claim. The image of God in Jesus Christ is unpleas-
antly concrete: a Jew, a man who was born and died 2000 years ago. This
particular historical fact as the foundation of Christian universality as the so -
called “scandal of particularity” provoked and irritated minds ever since. A
nice example is the famous dictum of D.F. Strauss, standing at the bottom of
liberal theology, 112 that the divine idea and an individual cannot be unified:
“This is indeed not the mode in which Idea realizes itself; it is not wont to
lavish all its fullness on one exemplar.”113 Going in a similar direction in the
20th century, John Hick, within his religious pluralism, denied the divine and
therefore salvific exclusivity of Jesus Christ as well: the man Jesus was only
111
Against KNITTER, ,QWURGXFLQJ, 176, who states (yet, maybe, only using different
terms) that in the postmodern paradigm, “particularity cancels out the universality”. Partic-
ularity cancels out absoluteness, not universality. Cf. LINDBECK, 7KH1DWXUHRI'RFWULQH,
35: “[D]ifferent religions and/or philosophies may have incommensurable notions of truth,
of experience, and of categorial adequacy”. As incommensurable, the can exist and do ex-
ist next to each other. Cf. below, Ch. 11.
112
Cf. the position of A. von Harnack above, subch. 1.3, and of some other liberal theo-
logians below, Ch. 2.1.
113
D.F. STRAUSS, 7KH/LIHRI-HVXV&ULWLFDOO\([DPLQHG, ed. P. C. HODGSON, trans. G.
ELIOT (Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1972), 779.
secondarily divinized114 and the traditional speech about Messiah and Son of
God is to be understood rather as mythological or metaphorical than as onto-
logical.115 It would be, after all, much more viable – while still being “fully
committed to Jesus” – to go a more “theocentric” way, especially in the en-
counter with other religious universal claims, as the catholic theologian P.F.
Knitter states.116 Or the exact opposite: as I already sketched above, some lib-
eral theologians conceive the Christology as a religious instrument for self-
enlightenment of one’s religious subjectivity: Christology (and the image of
Jesus) is a necessary step to a clear religious self-relation, it “explicates the
reflexive structure of transparency in the self-relation of a human”.117
Overall, in the current plural situation, it seems to be wiser, more strategi-
cal, and more universal to speak generally about God or Divinity, or about
human religiousness, and about a common structure of religion rather than
concretely about Jesus Christ. There are, as shown, several strategies, how to
weaken or sideline Christology in order to be more universal and more open
to other universal claims. 118 But this direction once taken, it blurs the specific
profile of Christian theology and tends to be abstract and far away from the
114
“And so his Jewish followers hailed him as their Messiah, and this somewhat myste-
rious title developed in its significance within the mixed Jewish-Gentile church ultimately
to the point of deification” (J. HICK, “Jesus and the World Religions”, in 7KH0\WKRI*RG
,QFDUQDWH, ed. J. HICK [London: SCM Press, 1977], 173). For a more detailed debate of this
position and of the whole controversy around Hick’s position, cf. DALFERTH, &UXFLILHG
DQG5HVXUUHFWHG, 1–37. Hick’s position plays apparently – for the Anglican theology in the
first place – the same role and brings the same irritations as liberal theology for the tradi-
tional Protestants and Catholics on the continent, and this irritation lasts since then still, cf.
B. HEBBLETHWAITE, 7KH,QFDUQDWLRQ&ROOHFWHG(VVD\VLQ&KULVWRORJ\ (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge UP, 1987), vii, who counts Hick among “non-incarnational” christologies, which
are a “much more serious threat” for Christian faith than different forms of atheism. Or cf.
MCCORD ADAMS, &KULVW DQG +RUURUV, who deals with Hick throughout of her book. For
more to Hick’s position cf. below, Ch. 11.1.
115
HICK, “Jesus and the World Religions”, 183–184; IDEM, 7KH 0HWDSKRU RI *RG ,Q
FDUQDWH &KULVWRORJ\ LQ D 3OXUDOLVWLF $JH (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press,
1993), to the scandal of particularity esp. 154–155; cf. critically against this – basically old
liberal – approach already R. BULTMANN, “Die Christologie des Neuen Testaments”, in
IDEM, *ODXEHQ XQG 9HUVWHKHQ, vol. 1 (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1933), 245–267, stressing
against a purely historically naïve approach to the New Testament the perspective of faith
based on Christ’s cross and resurrection.
116
P.F. KNITTER, 1R2WKHU1DPH"$&ULWLFDO6XUYH\RI&KULVWLDQ$WWLWXGHVWRZDUGWKH
:RUOG 5HOLJLRQV (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1985), xiii–xiv. For Knitter, Jesus has a “uni-
versal relevance” and “significance” (ibid., 203), but still, the old rule is valid “deus sem-
per major” (ibid., 202), so that “God has not been confined to Jesus” (ibid., 204).
117
118
It would be an interesting question for another study, to what extent are all these
strategies paradoxically latently led by the conviction of the superiority of the Christian
religion (or at least of the Christian theological perspective). Cf. below, Ch. 11.1.
concrete praxis of faith. It yields the particular perspective with the hope
there would be some more universal perspective. However, there is nothing
but particular perspectives. To weaken Christology, for what reason or strate-
gy ever, means to weaken the Christianity of theology. In the postmodern
plural paradigm, there is no other option than to elaborate – in a purifying and
correcting clash with other perspectives – fairly, and as plausibly as possible,
one’s particular position with all that belongs to it.119 Therefore, even if the
objection would be right that Christology and Christian theology founded on
Christology is too particular, there are still no other relevant perspectives to
be elaborated but only particular ones (cf. also below, Ch. 11).
That is exactly, what I intend with this book. I will try to explicate and
substantiate my conception of ontological Christology from the perspective of
Christian faith in a critical reflection of it, and in discussion with the tradition
and its interpretations, in order to provide a plausible contemporary concept,
which, as I hope, will prove itself useful for the orientation RI faith, for the
orientation DERXW Christian faith and for some IXUWKHUWKHRORJLFDODQGSKLOR
VRSKLFDOGHEDWH.
Within the above outlined tension between a universal claim and a particular perspective,
there is one more important and ambitioned point, which is substantial in my view of the-
ology. If a theological text should contribute something for a further debate, it has to be
understandable. And if it should contribute something not only for the orientation of faith
but also for the orientation about Christian faith, or: not only for the church and its theol o-
gy but also for the academic and scientific world, it has to be understandable somehow
generally. The ambition of this study – and it should be, in my view, the ambition of all
theology – is to be generally understandable for anyone who knows the given language
(English in this case) and can follow rational argumentation. There are no other admissible
conditions for understanding. This applies also for a theological text, which is written from
the perspective of Christian faith. Despite this fact, Christian faith of the potential reader
cannot be a condition for understanding and studying theology. If this would be the case,
then theology would have its justification only inside the church walls and would have a
meaning only within the community of believers, because no one else could understand it.
This would imply, at the same time, that Christian faith provides some special abilities or
higher (or at least different) kind of knowledge and argumentation, which is impossible to
follow and to understand without faith. If the Christian speech, and with it also the theo-
logical speech of God, would be a wholly separate language game, then, church would
have to become unavoidably a ghetto and theology some kind of a GLVFLSOLQDDUFDQL. But
the claim of Christian faith and theology was from the beginning just the opposite one: to
express and explicate ZLWKLQWKHFRPPRQODQJXDJH the new experience resulting from the
Easter message. And, in case of theology, to do this within the standards of scientific ra-
tionality and argumentation, and, hence, in a wholly understandable way. Yet still, my
119
Cf. V.-M. KÄRKKÄINEN, &KULVWDQG5HFRQFLOLDWLRQ (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans,
2013), who – inspired by Ph. Clayton’s thesis that in philosophy and religion, we need a
“new integration” within the plurality of traditions (PH. CLAYTON, $GYHQWXUHVLQWKH6SLULW
*RG :RUOG 'LYLQH $FWLRQ [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008], 260) – proposes a post-
modern Christology in the context of world religions.
claim was that theology, if it wants to remain theology, has no other option than to speak
from the perspective of Christian faith. The point is that the claim of general understanda-
bility and the necessary perspectivity of theology do not exclude one another. Because the
Christian faith and theology think and speak in the common terms and in the common la n-
guage, their perspective has to be understandable even if one does not share it existentially
for oneself. The theological perspective, i.e., the perspective of Christian faith, can be in
the theological work (i.e., in the theoretical reflection, not in the religious praxis, where
existentially shared faith is legitimately presupposed) accepted only as a hypothesis, only
in the mode of: ‘Given that the premises of Christian faith are true, what follows from it?’
One can hypothetically accept the perspective of another in order to understand and discuss
one’s argumentation from this perspective – this is what we do quite often in our mutual
communication and argumentation. We are able to understand and debate positions, which
we do not share. This is all that is necessary and sufficient to understand and study theolo-
gy. Therefore, the ambition and claim of this text is also to be generally understandable in
order to contribute something to a further discussion inside and outside the church as well
as inside and outside of theology. 120
120
Cf. to the internally differentiated structure of the relation of faith, theology, church,
and university GALLUS, “Theologie – eine Glaubenswissenschaft?”. And also DALFERTH,
5DGLFDO 7KHRORJ\ $Q (VVD\ RQ )DLWKDQG 7KHRORJ\ LQWKH 7ZHQW\)LUVW &HQWXU\ (Minne-
apolis: Fortress Press, 2016), 240: “One does not need to have faith in order to follow the
thinking of theology. One must, however, at least as a thought experiment, follow along
with faith’s radical change of orientation in order to see what the thinking of theology con-
sists of.“

Chapter 2
The Object of Christology
Who is actually the object of Christology? This seems to be a simple ques-

tion: well, Jesus Christ, for sure. In general, the person of Jesus is the indis-
putable starting point of Christian faith and Christian theology, but even – in
general and only in general. 1 The answers to the more specific question of
‘Who is this Jesus Christ and where do we know it from?’ differ radically.
The history of Christology in the modern age is actually a long debate trying
to find an appropriate answer that is raised by this question.
Until the Enlightenment, the accepted answer of the long developing
Christian theological tradition was based on the Chalcedonian two-natures
Christology: Jesus Christ is the incarnated Son of God. The stress laid on the
incarnation of the divine Logos and on the two natures of Jesus Christ with
their appropriations and with their clear subordination. It was the person of
the divine Logos, who was the leading principle (WRKHJHPRQLNRQ). Therefore,
the person of Jesus Christ in this traditional view had a rather divine charac-
ter, which was important for its fundamental soteriological function. 2
In the Enlightenment, in context with the development of the historical-
critical method and its use for the reading of biblical texts, the question that
arose was not of the so-called “dogmatic Christ” anymore, who has been now
considered to be only a dogmatic and metaphysical construct, but rather of
the “historical Jesus”, driven ahead mainly by liberal theology. Not the Jesus
Christ of the church tradition but the “real” Jesus of Nazareth, his life and his
self-understanding was now set as the main focus of any possible Christolo-
gy. In this conception, the historical notion became a presupposition for every
theology: “Whether Christ was more than a human being is a problem. That
1
This is beyond a doubt also in the radical liberal theology. Cf. e.g. DANZ, *UXQG
SUREOHPH, 2: “For Christianity, the relation to the historical person of Jesus of Nazareth is
constitutive. Without the relation to him, there is no Christianity.” Cf. also WAGNER,
“Christologie als exemplarische Theorie”, 315; or even G. LÜDEMANN and A. ÖZEN, :KDW
5HDOO\ +DSSHQHG WR -HVXV $ +LVWRULFDO $SSURDFK WR WKH 5HVXUUHFWLRQ, trans. J. Bowden
(London: SCM Press, 1995), 1, who point not only to the person of Jesus but directly to his
resurrection: “The resurrection of Jesus is the central point of the Christian religion.”
2
For the beginnings and the development of the Chalcedonian christological tradition
cf. below, Ch. 3.
7KHµ4XHVWV¶IRUWKH+LVWRULFDO-HVXV 37
he was a true human being – if he was a human being at all – and that he nev-
er ceased to be a human being is not in dispute.” 3
1. The ‘Quests’ for the Historical Jesus4

1. The ‘Quests’ for the Historical Jesus
It was H.S. Reimarus, who came first with the strictly historical perspective
on Jesus and his life. He considered the evangelists as “historians who have
reported the most important things that Jesus said as well as did”.5 Therefore,
the four Gospels are a reliable source from which should be derived what Je-
sus said and preached6 – in contrary to the writings of the apostles who were
not historians but teachers who “consequently present their own views”.7
Therefore, Reimarus wants to – and this is his fundamental methodical pre-
supposition – “separate completely what the apostles say in their own writ-
ings from that which Jesus himself actually said and taught”,8 because mixing
up these two sets of writings considered Reimarus for the “common error of
Christians”.9 With these presuppositions, Reimarus had given the principal
setting for all following quests for the historical Jesus: 1) The quest for his-
3
G.E. LESSING, “The religion of Christ” (1780), in /HVVLQJ 3KLORVRSKLFDO DQG 7KHR
ORJLFDO:ULWLQJV, ed. H. NISBET (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005), 178.
4
A good and short overview can be found in LANDMESSER, “Der gegenwärtige Jesus”,
96–120, whom I here loosely follow. More literature can be found in J. FREY, “Der histor-
ische Jesus und der Christus der Evangelien”, in 'HU KLVWRULVFKH -HVXV 7HQGHQ]HQ XQG
3HUVSHNWLYHQ GHU JHJHQZlUWLJHQ )RUVFKXQJ, ed. J. SCHRÖTER und R. BRUCKER (Ber-
lin/New York: De Gruyter, 2002), 273–336. For an exhausting amount of literature and a
presentation of the whole topic present see the +DQGERRN IRU WKH 6WXG\ RI WKH +LVWRULFDO
-HVXV, 4 vols, ed. T. HOLMÉN and S.E. PORTER (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2011); cf. here C.
BROWN, “The Quest for the Unhistorical Jesus and the Quest for the Historical Jesus”,
ibid., vol. 1, 855–886. Cf. also G. THEISSEN and A. MERZ, 7KH+LVWRULFDO-HVXV$&RP
SUHKHQVLYH *XLGH, trans. J. BOWDEN (London: SCM Press, 1998), 1–16, who divide the
whole era not into three Quests, as it is usually done in a simple manner but in more detail
into five phases. Further also DANZ, *UXQGSUREOHPH, 13–41.
5
H.S. REIMARUS, )UDJPHQWV, ed. CH.H. TALABERT, trans. R.S. FRASER (Philadelphia:
Fortress Press 1970), 64.
6
Ibid., 64–65.
7
Ibid., 64.
8
Ibid.
9
Ibid., 71. In this sense, but 130 years later, A. von Harnack, with reference to W.
Wrede, differentiated a “twofold Gospel in the New Testament” (A. VON HARNACK, “Das
doppelte Evangelium im Neuen Testament [1910]”, in IDEM, $GROIYRQ+DUQDFNDOV=HLW
JHQRVVH5HGHQXQG6FKULIWHQDXVGHQ-DKUHQGHV.DLVHUUHLFKVXQGGHU:HLPDUHU5HSX E
OLN, vol. 1, Der Theologe und Historiker, ed. K. NOWAK [Berlin/New York: De Gruyter,
1996], 181–182): the ‘first Gospel’ is the Gospel proclaimed by Jesus, the ‘second Gospel’
is the apostolic Easter proclamation about Jesus as the crucified and resurrected Son of
God.
38 &KDSWHU7KH2EMHFWRI&KULVWRORJ\
torical Jesus concentrates predominantly on the Gospels. 2) The Gospels are

approached in the expectance to be the history or biography of Jesus. 3) The
other New Testament writings – although in fact older than the Gospels – are
considered to be the prejudiced church tradition and are, therefore, not taken
seriously in account. 4) Reimarus understood Jesus’ life fully within the mar-
gins of judaism, which was “a determination that should have a lasting ef-
fect”.10 It took a long time to critically and reasonably cross and redefine
these margins.
The following research doubted quite quickly the second presupposition of
Reimarus: the Gospels are not a neutral history but they are written in a cer-
tain perspective with a certain aim. David Friedrich Strauss, in his influential
7KH/LIHRI-HVXV, read the narratives of the Gospels as Christian myths, as an
ideological, i.e., in the end, a non-historical, fictional11 treatment of the uni-
versal and timeless “original Christian ideas, which are embodied in a narra-
tive” and produced by the community of believers.12 William Wrede proved,
then, that the evangelists were led by the concept of messianic secrecy, so
that the Gospels cannot be treated as neutral history. 13 They have a “tenden-
tious character”, which does not allow distinguishing the neutral history of
Jesus from the after-Easter image of Christ. 14
The “naïvely historicizing” approach to the texts of the New Testament
was hence no longer tenable. 15 The most famous critique of it presented al-
ready in 1892 Martin Kähler in his lecture 7KH 6R&DOOHG +LVWRULFDO -HVXV
DQG WKH +LVWRULF %LEOLFDO &KULVW.16 Against the liberal differentiation of his-
torical Jesus and dogmatic Christ, Kähler refers to the “real Christ of faith
and history”, where “this real Christ is the Christ who is preached”.17 The
quest for the historical Jesus trying to get beyond the texts of the Gospels is
for Kähler a “blind alley”,18 because
10
LANDMESSER, “Der gegenwärtige Jesus”, 97.
11
D.F. STRAUSS, 7KH/LIHRI-HVXV&ULWLFDOO\([DPLQHG, 87.
12
D.F. STRAUSS, 'DV/HEHQ-HVXNULWLVFKEHDUEHLWHW (Tübingen: C.F. Osiander, 1835),
vol.I, 75: “geschichtartige Einkleidungen urchristlicher Ideen”.
13
W. WREDE, 7KH 0HVVLDQLF 6HFUHW, trans. J.C.G. GREIG (Cambridge and London:
James Clarke, 1971). Cf. LANDMESSER, “Der gegenwärtige Jesus”, 99.
14
THEISSEN and MERZ, 7KH+LVWRULFDO-HVXV, 6.
15
16
M. KÄHLER, 7KH6R&DOOHG+LVWRULFDO-HVXVDQGWKH+LVWRULF%LEOLFDO&KULVW, trans.
C.E. BRAATEN (Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1964).
17
Ibid., 57 and 66 (originally italicized).
18
Ibid., 46.
“we do not possess any sources for a ‘Life of Jesus’ which a historian can accept as relia-
ble and adequate. I repeat: we have no sources for a biography of Jesus of Nazareth which
measure up to the standards of contemporary historical science.”19
The origin of Christian faith and confession is not based on historical facts
but on “the crucified, risen, and living Lord”.20 Kähler tries also to overcome
the reduction of the concentration only on the Gospels and the division b e-
tween the allegedly reliable Gospels and the allogene Epistles: Jesus Christ is
“the Christ of apostolic preaching, of the ZKROH New Testament”.21 This
Christ is also “the originator of the biblical picture of the Christ”, so that we
cannot separate biblical texts and Christ or filter him out from the texts.22 The
fact that the biblical texts are written from the perspective of Easter faith and
are prejudiced in this sense, Kähler obviously evaluates differently than the
liberal tradition: it is not a problem, which needs to be overcome; it is rather
the fundamental perspective of all Christian theology. 23
The end of the so-called ‘First Quest for the historical Jesus’ marked Al-
bert Schweitzer, who declared that all attempts to find the historical Jesus be-
hind the biblical texts are failed:
“There is nothing more negative than the result of the critical study of the Life of Jesus.
The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward publicly as the Messiah, who preached the ethic
of the kingdom of God, who founded the kingdom of heaven upon earth, and died to give
his work its final consecration, never existed. He is a figure designed by rationalism, en-
dowed with life by liberalism, and clothed by modern theology in a historical garb.”24
The liberal lives of Jesus were unmasked as projections of our presence into a
picture of Jesus as an ideal ethical personality, depending on the preferences
of the authors.25
However, within this period of the liberal First Quest, a new theological category was es-
tablished, which will play an important role further on. It was I. Kant as the first, who con-
19
Ibid., 48. The result of a search for a historical Jesus is then, according to Kähler, a
wide plurality of hiddenly dogmatic pictures of Jesus, in which their authors “blithely
compose epics and dramas without being aware that this is what they are doing”, so that
“the image of Jesus is being refracted through the spirit of these gentlemen themselves”
(ibid., 57).
20
Ibid., 64.
21
Ibid., 65, cf. 86.
22
Ibid., 87 (originally italicized) and 86.
23
Kähler holds a position exactly opposite to Reimarus – we have to read the New Tes-
tament from the epistles to the Gospels: “Thus, our faith in the Savior is awakened and sus-
tained by the brief a concise apostolic proclamation of the crucified and risen Lord. But we
are helped toward a believing communion with our Savior by the disciples’ recollection of
Jesus, a recollection which was imprinted on them in faith” (ibid., 96–97).
24
A. SCHWEITZER, 7KH 4XHVW IRU WKH +LVWRULFDO -HVXV, ed. J. BOWDEN, trans. W.
MONTGOMERY et al. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 478.
25
Cf. THEISSEN und MERZ, 7KH+LVWRULFDO-HVXV, 5–6.
ceived Jesus as “the personified idea of the good principle”,26 who differentiated the histor-
ical personality of Jesus as a bearer of a certain principle from this timeless principle. This
made possible to focus not only on a historical person but on the timeless principle in the
first place. A similar thought is found in Schleiermacher, for whom Jesus was a particular
historical personality fulfilled with a divine principle.27 D.F. Strauss, then, radicalized this
thought and split the eternal principle (the idea) wholly from the particular historical per-
son, because – according to his famous thesis – the idea and an individual never can be
united.28 For many, this went too far. However, even Strauss himself knew that the idea
needs particular historical expressions. On the other hand, the identification of the timeless
principle with the historical person of Jesus (like in traditional dogmatics), together with
the increasing notion of impossibility to reconstruct the historical personality of Jesus,
stressed the danger that the person of the Redeemer remains locked behind the “ugly broad
ditch of history” (Lessing). Therefore, an instance was needed, which would not split but
in the contrary bind together the particular historical person of Jesus, the divine principle
and also us. For this function, the term of WKHSLFWXUH was fitting. More precisely: the pic-
ture of Jesus’ inner life or of his character as it is preserved in the biblical scriptures. 29 This
term was also easy to unite with the historic-critical approach to the Gospels as prejudiced
testimonies, which gain, again, a very important role. Beginning with Schleiermacher’s
speech of “total impression” of the Redeemer, 30 the “picture of Jesus” became a formula,
which expressed the new “christological program”. 31 “The picture of Christ”, of his inner
life,32 of his personality became from now on the main focus of Christology:33 Not any-
more the life of Jesus, not Jesus himself, but the affecting spiritual picture of Jesus in the
Scriptures was now the connection between the believers and the historical Jesus and the
topic of Christology. Whomever seeks, what the apostles once experienced, that God “acts
with us as with them”, “will find, what he seeks, in the Christ whom shows the New Tes-
tament”. When we put aside everything, “what does not seem to be an undoubted thing”,
there remains, what cannot “be removed by any doubt. It is the picture of the inner life of
26
I. KANT, 5HOLJLRQ ZLWKLQ WKH /LPLWV RI 5HDVRQ $ORQH, trans. E. WOOD and G. DI
GIOVANNI, (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998), 79. Cf. EVERS, “Combinatory Christolo-
gy”, 6.
27
SCHLEIERMACHER, 7KH&KULVWLDQ)DLWK, § 93.4, 384.
28
Cf. above, Ch. 1.2.3, at footnote 113.
29
Cf. R. SLENCZKA, *HVFKLFKWOLFKNHLW XQG 3HUVRQVHLQ, 84, who reminded already in
1967 that this term deserves much more attention than it had, because it is much more cen-
tral than the term of ‘life’ of Jesus.
30
SCHLEIERMACHER, 7KH&KULVWLDQ)DLWK, §10, Postscript, 50.
31
32
So W. HERRMANN, “Der geschichtliche Christus, der Grund unseres Glaubens”, in
IDEM, 6FKULIWHQ]XU*UXQGOHJXQJGHU7KHRORJLH, vol. 1, ed. P. FISCHER-APPELT (München:
Chr. Kaiser, 1966), 173. Cf. IDEM, “Die christologischen Arbeiten der neuesten Zeit”,
7K/=1(1876), 116–119; DANZ, *UXQGSUREOHPH, 133–136.
33
And not only of the liberal theology, as we could see in Kähler, who used this term as
well, cf. above. Cf. also R. SLENCZKA, *HVFKLFKWOLFKNHLW XQG 3HUVRQVHLQ, 84–91, who
shows the origin of this idea in A. Neander, who “maintained the conception that the SLF
WXUH of the self-revelation of Christ has further effect in the Gospels and refers also back to
the individual historical person” (ibid., 85).
Jesus”.34 The historical person of Jesus did not vanish in the history, because Jesus himself
was the cause of the biblical picture. Yet, at the same time, the historical Jesus ceased to be
of highest importance. The theological task was not anymore a conception of the person of
Jesus (historical or dogmatic). The focus of Christology shifted to the biblical picture,
which preserved through the times the most important instance: the living impression of
Jesus’ God-consciousness. In this way, Jesus Christ was in fact reduced to a picture and
faith (or religion) analogically and in consequence of it to individual morality. 35 At the
same time, the term of the biblical picture of Jesus offered a broad space for different in-
terpretations and was used not only in liberal theology. 36 It is found since then across the
times e.g. in Schleiermacher, W. Herrmann, M. Kähler, P. Tillich, M. Moxter, M.D.
Krüger or Ch. Danz.37 It apparently promises a middle position between a suspicious ob-
jectivity (be it the inaccessible objectivity of the historical Jesus or the alleged objectivity
of the dogmatic Christ) and an arbitrary subjectivity. 38 As it will turn out later though, if
used as the central christological category, it entails also compromises in the divinity of
Jesus.39
After the end of the First Quest, there was for some time a “telling silence”
(the so-called “1R 4XHVW”), represented mainly by the position of R. Bult-
mann, which was close to the one of Kähler:
“It is therefore illegitimate to go behind the kerygma, using it as a ‘source’, in order to r e-
construct a ‘historical Jesus’ with his ‘messianic consciousness’, his ‘inner life’ or his
‘heroism’. That would be merely ‘Christ after the flesh’, who is no longer. It is not the his-
torical Jesus, but Jesus Christ, the Christ, preached, who is the Lord.”40
34
HERRMANN, “Der geschichtliche Christus”, 172–173. Paradoxically, it is this biblical
picture of Christ that Herrmann calls ‘the historical Christ’. Cf. R. SLENCZKA, *HVFKLFKW
OLFKNHLWXQG3HUVRQVHLQ, 88: “The Scripture is the bearer of this picture. In this way, a gen-
eral term of Christ is replaced by the ‘picture’ in its illustrativity (Anschaulichkeit) and by
the historical person in its causality (Ursächlichkeit).”
35
The aim of the effect of the biblical picture of Christ was an inner religious exper i-
ence, which should at the end lead to a better morality. Cf. DANZ, *UXQGSUREOHPH, 133:
“The historical Christ represents a successful realization of morality in the world and this
singular success establishes at the same time in the believers the trust in their own moral
duty.”
36
U. Barth, “Hermeneutik der Evangelien”, 302, notices with a slight irony that with
the term of the picture were in the history bound often weird and terrible interpretations
and associations (“Gräuslichstes und Verschrobenstes”).
37
For a short sketch of the last three theological positions cf. below.
38
M. MOXTER, “Szenische Anthropologie – Eine Skizze”, in 0-7K;;,; $QWKURSROR
JLH, ed. E. GRÄB-SCHMIDT and R. PREUL, MThSt 131 (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsan-
stalt, 2017), 63, speaks about a “intertwinning of the external and the internal, of a pre-
defined image and a receiving, appropriating response”.
39
Cf. below in this chapter.
40
R. BULTMANN, “The historical Jesus and the Theology of Paul”, in IDEM, )DLWKDQG
8QGHUVWDQGLQJ, vol. I, ed. R.W. FUNK, trans. L.P. SMITH (New York: Harper and Row,
1969), 241.
There is no possibility to go beyond the “kerygma” as it is told in the biblical

scriptures, which are written from the perspective of Easter faith and, hence,
they “speak categorically differently than a speech of the historical Jesus
could”.41 It is actually quite a paradox in this respect that Bultmann comes
very close to Strauss, only with the opposite signature: where Strauss saw the
truth of the myth, the idea, Bultmann sees the kerygma.42 It is the principal
perspective what matters here. For Bultmann, it is not an external perspective
of a historian but an internal perspective of faith, as the famous first sentence
of his 7KHRORJ\RIWKH1HZ7HVWDPHQWV says: “7KHPHVVDJHRI-HVXV is a pre-
supposition for the theology of the New Testament rather than a part of that
theology itself.”43 Therefore, the only point of the historical Jesus that Bult-
mann is interested in is the bare fact of his existence (“Dass” des Gekom-
menseins Jesu).44
The so-called 6HFRQG4XHVW was started in 1953 by E. Käsemann’s lecture
7KH 3UREOHPRI WKH +LVWRULFDO -HVXV.45 Although Käsemann, belonging him-
self to the Bultmann-school, considers the quest for the historical Jesus a
“genuine liberal question”, he stresses also the importance of the historical
approach to the Gospels in order to show their authenticity and reliability and
to overcome the “separation, or even antithesis”, suggested by the liberal the-
ology, between “kerygma and tradition”.46 In order to find what in the Gos-
pels could be considered a “critically ensured minimum”47 of genuine acts or
words of the historical Jesus, Käsemann introduces his “criterion of differ-
ence”: authentic Jesus is to be found when we filter off everything which is
derived from Judaism on one side and from the early Christianity on the oth-
er.48 Within this frame, this “New Quest” found an intense echo. 49
This perspective, however, “necessarily led to seeing Jesus in contrast to
Judaism” and, as time went on, it was considered more and more one-sided.50
It was thus inevitable that a reaction came – the so-called 7KLUG4XHVW for the
41
42
THEISSEN und MERZ, 7KH+LVWRULFDO-HVXV, 7.
43
R. BULTMANN, 7KHRORJ\RIWKH1HZ7HVWDPHQW, trans. K. GROBEL (Waco: Baylor UP,
2007), 3.
44
R. BULTMANN, “Das Verhältnis der urchristlichen Christusbotschaft zum historischen
Jesus”, in IDEM, ([HJHWLFD $XIVlW]H ]XU (UIRUVFKXQJ GHV 1HXHQ 7HVWDPHQWV, ed. E.
DINKLER (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1967), 449–450.
45
E. KÄSEMANN, “The Problem of the Historical Jesus”, in IDEM¸ (VVD\VRQ1HZ7HV
WDPHQW7KHPHV, trans. W.J. MONTAGUE (Chatham: SCM Press, 1964), 15–47.
46
Ibid., 17.
47
48
KÄSEMANN, “The Problem of the Historical Jesus”, 37.
49
Cf. THEISSEN und MERZ, 7KH+LVWRULFDO-HVXV, 8, who give an overview of different
answers to the question, in what lies the criterion of difference.
50
Ibid. Cf. DANZ, *UXQGSUREOHPH, 25, who declares this phase for a “dogmatic con-
struction of the historical Jesus”.
historical Jesus, which tries to see the person of Jesus in the exact opposite
perspective: within the context of Judaism of his time. 51 On one side, there
has been the -HVXV6HPLQDU in Santa Rosa, California, founded by R. Funk
and J.D. Crossan, which, by voting scholars, tries to find out in the Gospels
“what he really said”.52 On the other hand, a huge amount of different Jesus-
books have been published, each one seeing Jesus differently involved in the
Jewish background of his times. 53 The main criterion of this Quest – may be
the most important outcome of the whole development – seems to be, in the
end, the “criterion of plausibility: what is plausible in the Jewish context and
makes the rise of Christianity understandable may be historical”.54
Hand in hand with this research go also important PHWKRGLFDO TXHVWLRQV
regarding the possibilities of historical research and historical reconstruc-
tions. From the current point of view, it is obvious that we have history al-
ways in the form of historical reconstruction, i.e., of particular constructions
of history in the perspective of current time, based on the interpretation of
historical sources.55 Although there is a presupposed objective history, which,
in the end, has “‘constructed’ its constructors who are ‘thrown’ into it with
51
An important role played the new text-findings in Qumran and Nag Hammadi, which
offer a better insight into the times then. The sources for the quest for historical Jesus were,
however, enriched only by extra-canonical scriptures concerning the Jewish milieu and not
directly the person of Jesus. The development of the research has shown that this fact led
not so much to a deeper understanding of Jesus but rather to a wider plurality of possible
interpretation-frames. Cf. J. SCHRÖTER, -HVXVXQGGLH$QIlQJHGHU&KULVWRORJLH0HWKRGL
VFKH XQG H[HJHWLVFKH 6WXGLHQ ]X GHQ 8UVSUQJHQ GHV FKULVWOLFKHQ *ODXEHQV, BThSt 47
(Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2001), 8–14.
52
Quoted in LANDMESSER, “Der gegenwärtige Jesus”, 104, with the fitting remark:
“The majority replaces the argument” (ibid., 105). THEISSEN und MERZ, 7KH +LVWRULFDO
-HVXV, 11, speak about Jesus with “more Californian than Galilean local colouring”. J.D.
CROSSAN, “Context and Text in Historical Jesus Methodology”, in +DQGERRNIRUWKH6WXG\
RI WKH +LVWRULFDO -HVXV, vol. 1, ed. T. HOLMÉN and S.E. PORTER (Leiden/Boston: Brill,
2011), 159, however, is convinced: “History is the past reconstructed interactively by the
present through argued evidence in public discourse.” A detailed debate with the Jesus
Seminar leads L.T. JOHNSON, 7KH5HDO-HVXV7KH0LVJXLGHG4XHVWIRUWKH+LVWRULFDO-H
VXVDQGWKH7UXWKRIWKH7UDGLWLRQDO*RVSHOV (New York: HarperCollins 1996).
53
Cf. illustrative selections in LANDMESSER, “Der gegenwärtige Jesus”, 105–112;
THEISSEN und MERZ, 7KH+LVWRULFDO-HVXV, 8–12; DANZ, *UXQGSUREOHPH, 30–41.
54
THEISSEN und MERZ, 7KH+LVWRULFDO-HVXV, 11. Critically to it and to all possible cri-
terias in the quest for the historical Jesus ALLISON, &RQVWUXFWLQJ-HVXV, 10.
55
Cf. RÜSEN, “Fiktionalität und Faktizität”, 23, who speaks about the “imaginative
power of the historical thinking”. J. SCHRÖTER, “Von der Historizität der Evangelien”,
167, says it more precisely: “The aim of the historical research is, therefore, not the UHFRQ
VWUXFWLRQRIWKHSDVW but rather WKHFRQVWUXFWLRQRIKLVWRU\” The constructivity of historical
research is a common notion today. SCHRÖTER, ibid., 168, calls it “an important character-
istic of the newest Jesus-research”. Cf. also LANDMESSER, “Der gegenwärtige Jesus”, 119;
THEISSEN und MERZ, 7KH+LVWRULFDO-HVXV, 13.
their lives”,56 we can have it only in the form of reconstructions from a par-
ticular point of view, from which we with imaginative power put together
pieces of interpretations and create a picture of continuity. 57 Our construc-
tions of history are therefore “fictions of the factual”. 58
This does not mean, however, that our interpretation of history would be
absolutely deliberate. It is true that we can never reconstruct a definite picture
of history. Every historical reconstruction is a construction and, therefore,
always “necessarily selective, driven by interests and thus in principle revisa-
ble, partially even falsifiable”.59 The interpretation of the sources can never
be unambiguous. But there is a negative limit, the so-called “power of veto of
the sources”, which cannot say, which interpretation is correct, but that can
say, which interpretation is – in respect to the sources – incorrect.60
56
RÜSEN, “Fiktionalität und Faktizität”, 28.
57
Exactly for this reason, i.e., that his story of Jesus is a reconstruction DSRVWHULRUL, re-
proves HICK, “Jesus and the World Religions”, 176, the Gospel of John, cf. also D.-M.
GRUBE, 2VWHUQDOV3DUDGLJPHQZHFKVHO(LQHZLVVHQVFKDIWOLFKH8QWHUVXFKXQJ]XU(QWVWH
KXQJGHV&KULVWHQWXPVXQGGHUHQ.RQVHTXHQ]HQIUGLH&KULVWRORJLH (Göttingen: Vanden-
hoeck & Ruprecht, 2012), 138. It is hence a kind of a Reimarian argument applied already
within the Gospels against the (supposedly) youngest of them. In this context, the Gospel
of John is indeed a remarkable entity within the debate. In a certain sense, the whole quest
could be also read and interpreted from the perspective of how individual scholars work
with this Gospel. Already M. KÄHLER, 7KH VRFDOOHG +LVWRULFDO -HVXV, 82–83, pointed to
the specific position of John. For him, John is “an obvious link between the Synoptics and
the Epistles”. Therefore, he criticizes the strict concentration on the Synoptics only. If we
search the historical Jesus in the Gospels, then, through John we have a direct link to the
Epistles so that there is no reason to put the Gospels in the liberal way against the Epistles.
Thus, if someone concentrates only on the Synoptics (like Harnack or Danz), then one
should bring convincing reasons, why should John have a different status within the Gos-
pels themselves (cf. ibid., 84, footnote 19).
58
SCHRÖTER, -HVXVXQGGLH$QIlQJH, 33: “Fiktionen des Faktischen”. Cf. J.D.G. DUNN,
-HVXV 5HPHPEHUHG, Christianity in the Making, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans,
2003), 102–103, who makes a fundamental semiotic distinction between “event, data and
facts”: events are irretrievably gone, available are the data, “which came down through
history” and which are interpreted as facts. Facts, therefore, are “always an LQWHUSUHWDWLRQ
of the data”.
59
J. SCHRÖTER, “Die aktuelle Diskussion über den historischen Jesus und ihre
Bedeutung für die Christologie”, in =ZLVFKHQ KLVWRULVFKHP -HVXV XQG GRJPDWLVFKHP
2010), 83.
60
This is a term of R. KOSELLECK, )XWXUHV3DVWRQWKH6HPDQWLFVRI+LVWRULFDO7LPH,
trans. K. TRIBE (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985), 155: “In principle, a source can never tell
us what we ought to say. It does not prevent us from making statements that we should not
make. The sources have the power of veto. They forbid us to venture or admit interpreta-
tions that can be shown on the basis of a source to be false or unreliable. […] Sources pr o-
tect us from error, but they never tell us what we should say.” This is basically the same
point, which makes U. ECO, 7KH /LPLWV RI ,QWHUSUHWDWLRQ (Bloomington: Indiana UP,
In other terms, this insight into the inevitable constructivity of the histor i-
cal work is a way how to deal today with the old problem of Lessings ‘ugly
broad ditch of history’. “In this remarkable theological discipline in which we
are engaged, no one so far has won that could be called the ‘Broad Jump over
Lessing’s Ditch’.”61 And no one can win, because the point is not anymore
how to jump over it, but rather how to move and go on in it. We have already
always jumped into it and right here we have to move: within the “historical
relativity and preliminary knowledge”. 62
This methodical result has of course an impact on theology and on Chris-
tology and the question of the historical Jesus in particular. In the Third Quest
(and in fact, although unknowingly, also in the First), it has led to an irreduc-
ible and almost endless plurality of pictures of Jesus. Right at the point where
the historical research expected to finally have a clarity came a wide diversi-
ty.63
“The simple and rather devastating fact has been that Gospels researchers and questers of
the historical Jesus have failed to produce agreed results. Scholars do not seem to be able
to agree on much beyond a few basic facts and generalisations; on specific texts and issues
there has been no consensus.”64
However, this plurality of outcomes does not result from the fact that differ-
ent scholars work with different material, but “from the assumptions about
the historical plausibilities that are presupposed in each case”.65 Not primarily
facts, not their interpretation but already the preunderstanding of each scholar
is the source of the diversity of the pictures. J. Schröter brings this to an im-
1994), 41, facing the problem of the so-called free “drift of interpretation”: “But, even
though the interpreters cannot decide which interpretation is the privileged one, they can
agree on the fact that certain interpretations are not contextually legitimated.”
61
G. THEISSEN und D. WINTER, 7KH4XHVWIRUWKH3ODXVLEOH-HVXV7KH4XHVWLRQRI&UL
WHULD, trans. M.E. BORING (Lousiville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 229.
62
SCHRÖTER, -HVXVXQGGLH$QIlQJH, 18.
63
LANDMESSER, “Der gegenwärtige Jesus”, 118, points out: “This creates the illusion
that a more precise and less modified picture of Jesus could be achieved by subtracting the
religious, more precisely the christological interpretation. The opposite is the case, as a l-
ready the incalculable variety of the modern pictures of Jesus shows.” G. WENZ, &KULVWXV,
Studium Systematische Theologie 5 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 2011), 114,
calls the picture of Jesus, which results from the Third Quest, “multi-facetted” and even
“disparate”. Facing this situation, M. BUNTFUß , “Verlust der Mitte oder Neuzentrierung?
Neuere Wege in der Christologie”, 1=67K46 (2004), 349, speaks about a “twofold christo-
logical estrangement”: the “dogmatic estrangement from Christ the God-human” and the
“historical estrangement from the earthly Jesus”.
64
DUNN, -HVXV 5HPHPEHUHG, 97. According to Dunn, after “the flight from dogma”
(ibid., 25) therefore, there was the other flight, “the flight from history” (ibid., 67).
65
J. SCHRÖTER, -HVXV RI 1D]DUHWK -HZ IURP *DOLOHH 6DYLRU RI WKH :RUOG, trans. W.
COPPINS and B.S. POUNDS (Waco: Baylor UP, 2014), 16.
portant conclusion: “Therefore, the question of who Jesus ZDV cannot be sep-
arated from the question of who he LV today.”66
In this respect, a plurality of different portrayals of Jesus is inevitable.
Every historical work as a view of history from a current standpoint remains
“changeable, fallible, and incomplete”. This is also the reason why the “his-
torical research can never ground the Christian faith let alone prove its co r-
rectness”.67 On the other hand, the sources still provide some historical data
which can serve as a good foundation for a reasonable picture of Jesus, “if
not in every detail, then at least in important facets”. 68 In this perspective, the
biblical sources gain much more importance and reliance again.
For liberal theology, the most important result of all the search for the historical Jesus,
who, in fact, could be the only founding point for a theological Christology, is the notion
that we cannot penetrate beyond the biblical texts to the historical person of Jesus. The hi s-
torical, earthly Jesus is gone. All we have are biblical texts and their picture of Jesus. And
again, we cannot have this picture in another way than in the plurality of our interpreta-
tions of it, in the plurality of our own pictures, constructed from an always particular here
and now. Hence, Christology should be dealing with the importance of these pictures and
our pre-understandings. Christology is possible only in the form of different Christologies,
which are, in the end, self-expressions of one’s own convictions and faith.69
In the liberal tradition today there are two possible ways of how to process this notion.
a) The more traditional approach emphasizes more the authenticity of the Gospels and
of their picture of Jesus.70 This biblical picture is the medium, in which the people of today
can meet Jesus. Jesus lives in the biblical pictures, they have affective and effective power
on human consciousness and spirituality and mirror the vividness of Jesus’ personality. 71
66
Ibid., 10, and identically 247. Or, in other words, the “historical Jesus” cannot be
separated from the Christ of faith, cf. B. DAHLKE, “Die bleibende Bedeutung der histor-
ischen Jesusfrage. Überlegungen zur Unterscheidung zwischen dem -HVXVGHU *HVFKLFKWH
und dem &KULVWXV GHV *ODXEHQV”, in 'RJPDWLVFKH &KULVWRORJLH LQ GHU 0RGHUQH, ed. CH.
DANZ and G. ESSEN (Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 2019), 111–131.
67
SCHRÖTER, -HVXVRI1D]DUHWK, 17.
68
Ibid. We can “trace the contours of his activity” (ibid., 15).
69
Cf. CH. DANZ, “Neue Erscheinungen zur Christologie”, 7KHRORJLVFKH5XQGVFKDX81
(2016), 234: “After the old-protestant doctrinal term of Christology, which itself was con-
structed in most different ways, was abandoned in the Enlightenment, there are christologi-
cal reflections only in the form of very diverse Christologies, which cannot be subsumed
under one common denominator. This concerns also the object of these Christologies.” Cf.
also EVERS, “Combinatory Christology”, 7, and his view of liberal Christology: “From its
very start this type of Christology is nothing but the unfolding of the meaning of Christ for
us, though not with reference to objective processes and matters of fact, but with reference
to our God-consciousness, whose emergence links us to Jesus Christ.”
70
Which is a common point in the latest New Testament studies, cf. SCHRÖTER, “Von
der Historizität der Evangelien”, 164–188.
71
Cf. U. BARTH, “Hermeneutik der Evangelien”, 301–303 and 277, where Barth marks
the methodical starting point of the liberal approach: “I think that the unity of God-
consciousness and self-consciousness, attributed to Jesus, can be – if at all – seen only in
the pious contemplation (Betrachtung) of his historical life.” And VON SCHELIHA, “Kyni-
The first approach refers very often to the Christology of 3DXO7LOOLFK, although he him-
self was not a liberal theologian. Nevertheless, his picture-Christology goes very much in
the direction of the liberal Christology and has been therefore positively received by many
liberal theologians. Tillich refers to the biblical texts, which depict “Jesus as the Christ”.
Tillich purposely does not speak simply about ‘Jesus Christ’ but rather about ‘Jesus as the
Christ’ because he differentiates between Jesus and Christ in order to put both these terms
into a dynamic relation: “[H]e is the Christ as the one who sacrifices what is merely ‘Jesus’
in him. The decisive trait in his picture is the continuous self-surrender of Jesus who is Je-
sus to Jesus who is the Christ.” In this picture, Jesus as the Christ is “the medium of final
revelation”, the ultimate and perfect symbol, which is able to transcend itself at the same
time: while Jesus as the bearer of the final revelation “overcomes its own finite conditions
by sacrificing them, and itself with them”, he “becomes completely transparent to the mys-
tery he reveals”.72 This self-surrender was fulfilled on the cross, where Jesus sacrificed his
“historical existence”, so that the cross became “the final manifestation of his transparen-
cy” of the Divine. 73 Not in his life, rather in the moment of his death, i.e., in the moment of
the total self-surrender of his humanity as the highest transparency for God was Jesus the
ideal picture of God, was Jesus the Christ.
This picture of Jesus as the Christ is preserved in the biblical scriptures and – here, Til-
lich is a faithful pupil of his teacher Kähler 74 – it is precisely this picture, which is the
foundation of Christian faith: “The foundation of Christian belief is the biblical picture of
Christ, not the historical Jesus.” 75 And the biblical picture of Christ bears still this power:
“The concrete biblical material is not guaranteed by faith in respect to empirical factuality;
but it is guaranteed as an adequate expression of the transforming power of the New Being
in Jesus as the Christ. […] And it can be shown that, in all periods of the history of the
church, it was this picture which created both the church and the Christian, and not a hypo-
thetical description of what may lie behind the biblical picture. But the picture has this cr e-
ative power, because the power of the New Being is expressed in and through it.” 76 Be-
cause of the power of this picture, Tillich speaks about “DQDORJLD LPDJLQLV” between the
biblical picture of Christ and his historical personality. This analogy is the final pin on
ker”, 29: “Christology […] uses the religious power of the pictures of Jesus a s they are
available in the multitude of possibilities to interpret his relationship with God.” The im-
mediate encounter with the impression of Jesus’ personality as the foundation of the Chris-
tian faith is also to find already in STRAUSS, 7KH/LIHRI-HVXV, 86, who states, that one of
the sources of the Christian myth is “that particular impression which was left by the per-
sonal character, actions, and fate of Jesus […] in the minds of his people”. And also in
HARNACK, :KDWLV&KULVWLDQLW\", 23: The Gospels “describe to us the impression which he
made upon his disciples, and which they transmitted”. 7KHLPSUHVVLRQRI-HVXV¶SHUVRQDOLW\
in his followers and later in the biblical scriptures (i.e., ‘the picture’) can be, hence, con-
sidered for a basic “christological” figure of the liberal theology. In how far stands this
tendency close to the notion of Droysen that the goal of the historical work is to understand
the “moral powers” acting in history? Cf. SCHRÖTER, -HVXVXQGGLH$QIlQJH, 27.
72
TILLICH, 6\VWHPDWLF7KHRORJ\I, 133. Regarding Tillich’s Christology and its critique
cf. GALLUS, 'HU0HQVFK]ZLVFKHQ+LPPHOXQG(UGH, 139–149.
73
TILLICH, 6\VWHPDWLF7KHRORJ\ I, 134.
74
Cf. KÄHLER, 7KHVRFDOOHG+LVWRULFDO-HVXV, 72–97.
75
P. TILLICH, 2Q WKH %RXQGDU\ $Q $XWRELRJUDSKLFDO 6NHWFK (New York: Scribner’s,
1966), 50.
76
TILLICH, 7KH6\VWHPDWLF7KHRORJ\II, 115.
which hangs this whole christological conception: through this analogy, through this kind
of an imprint, Jesus as the Christ himself is present in the picture. 77
Lately, 0DOWH'.UJHU proposed a theological concept based on the term of the picture
(Bild) and the fundamental human ability of imagination (Bildvermögen, innere Bildlich-
keit, Einbildungskraft), which as such has an inborn religious dimension.78 The term of the
picture or image secures the main goal of the protestant theology, which should “prevent
the unconditional dimension of the religion from any objectification”.79 The picture stands
for the permanent dynamics because in the reference to its object, a picture is precisely QRW
what it is a picture of.80 In the middle of this theology stands Jesus Christ, conceived in a
way that is very close to Tillich: the Christian faith sees Jesus Christ as a picture of God, as
a depiction of the Unconditional. “Jesus as the picture of God refers to the fact that God as
the unconditioned dimension of life is not accessible without a picture and, at the same
time, manifests himself even in this picture of Jesus only indirectly.”81 With Easter, with
the resurrection, Jesus “became definitely the picture of God”, an “unobjective object”,
which “interrupted the physical world” and which is accessible only in faith, because on
the cross, Jesus fulfilled the nature of a picture: in his self-negation he literally “crossed”
himself in his humanity (and hence in his objectiveness) in order to point not to himself,
but rather to the one whom he depicted, to Godself.82 As such, the role and effect of Jesus
is that he “guides other people into the horizon of the Unconditional” and “opens the rel i-
gious dimension of humans”. 83 After Easter, no personal encounter with Jesus is possible
anymore. “Rather, the after-Easter Jesus encounters in the canonical scriptures of the Bi-
ble.”84 The biblical scriptures are the “follower” of the Easter manifestations of Jesus. 85
The biblical picture of Jesus effects, then, “an imaginative inner impressing of the picture
of Christ (Einbildung des Bildes Christi)” in a human, “which is again understood as an
imaginative self-impressing of God”.86 The biblical picture of Christ is the deciding ele-
ment, which has the power to provoke inner human imagination that understands this bibli-
cal picture as a picture – and ultimately: as a revelation of God.
This figure with its tendency to the immediacy of the encounter with the living picture
of Jesus, present in the liberal tradition almost from the beginning, is surprising, especially
77
Ibid.
78
M.D. KRÜGER, 'DVDQGHUH%LOG&KULVWL6SlWPRGHUQHU3URWHVWDQWLVPXVDOVNULWLVFKH
%LOGUHOLJLRQ (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 538. Cf. my review of his book in &RPPXQ
LR9LDWRUXPLIX(2017/1), 122–125.
79
KRÜGER, 'DVDQGHUH%LOG, 522.
80
Ibid., 453.
81
Ibid., 529.
82
Ibid., 504–505. The resurrected Christ has no existence outside of the faith: the Chris-
tian faith “is the anthropological realization of this christological being in the manifesta-
tion” (ibid., 522).
83
Ibid., 507 and 510.
84
Ibid., 505.
85
Ibid., 506.
86
Ibid., 521. The religion as a “plausible human imaginative inner impressing (plausi-
ble Einbildung des Menschen)” is based on the human “imaginative impressing of the pic-
ture of Christ as it is passed on in the New Testament”, “in which then again the imagina-
tive self-impressing of God happens” (ibid., 539).
in this tradition, which emphasizes rationality, historicity, and critical knowledge. 87 It was
Albert Schweitzer, who said it explicitly in the context of the negative result of his book on
historical Jesus: “Our relationship to Jesus is ultimately of a mystical kind. […] Our reli-
gion, in so far as it proves to be specifically Christian, it therefore not so much a Jesus-cult
as a Jesus-mysticism.”88 It seems that the whole liberal search for the historical Jesus is
motivated by the search for an immediate experience of the vividness of Jesus’ personality,
of his “inner life”, which is according to the paradigmatic conception of W. Herrmann “the
very characteristic of the Christian religion”.89
On this point, Schleiermacher can be rightly called the father of the liberal theology. In
his conception, the whole of Christian faith and theology stems also from a mystical inner
experience of Christ’s redeeming activity: “Now such a presentation of the redeeming a c-
tivity of Christ, as has been given here, which exhibits it as the establishment of a new life
87
With the tendency to the immediate encounter with the inner personality of Jesus, the
liberal recourse to the picture of Jesus in the Scriptures contains a kind of a mystical el e-
ment, although it was originally meant as a way, how to separate the historical person of
Jesus from the Gospels and make it an object of objective historical research, cf. R.
SLENCZKA, *HVFKLFKWOLFKNHLWXQG3HUVRQVHLQ, 90.
88
SCHWEITZER, 7KH4XHVWRIWKH+LVWRULFDO-HVXV, 486.
89
Cf. HERRMANN, 'HU9HUNHKUGHV&KULVWHQPLW*RWW, 63. In Herrmann, the very core
of all religion is exactly this immediate experience of God’s effecting of the human soul
(ibid., 16). It has to be mediated by other people and their testimony, but once found, this
mediation is no more needed and the power of the inner life of Jesus is present immediate-
ly (ibid., 57–58). This immediate experience transcends, then, the question of the historici-
ty of Jesus’ person (ibid., 59), because the power of the picture of the personal life of Jesus
is unique and beyond compare with any other person in the history in the “solidity of reli-
gious conviction”, in the “clarity of the moral judgement”, and in the “purity and power of
the will” (ibid., 67). – A similar conception is found in Harnack (cf. to him above, Ch.
1.1.3), who also insists on religious experience and on the immediacy of the soul to God,
mediated by Jesus as the personified Gospel (cf. HARNACK, :KDWLV&KULVWLDQLW\", 44: the
kingdom of God is “the inner link with God” and “the most important experience that a
man can have”). However, AXT-PISCALAR, “Adolf von Harnack’s Christology”, 163, tries
to argue against the notion that Harnack’s theology is based on a mystical element. She
points to the important fact that for Harnack religion does not mean a negation of the world
but has a clear positive function in shaping and forming the culture and community. Never-
theless, Axt-Piscalar does not sufficiently differentiate between the individual foundation
and the practical outcomes of religion in Harnack. These two dimensions are different: in-
wardly, in the immediacy of the soul with God, individual religion is grounded on this
mystical element. Outwardly, it has practical effects. – Similar tones are found in J.M.
ROBINSON, .HU\JPD XQG KLVWRULVFKHU -HVXV (Stuttgart: Zwingli, 2 nd ed. 1967), 114–116,
who states that the kerygma leads to an “existential encounter” with the whole historical
person of Jesus. On the other hand, this illustrates a certain closeness of the liberal theol o-
gy to the existential interpretation. This applies also for DUNN, -HVXV 5HPHPEHUHG, 893,
who at the very end of his opus says: “In short, WKURXJKWKH-HVXVWUDGLWLRQWKHZRXOGEH
GLVFLSOH VWLOO KHDUV DQG HQFRXQWHUV -HVXV as he talked and debated, shared the table-
fellowship and healed. In hearing the Jesus tradition read from pulpit or stage, in sacred
space or neighbour’s sitting room, we sit with the earliest disciple and church groups […].
Through that tradition it is still possible for anyone to encounter the Jesus from whom
Christianity stems, the remembered Jesus.”
common to Him and us (original in Him, in us new and derived), is usually called by those
who have not had the experience, ‘mystical.’ This expression is so extremely vague that it
seems better to avoid it. But if we are willing to keep so close to its original use as to un-
derstand by it what belongs to the circle of doctrines which only a few share, but for others
are a mystery, then we may accept it. Provided that we recognize that no one can be r e-
ceived into this circle arbitrarily, because doctrines are only expressions of inward experi-
ences – whoever has these experiences ipso facto belongs to the circle; whoever has not,
cannot come in at all.”90
The problem is that the fixation on the term of the picture pushes God actually in an in-
accessible distance God himself cannot surpass so that God cannot be really present in the
world. God can touch the world only in pictures, which are, however, always necessarily
fragmentary and relative. God remains absolutely transcendent and far, only a tangent to
the world, too big and too perfect to enter the particular and imperfect world, so that the
world becomes for God an unsurpassable limit. 91 With this fact, liberal theology misses the
fundamental notion of the Christian faith that God comes not only LQ particular human pic-
tures, but has come in a unique way DV a human being in Jesus Christ.
b) The more radical liberal approach emphasizes the notion that it is RQO\SLFWXUHV, we
have, i.e., either the constructions of the second generation of the early Christians (the
Gospels), or RXU current constructions,92 without any possibility to return back to the “real
Jesus”, who still “vanishes […] in his own times”.93 For these authors, this is the main re-
sult of the Third Quest and they intensively demand that systematic Christology should
accept this result as the basis of its own thinking. 94 The (First and) Third Quest, seen as the
finally sincere historical critique, allegedly proved that the Second Quest and with it the
whole dogmatic church-Christology was nothing else than a construction of the picture of
Jesus, in this case, however, a strictly dogmatic one, which is, therefore, prejudiced and
should be abandoned. 95 The historical search for Jesus has to have not only a fundamental
“corrective function” for the “constructions of systematic Christology”,96 moreover: the
“Jesus of history, as the historical research can reconstruct him” should be “the starting
90
SCHLEIERMACHER, 7KH&KULVWLDQ)DLWK, § 100.3, 428–429.
91
The question here, therefore, is not the one of M. Luther: How can I find a merciful
God?, but rather: How can I find God at all?
92
Cf. DANZ, *UXQGSUREOHPH, 32. IDEM, “Der Jesus der Exegeten und der Christus der
Dogmatiker. Die Bedeutung der neueren Jesusforschung für die systematisch-theologische
Christologie”, 1=67K51 (2009), 201.
93
DANZ, *UXQGSUREOHPH, 40–41. LANDMESSER, “Der gegenwärtige Jesus”, 118, makes
exactly this point to an objection against the modern question of historical Jesus: “The
modern question of the historical Jesus strips to a large extent from the Jesus of the Gos-
pels his christological interpretation, moves him away from his contexts of literature and
theology, transposes him in a past, which vanishes in a distance to the present, which ca n-
not be overcome.”
94
Cf. VON SCHELIHA, “Kyniker”, 22: “One has the impression: The gong for the ‘third
round’ hasn’t rang yet for the systematic theology.”
95
DANZ, *UXQGSUREOHPH, 30. Cf. F. WITTEKIND, “Christologie im 20. Jahrhundert”, in
=ZLVFKHQ KLVWRULVFKHP -HVXV XQG GRJPDWLVFKHP &KULVWXV, ed. CH. DANZ and M.
MURRMANN-KAHL, DoMo 1 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 41: It was a “(self)misun-
derstanding of the ‘second round of the quest for the historical Jesus’ to read the dogmatic
constructions as claims for historical knowledge”.
96
DANZ, “Der Jesus der Exegeten”, 201.
point of Christology”,97 because it has also “a constructive function” for theology and
faith.98 Danz takes the criteria of historical work from E. Troeltsch: historical criticism,
probability, analogy and correlation. 99 The point is, then, that in this setting, there cannot
occur anything really new in the history, which a historian could acknowledge as really
historical and not only mythological or phantastic. Therefore, any claim of singular events
such as Jesus’ divinity, incarnation of the Son of God or his resurrection is unacceptable.
This only historical, i.e., immanent framework dictates then for theology and faith what is
possible to think and to believe and what is not.
Under these conditions, this picture of Jesus remains: Jesus was a “Jew from Galilee”
and it was later that his Jewish followers, who, in order to deal with his death, “gave him
after his death a meaning, which led to the rise of a new religion”. 100 Jesus himself ob-
tained then a divine status.101
Even though in this radically liberal approach there is a clear knowledge that Christolo-
gy is an “intertwining of fact and interpretation”, what remains is only the interpretation in
form of the self-reflexivity of the self-consciousness.102 The “problem of historism in
Christology” is solved with the escape into the self-consciousness: Christology does not
relate to some historical realities but works with the current pictures of Jesus in order to
contribute to the self-enlightenment of the religious individual. 103 Subsequently, everyone
can choose and find their own picture of Jesus because there is not and cannot be any uni-
97
DANZ, “Neue Erscheinungen zur Christologie”, 234.
98
99
Cf. Ibid., 195.
100
Ibid., 42–43, 51–52, referring to G. THEISSEN, 7KH5HOLJLRQRIWKH(DUOLHVW&KXUFK
HV&UHDWLQJD6\PEROLF:RUOG, trans. J. BOWDEN (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999), 41–
60. The problem is, a new religion, which should survive more than three or four gener a-
tions, cannot begin only by a new symbolical interpretation in surmounting the experi-
enced cognitive dissonance through the fundamentals of faith (cf. ibid., 43). P. POKORNÝ,
7KH*HQHVLVRI&KULVWRORJ\)RXQGDWLRQVIRUD7KHRORJ\RIWKH1HZ7HVWDPHQW, trans. M.
LEFÉBURE (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1987), 109–156, showed in a convincing way that in
the beginning of the new perspective on Jesus there must have been an external “impulse”.
Cf. also below, Ch. 4.1.2 and 9.1–2.
101
Definitely in the Gospel of John, according to DANZ, *UXQGSUREOHPH, 54. Cf. also
the position of J. Hick, below, Ch. 11.1.
102
Cf. ibid., 204. Danz struggles here in the first place with the position of J. Schröter
but he cannot do justice to him because he underestimates what can be considered as his-
torical facts, as well as he underestimates the Easter tradition, which belongs to history as
well and cannot be simply filtered off as Danz does it. Cf. DANZ, *UXQGSUREOHPH, 38–41,
205–208. IDEM, “Neuere Erscheinungen zur Christologie”, 250. In opposition to it cf.
SCHRÖTER, -HVXVRI1D]DUHWK, 14: “Therefore, a fundamental skepticism toward a picture
of Jesus constructed with the help of historical criticism goes too far.”
103
DANZ, *UXQGSUREOHPH, 9, 193, 209–222. Faith “describes itself”, its contents do not
exist independently of it (ibid., 203–204). Precisely WITTEKIND, “Christologie im 20.
Jahrhundert”, 23: “This means that the function of the reference to the historical Jesus
changes. He is not anymore the historical foundation of faith but the picture of the historic-
ity of faith.” And ibid., 40: The alleged final point of Christology is not that “the reality of
the historical Jesus is recognized and appropriated, but that the picture of Jesus is the func-
tion of the self-expression (Selbstdarstellung) of faith”.
fied picture of Jesus.104 What remains, is an endless plurality of pictures going to the edge
of arbitrariness. With this “anything goes”, these modern authors come paradoxically re-
markably close to the danger of the postmodern paradigm. 105
Faith, in this concept, is thus solely the transparency of the self-reflection with the help
of some religious images. That means a huge reduction of the whole theology to anthropo-
logical questions, and, moreover, merely to epistemological questions, from which these
concepts often cannot proceed any further.106 The fundamental question (now from the per-
spective of the theory and critique of ideology) for a liberal theology of this shape is, there-
fore: why should one need such faith and religion, what does it actually bring? If the goal
is to achieve self-transparency and self-enlightenment, why should one go necessarily the
religious way? 107 How is an “inflationary functionalism” of religion to be avoided? 108
Nourished from the idealist critique of religion in the 19 th century, this theological concep-
tion says the same in the end, what people living under totalitarian regimes hear about reli-
gion: that it is only an internal, rather psychological need. 109 The next obvious and logical
step then would be to abandon religion as obsolete. 110 A theology, which uses mostly the
prefix “self-”, leads, in fact, unavoidably to an inner self-destruction.111
104
Therefore, this conception of Christology denies Christology as a Christology of a
person (Personchristologie), DANZ, *UXQGSUREOHPH, 212–213. There are only pictures and
images: “Jesus becomes the image – though in many cases surely rather a projection screen
– for what we consider to be true religiosity, true faith, and authentic existence” (EVERS,
“Combinatory Christology”, 7).
105
Cf. GRUBE, 2VWHUQ DOV 3DUDGLJPHQZHFKVHO, 162; and also CH. TIETZ, “Jesus von
Nazareth in neueren Christologien”, =HLWVFKULIWIU'LDOHNWLVFKH7KHRORJLH62/31(2/2015),
90–108.
106
N. SLENCZKA speaks in this respect from an “escape from the ORFL of material dog-
matics” (N. SLENCZKA, “Flucht aus den dogmatischen Loci”, ]HLW]HLFKHQ8/2013, 46; cf. D.
EVERS, “Neuere Tendenzen in der deutschsprachigen evangelischen Dogmatik”, 7K/=140
[2015/1], 3). The ideal of these liberal conceptions, that is to say, is to abstain from all con-
tents to faith conceived as pure certainty, thus – again – to some kind of mystical immedia-
cy (cf. DALFERTH, 'LH :LUNOLFKNHLW GHV 0|JOLFKHQ, 341, refering to R. Barth, cf. R.
BARTH, $EVROXWH :DKUKHLW XQG HQGOLFKHV :DKUKHLWVEHZXWVHLQ 'DV 9HUKlOWQLV YRQ
ORJLVFKHP XQG WKHRORJLVFKHP :DKUKHLWVEHJULII ± 7KRPDV YRQ $TXLQ .DQW )LFKWH XQG
)UHJH, RPT 13 [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004]).
107
Cf. WITTEKIND, “Christologie im 20. Jahrhundert”, 41–42: “Christology expresses
therefore that religion refers only to itself and the religious symbolic does not have any
other object than the religion as the religious interpretation of the self.” What for religion
then?
108
WAGNER, 0HWDPRUSKRVHQ, 165, obviously knew about this danger.
109
Cf. EVERS, “Combinatory Christology”, 7: “However – as can be studied in the criti-
cism of religion from the 19 th century to today – Jesus can also become the symbol of what
in a repressive religious perspective human beings should be, but what autonomous and
self-determined individuals do not want to be, a repressive ideal of heteronomy.” On the
contrary, confirming, in fact, that liberal theology and liberal Marxism do not stand far
away from each other, M. MACHOVEC in his book -HVXV IU $WKHLVWHQ (Stuttgart: Kreuz,
1975), tries to interconnect marxism and “the Jesus thing”, which are allegedly mutually
necessary, if neither of them should degenerate into ideology.
110
It is therefore only consistent, when WITTEKIND, “Christologie im 20. Jahrhundert”,
42, asks the question: “Is the consequence of this critique that Christianity has to get along
7KH6HDUFKIRUWKH+LVWRULFDO-HVXV7RGD\ 53
2. The Search for the Historical Jesus

from Today’s Perspective
2. The Search for the Historical Jesus Today
From the current point of view, the development of the method and the evalu-
ation of the sources have brought some criticism towards the methodical set-
ting of the Third Quest and also some new positions, which try to implement
the important achievements of the research so far.
In the current view of the Third Quest, it is obvious that it still holds the
original conviction that the search for the historical Jesus has to process on a
strictly historical basis. The main orientation of the Third Quest is therefore
from the beginning anti-dogmatic, anti-theological and “DQWLFKULVWRORJLFDO”
in particular. Theological treatises on Jesus are under the suspicion that they
may “falsify the picture of Jesus and make it subservient to certain theologi-
cal interests”.112 In contrary to it, the presupposition is leading that the histor-
ical approach can get to the historical core without such premises. Repeating
the old starting point of Reimarus, it comes, in fact, again to the contraposi-
tion of the ‘historical Jesus’ and the ‘Christ of faith’, which are again set
against each other. 113 The historical Jesus has to be found “in the opposition
to the propositions of faith”,114 somewhere behind the “sources, which were
reforged by Christians”.115 The new methodological insights into the histori-
cal research have, however, questioned such approach and “revealed the epis-
without Christology in the future?” KRÜGER, 'DVDQGHUH %LOG &KULVWL, 488 and 538–539,
states openly that the human God-consciousness is a projection, but against the Feuer-
bachian critique of religion he tries to save its relevance with the argument that it is a nec-
essary projection because it roots in the fundamental and inborn human ability of imagina-
tion. However, if God is a projection, and be it a necessary one, whose function is, in the
end, “the self-understanding of a human life” (ibid., 540) and the “counterfactual self-
acceptance and freedom” (ibid., 537), one has to ask, whether this whole religious agenda
was not in fact a needless “GpWRXU” one “could probably have spared” (S. FREUD, &LYLOL]D
WLRQ DQG ,WV 'LVFRQWHQWV, trans. J. STRACHEY [New York/London: W.W. Norton, 1961],
35).
111
Cf. TRACY, 2Q 1DPLQJ, 16: “That self-grounding, self-present modern subject is
dead: killed by its own pretensions to grounding all reality in itself.” And also I.U.
DALFERTH, “Gott mit uns”, in 'HQNZUGLJHV*HKHLPQLV.%HLWUlJH]XU*RWWHVOHKUH )6IU
(-QJHO]XP*HEXUWVWDJ, ed. IDEM and J. FISCHER, (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004),
73: “The ‘anthropological turn’ of the modern Christology is an ‘anthropologization’ of
salvation, consistently thought out to the end – a definition of the essence and life of hu-
mans without any relation to God” (originally partly italicized).
112
SCHRÖTER, “Die aktuelle Diskussion”, 68.
113
Ibid. Cf. DAHLKE, “Die bleibende Bedeutung der historischen Jesusfrage”.
114
SCHRÖTER, “Die aktuelle Diskussion”, 75. Schröter notices about this approach,
which originates already from Reimarus: “This position has been held in the historic-
critical research since that time again and again.” (Ibid.)
115
Ibid., 76.
temological deficits at the beginnings of the Third Quest”.116 The history is to

be (re)constructed not against the context of the sources but rather through it
or even within it. Moreover: “The origin of Christianity is to be explained
from Jesus’ acting,” not against it.117
Regarding the sources, the Third Quest criticized the Second for its narrow
orientation only on the synoptic Gospels and sought to balance this one-
sidedness through the wider historical FRQWH[WRIWKH-HZLVKZRUOG, supported
by the new discoveries. Hereby, the Third Quest was obviously fascinated
and its main question was clearly influenced in a fundamental way by it: the
Third Quest searches for the historical Jesus exclusively in the Jewish con-
text.118 Since this time, it is taken as a commonly shared fact in the historical
Jesus research that Jesus has to be understood on the backdrop of Judaism of
his time.119 What remains fully aside though, is the rest of the New Testa-
ment, as if WKLV context would not be plausible at all.
Since Reimarus, the opinion had been held that the Easter perspective, as
contained in the apostolic texts of the New Testament, is a foreign dogmatic
construction; that between the teaching of Jesus (or Jesus himself) and the
interpretation in the epistles is only discontinuity; that these are two different
worlds without any connection. 120 M. Hengel showed – in a polemic with A.
von Harnack, who, actually fully in the intention of Reimarus, considered
Paul for the founder of the speculative objective Christology of a divine hu-
man and, hence, of a ‘second Gospel’121 – that the origins of Christology lie
already before Paul, in the two decades after Jesus’ death. 122 Here, Hengel
again reminds us what already Kähler and Bultmann each in his way did: that
for the biblical texts, even for the epistles, which are older than Gospels, the
basic perspective on Jesus is the Easter perspective. Therefore, this perspec-
116
Ibid.
117
118
Cf. SCHRÖTER, “Die aktuelle Diskussion”, 82.
119
SCHRÖTER, -HVXV RI 1D]DUHWK, 9. To the relation of Christology and Judaism cf.,
from his specific position, CH. DANZ, “Jesus, der Jude aus Galiläa und der christliche
Erlöser. Anmerkungen zur Funktion der dogmatischen Christologie im christlich-jüdischen
Diskurs”, in 'RJPDWLVFKH&KULVWRORJLHLQGHU0RGHUQH, ed. IDEM and G. ESSEN (Regens-
burg: Friedrich Pustet, 2019), 303–318. With the impact of the Jewish context of the earth-
ly Jesus intensified through the horrible experience of World War II deals 6WUHLWIDOO&KULV
WRORJLH9HUJHZLVVHUXQJHQQDFKGHU6KRDK, ed. H. HOPING and J.-H. TÜCK, QD 214 (Frei-
burg: Herder, 2005).
120
With the epistles being rather a church phantasy of an objective divine human. Cf.
above to Reimarus, and also VON SCHELIHA, “Kyniker”, 29.
121
Cf. above, Ch. 1.1.3, at footnote 35 and HARNACK, “Das doppelte Evangelium”.
122
M. HENGEL, “The Son of God”, in IDEM 7KH &URVV RI WKH 6RQ RI *RG, trans. J.
BOWDEN (London: SCM Press, 1976), 2. Cf. also SCHRÖTER, -HVXVXQGGLH$QIlQJH, 60.
POKORNÝ, 7KH*HQHVLV, 39, 70, 95, 147, and below in this chapter.
tive should be taken in account at least as a possible perspective and it should

be tested also historically, in how far is this perspective plausible.
The point is not, as the liberal theology often puts it, that the Easter pe r-
spective would have to be the only one, the only correct one. 123 From today’s
point of view, no one denies, that there were and are many perspectives on
Jesus possible.124 The Easter perspective is one of them and it is the basic
perspective for the Christian faith as it is depicted in the biblical texts. Asking
for Jesus, theology should therefore take this perspective honestly into ac-
count. J.D.G. Dunn puts it precisely: “[I]t has become clear that to abstract
faith from the historical task is to proceed unhistorically. For the first faith of
those called by Jesus is itself part of the historical data to be considered.”125
Or as P. Pokorný states clearly: “The earthly Jesus is part of the Easter ker-
ygma.”126 However, it is to say vice versa that the perspective of faith needs
the correction of the historical research in order not to become a vast specula-
tion:127 “[H]istorical Jesus research does not make a judgment about the truth
of the Christian faith either. Instead, it provides the foundation for compr e-
hending its emergence.”128
The research has shown that the biblical texts, taken as testimonies written
from this perspective, can provide also some historically authentic infor-
mation.129 Hence, without taking this perspective into account the historical
research risks to cease its critical historicity, and theology risks to get outside
123
Cf. VON SCHELIHA, “Kyniker”, 29; MURRMANN-KAHL und DANZ, “Problemhori-
zont”, 6; DANZ, *UXQGSUREOHPH, 189.
124
Cf. SCHRÖTER, -HVXVXQGGLH$QIlQJH, 178: “The christological development in the
area of the Jesus tradition could have taken place with a different weighting than is often
assumed.”
125
DUNN, -HVXV5HPHPEHUHG, 327; similarly JOHNSON, 7KH5HDO-HVXV, 143–146.
126
POKORNÝ, 7KH*HQHVLV, 62.
127
SCHRÖTER, “Die aktuelle Diskussion”, 86. IDEM, “Von der Historizität der Evan-
gelien”, 165, who refers to THEISSEN und MERZ, 7KH+LVWRULFDO-HVXV, 23–33, 98–115 and
their analysis of the arguments of the historical scepticism. The important result is that
there is no reason to put the Easter perspective of the Gospels against the character of Gos-
pels as historical sources. Cf. also POKORNÝ, 7KH*HQHVLV, 14.
128
129
SCHRÖTER, “Von der Historizität der Evangelien”, 164, calls this “a turn within the
Jesus research”. On the trust to the historical reliability of the Gospels based his book
about Jesus J. Ratzinger (pope Benedict XVI), cf. J. RATZINGER, -HVXVRI1D]DUHWK, trans.
A.J. WALKER (New York: Doubleday, 2008), 13: “I trust the Gospels. Of course, I take for
granted everything that the Council and modern exegesis tell us about literary genres,
about authorial intention, and about the fact that the Gospels were written in the context,
and speak within the living milieu, of communities. I have tried, to the best of my ability,
to incorporate all of this, and yet I wanted to try to portray the Jesus of the Gospels as the
real, ‘historical’ Jesus in the strict sense of the word.” The book ignited a broad debate, for
literature cf. DAHLKE, “Die bleibende Bedeutung der historischen Jesusfrage”, 118–119.
of the perspective of the Christian faith (from which it shall speak) and,
hence, to stop being Christian theology. 130
Finally, this approach is represented also in the quest for the historical J e-
sus by some recent positions, which try to integrate the achievements of the
research so far: among others, the Easter perspective of the Gospels, the con-
text of the New Testament and Judaism, and the constructivity of the histori-
cal work. 131 What we have in the biblical sources, are remembrances of the
first Christians, narratives, and some basic ideas trying to rationally process
the experiences and remembrances. Therefore authors like J.D.G. Dunn 132, J.
Schröter133 or D.C. Allison134 work with WKH PHPRU\ as “the mediating ele-
ment between past and present”.135 From these memories (and other historical
sources), we can construct our picture of Jesus as a plausible picture, based
also on some particular “facts” or particular memories, which we have re-
garding the person of Jesus. 136 This does not mean, as the First Quest for the
historical Jesus thought, to go beyond the sources to the real historical person
of Jesus but rather to present a “conception grounded on the weighing of
plausibilities, which as an abstraction from the sources always moves LQIURQW
of the sources”.137 The Jesus we can reconstruct is, therefore, “the Jesus UH
PHPEHUHG and PDGHSUHVHQW from a specific perspective at the beginning of
the twenty-first century”. 138
130
Cf. LANDMESSER, “Der gegenwärtige Jesus”, 114–115.
131
Cf. DUNN, -HVXV 5HPHPEHUHG, 65, who names the achievements of the research
more in detail.
132
DUNN, -HVXV 5HPHPEHUHG. Dunn’s conception is based on the “immediate” and
“lasting impact” or “impression” (ibid., 882 and 892), which the historical Jesus had on his
disciples, whose remembrances we have now in the New Testament texts. With this, Dunn
stands actually close to the liberal conception of the living picture of Jesus preserved in the
NT (cf. above, Ch. 2.1).
133
SCHRÖTER, -HVXVRI1D]DUHWK.
134
ALLISON, &RQVWUXFWLQJ-HVXV.
135
136
Or, as ALLISON, &RQVWUXFWLQJ-HVXV, 460, does it: “Instead of attempting to authenti-
cate individual item after individual item, I have preferred, for the most part, to identify
larger patterns across the sources and then to seek for the best explanation”.
137
138
Ibid., 9. Therefore, S. MCKNIGHT in his review of Allison’s work calls the Third
Quest to be over: “Allison’s book brings the quest for the historical Jesus to a new dead-
end. We can’t do what we thought we were going to do. The Third Quest is, at least for
me, officially over” (quoted in ALLISON, &RQVWUXFWLQJ-HVXV, 461, footnote 88). However,
Allison himself denies that there would be different periods or quests for the historical Je-
sus (ibid., 461). – Concerning the periodization, M. WELKER, *RGWKH5HYHDOHG&KULVWRO
RJ\ (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans, 2013), 87–94, tries to introduce a “fourth quest” by
elevating the quest for the historical Jesus to a multi-level multicontextuality in order to
avoid all risks of the previous quests and at the same time to preserve their complex con-
cerns (ibid., 93). For a Fourth Quest within the search for the historical Jesus argues also E.
According to J. Schröter, there is no possibility to get in the biblical scrip-

tures beyond the plurality of after-Easter rememberances and perspectives on
Jesus.139 This does not mean, however, that the question of the historical Je-
sus would be obsolete or that theology would have to start just so with the
Easter perspective, take it or leave it. It was the Easter faith in the first place,
who had a preeminent interest in the question of the historical, or may be on
this point rather: the earthly Jesus.140 The Easter perspective expresses the
faith in the crucified and resurrected one. Therefore, LWLVWKH(DVWHUIDLWKLW
VHOIZKRLVLQWHUHVWHGLQWKHKLVWRU\LQWKHILUVWSODFH.141 Then, is it also possi-
ble to find and discern within this perspective some moments or elements of
earlier traditions, which were integrated into this perspective.
The Easter perspective marks hence no total discontinuity, there is “no
‘Easter-ditch’, that would set” the “pre-Easter Jesus and his post-Easter inter-
pretation” “against each other”.142 It is not the beginning of a wholly new and
different perspective and teaching, as Reimarus put it. It is of maximal im-
BAASLAND, “Fourth Quest? What Did Jesus Really Want?”, in +DQGERRNIRUWKH6WXG\RI

WKH+LVWRULFDO-HVXV, vol.1, ed. T. HOLMÉN and S.E. PORTER (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2011),
31–56. Cf. also G. WENZ, “The Last Quest. Zum christologischen Problem der Frage nach
dem historischen Jesus”, in 'RJPDWLVFKH&KULVWRORJLHLQGHU0RGHUQH, ed. CH. DANZ and
G. ESSEN (Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 2019), 153–178.
139
J. SCHRÖTER, “Der erinnerte Jesus als Begründer des Christentums? Bemerkungen
zu James D.G. Dunns Ansatz in der Jesusforschung”, =17 20 (2007/2), 51, 53. The 20th
volume of ZNT as whole is dedicated to the “remembered Jesus (Der erinnerte Jesus)”. Cf.
also POKORNÝ, 7KH*HQHVLV, 95–96.
140
Cf. SCHRÖTER, -HVXVRI1D]DUHWK, 9; LANDMESSER, “Der gegenwärtige Jesus”, 119:
“In the perspective of faith, the ‘historical Jesus’ is already always present, these are not
aspects of the Christian approach to the reality and to the world, which would exclude one
another.”
141
Cf. E. JÜNGEL, *RGDVWKH0\VWHU\RIWKH:RUOG2QWKH)RXQGDWLRQRIWKH7KHRORJ\
RIWKH&UXFLILHG2QHLQWKH'LVSXWHEHWZHHQ7KHLVPDQG$WKHLVP, trans. D.L. GUDER (Lon-
don [et al.]: Bloomsbury T and T Clark, 2014), 349, footnote 17, who stresses the connec-
tion of the Easter faith with the question of the historical Jesus and vice versa the connec-
tion of the fact of the historical Jesus with the existence of Easter faith: “[O]ne can ask rel-
evantly about the historical Jesus only when faith in Jesus Christ has been acknowledged
as at least a IDFWXDO result of the fact that Jesus the man did exist on earth. But then it is
already a statement made by faith to say that faith in Jesus Christ is the UHOHYDQWresult of
the man Jesus’ having been on earth, and anything but a misunderstanding. There is no
historical mediation between the two.” Cf. also IDEM, 3DXOXVXQG-HVXV, 6th ed., HUTh 2
(Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1986), 279–284; IDEM, “The Dogmatic Significance of the
Question of the Historical Jesus”, in IDEM, 7KHRORJLFDO (VVD\V, vol. II, trans. A.
NEUFELDT-FAST and J.B. WEBSTER (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), 82–119;
POKORNÝ, 7KH*HQHVLV, 130; KRÜGER, 'DVDQGHUH%LOG&KULVWL, 506.
142
SCHRÖTER, -HVXVRI1D]DUHWK, 201, cf. ibid., 202: “It would therefore be a misappre-
hension to want to set off the ‘real’ Jesus against the Jesus LQWHUSUHWHG with the help of the
Easter experiences.”
portance that Easter bring a new perspective, but a new perspective on what
was there also already before, a new perspective on the continuous life-story
of Jesus. A new perspective, which can be understood better in the light of
the earthly Jesus, of his life and of his teaching. In this new Easter perspec-
tive, there is a IXQGDPHQWDOFRQWLQXLW\: the resurrected Jesus is the crucified
Jesus. It is the continuation of his story, of the same person, of the same life.
And also the interpretation from this new Easter perspective is based “on e x-
periences that have gone forth from his earthly activity”. 143 The Easter per-
spective would not be possible without the activity of the earthly Jesus, alt-
hough Easter brings something radically new, a wholly new experience with
this previous experience. For the followers of Jesus, the Easter experiences
would not be comprehensible without a foundation in the life of the earthly
Jesus.144
As I stated above, although the Easter perspective became dominant, there were other per-
spectives and traditions, which can be still reconstructed from the biblical texts, although
they had been reshaped from the Easter perspective. J. Schröter shows that from the very
beginning, there was a Galilean interpretation of Jesus (the so-called Q source), wholly
independent of Paul, which emphasized the importance of the earthly Jesus and his acting;
this was later an important point for the continuity between the earthly and the resurrected
Jesus.145 This tradition was oriented on Jesus’ announcement of the coming of the King-
dom of God and on the title of the ‘Son of man’. Mark integrated later this tradition into
his conception with the titles of Jesus as Christ and Son of God who will return, however
not as N\ULRV, as the Pauline tradition put it, but as the Son of man.146 There was hence a
self-standing Galilean tradition with its own accents.
With respect to the differences and different accents of the traditions, the important
point is: both traditions the Galilean (Q and Mark) and the (pre-Pauline) tradition of Jeru-
salem do not mark different lines of development, which would stand unmediated next to
each other or even against each other but build a certain “coherence”. They both represent
with different accents the notion that in Jesus came the Kingdom of God. With their int e-
gration into the Easter perspective, this notion and their specific accents were not blurred
143
Ibid., 201.
144
Ibid., 202. Cf. ibid., 246: “Rather, there are multiple connections that lead from the
activity of the earthly Jesus to the emergence of the Christian faith.” Cf. also ALLISON,
&RQVWUXFWLQJ-HVXV, 25–26.
145
SCHRÖTER, -HVXVXQGGLH$QIlQJH, 60–61. POKORNÝ, 7KH*HQHVLV, 89, regarding the
plurality of old sources and conceptions, points to the fact that the Q source is the only old
tradition “in which both the title Messiah […] and the resurrection kerygma are missing”.
It is therefore no wonder that, already from this point of view, the liberal search for the
historical Jesus focused from its very beginnings on the synoptic Gospels. But it is to say,
at the same time, that the Q source was “soon brought into relationship with the resurrec-
tion message”, thus “it cannot serve as a basis for the reconstruction of an alternative
Christology” (ibid., 94–95, cf. 105–109 stressing the plurality of traditions and layers).
146
SCHRÖTER, -HVXVXQGGLH$QIlQJH, 217–218, 222.
or lost but remained preserved. The point is, therefore, not to find the only tradition and
perspective but to find and preserve a “SOXUDOLW\ZLWKLQDFRKHUHQFH”.147
Regarding the question of the beginnings of Christology, it is to say that there

is a remarkable FRQWLQXLW\ between the earthly Jesus and the Easter perspec-
tive. The beginnings of Christology are firmly rooted in the acts of the earthly
Jesus, who already during his life “bound the happening of the reign of God
to his own person”, 148 so that church Christology with its emphasis on the
christological titles (Messiah, Son of God) is to be understood not as a co n-
struction from the Easter perspective but rather as an integral dimension al-
ready of the acting of the earthly Jesus and his message of the early coming
of the Kingdom of God. 149
Schröter speaks about this continuity as “a development from an ‘implicit’ Christology
with its basis in Jesus himself to a post-Easter H[SOLFLW Christology”.150 This point is one of
the most irritating for liberal theology, which tries to prove intensively that the develop-
ment from the historical Jesus to the church Christology was not necessary and only possi-
ble but merely contingent – and was proven in the Enlightenment to be false.151 But the
point is not to present the Easter perspective as the only possible interpretation of the
earthly Jesus and his life. Rather, the Easter perspective proves to be a plausible and – not
the only, but still one – possible perspective and interpretation of the meaning of earthly
Jesus and of his life. And from the internal perspective of Christian faith, this continuity is
beyond a doubt. To disprove the Easter perspective, the liberal theology would not have to
attack the necessity or contingency of the Easter interpretation of Jesus’ life but the plausi-
bility of this perspective. The Easter perspective does not say that it is the only possible
interpretation of the life of Jesus. However, it is convinced that it is a very plausible one.
To refute it would mean not to show that there is no necessary continuity between the
147
Ibid., 217–219, quotation 219. Cf. with a similar result the study of F. BOVON, “The
First Christologies: Exaltation and Incarnation Or, From Easter to Christmas”, in -HVXV
&KULVW7RGD\6WXGLHVRI&KULVWRORJ\LQ9DULRXV&RQWH[WV, ed. S.G. HALL, TBT 146 (Ber-
lin/New York: De Gruyter, 2009), 27–43. And also POKORNÝ, 7KH*HQHVLV, 13 and 88: “It
is true that there were various Christological conceptions; but we have seen that in the ol d-
est stage accessible to us they were already too closely knit together for us today to consid-
er them as competing alternatives.”
148
SCHRÖTER, -HVXVXQGGLH$QIlQJH, 221. Cf. POKORNÝ, 7KH*HQHVLV, 45–55.
149
150
Ibid., 215. To implicit and explicit Christology cf. THEISSEN and MERZ, 7KH+LVWRU
LFDO-HVXV, 523–563.
151
Cf. DANZ, *UXQGSUREOHPH, 185–189. His position concerning a possible continuity
from the earthly Jesus towards the Easter interpretation of his life and resurrection is clear
and remains inline with the position of Reimarus and Strauss: “The retracing of the early
Christian kerygma to a particular historical figure is supposed to counter the suspicion that
the after-Easter Christology is a myth and thus a projection of the congregation” (ibid.,
187). For a critique of this position see also GRUBE, 2VWHUQDOV3DUDGLJPHQZHFKVHO160–
163.
earthly Jesus and the Easter interpretation of his life, but rather to show that there FDQQRW
EHDQ\ continuity at all.152
In summary: theology does not deny the plurality of possible approaches to

Jesus or the plurality of possible pictures of him. 153 Nevertheless, it purposely
chooses the Easter perspective as the perspective of its own interpretation,
also because this perspective proved very early that it can integrate many oth-
er christological emphases.154 7KH(DVWHUSHUVSHFWLYHEHFRPHVWKHIXQGDPHQ
WDOKHUPHQHXWLFDOSHUVSHFWLYH in the interpretation of the person of Jesus and,
from here on, the whole of reality. Christology, then, is the consistent reflec-
tion on this perspective, which it tries to think to the end. It is not the only to-
the-end-thinking of the only possible perspective but rather an attempt to
think this perspective to the end in a consistent and plausible way.
3. &KULVWXVSUDHVHQV
3. Christus praesens
Who, then, is the object of Christology? Obviously, it is not the historical Je-
sus but it is not the earthly Jesus either. The object of Christology, if Chris-
tology should remain a theological discipline, cannot be a result of historical
research. I intended to show above, in the discussion with the historical ques-
tions and with the help of the results of current research that the theological
focusing on the person of Jesus Christ has to take in account the Easter per-
spective as the main framework for the interpretation of Jesus, as the funda-
mental hermeneutical perspective of Christology. It is the Easter perspective,
which is the fundamental perspective of the New Testament (and of the
church tradition) and of Christian faith. 155 And Christian faith does not relate
152
This was an important question in the discussion with R. Bultmann, who reduced the
importance of the historical Jesus only to the mere fact of his historical existence (his
“Daß”, cf. BULTMANN, “Das Verhältnis“, 449–450), which was in his opinion the only
condition for the existence of the Christian proclamation. Everything else regarding the
history of Jesus “does not matter” (ibid., 469), because “the Christ of the kerygma is not a
historical figure which could be in any continuity with the historical Jesus” (ibid., 448; cf.
WENZ, &KULVWXV, 108).
153
This is also the point of the summarizing study of DAHLKE, “Die bleibende
Bedeutung der historischen Jesusfrage”, 111–131.
154
Cf. POKORNÝ, 7KH*HQHVLV, 147: “[T]he resurrection Christology had already made
progress in wider circles before Paul, since it was able to integrate the other expressions of
the Easter faith”.
155
Cf. LANDMESSER, “Der gegenwärtige Jesus”, 116: “In an essential point, however –
in the Archimedes’ point, so to speak – the New Testament texts meet in their speech about
Jesus. They talk about Jesus in the way they do only because of the event that decisively
shapes their view of the story of Jesus and the message of Jesus: because of the encounter
with the risen Christ. This is exactly the perspective of the believers, which is also the de-
termining perspective already of the New Testament texts.” Cf. also KRÜGER, 'DVDQGHUH
&KULVWXVSUDHVHQV 61
to Jesus Christ as to a mere historical person. Christian faith, as a vivid rela-

tion to Jesus Christ, relates to him DVSUHVHQW. “If there is to be an unambigu-
ous starting-point at all theology has to take seriously that faith is essentially
faith LQ&KULVW, i.e., a direct personal relation to the present Christ. But then,
logically, for faith to exist Christ must be risen, alive and present.” 156
Therefore, the object of Christology, as I conceive it, is the &KULVWXVSUDH
VHQV, the present Jesus Christ.157 Which is a theological statement – an abbre-
viation, actually – that needs to be more specified.
First, the Easter perspective, as the fundamental hermeneutical perspective,
points to the the crucified DQG resurrected one. The person of Jesus Christ in
this perspective can be therefore reduced neither only to the historical or
earthly Jesus, nor to the risen Christ apart from his earthly life, nor to the
eternal Logos, who for a certain time became human. Neither is he a personal
embodiment of an eternal divine principle (Kant, Schleiermacher) or of an
idea (Strauss) or of the Gospel (Harnack), as some former approaches tried to
put it. Jesus Christ as &KULVWXVSUDHVHQV stands for the person of Jesus Christ,
in whom the Easter faith recognized God himself within full humanity. With
this understanding of Jesus Christ, “God is already involved” 158 – this is the
new and turning point in the Easter perspective. In Jesus was God himself, in
Jesus Christ we have to do with God-Self. The human Jesus of Nazareth was
and is the self-revelation of God. This is the only reason why faith relates to
Jesus and believes in him. If God would not be in him, faith in him would be
a mistake and a blasphemy.
Against all negative and liberal theologies which try to overcome any nec-
essary concreteness, particularity and objectification of the human speech of
God in order to preserve God in his untouched absoluteness, from the christo-
logical point of view is to say: not GHXVVHPSHUPDLRU, not GHXVGHILQLULQHT
XLW, not a negative statement, which should clearly delimit all human attempts
of grasping the divine, but o` lo,goj sa.rx evge,neto, exactly this positive state-
ment based not on the human attempt to grasp God from below but on the be-
lieved divine motion from above, is the starting point of all Christology and
theology. “The sentence ‘deus definiri nequit’ is […] christologically unac-
%LOG &KULVWL, 506 and 507: The Easter is “the basic date of the Christian faith”. “To be a
Christian means to stand in the efficacy of what happened at the Easter.” Similarly, WENZ,
&KULVWXV, 29: “Easter is the constitutive ground of Christianity and Christology.”
156
I.U. DALFERTH, 7KHRORJ\DQG3KLORVRSK\ (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 126.
157
Cf. DALFERTH, &UXFLILHGDQG5HVXUUHFWHG, 24. And also CH. SCHWÖBEL, “‘Wer sagt
denn ihr, dass ich sei?’ (Mt 16,15). Eine systematisch-theologische Skizze zur Lehre von
der Person Christi”, in 0DUEXUJHU -DKUEXFK 7KHRORJLH ;;,,, &KULVWRORJLH, ed. E. GRÄB-
SCHMIDT und R. PREUL (Leipzig: EVA, 2011), 41–58, starting with the perspective of the
Christian worship. The same stresses MOLTMANN, 7KH:D\RI-HVXV&KULVW, 42.
158
DALFERTH, &UXFLILHGDQG5HVXUUHFWHG, 23. Cf. WENZ, &KULVWXV, 46.
ceptable.”159 Jesus Christ is the self-definition of God, without ceasing any-

thing of his true humanity. Christology, therefore, must be a Christology of
his person and his work in their unity. Considering all unavoidable perspec-
tivity of one’s own standpoint within the perspective of Christian faith, Chris-
tology can and must bring more than an impressive picture or metaphor for a
possible self-identification or self-enlightenment. It can and must give an an-
swer to the question who this Jesus Christ is and what does it mean for us.
Christology can and must develop a christological ontology.
Secondly, however, in order not to make the same mistake of immediacy
as the liberal theology does it, this presence is not immediate, nor is it to find
LPPHGLDWHO\ on a certain place like in the biblical picture of Christ (as Kähler
and Herrmann both in their own way stated) or in the proclamation of “the
church as the bearer of the kerygma” (as Bultmann conceived it)160 but this
presence is PHGLDWHG, and mediated in a twofold way: First, mediated through
the Spirit, because the presence of Jesus Christ is not a bodily presence. On
the contrary, his presence in the Spirit is based on his bodily absence. No di-
rect encounter with the person of Jesus Christ, no encounter with Jesus Christ
without the Spirit is possible. &KULVWXVSUDHVHQV cannot be therefore thought
of than in trinitarian terms. The notion of Jesus Christ as the self-revelation of
God is mediated by the Spirit who constitutes Christian faith as faith in Jesus
Christ as the self-revelation of God. In this respect, the term of &KULVWXV SUDH
VHQV is DQ DEEUHYLDWLRQ RI D PXFK PRUH FRPSOH[ ± EHFDXVH WULQLWDULDQ ±
VWUXFWXUH. Christian faith is not the result of an immediate, somehow mystical
encounter with the risen Jesus, with the effect or vividness of his biblical pic-
ture or with the immediate effect of the church proclamation; it is an encoun-
ter with the living Christ, who is present through and in the Spirit and who
opens a new understanding of God, world and oneself.
However, this refusal of any christological immediacy does not mean only
a shift to a pneumatological immediacy, which would inevitably tend or even
end in religious enthusiasm. Therefore second, and at the same time, also WKH
SUHVHQFHRIWKH6SLULWLVDPHGLDWHGSUHVHQFH. In relation to his creation, there
are no special ways or channels for God’s communication with the world.
God relates to the world always with, in, and through created forms (as are
e.g. the biblical texts or the church proclamation and many other forms of
human communication – here, they have their legitimate place). The funda-
159
E. JÜNGEL, “Das Verhältnis von ‘ökonomischer’ und ‘immanenter’ Trinität”, in
IDEM, (QVSUHFKXQJHQ*RWW±:DKUKHLW±0HQVFK7KHRORJLVFKH(U|UWHUXQJHQ (München:
Chr. Kaiser, 1980), 267–268. Cf. WOŹNIAK, “The Christological Prism”, 526: “The Kanti-
an critical question ZKDWFDQZHNQRZ" has in theology a radically Christological charac-
ter.”
160
BULTMANN, “Das Verhältnis der urchristlichen Christusbotschaft”, 468–469, in a
Hegelian manner, almost identifies the church with the Spirit and, hence, with the living
Christ.
&KULVWXVSUDHVHQV 63
mental base for this statement is nothing else than Christology in the terms of
incarnation, of God’s coming into the world as a true human without ceasing
to be God. In this fundamental point, &KULVWRORJ\ LV WKH YHU\ EDVH IRU DOO
SQHXPDWRORJLFDOFRPPXQLFDWLRQ. The presence of the living Christ manifests
itself therefore always as the presence of the Spirit within the created forms,
in which God makes God-Self communicable and understandable. 161 This is
valid also for the primary instances of encounter with the living Jesus Christ:
for the Christian proclamation of faith and for the eucharist.
And since understanding is a plural phenomenon, the presence of the Spirit
opens a wide space for a plurality of understandings and formulations of the
person of Jesus Christ. But this plurality of understandings is to be differenti-
ated from what is understood: all Christian understandings of Jesus Christ
should relate and refer to the crucified and resurrected one, who is now pr e-
sent in the Spirit.162
If Jesus Christ is understood in the Easter perspective now as &KULVWXV
SUDHVHQV, there is, on one side, the trinitarian context necessary. This means,
when talking about &KULVWXVSUDHVHQV, God is already always in play, as stat-
ed above. But then, ‘Christ as &KULVWXVSUDHVHQV’ means Christ present WRXV.
We also are involved. Christology is thus not (and has never been) a mere
theoretical speculation about the person of Jesus Christ, of his divinity and
humanity. The aim was never just to construct a theoretically consistent con-
ception. The deepest interest of Christology from its early beginning was so-
teriological. The task of Christology, which has as its object the present Jesus
Christ, is thus to elaborate not only the person of Jesus on the backdrop of the
Trinity but also and primarily KLVPHDQLQJDQGLPSRUWDQFHIRUXV. It is the so-
teriological interest, from which all the important christological and ontologi-
cal questions arise.163
At the end of Chapter 1.2.2 I stated that a firm part of the theological re-
flection is the debate about what defines the Christian faith (from which per-
spective the theology should speak) and what are its fundamental points. 164
161
I will develop more these pneumatological implications for the God-human commu-
nication in the following volume on pneumatological anthropology.
162
Cf. DALFERTH, &UXFLILHGDQG5HVXUUHFWHG, 28: The important thing is that “the wide
range of Christian confessions” and theological concepts has still the identical referent.
“The very consistency of this theme helps to integrate the varied and diverse content of the
confessions.”
163
Cf. ibid., 26–30. This, however, does not mean that Christology could be reduced
only to soteriology, cf. below, Ch. 3.2.5, fn. 246.
164
Or, said with LINDBECK, 7KH1DWXUHRI'RFWULQH, 82, who differentiates between the
formulations of the doctrines and rules or paradigms they want to establish: what are the
fundamental rules, which the grammar of faith tries to express (through its doctrinal state-
ments in the first place), and then – and this is the specifically theological task – which
grammar results from these rules. This theologically developed grammar does not neces-
Implicitly, within what I have said about the object of Christology, I have
now responded this question from my perspective: Christian faith is defined
from the Easter perspective as its fundamental hermeneutical perspective as
faith in Jesus Christ, the crucified and resurrected one. 165 “Christian faith
stands or falls with the confession that Jesus has been raised by God – and
Christian theology stands or falls with the clear and careful conceptual expo-
sition of this confession.”166 Christian faith is thus that faith, which recogniz-
es, that in Jesus Christ acted God-Self. This can be expressed differently, as
already the first biblical confessions do: “Jesus Christ is Lord” (Phil 2:11).
“This man was the son of God” (Mk 15:39). Or: “This is the Christ” (John
7:41). There are many more ways possible. But all these and similar expres-
sions should point to the fundamental eschatological reality of the crucified
and resurrected Jesus Christ.167
sarily have to match the grammar of faith. Then, theology with its developed grammar can
be a critical pendant to the grammar of lived faith, if they both, however, relate to the same
fundamental rules.
165
LANDMESSER, “Der gegenwärtige Christus”, 115, refers to his “christological crite-
rion of preference” (in L. in italics) and names four aspects of the christologically shaped
Christian faith: the incarnation, the teaching and the acting of Jesus, the death of Jesus and
his resurrection. In my view, the Easter perspective (the death and resurrection of Jesus) is
enough to name the specifics of Christian faith. The life of Jesus is the necessary presup-
position, which, however, gets in the light of the Easter a new meaning. And the incarna-
tion is a “secondary interpretament of the resurrection confession” (DALFERTH, &UXFLILHG
DQG5HVXUUHFWHG, 31).
166
DALFERTH, &UXFLILHG DQG 5HVXUUHFWHG, 31 (partly in italics). Cf. also W. KASPER,
-HVXV WKH &KULVW, trans. V. GREEN (London: Burns and Oates, 1976), 15: “The assertion
‘Jesus is the Christ’ is the basic statement of Christian belief, and Christology is no more
than the conscientious elucidation of that proposition.” And also SCHLEIERMACHER, 7KH
&KULVWLDQ)DLWK, § 91.1, 371: “The consciousness of one who in no degree relates the po-
tency of the God-consciousness which he finds in himself to Jesus is not Christian at all.”
167
Cf. the presupposition of an identical consciousness of all at the beginning in
SCHLEIERMACHER, 7KH &KULVWLDQ )DLWK, § 95.1, 389. Clearly DALFERTH, (YDQJHOLVFKH
7KHRORJLH DOV ,QWHUSUHWDWLRQVSUD[LV, 100 (going in the same direction as LINDBECK, 7KH
1DWXUH RI 'RFWULQH, 82, with his differentiation of principal rules and their particular for-
mulations): “Therefore, the Gospel has a pragmatic identity but no semantical identity.”

Chapter 3
The Field of Christology: The Chalcedonian Frame
1. The Creed of Chalcedon and Its Problems

1. The Creed of Chalcedon and Its Problems
After the Council in Nicea 325 dealt with and answered the basic questions of
Christ’s divinity and the Trinity and after the Nicene Creed (with its exten-
sion of the pneumatological article in Constantinople I, 381) was subsequent-
ly acknowledged as WKH only Creed,1 the theological debate went on to in-
clude the fundamental christological question, how are divinity and humanity
related in the person of Jesus Christ. With this question, the christological fo-
cus shifted massively to the incarnation and WKH LQFDUQDWLRQ SHUVSHFWLYH EH
FDPHGRPLQDWLQJLQFKULVWRORJLFDOWKLQNLQJ.2
Although from a detailed perspective on the particular development of
christological thought, it might not have seemed to be a fundamental decision
and formulation, the Chalcedonian Definition of Faith set the margins for
both future christological work and its critique. 3 This definition, therefore,
1
By the Canon 7 at the Council of Ephesus 431, quoted in $FWVRIWKH&RXQFLORI&KDO
FHGRQ, vol. 1, Session I, Nr. 943, trans. and ed. R. PRICE and M. GADDIS, Translated Texts
for Historians 45 (Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2005), 323. Cf. D.M. GWYNN, “The Council
of Chalcedon and the Definition of Christian Tradition”, in &KDOFHGRQ LQ &RQWH[W, ed. R.
PRICE and M. WHITBY (Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2009), 7–26. However, this decision,
which was for the future very influential, was made by the presiding Cyril of Alexandria in
a very wilful way legitimizing with this his own theology against Nestorius, cf. K.
BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV GHU 'RJPHQJHVFKLFKWH, vol. 2,1 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft, 1991), 51.
2
Cf. MOLTMANN, 7KH:D\RI-HVXV&KULVW, 49.
3
Cf. GRILLMEIER, &KULVW LQ WKH &KULVWLDQ 7UDGLWLRQ, vol. I, trans. J. BOWDEN et al.
(London: Mowbray, 1965), 549: “The Fathers were probably not conscious of the signifi-
cance of their decision as it is expressed in the following sentences, and of what it was to
mean for future generations of theologians.” From a rather historical perspective, the cur-
rent discussion stresses primarily the continuity of the Definition with the previous and
following development, cf. GWYNN, “The Council of Chalcedon”, 23; B.E. DALEY, SJ,
“Unpacking the Chalcedonian Formula: From Studied Ambiguity to Saving Mystery”, 7KH
7RPLVW 80 (2016), 165–189; K. ANATOLIOS, “The Soteriological Grammar of Conciliar
Christology”, 7KH7RPLVW78 (2014), 165–188. However, PRICE and GADDIS, “General In-
troduction”, in $FWV RI WKH &RXQFLO RI &KDOFHGRQ, vol. I, ed. EIDEM, Translated Texts for
Historians 45 (Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2005), 71, footnote 234, seem to underestimate
66 &KDSWHU7KH)LHOGRI&KULVWRORJ\
still marks “the playground, on which the Christological reflection operates”,4

although it has been heavily criticized in the times of its origin and again
since the Enlightenment up to today. Both the Creeds of Nicea (Trinity) and
Chalcedon (Christology) are still the most fundamental theological decisions
of Christianity. 5
The leading question of this chapter is quite simple: Should we try to keep
Chalcedonian categories or at least their intentions, or should we, e.g. with
liberal theology, abandon this doctrine as insufficient and strive to overcome
it? One could, in the end, avoid an answer pointing to the mystery: “The
question of how divinity and humanity were united in Christ can presumably
not be answered in a satisfactory way by any theologian.”6 Nevertheless, one
should at least try it:
“But patristic theology was never satisfied with such a situation. It continually made new
efforts to transcend the embarrassment of concrete imperfections in its understanding of
that which had been laid hold of in faith. Only the one who attempts it may greet the diffi-
culties that emerge on a new level as a sign of the profound mystery of Jesus’ reality,
which despite the most penetrating understanding can never be so ultimately resolved that
there would remain no reason for further questioning.“ 7
The aim of this chapter, therefore, is to elaborate on the Chalcedonian frame

of Christology and to sketch the development of the most important points,
concepts, and critiques of it. If we want to keep the legitimate intentions of
the Chalcedonian Christology, we need – and that is the thesis of this chapter
– to go ZLWK &KDOFHGRQ EH\RQG &KDOFHGRQ. Therefore, I will show how the
substance-thinking that starts with the perspective of incarnation leads inevi-
tably into aporias. This result thus forces a change in perspective to the per-
spective of resurrection, which, then, with some necessary critical adapta-
tions, helps to maintain the substantial intentions of the margins set by the
the importance of the council too much saying that “it cannot be said that the council itself
marked any advance in Christological understanding; nor did it claim so”.
4
DALFERTH, “Gott für uns”, 57. Similarly PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 292; E. JÜNGEL, “Hu-
manity in Correspondence to God. Remarks on the Image of God as a Basic Concept in
Theological Anthropology”, in IDEM, 7KHRORJLFDO (VVD\V, trans. J. WEBSTER (London:
Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), 132; CH. SCHWÖBEL, “Christology and Trinitarian
Thought”, in 7ULQLWDULDQ 7KHRORJ\ 7RGD\, ed. IDEM (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995), 143.
And, of course, Chalcedon as WKH christological frame is firmly held in the catholic as well
as in the Eastern-orthodox theology.
5
Cf. DALFERTH, -HQVHLWVYRQ0\WKRVXQG/RJRV, 95.
6
B. LOHSE, $6KRUW+LVWRU\RI&KULVWLDQ'RFWULQH (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985),
90.
7
PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 303 (partly my own translation).
7KH&UHHGRI&KDOFHGRQDQG,WV3UREOHPV 67
Chalcedonian definition: the unity of the person of Jesus Christ while pre-
serving the distinction between his divinity and humanity.8
7KH'HILQLWLRQ
The backgrounds and the content of the Chalcedonian Definition from 22 nd
October 451 are well known. 9 Furthermore, the interest of this study is sys-
tematical, not primarily historical. I will, therefore, stress only some points
important for the further discussion. My interest lies not in the particular
thinkers and in the development of their thought but rather in the arguments
and in their development.
The Chalcedonian definition – respectively the last part, commonly quoted
as the definition itself – is a careful and cautious compilation of sentences,
phrases, and terms from other texts. Thus, not the particular formulations but
their combination is new and opens new spaces for new interpretations.
The traditional description of the Creed speaks about balancing between two rivalrous
schools in $OH[DQGULDDQG$QWLRFK. Although it may be too generalizing to speak about two
schools,10 the tendencies in the christological thinking between the Antiochenes, represent-
8
The first version of this chapter was published as P. GALLUS, “The Importance of the
Chalcedonian Distinction”, &RPPXQLR9LDWRUXP LXI (2019/3), 256–288.
9
Cf. primarily the classics: A. GRILLMEIER, -HVXV &KULVWXV LP *ODXEHQGHU .LUFKH, 5
vols (1–2/4) (Freiburg: Herder, 1990/2004–2006) = &KULVW LQ WKH &KULVWLDQ 7UDGLWLRQ, 5
vols (1–2/4), from the 1 st German edition trans. J. BOWDEN et al. (London: Mowbray,
1965–1996). Concerning Chalcedon esp. A. GRILLMEIER, -HVXV &KULVWXV LP *ODXEHQ GHU
.LUFKH, vol. 1 of the last German edition (Freiburg: Herder, 1990/2004), 751–775, and vol.
2/1. Further: 'DV .RQ]LO YRQ &KDONHGRQ, vols I–III, ed. A. GRILLMEIER and H. BACHT
(Würzburg: Echter, 1951–1954); P.-TH. CAMELOT, (SKHVXVXQG&KDOFHGRQ (Mainz: Mat-
thias Grünewald, 1963), 87–271; J. MEYENDORFF, &KULVW LQ (DVWHUQ &KULVWLDQ 7KRXJKW
(New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1969); &KDONHGRQ*HVFKLFKWHXQG$NWXDOLWlW
6WXGLHQ]XU5H]HSWLRQGHUFKULVWRORJLVFKHQ)RUPHOYRQ&KDONHGRQ, ed. J. VAN OORT and J.
ROLDANUS (Leuven: Peeters, 1998); &KDOFHGRQLQ&RQWH[W, ed. R. PRICE and M. WHITBY
(Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2009); B.E. DALEY, *RG9LVLEOH3DWULVWLF&KULVWRORJ\5HFRQ
VLGHUHG (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2018), 1–10; K.-H. UTHEMANN, “Zur Rezeption des Tomus
Leonis in und nach Chalkedon”, in IDEM, &KULVWXV.RVPRV'LDWULEH7KHPHQGHUIUKHQ
.LUFKHDOV%HLWUlJH]XHLQHUKLVWRULVFKHQ7KHRORJLH (Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 2005),
1–36. A very sober and differentiated picture of history and theology with short and bright
formulations provides BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV. – The text of the Creed see in &RPSHQGLXP
RI &UHHGV 'HILQLWLRQV DQG 'HFODUDWLRQV RQ 0DWWHUV RI )DLWK DQG 0RUDOV, ed. H.
DENZINGER and P. HÜNERMANN, 43rd ed. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012), Nr. 300–
303; or in $FWVRIWKH&RXQFLORI&KDOFHGRQ II, Nr. 30–34, 201–205. For the genesis of the
Creed in detail cf. A. DE HALLEUX, “La définition christologique à Chalcédoine”, 5HYXH
WKHRORJLTXHGH/RXYDLQ7 (1976), 3–23, 155–170; A. GRILLMEIER, -HVXV&KULVWXV1, 753–
759; I.O. DE URBINA, “Das Glaubenssymbol von Chalkedon”, in 'DV .RQ]LO YRQ
&KDONHGRQ I, 389–418; $FWVRIWKH&RXQFLORI&KDOFHGRQII, 183–205.
10
Cf. P.L. GAVRILYUK, 7KH6XIIHULQJRIWKH,PSDVVLEOH*RG7KH'LDOHFWLFRI3DWULVWLF
7KRXJKW (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004), 137–139; B.E. DALEY, “Antioch and Alexandria.
ed by Nestorius, Theodor of Mopsuestia and Theodoret of Cyrus, and the Alexandrians,

represented by Cyril in the first place but following other important theologians like Apol-
linaris of Laodicea or Athanasius, are quite clear and different: whereas the Antiochenes
stressed more the duality of the natures of Jesus Christ, the Alexandrines emphasized more
the unity of the person rooted in the K\SRVWDVLV of Logos.11 Both schools used different
terms for the same phenomena, which made a mutual understanding only worse. 12 Moreo-
ver, on both lines of thought were known extreme positions that were condemned as heret-
ical: on one side stands splitting the person of Jesus Christ into two (allegedly Nestorius,
who was condemned in Ephesus 431, but who, in fact, held rather the position of the later
Formula of Reunion 43313). On the other side stands the conception of the personal unity at
the cost of the humanity (Apollinaris, condemned in Constantinople 381) or of the differ-
ence between divinity and humanity, resulting into a mixture of natures (Eutyches, con-
demned in Chalcedon 451).
Both “schools” could find a certain mutual compromise in the )RUPXOD RI 5HXQLRQ
IURP (written probably by Theodoret), which played an important role for Chalcedon
in both the found compromise and the unsolved problems (and can be thus called the “pre-
decessor of Chalcedon”).14 However, the important proponents of this peaceful compro-
mise died shortly after: John of Antioch in 442, Cyril in 444, Proclus of Constantinople in
446. Alive was Theodoret of Cyrus. “Tensions began to rise again.” 15
As a third element next to these Eastern two, which played a major role in Chalcedon,
came the West through pope Leo and his Tomus ad Flavianum.16
Since the council in Ephesus 431 and its factual end in the Formula of Reun-
ion 433, the theology of Cyril of Alexandria was widely considered for the
measure of orthodoxy.17 Also the Chalcedonian Definition itself was prepared
Christology as Reflection on God’s Presence in History”, in 7KH 2[IRUG +DQGERRN RI

&KULVWRORJ\, ed. F.A. MURPHY (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2015), 121–138. Literature to Antioch
and Alexandria see in A.M. RITTER, “Dogma und Lehre in der Alten Kirche”, in C.
ANDRESEN et al., 'LH FKULVWOLFKHQ /HKUHQWZLFNOXQJHQ ELV ]XP (QGH GHV 6SlWPLWWHODOWHUV,
ed. A.M. RITTER (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), 239.
11
Nicely BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 63: “Against the dyophysitism of Nestorius, which
fluoresced heretically, [in the theology of Cyril] was put an ecclesiastically domesticated
form of monophysitism.”
12
Cf. the case of Nestorius and Cyril, GRILLMEIER, -HVXV&KULVWXV1, 715–716.
13
Cf. the observation of BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 62: “In short, no matter how the
Christology of Nestorius was intended to be orthodox, its structure had to appear question-
able in the moment that it left the secure inner space of the Antiochene scholarship and
entered the dangerous soundboard of the dogmatic discussions of the church.”
14
Cf. '+ 271–273; BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 52, 82–84; GRILLMEIER, &KULVW 1, 497–
501.
15
DALEY, “Unpacking the Chalcedonian Formula”, 167.
16
The differentiated position of Leo within the Western context tries to maintain
BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 86–114; to the similarities and specifics of all three positions cf.
ibid., 99–100.
17
However, as BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 134, substantiates, there is an important differ-
ence between Cyril of the Ephesine Council (cf. his Third Letter to Nestorius with its 12
Anathematisms in J.A. MCGUCKIN, 6W&\ULORI$OH[DQGULD7KH&KULVWRORJLFDO&RQWURYHU
V\,WV+LVWRU\7KHRORJ\DQG7H[WV [Leiden et al.: E.J. Brill, 1994], 266–275) and between
by a committee of mostly Cyrilline theologians. By now, it can be considered

a broad consensus in the research that the intention of the whole Creed was
PHDQW LQ WKH &\ULOOLQH OLQHKRZHYHU ZLWKRXW XVLQJ WKH FKDUDFWHULVWLF &\ULO
OLQHWHUPLQRORJ\.18
An important role played, nonetheless, the position of Rome, represented
by the pope Leo I in his 7RPXVDG)ODYLDQXP from 449.19 With the consistent
distinguishing between the natures, Leo was close to the Antiochene position.
Maybe therefore, the official acceptation of the Tomus at the council did not
go as smoothly as the texts of Cyril, since “Cyril was the test for christologi-
cal orthodoxy, and Cyril alone”. 20 Nevertheless, after some objections, To-
mus was accepted also as orthodox with the concluding statement: “Leo and
Cyril taught the same.”21
The final definition had thus to find a balance between these positions. It
does it in a very cautious way: not only in what it contains but also in what it
omits. Next to the missing controversial Cyrilline PLDSK\VLV-formula it is
striking that the introduction of the definition refers to Cyril’s Laetentur-letter
and to his Second letter to Nestorius but QRW to his Third letter to Nestorius
with the 12 anathematisms, which was accepted as normative in Ephesus
431.22
To satisfy the Roman delegates, the definition replaces the Cyrilline con-
ception of the person of Jesus Christ “from two natures” with the formulation
“acknowledged in two natures”, which is more in line with Leo. Tomus also
is directly quoted but only in one sentence: “the distinctive character of each
nature being preserved and coming together into one person and one hyposta-
Cyril after the Formula of Reunion (cf. Cyril’s so-called “Laetentur”-Letter to John of An-
tioch, in ibid., 343–348). The question, ZKLFK&\ULO is to be taken as the norm, played an
important role for the further development, cf. BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 153–161, 182.
18
Cf. R. PRICE, “The Council of Chalcedon: A Narrative”, in &KDOFHGRQLQ&RQWH[W, ed.
R. PRICE and M. WHITBY (Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2009), 81; UTHEMANN, “Zur Rezep-
tion des Tomus Leonis”, 1.
19
$FWVRIWKH&RXQFLORI&KDOFHGRQ, Session II, Nr. 22, 14–24.
20
P.T.R. GRAY, 7KH 'HIHQVH RI &KDOFHGRQ LQ WKH (DVW ± (Leiden: E.J. Brill,
1979), 9.
21
$FWVRIWKH&RXQFLORI&KDOFHGRQ, Session II, Nr. 23, 24. Tomus was accepted by the
Council together with Cyril’s Laetentur-letter and with his Second letter to Nestorius as
sunodikai. evpistolai, (“conciliar letters”, $FWVRIWKH&RXQFLORI&KDOFHGRQ, Session V, Nr.
34, 203; ACO II,1,2 129,11–16; UTHEMANN, “Zur Rezeption des Tomus Leonis”, 11). For
the objections against Tomus cf. UTHEMANN, “Zur Rezeption des Tomus Leonis”, 12–24
and $FWVRIWKH&RXQFLORI&KDOFHGRQ, Session II, Nr. 24–34, 25–27.
22
Cf.$FWVRIWKH&RXQFLORI&KDOFHGRQ, Session V, Nr. 34, 203 (ACO II,1,2, 129,10);
UTHEMANN, “Zur Rezeption des Tomus Leonis”, 10–11; BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 117–
118. All three “conciliar letters” (two letters of Cyril and the Tome of Leo) were read in
the second session together with Nicaenum and Constantinopolitanum ($FWRIWKH&RXQFLO
RI&KDOFHGRQ, Session II, Nr. 11–22, 12–24).
sis”.23 Otherwise, the majority of quoted or alluded texts comes from Cyril;
however, an important role for the final text played the Formula of Reunion
from 433 with its respect for the Antiochene accents. Thus, the Chalcedonian
definition is a respectable piece of theological work. In his classical study, A.
de Halleux pointed to Basil of Seleucia as the leading head and hand of the
definition and this opinion holds since then as a consensus in the discussion.24
In this way, the definition opened space for different interpretations. It is very
probable that the authors of the definition “must have given a Cyrillian inte r-
pretation to what they approved, even if the Definition had to contain phrases
that would satisfy the Roman delegates”, 25 but at the same time, because it
does not use the characteristic Cyrilline terminology, the definition in its
moderate formulation makes different readings possible.
Whereas the latest studies argue plausibly for a moderate Cyrilline inter-
pretation of Chalcedon (which would then stand in a continuous line between
Ephesus 431, and Constantinople II 553, pushing, however, the Formula of
Reunion from 433 with its Antiochene emphases to the background),26 the
traditional western interpretation considered Leo’s Tomus as the dominating
voice and thus read the Creed through this optics. 27 Both these interpretations
23
Cf.$FWVRIWKH&RXQFLORI&KDOFHGRQ, Session II, 17 and 204.
24
Cf. DE HALLEUX, “La définition christologique”, 158–160; GRILLMEIER, -HVXV
&KULVWXV, 757–758; UTHEMANN, “Zur Rezeption des Tomus Leonis”, 12.
25
PRICE, “The Council of Chalcedon”, 81; cf. RITTER, “Dogma und Lehre”, 271: “Eve-
rything seems to point to the fact that the formulation of the christological formula of
Chalcedon in its final shape took as much as possible the side of Cyril and as less as abs o-
lutely necessary (in order to avoid an open split) the side of Leo.”
26
Cf. MEYENDORFF, &KULVW; PRICE, “The Council of Chalcedon”; GRAY, 7KH 'HIHQVH
RI &KDOFHGRQ, 16. One-sidedly Cyrilline are PRICE and GADDIS, “General introduction”,
67–68 (the Tome was only “a contribution to rhetoric rather than theology”, ibid., 67, foot-
note 227); WEINANDY, “The Doctrinal Significance”, 560 (Chalcedon “must be read
through the eyes of Cyril”), or MCGUCKIN, 6W&\ULORI$OH[DQGULD, 240, who tries to read
Chalcedon “apart from the Leonine Tome, which has too often been taken as its exegetical
commentary, but rather should be taken out of the interpretative picture since the Chalc e-
donian symbol was more in the manner of a corrective of Leo than a substantiation of
him.” The strong tendency to read the Chalcedonian definition in an only Cyrilline way
leads, however, often to an inappropriate interpretation of Chalcedon from the backward –
and, hence, anachronistic – perspective of Constantinople II (553), where the Cyrilline the-
ology, however elaborated and corrected by the neo-Chalcedonians, clearly won. Cf. this
tendency e.g. in R. NORRIS JR., “Chalcedon Revisited: A Historical and Theological Re-
flection”, in 1HZ3HUVSHFWLYHVRQ+LVWRULFDO7KHRORJ\(VVD\VLQ0HPRU\RI-RKQ0H\HQ
GRUII, ed. B. NASSIF (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 140–158; PRICE and GADDIS, “Gen-
eral introduction”, 70–71; ANATOLIOS, “The Soteriological Grammar”.
27
Cf. J. PELIKAN, 7KH&KULVWLDQ7UDGLWLRQ7KH(PHUJHQFHRIWKH&DWKROLF7UDGLWLRQ
± (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 264; KASPER, -HVXV
WKH &KULVW, 224–225; LOHSE, 6KRUW +LVWRU\, 93: “In the Chalcedonenian creed the West
gave its answer to the East.” F. LOOFS, /HLWIDGHQ]XP6WXGLXPGHU'RJPHQJHVFKLFKWH, 7th
argue from the FRQWH[W of the Creed. The definition itself contains rather bal-
anced, symmetrical formulations, which can be read from both sides, depend-
ing on the theological context one puts it in. This combined or mixed charac-
ter of the definition is precisely summarized by K.-H. Uthemann:
“[T]he Definitio fidei of Chalcedon is to be understood in its intention as a reception of
Christology of Cyril of Alexandria based on the Union of 433, however, with an unambi g-
ed. (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1968), 246: “Just as in Nicea and in Chalcedon, the West
pressed its orthodoxy.” In the view of CAMELOT, (SKHVXVXQG &KDOFHGRQ, 87–271, Con-
stantinople II, and even Chalcedon itself, lack the clarity of Leo’s Tome. The genuine fol-
low-up of the Chalcedonian definition was thus Constantinople III (680–81, ibid., 227).
The perspective of Constantinople III is leading also in the clearly western interpretation of
Chalcedon in H. HOPING (LQIKUXQJ LQ GLH &KULVWRORJLH, 3rd ed. (Darmstadt: Wissen-
schaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2014), 110–122. On the contrary, from a liberal position, E.
MÜHLENBERG, “Das Dogma von Chalkedon: Ängste und Überzeugungen”, in &KDONHGRQ
*HVFKLFKWH XQG $NWXDOLWlW 6WXGLHQ ]XU 5H]HSWLRQ GHU FKULVWRORJLVFKHQ )RUPHO YRQ
&KDONHGRQ, ed. J. VAN OORT and J. ROLDANUS (Leuven: Peeters, 1998), 1–23, attacks
harshly on one side the western contribution to Chalcedon as wrong theology (ibid., 14)
and above all mere politics (ibid., 13) and on the other side the interpretation of christolog-
ical dogmatic development by A. Grillmeier. Paradoxically, he favors the theology of Cyril
(who, in his view, however, lost at Chalcedon, ibid., 21–22), just as Grillmeier also does
(cf. GRILLMEIER, -HVXV &KULVWXV , 679), although with different reasons. With his posi-
tion, Mühlenberg follows the classical but today already overcome interpretation of Chal-
cedon by A. VON HARNACK, /HKUEXFK GHU 'RJPHQJHVFKLFKWH II (Freiburg i.B.: J.C.B.
Mohr, 1887), 369–376, that at the council, “everything was led by the commissars of the
Caesar” (ibid., 370) and, with this political support in the background, the main theological
influence had – against the Cyrilline conviction of the majority of the gathered bishops –
the Pope with his Tome. Concerning the position of Leo at the council cf. BEYSCHLAG,
*UXQGULVV, 56–57, 130; D. WYRWA, “Drei Etappen der Rezeptionsgeschichte des Konzils
von Chalkedon im Westen”, in &KDONHGRQ*HVFKLFKWHXQG$NWXDOLWlW6WXGLHQ]XU5H]HS
WLRQGHUFKULVWRORJLVFKHQ)RUPHOYRQ&KDONHGRQ, ed. J. VAN OORT and J. ROLDANUS (Leu-
ven: Peeters, 1998), 147–148. Although Harnack sees the whole proceedings mainly
through the optics of politics, it is an indisputable truth that the political pressure of the
caesar played a key role: BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 57, speaks of a “massive pressure of the
caesar” who forced the Cyrilline-thinking East to make “an ecumenical christological deci-
sion with explicit respect to the position of Rome” (cf. also ibid., 115–124; DALEY, “Un-
packing the Chalcedonian Formula”, 169). BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 130, then summarizes:
“Outwards, i.e., regarding the rejection of heresies from both sides, are both Leo and Cyril
equal bearers of the Chalcedonian definition; however, regarding the internal christological
part, the Leonine (or the Leonine-Antiochene) position is clearly dominant, the Cyrilline in
the contrary is since 433 dogmatically reduced and also clearly recessive. In this i n-
cogruence, imposed on the Council, between the claim and the reality lies the menetekel of
the Chalcedonian dogma and with it, at the same time, the dangerous igniter of the christo-
logical conflicts after Chalcedon.” The recessiveness of Cyrilline theology is rather disput-
able, but the incogruence between the claim of the Creed and the reality of theology and
church in that historical moment hits the target.
uous differentiation of nature and K\SRVWDVLV, in which the Leonine part of the formula was
built in.”28
Anyway, at least in one point, the definition brings a final clarification. Based
on the presupposition of Christ’s full divinity and full humanity (YHUH'HXV±
YHUH KRPR), considered both as natures (SK\VHLV), the Creed establishes the
fundamental distinction of Christ’s two natures (SK\VHLV) and his person (K\
SRVWDVLV, SURVRSRQ). Until then, this distinction was made only by some theo-
logians and not consistently.29 The Creed says clearly that the unity of the
person lies on another level than the duality of the natures: the duality of the
natures with their particular attributes “concurs” into the unity of the per-
son.30 In this way, both accents can be preserved, the Alexandrine accent on
the unity of the person as well as the Antiochene accent on the duality of the
natures without falling each time to the other extreme, as if the unity of the
person would exclude the duality of the natures and YLFHYHUVD.31
Stating the difference between person and natures on the one side and be-
tween the natures on the other side, the Creed fundamentally stresses the uni-
ty of the person of Jesus Christ, using the phrase “one and the same” three
times and using “the same” next to it five more times. And it is precisely the
question of the unity of the person, which is both at the same time the most
important and the most problematic to think. In other words, the definition
leaves the question open, how is WKHXQLW\RIWKHSHUVRQRI-HVXV&KULVW con-
stituted. It makes it possible to access the person of Jesus Christ from two dif-
ferent perspectives: starting either from the unity of his person, or from the
duality of his natures. It is this point where the biggest difference lies be-
tween Cyril on the one side and the West (with the Antiochians) on the other
side. From this decision follows then the point of differing interpretations,
which caused (and partly still cause) the biggest mutual irritations.
28
K.-H. UTHEMANN, “Definitionen und Paradigmen in der Rezeption des Dogmas von
Chalkedon bis in die Zeit Kaiser Justinians”, in &KDONHGRQ *HVFKLFKWH XQG $NWXDOLWlW
ROLDANUS (Leuven: Peeters, 1998), 54, fn. 1.
29
Most important was again Cyril of Alexandria. However, at the same time, it was his
terminological inconsistency and ambiguity, which caused some of the following misun-
derstandings, cf. GRILLMEIER, &KULVW 1, 473–483; N. RUSSELL, “‘Apostolic Man’ and
‘Luminary of the Church’: The Enduring Influence of Cyril of Alexandria”, in 7KH7KHROR
J\ RI 6W &\ULO RI $OH[DQGULD $ &ULWLFDO $SSUHFLDWLRQ, ed. T.G. WEINANDY and D.A.
KEATING (London/New York: T&T Clark, 2003), 237–257.
30
'+ 301: “swzome,nhj de. ma/llon th/j ivdio,thtoj e`kate,raj fu,sewj kai. eivj e]n
pro,swpon kai. mi,an u`po.stasin suntrecou,shj.”
31
In fact, Chalcedon set “a new way of speaking” with this differentiation, cf. A.
GRILLMEIER, “‘Piscatorie’ – ‘Aristotelice’”, in IDEM, 0LW LKP XQG LQ LKP (Freiburg:
Herder, 1975), 291.
In the general Cyrilline atmosphere and with the strong stress on the unity
of the person, it is a paradox that the only explicit hint in the question of the
constitution of the unity is the quotation of Tomus: the natures “coming to-
gether” to the unity, as if the unity was the result of this process of congru-
ence. It is true that this is the only passage, where the Creed starts explicitly
with the duality of the natures and aims then to the unity. 32 But the problem is
that the opposite view – the concept of Logos as the KHJHPRQLNRQ in this
whole process, who constitutes the unity in itself from the beginning so that
the unity precedes (at least noetically) the difference between the natures –
remains unmentioned. This concept is a logical result of the key formula of
Cyril mi,a fu,sij tou/ qeou/ lo,gou/ sesarkwme,nh,33 but it was explicitly devel-
oped later.34 Nevertheless, in the Chalcedonian Creed itself this conception
can only be tacitly presupposed from the general context and theological at-
mosphere of the council.35 The definition as such remains, therefore, RSHQWR
ERWKUHDGLQJV, searching for balance and symmetry. 36 In this form,
32
At the same time, the Creed refuses the extreme Nestorian position which starts with
two VHOIVWDQGLQJ natures of Christ before their unity with an anathema: “kai. tou. du,o me.n
pro. th/j e`nw,sewj fu,seij tou/ kuri,ou muqeu,ontaj […] avnaqemati,zei” ('+ 300).
33
This important but in the Chalcedonian perspective rather confusing formula origi-
nates from Apollinaris of Laodicea. However, Cyril used it being firmly convinced that is
stems from Athanasius and is therefore orthodox. At the same time, Cyril himself did not
distinguish clearly enough between SK\VLVand K\SRVWDVLV, so that he can say with the same
meaning also mi,a u`postasij tou/ qeou/ logou/ sesarkwme,nh, which would – at least in the
Chalcedonian perspective – shift the meaning considerably towards Chalcedonian ortho-
doxy. Nevertheless, Cyril insisted on PLD SK\VLV, even when differentiating two natures
following the Formula of Reunion (cf. his Second letter to Succensus, ep. 46, in
MCGUCKIN, 6W&\ULORI$OH[DQGULD, 359–363). With all this, Cyril created rather a termi-
nological chaos offering different interpretations and variations. G. ESSEN, 'LH )UHLKHLW
-HVX 'HU QHXFKDONHGRQLVFKH (QK\SRVWDVLHEHJULII LP +RUL]RQW QHX]HLWOLFKHU 6XEMHNW XQG
3HUVRQHQSKLORVRSKLH (Regensburg: Pustet, 2001), 28, fn. 12, calls this insisting of Cyrill on
his formula a fall back “to the pre-Cappadocian niveau”. Cf. also GRILLMEIER, &KULVW 1,
473–483; BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 68–73, 84–85. Fitting is the remark of Beyschlag that a
radical monophysite interpretation of PLD SK\VLV, however, was in Chalcedon “ruled out
once for all times” (ibid., 128–129).
34
Cf. GRILLMEIER, &KULVW 2/2, 455; BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 128–129, fn. 226, alt-
hough the core of this concept stems already from Athanasius, cf. ibid., 65.
35
Cf. KASPER, -HVXVWKH&KULVW, 226, who, therefore, can read the definition one-sidedly
in the western perspective: “The Chalcedon definition lies essentially within the frame-
work of western Christology; there was no place for Cyril’s dynamic Christological idea of
the hegemony of the /RJRV within the apparently symmetrical scheme of two natures
which meet in one person.” ANATOLIOS, “The Soteriological Grammar”, holding the oppo-
site interpretation, points to the formulation of the Creed “not as though he was parted or
divided into two persons, but one and the same Son and only-begotten God, Word, Lord,
Jesus Christ”, which should presuppose the hegemony of the Logos. The current common
opinion expresses UTHEMANN, “Der Neuchalkedonismus als Vorbereitung des Monothe-
letismus”, in IDEM, &KULVWXV.RVPRV'LDWULEH (Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 2005), 215:
“it represents something novel and original, what could be and was indeed interpreted in
different ways, depending on the decision, whether the hypostasis was made the central
term of this Christology, i.e., whether it was filled with a particular content (Cyrilline or
Byzantine interpretation of Chalcedon), or not. In other words, whether K\SRVWDVLV was
understood within the frame of Leo’s term SHUVRQD only as a purely formal defense of
Trinity where Christ is SHUVRQD of the incarnated Logos and not some fourth subject of
worship (so-called Leonine interpretation).”37
This search for balance is also obvious in another point. After long discus-
sions, the definition accepted, in the end, the Leonine “in two natures” in-
stead of the obviously originally proposed Cyrilline phrase “out of two na-
tures”, mainly as a clear stance against Eutychianism. 38 At the same time, the
definition does not simply say that Jesus Christ has two natures, but rather
that the one Jesus Christ is “acknowledged” (gnwrizo,menon) in two natures.
This is again a Cyrilline stress regarding the distinguishing of the natures,
which can be done – according to Cyril, in order to avoid splitting Christ into
two – only theoretically, as if retrospectively, only in a theoretical analysis. 39
On the other side, with the four famous negative adverbs, the definition
stresses the duality of the natures in their distinctiveness (avsugcu,twj(
avtre,ptwj, against Eutychianism) and inseparability (avdiaire,twj, avcwri,stwj,
against Nestorianism) at the same time. The terms are all basically Cyrilline40
but were introduced to the council the first time by the Roman delegates in
the context of the debate about the orthodoxy of Leo’s Tome and are used
“The 'HILQLWLR ILGHL of Chalcedon was open for two interpretations. It was born – this
might be meanwhile a consensus within the research – from the Cyrilline spirit, without
constituting Cyril’s christological language as a norm: the omission of the main Cyrilline
formula was too obvious.”
36
Cf. UTHEMANN, “Der Neuchalkedonismus”, 213–221.
37
UTHEMANN, “Definitionen und Paradigmen”, 54, with reference to DE HALLEUX, “La
définition christologique”, 155–170; cf. UTHEMANN, “Der Neuchalkedonismus”, 213–221.
Based on Cyril’s Laetentur-letter where Cyril confirms the enduring difference of the na-
tures within the unity, this Cyrilline point was integrated into the Chalcedonian definition
and opened the space for the Leonine emphasis on two preserved natures, cf. IDEM, “Zur
Rezeption des Tomus Leonis”, 11.
38
For the text variations cf. '+ 302. This was also the official reason and appreciation
of the Tomus of Leo that it clearly refuses Eutychianism, cf. $FWVRIWKH&RXQFLORI&KDO
FHGRQII, Nr. 34, 203. It was thus not meant by the council primarily against monophysit-
ism, as the western optics often reads it.
39
Cf. GRAY, 7KH'HIHQVH, 14; MCGUCKIN, 6W&\ULORI$OH[DQGULD, 239, quoting Cyril’s
First Letter to Succensus 7. But again, this stress was more elaborated later by the neo-
Chalcedonians.
40
Two of them (avsugcu,twj( avtre,ptwj) from his First Letter to Succensus, cf.
MCGUCKIN, 6W&\ULORI$OH[DQGULD, 239, added all together with the other two according
to the demands of the Romans and of the Caesar by the committee under the influence of
Basileus of Seleucia, cf. GRILLMEIER, -HVXV&KULVWXV1, 756.
here apparently to satisfy the western and the Antiochene accents.41 In fact,
the definition corrects hereby – paradoxically with his own terms – Cyril’s
own one-sidedness and his monophysite tendencies and his lack of termino-
logical concision.42
Moreover, systematically, this clear distinction brings a fundamental
stress: In the one person of Jesus Christ – although conceived already in the
Nicene Creed as “becoming flesh” (sarkwqe,nta) or “becoming human”
(evnanqrwph,santa, '+ 125) – *RGUHPDLQV*RGDQGKXPDQUHPDLQVKXPDQ.
There is no fusion or merging and no transformation or mutation of one of the
natures into the other. Although God became human, divinity was not huma n-
ized, and humanity was not divinized. Neither divinity nor humanity was
transformed to the other nature or changed in its own character; full divinity
and humanity remain preserved. God became human without ceasing to be
God. And human Jesus was not transformed into a divine being that would
cease its full humanity.
This important notion, however, marks another point of further struggle
and controversy. It concerns the interpretation of the term avtre,ptwj. Among
the four adjectives, avtre,ptwj is in the theological discussion the term that re-
ceives the least analysis. While the other terms are clear in their opposition
against Euthychianism and Nestorianism, avtre,ptwj was originally used
against Euthyches, and, within the Chalcedonian context, it takes a stance
against monophysitism (which is, as already said, a slight paradox, because
the term originates from Cyril 43). It defends the immutability of the natures
and tries to avoid the absorbance of the humanity by the divinity, as the Apol-
linarist PLDSK\VLV-formula tends to do, and also YLFHYHUVD it tries to prevent
41
Cf. DE URBINA, “Das Glaubenssymbol von Chalkedon”, 394 and 399. Cf. also $FWVRI
WKH&RXQFLORI&KDOFHGRQII, 204, footnote 53. The editors add here their commentary say-
ing quite one-sidedly: “Here again the emphasis is on unity rather than duality in Christ.” It
is, however, obvious that the focus of the adjectives lies in the twoness of the natures and
of their mutual relation than in the oneness of the person (which is rather the context here
than the direct topic).
42
This is most obvious in the Chalcedonian anathema of all who “imagine one nature
after the union” ('+ 300, $FWVRI WKH &RXQFLORI &KDOFHGRQ II, Nr. 34, 204). It is a clear
stance against radical monophysitism (now in specifically Chalcedonian shaping of the
terms), which makes the Cyrilline PLDSK\VLVIRUPXOD in fact impossible. Cyril’s insisting
on the PLDSK\VLVIRUPXOD without any more precise differentiation between SK\VLV and
K\SRVWDVLV is thus considered by many scholars to be his main weakness (cf. e.g. RUSSELL,
“‘Apostolic Man’”, 239). Nevertheless, cf. Canon 8 of the Council of Constantinople II
553 ('+ 429), where the Cyrilline line won and the PLDSK\VLV formula emerges again,
although corrected by the context.
43
Cf. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA, Ep. 45 (First letter to Succensus), 3*77, 232B–C.
the (rather theoretical) transformation of divinity into humanity (or even

flesh) in the incarnation.44
In the context of the following interpretations of Chalcedon it becomes
more and more clear that the main interest lies in the preservation of the im-
mutability of the divine nature, which must remain untouched despite the in-
carnation and humanity of Jesus Christ. On the other hand, to preserve the
hypostatic unity of the person of Jesus Christ, both natures cannot remain
simply next to each other. There must be a unifying power, some unifying
dynamic. This purpose secures the idea of WKHRVLV, i.e., the divinization of the
human nature, in the later interpretation based on the concept of HQK\SRVWD
VLV.45 If there has to be a true and full unity of divinity and humanity, at least
one side has to change, or at least it has to adapt to the other. In the early-
Christian thinking, following up the Antiquity, God cannot change. There-
fore, all necessary change will have to be done on the side of the human na-
ture.46 However, with this scheme starts the long-lasting struggle for preserv-
ing the full humanity of Christ, which is herewith endangered, be it with its
divinization or with its diminishing.
Overall, the Chalcedonian Creed did not (and in respect to the Canon 7 of
Council of Ephesus even could not) want to be anything else than a genuine
interpretation of the “the Symbol”, of the Nicene Creed.47 And just as such,
44
Nevertheless, this position can be also found in the old theology, cf. DE URBINA,
“Das Glaubenssymbol von Chalkedon”, 408, as well as in the 19 th century, where this way
go the attempts with NHQRVLV, cf. below in this chapter, subchapter 2.7. De Urbina, howev-
er, interprets the term ἀτρέπτωj only in the relation to the divine nature in order to pre-
serve its immutability and impassibility and to prevent any kenotic tendencies.
45
Cf. below, subch. 2.2. Here, the question arises, whether the strong stress on WKHRVLV
does not collide with the Chalcedonian avtre,ptwj, i.e., whether the human nature does not
change towards the divine on the cost of full humanity, which is thus in danger to be di-
minished. That is why WKHRVLV cannot be established as the normative soteriological model,
as ANATOLIOS, “The Soteriological Grammar”, proposes. My proposal goes exactly in the
opposite direction, cf. below, Ch. 6.1.
46
Cf. the alternative attempt of BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 96–114, who tries to interpret
the western (Leonine) Christology in terms of “Christus humilis”, where both natures re-
main strictly preserved, yet divinity, in an opposite movement to WKHRVLV, adapts to humani-
ty and this is the fundamental soteriological mediation: “Whereas the Christian East sees
the mediator in the divine Logos […], in the West is it ‘homo Christus’, i.e., the human
side of Jesus who steps into the center” (ibid., 96, fn. 168). “To secure salvation, the divine
self-communication [Selbstmitteilung] can proceed in general only in the IRUP RI KXPDQ
KXPLOLW\ of ‘homo assumptus’ and through it, i.e., under strict preservation of the boundary
between the two natures” (ibid., 97). Beyschlag tries to interpret Leo with patripassian
tones (i.e., in the line of Lutheran Christology with its stress on the real FRPPXQLFDWLRLGL
RPDWXP, cf. below, subch. 2.5), which, however, Leo would never accept.
47
Cf. '+ 300; A. GRILLMEIER, “Das Verständnis der christologischen Formuli-
erungen”, in IDEM, )UDJPHQWH]XU&KULVWRORJLH (Freiburg: Herder, 1997), 140. The factual
and authoritative claim of the Chalcedonian council was, nevertheless, even greater as the
the claim of the Chalcedonian definition was definitely RQWRORJLFDO: it wanted

to present “the message of the truth”,48 i.e., who Jesus Christ ontologically is
– although this claim is exactly the problem, which leads, in the end, to apor-
ias of the two-natures doctrine.49 Anything less would not be in accordance
with the self-understanding of the council and with the intensity of the whole
early Christian trinitarian and christological debate. 50 This is to be respected
one of Nicea: with around 370 bishops, Chalcedon was the biggest council until Vatican I
(cf. PRICE, “Truth, Omission, and Fiction in the Acts”, in &KDOFHGRQ LQ &RQWH[W, ed. R.
PRICE and M. WHITBY (Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2009), 103; BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV,
115). And, at the same time, the acts of the council, which frankly note almost all discus-
sions at the council including many disagreements and dissents, are “the longest single
document that survives from the early Church” (PRICE, “Truth, Omission, and Fiction”,
105). The Chalcedonian Creed itself, however, is written in a doctrinal language, which
made the reception of the Creed in the church more complicated since the very beginning.
Cf. GRILLMEIER, )UDJPHQWH ]XU &KULVWRORJLH, 134–151, refering how the bishops com-
plained to the Caesar Leo I. in &RGH[(QF\FOLXV from 458 that Chalcedon with its compli-
cated terms “cannot be a basis for the baptismal catechesis” (ibid., 136). Cf. also IDEM,
“‘Piscatorie’ – ‘Aristotelice’”, 283–300; and DALEY, “Unpacking the Chalcedonian For-
mula”, 181–182: The formula and its reception started in fact “a new style of theology,
which had haltingly begun in the late-fourth-century controversies with the ‘Eunomian’
Arians over how to conceive of God as both radically one and irreducibly three – a style I
would characterize as ‘scholastic’ or academic – [this new style] now almost completely
replaced the more exegetical and homiletic forms of theological discourse that had pre-
dominated in earlier centuries. Whereas previously theological controversies had been
conducted largely in oratorical style – in works shaped by the rhetorical canons of epideic-
tic and forensic speech – Christological argument from the mid-fifth century on came to be
couched almost exclusively in the style of the classroom, the scholastic disputation, the
philosophical lecture. The exact definition of terms, the analysis of traditional formulas,
the development of complex chains of argument in syllogisms and theses, formed an in-
creasingly large part in the development of theological ideas. Technical concepts and stra t-
egies, drawn especially from the ideologically Neoplatonic commentators on the Hellenis-
tic philosophical ‘scriptures’ of Plato and Aristotle, now came to play a decisive, if
unacknowledged, role on all sides in reflection on the unity of the person of Christ.
Learned monks and educated laypeople (often called scolastikoi,), rather than bishops,
more and more dominated theological discussion.”
48
$FWV RI WKH &RXQFLO RI &KDOFHGRQ II, Nr. 31, 201; cf. BEYSCHLAG , *UXQGULVV, 131:
“The Chalcedonian creed is normative in the first place as a dogmatic statement about be-
ing [Seinsaussage], i.e., it says, who (resp. what) Christ truly ‘is’.”
49
Cf. DALFERTH, &UXFLILHGDQG5HVXUUHFWHG, 142.
50
Cf. E. SCHLINK, “Die Christologie von Chalcedon im ökumenischen Gespräch”, in
IDEM, 'HUNRPPHQGH &KULVWXVXQGGLHNLUFKOLFKHQ 7UDGLWLRQHQ (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck
& Ruprecht, 1961), 81 and 86: “[F]or the 19 th and 20th century, the tendency is characteris-
tic to sideline the ontological utterances at all and to limit oneself only to the historical ut-
terances. However, this would, in the end, mean to surrender the Chalcedonense complet e-
ly.” “The historical and the ontological utterances in the Christology are not an Either-Or,
they rather belong together.” Cf. also J.D. ZIZIOULAS, “On Being a Person. Towards an
Ontology of Personhood”, in 3HUVRQV 'LYLQH DQG +XPDQ, ed. CH. SCHWÖBEL and C.E.
also concerning the modern and postmodern discussions about the interpreta-
tion of the Creed, its status, and meaning. In the last decades, there were more
attempts of a new way of reading the Creeds (or the Chalcedonian definition
in particular) with a different degree of loosening the ontological commit-
ment of the Creed itself: it was read only in the direction of a mythological
metaphor,51 or as a paradigmatic, yet rather intuitive way of speaking, 52 or in
the frame of the theory of rules as a fundamental grammar of faith, 53 or as cri-
teria for any following christological theory, 54 or as an “‘apophatic’ docu-
ment” marking the “horizon” of what is and is not possible to say about Jesus
Christ,55 or in a very literal sense, or simply as a paradox, or even a riddle.56
Theoretically, it can be argued for any of these possibilities. From the current
point of view, however, it might be obvious that a straight metaphysical read-
ing is no longer tenable and that we need to understand the Creed and its
meaning in a more differentiated way than as a direct metaphysical descrip-
tion. However, in doing so, one should not forget the original ontological
claim of the Creed.57
7KH3UREOHPVRIWKH'HILQLWLRQ
The basic problem was the simple fact that the natures are two. This problem
concerned in the first place the theology of Cyril of Alexandria, as character-
ized by the PLDSK\VLVIRUPXOD, and hence all his followers including the ma-
jority at the council, but, as it will turn out, it played a major role also in the
development later.58 Already Apollinaris knew that two wholes could not cre-
GUNTON (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991), 43, who, in his stressing of the ontological char-
acter of the Creed, however, reads Chalcedon from the perspective of Constantinople II.
51
HICK, “Jesus and the World Religions”. IDEM, 7KH 0HWDSKRU RI *RG ,QFDUQDWH
&KULVWRORJ\ LQ D 3OXUDOLVWLF $JH (Westminster: John Knox Press, 1993), 45, reads the
Chalcedonian Creed as a “philosophical artefact” with technical terminology, which, how-
ever, cannot be reasonably explicated “in any religiously acceptable way”.
52
NORRIS, “Chalcedon Revisited”.
53
LINDBECK, 7KH 1DWXUH RI 'RFWULQH, 59–97; DALFERTH, &UXFLILHG DQG 5HVXUUHFWHG,
137–153.
54
55
S. COAKLEY, “What Does Chalcedon Solve and What Does it Not? Some Reflections
on the Status and Meaning of the Chalcedonian ‘Definition’”, in 7KH,QFDUQDWLRQ $Q ,Q
WHUGLVFLSOLQDU\6\PSRVLXPRQWKH,QFDUQDWLRQRIWKH6RQRI*RG, ed. S.T. DAVIS et al. (Ox-
ford: Oxford UP, 2004), 160–161.
56
For the last three possible readings cf. ibid., 155–159.
57
Cf. BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 131: “All processes, meanings and acts come from this
‘is’ of this person [i.e., what this person ontologically is], not vice versa. With all this, the
christological dogma is in a steep opposition to all ‘functional’ and substitutional Christol-
ogies of today as well as to the changing flow of modern Jesus-impressions.”
58
Cf. PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 322.
ate a unity. 59 The problem of the twoness of the natures within a proclaimed
unity is, since then, the biggest problem of incarnation Christology at all.
On the church level, the simple number of two caused the first big schism. For the “Cyril-
lian purists”, in fact more Cyrilline than Cyril himself, “any assertion of ‘two natures’ after
the union was anathema”, so that “the Definition never had a hope of winning universal
acceptance in the eastern provinces”.60 There arose a strong opposition of the so called
“mono-“ or “miaphysites”.61 Intense discussions with these churches about Chalcedon took
place in the past decades.62 These discussions contributed clearly to a better mutual under-
standing and understandings of the Chalcedonian Creed, where it turned out that the differ-
ences were mainly in the terminology, 63 so that “none of the parties claims, what the other
fears”.64 It is obvious that the tendency in the debates is to accept the differences as legiti-
mate alternatives with different focuses (the Orientals focus more on the unity of the per-
son, the Romans more on the duality of the natures), which, however, lead to different
views on Chalcedon and the history of dogma.65
The question is not, whether one should keep or abandon the Chalcedonian Creed, but
how to understand and to interpret it. Chalcedon is still the common basis. As Wendebourg
states: “[T]he christological controversy has been overcome, the Orthodox and the Orien-
tals could unite on a common formulation of faith in the incarnated Logos and they
59
“Du,o te,leia e]n gene,sqai ouv du,natai“, quoted from ATHANASIUS, &RQWUD$SROOLQDUL
XP, 1,2, in LOOFS, /HLWIDGHQ, 210.
60
PRICE, “The Council of Chalcedon”, 81. However, next to it, there were more reasons
why these churches did not accept Chalcedon than only the two natures, cf. P.
FARRINGTON, “The Oriental Orthodox Rejection of Chalcedon – An Introduction”,
https://www.academia. edu/6905550/The_Oriental_Orthodox_Rejection_of_Chalcedon
[accessed April 23, 2019], discussing the six anathemas of Dioscoros and showing their
legitimity. Cf. also A. LOUTH, “Why Did the Syrians Reject the Council of Chalcedon?”,
in &KDOFHGRQ LQ &RQWH[W, ed. R. PRICE and M. WHITBY (Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2009),
107–116.
61
The terminology in this case is not unified. Some consider the name “monophysites”,
who were labeled with it by their opponents, for a pejorative term, which should be avoi d-
ed (PRICE and GADDIS, “General Introduction”, 74); others find the term “miaphysite” ra-
ther barbarian (LOUTH, “Why Did the Syrians Reject the Council of Chalcedon?”, 107).
The simple term “non-Chalcedonian” is too wide because of the other outside wing of the
whole controversy: the dyophysite non-Chalcedonian churches, which never accepted the
condemnation of Nestorius (PRICE and GADDIS, “General Introduction”, 74).
62
A very good insight into the debates in the broad ecumenical scene, into the different
understandings of Chalcedon and the following history of dogma offers D. WENDEBOURG,
“Chalkedon in der ökumenischen Diskussion”, in &KDONHGRQ *HVFKLFKWH XQG $NWXDOLWlW
ROLDANUS (Leuven: Peeters, 1998), 190–223; and TH. HAINTHALER, “Christological Dec-
larations with Oriental Churches”, in &KULVWLDQV6KDSLQJ,GHQWLW\IURPWKH5RPDQ(PSLUH
WR%\]DQWLXP, ed. G.D. DUNN and W. MAYER, VChS 132 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 426–453.
63
WENDEBOURG, “Chalkedon in der ökumenischen Diskussion”, 199.
64
Ibid., 201.
65
E.g. on Tomus Leonis or on the 5 th ecumenical council in Constantinople in particu-
lar; ibid., 207–217.
acknowledge mutually the legitimacy of their traditional doctrines.”66 This result was pos-
sible also due to the above mentioned modern reading of the Creeds, which has brought,
among other things, the crucial differentiation between the faith and its contingent formu-
lations in the Creed, which are always only “relative approximations” to the substantial
reality of the one Jesus Christ, 67 who is “unabridged and unremittingly” God and human.68
The biggest remaining and “barely soluble” problem is hence not the dogmatic content of
the Creed. It is rather the authority of the Council. 69
Next to it, the two natures, conceived in Chalcedon rather symmetrically and
on the same level, lead to an equivocation in the term of SK\VLV.70 This notion
was the main critical point of Schleiermacher’s critique of the old dogma: it
is not possible to use the same term “indifferently” for such different entities
like divinity and humanity. 71
Another known problem is the fact that Chalcedon does specify neither the
particular terms nor their mutual relations. 72 Moreover, it does not care about
66
Ibid., 218.
67
Ibid., 203.
68
Ibid., 202.
69
Ibid.
70
POSPÍŠIL, -Håtã] 1D]DUHWD, 145–146, states, however that “the Chalcedonian defini-
tion definitely does not put the divine and human nature of Christ on the same level”, b e-
cause the participation of Jesus Christ on divinity is different from his participation on hu-
manity and because “every our utterance about the living God is only analogical and this
has to apply also for the Chalcedonian definition” (ibid., 146, footnote 209). Neither of
these two arguments has any support in the Chalcedonian definition itself. It is, again, a
backward reading of Chalcedon from the perspective of later development.
71
72
COAKLEY, “What does Chalcedon solve”, 162–163, tries to summarize the questions,
which remain open in Chalcedon – although at least some could be answered with respect
to the context of the debate preceding Chalcedon or from the quite long but often over-
looked Prooemium of the Creed’s famous definition: “Thus: (1) Chalcedon does not tell us
in what the divine and human ‚natures‘ consist; (2) it does not tell us what K\SRVWDVLV
means when applied to Christ; (3) it does not tell us how K\SRVWDVLV and SK\VHLV are relat-
ed, or how the SK\VHLV relate to one another (the problem of the FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP);
(4) it does not tell us how many wills Christ has; (5) it does not tell us that the K\SRVWDVLV is
identical with the pre-existent Logos; (6) it does not tell us what happens to the SK\VHLV at
Christ’s death and in his resurrection; (7) it does not tell us whether the meaning of K\SRV
WDVLV in this christological context is different, or the same, from the meaning in the trini-
tarian context; (8) it does not tell us whether the risen Christ is male.” Similarly
BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 121: “Concerning the points of conflict, the definition is rather
silent than explicit: The Symbol says nothing about the relation between its first (funda-
mental) and the second (terminological) part of its declaration. It does not define any of its
christological terms (fu,sij, u`po,stasij, pro,swpon). Moreover and primarily, the relation
between the unity of Christ’s person and the duality of the natures (which was for all fol-
lowers of Cyril the decisive question of the identity of divine person and divine nature)
remains peculiarly blurred; this is a problem, which – in spite of the four exclusive adverbs
between both natures (‘unconfused, unchanged, undivided, unseparated’) remains rather
the previous and already codified use of them, which leads to contradictions
between Christology and Trinity (e.g. in the case of K\SRVWDVLV, as I will show
later).73
In general, the XVH RI WHUPV was the biggest problem of all the debates
around Chalcedon, complicated by the fact that each party used its own ter-
minology and, moreover, not always consistently, as it is the case in Cyril
who, on one side, insisted on the use of his PLDSK\VLV-formula but, on the
other side, could also use the term of K\SRVWDVLV instead of SK\VLV.74 The
Chalcedonian formula is, hence, rather a mixture “without any adequate the-
ology in the background”.75 And still, “[s]omewhere in that mix, the [Chalce-
donian] statement suggests, lies orthodoxy.” 76
The terms used in the Creed went through a difficult process of reshaping
during the first Christian centuries and actually never had a clearly univocal
meaning.77 I will shortly sketch the development of the three most important
of them until about the time of Chalcedon:
3K\VLV was defined by Apollinaris as auvtokinh,ton, i.e., a self-sufficient
unity which is able to live as a whole (te,leion). Therefore, a SK\VLV is not the
body itself but a living body, a body revived by soul or spirit. According to
this notion, the question in the beginning was how to think the unity of d i-
vinity and humanity in Jesus Christ within one SK\VLV, as it was expressed in
firmly standing than being solved. The understanding of the Chalcedonian formula was
loaded with these aporias from the beginning and this situation was transposed mutatis mu-
tandis also to the modern research of Chalcedon.” Ibid., 133, Beyschlag adds two more
missing points: “any possibility to formulate WKHGLYLQLW\RIWKHKXPDQ-HVXV in his imma-
nency” and the cross. HICK, 7KH0HWDSKRU, 48, repeatedly criticizes the solely negative and
technical formulation of the Creed, which allegedly cannot have any reasonable religious
meaning. According to him, ‘truly God and truly man’ remains thus a mere assertion.
73
Regarding the fact that Chalcedon is a “patchwork of terms and phrases” taken from
different sources, DALEY, “Unpacking the Chalcedonian Formula”, 169–170, presumes
that “[p]robably most of the more than five hundred bishops present would have been hard
put to explain what ‘substance’ and ‘nature’ (universal reality) and ‘hypostasis’ and ‘pros-
opon’ (reality as individual and concrete) actually mean, when applied to Christ, and what
the difference among them is.”
74
Cf. GRILLMEIER, &KULVW, 481; UTHEMANN, “Zur Rezeption des Tomus Leonis”, 9.
75
LOOFS, /HLWIDGHQ, 237.
76
DALEY, “Unpacking the Chalcedonian Formula”, 173.
77
All three major terms ‘SK\VLV, K\SRVWDVLV, SURVRSRQ’ were introduced into the christo-
logical debate by Apollinaris of Laodicea. Cf. GRILLMEIER, &KULVW1, 500 and 338 with a
nice quotation from APOLLINARIS, 'HILGHHWLQFDUQDWLRQH 6, in which he equates all three
following terms: „[H]e himself is RQH physis, RQH hypostasis, RQH power (evne,rgeia), RQH
prosopon, wholly God and wholly human.“ For the Trinitarian use of these terms as the
necessary background for christological thinking cf. G. GRESHAKE, 'HUGUHLHLQH*RWW, 3rd
ed. (Freiburg: Herder, 1997), 74–171. – Another problem, which I do not follow in this
study, was the search for an appropriate translation of the Greek terms into Latin, which
caused further shifts in the understanding and was discussed far into the Middle ages.
the PLDSK\VLVIRUPXOD by Apollinaris and later and primarily by Cyril of Al-

exandria.78 The latter specified the term SK\VLV as “an individual, existent
substance” – i.e., as an efficient principle, which still needs a real basis for its
real existence: a K\SRVWDVLV. Therefore, “Cyril can also use the expression K\
SRVWDVLV for the complete SK\VLV”.79 And to make it even more complicated:
from the perspective of Trinitarian theology, as partly followed in the Chal-
cedonian creed itself, in Jesus Christ SK\VLV actually represents the divine and
human RXVLD and, in some cases, both terms could be used SURPLVFXH.80 Ac-
cording to this usage, SK\VLV stands for the substance or unspecified material
all people have in common (in other words, the K\OH without the PRUSKH).
The shifts in the use of the term (at first a self-standing unit, then only an im-
personal substance which needs a K\SRVWDVLV to be real, and later – as a neces-
sary christological consequence – a synonym for RXVLD) contributed to a blur-
riness in its understanding.
+\SRVWDVLV was a term firmly rooted in trinitarian theology, used since
Cappadocian theology to refer to the divine persons:“+\SRVWDVLVis the RXVLD
with the LGLRPDWD or the NRLQRQ together with the LGLRQ.”81 It is hence a
stand-alone entity, which can be composed of more united parts. In the K\
SRVWDVLV, the SK\VLV or RXVLDbecomes a real, existent being, an “objective re-
ality”. 82 +\SRVWDVLV in a ‘personal’ sense can, therefore, be considered for a
kind of middle term between SK\VLV and SURVRSRQ: not only a mere substance
78
GRILLMEIER, &KULVW1, 474–475. This move became possible only at the price of di-
minishing of ‘humanity’ to the body only, i.e., without its living principle, which was al-
ways Logos. Therefore, Apollinaris was condemned by Chalcedon as a monophysite here-
tic ('+ 300). Cyril, however, believed that the formula originates from Athanasius and is
hence clearly orthodox (Cyril had it from Letter to Jovian, which he believed to be written
by Athanasius, yet the letter was from Apollinaris). Nevertheless, the Apollinarist danger
of reducing the humanity of Christ remains latently hidden in Cyril all the time: “Cyril’s
unusual popularity in the church and in dogmatics may be maintained also by the fact that
his oscillating monophysitism can be interpreted in both ways in the church sense and in
the heretical sense” (BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 76).
79
GRILLMEYER, &KULVW1, 481.
80
The Chalcedonian Creed itself ('+ 301) speaks of Christ as KRPRRXVLRVwith the Fa-
ther and KRPRRXVLRV with us. These RXVLDL are thus nothing else than what is a few lines
later called SK\VHLV concurring to one K\SRVWDVLV. Further cf. GRILLMEIER, &KULVW 2/2, 52–
61.
81
GRESHAKE, 'HUGUHLHLQH*RWW, 81. Cf. ESSEN, 'LH)UHLKHLW-HVX, 24–32, who points
also to the roots of the Cappadocian distinction in the Stoic theory of individuation (ibid.,
31, fn. 23); cf. also GRILLMEIER, &KULVW 1, 373, cf. IDEM, -HVXV &KULVWXV 1, 768; IDEM,
&KULVW2/2, 278; and IDEM, “Piscatorie” – “Aristotelice”, 294–300. Also the difference be-
tween K\SRVWDVLV and RXVLD is already a result of a development; in the very beginning,
they both meant the same (cf. GRESHAKE, 'HUGUHLHLQH*RWW, 81, footnote 95).
82
GRESHAKE, 'HUGUHLHLQH*RWW, 81.
but also not a personality. 83 But the christological use of this term, then, in
the context of incarnation, shifted closer to anthropology, i.e., closer to the
term of SURVRSRQ, so that K\SRVWDVLV and SURVRSRQ were later sometimes used
interchangeably.84 A serious question arose: how could the divine K\SRVWDVLV
of the Son become truly human and remain one K\SRVWDVLV at the same time? 85
The term K\SRVWDVLV lent itself more and more to equivocation. 86 In the Trini-
tarian use, it meant something different than it did in its christological or an-
thropological usages: whereas a K\SRVWDVLV of the Trinity is not a self-
standing personality (because this would lead directly to tritheism), in the
83
Cf. fundamentally GRILLMEIER, “Piscatorie” – “Aristotelice”, 297: “In der Aussage:
Christus ‘eine Hypostase in zwei Naturen’ bedeutet ‘hypóstasis’ noch nicht das, was später
als Hypostase (Person) definiert worden ist: ‘Einzelsubjekt in geistiger Natur’ (distinctum
subsistens in natura intellectuali). ‘Subjekt’ ist noch nicht unter der Rücksicht seiner un-
mittelbaren Eigenständigkeit gesehen.“ Cf. IDEM, “Das Verständnis”, 147.
84
This was the case already in Cappadocian theology because the K\SRVWDVLV of a par-
ticular human is always understood to be a concrete individual with a face, recognizable in
a concrete SURVRSRQ. Cf. GRILLMEIER, &KULVW 1, 374–375, who points out, that the Cappa-
docian concept of K\SRVWDVLV was actually too individualistic: “they remain fast in a realm
which we may describe as individuality” (ibid., 375). In Christology, the heritage of Cap-
padocian theology became a complication because it does not comply with the trinitarian
use of the terms: “in the WKHRORJLDone nature and three K\SRVWDVHVand in the RLNRQRPLD
one K\SRVWDVLV(from the Trinity) in two natures” (GRILLMEIER, &KULVW 2/2, 278).
85
Cf. GRILLMEIER, -HVXV&KULVWXV1, 768.
86
Cf. already NESTORIUS, “Liber Heraclidis” B 342,3–7, quoted in A. GRILLMEIER,
“Das Scandalum oecumenicum des Nestorius in kirchlich-dogmatischer und theologieges-
chichtlicher Sicht”, in IDEM, 0LWLKPXQGLQLKP (Freiburg: Herder, 1975), 261–262: “Fur-
ther alike the Trinity: there one essence (syr. ouvsi,a), three prosopa; however, three prosopa
of one essence (ouvsi,a); here one prosopon of two essences (ouvsi,ai) and two essences
(ouvsi,ai) of one prosopon.” Further cf. ESSEN, 'LH )UHLKHLW -HVX, 37–38, and again
GRILLMEIER, &KULVW 2/2, 505, quoting a Severian author from the 6th century who even
stresses this equivocation between WKHRORJLD and RLNRQRPLD: “There is agreement about the
fact that K\SRVWDVLV and RXVLD, or SK\VLV, are not the same in the WKHRORJLD; in the RLNR
QRPLD, in contrast, they are identical.” In opposition to the Severians, the neo-
Chalcedonism tried to show the univocity of WKHRORJLD and RLNRQRPLD and thus of the trini-
tarian and christological terminology, cf. UTHEMANN, “Das anthropologische Modell”,
107, footnote 20. This problem remained unsolved for a long time, cf. SCHLEIERMACHER,
7KH &KULVWLDQ )DLWK, § 96.1, 395, who saw the problem precisely: “If now we carry over
into the doctrine of the Trinity the explanations which are usually given of the word ‘Per-
son’ in the doctrine of Christ – and there is sufficient reason for this, since it is asserted
that Christ did not become a Person only through the union of the two natures, but the Son
of God only took up human nature into His Person – then the three Persons must have an
independent anterior existence in themselves; and if each Person is also a nature, we come
almost inevitably to three divine natures for the three divine Persons in the one Divine Es-
sence. If, on the other hand, the same word ‘Person’ means something different in the one
doctrine from what it means in the other, so that in the Person of Christ we have still an-
other Person in the other sense of the word, the confusion is just as great.”
christological and anthropological use, the term shifted more and more to-
ward exactly this meaning. 87 With the course of time, it was more and more
obvious that the term of K\SRVWDVLV itself could not fulfill both functions,
which Chalcedon attributed to it: to be the unifying level on one side, and to
integrate two natures in their fullness and fully presereved difference. 88
The termSURVRSRQ went through remarkable shifts as well. Rejected after
first attempts to use it within the Trinity to indicate a Trinitarian person b e-
cause of its common meaning as “face”, or even “mask” (a step which would
have led to modalism), 89 this term stands for the individual specifics, SURSULH
WDWHV, for the sum of individual differences which make any individual
unique; it is the concrete and particular expression for individual personal
substance (K\SRVWDVLV): Every K\SRVWDVLV has a SURVRSRQ.90 Both terms could
be hence used synonymously, but at the same time, SURVRSRQ also opens the
path – seen in a substantially longer run – in the direction of the Latin SHUVR
QD and towards the modern term of personality. 91 Chalcedon puts this term
87
The current Eastern-orthodox theology remains often on the position of the Cappado-
cian theology, struggling then, however, with exactly this different meaning of person in
the Trinity and in anthropology, cf. ZIZIOULAS, “On Being a Person”, 33–46; CH.
SCHWÖBEL, “Introduction”, ibid., 18–19; ZIZIOULAS, %HLQJDV&RPPXQLRQ, 31–49. On the
contrary, E. SCHILLEBEECKX, -HVXV $Q ([SHULPHQW LQ &KULVWRORJ\, trans. H. HOSKINS
(London: Collins, 1979), 661, tries to identify the anthropological use of ‘person’ with the
trinitarian use. Yet, this would, in the end, lead to a tritheistic conception of God.
88
Cf. ESSEN, 'LH )UHLKHLW -HVX, 48, who calls both these functions “the diacritical-
individuating function” and “the henotic function”.
89
Cf. GRESHAKE, 'HUGUHLHLQH*RWW, 80: 3URVRSRQ “never had the place in Greek phi-
losophy that SHUVRQD had in the West. Instead, the equivalent for the Latin SHUVRQD in the
East became stepwise the more ‘philosophical’ term K\SRVWDVLV.” Cf. also ZIZIOULAS, %H
LQJDV&RPPXQLRQ, 31–36.
90
Cf., e.g., the use of SURVRSRQby Nestorius, GRILLMEIER, -HVXV&KULVWXV 1, 713: SURV
RSRQ is the “carakth.r th/j u`posta,sewj”. At the same time, Nestorius can use both terms as
synonyms, cf. ibid., 715.
91
Although the Greek SURVRSRQ would be interpreted in Latin with the much clearer
SHUVRQD, e.g. as Tertullian did it (cf. GRILLMEIER, &KULVW, 126), “the long-lasting process
of creating an explicit meaning and deepening” of the terms “proceeded in the East and the
West independently of each other” (GRESHAKE, 'HUGUHLHLQH*RWW, 83). The West had for a
long time no equivalent for K\SRVWDVLV – there was no translation for it, until the term “sub-
sistentia” was implemented. In his influential Tomus, Leo used the Augustinian term of
person (cf. UTHEMANN, “Zur Rezeption des Tomus Leonis”, 35 ). Yet also the term of SHU
VRQD developed, cf. the famous definition of BOETHIUS, 'H FRQVRODWLRQH SKLORVRSKLDH V
(cf. ESSEN, 'LH)UHLKHLW-HVX, 49–53), its later correction by Richard of St. Victor, and its
further development in the Enlightenment (H. SCHMID, 'LH 'RJPDWLN GHU HYDQJHOLVFK
OXWKHULVFKHQ.LUFKH, 7th ed. [Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1893], 214–215; GRESHAKE, 'HU
GUHLHLQH*RWW, 101–171; DALFERTH, &UXFLILHGDQG5HVXUUHFWHG, 148–153; JÜNGEL, *RGDV
WKH 0\VWHU\, 82–83; R. SPAEMANN, 3HUVRQV 7KH 'LIIHUHQFH %HWZHHQ µ6RPHRQH¶ DQG
µ6RPHWKLQJ¶ [Oxford: Oxford UP, 2017], 21–33).
right next to K\SRVWDVLV. On one hand, SURVRSRQ was the preferred term for
the unity of the person of Jesus Christ in the Antiochene perspective. 92 How-
ever, in the Chalcedonian Creed, it is a quotation of Leo’s Tome: the Latin
term SHUVRQD is translated into Greek with SURVRSRQ and added with the pre-
ferred Cyrilline term of K\SRVWDVLV next to it.93 The Antiochene SURVRSRQ as a
translation of the Western SHUVRQD stands here thus without any mediation
next to the Cyrilline K\SRVWDVLV. The question is, whether both of these terms
can be understood here simply as synonyms, or if, after all, SURVRSRQ could
be taken as a further specification of K\SRVWDVLV?94 With this question, I go
knowingly beyond Chalcedon and its intention, but this will be an important
point in my further work with the Chalcedonian formula. From this perspec-
tive, there is an interesting and important space between K\SRVWDVLV and SURV
RSRQ, which could be christologically used to emphasize and develop more
the humanity of Jesus Christ. 95
A respectable Eastern-orthodox perspective founded on the conception of the person in the
Greek Fathers was presented by John D. Zizioulas.96 In his perspective, the crucial step
was done within the trinitarian debate when the term of K\SRVWDVLV, meaning originally the
same as RXVLD or SK\VLV, was established for ‘person’ in the theology of Cappadocian Fa-
thers.97 Since then, K\SRVWDVLV is what makes the real personhood: it is the constitutive ele-
ment of personal being and its fulfilment.98 However, in the trinitarian debates, K\SRVWDVLV
was identified with the being of God, whence the only true person is God-Self, moreover:
the Father. This is the anchor of RUWKRGR[SDWURFHQWULVP: the true hypostasis is the hyposta-
sis of the Father who in his person is the principle of all divinity and of all true person-
92
Cf. GRILLMEIER, &KULVW1, 431–437 (Theodor of Mopsuestia) and 491 (Theodoret of
Cyrus); BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 61.
93
Cf. $FWVRIWKH&RXQFLORI&KDOFHGRQ II, 17; for the original Latin text of Tomus Leo-
nis and its Greek translation read at the Council cf. 3/ 54,763A/764A. The roots of this
paratactic use of K\SRVWDVLVand SURVRSRQ lie in the Formula of Reunion from 433 and be-
fore it in Proclus of Constantinople, cf. UTHEMANN, “Zur Rezeption des Tomus Leonis”,
12. It occurs also in the Confession of Flavian’s “endemic” synod of 448, cf. BEYSCHLAG,
*UXQGULVV, 88–90.
94
GRESHAKE, 'HU GUHLHLQH *RWW, 80, footnote 90, points out that “in Chalcedon, the
parataxis of prosopon and hypostasis was not a problem (cf. '+ 302); at the Second Coun-
cil of Constantinople (553), on the contrary, the paratactic use of both terms was taught as
obligatory (cf. '+ 421).” Yet still, the Council of 553 speaks about the use of this paratax-
is for the persons of the Trinity. Christologically, the important question remains, how can
one K\SRVWDVLV or SURVRSRQ unite two natures?
95
Cf. below, subchapter 3 and Ch. 6.
96
ZIZIOULAS, %HLQJDV&RPPXQLRQ. His conception, too, works with the difference and
tension between K\SRVWDVLV and SURVRSRQ. However, he does not trace their relation much
in the development of the historical debate, but rather proposes his own theological con-
ception.
97
Ibid., 36–37.
98
Ibid., 39, 47.
hood. 99 “If God does not exist, the person does not exist.” 100 But when God the Father is
the definition of personhood, then authentic person means “absolute ontological freedom”,
free from all necessity, i.e., it must be uncreated.101 For humans, bound through their “bio-
logical hypostasis”, which subsists in them and constitutes them, their createdness is clear-
ly a limitation so that they cannot “become a person in the same sense that God is one, that
is, an authentic person”.102 This is possible only with a new hypostasis, with a new birth in
the baptism, through which human existence gets an “ecclesial” or “sacramental or eucha-
ristic hypostasis”, participates in the person of Christ, and becomes a divinized existence
(WKHRVLV).103
This conception raises several questions. Within the Trinity, the patrocentric stress on
the person of the Father as the constitutive element of divinity seems to cause an equivoca-
tion in the trinitarian use of “person”, which applies differently to the Father and different-
ly to Son and Spirit as derived in both personhood and divinity from the Father.104 Moreo-
ver: if only the Father is God in the proper sense, who is the Son (and the Spirit)? – With
the identification of the person of Christ with God-Son, there is a danger of another equiv-
ocation between the use of K\SRVWDVLVor “person” within the Trinity and in anthropology:
the trinitarian persons are not three individuals.105 Zizioulas knows about it (while the
source of this danger lies already in the Cappadocian Fathers106) and stresses, therefore,
that person VXEVLVWV in the particular being and that the true mode of being is being in
communion with other persons.107 – Nonetheless, this mode of proper being is possible
only when the limits of createdness are transcended. Obviously, in Zizioulas’ conception
humanity and divinity stand against each other: biological existence is incompatible with
the ecclesial existence. Creation and createdness as such are understood in a negative way
and should be transcended. However, is the VDU[ in the incarnation, then, taken seriously
enough? – Zizioulas sees the solution in WKHRVLV, resp. in the christification of humans: bap-
tism is “adoption of man by God, the identification of his hypostasis with the hypostasis of
the Son of God”. 108 By taking biblical metaphors as ontological statements, Zizioulas blurs
the distinction between Christ and other humans: believers become a second Christ and
Christ thus the first of many. Moreover, the presence of God is identified with the church:
“Thus the Church becomes Christ Himself in human existence, but also every member of
99
Ibid., 41.
100
Ibid., 43.
101
Ibid.
102
Ibid., 44, 49.
103
Ibid., 49–50, 53, 59.
104
This saw precisely SCHILLEBEECKX, -HVXV, 667.
105
Cf. ZIZIOULAS, %HLQJDV&RPPXQLRQ, 54.
106
Cappadocian Fathers did not conceive the Trinity from a divine substance but rather
from the three distinct persons, who were seen, however, in analogy with three human in-
dividuals trying to avoid both extremes: modalistic Sabellianism and tritheism, cf.
BASILIUS M AGNUS, Ep. 38 and Ep. 263,6, both in 3*32, 325–340 and 883–884; *UHJRU\
RI 1\VVD 7KH 0LQRU 7UHDWLVHV RQ 7ULQLWDULDQ 7KHRORJ\ DQG $SROOLQDULVP, ed. V.H.
DRECOLL and M. BERGHAUS (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2011); and later the simplifying sum-
mary in JOHN OF DAMASCUS, ([SRVLWLRILGHL 48 (III 4), in 'LH6FKULIWHQGHV-RKDQQHVYRQ
'DPDVNRV, vol.II, ed. B. KOTTER (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1973), 116,1–5.
107
This would go in the direction of my own proposal, cf. below. Ch. 6.2.
108
ZIZIOULAS, %HLQJDV&RPPXQLRQ, 56.
the Church becomes Christ and Church.”109 The basic Chalcedonian distinction that God
remains God and human remains human seems, hence, to be transgressed.
In his conception, Zizioulas truly represents the theology of the Greek Fathers preserv-
ing both: their indisputable contribution as well as their problems, which remain unsolved.
It is obvious that the construal of all these terms in the time of Chalcedon was
still in motion without any firm and universally acknowledged meaning – on
the contrary, the terms were used and developed differently by different theo-
logians, and Chalcedon contributed to this lack of clarity in some cases even
more.110 The unresolved aspects of this terminology open a space for different
interpretations, and sometimes, these very substantial metaphysical terms
lead even to contradictions in their own meaning. This makes a coherent un-
derstanding much more complicated and, as the history of interpretation has
shown, actually impossible and, in the end, aporetic. Already this situation
shows that Chalcedon was not the closing of a debate, as the council fathers
had wished,111 but rather the beginning of a new and long debate, which had
to clarify the terms first, and the beginning of a search for an appropriate the-
ological structure that would integrate Trinitarian and christological aspects
in their complexity – which actually in the time of the early church never
happened.
Despite this unclearness, with the famous four negative adjectives in the
first place, Chalcedon has set new, quite clear and very fundamental and in-
fluential margins. The whole following christology in its development until
today can be, therefore, understood as a continuous struggle with Chalcedon
and its meaning.
As a new and influential beginning as well as a vote for a more differenti-
ating theology and despite all the problems sketched above, Chalcedon set
three main challenges for the Christology that would follow in its wake, all of
which must be considered in terms of their particular complexity, on one side,
and of their unity, on the other:
a) 9HUHGHXV – Jesus Christ is to be thought of as the true God, the incar-
nated second person of the Trinity, the incarnated Son in his difference from
the Father and Spirit and at the same time in divine unity with them.
b) 9HUHKRPR – Jesus Christ is to be thought of, at the same time, as a true
human possessing the fullness of humanity, as part of the human genus, not
differing from other humans.
109
Ibid., 58.
110
Cf. e.g. GRILLMEIER, -HVXV &KULVWXV 1, 702: e.g. Andrew of Samosata was able to
write that SK\VLV = K\SRVWDVLV and K\SRVWDVLV = SURVRSRQ. A similar lack of clarity can be
found in Nestorius who, compared to his big rival Cyril, and regarding the same things,
uses the terms in another way, resp. uses other terms as Cyril does, which made the debate
complicated the more, cf. ibid., 715–716.
111
Cf. GRILLMEIER, &KULVW2/1, 3.
c) Unique XQLW\ – at the same time, Jesus Christ is to be thought of as be-

ing unique and special, in a unique, unrepeatable unity of both previously
mentioned characteristics. Chalcedon expressed this point with the originally
biblical notion that Jesus Christ was the only one without sin (cf. Hebr 4:15),
and in this respect fundamentally different from all. 112
The FRPSOH[LW\ of the Chalcedonian task drives both reason and rationality
to the edge because the person of Jesus Christ is obviously the point of inter-
section between God and man, universality and particularity, eternity and
finitude.113 Nevertheless, it is a task theology cannot abandon: in the certitude
about the thing that is to be expressed, i.e., the person of Jesus Christ in its
soteriological meaning, theology has to search for appropriate ways to ex-
press it.114 The most fundamental reason why theology has struggled since
Chalcedon with an appropriate understanding of the person of Jesus Christ
has been neither a fondness for abstract theological speculation or some self-
confident plan to build a perfect theological system, but it is – from the very
beginning – VRWHULRORJ\. With the person of Jesus Christ, salvation is at
stake.115
At the same time, the question of the unity of Christ’s humanity and di-
vinity, answered by Chalcedon in the terms of two natures in one person,
concentrates the main theological IRFXV RQ WKH LQFDUQDWLRQ, which becomes
the leading theological perspective. It is this perspective that leads in the end
to the aporias of Chalcedonian Christology, as the history of interpretation of
the Creed has shown. This is now to be elaborated more in detail.
112
Cf. DALFERTH, “Gott für uns”, 63–64; IDEM, &UXFLILHGDQG5HVXUUHFWHG, 133. Cf. al-
so C. SCHÖNBORN, *RWW VDQGWH VHLQHQ 6RKQ &KULVWRORJLH, AMATECA, Lehrbücher zur
katholischen Theologie VII(Paderborn: Bonifatius, 2002), 147; WEINANDY, “The Doctri-
nal Significance”, 549–550; IDEM, 'RHV*RG&KDQJH"7KH:RUG¶V%HFRPLQJLQWKH,QFDU
QDWLRQ (Still River, MA: St. Bede’s Publications, 1985), 82, with reference to Thomas of
Aquin.
113
Cf. PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 344: “It should be clear that we have here a degree of com-
plexity in the matter to be expressed that brings us to the limit of what can be expressed at
all and which, therefore, even in a systematically coherent succession of statements, can no
longer be described with a sufficient degree of concreteness (i.e., in all its aspects).”
114
Cf. ibid., 303: “‘No trespassing’ signs against ‘betrayal of the mystery’ […] are of
little help. […] True respect for the mystery can express itself, among other ways, just in
the attempt to think it over” (partly my own translation, P.G.).
115
For the soteriological dimension and differences between East and West cf. below,
subch. 2.4, and P. GALLUS, “Christologické kořeny konceptu svatosti [Christological Roots
of the Concept of Holiness]”, 7HRORJLFNiUHIOH[H24 (2018/1), 19–29.
7KH6WUXJJOHZLWK&KDOFHGRQLQWKH+LVWRU\RI7KRXJKW 89
2. The Struggle with Chalcedon in the History of Thought

2. The Struggle with Chalcedon in the History of Thought
Although right after Chalcedon there were repeated attempts to reject the
Creed and turn back to far more popular and broadly deep rooted Cyrilline
monophysitism, Chalcedon was established (also on the political level) as the
official teaching of the church (dogma) and, hence, as the basis for any fol-
lowing Christology. 116 This fact, however (next to the first big church schism,
as said above), immediately raised the question of an appropriate interpreta-
tion and woke up the need for a further theological clarification. B.E. Daley
puts it shortly:
“[T]he Chalcedonian definition itself can better be understood as a mid-fifth-century way-
station, a brilliant but largely unsuccessful attempt to reconcile competing traditions of
language and thinking about the person of Christ, than as a settlement, let alone as the cli-
max, of patristic debates about Christ, or as itself an adequate foundation for lasting ec u-
menical agreement.”117
Two theological figures were important in the first place: regarding the duali-
ty of the natures, it was the (already pre-Chalcedonian) concept of FRPPXQL
FDWLR LGLRPDWXP; regarding the unity of the person of Jesus Christ then the
(neo-Chalcedonian) concept of HQK\SRVWDVLV.118 According to different ac-
cents of the two main parts of Christianity, the first was more important in the
West, the second in the East. I will sketch both concepts and their problems
and then I will follow their further development in some of the most im-
portant stations of the history of theology.
&RPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP
Western theology stressed primarily the differentiation of the natures. In this
respect, it stood close to the Eastern Antiochene position, but otherwise con-
tinued its development independently. The fundamental and until today most
116
Cf. GRILLMEIER, &KULVW2/1, 3–4; 'DV.RQ]LOYRQ&KDONHGRQII, ed. GRILLMEIER and
BACHT; CAMELOT, (SKHVXVXQG&KDOFHGRQ, 198–221; WENDEBOURG, “Chalkedon in der
ökumenischen Diskussion”; WYRWA, “Drei Etappen”; DALEY, “The Christology of Chal-
cedon”, in IDEM, *RG9LVLEOH, 10–27. Regarding the main players of the christological de-
velopment so far, BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 134, summarizes the factual paradoxical out-
come: “With respect to the alliance of 431, Nestorius had to remain dogmatically out, alt-
hough, in fact, he was rehabilitated by the Chalcedonian two-natures doctrine. Cyril, in the
contrary, was encompassed into the imperial-ecclesiatical Creed of Chalcedon, although
the ‘whole Cyril’, i.e., Cyril of mi,a fu,sij and of the 12 Anathematisms, fits into it in no
way.”
117
DALEY, “Unpacking the Chalcedonian Formula”, 179–180. Similarly ANATOLIOS,
“The Soteriological Grammar”, 174: “The standard modern question, first posed by Ra h-
ner, of ‘Chalcedon: End or Beginning,’ leaves out the more historically accurate option of
‘Middle.’” Anatolios uses this argument for favouring the perspective of Constantinople II.
118
Cf. BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 70.
influential document of the Western position was the famous Tomus ad Fla-
vianum of Pope Leo I,119 which partly influenced the Chalcedon Creed itself:
against the Cyrilline miaphysite emphasis on unity and against the thinking
from the unity towards the duality of the natures in an theoretical analysis
(“evk du,o fu,sewn”), Leo insisted on the duality of the natures (“evn du,o
fu,sesin”), which concur to the unity of the person, thinking thus from the du-
ality towards the unity (or presupposing the unity only as a formal term).120
While in the Chalcedonian definition both these accents stand simply next to
each other creating a momentary but untenable symmetrical balance, on the
other hand, Leo does not seek any balance in this question. On the contrary,
in his christological view, he goes far beyond what will be shortly accepted in
Chalcedon, and sees both natures of Jesus Christ as self-acting substances.
With full power, it is expressed in the sentence of the Tome known as “the
horror to the Monophysites”: “For each form performs what is proper to it in
communion with the other, the Word achieving what is the Word’s, while the
body accomplishes what is the body’s.” 121 Both natures are self-standing and
self-acting entities, which only subsequently seek their unity constituted in
the mutual communication of both. “Therefore, the ‘distincte agere’ […] of
both natures follows not – as one would expect – ‘alterius unitate’, but rather
only ‘alterius communione’.”122
The strong stress on the duality within the unity raises quite acutely the
question of the FRPPXQLFDWLR LGLRPDWXP. In fact, this theological figure has
been used since the most ancient Christian times (avnti,dosij tw/n ivdiwma,twn)
and has been more reflected since the Apollinarian controversy.123 It is in-
119
For the Christology of Leo I cf. GRILLMEIER, -HVXV &KULVWXV 1, 734–750; IDEM,
&KULVW, , 115–194; MÜHLENBERG, “Das Dogma von Chalkedon”, 14–16. CAMELOT,
(SKHVXV XQG &KDOFHGRQ, 167, representing the typical Western catholic view, favors the
theology of Leo, seeing it as a corrective of both Eastern extremes, the Alexandrine reduc-
tion of only one nature and the Antiochene separation into two persons. However, the same
tendency as in the Antiochene view can be found in Leo as well, cf. below, footnote 156.
120
Cf. UTHEMANN, “Der Neuchalkedonismus”, 219: “In Leo and in Chalcedon, whose
definition accepted this idea of Leo in the sense that Cyril’s main formula has to be inter-
preted with respect to the term of SHUVRQD or K\SRVWDVLV, remains unsaid, how is SHUVRQD to
be thought of so that the person binds the symmetry of the natures into a unity, unless one
would be satisfied with the hint that due to the symmetry of the natures no fourth subject of
worship is established, because the Logos, in the sense of a formal unity – XQLWDVSHUVRQDH
– is the subject of both.” Cf. also IDEM, “Zur Rezeption des Tomus Leonis”, 35–36; IDEM,
“Definitionen und Paradigmen”, 54; BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 90–94.
121
$FWV RI WKH &RXQFLO RI &KDOFHGRQ II, 19, cf. the Latin original: “Agit enim utraque
forma cum alterius communione quod proprium est: Verbo scilicet operante quod Verbi
est, et carne exsequente quod carnis est” ('+ 294).
122
BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 94.
123
Cf. PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 297; and B. GLEEDE, “Vermischt, ausgetauscht und
kruzweis zugesprochen. Zur wechselvollen Geschichte der Idiome Christi in der alten
tended to express, in an appropriate way, “how the divine and the human in
Christ could be united without damage to the distinctiveness of each”.124 Due
to the distinction of two SK\VHLV in one K\SRVWDVLV at the background of Cap-
padocian ontology (which itself was rooted in Stoic distinctions 125), it was
clear that each nature has its own specific properties or attributes which – in
order to create the real unity of the person – it should and can somehow share
with the other.126
This was, on one hand, the explanation of the paradoxical statements con-
cerning Jesus Christ, which began to emerge from the very beginning of
Christian theology and even within the biblical scriptures themselves. Leo
gives clear examples, which lean on the biblical and theological tradition:
“the Son of man came down from heaven” (cf. John 3:13) or “the only-
begotten Son of God [was] crucified and buried” (cf. the Nicene or later the
Apostolic Creed).127 It is, then, possible to make seemingly contrary asser-
tions but still concerning the same person.
It opens the problem of the so-called GLYLVLR YRFXP, of the attribution of
different biblical statements concerning Jesus Christ in the unity of his di-
vinity and humanity, of his words and his actions, which was a topic also in
the debates around Chalcedon. Who is the subject of the particular state-
ments? To whom are the statements to be attributed – both the high and the
low statements to the person of Jesus Christ, or rather each statement should
be attributed to the appropriate nature (high to the divinity and low to the
humanity)? 128 And what about the biblical statements, in which divinity and
Kirche“, in &UHDWRUHVW&UHDWXUD/XWKHUV &KULVWRORJLHDOV/HKUHYRQGHU,GLRPHQNRPPX

QLNDWLRQ, ed. O. BAYER and B. GLEEDE, TBT 138 (Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 2007),
35–94, who brings a good overview of the development in the early church. In his opinion,
avnti,dosij tw/n ivdiwma,twn is “the very SURSULXP of the Chalcedonian Christology” (ibid.,
83). GRILLMEIER, &KULVW 1, 436–437, considers as the earnest beginning of the reflected
use of FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP the time and work of Theodore of Mopsuestia. R. CROSS,
“Perichoresis, Deification and Christological Predication in John of Damascus”, 0HGLDHYDO
6WXGLHV62 (2000), 70, calls the Latin term itself in the contrary “a Western medieval coin-
age”.
124
125
Cf. GRILLMEIER, &KULVW1, 372.
126
Leo in his Tomus speaks about “ivdio,thj e`kate,raj fu,sewj”. This phrase (originating
from TERTULLIAN, “Adversus Praxeam” 27, cf. BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 93) was subse-
quently incorporated into Chalcedonense, cf. $FWVRIWKH&RXQFLORI&KDOFHGRQ II, Session
II, Nr. 22, 17 (Tomus), and Session V, Nr. 34, 204 (Chalcedonense): “the distinctive char-
acter of each nature”.
127
$FWVRIWKH&RXQFLORI&KDOFHGRQII, 20–21. Cf. BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 93, fn. 162.
128
This was a traditional question, cf. BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 94, fn. 163: “Whereas
the Christian East discusses, how can be both ascribed to the one christological subject”,
Leo simply says with sheer easiness: “unum horum coruscat miraculis, aliud subcumbit
injuriis […] unus idemque est”.
humanity occur together (the so-called DFWLRQHVFRPPXQHV)? In this question,

the Alexandrine and the Western (and the Antiochene) position differ.
“We can speak about a Cyrilline and a Leonine interpretation, depending on what is
stressed, if it is stressed that God-Logos, one K\SRVWDVLV of the Trinity becomes flesh,
makes miracles and suffers, or if it is stressed that Christ, God and human in one person
makes miracles in his divine nature and dies on the cross in his human nature”
and both these actions meet in the person. 129

However, Chalcedon did not bring a solution:
“As it was shown already in the protest of the Illyrians and of the Palestinians in Chalce-
don, which Leo tried to rebut with his so-called second Tomus, concerning the DFWLRQHV
FRPPXQHV Chalcedon left something open. Depending on where the stress was laid – if on
the remaining difference of the natures or on the hypostatic union of the natures – the
Chalcedonian formula led to a different picture of Christ. Here, it is obvious that the reason
for the difference lies, in the end, in each case in different soteriology.”130
For Leo, the soteriological point of the FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP was exactly

the possibility of two contrary statements about one and the same person of
Jesus Christ: we need someone who “would be able to die in respect of the
one and would not be able to expire in respect of the other”.131 Yet this sen-
tence of Leo’s, with his stress on separate actions of both natures, actually
avoids the FRPPXQLFDWLR LGLRPDWXP by ascribing both parts of the sentence
separately to both natures, which do not really communicate with each other
but exist rather together next to each other in one presupposed person.132
129
UTHEMANN, “Zur Rezeption des Tomus Leonis”, 35–36. Cf. IDEM, “Der Neu-
chalkedonismus”, 215–216. This question knows already the Formula of Reunion (433),
which mentions it as a still unsolved problem: “As for the evangelical and apostolic stat e-
ments about the Lord, we recognize that theologians employ some indifferently in view of
the unity of person but distinguish others in view of the duality of natures, applying t he
God-befitting ones to Christ’s divinity and the humble ones to His humanity” (cf. '+ 273).
130
UTHEMANN, “Der Neuchalkedonismus”, 216.
131
$FWVRIWKH&RXQFLORI&KDOFHGRQ II, 17–18; “et mori posset ex uno, et mori non ex
altero”, '+ 293. Similarly Cyril of Alexandria (cf. ANATOLIOS, “The Soteriological
Grammar”, 171, who calls it in Cyril the “Cyrillian paradox”) or John of Damascus, cf.
CROSS, “Perichoresis”, 106: “This strategy is a commonplace of orthodox Christology
from Cyril of Alexandria and Leo onwards.”
132
The same case is the already above-mentioned follow-up of the famous “Agit enim”-
sentence, which ends also with a clear separation of actions of the particular natures: “the
one shines with miracles, while the other has succumbed to outrages” ($FWVRIWKH&RXQFLO
RI &KDOFHGRQ II, 19). The unity of humanity and divinity is simply presupposed with the
biblical fact of Christ’s person, cf. BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 92. That this point leads, on
the other hand, to logical incoherencies with two opposite sets of properties, points out in
the 20th century, HICK, 7KH 0HWDSKRU, 102, who calls this “the incompatible-attributes
problem”. Similarly I. LANDA, “Jednota dvou přirozeností. Hegel a ‘Symbolum Chal-
cedonense’ [The Unity of Two Natures. Hegel and the ‘Symbolum Chalcedonense’]”,
)LORVRILFNiUHIOH[H 40 (2011), 27: “It seems that the propositions of the Symbolum Chal-
(This indicates already the aporetic nature of the figure of FRPPXQLFDWLRLGL

RPDWXP, as I will show later.)
Yet still, the FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP should be an instrument for grasp-
ing and expressing the searched XQLW\ of these two natures, because they
should not remain simply next to each other, although SHUGHILQLWLRQHP they
are absolutely different or even opposite. Therefore, at the same time, the
question arises, what kind of unity can be expressed with a paradoxical
statement and how far can such unity reach. 133 Or, in other words: what does
this “sharing” or “communication” of attributes actually mean?
As was obvious already to Leo, the question of the unity of two natures becomes critical
regarding the death of Jesus Christ on the cross. The Chalcedonian two natures in combi-
nation with the necessity of the FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP obviously raised in a fundamen-
tal way the question of the suffering of God in Jesus Christ and a certain theopaschitism
seemed to be inevitable.134 The most courageous were the Scythian monks, who in 518/519
came with the formula “One of the Trinity was crucified”, which ascribes the suffering and
death not only to the humanity of Jesus Christ, nor to his person but directly to the second
person of the Trinity, to the eternal Son. 135 This formula became the matter of the so-called
WKHRSDVFKLWLFFRQWURYHUV\ because it went exactly against the basic and firmly rooted pre-
supposition that God is unchangeable and thus impassible (what is sometimes called the
“apathy-axioma”).
The divine apathy was fundamental and shared by all. From this axioma, then, it was
only a small step to take exactly this point as the key differentiation between the natures.
cedonense create a set of logically inconsistent assertions (or at least such a set can be
drawn from it). Divine attributes are, that is to say, incompatible with the human ones: e.g.
God is all-knowing but a human has only limited cognitive abilities etc. When we admit,
Christ was ‘truly God and truly human’, we are forced to affirm the assertion that he was
omnipotent, and at the same time, that he wasn’t.” Exactly this, however, was the case and
strategy in the Antiochene theology, cf. e.g. THEODORET, “Erranistes”, 3*83, 147 (= 1L
FHQH DQG 3RVW1LFHQH )DWKHUV II/III, 195): “But when we are discussing the Person we
must then make what is proper to the natures common, and apply both sets of qualities to
the Saviour, and call the same Being both God and Man, both Son of God and Son of
Man.”
133
Cf. UTHEMANN, “Der Neuchalkedonismus”, 219: “Since the union as such is not
considered, it is within the frame of a Leonine interpretation of Chalcedon not necessary to
do in the theory of predication the step, which led to the neo-Chalcedonian theory of HQK\
SRVWDVLV.” Cf. below, subch. 2.2.
134
Cf. ELERT, 'HU$XVJDQJGHUDOWNLUFKOLFKHQ&KULVWRORJLH (Berlin: Lutherisches Ver-
lagshaus, 1957), 123–124: “theopaschism” is probably originally a term of Nestorius used
by him against Cyril and the monophysites. Cf. also below, Ch. 7.2.2.1.
135
Cf. LOOFS, /HLWIDGHQ, 241; W. ELERT, “Die Theopaschitische Formel”, 7KHRORJLVFKH
/LWHUDWXU]HLWXQJ75(1950/4–5), 195–206. IDEM, 'HU$XVJDQJ, 121–124; GRESHAKE, 'HU
GUHLHLQH *RWW, 342–343; GRILLMEIER, &KULVW2/2, 317–343; RITTER, “Dogma und Lehre”,
279; BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 151–152. Another variant of the formula says: “e[na th/j
a`gi,aj tria,doj peponqe,nai sarki, ” (ibid., 151). This (in its origin already biblical [1Pt 4:1]
and then Athanasian and Cyrilline) sarki, proved later to be the way out of the problem, cf.
below, subchapter 2.2 and Ch. 7.2.2.1, and also ELERT, 'HU$XVJDQJ, 76–97.
The most fundamental difference between divinity and humanity was the apathy of divinity
and the passibility of humanity. 136 And this line could not be crossed.137
From the western point of view, theopaschitism was always considered rather a heresy
because in its consequences, it was close to the Arian and tri-theistic thought.138 The Chal-
cedonian definition itself mentions the impassibility of the divine twice in the introduction
as a crucial point holding strictly the divine apathy. It declares for a nonsense the opinion
of those who are “fantasizing that the divine nature of the Only-begotten is passible”.
Then, it praises the Tomus of Leo in his critique of Euthychianism, whose mixture of na-
tures would lead to the passibility of divinity. 139 Leo himself, although fascinated by the
possibility of FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP, which allowed him to claim Christ’s mortality and
immortality at once, strictly differentiated between divine apathy and human suffering. On
the one hand, he was able to write the paradoxical, as if theopaschitic sentence “the Son of
God is said to have been crucified and buried”, but, on the other hand, right after that he
hurries to add “when he endured these things not in the Godhead itself in which he is only-
begotten, coeternal and consubstantial with the Father, but in the weakness of his human
nature”.140 With this differentiation, Leo assumes already the orthodox solution of the
problem: suffering is to be limited to the human nature only.
Otherwise, at least in the Alexandrine mia-physitic sense, the human passion and suf-
ferings would have to be ascribed to the hypostasis of the Logos. This seemed to be the
case in Cyril. In his Third letter to Nestorius, he refuses all conceptions of unity, which
speak only about “juxtaposition” or “conjunction” and, stressing the Logos as the only sub-
ject of all Christ’s actions, he writes in the famous 12 th anathema, leaning on 1Pt 4:1: “the
Word of God suffered in the flesh, was crucified in the flesh, and tasted death in the
136
Cf. ELERT, 'HU$XVJDQJ, 87 (concerning the Antiochians).
137
This notion was very common and absolutely fundamental. Suffering and God were
in an absolute opposition. A suffering God would lose his divinity. Especially for the
Western tradition with its stress on the remaining difference of the natures, the “preserva-
tion of the transcedence of God” was crucial (UTHEMANN, “Der Neuchalkedonismus”,
218). Cf. PELIKAN, 7KH&KULVWLDQ7UDGLWLRQ, 231, 268; ELERT, 'HU$XVJDQJ, 72–73. But
cf. also K. RAHNER, “Current Problems in Christology”, in IDEM, 7KHRORJLFDO ,QYHVWLJD
WLRQV, vol.I, trans. C. ERNST, OP (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1961), 177: “‘One of
the most holy Trinity has suffered’, the Scythian monks used to say, with that brutality of
faith which takes not only death but its hidden divinity with the same seriousness, so that
hundreds of years after Ephesus and Chalcedon we are still startled by it, though it is per-
fectly obvious, that we are bound to speak like this and that the whole truth, the single
unique truth of Christianity, is contained in it.”
138
Cf. GRESHAKE, 'HU GUHLHLQH *RWW, 342–343. Cf. also e.g. the reserved position of
HOPING, (LQIKUXQJ, 116: the Pope confirmed that the theopaschitic formula “can be un-
derstood in the sense of Chalcedonian orthodoxy”, which was a step by which “the mild
monophysitism was much obliged”.
139
'+ 300; 7KH $FWV RI WKH &RXQFLO RI &KDOFHGRQ II, Session V, Nr. 34, 203. Cf.
BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 130: “This means that we have to conclude from this ‘argumen-
tum e silentio’: The passion of Christ remains, according to the Chalcedonian conception,
restricted to the human nature of the Lord. The incarnated God-Logos is not passible ‘in
his flesh’ (Cyril), but rather (in the sense of Tomus Leonis) as ‘true human’.”
140
7KH$FWVRIWKH&RXQFLORI&KDOFHGRQI, Session II, Nr. 22, 20–21.
flesh”.141 However, Cyril could not allow any hint of theopaschitism either. This would go
too far. Therefore, in the second step, he stresses repeatedly – in a slightly Apollinarian
way, which results from his mia-physitism – the suffering in the flesh, meaning in the flesh
only, thus excluding the divinity from all suffering: “He suffers with regard to the flesh
that is his own, not with regard to the nature of the divinity. […] Rather, as I said, he
should be thought of as suffering with regard to the flesh that is his own, but not suffering
in any such manner with regard to the divinity. […] It is like iron, or some other such ma-
terial, when it is put into contact with fiery flames. It receives the fire into itself and exudes
the flame. But if someone strikes it, the material itself takes the hit but the nature of the
fire is not at all harmed by the one who strikes. This is how you should understand how the
Son is said to suffer in the flesh but not to suffer as far as the divinity.” 142 Obviously, what
happens to Christ, “does not happen LQ WKH VDPH ZD\” to his divinity and humanity. 143
Hence, neither Cyril could keep up the unity fully and avoid the answer to the question,
what effect had the death on the union of Christ’s person. Overall, an interesting dyophy-
site point emerges here within the Cyrilline tradition.144 In the effect, the western and the
Cyrilline tradition meet at this point.145
At the same time, this ascription of suffering only to the human nature, to the “flesh”,
opened the possibility for a compromise solution to the theopaschitic controversy. The the-
opaschitic formula was accepted as orthodox at the 5 th Ecumenical Council in Constanti-
nople 553 but with a slight and meaningful shift of emphasis in the sketched direction: “Ei;
tij ouvc o`mologei/( to.n evstaurwme,non sarki, ku,rion h`mw/n VIhsou/n Cristo.n ei=nai qeo.n
avlhqino.n kai. ku,rion th/j do,xhj kai. e[na th/j a`gi,aj tria,doj\ o` toiou/toj avna,qema e;stw.“146
The important emphasis lies on the word σαρϰὶ. The Son of God suffered and died, but in
141
CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA, “Third Letter to Nestorius”, in MCGUCKIN , 6W&\ULORI$O
H[DQGULD, 275 (= 3*77, 121D).
142
CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA, 2QWKH8QLW\RI&KULVW, trans. J.A. MCGUCKIN (Crestwood:
St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995), 130–131 (= 3* 75, 1357CD); and also already
ATHANASIUS, “Orationes adversus Arianos” III, 34, in 3*26, 396. Cf. ANATOLIOS, “The
Soteriological Grammar”, who tries to defend the Cyrilline position as the only right.
143
ANATOLIOS, “The Soteriological Grammar”, 171.
144
Hence, for ERWK these traditions applies the critical question, which ANATOLIOS,
ibid., 179, asks towards the western conception of FRPPXQLFDWLR LGLRPDWXP: “Indeed, if
we merely separate Christological predications into discrete compartments representing the
divine and human natures respectively, are we not trying to describe the features of the
Incarnation in pre-Incarnation terms? Are we not thereby positing a separation of natures
and making the incarnate Word the subject and agent of this separation instead of the sub-
ject and agent of the unity of the two natures?”
145
At the same time, this development opened the possibility of further interpretation of
Chalcedon, because it set into a relationship what was then called RLNRQRPLD and WKHROR
JLD: Christology and Trinity. Cf. BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 153, 177; ELERT, 'HU$XVJDQJ,
119. Another important impulse for a deeper development of this relationship were the
(previously already present) problems emerging from the new terminology, which it made
explicit, cf. above, subch. 1.2.
146
'+ 432. Cf. 7KH $FWV RI WKH &RXQFLO RI &RQVWDQWLQRSOH RI , vol. 2, trans. R.
PRICE, Translated Texts for Historians 51 (Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2009), 123: “If any-
one does not profess that our Lord Jesus Christ, crucified in the flesh, is true God and Lord
of glory and one of the holy Trinity, let him be anathema.” Cf. W. ELERT, “Die The-
opaschitische Formel”, 201.
the flesh, meaning only in the flesh, not in Godhead. The suffering was confirmed in the
human nature only. 147 Regarding divinity, clearly the traditional view won, keeping God
apart from all suffering and change and preserving God’s apathy and immutability. On this
point, both natures were strictly differentiated and kept apart. “Because the impassibility of
God was a basic presupposition of all christological doctrine, any formula that seemed to
tend toward jeopardizing this impassibility was suspect.” 148 With this emphasis, this solu-
tion became the standard solution in the catholic as well as in the Eastern-orthodox theolo-
gy until today.149
This marks another problem of a rather cautious use of FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP. By
not doing the last step vis-à-vis the death of Jesus Christ, it obviously splits the person of
Jesus into two. But to do the last step consistently would raise serious questions about the
conception of divinity, because the traditional concept of God would be broken from with-
in. Thus, at the point of death, we either – following the tradition – abandon the unity of
the person of Jesus Christ, or, we need another concept of God.150 I will argue for the sec-
ond option.151
In answer to the question, what is meant by the “sharing” of properties, there

is one more important differentiation to make. The strict Western differentia-
tion of both natures in Christ supported the old tendency to conceive the
FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP only YHUEDOLWHU, i.e., only in the mode of predication
about the person of Jesus Christ, not UHDOLWHU, which would mean also a real
ontological communication and unification of the natures. 152
What could it mean and how irritating it could be, if the FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP would
be applied not YHUEDOLWHU but consistently UHDOLWHU and if, therefore, the divine nature should
participate somehow in the human nature, saw Nestorius in the first place – with an obvi-
ous scare: “For those who allow themselves to be carried away by this notion of ‘appropri-
ation’ must of necessity admit that because of this appropriation God the Word was i n-
volved in sucking at the breast, and in gradual growth, and in trepidation at the time of the
passion, needing the assistance of an angel. I will make no mention of circumcision, sacr i-
fice, sweating, hunger; all those things which, joined with the flesh, are actually adorable
147
Cf. PELIKAN, 7KH &KULVWLDQ 7UDGLWLRQ 1, 246: “The specter of Gnostic and other
forms of docetism made it imperative for all to affirm the reality of the sufferings of Christ
and of his agony in the garden; the specter of Patripassianism made it impossible to attrib-
ute these to the divine nature.”
148
Ibid., 270–271.
149
Cf. POSPÍŠIL, -Håtã]1D]DUHWD, 181: “We can close: Any change, any ‘becoming’ in
Christ concerns solely his humanity; God remains basically unchangeable.” And Pospíšil
refers to THOMAS AQUINAS, 67KI, q13 a7.
150
Cf. clearly and shortly ELERT, 'HU$XVJDQJ, 122: “Either is Christ, as the one who
also suffered and died, the incarnated Logos of God, or he is not him at all. This is the A
and O of all theopaschitic formulas. Every incarnational Christology without theopaschitic
expression is incomplete. And in case that it avoids such expression knowingly, it is a de-
ception or a self-deception” (originally partly italicized).
151
Cf. below, Ch. 5. For the problem of death of God in Jesus Christ cf. below, Ch. 7.
152
Cf. GLEEDE, “Vermischt”, 72–78, with the typically Lutheran result: “All in all,
avnti,dosij tw/n ivdiwma,twn does not have any other meaning than the internal christological
joyful exchange” (ibid., 77). However, it is not that simple, cf. below, subch. 2.5.
because they were done for our sake, but which, if they are attributed to the Godhead, are
merely lies and become the grounds for our rightful condemnation as blasphemers.”153 It
will take more than thousand years, until M. Luther will claim exactly this “that it is said
correctly and truly: God is born, breastfed or nursed, he lies in the manger, is cold, walks,
stands, falls down, peregrinates, is awake, eats, drinks, suffers, dies etc.” 154
It is then no surprise that the term “FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP” or “avnti,dosij

tw/n ivdiwma,twn” is very often translated as “common application of WHUPV” or
as “$XVVDJHQWDXVFK”, as if it concerned only the way of speaking about Jesus
Christ.
The tradition – which, in the course of time, added onto the ontic level the
differentiation between the essential, unshareable properties and shareable
accidents for each nature, and, hence, stressed the difference between the na-
tures even more 155 – distinguished also very strictly what can be predicated
about each of the natures and about the unity of the person. The particular at-
tributes were to relate to the person in which both natures concur, not to the
other nature. The communication runs, therefore, always through the level of
the unity of the person, never directly from one nature to the other. All theo-
logians of the early church, of course, speak about the unity of the person and
try to think it. But when the duality of the natures becomes the leading per-
spective, as is the case when one uses the idea of FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP,
which starts with the natures as self-standing agents, every higher unity has to
fail.156
153
NESTORIUS, “Second Letter to Cyril”, $&2I,3, 25,30–36, English in MCGUCKIN, 6W
&\ULORI$OH[DQGULD, 367.
154
M. LUTHER, 'U 0DUWLQ /XWKHUV 7LVFKUHGHQ ±, vol. 6 (Weimar: Hermann
Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1921), 68,37–40.
155
Already Leontius of Byzantium distinguishes between universal and individual qual-
ities, cf. DALEY, “Unpacking the Chalcedonian Formula”, 185; B. GLEEDE, 7KH'HYHORS
PHQW RI WKH 7HUP evnupo,statoj IURP 2ULJHQ WR -RKQ RI 'DPDVFXV (Leiden/Boston: Brill,
2012), 69–99, tracing this distinction back to Aristotle and Porphyry. John of Damascus
distinguishes between properties (ivdiw,mata), which are constitutive for the nature, and ac-
cidents (sumbebhko,nta), which are constitutive for the person, cf. CROSS, “Perichoresis”,
81: “[A] (universal) nature is a collection of (universal) properties, […] a (particular) hy-
postasis is this nature along with a unique collection of (universal) accidents”. (Cf. below,
subchapter 2.3.) For the later development cf. also THOMAS AQUINAS, 67KIII, q16 a5. G.
BIEL, &ROOHFWRULXP FLUFD TXDWWXRU OLEURV 6HQWHQWLDUXP ,,,, ed. W. WERBECK and U.
HOFMANN (Tübingen 1979), 154–155, speaks about “determinations” and differentiates
determinations of the first (ILQLWXV, FUHDWXUD, DQQLKLODELOLV) and second order (KRPR, DQL
PDO, PRUWDOH). Only the latter can be predicated about Christ (cf. O. BAYER, “Das Wort
ward Fleisch”, in &UHDWRU HVW &UHDWXUD /XWKHUV &KULVWRORJLHDOV /HKUH YRQ GHU ,GLRPHQ
NRPPXQLNDWLRQ, ed. O. BAYER and B. GLEEDE, TBT 138 [Berlin/New York: De Gruyter,
2007], 18).
156
GRILLMEIER, &KULVW 2/1, 159–166, shows the oscillation between unity and duality
in the theology of Leo with all its ambiguities. There is this notion on one side: “Strictly
speaking, there would have to be thus two SHUVRQDH in Christ” (ibid., 162). But then also:
However, and this is the crucial point and the biggest problem, with a ver-
bal-only use of the FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP, the unity of the person of Jesus
Christ only remains in the mode of predication, whereas the natures keep
their primacy and importance as the individual agents in Christ. Western the-
ology was hence unable to think a real unity of Christ’s person. 157 This was
confirmed and from then on fixed at the 6 th Ecumenical Council in Constanti-
nople 680–681 (seen in the discussion about the history of the dogma, in op-
position to the 5 th Council of 553, as the victory of Western influence 158),
which accepted the dyotheletist doctrine, that, in fact, split the person of Jesus
Christ into two: „This doctrine in turn gave rise to the misunderstanding that
the duality of wills in Jesus Christ also made it necessary to assume a duality
of subjects, so that his divine and human natures must be distinguished not
just as DOLXG HW DOLXG but as DOLXV HW DOLXV“.159 The old abyss separating the
eternal and immutable God from the mortal and mutable human was only
transferred onto the person of Jesus Christ where “the whole question begins
all over again”.160
This verbal-only use of the FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP is in contradiction to
the original intention of Chalcedon. Its claim was to give a rule not only for
how to talk about Jesus Christ but rather for the ontological conception of his
person along with a real relation of the natures. 161 Hence, the early Western
application of the FRPPXQLFDWLR LGLRPDWXP lags behind the intentions of
Chalcedon. There were, however, only a few theologians in the history (actu-
ally only Luther and later partly the Protestant Lutheran orthodoxy) who
dared to make some steps towards a UHDOLWHU-understanding of the FRPPXQL
FDWLRLGLRPDWXP. If this understanding should avoid falling into the aporias of
the other extreme, as it is the danger in Luther and the Lutheran orthodoxy
“Like Cyril of Alexandria, Leo too always sees first the concrete subject in Jesus of Naza-
reth. The unity is his starting point” (ibid., 163; cf. BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 92–94).
157
Cf. RAHNER, “Current Problems in Christology”, 180: &RPPXQLFDWLR LGLRPDWXP is
being either “understood ‘monophysitically’ in the form of a cryptogamic heresy (VLWYHQLD
YHUER!) […], or, while the immutability of the Logos and the Chalcedonian ἀσυγχύτωj re-
mained clear, the emptily formal abstractions of the unity (for all its being hypostatic)
would take on no real fullness of meaning for us.” Cf. also J. WERBICK, *RWWPHQVFKOLFK
(LQHHOHPHQWDUH&KULVWRORJLH (Freiburg: Herder, 2016), 277, footnote 75: “The doctrine of
the communication of idioms comes more and more to the position of a differentiated regu-
lation of speech, which shall on one hand meet the dogma of Chalcedon, and, on the other
hand, it shall hold back Nestorianism, which wants to have such communication of idioms
excluded; however, it brings no clarity into what is here really said.”
158
Cf. LOOFS, /HLWIDGHQ, 246.
159
DALFERTH, &UXFLILHGDQG5HVXUUHFWHG, 141.
160
RAHNER, )RXQGDWLRQVRI&KULVWLDQ)DLWK, 220.
161
For a more detailed debate about the intrinsic claim and self-understanding of Chal-
cedon, see the discussion in COAKLEY, “What does Chalcedon solve and what does it
not?”, 143–163.
(cf. below, subch. 2.5–6), it requires – as already mentioned above – a wholly

different conception of divinity and of the relation of God to the world.
At the same time, the problem of FRPPXQLFDWLR LGLRPDWXP recalls the
aforementioned problem of Chalcedon itself. The Creed only sketches a solu-
tion in very heavy substance terms and presents the natures in symmetrical
relations. This, in combination with the conception of divinity and humanity
as opposites (infinite – finite, immortal – mortal, unchangeable – changeable,
impassible – passible), results necessarily in logically contradictory claims,
which can barely concur in one person, as Chalcedon defined it. The further
development showed very soon that it was not possible to keep the symmetry
of the natures, as proposed in Chalcedon in the Antiochene-Leonine heritage,
because it endangered the unity of Christ’s person. 162 From the beginning of
the christological controversy, this was the fundamental stress of Alexandrine
theology, which sought an expression of unity with much greater intensity.
(QK\SRVWDVLV
The accentuation of the unity of the person had been strong since the Apolli-
narian and Cyrilline PLDSK\VLV-formula, which corresponded also with popu-
lar monophysitism. Whereas the Western and Antiochene approach chose the
two natures as the theological starting point, Alexandrine theology started
with the unity of Christ’s person. It was Cyril’s important notion that the d u-
ality of Christ’s natures can be discerned only in a retrospective theoretical
analysis, not in and through the actions of Jesus Christ. 163 The person of Jesus
Christ was constituted “evk du,o fu,sewn”.164
162
Cf. the struggle of Gelasius I with the symmetry, GRILLMEIER, &KULVW2/1, 297–305.
PELIKAN, 7KH&KULVWLDQ7UDGLWLRQ 1, 269, calls the symmetry “deceptively simple and ul-
timately imprecise”. DALEY, “Unpacking the Chalcedonian Formula”, 180–181, summa-
rizes very well: “But Chalcedon’s positive formulation of how the Church must interpret
Nicene theology and confess the person of Christ, for all its even-handedness, still seems
to have struck many – probably a majority – of Greek-speaking Christians as too symmet-
rical, too dialectical, too ready to affirm the continuing, even independent, functioning of
the two utterly different realities or ‘natures’ united in Christ’s one ‘person,’ to count as an
unambiguous affirmation of the Church’s ancient faith that it was truly God the Son who
spoke and healed, died and rose, as the Jesus of the Gospels.”
163
“th|/ qewri,a| mo,nh”, as the 5th Ecumenical Council later put it ('+ 428); or evn
evpinoi,a|, as wrote LEONTIUS OF JERUSALEM, “Liber contra Monophysitas”, 3* 86,
1801AB. Cf. GRILLMEIER, &KULVW1, 480.
164
However, Cyril was able to write also sentences, which go in the same direction as
Leo and found their way into the Chalcedonian definition, cf. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA,
“Second Letter to Nestorius”, PG 77, 45C/46C (=$&2 I,1, 26,25–27,18): “While the na-
tures that were brought together into this true unity were different, nonetheless there is One
Christ and Son from out of both. This did not involve the negation of the difference of na-
tures, rather that the Godhead and manhood by their ineffable and indiscribable consilience
into unity achieved One Lord and Christ and Son for us” (English translation from
At the same time, it was subsequently more and more clear that the prima-
ry subject and unifying principle with primary activity, i.e., the KHJHPRQLNRQ
was the Logos – the preexistent second person of the Trinity, the trinitarian
K\SRVWDVLV of the Son who became flesh in Jesus Christ, so that in the unity of
natures, divinity had the upper hand. 165 This brought the conception of the
two natures, from the very start, into obvious asymmetry, to a one-sided in-
clination from active divinity to the receptive humanity. For the early church,
the divine attributes of Christ were, in the end, more important that the hu-
man ones; the main interest lied in the participation of the human nature in
the divine rather than the other way round. Divine participation in humanity
was, on the one hand, absolutely necessary for salvation, because the main
soteriological thesis was the so-called formula of interchange, as expressed
most typically by Gregory of Nyssa: “To. ga.r avpro,slhpton( avqera,peuton.
What is not accepted is not healed.” 166 The divine Logos had to accept full
humanity to save humanity completely.
On the other hand, this necessary divine participation in humanity was al-
ways a complication for theology (and not only for the theology of the early
church). There was a clear interest in Christ’s full humanity (the most may be
in the first two centuries in the struggle against gnostic docetism), yet not in
the old, sinful humanity, as is the case with all people, but rather in a divine
or divinized humanity, because only from such a human could salvation be
attained.167 It was thus much more important for human nature to attain the
MCGUCKIN, 6W&\ULORI$OH[DQGULD, 263). Based on such sentences, it is not easy to under-

stand why Cyril insisted so much on his PLDSK\VLV-formula. “The right thing now would
have been for Cyril to give up the ‘Apollinarian’ language of the mi,a fu,sij formula once
and for all. Had he done this, without doubt the further development of christological dog-
ma would have been preserved from much confusion” (GRILLMEIER, &KULVW1, 476).
165
Cf. GRILLMEIER, &KULVW2/2, 455: “In brief, as we have ascertained, there then arose
the custom of identifying the ‘one K\SRVWDVLV’ in Christ with the K\SRVWDVLV of the pre-
existent Logos (Patriarch Gennadius, Diadochus of Photike). In this manner the way was
opened for further reflections on what constituted the difference between the ‘concept’ of
K\SRVWDVLVand that of ‘nature’, and finally on what could lead to the elaboration of a defi-
nition of K\SRVWDVLV.” For the tendency to an asymmetrical relation on the Antiochene side,
e.g. in Theodoret, see BEYSCHLAG , *UXQGULVV, 91, fn. 158.
166
GREGORY OF NYSSA, Ep. 101, 3* 37, 181–183; and Gregory continues: “{O de.
h[nwtai tw/| Qew/|( tou/to kai. sw,zetai.” It is the unity of humanity and divinity that brings
salvation.
167
Cf. the sermons of Leo (3/54, 192, 211, 217) as quoted by CAMELOT, (SKHVXVXQG
&KDOFHGRQ, 166: “If Christ wasn’t the true God, he could not have healed us; if he wasn’t a
true man, he could not have given us any example [sic!] […] He became man like us so
that we can participate [in] his divine nature.” The best example is, however, Leontius of
Jerusalem, who elaborated the conception of WKHRVLV. Cf. below and LEONTIUS OF
JERUSALEM, “Contra Nestorianos” II, 21, in 3*86/1, 1581 (incorrectly attributed to “Le-
ontius Byzantinus seu Hierosolymitanus”); and UTHEMANN, “Definitionen und Paradig-
men”, 106–122.
positive aspects of the divine attributes, which was possible only through the
acceptance of humanity by the divine nature. The divine nature itself in no
way needed the low human attributes and accepted them only due to soterio-
logical necessity, while the question remained: to what extent could immuta-
ble divinity accept human finitude?
Patristic theology was thus concerned not only with the proper way of speaking about Je-
sus Christ but rather with the ontology of his person, with the orthodox answer to the ques-
tion of who he substantially was. Patristic theology thought UHDOLWHU about Jesus Christ and
sought to answer both the question of how the incarnation had been possible and how the
incarnation was to be thought of.
For many followers of the Alexandrine standpoint, Chalcedon was considered

a loss, even though the Creed absorbed many of the concrete formulations of
Cyril. After post-Chalcedonian attempts to reestablish monophysitism, 168 a
serious theological concept arose, which tried to interpret Chalcedon again
more according to the intentions of the theology of Cyril and defend it against
objections from both extreme wings, from the monophysite as well as from
the Nestorian. The discussion speaks since J. Lebon about the so-called “neo-
Chalcedonism” 169 or about “Cyrilline Chalcedonianism” 170, which was pre-
pared in the work of Johannes Grammatikos171 and represented in the first
place by the texts of Leontius of Byzantium and Leontius of Jerusalem. 172
They developed – each with his own particular contribution, yet further in my
text seen in a synthetic perspective – the concept of incarnation as HQK\SRVWD
VLV.173 Starting with the divine Logos as the second person of the Trinity, this
168
By Severus of Antioch and his followers in the first place, cf. GRILLMEIER, &KULVW
2/2, 21–180.
169
The term was used the first time by J. LEBON in his work /HPRQRSK\VLVPHVpYHULHQ
(Louvain: J. Van Linthout, 1909). Cf. also UTHEMANN, “Der Neuchalkedonismus”, 207–
255; GRAY, 7KH'HIHQVHRI&KDOFHGRQ, 1–6; IDEM, “Neuchalkedonismus”, in 7KHRORJLVFKH
5HDOHQ]\NORSlGLH , ed. G. MÜLLER (Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 1994), 289–296;
GRILLMEIER, &KULVW 2/2, 429–438; IDEM, “Der Neu-Chalkedonismus”, in IDEM, 0LW LKP
XQGLQLKP&KULVWRORJLVFKH)RUVFKXQJHQXQG3HUVSHNWLYHQ (Freiburg: Herder, 1975), 371–
387; S. HELMER, 'HU1HXFKDONHGRQLVPXV*HVFKLFKWH%HUHFKWLJXQJXQG%HGHXWXQJHLQHV
GRJPHQJHVFKLFKWOLFKHQ %HJULIIHV (Bonn: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität,
1962).
170
Cf. MEYENDORFF, &KULVW, 29–46; A. LOUTH, “Christology in the East from the
Council of Chalcedon to John Damascene”, in 2[IRUG+DQGERRNRI&KULVWRORJ\, ed. F.A.
MURPHY (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2015), 142. To what means “Cyrilline” at this point cf.
BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 172–173.
171
Cf. UTHEMANN, “Definitionen und Paradigmen”, 60–95; GRILLMEIER, &KULVW ,
52–72; GLEEDE, 7KH'HYHORSPHQW, 50–61.
172
For the identification of both Leontii cf. GRILLMEIER, &KULVW 2/2, 181–186 and 271–
275.
173
To the development of the term cf. GLEEDE, 7KH'HYHORSPHQW; ESSEN, 'LH)UHLKHLW
-HVX, 34–48.
concept tries to reinterpret the incarnation through a Cyrilline reading of the

Chalcedonian definition that two SK\VHLV concur in one K\SRVWDVLV.
This is done, however, with a significant shift in the understanding of K\
SRVWDVLV, as already mentioned above. In the ILUVWVWHS, this must be clear: The
self-standing K\SRVWDVLV of the person of Jesus Christ is not constituted after-
wards as the result of the connection of the two natures. It is from the begin-
ning the K\SRVWDVLV of the divine Logos, which precedes the whole incarna-
tion. Therefore, this must be from the beginning the only K\SRVWDVLV and thus
the only subject in the whole process.174
The VHFRQG VWHS: The divine K\SRVWDVLV of the Logos must accept the hu-
man nature in some way. However, this cannot mean a whole human person,
the whole human K\SRVWDVLV – said in the traditional terms: the incarnation
proceeds as DVVXPSWLRKXPDQDHQDWXUDH, not as DVVXPSWLRKRPLQLV. This lat-
ter concept bears the adoptionist danger that the Logos would accept a com-
plete human being, already constituted before the unity and actually splits J e-
sus Christ into two sons, into two ununifiable K\SRVWDVHLV – which was pre-
cisely the danger of Nestorianism.175 The divine Logos accepts, therefore – or
more precisely: creates in himself, in-creates176 – solely a human nature,
which does not have any own human K\SRVWDVLV, into its own divine K\SRVWD
VLV.
In this way, the divine K\SRVWDVLV constitutes the unity of the whole per-
son.177 The divine K\SRVWDVLV has then obviously a double function in this
process and also in the constituted person: it is the K\SRVWDVLV of the divine
Logos and at the same time the K\SRVWDVLV of the accepted human nature. 178
This means, as it seems to be the case in Leontius of Jerusalem, that, in fact, K\SRVWDVLV has
three functions, which gives the conception of Leontius a very agreeable dynamic tenden-
cy. First, the K\SRVWDVLV of the Logos is the K\SRVWDVLV of the incarnated person of Jesus
174
Cf. UTHEMANN, “Der Neuchalkedonismus”, 217: “For every predication, he [sc.
Logos] is the subject ‘in itself’ (kaq’ e`auto,). However, if the individual human nature of
Christ, assumed by the Logos, may be also a subject of statements, then it cannot be this
subject ‘in itself’ but rather only as a not self-standing subject: ouvk ivdikw/j( ouvk
ivdiou?posta,twj( ouvk avna. me,roj etc., as it was said against a Nestorian construction while, at
the same time, the first step towards a theory of HQK\SRVWDVLV was made.”
175
Cf. UTHEMANN, “Definitionen und Paradigmen”, 92–93. For the term of nature with
its properties and attributes, cf. also DALEY, “Unpacking the Chalcedonian Formula”, 184–
189; CROSS, “Perichoresis”, 73–86.
176
Cf. RAHNER, )RXQGDWLRQVRI &KULVWLDQ )DLWK, 220: “The phrase is already found in
Augustine that God ‘assumes by creating’ and also ‘creates by assuming’, that is, he cre-
ates by emptying himself, and therefore, of course, he himself is in the emptying. He cre-
ates the human reality E\ WKH YHU\ IDFW WKDW he assumes it as his own.” Cf. also
BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 179, with references to patristic texts; ESSEN, 'LH)UHLKHLW-HVX,
42.
177
UTHEMANN, “Definitionen und Paradigmen”, 110.
178
Cf. ibid., 111–112.
Christ, where it is the common (koinh,)K\SRVWDVLV. Second, it can serve, at the same time,
as an own (ivdikh,) K\SRVWDVLV for each nature, the divine as well as the human, depending
on the relation to God or to humans. And third, for the human nature and its HQK\SRVWDVLV,
this means that it KDV a K\SRVWDVLV, but LV QRW a K\SRVWDVLV, i.e., not in itself, not for itself
but only within the K\SRVWDVLV of the Logos.179 The human nature can use the K\SRVWDVLVof
the Logos as its own (u`po,stasij ivdikh, pro.j h`ma/j) but not as an own particular K\SRVWDVLV
(ivdiadzousa u`po,stasij).180 With these very substance-thought terms, Leontius tries obvi-
ously to express dynamic relational issues: the divine K\SRVWDVLV seems to have a certain
adaptability.181 If the K\SRVWDVLV could work in such multifunctional way, the man Jesus
would be then in this respect in no way different from other people.
At the same time, I must be fair and not overstretch the interpretation of Leontius. Be-
sides the legitimate question, whether the term K\SRVWDVLV is not being used equivocally
here,182 Leontius is, in the case of Jesus Christ, not interested in the common humanity. He
wants rather to show the exact opposite: that Christ is not human in the same sense as all
other people but different, divinized: “In Leontios comes the human Jesus not closer to all
people, but he is and remains the divinized human at a distance to any human ‘like you and
me’.”183
And then the WKLUGVWHS – the crucial point of this thought (for Leontius of Je-
rusalem the main positive of the whole, to me, however, the main problem of
the whole): the human SK\VLV cannot exist only DVVXFK, but for a real exist-
ence, it has to acquire some specific, particular attributes in order to be con-
stituted as a particular hypostasis. In the case of Jesus Christ, his human na-
ture gets these specific attributes not within a human hypostasis but within
the hypostasis of the divine Logos. Thus, WKH KXPDQ QDWXUH JHWV GLYLQH DW
WULEXWHVLQWKHLQFDUQDWLRQ. The point in Leontius is not the universal humani-
ty of Christ but the divinization of Christ’s human VDU[, which is never out-
179
Ibid., 92, 100. LOOFS, Leitfaden, 240. Therefore, the human nature is precisely
HQK\SRVWDWRQ, not DQK\SRVWDWRQ. It has a K\SRVWDVLV, although not its RZQ K\SRVWDVLV. This
slight difference, important for LEONTIUS OF BYZANTIUM (cf. “Contra Nestorianos et Eu-
thychianos” I, 3*86/1, 1277D; GLEEDE, 7KH'HYHORSPHQW, 61–69; UTHEMANN, “Defini-
tionen und Paradigmen”, 92, quoting the unpublished dissertation of B.E. Daley: “anhypo-
static” would mean “purely abstract”) as well as for LEONTIUS OF JERUSALEM (cf. “Contra
Nestorianos” II 10, 3* 86/1, 1556; GRILLMEIER, &KULVW 2/2, 284–285; GLEEDE, 7KH 'H
YHORSPHQW, 122–137), got lost in the flow of time, which supported the common trivial
view of Christ as identified solely with the divine Logos in human flesh (this view origi-
nates already from Cyril, against whom already Nestorius raised the objection of the hu-
man nature as anhypostatical, and therefore only fictional, cf. GLEEDE, “Vermischt”, 61;
LOOFS, /HLWIDGHQ, 243–244). The humanity of Christ was thereby diminished the more.
180
LEONTIUS OF JERUSALEM, “Contra Nestorianos” II 14 and V 29, 3* 86/1, 1568C
and 1749B; cf. UTHEMANN, “Definitionen und Paradigmen”, 112.
181
Which goes nicely in the direction of my concept of divine accommodation, cf. be-
low, Ch. 5 and 6.1.
182
UTHEMANN, “Definitionen und Paradigmen”, 112; GRILLMEIER, &KULVW 2/2, 292.
183
UTHEMANN, “Definitionen und Paradigmen”, 112–113; LEONTIUS OF JERUSALEM,
“Contra Nestorianos” II 14, 3*86/1, 1565–1568.
side of the divine K\SRVWDVLV, rather always in connection with Logos, and re-
ceives the divine attributes, “which do not pertain to any other human”. 184
This interpretation fits smoothly with the conception of the virgin birth
from the Holy Spirit as the source of the divine attributes of Christ’s humani-
ty; but, at the same time, a serious question about the IXOO humanity of Jesus
Christ arises. Can a solely human nature without particular human attributes
be considered a full humanity, a full human being?185 Is this divinized (and in
its humanness diminished) humanity still a humanity, given its difference
from all other humans? 186 This point would come under heavy but legitimate
attack later on in the Enlightenment with its accent on the real and concrete
historical humanity of the man Jesus. In this respect, the interest of Leontius
and of his concept of HQK\SRVWDVLV is fundamentally different. A stress on the
historical humanity is not found here.187
184
Cf. UTHEMANN, “Definitionen und Paradigmen”, 113. ESSEN, 'LH)UHLKHLW-HVX, 29,
fn. 15, points already to Gregory of Nyssa, who, in his Christology, was able to avoid the
danger of two Sons only at exactly this cost: that the human attributes of Christ’s humanity
were replaced by the divine ones.
185
Although this conception has still been used by some until today (cf., e.g., E.
JÜNGEL, -XVWLILFDWLRQ 7KH +HDUW RI &KULVWLDQ )DLWK, trans. J.F. CAYZER [Edinburgh/New
York: T&T Clark, 2001], 161), this question shows its aporias, which follow from the
thinking in the terms of substances and attributes. Already within this old system of
thought itself, the crucial question is: how can it exist and what should be human nature
without any attributes, as such, when humans exist only as particular exemplars? Is not
such an entity, as indicated above, “purely abstract”? Cf. below, Ch. 8.3.3.2 and
SCHLEIERMACHER, 7KH&KULVWLDQ)DLWK, § 97.2, 402: “It is not an easily solved problem, to
think of something as the human nature of Christ and yet as impersonal, since the nature in
which we all share can only be called the nature of an individual in so far as it has become
personal in him. But if we go into the idea, there must arise the new difficulty, how, in
view of this impersonality, the human nature in Christ can fail to be more imperfect in Him
than in us all?” Similarly BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 178–181. GLEEDE, 7KH'HYHORSPHQW, 2,
states also that the concept of HQ\KSRVWDVLV led to diminishing of the human personality of
Christ and reminds that HQK\SRVWDVLV cannot be simply identified with insubsistence be-
cause of the danger that the insubsistence of the human nature in the divine K\SRVWDVLV
would be conceived only as accidental (ibid., 187).
186
In a certain variation, the Apollinarian-Cyrilline underestimation of the human soul
or mind, which always stood for the specifics of one’s personality, comes back again here
(cf. in the context of the polemic of Leontius of Byzantium with the afthartics in
GRILLMEIER, &KULVW2/2, 222–226). Interesting for the next development is the fact that the
same applies also to the conception of Thomas Aquinas as well, cf. J. WAWRYKOW, “The
Christology of Thomas Aquinas in Its Scholastic Context”, in 2[IRUG+DQGERRNRI&KULV
WRORJ\, ed. F.A. MURPHY (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2015), 245, who tries to defend Thomas but
on this point with an aporetic argument: “A human person in exactly the same way that I
am a human person? No; but a human person, nonetheless.”
187
Leonardo Boff, who stresses the historical existence of Jesus as the starting point of
Christology, sees, paradoxically, the absence of an own human K\SRVWDVLV as a positive
fact, cf. L. BOFF, -HVXV &KULVW /LEHUDWRU. $ &ULWLFDO &KULVWRORJ\ IRU 2XU 7LPH, trans. P.
Nevertheless, the conception of HQK\SRVWDVLV viewed this fact positively.

Its point and the point of the whole of humanity – and hence of salvation –
was: WKHRVLV, GLYLQL]DWLRQ.188 The incarnation of Jesus Christ set all the neces-
sary conditions for it once and for all and constituted and opened up a new
ontological dynamic for everyone. (QK\SRVWDVLV is hence an LQGLYLQL]DWLRQ, an
incorporation of humanity into divinity – which is exactly the opposite of an
incarnation in which God enters into the humanity. It is quite a paradoxical
outcome: nearly all theologians of the early church speak about incarnation,
about how God became man leaning on John 1:14, but no one can really real-
ize it in a theological conception. Mostly, the line of thought goes in the same
direction as in Leontius: not *RG does become human, but human is some-
how integrated into the divinity.
This interpretation, however, blurs an important Chalcedonian distinction,
which is fundamental for the whole of theology, not only for soteriology – the
distinction between God and humans, between Creator and creation. The
Chalcedonian emphasis clearly says that in the unity of the person of Jesus
Christ, *RGUHPDLQV*RGDQGKXPDQUHPDLQVKXPDQ; none of them mutates
or is transformed into the other. The concept of WKHRVLV, however, tries to es-
tablish a base for exactly this direction, with a soteriological point: for salva-
tion, humans will become divine. With this, humanity in its own substance
and meaning is diminished, as if it were something soteriologically incapable,
what must be enhanced, amended or even – in the most radical version –
overcome.189
HUGHES (London: S.P.C.K., 1980), 196–197: “Because he opened himself to and gave
himself over to God with absolute confidence […] Jesus does not possess what the Council
of Chalcedon taught: He was lacking of ‘hypostasis,’ a subsistence enduring in himself and
for himself. […] The absence of a human personality (hypostasis or subsistence) does not
constitute an imperfection in Jesus but rather his highest perfection. Emptying himself
means creating interior space to be filled with the reality of the other. It is by going out of
oneself that human beings remain profoundly with their own selves; it is by giving that one
receives and possesses one’s being. Hence Jesus was the human being par excellenc e, HFFH
KRPR.” More to the conceptions of liberation theology see below, Ch. 6.3.
188
Cf. UTHEMANN, “Definitionen und Paradigmen”, 109, 113–117; PANNENBERG, -H
VXV, 39–42. For the concept of WKHRVLV in broader context, cf. P. NELLAS, 'HLILFDWLRQ LQ
&KULVW2UWKRGR[ 3HUVSHFWLYHV RQ WKH 1DWXUH RI WKH +XPDQ 3HUVRQ, trans. N. RUSSELL
(Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997); 7KHRVLV'HLILFDWLRQLQ&KULVWLDQ7KH
RORJ\, vol. 2, Princeton Theological Monograph Series 156, ed. V. KHARLAMOV (Eugene,
OR: Wipf and Stock, 2011); here further literature; ANATOLIOS, “The Soteriological
Grammar”, led by the Cyrilline perspective of Constantinople II tries to establish WKHRVLV as
the normative conception for the orthodox concept of salvation, tacitly presupposing HQK\
SRVWDVLV as the leading christological model.
189
HICK, 7KH0HWDSKRU, 130, in his only presentical and rather Pelagian soteriological
concept, conceives WKHRVLV as “gradual transformation of the person from human animal
into the finite ‘likeness’ of God” so that “it is this actual human change that constitutes
I am convinced that a conception of salvation, where humans remain humans and are
brought to the fulfillment of their humanity in community with God, is a much stronger
conception, because it can take more seriously humanity in all its dimensions. Instead of
WKHRVLV, I would therefore speak about DQWKURSRSRHVLV as the final goal of humanity: to be-
come more or fully human in community with other creation and God.190
The main advantage of the conception of HQK\SRVWDVLVis a clear model of the

unity of Christ’s person, which is speculatively reconstructed from a retro-
spective view as a pro,swpon su,nqetoj or a composite K\SRVWDVLV.191 Leontius
of Byzantium calls the result of this retrospective reconstruction – from the
trinitarian Son through the creation of human SK\VLV to the HQK\SRVWDVLV – an
DSRWHOHVPD.192 That is an important shift compared to Chalcedon: the
DSRWHOHVPD, the result of the whole process, is not the K\SRVWDVLV as such, be-
cause the K\SRVWDVLV – as the K\SRVWDVLV of the second person of the Trinity –
is the KHJHPRQLNRQ principle from the very beginning. The DSRWHOHVPD, the
final point, is the retrospectively reconstructed enhypostatical union of the
person of Jesus Christ.
The concept of HQK\SRVWDVLV was not the first attempt to solve the unity of two different
entities. Since the Antiquity, there were some favorite examples of such cases, in which a
real unity was established: iron and fire, wine and water, and body and soul. All three were
also christologically important.
The anthropological analogy of ERG\ DQG VRXO, rooting in the Neoplatonic term of
avsu,gcutoj e[nwsij, bears obviously an Apollinarist danger because christologically, one has
to think of the unity with the divinity in Jesus Christ QH[WWR the human unity of body and
soul. Yet still, body and soul was a convincing example of a unity of an immaterial and
material entity and it became the leading metaphor for the unity of the natures in Jesus
Christ, although it evoked an intense discussion between the dichotomical and trichotomi-
cal structure of the person of Jesus Christ (or, in Grillmeier’s classical terms: between the
Alexandrine Logos-sarx Christology and the Antiochene Logos-anthropos Christology).193
:LQHDQG ZDWHU was an example that secured the difference of the substances, which
do not merge to a fusion (su,gcusij, cf. against it the Chalcedonian avsugcu,twj). At the same
salvation” as re-centering of life in God, appealing to its closeness to “the modern ‘liberal’
approach initiated in the nineteenth century by Friedrich Schleiermacher”.
190
Cf. below, Ch. 6.2.3. and also GALLUS, “Christologické kořeny”; JÜNGEL, “Humani-
ty in Correspondence to God”, 152–153.
191
Instead of the monophysite e[nwsij fusikh, , the conception now speaks of e[nwsij
u`postatikh,, of hypostatic union, cf. BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 178.
192
Cf. LEONTIUS OF BYZANTIUM, “Contra Nestorianos et Euthychianos” I, 7, 3*86/1,
1297C; GRILLMEIER, &KULVW2/2, 454; UTHEMANN, “Definitionen und Paradigmen”, 97.
193
For the roots and the use in neo-Chalcedonism cf. UTHEMANN, “Das anthropolo-
gische Modell der hypostatischen Union”, in IDEM, &KULVWXV .RVPRV 'LDWULEH (Ber-
lin/New York: De Gruyter, 2005), 103–196. Further cf. GRILLMEIER, &KULVW1, 438 (The-
odor of Mopsuestia), and2/2, 34–39 (Severus of Antioch), 204 (Leontius of Byzantium);
Pseudo-Athanasianum (Symbolum “Quicumque”), '+ 76; JOHN OF DAMASCUS, “Exposi-
tio fidei”, 60 (III,16), 153–155; from him, these metaphor spread through the whole west-
ern tradition to Luther and Protestant orthodoxy (cf. below, subchapter 2.5 and 2.6).
time, it preserved the immutability of the divinity in the union with humanity. When dis-
solving a sweet drop of wine in the salty ocean, the wine is afterwards everywhere present,
but it does not affect or change the quality or the substance of the water, which remains
dominant.194
The example of LURQDQGILUH, very famous and in christological context mentioned the
first time probably by Origen 195, stressed, next to the preserved difference of the substanc-
es, the activity of the one element, which creates the unity of both. It is the fire (divinity)
that heats through the iron (humanity) without diminishing its own quality but, at the same
time, giving its quality to the iron as well.196 This metaphor should, therefore, support the
concept of the WKHRVLV of human nature.197
Since Antiquity, the common background was the 6WRLFWKHRU\RIPL[WXUH.198 Although
the terminology and the meaning of the particular terms were neither here always firm and
univocal, the Stoics distinguished in principle three (or four) different ways of two sub-
stances creating a unity: para,qesij (or LX[WDSRVLWLR), where the substances remain separated
(pieces of different sorts of corn, sand, salt and sugar or gathering of people). The middle
form is mi,xij (PL[WLR) or kra/sij (PL[WXUD). In this case, the substances or qualities merge,
but keep their properties and can still be separated again, although it might be technically
difficult (iron and fire, air and light, water and wine, in some authors also body and soul).
The last is total mixture, su,gcusij (FRQFUHWLR, FRQIXVLR), in which the substances merge
without the possibility of being separated again and build a new substance wherein the
original qualities vanish.
For the Christological use, it was clear that su,gcusij is to be avoided. Chalcedon sets
against it explicitly the term avsu,gcutwj.199 (What was searched for was avsu,gcutwj e[nwsij
194
Cf. PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 297. He adds correctly, however, that these metaphors
were “open to completely opposing interpretations” (ibid.). Cf. also ELERT, 'HU$XVJDQJ,
57, referring to THEODORET OF CYRUS, “Erranistes”, in 3*83, 153D (quoting Gregory of
Nyssa); L. ABRAMOWSKI, “Die Schrift Gregors des Lehrers ‘Ad Theopompum’ und
Philoxenus von Mabbug”, =HLWVFKULIWIU.LUFKHQJHVFKLFKWH89(1978), 289–290.
195
ORIGENES, 'HSULQFLSLLV II, 6,6; cf. GRILLMEIER, &KULVW1, 146; UTHEMANN, “Defi-
nitionen und Paradigmen”, 117.
196
Cf. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA, 2Q WKH 8QLW\ RI &KULVW, 130–131 (= 3* 75, 1357CD);
PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 297; GRILLMEIER, &KULVW2/2, 39–40; UTHEMANN, “Definitionen und
Paradigmen”, 117–122.
197
UTHEMANN, “Definitionen und Paradigmen”, 118–121, for Leontius of Jerusalem.
However, in this case, the metaphor is inconsistent, because, in fact, it is the iron, which is
the substance assuming into itself the fire, whereas the concept of HQK\SRVWDVLV worked in
the opposite direction. It is the K\SRVWDVLV of the divine Logos, which assumes humanity
into itself. Nevertheless, this metaphor was also used further on for many centuries until
the Enlightenment.
198
Cf. GRILLMEIER, &KULVW 2/2, 40 and 205; CROSS, “Perichoresis”, 86–104; J.
SELLARS, 6WRLFLVP (Durham: Acumen, 2006), 88–89; H. DÖRRIE, 3RUSK\ULRV¶³6\PPLNWD
=HWHPDWD´ ,KUH 6WHOOXQJ LQ 6\VWHP XQG *HVFKLFKWH GHV 1HXSODWRQLVPXV´, Zetemata 20
(München: C.H. Beck, 1959), 24–35.
199
In the earlier times, however, the Fathers like, e.g., the Cappadocians spoke careless-
ly and undifferentiated about a mixture of natures in Jesus Christ (avna,krasij), cf. GLEEDE,
“Vermischt”, 46–47; PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 297. Similarly also Hilary of Poitiers, cf.
GRILLMEIER, &KULVW1, 400.
– against su,gcusij was, therefore and already by Cyril, put the term su,nqesij.200) But for a
long time, the middle term of kra/sij seemed to be useful. Moreover, if it was defined as
follows: “[T]he two entities are mixed together to the point that every part of the mixture
contains both of the original entities, yet each of the original entities retains its own di s-
tinctive properties and can in theory be extracted from the mixture.”201 This seemed to fit
for the christological use perfectly. 202 However, there were still some doubts – may be due
to the lack of an absolutely firm meaning and due to the middle position, which tends to
blur the line towards the extremes. Therefore, some were afraid that in a mixture, the two
substances nevertheless create a fusion,203 or at least weaken each other.204 Besides, in the
Stoic version, kra/sij creates actually a new entity. 205 In comparison with the concept of
HQK\SRVWDVLV, which was developed against this Stoic background,206 kra/sij is static, while
HQK\SRVWDVLV has a better dynamic. 207 In the further development, the knowledge of Stoic
philosophy rather vanished, while the concept of enhypostasis found its way through the 5 th
Council of Constantinople and through John of Damascus into the western Christology (cf.
below).208
Next to the obviously leading and principal function of the divine nature, and
in terms of the further elaboration of FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP, the figure of
HQK\SRVWDVLV brings about a clear declivity, an asymmetry due to its stress on
the direction from the divine nature towards the human one and not vice ver-
sa.209 In the context of WKHRVLV, it was this direction, in which was the theolo-
200
Cf. GRILLMEIER, &KULVW 2/2, 205; CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA, ep. 45, 3* 77, 233A;
LOOFS, /HLWIDGHQ, 230–231. Cf. also Canon 4 and 7 of Constantinople II, '+ 425 and 428.
201
SELLARS, 6WRLFLVP, 89. Kra/sij in christological use is found e.g. in Tertullian, No-
vatian or John Chrysostom (cf. GRILLMEIER, &KULVW1, 129, 132, 420).
202
Cf. SELLARS, 6WRLFLVP, 89, when he continues: “For instance, it is reported that if
one mixes wine and water in a glass it is possible to extract the wine out of the mixture by
using a sponge soaked in oil […]. Although the wine and water are completely mixed, in a
way that the grains of salt and sugar are not, it is still possible to separate the two liquids.
One slightly paradoxical consequence of this theory of total blending that the Stoics appear
to have accepted was the thought that if one added a single drop of wine to the sea then
that single drop of wine would have to mix with HYHU\part of the sea, in effect stretching
itself out over a vast area.”
203
THEODORET, “Erranistes”, in 3*83, 156, cf. PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 297, fn. 41.
204
GRILLMEIER, &KULVW2/2, 40 and 205.
205
SELLARS, 6WRLFLVP, 89.
206
Clearly in Leontius of Byzantium, cf. GRILLMEIER, &KULVW 2/2, 205; CROSS, “Peri-
choresis”, 74, fn. 10.
207
Cf. CROSS, “Perichoresis”, 72, who, therefore, distinguishes in John of Damascus, in
whom the different patterns and models meet, the static XQLRQLQIDFWRHVVH (the Stoic NUD
VLV) and the dynamic XQLRQ LQ ILHUL (the Neoplatonic participation of the human nature in
the divine as WKHRVLV).
208
Cf. H.U. VON BALTHASAR, &RVPLF /LWXUJ\, trans. B.E. DALEY, SJ (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 2003), 63: With the Chalcedonian ‘indivisibly – unconfusedly’, “the image
of a reciprocal indwelling of two distinct poles of being replaced the image of mixture”.
209
Cf. UTHEMANN, “Definitionen und Paradigmen”, 108. Explicitely ANATOLIOS, “The
Soteriological Grammar”, 184, who conceives this one-way communication to be funda-
gy of that time interested. On the contrary, no one was interested in the oppo-
site direction, and although it was clear that Jesus Christ as a true human had
to have full humanity there was no interest in humanizing divinity. The path
towards salvation led rather through divinized humanity more than through
full human humanity as such. Therefore, in Jesus Christ himself, the divine
nature was, in the end, more important than the human one.
All these small steps contributed to the fact that the KXPDQLW\RI&KULVWZDV
PRUH DQG PRUHGLPLQLVKHG. What finally remained was a PHUHO\ GLYLQH pic-
ture of Jesus Christ. 210
The neo-Chalcedonist version of Cyrilline theology was officially con-
firmed at the WK(FXPHQLFDO&RXQFLOLQ&RQVWDQWLQRSOH and became the
leading perspective on the Chalcedonian orthodoxy. 211 In accord with the
concept of HQK\SRVWDVLV, the council in its mostly negative formulation of the
&DQRQHV stated that the union of the Word and of the flesh happened “in the
hypostasis”212 – not “concurring into one hypostasis”, as Chalcedon had said
leaning on Leo. Therefore, the formulation “evk du,o fu,sewn”, once rejected,
was from now on and again an acceptable alternative to the orthodox “evn du,o
fu,sesin”.213 The Chalcedonian balance was thus shifted significantly to the
Cyrilline line, whereas the Antiochene-Leonine perspective was pushed into
the background.214
mental for the hypostatic union, even in the case of Christ’s suffering, which is made pos-
sible through divine compassion: “[W]e have to reiterate the principle that any affirmation
about Christ can only ultimately mean the communication of the features of the divine na-
ture to the human nature.”
210
Cf. GLEEDE, 7KH 'HYHORSPHQW, 137. Against GRILLMEIER, &KULVW 2/2, 509, who
praises the HQK\SRVWDVLV as the perfect unity of divine and human nature. Moreover, ana-
logically to the fusion of church and empire, the missing humanity in the rather divine pic-
ture of Christ made place for a merge of this picture with the political emperor into a “p o-
litical picture of Christ” (BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 182). For a general judgement about the
outcome of the old-church Christology cf. BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 192–197.
211
Cf. BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 159–161, 183–185.
212
Cf. '+ 424–426.
213
Cf. LOUTH, “Christology in the East”, 142–143; BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 173: The
aim was to “balance dogmatically ‘Chalcedon’ and the ‘whole Cyril’ (including mi,a fu,sij
and the 12 Anathematisms) in order to free the Chalcedonian dogma by this key sign
[Vorzeichen] from the permanent objection coming from the monophysites against the al-
leged ‘Nestorian’ heresy.”
214
Cf. BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 182: “The christological integration of the ‘whole Cyr-
il’ [cf. above, fn. 22] was possible only by letting tacitly fall ‘Tomus Leonis’ with its ex-
plicit western two-natures doctrine […], which was, since 451, on the equal level with Cyr-
il (this ‘fall’ occurred in 553 when it was overlaid by the ban of ‘Three Chapters’).” In a
broader ecclesiastic-political sense, “the christological definition [of the 5 th Council] was
not valid universally for the whole empire and church, but it was rather formulated only as
a document of the *UHHN orthodoxy, whereas the specific western position was, in fact,
disregarded.”
This council is considered by many the hermeneutical key to Chalcedon it-

self: in Constantinople II Cyril finally won, as he allegedly should win in
Chalcedon itself. To interpret Chalcedon from the viewpoint of Constantino-
ple II is, however, anachronistic and one-sided, because next to the neo-
Chalcedonian perspective, there is also the western perspective, which re-
mained untouched by the neo-Chalcedonian theology215 and asserted itself a
hundred years later again in the 6th Ecumenical Council in Constantinople
(680–681) with the dogmatic codification of dyotheletism, i.e., of two wills
and two energies in Jesus Christ, in which the human obediently submits to
the divine.216
However paradoxical it can seem to be, both traditions the eastern and the
western finally met in a merely divine picture of Jesus Christ, in one K\SRVWD
VLV of Jesus Christ, which suffered, but only in the flesh, only in his humanity.
This took place in the West thanks to a strict distinguishing between the two
natures and their works, in which the divine nature was always the more im-
portant; and in the East thanks to humanity conceived only in the form of the
common human SK\VLV, which was divinized in Jesus Christ. Neither concept,
however, could think a unity of full humanity and divinity. 217 And both con-
tributed, in the end, to the underestimation of the human element, which last-
ed since then for many centuries, until the 20 th century. 218
215
Nevertheless, the West got at least the knowledge of the hypostatic union through
Gregory the Great, who spent some time in the East, cf. P. GRAY, “Neuchalkedonismus”,
in 75( 24, 294. A typical western view on the development of the old church represents
CAMELOT, (SKHVXVXQG&KDOFHGRQ, 206–221.
216
This, however, meant to stress the other extreme and to fall into other problems, in-
stead of bringing a solution, cf. '+ 556: “And we proclaim equally two natural volitions
or wills in him and two natural principles of action which undergo no division, no change,
no partition, no confusion, in accordance with the teaching of the holy fathers. And the two
natural wills not in opposition, as the impious heretics said, far from it, but his human will
following, and not resisting or struggling, rather in fact subject to his divine and all power-
ful will.” Cf. ESSEN, 'LH )UHLKHLW -HVX, 54–65. Further cf. above, end of the subch. 2.1.
The Eastern perspective with its until then dominant model of HQK\SRVWDVLV led organically
from the concept of WKHRVLV and WKHRNLQHVLV over the concept of one hypostatic energy ra-
ther to monotheletism, cf. UTHEMANN, “Der Neuchalkedonismus”, 220 and 222–255;
GLEEDE, 7KH'HYHORSPHQW, 137. Further cf. BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 185–192.
217
P. SCHOONENBERG, 7KH&KULVW$6WXG\RIWKH*RG0DQ5HODWLRQVKLSLQWKH:KROH
RI&UHDWLRQDQGLQ-HVXV&KULVW (New York: Herder and Herder, 1971), 61–66, summarizes
the objections against the Chalcedonian model and its later interpretations and takes it to
the point with a question, which clearly shows the aporetic outcome: “Does the Chalcedo-
nian pattern lead us to a disguised or to a divided Christ?” (ibid., 65).
218
Cf. for the catholic tradition the papal encyclical Sempiternus Rex to the 1500 th an-
niversary of Chalcedon (1951, '+ 3905), which still denies any human subjectivity in
Christ. This is, what WERBICK, *RWWPHQVFKOLFK, 269, criticizes already in the Chalcedoni-
an concept of K\SRVWDVLV: it has no reflexivity or subjectivity. The person of Christ appears
therefore as a “metaphysical monster”. The monstrosity of the traditional picture of Christ
-RKQRI'DPDVFXV
For the further development of Christological doctrine as well as for the con-
tinuity of tradition, John of Damascus holds a key position.219 As a Damas-
cus-native (675/676), he lived already in a different religious situation. In the
630’s, Syria was lost to Islam so that Damascus (dar al-Islam) was now the
capital of Islamic Umayyad Empire and although the Muslims “had no great
desire to convert Christians”, these were, nevertheless, forced to formulate
what is Christian orthodoxy. 220 John, therefore, summarizes the Christian tra-
dition in his work. In him, the different Christological traditions and accents
of the development until that time meet and he tries to grasp it as a consistent
whole. Although he himself does not bring any remarkably new elements
next to the traditional ones, through his attempt to systemize the tradition he
was brought to a new synthesis of the Christian faith. 221 It is his work – find-
ing its way through Lombardus’ Sentences also into the Western theology,
from the scholasticism through Reformation into Enlightenment – which
builds the connection between the early Eastern and later Western theology.
For the West, who was not so much acquainted with the philosophical tradi-
tions, which had built the background for the Eastern theology (“Stoic phys-
ics and Neoplatonist metaphysics” in the first place), was John the most im-
portant “transmitter of the Chalcedonian tradition”. 222 This meant that with
the original background also some important notions and fine differentiations
got lost.
The interpretation of the John’s Christology has therefore to deal with two
basic complications: first, John tries to bind together into a consistent whole
in the church Christology is an often-criticized point in the 19th and 20th century from dif-
ferent sides: from liberal theology as well as from some philosophers (cf. e.g. J. MILBANK
and S. ŽIŽEK, 7KH 0RQVWURVLW\RI&KULVW 3DUDGR[ RU 'LDOHFWLF" [Cambridge: MIT Press,
2009]).
219
Cf. BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 191–192; C. WESSEL, “Dogma und Lehre in der Ortho-
doxen Kirche von Byzanz”, in C. ANDRESEN et al., 'LHFKULVWOLFKHQ/HKUHQWZLFNOXQJHQELV
]XP (QGH GHV 6SlWPLWWHODOWHUV, ed. A.M. RITTER (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
2011), 322–329; GLEEDE, 7KH'HYHORSPHQW, 162–181.
220
LOUTH, “Christology in the East”, 149.
221
Cf. CROSS, “Perichoresis”, 69, who names him “an unashamed encyclopedist”, who,
however, combined traditional elements into a new and unique theory (ibid., 120–121).
Further cf. DALEY, *RG9LVLEOH, 223–231.
222
Cf. CROSS, “Perichoresis”, 121. Surprisingly, the Chalcedonian Council is men-
tioned in John’s main work ([SRVLWLRILGHL only once and as if by the way concerning the
Trishagion (JOHN OF DAMASCUS, “Expositio fidei”, 54 (III,10), in 'LH 6FKULIWHQ GHV -R
KDQQHVYRQ'DPDVNRVII, ed. B. KOTTER [Berlin: De Gruyter, 1973], 130,44. – I refer fur-
ther on in the main text to this edition, cf. the English translation JOHN OF DAMASCUS,
“Exposition of the Orthodox Faith”, in 1LFHQHDQG3RVW1LFHQH)DWKHUV, Series II, vol. 9,
ed. PH. SCHAFF, trans. S.D.F. SALMOND [Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2010],
541–781).
the whole previous christological tradition with its different positions, devel-
opments, and outcomes. It means to unwind a complicated bundle, which
necessarily contains contradictions. And moreover, this obstacle is made
much more complicated due to the second problem that John is not precise in
his terms and expressions. Overall, his work is a piece of early scholasticism,
thought in categories of substance and accidents, which shows quite clearly
all aporias and contradictions of the early christological tradition. In this re-
spect, John did not bring a new solution, but formulated the tradition in its
ambiguities anew. 223
In his christological view, as presented in ([SRVLWLR ILGHL, mainly in the
third and fourth part, John tries to unite three different accents. 1) The West-
ern or Antiochene accent on the duality of the natures, which remain un-
changed in the union. With this static element goes hand in hand the stress on
symmetrical relations between the natures. 2) The neo-Chalcedonian accent
on the leading and active role of the divinity as expressed in the concept of
HQK\SRVWDVLV. With this dynamic element and with the stress on the unity of
the person comes the one-sided declivity from the divine to the human as well
as the idea of WKHRVLV. 3) The accent of the uniqueness of Jesus Christ, which
John tries to keep in relation to God as well as in relation to humans. All
three accents hide their specific dangers, which come out in John, as well as
the main problem of impossibility of harmonizing all these ideas into one
consistent whole.
Regarding the first accent, it might be a surprise that John stands closer to
the Western position in general, supported clearly by the dyotheletism of
Maximus Confessor. He repeatedly quotes Leo, moreover not only within the
Chalcedonian frame but also Leo’s most provocative sentence about each na-
ture performing what is proper to it (47 [III,3], 115,74.79). The Chalcedonian
differentiation between natures on one side and the K\SRVWDVLV on the other is
obviously of the highest importance to him and he takes a clear stance against
all kinds of monophysitism. This differentiation is also the base for the FRP
PXQLFDWLR LGLRPDWXP, which, in John’s view, is one of the key points in
Christology. He understands the FRPPXQLFDWLR only in the verbal use, but es-
tablishes clear rules: the properties of one nature cannot be predicated about
223
With this assessment, I differ from CROSS, “Perichoresis”, 120, who considers the
Christology of John to build “a reasonably consistent whole”. In his thorough study, Cross
reads John against the background of the Stoic physics (the relation of natures in Christ as
Stoic kra/sij) and of Neoplatonist metaphysics (the WKHRVLV of the human nature as partici-
pation of the divinity in the humanity). Although he is explicitly interested in the Christ o-
logical predication and in the problem of FRPPXQLFDWLR LGLRPDWXP (ibid., 70), he leaves
aside the previous christological development from Chalcedon to Constantinople III, which
is important to me and my interpretation of John. Nevertheless, these both approaches do
not exclude each other, they can be seen rather complementary. As it will come out, they
both meet in many points.
the other nature. 224 But the properties of both natures can be predicated about
the K\SRVWDVLV, even in a mixed way. With this, John justifies what could be
otherwise considered an unclear way of predication about Christ: “[W]hen we
contemplate the subsistence compounded of the natures we sometimes use
terms that have reference to His double nature, as ‘Christ,’ and ‘at once God
and man,’ and ‘God Incarnate;’ and sometimes those that imply only one of
His natures, as ‘God’ alone, or ‘Son of God,’ and ‘man’ alone, or ‘Son of
Man’; sometimes using names that imply His loftiness and sometimes those
that imply His lowliness.” (48 [III,4], 116,16–117,21) But a predication about
the K\SRVWDVLV cannot be in reward related to both natures, there we must dif-
ferentiate again. If we speak of Christ as of “God who suffers, and as the
Lord of Glory crucified” we do it “not in respect of His being God but in re-
spect of His being at the same time man” (ibid., 117,33–34).
The possibility of FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP results from the mutual inter-
penetration of the natures (ibid., 117,39–40). However, within this strict dif-
ferentiation or even separation of natures and within this static picture of
symmetrical relations, the interpenetration seems to be rather a mere concur-
rence of two natures existing simply next to each other. The unity, proposed
on the verbal level (but at the same time leading to an unclear mixture of ex-
pressions), is not backed up by a real unity on the ontical level of the compo-
site K\SRVWDVLV.225 Both natures keep their properties and this is the basic level
on which Damascenus thinks. 226 Like Leo, he ascribes very often activities
not to the person but to the particular natures. 227
Concerning the conception of nature, there is one new idea that John brought into the dis-
cussion, though it is of little help regarding the real unity. Unlike in the Cappadocian the-
ology where nature was simply to koino,n, John brings the difference between properties
and accidents: nature is “a collection of (universal) properties”, while K\SRVWDVLV is “this
nature along with a unique collection of (universal) accidents”. 228 But obviously, when na-
224
Cf. 48 (III,4), 117,24–27: “When, then, we speak of His divinity we do not ascribe to
it the properties of humanity. For we do not say that His divinity is subject to passion or
created. Nor, again, do we predicate of His flesh or of His humanity the properties of di-
vinity: for we do not say that His flesh or His humanity is uncreated.” English translation
in JOHN OF DAMASCUS, “Exposition of the Orthodox Faith”, 657. Cf. GLEEDE, “Ver-
mischt“, 35–94.
225
CROSS, “Perichoresis”, 108, tries to differentiate the verbal DQWLGRVLV of idioms from
the ontical SHULFKRUHVLV. Although the original aim of FRPPXQLFDWLR LGLRPDWXP was also
ontical (as sharing of properties, not only as their mutual predication), one can do this di s-
tinction. However, it stresses the missing ontical sharing of properties the more, so that the
unity of person remains only on the verbal level.
226
This is confirmed also by John’s explanation of the two wills and energies of Christ,
cf. 58–59 (III,14–15), 137–153. In this context, John works with trichotomical anthropolo-
gy, cf. 50 and 62 (III,6 and 18), 121,38–49 and 157–160.
227
Cf. CROSS, “Perichoresis”, 86.
228
Ibid., 81, cf. 84.
ture is a collection of properties (like life, reason, walking, breathing, will, action or
death), not all can be sharable. Nevertheless, the problem in the verbal-only use of FRPPX
QLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP in the Western style is that there is, in fact, no real sharing of properties,
because the natures just coexist next to each other in the claimed composite K\SRVWDVLV.
At the same time, John shows a certain carelessness and does not distinguish his use of
terms carefully enough when he speaks about the natures in a very material and inappro-
priate way as “parts” (me,roj, ibid., 117,28 and often), as if Christ would be only partly and
not wholly God and man, 229 and when he conceives K\SRVWDVLV even in the trinitarian use
like the Cappadocian tradition as “individual” (a;tomon, ibid., 116,4), which would result in
tritheism.230
But then, he brings the second accent into play, the enhypostatical one-way
dynamics in order to support more unity:
“[A]lthough we hold that the natures of the Lord permeate one another, yet we know that
the permeation springs from the divine nature. For it is that that penetrates and permeates
all things, as it wills, while nothing penetrates it: and it is it, too, that imparts to the flesh
its own peculiar glories, while abiding itself impassible and without participation in the
affections of the flesh.” (51 [III,7] 126,57–61)
Following up the work of both Leontii, John conceives nature as always sub-
sistent in a K\SRVWDVLV. When Logos assumed humanity, it had to be done
enhypostatically:
“God the Word Incarnate, therefore, did not assume the nature that is regarded as an ab-
straction in pure thought (for this is not incarnation, but only an imposture and a figment of
incarnation), nor the nature viewed in species (for He did not assume all the subsistences):
but the nature viewed in the individual, which is identical with that viewed in species. For
He took on Himself the elements of our compound nature, and these not as having an inde-
pendent existence or as being originally an individual, and in this way assumed by Him,
but as existing in His own subsistence. For the subsistence of God the Word in itself b e-
came the subsistence of the flesh, and accordingly ‘the Word became flesh’ clearly without
any change, and likewise the flesh became Word without alteration, and God became
man.” (55 [III,11], 131,8–17)
The price paid for this conception is still the same: diminished humanity,
which contains human nature but as the specific accidents receives the acci-
dents of divinity and is, consequently, divinized. However, this was John’s
intention – not only divinized humanity but, following Leontius of Jerusalem,
divinized flesh (61 [III,17], 155–157).231 It is then a problem for the Dama-
229
John probably saw the danger, but did not find better formulation than “He is then
wholly perfect God, but yet is not simply God: for He is not only God but also man. And
He is also wholly perfect man but not simply man, for He is not only man but also God.”
(51 [III,7], 126,52–54)
230
Cf. CROSS: “Perichoresis”, 108.
231
And it was the main interest for many following centuries. There was no interest in
pure humanity. Only divinized humanity was considered salvific, although not in the form
of divinized flesh (cf. CROSS, “Perichoresis”, 110–119, 121). In John, the divinization of
scene to ascribe to Christ the character of a servant (65 [III,21], 163–164),

some inner development (66 [III,22], 164–165) or human affections (65 and
67 [III,21 and 23], 163–164 and 165–166). Christ’s prayer to the Father un-
derstands him as if praying in our place (68 [III,24], 167–168). The object of
suffering was only Christ’s body (70 [III,26], 169) – and right in this crucial
and controversial point comes out clearly the aporeticity of the whole Chris-
tological tradition, which John thinks here out to the end: “Christ then, since
He is in two natures, suffered and was crucified in the nature that was subject
to passion. For it was in the flesh and not in His divinity that He hung upon
the Cross.” (80 [IV,7], 179,24–26) In the end, John slips again from the unity
to the ascribing of actions to the natures and this results, in a fatal way, as a
breach of the Chalcedonian avcwri,stwj.232 Because the natures are “opposite
counterparts” (ta, evnanti,a fusika,, 91 [IV,18], 214,57) and as such, they can-
not be easily unified.233
All this has an impact also concerning the third accent on Christ’s unique-
ness. Absolutely unique is already the fact of the incarnation, God becoming
human: it is “the only new thing under the Sun” (45 [III,1], 108,44–45). First,
John correctly distinguishes in what lies the uniqueness of Christ:
“In so far as Christ’s natures differ from one another, that is, in the matter of essence, we
hold that Christ unites in Himself two extremes: in respect of His divinity He is connected
with the Father and the Spirit, while in respect of His humanity He is connected with His
mother and all mankind. And in so far as His natures are united, we hold that He differs
from the Father and the Spirit on the one hand, and from the mother and the rest of ma n-
kind on the other. For the natures are united in His subsistence, having one compound sub-
sistence, in which He differs from the Father and the Spirit, and also from the mother and
us.” (47 [III,3], 115,89–116,98).
But in the course of time, he slips to stressing the divinity, which, however,
estranges Christ from humanity and humans:
the flesh of Christ began already with his conception, cf. 87 (IV,14), 198–202: The concep-
tion came through the sense of hearing, the birth then went the usual way as birth of chi l-
dren does, although some said that Mary gave birth through the side of her body. Neverthe-
less, it was painless and the virginity of Mary remained intact her whole life, because after
the birth of Christ she did not consort with a man. “For could it be possible that she, who
had borne God and from experience of the subsequent events had come to know the mira-
cle, should receive the embrace of a man. God forbid! It is not the part of a chaste mind to
think such thoughts, far less to commit such acts.” (ibid., 202,110–113) The body of Christ
was then incorruptible and indestructible, even in death (72 [III,28], 171–172). – To Leon-
tius of Jerusalem cf. UTHEMANN, “Definitionen und Paradigmen”, 115–117, and against it
the struggle of Leontius of Byzantium with the afthartics, cf. GRILLMEIER, &KULVW ,
213–229.
232
Cf. CROSS, “Perichoresis”, 120.
233
Cf. 47 (III,3), 115,70–74.
“Moreover, just as He received in His birth of a virgin superessential essence, so also He

revealed His human energy in a superhuman way, walking with earthly feet on unstable
water, not by turning the water into earth, but by causing it in the superabundant power of
His divinity not to flow away nor yield beneath the weight of material feet. For not in a
merely human way did He do human things: for He was not only man, but also God, and so
even His sufferings brought life and salvation: nor yet did He energise as God, strictly after
the manner of God, for He was not only God, but also man, and so it was by touch and
word and such like that He worked miracles.” (59 [III,15], 151,188–196)
John tries to keep balance, but in fact, he stresses for the humanity as well as
for the divinity the miraculous capacity of Christ.
The theology of John of Damascus was the endpoint of the Eastern devel-
opment. Through it, the Western medieval theology inherited the Eastern tra-
dition with all its unsolved problems and aporias passed on since Chalcedon:
Either there are two self-standing natures as primary agents in a solely formal
unity, or the humanity is considerably diminished in the unity. There are thus
the old Creeds on the one side and on the other the factual development of the
doctrine, which cannot meet the demands of the Creeds. The western theolo-
gy adopts this situation and keeps it in different particular theologies for
many centuries (inclusively the medieval scholasticism and later the
Protestant orthodoxy on both the Lutheran and the Reformed side, cf. below)
until the Enlightenment, in whose perspective, stressing the real and concrete
humanity, this aporetic situation is no longer tenable. 234
7KH:HVWHUQ0HGLHYDO&KULVWRORJ\
In Western Christology, the main influence won subsequently in the 13 th cen-
tury the Christology of Thomas Aquinas and his interpretation of the theory
of subsistence, interpreted later by the nominalists in the terms of a supposi-
tional union (and next to it, as the main soteriological model, the satisfaction
theory of Anselm of Canterbury).235 Due to a different and in fact much less
234
Cf. also the closing remark of DALEY, “Unpacking the Chalcedonian Formula”, 189:
“What Christians since the Middle Ages understand as ‘Chalcedonian’ Christology is, in
fact, Chalcedon as ‘received’ in the following four centuries: a reading of the council’s
cautious formulation through the modifying lenses of several later ancient councils, as well
as through the hermeneutical contributions of late antique philosophy and the interpretation
of a number of influential ancient and medieval theologians.”
235
As to the medieval scholastic theology and its christological conceptions of assump-
tus-homo theory (Abaelard), habitus theory and subsistence theory (Thomas of Aquin),
while the latest is actually a Western form of HQK\SRVWDVLV, cf. WEINANDY, 'RHV *RG
&KDQJH", 83–86 (and my short sketch of Weinandy’s own neo-Thomist conception below,
Ch. 5.4, as well as the conservative neo-Thomist conception of T.J. White, cf. below,
subch. 3); PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 295–296; DALFERTH, &UXFLILHG DQG 5HVXUUHFWHG, 141;
GRAY, “Neuchalkedonismus”, 75(24, 295; J. BAUR, “Lutherische Christologie im Streit
um die neue Bestimmung von Gott und Mensch”, in IDEM, /XWKHU XQG VHLQH NODVVLVFKHQ
(UEHQ7KHRORJLVFKH$XIVlW]HXQG)RUVFKXQJHQ (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1993), 150; R.
complicated term of person, the Western Christology could adopt the concept
of the hypostatic union but it did not need to deal with the Eastern detailed
discussion and controversies. 236 The theory of subsistence is hence very simi-
lar to the concept of HQK\SRVWDVLV, but holds firmly the old Western (Leonine)
accents: it starts with the natures as self-standing agents and keeps their strict
differentiation, the divine nature being the dominating power in the union. 237
The rather divine picture of Christ is stressed all the more. The leading per-
spective is still the perspective of incarnation.
Whereas the concept of the hypostatic union was similar, probably the
biggest difference between East and West lies in GLIIHUHQWVRWHULRORJ\.238 The
East was interested mainly in the divinity and the divinized humanity of
Christ, resulting soteriologically in the concept of WKHRVLV where Christ in his
divinized humanity opened (again) the possibility for the humans to become
divinized as well. In a classical (and – at least from the Western perspective –
slightly controversial) way, this was expressed by Athanasius with his formu-
la: “He became human so that we can become divine.” 239 The main soterio-
logical dynamics in the Eastern conception is thus the anthropological motion
from below upwards; it is a christological elevation of the human nature to-
wards divinity.
This is different in the Western tradition, although it knows these accents
as well. Nevertheless, the West had since its theological beginnings (cf. e.g.
Tertullian or Augustine) a deeper and stronger term of sin and, connected
with the seriousness of sin, more understanding for the human need of escap-
ing from the old, corrupt, sinful humanity, of liberation from guilt and sin and
for salvation in terms of justification and righteousness in front of God; this
SCHWARZ, “Gott ist Mensch. Zur Lehre von der Person Christi bei den Ockhamisten und
bei Luther”, =HLWVFKULIW IU 7KHRORJLHXQG .LUFKH 63 (1966), 293–334. Luther himself re-
fers to medieval theories of the unity of Jesus Christ in the “Disputatio de divinitate et hu-
manitate Christi” (1540), in :$39/II, 93–96: according to him, they are in fact all wrong,
but since they all try to express an “ineffable thing” and have the “right and catholic” i n-
tention (“omnes illi recto et catholicae sapiunt”), this “unsuitable speech” can be “par-
doned” (th. 49 and 50, ibid., 96,1–4). Because “that great is the simplicity and goodness of
the Holy Spirit that when his people speak with false grammar, they speak truth in the
meaning” (th. 61, ibid., 96,31–32).
236
Cf. GRAY, “Neuchalkedonismus”, 75( 24, 294; ESSEN, 'LH)UHLKHLW-HVX, 21–22.
237
Until the Enlightenment, there was actually never and nowhere any comparable in-
terest in the humanity of Christ as it was in his divinity.
238
Cf. GALLUS, “Christologické kořeny”; UTHEMANN, “Zur Rezeption des Tomus Leo-
nis”, 31; IDEM, “Definitionen und Paradigmen”, 54.
239
ATHANASIUS, “Oratio de incarnatione Verbi”, 54,3, in 3* 25, 192B: “Auvto.j ga,r
evnhnqrw,phsen( i[na h`mei/j qewpoihqw/men.”
was the main soteriological question. 240 Although the leading perspective in
the Western Christology was still the perspective of incarnation, there was
also an important accent on Easter, on the suffering of Jesus Christ on the
cross, although Christ served here often only as an example to be piously fol-
lowed in order to live a sanctified life (VDQFWLILFDWLRQ as the aim of human ex-
istence).241 The main soteriological dynamics is therefore God’s condescend-
ence, the theo-logical motion from above down. 242 Its classical expression is
the satisfaction theory of Anselm of Canterbury. 243
0DUWLQ/XWKHU
This is also the background for the theological thinking of Martin Luther.244
He remained with his Christology within the traditional frame but added
240
A good illustration of the East-West difference is the Pelagian controversy, for
which the East had actually only “little understanding”, cf. LOHSE, 6KRUW+LVWRU\RI'RF
WULQH, 118.
241
Cf. ELERT, “Die Theopaschitische Formel”, 7K/=75 (1950), 201–203; P. ALTHAUS,
7KH7KHRORJ\RI0DUWLQ/XWKHU, trans. R.C. SCHULTZ (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966),
182–183; BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 98–99: The humility, which Christ beared in his human-
ity, “entails also an exemplary character in respect to the atoned, because it encompasses
the ‘following’ [Nachfolge] of the ‘humilitas’ of Christ (in the broad sense) as a principle
of ecclesiastic life. The ideal of the ‘imitation of God’, inherited from hellenistic Judaism
(cf. e.g. Eph 5:1–2) has thus on the Western soil not primarily the Platonic shaping of the
‘highest possible similitude to God’ […], but rather always the particular face of the (sin-
less) ‘Christus humilis’.” However, ibid., 114, Beyschlag admits that the Western accent
on the humble Christ was subsequently pushed out by the neo-Chalcedonian christological
dominancy. The following of the humble Christ became “the pattern of the special monas-
tic piety (as though the archetype of the later Christology ‘from below’), whereas the offi-
cial picture of Christ got more and more the imperial character of the world judge.”
242
Cf. BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 98, fn. 171: “Here lies a fundamental christological dif-
ference between East and West […]: Both sides presuppose that the incarnation cannot
entail any substantial diminution of divinity. However, whereas the East has the tendency
to conceive the humiliation of the Logos in the incarnation at the same time as exaltation
of Jesus’ humanity, is the ‘Son’ in the Western conception ‘secundum humanitatem’ i n-
deed ‘minor patre’.” Beyschlag refers here to 6\PEROXP 4XLFXPTXH (“inferior to the Fa-
ther in his humanity”) and to the 7RPXV/HRQLV (“For he has from us the humanity that is
less than the Father; and he has from the Father the Godhead that is equal with the Father”,
7KH$FWVRIWKH&RXQFLORI&KDOFHGRQ, Session II, Nr. 22, 20).
243
Based on the famous hamartiological thesis: “Nondum considerasti, quantum pon-
deris sit peccatum”, ANSELM OF CANTERBURY, &XU'HXVKRPR I, 21 (Darmstadt: Wissen-
schaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1960), 74–75.
244
Regarding the sources of Luther’s own knowledge of the theology of the old church
see CH. MARKSCHIES, “Luther und die altkirchliche Trinitätstheologie”, in /XWKHU ±
]ZLVFKHQGHQ=HLWHQ, ed. CH. MARKSCHIES and M. TROWITZSCH (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck,
1999), 37–85.
some specific accents.245 It was him, who, after a long time of focusing on the
ontology of Christ’s person on one side and his salvific work on the other,
pushed again to the foreground the intense interconnection of Christ’s person
and soteriology.
However, without reducing Christology only to soteriology or only to a function of soteri-
ology.246 This is a tendency, which started already with Melanchthon’s famous thesis “Hoc
est Christum cognoscere, beneficia eius cognoscere.” 247 Today, it is a favored interpreta-
tion among liberal theologians. 248 Against all tendencies to reduce theology only to exis-
tentialism and subjectivism, however, the ontological question regarding the person of J e-
sus Christ must be asked and answered as well. 249 One cannot be satisfied with the work or
effect without knowing who is the person behind it. Just the opposite is the case. In Luther,
the person of Jesus Christ is the base and the key to his work and effects in a fundamental
way.250 Person and work cannot be separated or reduced only to one of it, as it was the case
in the medieval theology, focusing primarily on the mysteries of the person, or later in the
existentialism or liberal theology, focusing on the actual individual benefits and the mean-
ing of one’s individual life only.
It is not by chance that he developed his Christology deeper in the context of

the controversies regarding the Eucharist. 251
In principle, however, Luther follows the traditional church Christology
founded on the Biblical Scriptures and holds firmly its fundamental point:
“Fides catholica haec est, ut unum dominum Christum confiteamur, verum
Deum et hominem.” 252 And Luther accentuates both: not only the divinity of
245
Cf. M. LIENHARD, 0DUWLQ/XWKHUV FKULVWRORJLVFKHV=HXJQLV. (QWZLFNOXQJXQG*UXQ
G]JH VHLQHU &KULVWRORJLH, trans. R. WOLFF (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1980),
14; B. LOHSE, 0DUWLQ/XWKHU
V7KHRORJ\,WV+LVWRULFDODQG6\VWHPDWLF'HYHORSPHQW, trans.
R.A. HARRISVILLE [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999], 228; ALTHAUS, 7KH 7KHRORJ\ RI
0DUWLQ /XWKHU, 193–194. G. EBELING, “Das rechte Unterscheiden. Luthers Anleitung zu
theologischer Urteilskraft“, =7K.(1988), 219–258; IDEM, “Disputatio de homine: Die
theologische Definition des Menschen”, in /XWKHUVWXGLHQ II/3 (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr,
1989), 129–141, stressing Luther’s unprecedentedly precise dealing with the term of the
person of Jesus Christ not as SHUVRQDSULYDWD but rather as SHUVRQDSXEOLFD (ibid., 167).
246
As later e.g. TILLICH, 6\VWHPDWLF7KHRORJ\II, 150, conceives it.
247
PH. MELANCHTHON, /RFL FRPPXQHV , in 0HODQFKWKRQV :HUNH LQ $XVZDKO,
vol. II/1, ed. H. ENGELLAND and R. STUPPERICH (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1978), 20,27–28.
248
Cf. e.g. below the interpretation of Luther by N. Slenczka.
249
Cf. LIENHARD, 0DUWLQ/XWKHUV FKULVWRORJLVFKHV=HXJQLV, 290.
250
Cf. LOHSE, 0DUWLQ/XWKHU
V7KHRORJ\, 223–224.
251
Mainly in “Dass diese Worte ‘Das ist mein Leib’ noch fest stehen wider die
Schwärmgeister”, in :$ 23, 38–320; and “Vom Abendmahl Christi. Bekenntnis”, in :$
26, 241–509. Cf. LIENHARD, 0DUWLQ/XWKHUVFKULVWRORJLVFKHV=HXJQLV, 146–198. BAYER,
“Das Wort ward Fleisch”, 24, says, knowingly exaggerating: “The Christology of Luther is
an auxiliary construction of his doctrine about the Eucharist.”
252
LUTHER, “Disputatio de divinitate et humanitate Christi” (1540), in :$39/II, 93,2–
3. Cf. ALTHAUS, 7KH 7KHRORJ\ RI 0DUWLQ /XWKHU, 186: “The distance between Luther’s
theological situation and task and our own is obvious. The primary christological problem
Christ, not only his divinized humanity but also his real, humble humanity.
Because it is this wonderful unity of divinity and humanity in the one person
of Jesus Christ, in which God himself is present.
“[B]efore Luther, the church and its theologians were primarily concerned with the divine
in Christ. They looked for his divine nature, his divine life, and for the divine significance
of his satisfaction. Luther, however, looks and finds God the Father himself in person in
Jesus Christ.”253
Therefore:
“[N]ot merely the deity or divine nature but God himself who is personally involved. […]
God is this man, and this man is the presence of God for us. Luther thereby transcends the
doctrine of the two natures as inadequate. It says far too little and does not say what is de-
cisive. Luther is ultimately concerned not with the relationship of the divine and the human
nature but with the relationship of the person of Jesus to the person of the Father.”254
The deciding soteriological frame is still the formula of interchange (What

was not assumed, cannot be saved), but Luther saw clearly that what had to
be assumed was not only the humanity as such but the humanity with its suf-
fering under the sin, which leads to death.255
There are thus at least WKUHH VKLIWV or maybe rather strong tendencies,
which can be identified in Luther’s Christology, which Luther himself devel-
oped subsequently, mostly in polemics with his adversaries, more clearly and
explicitly. None of them is finished and consistently held. Luther never in-
tended to create a theological system; his texts arose very often from the need
of actual situation. Sometimes, he used the terms quite carelessly or not pre-
cisely enough; 256 sometimes, he as if oscillates between the traditional doc-
trine and his new accents, depending on the particular situation and text, and
falls into contradictions.257 However, in my opinion, these three shifts are
clear and they describe and explain the new elements of Luther’s Christology.
The first point is a UDGLFDO HPSKDVLV RI WKH FURVV (against the traditional
emphasis of the incarnation), as Luther expresses it already in the Heidelberg
Disputation in 1518: “He deserves to be called a theologian, however, who
and task confronting us is to establish the deity of Christ; this is completely and clearly
decided for Luther by the witness of the Holy Scripture.”
253
ALTHAUS, 7KH7KHRORJ\RI0DUWLQ/XWKHU, 182. Because of this fundamental interest
of Luther in Jesus Christ as the revelation of God, some call his Christology Johannine (cf.
ibid.; LIENHARD, 0DUWLQ/XWKHUVFKULVWRORJLVFKHV=HXJQLV, 174).
254
ALTHAUS, 7KH7KHRORJ\RI0DUWLQ/XWKHU, 191.
255
Cf. LUTHER, “Enarratio 53. capitis Esaiae” (1544), in :$40/III, 715,33; LIENHARD,
0DUWLQ/XWKHUVFKULVWRORJLVFKHV=HXJQLV, 269, 274.
256
Cf. LIENHARD, 0DUWLQ/XWKHUVFKULVWRORJLVFKHV=HXJQLV, 175, 259.
257
Cf. ALTHAUS, 7KH7KHRORJ\RI0DUWLQ/XWKHU, 198.
comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering
and the cross.”258
Nevertheless – and that is the second point – WKHLQFDUQDWLRQ still keeps its
importance, because it is the point of the mysterious union of divinity and
humanity in the person of Jesus Christ. Luther follows here the two-natures
doctrine.259 But against Occamists and Zwingli, who (in accord with the
western tradition) strictly differentiated between the natures – emphasizing
their duality so much that the unity of the person was questionable – Luther
stresses (in an Alexandrine manner, although on the western background 260)
the unity and, overtime, he starts his christological thinking more and more
with the LQGLVVROXEOHXQLW\RIWKHSHUVRQ: “That God became human, that the
Creator and the creature are one and the same person in Christ, exactly this is
the foundation of theology.” 261 It is this unity of divinity and humanity in
Christ, which brings salvation. The incarnation bears thus a fundamental sote-
riological meaning, which is then fulfilled in the cross.
For Occamists, the ontological principle was leading that “uncreated and created being is
to be held strictly separate”: QXOODHVWSURSRUWLRILQLWLHWLQILQWL.262 In Luther’s view, this led
in the Occamists to equivocations in the term “homo” in the first place (and “aequivocatio
est erroris mater”).263 Luther saw here the old problem of equivocational use of “person” in
anthropology and Christology (cf. above in this chapter, subchapter 1.2), which he solved
with the claim of different logic and language in philosophy and theology, because the per-
sonal unity of divinity and humanity in Jesus brings a new reality and with it a new la n-
258
“Disputatio Heidelbergae habita” (1518), th. 20, in :$1, 354,19–20; cf. also ibid.,
th. 21.
259
Cf. LUTHER, “Disputatio de divinitate et humanitate Christi” (1540), in :$ 39/II,
93–96; LIENHARD, 0DUWLQ/XWKHUVFKULVWRORJLVFKHV=HXJQLV, 244.
260
According to LOHSE, 0DUWLQ /XWKHU¶V 7KHRORJ\, 228, was Luther’s theology “alto-
gether of the Alexandrian persuasion”, whereas ALTHAUS, 7KH7KHRORJ\RI0DUWLQ/XWKHU,
197, sees in his theology also Antiochene accents. It is not advisable to try to press L u-
ther’s theology into the scheme of the old schools because one can find in Luther “the ter-
minology and characteristic motifs of different lines of thought and still, one is not able to
assort Luther with only one of these systems” (LIENHARD, 0DUWLQ/XWKHUVFKULVWRORJLVFKHV
=HXJQLV, 136). This is no surprising fact – Luther is simply an original thinker. He obvious-
ly knew all three main traditions (Alexandrine, Antiochene and western) and his own posi-
tion results from an original combination of all.
261
SCHWARZ, “Gott ist Mensch”, 308 (cf. ibid., 307–309), with reference to LUTHER,
“Disputatio de sententia: verbum caro factum est (Joh. 1,14)” (1539), in :$ 39/II, 8,21.
For the development of Luther’s thought in this point cf. SCHWARZ, “Gott ist Mensch”,
345–351; LIENHARD, 0DUWLQ/XWKHUVFKULVWRORJLVFKHV=HXJQLV, 163, 185–186, 278–280.
262
Cf. SCHWARZ, “Gott ist Mensch”, 300.
263
Cf. LUTHER, “Disputatio de sententia: verbum caro factum est (Joh. 1,14)” (1539), in
:$ 39/II, 28,10; SCHWARZ, “Gott ist Mensch”, 302–307; LIENHARD, 0DUWLQ /XWKHUV
FKULVWRORJLVFKHV=HXJQLV, 247–248.
guage: “Certum est tamen, omnia vocabula in Christo novam significationem accipere in
eadem re significata.”264
Regarding Zwingli as the other major adversary, Luther saw him very close to Nestori-
us (who, in Luther’s view, refused the FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP),265 but he criticizes here
actually the fundamental problem of the Western tradition as well: “Because where the
works are appropriated [to one particular nature] and divided, there must be the person di-
vided as well.”266
The third point is, then, a logical consequence of this approach: the under-
standing of FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP as a UHDOFRPPXQLFDWLRQDQGVKDULQJRI
SURSHUWLHVEHWZHHQWKHQDWXUHV. Because the unity of Christ’s person is real,
the sharing of properties must be real too.267 Luther, therefore, criticizes the
verbal-only use.268
In his neo-liberal christological proposal based on the theory of subjectivity, 1 6OHQF]ND –
also with a detailed interpretation of Luther – brings in the opposite extreme: he tries to
think this YHUEDOLWHU use to its end and, hence, to think the divinity of Christ only as a sub-
jective predication. His approach is based on the thesis that the term “God” does not refer
to any reality, that the divinity of Jesus Christ is rather something one attributes to Jesus in
one’s self-understanding; and with this attribution, one constitutes own identity. 269 The
whole christological tradition with the doctrine of FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP is understood
only as a mode of predication, only as mere hermeneutics, as a certain authoritative la n-
guage, which should bring better orientation.270 Step by step, Slenczka loosens and then
splits the language from reality. Everything in Christology is only a matter of language.
And he tries to substantiate this with Luther, who, in some passages of his Great Catechism
and his Lecture on the Letter to Galatians, “tends to say that God does not simply possess
his divinity but that he gets it rather in an implicit act of human predication”. “[T]his act of
predication [Luther] locates in the process of faith.”271 Hence, “Christ is predicated to be
God, when a human awaits everything from him”. The core of Slenczka’s approach is a
subjectivist twist: in the christological predication, one does not describe, what happens LQ
264
18.
265
Cf. M. LUTHER, “Von den Konziliis und Kirchen” (1539), in :$50, 587,31–32.
266
LUTHER, “Vom Abendmahl Christi. Bekenntnis” (1528), in :$ 26, 324,10–11;
LIENHARD, 0DUWLQ/XWKHUVFKULVWRORJLVFKHV=HXJQLV, 174.
267
LUTHER, “Disputatio de divinitate et humanitate Christi” (1540), in :$ 39/II, 8–9:
“propter unitam coniunctionem et unitatem duarum naturarum fit communicatio idioma-
tum”. And IDEM, “Von den Konziliis und Kirchen” (1539), in :$50, 590,3–4: “Because it
has become one person from God and human, therefore the person has idiomata of both
natures.”
268
Primarily in the form of the Zwinglian “alloiosis”, cf. LUTHER, “Vom Abendmahl
Christi”, in :$ 26, 319–320. Cf. LIENHARD, 0DUWLQ /XWKHUV FKULVWRORJLVFKHV =HXJQLV,
253–254.
269
N. SLENCZKA, “Problemgeschichte der Christologie”, in 0DUEXUJHU -DKUEXFK 7KH
RORJLH ;;,,, &KULVWRORJLH, ed. E. GRÄB-SCHMIDT and R. PREUL (Leipzig: EVA, 2011),
61, fn. 4, and 110.
270
Ibid., 67–68.
271
Ibid., 75.
UH in Christ, but through his or her verbal relation to Jesus, one expresses one’s existential
position: “[T]he description of Jesus as God or as the Son of God is an expression of an
existential attitude, within of which the claim ‘this one is the Son of God’ has its mean-
ing.” However, Slenczka knows that with this attempt of a radical verbal-only understand-
ing of FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP (or better: of attribution of divinity) he claims, in fact, – in
a typically neoliberal manner – “to understand Luther differently but anyway better than he
understood himself”.272 This conception should be in his perspective “the fundament and
the starting point of any Christology, which wants to be possible in a relaxed way”.273
Since the Eucharist-controversy with Zwingli, the UHDOLWHU understanding of

the FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP becomes for Luther the “praecipuus [articulus]
in nostra religione”.274 If God became man, then this incomprehensible and
mysterious unity means that what is divine in the person of Christ belongs
now to the human and YLFHYHUVD.275 The result is, on one side, the doctrine of
XELTXLW\ RI &KULVW¶V KXPDQ ERG\, on the other side, the provocative thesis
about the GHDWKRI*RGRQWKHFURVV.
Both theses are logical consequences of a radical conception of the UHDOLWHU
understood FRPPXQLFDWLR LGLRPDWXP. The ubiquity of the human body of
Christ is a result of a divinized humanity in the union – as it is the case in the
old eastern conception of HQK\SRVWDVLV, which Luther follows in his under-
standing of the hypostatic union.276
“No, my fellow, where you put God there you must put humanity as well. They cannot be
separated and divided from each other. It has become one person and it does not dissociate
humanity away, as when master Hans takes off his skirt and puts it away when he goes to
sleep.”277
Every accent lies here on the Chalcedonian avcwri,stwj.278
272
Ibid., 76.
273
Ibid., 59–60. A similar interpretation is to find in CH. DANZ, (LQIKUXQJLQGLH7KH
RORJLH0DUWLQ/XWKHUV (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2013).
274
LUTHER, “Enarratio 53. capitis Esaiae” (1544), in :$40/III, 704,8; IDEM, “Disputa-
tio de divinitate et humanitate Christi” (1540), in :$39/II, 93,5. Cf. also LIENHARD, 0DU
WLQ/XWKHUVFKULVWRORJLVFKHV=HXJQLV, 178, 185.
275
15: “Est res incomprehensibilis, sicut etiam ipsi angeli non possint capere et
comprehendere, quod duae naturae in una persona unitae sunt.”
276
Cf. LIENHARD, 0DUWLQ /XWKHUV FKULVWRORJLVFKHV =HXJQLV, 172–179; ALTHAUS, 7KH
7KHRORJ\ RI 0DUWLQ /XWKHU, 398–399; LOHSE, 0DUWLQ /XWKHU¶V 7KHRORJ\, 230–231; J.
BAUR, “Ubiquität”, in &UHDWRU HVW FUHDWXUD /XWKHUV &KULVWRORJLH DOV /HKUH YRQ GHU ,GL
RPHQNRPPXQLNDWLRQ, ed. O. BAYER and B. GLEEDE (Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 2007),
186–301. LIENHARD, 0DUWLQ /XWKHUV FKULVWRORJLVFKHV =HXJQLV, 259, asks, if this radical
conception does not lead, in fact, to docetism. In opposition to this meaning, the Finnish
Luther-scholars stressed the importance of WKHRVLV for Luther, cf. LOHSE, 0DUWLQ/XWKHU¶V
7KHRORJ\, 221 (here also further literature to this problem).
277
LUTHER, “Vom Abendmahl Christi. Bekenntnis”, in :$26, 333,6–10.
278
Cf. LIENHARD, 0DUWLQ/XWKHUVFKULVWRORJLVFKHV=HXJQLV, 185.
However, at the same time, Luther goes beyond it, because next to this
figure, which will be later based on the so-called JHQXV PDLHVWDWLFXP, he
knows in his conception of a mutual FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP also the oppo-
site case, the (later so-called) JHQXVWDSHLQRWLFRQ, in which the divine nature
gets the humble attributes of the humanity. With this consequence, Luther is
the first one to break with the old and until then ruling Platonic axioma of di-
vine apathy and impassibility (and, as we will see below, he remains alone in
this for another three hundred years, at least).279 Through the radical concep-
tion of a UHDOLWHU understood FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP Luther was brought to
sentences, which became known: “If I would believe that only the human na-
ture suffered for me, then Christ would be a bad Messiah to me, he himself
would rather need a Messiah.” 280 And:
“We Christians must know that if God is not with us on the scales und does not give his
weight, then we sink with our pan down. I want to say: If it is not true that God died for us
but rather only a human, then we are lost. But if the death of God and the death God lies in
the pan, then he sinks down, and we go up like a light empty pan. […] He could not sit in
the pan, he had to become a human like us so that we can say: God died, God’s sufferings,
God’s blood, God’s death. Because God in his nature cannot die. But where God and hu-
man are unified in one person, then it is truly said: God dies, when the human dies who is
one thing or one person with God.” 281
With these thoughts, Luther admits a change in the divinity. He confirms this
later also explicitly when he gives an answer to the objection that God cannot
be crucified nor can he suffer:
“I know, until he became human he did not suffer from eternity, but since he became hu-
man, he is passible. He was not human from eternity, but since he was conceived from the
Holy Spirit, i.e., born from the virgin, God and man became one person. Therefore, the
same is predicated of God and human. Here, a personal union was made. Here, humanity
and divinity merge [gehets ineinander]. The unity is what holds it together. I confess two
natures, but they cannot be separated. This is achieved by the unity, which is a bigger and
more firm conjunction than the conjunction of soul and body, because they will separate,
but this conjunction, the immortal divine nature and the mortal human nature will never
279
It is, therefore, not true that Luther would make an end to this long Christian tradi-
tion, as states LIENHARD, 0DUWLQ/XWKHUVFKULVWRORJLVFKHV=HXJQLV, 289–290. Already the
lutheran orthodoxy turned to the conception of the impassible God again, cf. below, subch.
2.6 and Ch. 7.2.2.
280
LUTHER, “Vom Abendmahl Christi. Bekenntnis” (1528), in :$26, 320,10–13.
281
LUTHER, “Von den Konziliis und Kirchen” (1539), in :$50, 590,11–22. This and
the previous quotation are both quoted in the “Formula of Concord”, Solida declaratio
VIII, in 'LH%HNHQQWQLVVFKULIWHQGHU(YDQJHOLVFK/XWKHULVFKHQ.LUFKH, 4th ed. (Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1959), 1029–1031.
separate, but are united in one person. Therefore, I say: Christus, the impassible Son of
God, God and human, was crucified under Pontius Pilate.” 282
Incarnation means something new even for God himself. 283

This conception brings a shift in the understanding of FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLR
PDWXP. Luther knows very well the old rules set already by John of Damas-
cus that the attributes of natures can be predicated both about the person but
not about the opposite nature. The FRPPXQLFDWLR is valid for the FRQFUHWD of
the person, not for the DEVWUDFWD of the natures. This rule, which the Lutheran
orthodoxy will reestablish again, is changed in Luther. After the incarnation,
it is possible to predicate the properties of one nature WKURXJK WKH SHUVRQDO
XQLW\ about the other nature as well. With this, Luther breaks an old barrier,
which should prevent God from suffering. Now, it is possible to say – not on-
ly YHUEDOLWHU but UHDOLWHU: “The man Jesus created the world.” And: “In Christ,
God died on the cross.”284 Now, the rule says: “It is thus right that what I say
about human Christ I say about God as well: that he suffered and was cruci-
fied.”285
In the late Luther, the doctrine of FRPPXQLFDWLR LGLRPDWXP becomes the
very heart of his Christology. It is the anchor and fundament for his soteriol-
ogy, where Luther brings another famous figure into play: the DGPLUDELOH
FRPPHUFLXP, the admirable exchange between Christ and humans. 286
It is to say explicitly that in Luther, FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP is not the same as the DGPL
UDELOHFRPPHUFLXP, although the latter firmly roots in the first and it is the anchor of Lu-
ther’s soteriology, which is grounded not in the work but rather in the person of Christ.
Nevertheless, both figures are to be distinguished. &RPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP deals with the
relationship of the natures in Christ, while DGPLUDELOH FRPPHUFLXP is a metaphor of the
relation of Christ to us, grounded firmly in the unity of divinity and humanity in Christ.
&RPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP belongs to the ontological Christology, DGPLUDELOHFRPPHUFLXP
to soteriology. 287 It is necessary to differentiate carefully the christological dimension of
282
LUTHER, “Disputatio de divinitate et humanitate Christi” (1540), in :$ 39/II,
101,24–102,6.
283
Cf. BAYER, “Das Wort ward Fleisch”, 22; BAUR, “Ubiquität”, 219–220.
284
LIENHARD, 0DUWLQ/XWKHUVFKULVWRORJLVFKHV=HXJQLV, 257.
285
LUTHER, “Disputatio de divinitate et humanitate Christi” (1540), in :$ 39/II, 101,
22–23. Cf. SCHWARZ, “Gott ist Mensch”, 309–313.
286
Cf. M. LUTHER, “Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen”, in :$ 7, 25,28–26,1,
where Luther metaphorically describes the DGPLUDELOHFRPPHUFLXP:Christ and the human
soul become one body (cf. LOHSE, 0DUWLQ/XWKHU¶V7KHRORJ\, 225–228).
287
This differentiation is not properly done in J.A. STEIGER, “Die communicatio idio-
matum als Achse und Motor der Theologie Luthers. Der ‘fröhliche Wechsel’ als hermeneu-
tischer Schlüssel zu Abendmahlslehre, Anthropologie, Seelsorge, Naturtheologie, Rhetorik
und Humor”, 1HXH =HLWVFKULIW IU 6\VWHPDWLVFKH 7KHRORJLH 38 (1996), 1–28. Already the
title signifies that Steiger mixes both theological figures together (and with it, he, in fact,
supports the above-mentioned reduction of Christology to soteriology): “The communica-
H[WUD QRV in Christ (FRPPXQLFDWLR LGLRPDWXP) and the soteriological dimension of SUR
QRELV of Christ (DGPLUDELOH FRPPHUFLXP). Therefore, it can be said (with a slight shift in
the meaning of the admirable exchange 288) that the christological FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP
is in itself the realization of the DGPLUDELOH FRPPHUFLXP between God and humans. But
this cannot be said YLFH YHUVD, as if DGPLUDELOH FRPPHUFLXP between Christ and humans
would be the realization of FRPPXQLFDWLR LGLRPDWXP, as Steiger does it. The relation be-
tween Christ and humans is not the same as the relation of divinity and humanity in Christ.
Soteriology is not the whole of Christology, although the first is firmly rooted in the latter.
To blur this distinction would mean, in the end, either to replace Christology with a direct
divine-human relation as liberal theology does it, or to see in Christ merely God, which
would be a repetition of the old but the false tendency to stress only the divinity of Christ.
Nevertheless, exactly this will be the result of the further development in the Lutheran or-
thodoxy.
However, as already mentioned above, Luther was no systematic theologian.

Neither is he consistent in his speech. Sometimes, he makes a few steps back
to the traditional position of divine apathy:
“Well, the divinity cannot suffer or die, you shall say. That is true. Nevertheless, because
divinity and humanity are in Christ one person, the Scripture, because of this personal uni-
ty, gives also to the divinity what happens to the humanity, and the other way round. This
is therefore also true. Hence, you shall also say this: The person (meaning Christ) suffers
and dies. Now, the person is the true God, therefore, it is correct to say: The son of God
suffers. Thus, although one part (so to speak), sc. the divinity, does not suffer, neverthe-
less, the person, which is God, suffers in the other part, sc. in the humanity.”289
This is the traditional position, which since Constantinople II says that Christ
suffered only in the flesh (peponqe,nai sarki,, cf. above, subch. 2.1).290 And
even worse: Luther can sometimes say sentences, which obviously contradict
to his position quoted above because now, he seems to split the natures. In his
struggle in Gethsemane, Christ
“had the feeling as if he would be abandoned by God. Yet indeed, he was abandoned by
God. Not that divinity would be separated from the humanity (because divinity and human-
ity in this person, which is Christ, the son of God and of Mary, are united in a way, in
which they cannot be separated or parted in eternity), but rather the divinity constricted and
hid so that it seemed (and whoever reads it would say): Here is no God but only a human,
moreover a grief-stricken and despondent human. The humanity was left alone, and the
tion with God not only takes place in faith, but faith LV the communicatio idiomatum be-
tween God and human” (ibid., 9).
288
Cf. BAUR, “Lutherische Christologie”, 149.
289
LUTHER, “Vom Abendmahl Christi. Bekenntnis”, in :$26, 321,4–12.
290
I do not agree with SCHWARZ, “Gott ist Mensch”, 313, that the addition of “secun-
dum divinitatem” or “secundum humanitatem” “should not limit the FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPD
WXP in any way”.
devil had a free access to Christ and the divinity constricted its power and let the humanity
struggle alone.”291
One can only guess what the reason of such inconsistencies is. Luther knows
that natures must remain distinct, even in the unity. Otherwise, there would
be the danger of a mixture. However, exactly this tendency is obvious in Lu-
ther – I only remind the above-quoted passage from his Disputatio de divini-
tate et humanitate Christi: “Here, humanity and divinity merge [orig.: gehets
ineinander].”292 – so that he has to oppose it. However, he does it clumsily.293
On the other hand, it is a necessary consequence of a radical conception of
UHDOLWHU understanding of FRPPXQLFDWLR LGLRPDWXP. This conception as well
leads into apories, which can be clearly shown, so that neither line of thought
brings a satisfying solution of the unity of divinity and humanity in Christ.
Questions arise regarding both radical endings of this conception and mainly
regarding their coexistence.
The question in connection with the XELTXLW\RIWKHKXPDQQDWXUH of Christ
was already mentioned: is an omnipresent humanity still human? Is not this a
substantial change, which, in the end, underestimates the real humanity, be-
cause the omnipresent humanity is rather divine? 294
A similar question arises regarding the GHDWKRI*RG: how can God die and
remain divine at the same time? Is God, who dies, the same as before? I.e.,
can he keep his divine identity and the same divinity?
The most serious problem is, however, the necessary conclusion of this
conception of FRPPXQLFDWLR LGLRPDWXP that both these radical endings – in
291
M. LUTHER, “Predigten des Jahres 1537“, Nr. 40, in :$ 45, 239,32. Cf. LOHSE,
0DUWLQ/XWKHU¶V7KHRORJ\, 229–230; ALTHAUS, 7KH7KHRORJ\RI0DUWLQ/XWKHU, 198, refers
to a quotation from another, earlier sermon from 1525: “Christus in cruce pendens non
sentit divinitatem, sed ut purus homo patitur” (M. LUTHER, “Predigten des Jahres 1525”,
Nr. 12, in :$17/I, 72,32–33).
292
Above, fn. 282.
293
Cf. LIENHARD, 0DUWLQ /XWKHUV FKULVWRORJLVFKHV =HXJQLV, 175 and 259, who brings
examples of Luthers careless speach and asks, if this radical conception does not lead “to a
certain monophysitism”. His suspicion is correct, but assorted to another heresy: not
monophysitism (which would mean a reduction of Christ to only one nature, in the tradi-
tion actually always to the divine one) but rather Euthychianism, which conceived the uni-
ty as a mixture of divinity and humanity, producing a third substance. Ibid., 236–237,
Lienhard mentions an interesting detail that while Luther in his “Von den Konziliis und
Kirchen” criticized heavily Nestorius, he did not recognize the problematic tendency of
Euthyches’ conception (cf. LUTHER, “Von den Konziliis und Kirchen”, in :$ 50, 592–
606). SCHLINK, “Die Christologie von Chalcedon im ökumenischen Gespräch”, 85, states
that Luther breaks Chalcedon in this point: “The objection against Luther is not illegitimate
that he, despite him holding firmly the Chalcedonense, went with his doctrine of the FRP
PXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP in fact beyond its utterances.”
294
This was criticized already by Luther’s adversaries Oecolampad and Zwingli, cf.
LIENHARD, 0DUWLQ/XWKHUVFKULVWRORJLVFKHV=HXJQLV, 161, 171, 175, 259, 276.
later terms: JHQXV PDLHVWDWLFXP on one side and JHQXV WDSHLQRWLFRQ on the
other –would have to coexist at the same time. 295 Herewith, the old aporia of
two sets of opposite properties at once returns.296 But opposite properties ex-
clude one another. Subsequently, the proclaimed unity falls apart into the du-
ality of the natures again. The FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP destroys itself in this
way. What could remain would be merely a Christology of paradoxes. 297
As we have seen, Luther is not clear enough, he oscillates often between
both poles and sometimes falls even into contradiction to his own theses.
Nevertheless, a little help could be the differentiation of two VWDWXV, which
was – based on Phil 2:6–9 – invented after Luther and became a firm part of
traditional protestant Christology: VWDWXV H[LQDQLWLRQLV and VWDWXV H[DOWD
WLRQLV.298 This distinction, which goes partly beyond Luther, is, nevertheless,
supported in Luther himself by the fact that he develops the doctrine of ubiq-
uity in connection with the Eucharist. 299 And Eucharist is an act, which hap-
pens SRVW &KULVWXP FUXFLIL[XP HW UHVXUUHFWXP. Ubiquity would be, then, ra-
ther a matter of VWDWXVH[DOWDWLRQLV, of the risen Christ, while the death of God
in Christ would concern the VWDWXVH[LQDQLWLRQLV, i.e., the time of the earthly
Jesus understood in terms of divine “evacuation” (ke,nwsij).300 A UHDOLWHU un-
derstood FRPPXQLFDWLR LGLRPDWXP could not be held in both of its radical
endings at the same time. The two VWDWXV would interpret it as a sequence of
the two JHQHUD: LQVWDWXH[LQDQLWLRQLV the divinity receives the human attrib-
utes (JHQXV WDSHLQRWLFRQ), while LQ VWDWX H[DOWDWLRQLV the humanity receives
YLFH YHUVD the divine attributes (JHQXV PDLHVWDWLFXP). Neither this particular
solution, however, erases the critical questions of both radical consequences
of this conception. This proves again that a satisfying solution would require
295
Cf. ALTHAUS, 7KH 7KHRORJ\ RI 0DUWLQ /XWKHU, 197; LIENHARD, 0DUWLQ /XWKHUV
FKULVWRORJLVFKHV=HXJQLV, 179.
296
Cf. above in this chapter, fn. 131 and 132. ALTHAUS, 7KH 7KHRORJ\ RI 0DUWLQ /X
WKHU, 196.
297
298
First time in J. WIGAND, 'H FRPPXQLFDWLRQH LGLRPDWXP (Basileae, 1568), 158:
“Nam GXSOH[ VWDWXV in Christo, dum in terris versari voluit, considerandues est: unus
quidem humiliationis, alter vero glorificationis.” Cf. TH. MAHLMANN, 'DV QHXH 'RJPD
GHUOXWKHULVFKHQ&KULVWRORJLH (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1969), 244, fn. 26.
299
However, as LIENHARD, 0DUWLQ /XWKHUV FKULVWRORJLVFKHV =HXJQLV, 174, points out,
the glorification of the human nature of Christ happens already with the incarnation (cf. M.
LUTHER, “Von den letzten Worten Davids”, in :$54, 49, 33–34). The ubiquity should be,
therefore, valid also for the earthly Jesus. Nevertheless, Luther himself says that although
the humanity of Jesus Christ took part on the divine attributes due to the UHDOLWHUFRPPXQL
FDWLR LGLRPDWXP, it hid its glorification until the resurrection and used it only when he
wanted to (cf. ibid., 50,8; FC SD VIII, in %6/., 1025,30–33).
300
This is a term, which Luther knows very well, but uses it in another meaning than
the kenotics later, cf. LOHSE, 0DUWLQ/XWKHU¶V7KHRORJ\, 229–230; ALTHAUS, 7KH7KHROR
J\RI0DUWLQ/XWKHU, 195–198.
a more dynamic term of God and a different definition of humanity (cf. be-
low, Ch. 5 and 6).
Overall, Luther’s Christology is a kind of unrestrained thinking, which
brought some fresh air into the traditional system, broke some rules and
grasped the topic from a different perspective. At the same time, Luther hi m-
self did not build a system. On the contrary, there are some substantial con-
tradictions in his thinking. 301 From a wider perspective, it is to say that in his
attempt at a new approach to Christology, he was left quite alone. Regarding
Christology (compared to soteriology and sacramentology), he had no real
followers: already since the Formula of Concord, which tried to keep at least
some of Luther’s provocative thoughts, it is obvious, how the emerging Lu-
theran orthodoxy took many steps back towards a certain scholasticism and to
the old solutions with their aporias.
7KH3URWHVWDQW2UWKRGR[\
The Formula of Concord (Solida declaratio VIII: De persona Christi) tries to
keep at least some of Luther’s specific emphases. It stresses the unity of the
person of Christ, the UHDOLWHU understanding of FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP and,
next to the JHQXVPDLHVWDWLFXP and to the stress on the ubiquity of the human
nature of Christ, it also quotes the above-mentioned of Luther’s texts con-
cerning the death of Jesus Christ. 302 However, at the same time, it balances
these emphases by taking some steps back to positions known from the previ-
ous tradition.
Much stronger than the emphasis on the unity of the person is again the
difference of natures in Christ, supported by the perspective of incarnation,
which becomes leading again. 303 At this point, FC refers to the Council of
Chalcedon, but instead of the Creed it quotes the famous “agit enim” sentence
from Leo’s Tomus, which is its interpretation-pattern for the understanding of
Chalcedonense.304 Herewith, FC turns back to the traditional western perspec-
tive on the two natures, supported moreover with an emphasis on “essential
301
302
Cf. FC, SD VIII, in %6/., 1017–1049.
303
FC mentions the council of Chalcedon in context with the Cappadocian heritage of
the conception of unity of the person of Christ as a mixture (quoting the typical ancient
examples of body and soul and of iron and fire), trying to differentiate better. Here, FC
comes to a typical formulation: “For it is a far different, more sublime, and [altogether]
ineffable communion and union between the divine and the human nature in the person of
Christ, on account of which union and communion God is man and man is God, yet neither
the natures nor their properties are thereby intermingled, but each nature retains its essence
and properties.” (Ibid., 1023, 22–31; cf. ibid., 1022–1023).
304
Ibid., 1031, 37–39.
properties” of each nature, which cannot be changed or taken over by the oth-
er nature so that they, therefore, simply exist next to each other.305
And even more: FC underlines the immutability of the divine nature, 306
which – again: in accord with the tradition – assumed the human nature, yet,
in the end,
“there is and remains in Christ only one divine omnipotence, power, majesty, and glory,
which is peculiar to the divine nature alone; but it shines, manifests, and exercises itself
fully, yet voluntarily, in, with, and through the assumed, exalted human nature in
Christ”.307
With this typically enhypostatical emphasis on the divinized humanity, the

JHQXV WDSHLQRWLFRQ is made impossible. 308 The communication of idioms
seems to be a one-way affair, as it was traditionally the case in the concept of
HQK\SRVWDVLV. Therefore, next to the quotes of Luther, who speaks about the
death of God, FC speaks only about the death of the Son, and only in his hu-
manity:
“On account of this personal union, which cannot be thought of nor exist without such a
true communion of the natures, not the mere human nature, whose property it is to suffer
and die, has suffered for the sins of the world, but the Son of God Himself truly suffered,
however, according to the assumed human nature, and (in accordance with our simple
Christian faith) [as our Apostles’ Creed testifies] truly died, although the divine nature can
neither suffer nor die.” 309
The properties of both natures can be attributed to the person, yet the FC dif-
ferentiates strictly, what belongs to which nature. 310
With all these little steps back, the FC started, what was developed and
brought to the end in the Lutheran orthodoxy. Here, the UHDOLWHU understood
FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP became the fundamental article, moreover a kind of
“a new dogma”. 311 However, what sounds brave and radical turns out in its
realization to be rather a big step back towards the old schemes. Still, the or-
305
Ibid., 1020, 4–31; 1021, 1–6. Cf. SCHMID, 'LH'RJPDWLN, 234, referring to the origin
of this doctrine in the Lutheran orthodoxy in M. Chemnitz’s 'HGXDEXVQDWXULV (1580).
306
Ibid., 1032, 10.
307
Ibid., 1039, 4–11.
308
Ibid., 1021, 7–25, confirming explicitely that the glorification of human nature hap-
pened already with the incarnation. However, cf. ibid., 1038, 37–39: the use of divine at-
tributes is “concealed and withheld [for the greater part] at the time of the humiliation“.
309
Ibid., 1023, 32–44.
310
Ibid., 1028, 14–30.
311
Cf. MAHLMANN, 'DV QHXH 'RJPD, 245, who tries to substantiate the important
christological insight of Luther that because of the UHDOLWHU understanding of the FRPPXQL
FDWLRLGLRPDWXP, Christology should not be “a two-natures doctrine but rather a unity-of-
person doctrine”. Mahlmann sees this goal fulfilled in the Christology of the Lutheran or-
thodoxy.
thodox theologians were very well acquainted with the theology of the early
church.
The orthodoxy operates again with the typically western differentiation of
two natures: the unity is constructed from the two natures.312 The human na-
ture of Christ is anhypostatic, 313 passively taken out from a mass of common
human nature and – obviously in an Aristotelian u`lh-morfh-frame – united
with the divinity in the person of Logos who is the person-building and active
principle.314 This is actually HQK\SRVWDVLVin the western view: not retrospec-
tively analyzed in theory but rather constructed from the two natures.315 The
unity (or synthesis 316) of unconfused natures and their proprieties is and re-
mains a mystery: 317 the Scripture teaches so but does not explain how the mi-
raculous unity is constituted. Therefore – here obviously referring indirectly
to the Creed of Chalcedon and its negative formulas – one has to be satisfied
only with the negative refusal of false possibilities, because it is easier to say
who Christ is not than who he is.318
Alike the concept of HQK\SRVWDVLV in Leontius of Jerusalem, this concep-
tion has similar consequences for the humanity of Christ in the Lutheran-
orthodox theology as well: Christ was genuinely without sin (not in an impu-
tative way as other people) and his body and soul had a special excellency.
His body was beautiful and genuinely immortal – mortal only by external
reasons, and after its death, it remained uncorrupted (in old terms: avqanasi,a
and avfqarsi,a).319
The Lutheran orthodoxy developed the mystery of the unity of the two na-
tures into a model, which seems to be a three-step sequence or scheme. The
fundamental frame builds FRPPXQLRQDWXUDUXP, from which follows the doc-
312
Cf. SCHMID, 'LH'RJPDWLN, 211. Further on, I follow this classical compedium. Cf.
also DALFERTH, &UXFLILHGDQG5HVXUUHFWHG, 142–148; PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 298–302.
313
This is a shift compared to Leontius of Jerusalem, cf. SCHMID, 'LH'RJPDWLN, 217.
314
Ibid., 212–213.
315
Cf. ibid., 217, with the named particular steps, which – despite of their logical se-
quencing – should happen at the same time (orig. in J. GERHARD, /RFLWKHRORJLFL III, 421):
the Holy Spirit separated and sanctificated the body from the mass of humanity, formed it,
and breathed in the soul; this formed and soulful body was then assumed into the subsist-
ence of the Logos and this formed, soulful and subsistent person was then conceived LQ
XWHURYLUJLQLV. Cf. ibid., 220 (M. CHEMNITZ, 'HGXDEXVQDWXULV, 23): the Logos increated
into himself his own humanity.
316
Ibid., 221. However, here (J. GERHARD, /RFL WKHRORJLFL III, 428) better than in the
Damscene: “Not a part with another part, but rather the whole Logos is united with the
whole body and the whole body with the whole Logos.” After the incarnation, there is no
Logos H[WUDFDUQHP and no body H[WUD/RJRQ (against the so-called Extra Calvinisticum).
317
Ibid., 222 (J. GERHARD, /RFLWKHRORJLFL III, 422, following Luther): “etiam angelo-
rum captum transcendens”, the unity is called a “me,ga musth,rion”.
318
Ibid., 213–214 and 222 (J. GERHARD, /RFLWKHRORJLFL III, 422).
319
Ibid., 218.
trine of SURSRVLWLRQHV SHUVRQDOHV and finally the doctrine of FRPPXQLFDWLR

LGLRPDWXP, which is the final point of the whole framework. However, as we
will see, after a courageous start, vis-à-vis the difficult points, this doctrine
turns back to the old schemes and their aporias.
The stress on the real exchange plays an important role already in the first
step (FRPPXQLR QDWXUDUXP): the divine nature appropriates to itself the hu-
man nature, the divine nature actively permeates the human nature (like fire
the iron or soul the body). 320 However, it is obvious, that it is a RQHZD\DI
IDLU: the divine nature is active, the human nature is passive. In an enhypo-
statical frame, this is the only possible motion. The ontical relation of natures
is asymmetrical. Already this is a noticeable step back from Luther’s concep-
tion.
On the contrary, the possibility of predication of personal appellations
(SURSRVLWLRQHVSHUVRQDOHV), which is hereby opened, can be symmetrical. The
SHUVRQDO appellation of one nature can be predicated about the other nature
(not only about the unifying person). “God is man” and “man is God” – in the
case of Jesus Christ, both predications are valid and not only YHUEDOLWHU as a
kind of a metaphor or V\QHNGRFKH but also UHDOLWHU, because in the person of
Jesus Christ, God really is man (without ceasing to be God). 321
The final point is, then, the FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP. Here, after both pre-
vious steps, one would expect a deep expression of the unity and intense mu-
tual relations of the natures, following the direction Luther had set. Yet the
opposite is the case: the differentiation of the natures and their duality wins.
This is clear to see already in both initial rules for the FRPPXLFDWLRLGLRPD
WXP, which are quite cautious. First, any property of any of the natures can be
predicated about the person – this is nothing new, to the contrary, this is the
oldest rule of the verbal-only use of FRPPXQLFDWLR LGLRPDWXP. And second,
no nature can act alone, the other nature always participates in it as well.322
There is obviously a very dualistic way of thinking in the old Leonine way
where the unity remains only proclaimed. This is confirmed in the differentia-
tion of three JHQHUD of FRPPXQLFDWLR LGLRPDWXP, which follows from both
rules: JHQXVLGLRPDWLFXP as the possibility of predication of different proper-
ties for the one person of Christ. *HQXV PDLHVWDWLFXP as the real sharing of
the divine properties to the human nature. And JHQXVDSRWHOHVPDWLFXP stress-
ing the soteriological dimension, i.e., the mutual work of both the divine and
the human nature for the salvation of humans.
320
Ibid., 224.
321
Ibid., 225, with the precise definition of SURSRVLWLRQHVSHUVRQDOHV: “eiusmodi enunti-
ationes, in quibus concretum unius naturae (unitae) praedicatur de concreto alterius nat u-
rae”. Cf. ibid., 232–233.
322
Ibid., 226.
All three JHQHUD seem to mark three different modes of real communica-
tion. However, in a closer view, this is not the case. Therefore, I propose to
differentiate very carefully, what each JHQXV expresses. It is to say that JHQXV
LGLRPDWLFXP only repeats the old rule of the YHUEDOLWHU predication, which
brings the possibility of symmetrical statements. This genus thus marks only
the possibility of what can be said about Jesus Christ. It is the same as the
conception of FRPPXQLFDWLR LGLRPDWXP in John of Damascus: all properties
of both natures can be predicated about the person of Christ but not about the
other nature. We can, therefore, say: “The human Jesus Christ is almighty”,
or: “In Jesus Christ, God died.” But we cannot say: “Humanity is almighty”,
neither “Divinity died” because both natures preserve and keep their essential
properties.323 As a sole mode of predication, JHQXV LGLRPDWLFXP repeats the
old aporias; it predicates about Jesus Christ two sets of contrary properties at
the same time. However, this possibility of a symmetrical predication cannot
be realized without contradictions or, as it was the case in the tradition, with-
out diminishing one of the natures – in this case of the human one.324
Therefore, the second genus, JHQXV PDLHVWDWLFXP, brings the asymmetry
and unlike the previous genus, it marks the ontic level. 325 Repeating what was
already constituted by the FRPPXQLRQDWXUDUXP, only on the level of proper-
ties, this JHQXV states the one-way real communication of properties from the
active divine nature to the passive human nature. Moreover, with the addi-
tional reason – known very well also from the old tradition and reestablishing
the Platonic concept of God with his immutability and apathy – that the di-
vine nature cannot change and thus cannot accept any new properties. 326 That
is why there is in this conception of FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP no real PXWXDO
exchange of properties but rather only divinization of the human nature, i.e.,
the enhypostatical WKHRVLV. (One of the consequences of this thought in Luther
was the ubiquity of the human nature of Christ and the Lutheran orthodoxy
holds this locus still firmly and defends it against the Reformed wing. 327) This
means, however, that this solution iterates also the old problems: by the divi-
nization, the human nature is, in fact, diminished in its humanity, and it is
substantially changed so that the question arises, whether this divinized hu-
manity, substantially different from all others, is still true humanity common
to all people. Nevertheless, the JHQXV PDLHVWDWLFXP is the dominating genus
because it describes the ontology of the person of Christ.
323
Ibid., 227–228., cf. 236–237.
324
Cf. above, subchapter 2.2; and also, DALFERTH, &UXFLILHG DQG 5HVXUUHFWHG, 147:
The JHQXV LGLRPDWLFXP “formulates the task but offers no solution. The JHQXV PDLHVWDWL
FXP, on the other hand, goes a step further.”
325
Cf. SCHMID, 'LH'RJPDWLN, 239 (A. QUENSTEDT, 7KHRORJLDGLGDFWLFRSROHPLFD III,
1685, 159): “Reciprocatio, quae in primo genere locum habet, in hoc genere non datur.”
326
Ibid., 229.
327
Cf. ibid., 239–243.
The third genus, JHQXVDSRWHOHVPDWLFXP, concerns soteriology and claims,

in harmony with Anselm’s satisfaction theory, that salvation could be brought
only through the work of Christ, in whom the divine and the human nature
always cooperate together – the work of only one nature would not be
enough. 328 The testing point of this cooperation, however, is the cross: the
suffering and the death of Jesus Christ. Here, it comes out that the cross
proves to be the insurmountable hurdle for this conception. While the human
nature suffers and dies, the divine nature can neither suffer nor die, however,
it still should be indivisibly united with the humanity in order to do this work
also together.329 This is impossible in the case of death: either both natures
really work together – and then the divine dies as well, as Luther dared to
say, or, at least at this point, the divine cannot go with the human nature,
which would, however, lead to docetism. The traditional aporia of the im-
passible God on the cross returns.
Overall, the final picture is an aporetical mixture. The position of Lutheran
orthodoxy could not keep the direction set by Luther, but it takes rather many
steps back and returns, in fact, to Constantinople II (divine immutability and
apathy, human nature enhypostatical in the divine, suffering of Christ only in
the flesh),330 however, read through Leo’s Tome. 331 The aporias are deeper
than ever: in the name of unity, the human nature is divinized and hence d i-
minished in its true humanity. And at the same time, in the name of pre-
serving the divinity from all mutability and passibility, the natures are differ-
entiated insomuch that the unity of the person, so intensively proclaimed at
the beginning, tends to fall apart in the end.
Nevertheless, to underline the soteriological importance of incarnation and
the humanity of Christ, the Lutheran orthodoxy developed, under the influ-
ence of the biblical Scriptures and against the backdrop of this doctrine, also
the doctrine of two VWDWXV of Christ. This doctrine, following the exposed lo-
cus of Phil 2,5–9, says that with the (everlasting) incarnation, Christ was until
his resurrection in the state of humiliation (VWDWXV H[LQDQLWLRQLV). However,
this humiliation cannot concern the immutable divine nature. It was thus the
human nature, which resigned the use of its divine attributes. With his resur-
328
Ibid., 229–230.
329
Cf. ibid., 231–232 and 244, with reference to D. Hollaz and M. Chemnitz, who both
struggle with preserving the unity of both natures in the moment of death of Jesus Christ.
However, how can unity be preserved, when one nature suffers and dies and the other does
not, yet should be still inseparably united with the dead one? Lutheran theologians hold the
Aristotelic-medieval position that death is the separation of mortal body and immortal soul.
In the case of Jesus Christ, the divine nature must be in the moment of death still united
with both. This ends in another apory, cf. more below, Ch. 7.1.1.
330
Cf. ibid., 236–237, with references to J. Gerhard and D. Hollaz.
331
Cf. ibid., 244, with reference to M. Chemnitz.
rection, Christ got in the state of exaltation (VWDWXV H[DOWDWLRQLV), where he

used his divine glory also for his humanity in fullness.332
In the 17th century arose the well-known dispute among the Lutheran theologians about the
meaning or radicality of NHQRVLV: did the human nature only KLGH its use of the divine at-
tributes (it still used those attributes but in a hidden way) – which is in fact not a NHQRVLV
but rather a NU\SVLV (kru,yij crh,sewj, the position of theologians from Tubingen) –, or did
it really UHVLJQ the use (ke,nwsij crh,sewj, the position of theologians from Giessen)? Nei-
ther the Giessen position denied that the human nature of Christ did possess the divine at-
tributes (kth/sij). The question concerned only their active use. Therefore, the discussion
focused primarily on the most provocative point of the whole Lutheran doctrine of FRPPX
QLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP: on the ubiquity of the human nature of Christ. While the Tubingen po-
sition held the radical version, more close to Luther himself, that Christ was omnipresent
since the moment of his conception, the Giessen theologians defended the (at the first sight
more acceptable but against the backdrop of the enhypostatical FRPPXQLFDWLR LGLRPDWXP
rather problematic333) more moderate position that only the divine nature was omnipresent
during the earthly time of Jesus Christ, without the omnipresence of the human one: the
divine nature of Christ reigned over the world “non mediante carne”.334 With this, howev-
er, the natures seem to be separated. 335 Nevertheless, it was this moderate solution, which
was later broadly accepted.336
Yet still – apart from the fact that this doctrine itself already makes the apori-
as more evident and deeper – with the possibility of the ke,nwsij only for the
nature that is mutable, i.e., for the human one, it is only a halfway solution. It
was thus only a matter of time until a conception came, which tried to think
the NHQRVLV much more radically and expand it to the divine nature as well.
The sharpest critique of the traditional Lutheran Christology came from D.F. Strauss, who
believed to show its aporias definitively. Next to the massively underestimated humanity
332
Cf. ibid., 271–272, 276 (D. Hollaz).
333
Cf. PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 309: “A place was made for concrete human life in spite of
the communication of divine attributes of majesty to Jesus’ humanity. Jesus’ glorification,
which supposedly had to be connected with his birth because of the doctrine of incarnation,
could be returned to its rightful place, to Jesus’ exaltation, by means of the doctrine of self-
emptying. But the God-man of this Christology who merely declined to use his glory re-
mained a sort of fabulous being, more like a mythical redeemer than the historical reality
of Jesus of Nazareth. […] They [sc. the Giessen theologians], however, threatened the vital
unity of the person. […] The Giessen theologians thus found themselves confronted by the
old argument: separate activities require separate persons.”
334
Cf. M. BREIDERT, 'LH NHQRWLVFKH &KULVWRORJLH GHV -DKUKXQGHUWV (Gütersloh:
Gerd Mohn, 1977), 21, quoting G. THOMASIUS, &KULVWL 3HUVRQ XQG :HUN, vol. II, 2nd ed.
(Erlangen: Bläsing, 1857), 440.
335
That was the critique expressed by the Tuebingen theologians. Cf. BREIDERT, 'LH
NHQRWLVFKH&KULVWRORJLH, 21–22.
336
SCHMID, 'LH 'RJPDWLN, 279–284; PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 307–309; BREIDERT, 'LH
NHQRWLVFKH&KULVWRORJLH, 19–23; U. WIEDENROTH, .U\SVLVXQG.HQRVLV6WXGLHQ]X7KHPD
XQG *HQHVH GHU 7ELQJHU &KULVWRORJLH LP -DKUKXQGHUW (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck,
2011).
of Christ, Strauss criticizes the FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP and the missing JHQXVWDSHLQRWL

FRQ next to the JHQXV PDLHVWDWLFXP. He comments with a deep irony the consequence of
the JHQXVPDLHVWDWLFXP that the human nature of Christ already as an embryo LQXWHURYLU
JLQLV reigns the whole world. The solution, in his eyes, however, aporetical as well, would
be a self-diminishing and self-subordination of divinity to the humanity in order to make a
fully human development possible. Yet this would mean for God to give up his divinity,
which is impossible to accept. Anyway, with this critique, Strauss anticipated the nascent
kenotic theology. 337
The5HIRUPHGSRVLWLRQ has inherited the same christological background, but

it differs from the Lutheran position from the beginning. For the Reformed,
the Son of God came only because of the sin of Adam, i.e., only because of
the soteriological purpose. Christ is primarily the Mediator of salvation. The
soteriological pattern is the same as in the Lutheran theology: it is Anselm’s
satisfaction theory. The unity of the person is conceived in the frame of sub-
sistence theory, however, with the big difference of the so-called ([WUD
&DOYLQLVWLFXP, which says that even after the incarnation, the divine Logos
exists in unity with the humanity as well as outside of it. The immanent Trini-
ty is thus not identical to the economic Trinity. 338 The assumed humanity is
hence not a part of the person of the Logos but rather only an instrument, or-
gan, and medium for its effects and actions on earth. 339 Here, the main critical
question would concern the incarnation and both of its sides: the divinity of
Christ, which seems to double or to split the Logos, and the humanity, which
seems to be underestimated to a mere instrument of divinity.
Against the backdrop of the Extra Calvinisticum, the unity in Christ is
twofold. First, the human nature is immediately united with the Logos in the
hypostatic unity. But, second, the human nature is united with the divine na-
ture only by being mediated through the Spirit. As such, this unity is defined
by the four Chalcedonian adjectives. The main emphasis, however, lies on the
GLIIHUHQFH of the natures: both keep their attributes and their radical differ-
ence remains preserved, because – unlike the Lutherans – the main rule is
valid, namely, ILQLWXP QRQ FDSD[ LQILQLWL.340 Thus, the Reformed theologians
represent the traditional western position.
With this emphasis (i.e., without any tendency to the divinization of the
human nature, which is strictly refused), the Reformed Christology can stress
much more the humanity of Christ in its natural human development: all ex-
337
Cf. D.F. STRAUSS, 'LH FKULVWOLFKH *ODXEHQVOHKUH LQLKUHUJHVFKLFKWOLFKHQ (QWZLFN
OXQJ XQG LP .DPSIH PLW GHU PRGHUQHQ :LVVHQVFKDIW, vol. II (reprint of the edition 1841,
Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2009), 142–143; BREIDERT, 'LH NHQRWL
VFKH&KULVWRORJLH, 24–26.
338
Cf. H. HEPPE, 'LH 'RJPDWLN GHU HYDQJHOLVFKUHIRUPLHUWHQ .LUFKH, ed. E. BIZER
(Neukirchen: Buchhandlung des Erziehungsvereins Neukirchen, 1935), 323–234.
339
Ibid., 326.
340
Ibid., 326–327.
cellency Christ had, had been the excellency of created gifts.341 The FRPPX
QLFDWLR LGLRPDWXP (structured in three sorts: FRPPXQLFDWLR JUDWLDUXP, FRP
PXQLFDWLR SURSULHWDWXP and FRPPXQLFDWLR RSHUDWLRQXP) is then basically a
mere coincidence of two sets of attributes in the united person. This mutual
coincidence is the deciding point for soteriology in the Anselmian frame. Be-
cause no direct communication between the natures is possible (unlike in the
Lutheran theology), the only point of real sharing is what the Lutherans
called SURSRVLWLRQHV SHUVRQDOHV. Here, the Reformed as well can say: “Christ
as God is human” and “The human Jesus is God”. Any other cross-predi-
cation of the attributes relating not to the person but to the natures in Christ
are possible and true but only verbal (which, nevertheless, does not mean
vague).342
Because of the strict differentiation of natures, the Reformed have no prob-
lems with the VWDWXVH[LQDQLWLRQLV – on the contrary, they offer a much more
radical and interesting solution of NHQRVLV: With the incarnation, Christ ac-
cepted the form of a servant (IRUPDVHUYL, Phil 2:7), which means that he hid
his divinity (not only divine attributes of the human nature, as the Lutherans
put it) under his humanity.343 The NHQRVLV concerns here the divinity itself,
although it is not a strict NHQRVLV but rather a hiding of divinity (kru,yij
qeo,ththj).
The suffering on the cross serves fully for the soteriological purpose:
Christ suffered only in the flesh but in the person of the Logos, which brings
the deciding soteriological impact – the satisfaction. 344 However, the VWDWXV
H[DOWDWLRQLV does not mean the divinization of Christ’s humanity. His humani-
ty is glorified, his body becomes immortal and free from suffering, but it is
still the highest possible glorification of a creature, not WKHRVLV.345
.HQRWLFLVP
The last missing piece of the puzzle brought the kenoticism of the 19 th centu-
ry – it took almost 2000 years until someone had the courage to express radi-
cally, what was actually in the air since the beginning, but what no one dared
to say explicitly until now: that in Jesus Christ, God emptied himself in favor
341
Cf. ibid., 354, with reference to Th. Beza. Cf. also PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 301.
342
HEPPE, 'LH 'RJPDWLN, 327–329. The difference in the conception of FRPPXQLFDWLR
LGLRPDWXP between Lutherans and the Reformed is one of the main differences. Neverthe-
less, one should be careful not to make the common mistake of evaluating the Reformed
position from Luther’s perspective on Zwingli or from the perspective of the Lutheran or-
thodoxy on the reformed wing, as it is often the case (cf. e.g. PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 299).
343
Ibid., 387.
344
Ibid., 358–359.
345
Ibid., 388.
of the full humanity of Christ. 346 It is an attempt to develop fully the humani-
ty, be it at the cost of the divinity. It was I.A. Dorner, who in 1839 was the
first one to raise the claim that the traditional Lutheran-orthodox JHQXV
PDLHVWDWLFXP has to be completed and balanced also by a JHQXV WDSHLQRWL
FRQ.347 The incipient kenotic theology assumed this emphasis and focused
further on only on it (while Dorner became paradoxically the sharpest adver-
sary of the kenotic approach). 348
While until the 19 th century, the divinity of Christ stood firm and the the-
ology struggled with Christ’s humanity, following the intense quest for the
historical Jesus and the idealistic philosophy of Hegel and Schelling 349 also in
Christology came the Cartesian-Kantian twist: the starting point is now the
true and full humanity of Jesus, to which the divinity is to be harmonized
without diminishing it.350 Now, the divinity has to be adapted to the humanity
and its capacity. Until now, the humanity was the nature that could change,
had to change, and changed indeed. Now, it is the divinity, which must
adapt.351 The struggle concerned now the meaning and radicality of this adap-
tation – and it was understood by the kenotic theologians in the terms of NH
QRVLV. Divine adaptation to human capacities means NHQRVLV of the divinity:
the divinity has to evacuate itself in order to create space for the full devel-
opment of Christ’s humanity. Divine NHQRVLV is a condition for true humani-
346
Cf. P. ALTHAUS, “Kenosis”, in 5**, vol. III., ed. K. GALLING, 3rd ed. (Tübingen:
J.C.B. Mohr, 1959, 1244–1246, who names this step “a break with the whole christological
tradition” and points to the Formula of Concord, Epitome 8,39, which rejects this idea
(ibid., 1245).
347
I.A. DORNER, (QWZLFNOXQJVJHVFKLFKWH GHU /HKUH YRQ GHU 3HUVRQ &KULVWL (Stuttgart:
S.G. Liesching, 1839), 169–183; cf. BREIDERT, 'LHNHQRWLVFKH&KULVWRORJLH, 28–29.
348
BREIDERT, 'LHNHQRWLVFKH&KULVWRORJLH, 29. It is this erudite study, written from a ra-
ther conservative Lutheran position, which I follow in this subchapter in the first place. Cf.
also, from a conservative catholic standpoint and thus very critical, WEINANDY, 'RHV*RG
&KDQJH", 101–123; and the rather positive study of D. BROWN, 'LYLQH+XPDQLW\.HQRWL
FLVP([SORUHGDQG'HIHQGHG (London: SCM Press, 2011).
349
According to BREIDERT, ibid., 299–300, this was the main background of the kenoti-
cism. He denies that the kenotic Christology would be the legitimate and final step of the
early-church or of the Lutheran or Reformed Christology. However, kenoticism understood
itself in this way and was therefore called by some “the negative fulfillment of the church
two-natures Christology”, cf. ibid., 304; but by others, it was called in the contrary “the
fulfilled kenosis of the reason”, cf. W. KASPER, 'HU *RWW -HVX &KULVWL, ed. L. ULRICH
(Leipzig: St. Benno-Verlag, 1982), 221.
350
This refers primarily to the German kenotic theology. Next to it, kenoticism devel-
oped independently also in the Russian and Anglican theology, cf. BREIDERT, 'LHNHQRWL
VFKH&KULVWRORJLH, 14 (here also further literature); KASPER, 'HU*RWW-HVX&KULVWL, 221. Cf.
also B. MCCORMACK, “Kenoticism in Modern Christology”, in 7KH 2[IRUG +DQGERRNRI
&KULVWRORJ\, ed. F.A. MURPHY (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2015), 444–457.
351
BREIDERT,'LHNHQRWLVFKH&KULVWRORJLH, 303.
ty.352 This was the most radical attempt in the history of Christology stating
that it was the divine nature, the Logos itself, who – even before incarnation –
resigned its own divine attributes (ke,nwsij kth/sewj).
Within this frame, many different conceptions emerged. The most well-
known, because it is the most mature and consistent – and in the context of
others still quite moderate – conception came from the Erlangen theologian
* 7KRPDVLXV.353 He follows up the traditional church Christology on the
Chalcedonian ground with the assumption of the common and anhypostatical
human nature, but – in accord with the Enlightenment and its accent on real
humanity, personality, and self-consciousness also in historical and psycho-
logical terms – stresses heavily the unity of the person of Jesus Christ: both
natures must be united insomuch that a divine-human “I” of the historical
personality of Jesus Christ is possible. Therefore, Thomasius criticizes Con-
stantinople III and sees the main problem of the traditional Christology in the
duality or duplicity of agents supported by the dyotheletism and by the whole
western tradition. 354 Overall, the kenotic Christology can be understood as
one big protest against the traditional axiom of divine immutability: if in Je-
sus Christ divinity and humanity should create a unity, then the divinity can-
not remain untouched by it, the divinity as well has to adapt to the humani-
ty.355 Christology has to work with a dynamic term of God – this is a right
insight, which the kenotic theology shares with Luther and with the theology
of the 20th century. At the same time, however, Thomasius with his accent on
unity runs into the same danger of a mixture of natures as Luther. 356
Nevertheless, the main PRYHQV of this whole process is divine love, whose
substance is “that it gives up everything except itself and can bear any limita-
tion, even the hindmost one”. 357 Therefore, in order to solve the problem that
God must adapt and remain the same at the same time, in his later work,
Thomasius differentiates between the “essential” and “relative” attributes of
God. The point of this differentiation is that “Logos can, therefore, surrender
these non-essential attributes without detriment to what he essentially is”. 358
The fundamental rule in Thomasius says: “Regardless of how deep the NHQR
VLV has to be conceived, it cannot be thought of as of giving up the divine es-
352
BREIDERT,ibid., 23, reminds that this means a substantial shift: from the doctrine of
the VWDWXV to the doctrine of the person, and from the ORJRVHQVDUNRV to ORJRVDVDUNRV: “The
goal of the kenotic theology is to understand and explain, how could the preexistent Logos
enter or get over into the human limits.”
353
The first time published 1845, cf. ibid, 30.
354
Cf. ibid., 82–87.
355
Cf. ibid., 132 (W. Geß).
356
Cf. ibid., 85.
357
THOMASIUS, &KULVWL3HUVRQXQG:HUNII, 205; BREIDERT, 'LHNHQRWLVFKH&KULVWROR
JLH, 86.
358
MCCORMACK, “Kenoticism”, 452.
sence or divine life; this would be a cardinal error, which contradicts the
Scriptures.”359 However, at the same time, the essential attributes of truth, ho-
liness, and love can be held in the incarnation only in a way appropriate to the
humanity, i.e., only modified and reduced.360 The distinction between the es-
sential and relative attributes thus becomes blurred and only the divinity is
diminished because it has to be adapted to the human capacity, which is the
last measure for the divinity as well. Breidert, therefore, quotes W. Elert:
“This term of capacity is indeed the fundamental term in the Christology of this new kenot-
ic theology. Here […], the human &DSD[ is the eye of the needle, into which the Logos
must press himself to become human and which prescribes to him the extent of his self-
emptying […] Applying this canon, however, one can only say that the human nature does
not have any capacity for God. In a comparison of any attributes, the human nature is al-
ways the smaller; and if, nevertheless, ‘God was in Christ’, it could have always been only
a smaller God as the real one, indeed, only another God.”361
The work of Thomasius tries to make space for the full humanity, but it rather
shows the aporia of a thinking, which conceives divinity and humanity as op-
posites: if he wants the full humanity, the divinity has to bow out, despite his
efforts to try to keep it. However, with the reduced divinity, the person of
Christ is reduced as well. The result is Jesus Christ as a kind of a half-God
and a half-human; the kenotic Christology thinks of God and human in Jesus
together in a way, in which Jesus “is in the end neither the first nor the lat-
ter”.362 And, moreover, with both natures as opposites, the unity of the person
falls apart.363
Other conceptions were even more radical. E.g. W.F. Gess – unlike Thomasius without any
regards to the fundaments of the traditional Christology – was able to state that the divine
Logos gave up his divinity and transformed himself into the human soul and ceased to be
God. This breaks the Chalcedonian avtre,ptwj and goes even further than the old Apolli-
narist heresy.364 Then, Jesus remains a sheer human.365
359
THOMASIUS, &KULVWL3HUVRQXQG:HUNII, 199; BREIDERT, 'LHNHQRWLVFKH&KULVWROR
JLH, 87.
360
BREIDERT, 'LH NHQRWLVFKH &KULVWRORJLH, 88; WEINANDY, 'RHV *RG &KDQJH", 115:
“The Kenoticist, while trying to maintain that the Logos is nevertheless Son of God, cannot
maintain that he is KRPRRXVLRQ with the Father as incarnate.”
361
W. ELERT, 'HU FKULVWOLFKH *ODXEH (Berlin: Furche-Verlag, 1940), 382–383; cf.
BREIDERT, 'LH NHQRWLVFKH &KULVWRORJLH, 89 and 304; and also PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 311:
“The YHUHKRPR is achieved only proportionately to subtractions from the YHUHGHXV.”
362
Cf. BREIDERT, 'LHNHQRWLVFKH&KULVWRORJLH, 309 and 112.
363
Cf. ibid. and 88–89.
364
Cf. MCCORMACK, “Kenoticism”, 453: “With Gess, the older kenoticism had reached
its nadir or its full potential, depending upon one’s point of view. Certainly, he had made
no effort to uphold divine immutability. Thomasius had tried to maintain the essential im-
mutability of God while finding in God genuine affectivity, and a capacity for real interac-
tion with the created world. Gess had simply given up on immutability.”
Neither the kenotic Christology, hence, was able to solve the problem of the
relationship of the natures in the person of Jesus Christ in another way than
by – radically or even extremely – diminishing one nature (divinity) in favor
of the other (humanity). Divinity and humanity remain total opposites, IL
QLWXP is still QRQFDSD[LQILQLWL. In an attempt to adapt divinity insofar that the
humanity will be able to grasp it, it reduces divinity to null. 366 An absolute
victory celebrates the moment of incarnation, the Easter plays no important
role.367 And besides, Trinity remains possible only at the cost of subordina-
tionism: the reduced divinity in Jesus Christ makes it impossible to conceive
the relationship of the Father and the incarnated Son as a God-God relation.
Moreover, the change of the divinity in Jesus Christ necessarily means a
change in the Trinity, which means that God’s identity would not remain the
same.368 Therefore, the adversaries of the kenotic approach stressed intensive-
ly the immutability of God.369
The kenotic Christology brings the doctrine of FRPPXQLFDWLR LGLRPDWXP
on the background of the two-natures concept obviously DGDEVXUGXP, show-
ing its fundamental problem that it presupposes the natures as self-acting op-
posite agents.370 Herewith, the old Apollinarian objection is still valid: “Two
wholes cannot create unity.” 371 Or with another old argument, mentioned by
365
Cf. BREIDERT, 'LHNHQRWLVFKH&KULVWRORJLH, 123–136; W.F. GEß, 'LH/HKUHYRQGHU
3HUVRQ &KULVWL HQWZLFNHOW DXV GHP 6HOEVWEHZXWVHLQ &KULVWL XQG DXV GHP =HXJQLVVH GHU
$SRVWHO (Basel, 1856). In fact, this is exactly the opposite result than the kenotics wanted to
defend, coming very close to the liberal theologians, who commented this with pleased
irony, cf. KASPER, 'HU*RWW-HVX&KULVWL, 221.
366
This is the point of the critique of the kenotic Christology in the papal Encyclical
“Sempiternus Rex” by PIUS XII. from 1951, cf. $$643 (Vatican, 1951), 637–638. .HQRVLV
is here the opposite heresy to docetism. Nevertheless, the idea of NHQRVLV was (in different
ways) developed further in the 20 th century even by catholic theologians, however not as
self-emptying but in contrary as the power of divine freedom, cf. RAHNER, )RXQGDWLRQVRI
&KULVWLDQ )DLWK, 224; KASPER, 'HU *RWW -HVX &KULVWL, 216–226; IDEM, -HVXV WKH &KULVW,
with his attempt of a Christology from below.
367
Cf. BREIDERT, 'LHNHQRWLVFKH&KULVWRORJLH, 300 and 309.
368
Cf. ELERT, 'HUFKULVWOLFKH*ODXEH, 382: “The consequence is, therefore, despite all
used precautionary measures, still the same: the lo,goj e;nsarkoj is indeed a different one
than the lo,goj a;sarkoj.”
369
Cf. BREIDERT, 'LH NHQRWLVFKH &KULVWRORJLH, 301–302; PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 311–
312.
370
For critique of the kenotic concepts cf. also ALTHAUS, “Kenosis”, 1245, who, how-
ever, stresses also the persisting importance of the kenotic concepts and their criticism of
the traditional Christology concerning the VWDWXV of Christ (VWDWXV H[LQDQLWLRQLV HW VWDWXV
H[DOWDWLRQLV), which pertain both to the whole person, and concerning the immutability of
God.
371
Cf. above, fn. 59; KASPER, -HVXVWKH&KULVW, 200: “Apollinaris’ problem is far from
being settled even today. It is a basic theme of modern criticism of religion and of modern
atheistic humanism that God and man are mutually exclusive.”
Thomasius: 'LYLVLV RSHULEXV GLYLGLWXU SHUVRQD If we split works, then the

person is split as well. 372 With this presupposition, the unity can be either
construed only mono-physitically by diminishing one of the natures, or it has
necessarily to fall apart. Thus, every Christology working with this pattern
must end in aporias. The whole doctrine of FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP proves
to be wrong from the very beginning and it can never solve the main christo-
logical task of how to think of the unity of divinity and humanity in Christ.
What is thus required today is a Christology, which would not need this mod-
el at all, which, however, would not leave the fundamental Chalcedonian
frame: it would have to start with the unity of the person, but, at the same
time, it would have to preserve the full divinity and full humanity of Jesus
Christ.373 The first one who tried it in the modern times was Schleiermacher,
even a few years before the modern kenotic theology was developed.
6FKOHLHUPDFKHUDQG+LV&ULWLTXHRIWKH7UDGLWLRQDO'RJPD
With the Enlightenment’s emphasis on natural humanity, the traditional
Christology in its neo-scholastic and speculative form that it received in the
Protestant orthodoxy was no longer tenable. After the so-called anthropologi-
cal turn, traditional Christology seemed to be too metaphysical and supernat-
ural, stressing the divinity of Christ and losing the human Jesus.374 Therefore,
it is no wonder that both extreme opinions were present: the first tried to d e-
fend the old theology, the other tried to throw it away as outdated and obso-
lete.375 Schleiermacher, very well familiar with the old texts and conceptions
and, at the same time, schooled in the Kantian criticism of metaphysics, de-
372
Cf. THOMASIUS, &KULVWL3HUVRQXQG:HUNII, 440, and PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 309.
373
Cf. similarly MCCORMACK, “Kenoticism”, 454–455, who, however, favorizes the
problematic dyothelitism of the ancient church: “What is needed today is a new kenotic
theory – one which will avoid the problems of the older kenoticism by: (a) making kenosis
RULJLQDOto the being of God so that its concretization in time involves no change in God
and, therefore, no split between the immanent Trinity and the economic Trinity, and (b)
understanding kenosis in such a way that no divestment of anything proper to God is en-
tailed and no departure from the dyothelitism of the ancient Church is required.” Cf. more
in detail below, Ch. 5.
374
BUNTFUß , “Verlust der Mitte”, 349, points to the roots of the modern critique in the
Socinian critique of the traditional christological dogma in the 16 th century: “The presup-
position of a connection of divine and human nature in one person contradicts the sound
reason. The biblical talk about the Logos and the Son of God thus cannot relate to a preex-
istent divine being but rather only to the earthly Jesus. Metaphorically speaking, Jesus may
be called a GLYLQXV KRPR, a divine human but not YHUH GHXV, true God, as the Council of
Chalcedon in 451 did it.” According to Buntfuß, however, “the Socinians provided a sol u-
tion of this problem, which is held until today, when they interpreted the talk about the di-
vinity of Jesus not as an object statement about his being but rather as a religious statement
about his importance.”
375
Cf. SCHLEIERMACHER, 7KH&KULVWLDQ)DLWK, § 95.1, 390.
cided to go the middle way and to keep from the old theology as much as
possible, as far as it can be harmonized with the current stress on the natural
humanity and to the “immediate Christian self-consciousness”.376
It was the undervalued humanity of the traditional Christology (and, as we
have seen, it was a strong tendency in Christology since the very beginning),
which proved the merely divine picture of Jesus Christ in the eyes of many
thinkers as a mere dogmatic construction: the unreal humanity made the d i-
vinity equally unreal. Therefore – supported also by the quest for the life of
the historical Jesus – to keep up the natural humanity of Jesus was the first
commandment of this time.377
According to this emphasis, Schleiermacher is interested only in the earth-
ly Jesus between his birth and death, he treats Jesus only in his historical ex-
istence without any wider or higher frame (e.g. without Trinity, which
Schleiermacher continuously criticizes, without the enhypostatical stress on
the divine Logos being the proper subject of the hypostatic unity, or without
future eschatology).378 At the same time, however – and this is to be appreci-
ated – he tries to keep the divinity of Jesus, in terms of a qualitatively differ-
ent and constantly strong God-consciousness, “which was a veritable exist-
ence of God in Him”. 379 With this God-consciousness, Christ is historically
unique and capable of affecting every Christian believer at any time. His
God-consciousness is therefore not only an example bound to his time and
place, but rather it is “urbildlich”, which means completely ideal and at the
376
Ibid., § 95.1, 390. A good overview of Schleiermacher’s Christology with references
to relevant literature gives DAHLKE, “Die Christologie”, 278–299. Cf. also SCHRÖDER, 'LH
NULWLVFKH,GHQWLWlW, 64–83; H. GERDES, “Anmerkungen zur Christologie der Glaubenslehre
Schleiermachers”, 1=67K 25 (1983), 112–125, who compares Schleiermacher’s Christolo-
gy in the first and second edition of 7KH &KULVWLDQ )DLWK; MARIÑA, “Schleiermacher’s
Christology Revisited”. To Schleiermacher’s christological sermons cf. E. HIRSCH, 6FKOHL
HUPDFKHUV&KULVWXVJODXEH'UHL6WXGLHQ (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1968). To the Christolo-
gy of his early works (of the Speeches on Religion in particular) cf. K. RUHSTORFER, “Von
der Geschichte der Christologie zur Christologie der Geschichte”, in &KULVWRORJLH, ed.
IDEM (Paderborn: F. Schöningh/Brill, 2018), 268–272.
377
Cf. SCHLEIERMACHER, 7KH&KULVWLDQ)DLWK, § 97.3, 409: “[W]hat comes into exist-
ence through the being of God in Christ is all perfectly human, and in its totality consti-
tutes a unity, the unity of a natural life-story, in which everything that emerges is purely
human”. Cf. also SCHLINK, “Die Christologie von Chalcedon”, 80–81.
378
Cf. SCHLEIERMACHER, 7KH&KULVWLDQ)DLWK, § 99.1, 418 and § 29.3, 125; SLENCZKA,
*HVFKLFKWOLFKNHLWXQG3HUVRQVHLQ, 212 and 219. Paradoxically, Schleiermacher uses for the
person of Jesus mostly the title “Christ” or “Redeemer”.
379
SCHLEIERMACHER, 7KH &KULVWLDQ )DLWK, § 94, Thesis, 385, cf. ibid., § 94.2, 387–
388.
same time prototypical and effective. 380 With this prototypical God-
consciousness, Christ becomes the anchor and a unique source of all other
occurrences of Christian God-consciousness in history.
Schleiermacher grounds his Christology, therefore, in this God-
consciousness of Christ and its effect. Its potency and power is the deciding
issue: “The Redeemer assumes believers into the power of His God-
consciousness and this is His redemptive activity.” 381 Through this time-
surpassing effect of Christ’s personality, the Christian personality and con-
science of every believer is constituted: the Christian relation to God is possi-
ble only through the personality of the Redeemer. 382 Using the model of cau-
sality, for Schleiermacher, Jesus is the source of the God-consciousness in
every Christian. 383 Every Christian is thus in an immediate relation to Christ.
Schleiermacher calls this relation “mystical”. 384 However, this does not give
any answer to what this relation actually is. This point of immediacy remains
quite vague in Schleiermacher.
This Christian-Christ relation is a closed system. One is either in (and this means: already
knowing, what is it all about), or out (and this means: without any possibility to understand
it): “no one can be received into this circle arbitrarily, because doctrines are only expres-
sions of inward experiences – whoever has these experiences LSVRIDFWRbelongs to the cir-
cle; whoever has not, cannot come in at all.” 385 In the end, it is the Father, who decides,
who can enter the space of the Kingdom of grace, i.e., of the church.386
As a consequence of this conception, Schleiermacher can raise the claim that

all sentences of Christology are “immediate expressions of our Christian self -
consciousness” 387, because the basic content of Christology – the conscious-
ness of fellowship with God in form of the divine grace – is “the basic con-
sciousness that each Christian has of his own state of grace, even where the
most dissimilar views of Christianity prevail”. 388
380
Cf. ibid., § 93, Thesis, 377. The English version translates “urbildlich” as “ideal”,
which is not very fitting. Further on, I will use the word “prototypical” instead. Cf.
SCHRÖDER, 'LHNULWLVFKH,GHQWLWlW, 71–74.
381
Ibid., § 100, Thesis, 423.
382
Cf. ibid., § 100.2, 427. For the liberal figure of effective picture of Christ cf. above,
Ch. 2.1.
383
Cf. ibid., § 93.1, 377; and also LANGE, +LVWRULVFKHU-HVXV, 147–149, and SLENCZKA,
*HVFKLFKWOLFKNHLWXQG3HUVRQVHLQ, 212–213: this makes the question of the historical Jesus
and of his relation to the Christian proclamation obsolete. The leading pattern is not
&KULVWXVSUDHVHQV in the proclamation but rather the immediacy of inner experience.
384
SCHLEIERMACHER, 7KH&KULVWLDQ)DLWK, § 100.3, 429. Cf. above, Ch. 2.1.
385
Ibid.
386
Cf. ibid., § 105.2, 469.
387
Ibid., § 91.2, 372.
388
Ibid., § 91.1, 371.
However, as already stated above (cf. Ch. 1.1.2), Schleiermacher cannot

keep up this thesis in his Christology, because in the part about the person o f
Christ he deals with the historical person, which is the external source and
ground for the Christian God-consciousness. This proves to be the case, when
Schleiermacher, right afterwards, stresses the historicity of Christ. Trying to
keep up both the divinity and the humanity in a historical personality, Christ
is defined as fully human RUJDQLVP filled and driven by the eternal divine
SULQFLSOH.389 He is thus a natural personality with all human development but
of a supernatural origin. This is Schleiermacher’s reformulation of the classi-
cal two-natures dogma. On the one hand, Christ is fully human; his personali-
ty had to develop from the beginning, including his God-consciousness, and
naturally in particular conditions and environments. All this belongs to “true
humanity”, 390 which is capable of all human changes. However, in Christ the
humanity is ideal, meaning that it is living and receptive and in its relation to
divinity only passive; this is because, on the other hand, it is completely driv-
en by the eternal divine principle, by the Spirit, which is always active and
never passive or passible.391 It is to say that Christ entered the sinful world,
but does not originate from it: he has a divine origin. 392 This affects also his
human development, which was “wholly free from everything which we have
to conceive as conflict” and which processed sinless as “a continuous transi-
tion from the condition of purest innocence to one of purely spiritual fulness
of power”.393 There was thus in Christ not even an “infinitely small amount”
of the tendency to sin. 394 Besides, Christ never erred, never suffered from
natural evils,395 and was also physically prototypical, i.e., healthy. 396
Overall, Christ is a unique manifestation of the divine principle in a histor-
ical personality, which is wholly passive and driven by the Spirit, but at the
same time, all divine activity is received and applied in and through the par-
389
Ibid., § 93.4, 384. “Organism” and “principle” are the main categories for Schleier-
macher’s conception of humanity and divinity. They both can surely and smoothly create a
unity, however, compared to (true!) humanity and divinity, “organism” as well as “princi-
ple” are both quite reductive.
390
Ibid., § 93.3, 381–382.
391
Cf. ibid., § 97.3, 407–408: “So that in this interrelation every original activity be-
longs solely to the divine, and everything passive solely to the human.”
392
Cf. ibid., § 93.3 381; § 97.1, 398. A nice illustration of Schleiermacher’s thinking is
the passage concerning the supernatural conception of Christ, where Schleiermacher de-
fends against the tradition of the virgin birth the normal human way of conceiving a child:
as a true human, Christ had a human father as well; cf. ibid., § 97.2, 403–407.
393
Ibid., § 93.4, 382–383.
394
Ibid., § 98.1, 414.
395
Ibid., § 104.4, 457.
396
Ibid., § 98.1–2, 415–417. On the contrary, Schleiermacher refuses the natural im-
mortality and the supernatural beauty of Christ.
ticular human organism. 397 “The Redeemer, then, is like all men in virtue of
the identity of human nature, but distinguished from all of them by the con-
stant potency of His God-consciousness, which was a veritable existence of
God in Him.”398
The strongest and most concrete expression of Christ’s divinity in Schleiermacher is this
quote: “this perfect indwelling of the Supreme Being” is to be posited “as His peculiar be-
ing and His inmost self. […] it is only through Him that the human God-consciousness be-
comes an existence of God in human nature”. 399 However, this statement, in fact, breaks
from within Schleiermacher’s self-restriction to the earthly Jesus and to the pious self-
consciousness only and opens a path Schleiermacher refuses. If the presence of God in
Christ goes so far that it is “His inmost self”, then is it not precisely here where the trinitar-
ian thinking should start and proceed to build the most proper frame of Christology and all
theology?
With this concept in mind, Schleiermacher criticizes traditional Christology.

At first, he targets the equivocation in the term ‘QDWXUH¶. It cannot be used for
both humanity and divinity, because these cannot be brought together under a
common conception. 400 Schleiermacher reserves the term of nature only for
the humanity. 401 Divinity is more like a “principle” to him. Compared to tra-
ditional Christology, his own terms are much more dynamic. Therefore, he
criticizes the substance-thinking of the old dogma, which necessarily leads, in
his view, to contradictions:
“Hence all the results of the endeavor to achieve a living presentation of the unity of the
divine and the human in Christ, ever since it was tied down to this expression, have always
vacillated between the opposite errors of mixing the two natures to form a third which
would be neither of them, either divine nor human, or of keeping the two natures separate,
but either neglecting the unity of the person in order to separate the two natures more dis-
tinctly, or, in order to keep firm hold of the unity of the person, disturbing the necessary
397
Ibid., § 96.3, 397. Cf. ibid., 97.3, 408–409: “So that in Christ Himself the original
assumptive divine activity and the divine activity during the union are not to be disti n-
guished; but all activities, in so far as distinguishable in time, are simply developments of
the human activities. Every outward activity of Christ, whether it is to be regarded rather as
an activity of the intellect or as one of the will, was in its aspect of human growth a result
of the temporal development; and only in so far as all emergent activity of Christ is to be
regarded thus can we rightly ascribe to Him a perfect human soul, but a soul inwardly im-
pelled by this special being of God in Him, which, retaining its unchangeable identity,
permeates that soul in the variety of its functions and moments, as that variety continually
develops.”
398
Ibid., § 94, Thesis, 385. Cf. ibid., § 94.2, 387: “[T]o ascribe to Christ an absolutely
powerful God-consciousness, and to attribute to Him an existence of God in Him, are ex-
actly the same thing.” This is the stumbling block for liberal theology, cf. above, Ch. 1.1.3,
fn. 43.
399
Ibid, § 94.2, 388.
400
Ibid., § 96.1, 392.
401
Ibid., § 96.1, 392: “Nature in this sense is for us the summary of all finite existence”.
balance, and making one nature less important than the other and limited by it. The same
thing comes out even in the vacillation between the expressions ‘connection’ and ‘union’ –
in the latter there is a tendency to wipe out the difference of the natures, while the former
makes the unity of the person doubtful. The utter fruitlessness of this way of presenting the
matter becomes particularly clear in the treatment of the question of whether Christ as one
person formed out of two natures had also two wills.”402
Starting with the unity of the historical personality of Christ within his con-
ception of divine activity and human receptivity, Schleiermacher has, logical-
ly, no understanding for the aporetical ending of the two-natures dogma in the
dyotheletism of Constantinople III, which dealt with two wills as two com-
peting activities. On the other hand, as it will come out later, in his concep-
tion, Schleiermacher himself is not far from exactly this approach. He strictly
distinguishes the “natures” in an equally strict subordination of the receptive
humanity to the active divinity. 403
In this context, Schleiermacher also sees the terminological chaos and in-
consistencies of the early church clearly with its SURPLVFXH use of SK\
VLV/RXVLD and SURVRSRQ/K\SRVWDVLV. In particular, he criticizes the equivoca-
tion of the term ‘person’ in theo-logy and Christology, which would lead to
tritheism.404 He relates his critique, then, also to the doctrine of the Trinity,
which seems to him to be rather an aporetical complication that is not neces-
sary for Christian faith and, moreover, with its personal conception of God
does not fit in his conception of God as a principle. 405
For the Chalcedonian distinctions, with which he sees himself in fact in
correspondence, Schleiermacher has an understanding only in terms of a his-
torical necessity for keeping a clean doctrine regarding the differentiation of
divinity and humanity, which is, however, crucial for him as well.406 Being in
accord with the oldest objections against the usability of the Chalcedonian
Creed, he sees no use of the negative distinctions for the proclamation of the
church and supports this opinion with the precise judgment that since the
times of the definitions of the early church, any following era only repeated
these old distinctions instead of searching for a positive expression, yet still
with the old aporia of the equivocating use of “nature” for the “divine nature
402
Ibid., § 96.1, 394.
403
Freedom of Christ’s human life is defined only as a sole “assent to the influence” of
divine activity, ibid., § 100.2, 426.
404
Ibid., § 96.1, 395.
405
Cf. ibid., and also § 97.2, 400: “It is, therefore, much safer […] to establish the doc-
trine of Christ independently of that doctrine of the Trinity.” And then see the appendix of
the whole work: §§170–172, 738–751.
406
Interestingly, ibid., § 96.1, 395, he refers to the phrase “out of two natures” (i.e., HN
GXRI\VHRQ), however without quoting Chalcedon. He does not refer directly to Chalcedon
even when discussing the relation of the natures. The quoted distinctions (the Chalcedoni-
an four plus two more), ibid., § 97.4, 410, are taken from John of Damascus.
and the duality of natures in the same Person”.407 Therefore, “the definitions
of the Schools have long since become a dead letter in which no one any
longer can find refuge”.408 He puts against it his conception and in order to
show its accordance to the biblical Scriptures, although differing from the
traditional doctrine, he interprets – as all theologians of the incarnation have
done it – the verse John 1:14:
“If this form of expression is very different from that of the language of the Schools as
used hitherto, yet it rests equally upon the Pauline phrase ‘God was in Christ’ and the Jo-
hannine ‘the Word became flesh’; for ‘Word’ is the activity of God expressed in the form
of consciousness, and ‘flesh’ is a general expression for the organic.” 409
This, also, confirms that in Schleiermacher, the Logos-sarx pattern is leading:

there is the divine active principle and the human receptive organism. 410
Second, Schleiermacher treats the traditional concept of K\SRVWDWLF XQLW\.
With his refusal of the trinitarian dogma, he also refuses the dominating Al-
exandrine pattern of the HQK\SRVWDVLV that there would have been first the
preexistent divine Logos who subsequently united humanity into his K\SRVWD
VLV.411 Concerning the person of Christ, Schleiermacher differentiates the su-
pernatural “act of union” and the natural “state of union”.412 Agreeing with
the tradition, he states the exclusive activity of the divine and mere passivity
of the human and reinterprets the unity of Christ’s person in his terms as the
divine “person-forming activity” of the natural organic development of hu-
manity.413 Schleiermacher hence starts in a rather Leonine manner – which
tacitly presupposes the given unity of the earthly Christ – with the twoness
and asks how divinity and humanity can be united without merging or dimin-
ishing.
As though in analogy to the old thought of a twofold birth of Christ, the
eternal after divinity, and the earthly after humanity, Schleiermacher states a
twofold constitution of the personality of Jesus. Interestingly enough, he be-
gins with the opposite direction of uniting than the tradition, and he talks at
first about “the implanting of the divine in the human nature”.414 On the one
hand, thus, divinity penetrates humanity, is implanted into humanity and into
the organic development creating the personality of the historical Jesus. On
407
Ibid., § 96.3, 397.
408
Ibid., § 96.2, 396. Cf. § 97.4, 410.
409
Ibid., § 96.3, 397.
410
Concerning human soul cf. above, fn. 397.
411
Cf. ibid., § 96.1, 392.
412
Ibid., § 97.1, 398.
413
Ibid., § 97, Thesis, 398; ibid., § 97.2, 400; § 100.2, 427.
414
Ibid., § 97.2, 400. Cf. LANGE, +LVWRULVFKHU-HVXV, 157. This is a remarkable thought
and an important supplement of the old model. Cf. certain similarity with my proposal of
divine accommodation, below, Ch. 6.1.
the other hand, humanity as the receiving part is assumed by the divinity and
this proves, in the end, to be the more powerful and frame-giving step: “The
nature of the association, however, must at every moment be such that the ac-
tivity proceeds from the being of God in Christ, and the human nature is only
taken up into association with it.” 415 In the final result, the personality of
Christ is thus a joint action of divinity and humanity, however still with a
clear domination of always active divinity.
The human nature is thus conceived in agreement with the old Christology
as anhypostatical (although this term seems to be, “in this scholastic dress,
very clumsy and obscure” and actually “unfortunate”). 416 Christ’s human na-
ture remains passive and is wholly formed by the divinity, which creates from
human nature the concrete personality. 417 The divine interpenetrates the orig-
inally passive human nature, and in this interpenetration the unity of divine
and human in Christ is constituted with respect to normal human develop-
ment.418
Until now, Schleiermacher searched for a critical compromise with the tra-
dition.419 What he, however, strictly rejects is the doctrine of FRPPXQLFDWLR
LGLRPDWXP. In his view, it is an “extremely empty and formal theory” be-
cause, if conceived UHDOLWHU, FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP would break the unity
again and, in the end, destroy the specifics of each nature: 420
“[T]he theory of a mutual communication of the attributes of the two natures to one anoth-
er also is to be banished from the system of doctrine, and handed over to the history of
doctrine” because it “must cancel again the union of the two natures, since in virtue of that
communication each nature would cease to be what it is”.421
On the one hand, Schleiermacher stresses fundamentally the unity of Christ’s

person and strictly refuses any thinking starting with natures. On the other
hand, however, and at the same time, within his causal thinking as well as in
his model of divine activity and human passivity, he still keeps a strict sep a-
ration between the divine and human and regards it as absolutely unaccepta-
ble for the divine to accept some human attributes, like (e.g.) suffering. It i s,
hence, obvious that Schleiermacher also struggles with uniting the duality and
415
416
Ibid., § 97.2, 402.
417
Ibid., § 97.3, 408.
418
Ibid., § 97.3, 409.
419
His aim was not to destroy the tradition, but rather “to inquire how much of the cur-
rent form of expression is to be retained, and how much, on the other hand, had better be
given up, either because it is an imperfect solution of the problem or because it is an addi-
tion not in itself essential, and harmful because the occasion of persistent misunderstand-
ings” (ibid., § 95.2, 390).
420
Ibid., § 97.4, 410.
421
Ibid., § 97.5, 411 and 413. Therefore, Schleiermacher strictly refuses any thought of
NHQRVLV or JHQXVPDLHVWDWLFXP, cf. ibid., § 105.3, 473–475.
that he also keeps divinity and humanity as opposites in Christ, which can be
united at last only in the form of a kind of one-sided divinization of the hu-
man.422
Subsequently, Schleiermacher opens the view from the focus on the indi-
vidual to the community of the church, to the “common” or “corporate
life”.423 The person-forming activity opens widely to a “world-forming” ac-
tivity so that the final aim of the incarnation is the new life and new God-
consciousness of the whole human nature. 424 “[T]hus the total effective influ-
ence of Christ is only the continuation of the creative divine activity out of
which the Person of Christ arose.” 425 What happened in Christ should proceed
in the whole humankind: “In just the same way Christ is to be the soul also in
the individual fellowship, and each individual the organism through which
the soul works.” 426 Here, Schleiermacher ends at a conception of universal
christification inclining to a Logos-sarx Christology within an Apollianrian
manner: the whole world should become a second Christ – organic nature
penetrated and revived by the divine principle.
Then, Schleiermacher shifts his focus from the earthly Jesus to his remaining impression
and his soteriological importance putting aside the problem of Christ’s suffering, death,
and resurrection. According to Schleiermacher, neither of these articles is important for the
development of individual God-consciousness (because it was not necessary for the apos-
tles either) and, hence, of no importance for salvation.427 All these are only secondary ele-
ments, resurrection belongs rather to the doctrine of the Scriptures, 428 the suffering of
Christ is rather an illustration of the importance of Christ and of his solidarity with all hu-
mankind.429
Overall, Schleiermacher tries to critically follow up the traditional Christolo-

gy and adapt it for his time. The strong side of his conception is the emphasis
on mutual unity and the mutual indwelling of clearly differentiated humanity
and divinity in the twofold motion: the divinity penetrating the humanity, and
the humanity being assumed by the divinity. Here, Schleiermacher was able
to admit some adaptation of the eternal divine principle to the organic human-
ity to conceive the person of Christ with its divinity within fully natural
terms.
However, neither Schleiermacher’s speculative concept of unity of divinity
and humanity – which he tries to keep both, unlike the following liberal the-
422
Cf. L. PEARSON, “Schleiermacher and the Christologies Behind Chalcedon”, +7593
(2003/3), 349–367.
423
424
Ibid., § 100.2, 427: “new vital principle”.
425
Ibid.
426
Ibid., § 100.2, 428.
427
Ibid., § 99.1, 418; § 101.4, 435–436.
428
Ibid., § 99.2, 419–420.
429
Ibid., § 101.4, 435–436; § 104.4, 458.
ology that refers substantially to him – can solve this principal problem be-
cause he cannot think God in another way than as constantly active. Yet, at
the same time, he cannot think God personally but only as a lifeless principle,
which cannot be affected or even suffer, while human is in the ideal case only
passive, determined from without, as though subordinated to the divine.430
Schleiermacher tries to think of Christ as of a human personality, but he can-
not fulfill this goal properly. In the end, he divides Christ into two levels as
well, where – paradoxically, in opposition to Schleiermacher’s main interest
– the humanity is rather undervalued. He conceives the humanity of Christ
physically in terms of human development, of human organism but paradoxi-
cally not enough in terms of human person.431 Humanity is reduced only to a
kind of organic substrate for the divinity. Thus, the same problem still re-
mains: how is one to think of the unity of the person of Christ in its divine-
human fullness.
In the end, Schleiermacher is interested in the humanity of Christ as in the
historical manifestation of the divine principle, which should replenish the
whole of humankind. After all, dealing with the ontology of Christ’s person,
it is again the soteriological point, the immediate “total impression” of the
Redeemer, what Schleiermacher stresses.432 This is fully in accord with his
program, however, the soteriological level is sustained by the crucial concep-
tion of Christ’s personality, i.e., by the ontology of Christ’s person. 433 At this
point, Schleiermacher goes thus beyond his own program. Therefore, the
question turns back, which Schleiermacher himself mentioned in his Second
Letter to Lücke: should not the whole material be organized differently, i.e.,
starting with Christology? 434 And then also – going even beyond this point –
should not the whole material get a trinitarian frame?
Nevertheless – although in this new attempt Schleiermacher failed to fulfill
what he had intended because crucial questions remain open and the whole
conception proves to be constituted not in the pious self-consciousness but
rather in the ontological Christology – his thought proved very influential for
the development of Christology that followed, mainly in two respects: first,
430
Cf. LANGE, +LVWRULVFKHU-HVXV, 172: The biggest problem of Schleiermacher’s theol-
ogy is his conception of God, which is “strangely lifeless”.
431
That is a precise observation of SLENCZKA, *HVFKLFKWOLFKNHLWXQG3HUVRQVHLQ, 222.
432
Cf. SCHLEIERMACHER , 7KH&KULVWLDQ)DLWK, § 105.1, 467: “For even His original in-
fluence was purely spiritual, and was mediated through His bodily appearance not other-
wise than even now His spiritual presence is mediated through the written Word and the
picture it contains of His being and influence – so that even now His directive control is
not simply a mediate and derived one.”
433
Cf. ibid., § 91.2, 372; § 29.3, 125.
434
SCHLEIERMACHER, 2QWKH*ODXEHQVOHKUH, 55–56 (= .*$ I/10, 338).
his profound critique of the traditional doctrine; 435 and second, his differentia-
tion of divine principle and particular historical individual.
Following this differentiation, the liberal authors after Schleiermacher
placed so much stress on the humanity of Jesus Christ (coincidentally, at the
beginning of the quest for the historical Jesus) that his divinity was split from
him – either into an eternal principle which manifested itself in the historical
personality of Jesus, or by abandoning the divinity of Jesus Christ so com-
pletely that he remained only a human image of God who more or less mir-
rored God and served as an ethical example. 436 The more the humanity of Je-
sus was stressed, the further away God was pushed, either into the undefined
horizon of human life or into the very inwardness of human itself.
In analogy to Schleiermacher – with all similarities and even bigger dissimilarities – in the
20th century, K. Barth proposed in his Church Dogmatics probably the most complexly
conceived and often highly appreciated christological proposal. 437 Contrary to Schleierma-
cher, his later work is often called a “neo-orthodoxy”. However, like Schleiermacher,
Barth as well maintains a wide and thorough discussion with the tradition and accepts its
christological fundaments: YHUH GHXV – YHUH KRPR and the Chalcedonian Christology are
also his own indispensable groundwork (.' IV/1, 146).
Christology is in Barth a part of the doctrine of atonement, where he uniquely com-
bines Christology and soteriology (struggling, therefore, on the most pages with the inclu-
sivity of Christ’s person and work, cf..' IV/1, 231–394; IV/2, 173–422) with the doctrine
of VWDWXV H[LQDQLWLRQLV (conceived as the self-humiliation of the divine – as an obedient
way into the foreign country: The Lord as Servant, .' IV/1, 171) and of VWDWXV H[DOWD
WLRQLV (conceived as the homecoming of the human: The Servant as Lord, .' IV/2, 1).
These are two parallel motions, yet still with divinity remaining divine even in the humilia-
tion (.' IV/1, 196; IV/2, 43)438 and without humanity being divinized (.' IV/1, 145: ex-
altation is not divinization;.' IV/2, 97, 105).439
However, both motions are not symmetrical (.' IV/2, 76), because they both are the
matter of divine activity (.' IV/2, 49), construed from above down. This means, surpris-
435
Cf. the currently standard handbook of systematical theology in Germany: R.
LEONHARD, *UXQGLQIRUPDWLRQ 'RJPDWLN, 4th ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
2009), 296–305; DANZ, *UXQGSUREOHPH, 106–141; SLENCZKA, *HVFKLFKWOLFKNHLWXQG3HU
VRQVHLQ, 118–126.
436
Cf. DANZ, *UXQGSUREOHPH, 128–141; SLENCZKA, *HVFKLFKWOLFKNHLWXQG3HUVRQVHLQ,
224–235.
437
Further on in this excursus, if not said otherwise, I refer to the German original 'LH
NLUFKOLFKH 'RJPDWLN I–IV (Zürich: Evangelischer Verlag, 1934–1967) with respect to the
(not very successful) English translation (&KXUFK 'RJPDWLFV I–IV, trans. G.W.
BROMILEY et al. [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1957–1988]).
438
Here, Barth tries to conceive God as dynamic but still immutably divine. In.'I/2,
174–176, he cannot find another explanation than that the incarnation is simply mirac u-
lous. At the same time, however, it remains valid that God cannot cease to be God. Cf. also
below, Ch. 5.5.
439
Cf. the survey of the whole doctrine in § 58, .' IV/1, 83–170; graphically O.
WEBER, .DUO %DUWKV .LUFKOLFKH 'RJPDWLN (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag,
1963), 197.
ingly, that at first, like in Schleiermacher, Barth proposes that the divinity takes part in the
humanity (“way into the foreign country”) and only afterward YLFH YHUVD (.' IV/2, 95–
96). There is no soteriological FRQFXUVXV: the whole story of Jesus Christ is purely the
mercy of God. In his interpretation of John 1:14, however, Barth accepts the traditional
conception (partly with its contradictions): he insists that God became human, neverthe-
less, in fact, he cannot conceive otherwise than that God assumed humanity (in form of the
common human nature) into divinity – i.e., enhypostatically (.' IV/2, 43–44, 51–79; cf.
also.' I/2, 176–182). “To put it even more simply, it all depends on the simple fact of the
existence and reality of Jesus Christ as it is attested in the New Testament. The doctrine of
the two natures cannot try to stand on its own feet or to be true of itself. Its whole secret is
the secret of Jn. 1:14 – the central saying by which it is described. Whatever we may have
to say about the union of the two natures can only be a commentary on this central saying.
Neither of the two natures counts as such, because neither exists and is actual as such. On-
ly the Son of God counts, He who adds human essence to His divine essence, thus giving it
existence and uniting both in Himself. In Him, and Him alone, they were and are unit-
ed.”440 The objection against the diminishing of humanity in the conception of HQK\SRVWD
VLV of the sole human nature Barth refuses as a “primitive argument”.441
In his conception, Barth starts clearly with the factual unity of the person of Jesus
Christ. It is a principal rule in his whole thinking: he proceeds from the reality (as testified
by the Scriptures,.' I/2, 30) to its possibility (.' I/2, 3); in Christology, there is no dif-
ference.442 Leading is still the perspective of incarnation (.' I/2, 3). From this perspective,
Barth analyzes subsequently the “natures” seeing their problematic but keeping the two-
natures doctrine as still necessary, however only in combination with soteriology (.'
IV/2, 26–27, 54–55). When then Barth comes to treat the unity again, he struggles with it
(cf. e.g..' IV/2, 82–91). He hesitates to treat it as something third next to the divinity and
humanity. The person of Jesus Christ is the unity of both natures as the “Mediator and
pledge” (.' IV/1, 149). Therefore, in the end, Barth speaks of the unity as of “mystery”
(.' I/2, 134): it is rather a point, from which theology should speak, not a point, about
which it should speak (.' I/2, 136–137).443 The question thus remains, how would it be
possible to think of both motions or VWDWXV at the same time and to avoid the danger either
of a merge or concurring contradictions. Barth knows about this danger (.' IV/2, 87 and
93). He tends – in accord with the Western tradition (and with the Reformed tradition in
particular) –, rather to keeping the difference of the natures with the sidelining of humani-
ty. The human subject in Jesus Christ is God Himself (.' IV/2, 54). The Word is the mys-
tery of the flesh and the flesh is “the shell and form of the Word” (.' I/2, 183). Barth,
therefore, accentuates with Chalcedon the difference of both “natures”, which remain dis-
tinct (.' IV/2, 68–69).
A balancing, however a very problematic emphasis, could be seen in Barth’s concep-
tion of Logos as eternal ORJRV HQVDUNRV. Logos was never without humanity, there was
never any ORJRVDVDUNRV (.' II/2, 118; IV/2, 34–35, 69). The flesh is not a mere mode of
440
Cf. clearly BARTH, &KXUFK'RJPDWLFVIV/2, 65–66.
441
.' I/2, 180
442
Cf. GALLUS, 'HU0HQVFK]ZLVFKHQ+LPPHOXQG(UGH, 411–431.
443
Similarly DALFERTH, “Gott für uns”, 63, who speaks about a “fundamental mistake,
which can be traced back to Chalcedon”: it is the “theological focusing on Jesus Christ,
instead of thematizing of everything else out of the perspective of Jesus Christ. With this,
the point of view was made to an object of theological doctrine, instead of theological
teaching about God, world and human life out of this point of view.”
revelation, it is the eternal mode of being of the Son (.' IV/2, 36–37). The Son of God
therefore eternally “embraces both height and depth, both sovereignty and humility, both
lordship and service” (.' IV/2, 92).
In the end, nevertheless, the perspective of the twoness of the natures still seems to be
stronger than the perspective of unity. 444 Therefore, Pannenberg is quite right in his harsh
judgment: Barth, in fact, repeats the old aporias and on the central problematic points, he
gives no answers.445 However, next to many particular fitting points, Barth’s fundamental
insights into the christological grounding of all theology and into its trinitarian structure as
well as his perspective of eschatological realism are still very valueable (and I refer to
them on many points of my own conception).
3. What to Do With Chalcedon Today?

3. What to Do With Chalcedon Today?
Looking back on the rich christological debate, there are thus several possi-
bilities for the treatment of the old christological tradition based on Chalce-
don:
1. Take it as it is, without any possibility of critique or of questioning the
old dogma, referring to the authority of the Council and the church.446 The
only possibility for treating the old dogma, would be, then, to try to explain
its categories and terms (the so-called “inculturation” of the eternal truth to
the changing conditions of being in a particular culture and time), because,
based on the unmistakable authority of the church, the old dogmas are an “au-
thentic interpretation of the testimony of the New Testament” and “the less
inappropriate way” of expressing the mysteries of faith. The dogma does not
change, only its interpretation does. It is to be understood and then presented
444
This uncertainty results partly also from the fundamental problem of Barths work: it
is wide and long and Barth sets many different or even opposite emphases, often without
final systematization so that one can find in his text contradictory claims, while their mutu-
al relation remains unclear: what is often declared as dialectics seems often to be rather a
paradox.
445
Cf. PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 312–315: Barth veils the missing answers by “the kenotic
appearance of the language about the humble condescendension of God” (ibid., 314). To
the development of Barth’s Christology cf. also GALLUS, 'HU0HQVFK, 219–551.
446
Cf. C. SCHÖNBORN, *RWWVDQGWHVHLQHQ6RKQ, 146–147; WEINANDY, “The Doctrinal
Significance”: Chalcedon is an “authoritative doctrinal conception and definitive dogmatic
expression” (ibid., 558). Together with Nicea and Ephesus, Chalcedon has a “metaphysical
nature” (ibid., 563). As such, Chalcedon’s dogmatic definitions are “sacrosanct” (ibid.,
564). It should be remainded here that Chalcedon itself refers to Jesus Christ as the a u-
thority behind the Christian doctrine, cf. '+ 301, resp. 7KH$FWVRIWKH&RXQFLORI&KDOFH
GRQII, session V, Nr. 34, 204: “[…] as the prophets from of old and Jesus Christ himself
taught us about him and the symbol of the fathers has handed down to us”. This point as
the source of Christian exclusivity is heavily criticized by the proponents of theological
pluralism, cf. HICK, 7KH0HWDSKRU, 29, fn. 2; SCHMIDT-LEUKEL, *RWW, 271.
:KDWWR'R:LWK&KDOFHGRQ7RGD\" 155
in an appropriate way. This is, until today, the rather conservative and official
(neo-Thomist) Catholic standpoint.447
It is quite paradoxical that the representative of this approach is one of the newest studies
in Christology, namely, 7KRPDV-RVHSK:KLWH¶V 7KH,QFDUQDWH/RUG (2015). White writes
from the perspective of pre-critical metaphysical realism, interpreting and judging every-
thing and everyone in comparison with Thomism and with a high self-consciousness.448
Any accents of Christology from below are marked as Nestorianism, any emphaysis on
God’s condescendence is labeled as kenoticism. 449 He himself speaks about defending the
traditional Chalcedonian Christology with reference to Nicea, Ephesus, Chalcedon and
Constantinople III; yet, in fact, he reads everything – including the old tradition (and even
the New Testament) – from the Thomist perspective, which he presents as the traditional
and only orthodox approach: “The understanding of the Bible offered by the fathers and
the scholastics, then, is not merely something that can be justified as one possible form of
reading among others […]. Rather, it is the only form of reading that attains objectively to
the deepest truth about the New Testament.”450 This is the major short circuit of this work:
Thomism cannot be presented as ‘the traditional Chalcedonian Christology’.451 Chalcedo-
447
Cf. the encyclical of Pius XII. “Sempiternus Rex”, dedicated to 1500 anniversary of
the Chalcedonian Christology; WEINANDY, 'RHV *RG &KDQJH"; POSPÍŠIL, -Håtã ] 1D]D
UHWD, 25, 148 and 147; HOPING (LQIKUXQJ, 12: “The central task of a systematic Christol-
ogy is a heremeneutic of the christological tradition, being at the same time commited to
truth [wahrheitsverpflichtete Hermeneutik der christologischen Überlieferung]. […] To the
task of a systematic Christology belongs, therefore, the hermeneutical appropriation of the
christological dogma.” Cf. also RAHNER, )RXQGDWLRQV RI &KULVWLDQ )DLWK, 283: “Anyone
who thinks that he is able to express what is meant in the classical Christology of the In-
carnation in another way without doing violence to what is meant, he may express it differ-
ently. This presupposes that he respects the official teaching of the church as a critical
norm for his own way of expressing it, and that he knows that his teaching has to be an
indispensable norm for him when he enters into the public discourse of the church.” With
this opinion, Rahner would stand exactly between point 1 and 5 in my list.
448
T.J. WHITE, 7KH,QFDUQDWH/RUG$6WXG\LQ7KRPLVWLF&KULVWRORJ\ (Washington: The
Catholic University of America Press, 2015), 124: “[I]f we can speak in lasting ways of
doctrinal truths, we can and must also identify theological errors that can persist through
time.” This is also a possible reason why, in his attempts of dialogue with and in his judg-
ments of other positions (e.g. the one of Schleiermacher, Rahner, K. Barth, Schillebeeckx,
Balthasar and others), it is sometimes difficult to recognize the real positions of the re-
ferred authors. Besides, it is strange that White criticizes the others for their philosophical
presuppositions, yet without reflecting on his own, which are quite massive, cf. ibid., 234–
235: “If Barthians frequently adopt Kantian epistemological premises, they do so not be-
cause of a theological understanding derived from divine revelation, but because they have
inherited a set of philosophical commitments and presuppositions from the German En-
lightenment and modern liberal Protestantism.” The towering self-consciousness based on
the conviction that Thomas’s and White’s own premises come from divine revelation, is
quite fascinating.
449
Ibid., 73–125 and 341–353. Obviously, both these topics present the biggest fears
and dangers for White himself.
450
Ibid., 8.
451
Cf. e.g. 236, 280.
nian Christology offers more interpretations than the western or even only the Thomist in
particular, as I hope to have shown above. Not to mention the plurality of interpretations of
the New Testament.
White pleads for a renewal of ontology and realism by which he, however, understands
the SUH.DQWLDQ VXSHUQDWXUDOLVWLF PHWDSK\VLFV.452 It is rather astonishing that in the 21st
century one can read assertions that we need to go “EDFN WR WKH WKLQJV LQ WKHPVHOYHV, to
measure the truth of the discourse against the structure of reality itself”, to return “to a re-
flection about the nature of what exists”, from hermeneutics to the underlying and univer-
sal metaphysics, to the things behind language and names. 453 Obviously, in White’s view,
Kant opened the door for the postmodern plurality of perspectives, which is frightening. 454
“In truth, without ontology, everything descends into night.”455 “In any event, it is clear
that once we adopt a post-metaphysical, hermeneutical methodology, the claims of a per-
ennial Christian truth seem deeply compromised, and the aspirations to any form of peren-
nial theological tradition are irrevocably undermined.” 456 Moreover, his view is firmly an-
chored in the natural theology as it is expressed in scholastic view of the relation between
nature and grace within the DQDORJLD HQWLV (which White repeatedly defends against K.
Barth) where grace brings supernatural revelation, which elevates nature to a special
knowledge.457 The “science of theology”, then, is based on this supernatural knowledge
and operates from this perspective of an ultimate truth. From this position, White repeats
all the problematic – and, in the end, aporetic – points of the old tradition: the reading of
the Gospels from the Johannine perspective while understanding John in a massively onto-
logical way; the Antique concept of God as apathetic, immutable and wholly transcendent;
the strict division between immanent and economic Trinity; the substance-burdened and
heavy speech of natures and accidents in the western perspective as two pinciples with
separate acting (Leo and Constantinople III); the dominance of divinity, for which humani-
ty is only an instrument or vehicle so that any influence from the humanity toward the di-
vinity is excluded; Christ’s direct divine self-consciousness; the notion of a universal hu-
452
Cf. ibid., 51, 56. Supernaturalism defines also his approach and hermeneutics of the
New Testament: “Historical-critical reflection on the Gospels might be able to defend ra-
tionally the historicity of this mystery or discuss its cultural context and circumstances. It
cannot procure, however, the basis itself for belief in the mystery, because this is given to
us only supernaturally – through faith in the portrayal of Christ given by the New Testa-
ment, which we know by faith to correspond to the historical Jesus himself” (ibid., 372).
453
Ibid., 490–491.
454
Cf. ibid., 235, 467.
455
Ibid., 487, where ontology = metaphysics based on „infallible revelation“ (ibid.,
484).
456
Ibid., 485.
457
Ibid., 58, 66, 205, 208, 232–233, 402, 427. However, in the Thomist view in White,
the notion of sin is underestimated; even in the fallen state the human is able to recognize
that he or she relates to God. Nature is still a firm binding base and precondition for grace
(cf. ibid., 162–164, 207). If this is the outer frame of the whole, then Christ has only the
role of a loud invitation to follow the path of grace. It is not by chance that in White’s cr u-
cial soteriological sentences, the metaphor of LQYLWDWLRQ for a virtuous life (sanctification)
plays the central role (cf. ibid., 233, 364, 428, 464). This is not much.
man essence; the suffering and death of Christ only in his humanity; the self-resurrection
of Christ; or the divinization of humanity as the final goal. 458
The picture of Jesus Christ suffers thus still under the same pains: his humanity is di-
minished, his person is treated primarily as divine and superhuman in his perfection in-
cluding his passion because it is led by the idea of Jesus’ permanent beatific vision of the
will of the Father.459 Yet, in the soteriological respect, Christ only opens the way toward
God and invites people to follow. 460 The main direction and motion of this conception is
given with the central principle of grace elevating the nature: it is the motion from below
up, from the human nature, which is obviously not good enough as such for salvation, up
to its divinization. The opposite motion – condescendence of God, which would result in
the true humanity of God (although White speaks often about the presence of God in the
creation), is missing: “God may in no way be assimilated to the world of human creatures.
But precisely for this same reason, God may be present in creation in a way that no created
reality can be.”461 Is this enough when the topic is the incarnate Lord – God who became
human?
Seen from an other end, the human relation to God is put mostly in intellectual category
of knowledge (revelation grasped in faith is a supernatural knowledge, theology has and
elaborates this knowledge, salvation is the perfect knowledge of God). 462
In the end, truth is the matter of divine revelation, which is the VDFUD GRFWULQD of the
Catholic church as it is normatively elaborated by Thomas Aquinas.463 What is newer than
that should be accommodated to the good old tradition.464 “We should seek the wisdom of
God according to this classical understanding, whether it initially makes perfect sense to
our contemporaries or not. For they themselves are very often thoroughly disorientated,
and stand in need of the wisdom of Christ.” 465 What is conceived from a non-believing per-
spective, must be deepened and elevated by supernatural insights of faith and theology.
The last argument for White says: it “is the teaching of divine revelation”. 466
Overall, White’s conception makes the impression of an immunization strategy by at-
tempting to build of a closed speculative system that appeals to supernatural divine revela-
tion, which thus must be true. Therefore, this approach fulfills the characteristics of what I
called above the absolute claim for truth (cf. above, Ch. 1.2.3).
458
Cf. ibid., 62, 64, 113, 116–117, 126, 169, 200, 237, 274, 279, 355, 359–360, 363,
364–367, 372, 374, 433.
459
Cf. ibid., 246, 379.
460
Cf. ibid., 118, 120–121.
461
Ibid., 202, cf. 207. Repeating the Antique term of God, White holds a possible touch
of divinity with suffering, death and non-being for “metaphysical absurdities” (ibid., 351).
462
Cf. ibid., 53, 58, 208, 354, 363, 395 (therefore, “salvation is offered to all human be-
ings who attain to the age of reason” [!]).
463
Cf. ibid., 74, 202, 468.
464
Ibid., 125: “If we wish to seek a way forward in Christology even amidst the con-
temporary questions, then we would do well to seek enlightenment from the perennial
principles of patristic and Thomistic theology. For within them, the central key to the fu-
ture of theological progress is to be found.” The way forward is actually the way back-
ward: a culture or era progresses only if it progresses toward Thomism (cf. ibid., 163).
465
Ibid., 509.
466
Ibid., 426.
2. Break it from within by dividing the traditional picture of Jesus Christ into
Jesus with all his historicity on one side and an eternal divine principle on the
other side. This way was introduced by Schleiermacher, radically deepened
by D.F. Strauß,467 and can be found in the thought of P. Tillich, 468 and still
lives in the conception of the cosmic Christ (e.g. T. de Chardin, R. Panikkar,
N.H. Gregersen) 469.
3. Weaken it by conceiving Jesus as a mere image of God, not God-Self.
Jesus becomes, then, a big example, a preacher, an appeal to morality, the ul-
timate referent to the divine itself (W. Herrmann 470, M. D. Krüger 471), the
“ideal case of religious subjectivity” (U. Barth 472).
4. Throw it completely away, either because it is all wrong from the begin-
ning (A. von Harnack 473), or because it is already completely passé for the
modern times (J. Hick 474, K. Huizing475, Ch. Danz 476, N. Slenczka477). Then,
theology has to have a completely different shape.
5. Read it critically but with all necessary critique of its terminology and
its way of thinking, keep its intentions and frame and try to reformulate its
categories. This is what former and current theologians on the Protestant as
well as on the Catholic sides have tried mainly.478
467
Cf. above, Ch. 2.1.
468
Cf. TILLICH, 67KII, 96, although Tillich himself refused this term and spoke rather
about the “universal Logos”, cf. ibid., 112.
469
Cf. W. THIEDE, :HU LVW GHU NRVPLVFKH &KULVWXV" .DUULHUH XQG %HGHXWXQJVZDQGHO
HLQHU PRGHUQHQ 0HWDSKHU (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001), 37–51;
MOLTMANN, 7KH:D\RI-HVXV&KULVW, 274–312; N.H. GREGERSEN, “The Extended Body
of Christ”, in ,QFDUQDWLRQ, ed. IDEM (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), 225–251; to
Gregersen’s attempt cf. the critical texts by Moltmann, Polkinghorne and Johnson in the
same volume.
470
HERRMANN, 'HU9HUNHKUGHV&KULVWHQPLW*RWW.
471
KRÜGER, 'DVDQGHUH%LOG&KULVWL.
472
BARTH, “Hermeneutik der Evangelien”, 276.
473
Acoording to HARNACK,/HKUEXFKII, 375–376, the Creed of Chalcedon is a “pseu-
domystery” and “apostasy from the old faith” and its key formulations are “deeply irreli-
gious” because only negative. Neo-Chalcedonism is “aristotelian scholasticism” and a fall
into philosophical theology (ibid., 385). Cf. also above, Ch. 1.1.3.
474
Cf. HICK, “Jesus and the world religions”, 167–185; IDEM, 7KH 0HWDSKRU, 29 and
45. Similarly H.M. KUITERT, .HLQ]ZHLWHU*RWW-HVXVXQGGDV(QGHGHVNLUFKOLFKHQ'RJ
PDV, trans. K. BLÖMER (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 2004).
475
K. HUIZING, 6FKOXVVPLW6QGH (Hamburg: Kreuz Verlag, 2017), 85–88.
476
DANZ, *UXQGSUREOHPH, 1–2, 55, 193.
477
SLENCZKA, “Problemgeschichte der Christologie”. IDEM, “Die Christologie als Re-
flex“.
478
Cf., as one reference for all, which I personally like, the answer of HAIGHT, -HVXV,
16: “There are only three options possible relative to these classical formulations: to avoid
them, to repeat them, or to interpret them. One cannot avoid them because the question of
just who Jesus was in ontological terms always remains; it will not go away and is not un-
Within the current catholic theology, especially in the German speaking area, there is a
lively christological discussion, which seeks an appropriate expression for Christology to-
day. However, the catholic Christology in its critical relation to the traditional Christology
does not go as far as do some protestant theologians, who speak about the fundamental de-
construction of Christology under the criticism of modernity (it is thus no chance that
above, in the points 2–4, are to find almost exclusively names of protestant theologians) 479
and remain strictly within the Chalcedonian frame. Here, catholic Christology seeks in var-
ious ways a new expression for the old dogmas, which would allow to abandon the sub-
stantialist ontology of the dogma and thus to overcome metaphysics, however, without
abandoning ontological Christology. An explicit accent lies on full humanity of Jesus.
Catholic theologians, therefore, make proposals based on, e.g., a new reformulation of
HQK\SRVWDVLV,480 on more relational interpretation of Chalcedon resulting into a Spirit-
Christology, 481 on the incarnation Christology approached from below with an accent on
the jewish context and on Jewish-Christian relationship,482 on the Kantian theory of subjec-
tive freedom,483 on the uniqueness of Christ in combination with the inclusivity of his sac-
important. One cannot just repeat the classical formulas, because they do not have the same
meaning in our culture as they did when they were formulated. To repeat them, therefore,
is to interpret them in a sense that was not intended by them. Therefore, one has no choice
but to engage the classical councils and to explicitly interpret them for our own period.
Christologies that try to leap over the classical doctrines fail in comprehensiveness.” (His
own interpretation of Chalcedon is, however, undefensible. Cf. ibid., 295–297 and below,
Ch. 11.1.) Cf. also the short and sober article by SCHLINK, “Die Christologie von Chalce-
don im ökumenischen Gespräch”; or the opinion of RITTER, “Dogma und Lehre”, 273:
“Which theological level is to be ascribed to it [sc. to the Chalcedonian definition] until
today can be seen on the fact that to give it wholly up means, in particular, to deny, at the
same time, some fundamental subjects of the biblical testimony or it means at least a de-
formation of the faithful response to this testimony.”
479
Catholic theology reacts to the position of Protestant liberal theology partly with a
bare stating, cf. G. ESSEN, “Geschichte – Metaphysik – Anthropologie. Diskurskonstella-
tionen der Christologie in der Moderne. Eine katholisch-theologische Vergewisserung”, in
'RJPDWLVFKH &KULVWRORJLH LQ GHU 0RGHUQH, ed. CH. DANZ and IDEM (Regensburg: Frie-
drich Pustet, 2019), 17: “Unlike the protestant theology [especially in their liberal concep-
tions], statements about ‘abolishing’ of the old-church Christology have barely found some
use in the catholic theology.” Sometimes, however, partly with embarrassment, cf. K.-H.
MENKE, “Review of Christian Danz: Grundprobleme der Christologie”, 7KHRORJLVFKH 5H
YXH110 (2014), 157: Ecumenical unity is now questioned also at points where “it was pre-
viously considered indubitable: on the field of the joint testimony to the uniqueness and to
the universality of salvation the Christ event”.
480
ESSEN, 'LH)UHLKHLW-HVX. Cf. more in detail to his proposal below, Ch. 6.1.
481
WERBICK, *RWWPHQVFKOLFK. Cf. more in detail to his proposal below, Ch. 5.4.
482
HOPING, (LQIKUXQJLQGLH&KULVWRORJLH.
483
B. NITSCHE, &KULVWRORJLH (Paderborn: F. Schöningh, 2012); IDEM, Eine freiheitsthe-
oretische Relektüre chalkedonischer Christologie”, in 'RJPDWLVFKH &KULVWRORJLH LQ GHU
0RGHUQH, ed. CH. DANZ and G. ESSEN (Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 2019), 263–285; M.
LERCH, 6HOEVWPLWWHLOXQJ *RWWHV +HUDXVIRUGHUXQJHQ HLQHU IUHLKHLWVWKHRUHWLVFKHQ 2IIHQE D
UXQJVWKHRORJLH (Regensburg: F. Pustet, 2015); IDEM, “Hypostatische Union als Frei-
heitsgeschehen”, in 'RJPDWLVFKH &KULVWRORJLH LQ GHU 0RGHUQH, ed. CH. DANZ and G.
rifice484, on the global importance of the christological heritage, where the history of Chris-
tology becomes Christology of history, 485 or on the historicity of the Gospels486.487 A spe-
cial christological emphasis arising from the Latin American situation of the oppressed
brings liberation theology. 488
This last solution is the one I prefer as well. The most important thing in this
approach is to make the distinction between what Chalcedon tries to say and
how it says it.489 Here, it is permissible to say clearly what I hope to have
demonstrated: that the critique of heavy metaphysical terminology and sub-
stantial terms from Schleiermacher through today was and is right, i.e., that
the doctrine of two natures due to its “questionable realistic semantics” is, in
the end, aporetic:490 the term “nature” becomes an equivocation when used to
refer to both divinity and humanity (the critique of Schleiermacher); the two
natures are conceived as substances opposite to each other and thus cannot be
united (the old critique of Apollinaris) so that this model tends either to speak
about two self-standing agents in Jesus Christ (Leo in his 7RPXV and the
whole concept of FRPPXQLFDWLR LGLRPDWXP) or to diminish one of them
(HQK\SRVWDVLV favoring the JHQXV PDLHVWDWLFXP RU JHQXV WDSHLRQWLFRQ lead-
ing to NHQRVLV). Much like “nature”, in its Trinitarian and christological use
the term K\SRVWDVLV also becomes an equivocation.
Therefore, the solution of the question of what to do with Chalcedon is WR
JRZLWK&KDOFHGRQEH\RQG&KDOFHGRQ: to keep its criteriological function but
not its substance ontology. I will explain it in two steps:
ESSEN (Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 2019), 239–261; TH. PRÖPPER, 7KHRORJLVFKH $Q
WKURSRORJLH I-II.
484
K.-H. MENKE, -HVXVLVW*RWWGHU6RKQ, 3rd ed. (Regensburg: F. Pustet, 2012); IDEM,
6WHOOYHUWUHWXQJ 6FKOVVHOEHJULII FKULVWOLFKHQ /HEHQV XQG WKHRORJLVFKH *UXQGNDWHJRULH
(Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1997).
485
RUHSTORFER, “Von der Geschichte der Christologie zur Christologie der Geschich-
te”, in &KULVWRORJLH, ed IDEM (Paderborn: F. Schöningh, 2008); IDEM, “Gegenwart im Ge-
genteil. Christologische Überlegungen im Gespräch mit Christian Danz und anderen über
das Paradox von Chalkedon”, in 'RJPDWLVFKH&KULVWRORJLHLQGHU0RGHUQH, ed. CH. DANZ
and G. ESSEN (Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 2019), 207–237.
486
RATZINGER, -HVXVRI1D]DUHWK.
487
Cf. the overview in B. DAHLKE, “Christologie jenseits der Metaphyisk? Zur Diskus-
sion in der neueren katholischen Theologie”, &DWK0 66 (2012), 62–78; ESSEN, “Ges-
chichte – Metaphysik – Anthropologie”.
488
BOFF, -HVXV&KULVW/LEHUDWRU; J. SOBRINO, SJ, &KULVWRORJ\DWWKH&URVVURDGV$/DW
LQ$PHULFDQ$SSURDFK, trans. J. DRURY (London: SCM Press, 1978); IDEM, -HVXVWKH/LE
HUDWRU $ +LVWRULFDO7KHRORJLFDO 5HDGLQJ RI -HVXV RI 1D]DUHWK, trans. P. BURNS and F.
MCDONAGH (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1993); IDEM, &KULVWWKH/LEHUDWRU, trans. P. BURNS
(Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2001). To Sobrino’s conception more in detail cf. below, Ch.
6.3.
489
Cf. LINDBECK, 7KH1DWXUHRI'RFWULQH, 82.
490
This is a common point in the discussion, cf. DALFERTH, &UXFLILHGDQG5HVXUUHFWHG,
142; PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 283–323; DANZ, *UXQGSUREOHPH, 56–79.
1. :LWK &KDOFHGRQ In the first step, we need to go with Chalcedon, be-

cause the Creed does two things of the highest importance. First, with its rep-
etition of “one and the same”, it heavily stresses the XQLW\RIWKHSHUVRQRI-H
VXV&KULVW. This, the factual person of the earthly Jesus, is the fact with which
Christology has to start (following in this point Cyril, Luther, Schleierma-
cher, or K. Barth).
And second, it preserves and keeps the fundamental christological distinc-
tion of Christ’s humanity DQG divinity: “9HUHGHXVYHUHKRPR is an indispen-
sable statement of Christian theology.” 491 This distinction says: Christology
remains in its track if it avoids either extreme position (both of which can be
found in the Christian theological tradition from the beginning until today).
Christ is to be conceived neither as an exclusively divine figure nor as a
merely human example of the pious life or religious self-consciousness.492
The historical human Jesus was God-Self, unconfused and undivided. Here-
with, Chalcedon refers unmistakably to the Nicene KRPRRXVLRV and, thus, to
the Trinitarian frame.
At the same time, for the question of Christology, it is obvious that we
have here still WZREDOOVLQSOD\KXPDQLW\DQGGLYLQLW\. But with this notion,
we seem to be at the beginning again. Humanity and divinity of Jesus Christ
are two – what? In the search for non-substantial terms, theologians speak
about two “sides”, “perspectives”, 493 “angles of view” 494, “moments”, “as-
pects”495 or “ways of being” 496 and try to express the unity of these both in
rather relational terms. 497 In my opinion, the terms humanity and divinity are
491
PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 285. Cf. DALFERTH, -HQVHLWV YRQ 0\WKRV XQG /RJRV, 3, who
adds also the necessary Trinitarian frame: “Christian theology is Christology. It cannot
speak about God without speaking about Jesus Christ. It cannot speak about Jesus Christ
without speaking about the Spirit. It cannot speak about the Spirit without speaking about
God and Jesus Christ. […] Whatever theme it grasps, it relates it to God and, hence, to Je-
sus Christ and to the Spirit who is the source of the confession to Jesus Christ. To be able
to speak about God not without Jesus Christ, about Jesus Christ not without God and about
both of them not without the Spirit is the very core of Christology. Insofar everything what
Christology treats has christological foundations.”
492
Cf. DALFERTH, “Gott für uns”, 66–67, who names these extremes “God-Man” and
“Good-Man”. MOLTMANN, 7KH:D\RI-HVXV&KULVW, 57, speaks about a “God-human be-
ing” on the theological background and about “God’s human being” “in an anthropological
foreground”. SCHÖNBORN, *RWW VDQGWH VHLQHQ 6RKQ, 37, calls the latter position straight
“neo-Arianism”.
493
494
POSPÍŠIL, -Håtã]1D]DUHWD, 201.
495
496
BARTH,.'IV/2, 50.
497
Cf. paradigmatically E. JÜNGEL, “Thesen zur Grundlegung der Christologie”, in
IDEM, 8QWHUZHJV]XU6DFKH (München: Chr. Kaiser, 1972), 277: “The being of Jesus Christ
is on the one side God’s self-relation as the relation to the humanity of the man Jesus and
sufficient, without any further necessity to subsume them under another

common term because they are not absolutely paratactic. At the same time,
there is not firstly a common term of humanity and divinity which should be
applied to Jesus Christ; we have to proceed in exactly the opposite way:
“From a theological point of view, the essence of this ‘divine nature’ or ‘d i-
vinity’, which is conjoined with human nature in Jesus Christ without confu-
sion and without division, can be stated only in relation to this historical sto-
ry.”498 And this applies YLFHYHUVD also for humanity: divinity as well as hu-
manity are defined in Jesus Christ and are to be further developed from this
christological starting point.
2.%H\RQG&KDOFHGRQTo keep this fundamental christological distinction
between humanity and divinity within the unity of the person but not to fall
into the old aporias at the same time, we have to change the frame, we have
to VKLIW WKH SHUVSHFWLYH from the aporetic perspective of incarnation, within
which Chalcedonian Christology traditionally operates, to the fundamental
perspective of the Christian faith – WKH SHUVSHFWLYH RI UHVXUUHFWLRQ.499 From
Christmas to Easter. 500 The Easter perspective is the point of intersection be-
tween Christ’s humanity and divinity, between the earthly and the risen Jesus,
and at the same time, it stresses that he is all the time one and the same per-
son. With the Easter perspective, we start from the factual unity of the person,
not with the differences of the natures, which can be analyzed only subse-
quently. From this perspective, theology does not construct the unity of the
person only DSRVWHULRUL, from the preceding natures (as the Western theology
mostly did it), but rather starts with the already realized unity in the person of
the crucified and resurrected. Making the resurrection the leading perspective
throws a clear light on the cross and the incarnation as well. It is the confir-
mation of the life of Jesus Christ and at the same time the revelation of the
very meaning of his person. In the light of the resurrection, both divinity and
on the other side the self-relation of the man Jesus as the relation to God.” Yet still, even in
such a complex relational statement, both halves of the sentence have a different subject.
498
DALFERTH, &UXFLILHG DQG 5HVXUUHFWHG, 144. Cf. MOLTMANN, 7KH :D\ RI -HVXV
&KULVW, 68f. This argument stressed also K. BARTH,.'IV/1, 203, and IV/2, 27, as well as
PANNENBERG, “Christologie und Theologie”, 140.
499
Cf. PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 322–323; ZIZIOULAS, %HLQJ DV &RPPXQLRQ, 55, fn. 49:
“All things in Christology are judged in the light of the resurrection. The incarnation in
itself does not constitute a guarantee of salvation. The fact that ILQDOO\ death is conquered
gives us the right to believe that the conqueror of death was also RULJLQDOO\ God. This is the
way in which Christology in the New Testament has developed – from the resurrection to
the incarnation, not the other way round – and patristic theology never lost this eschatolog-
ical approach to Christology.”
500
Cf. MOLTMANN, 7KH:D\RI-HVXV&KULVW, 49. The Easter perspective is leading also
in PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 53; DALFERTH, &UXFLILHG DQG 5HVXUUHFWHG, 30–31; WENZ,
&KULVWXV, 27; M. WELKER, *RGWKH 5HYHDOHG, 55, fn. 49; G. O’COLLINS, SJ, &KULVWRORJ\
$%LEOLFDO+LVWRULFDODQG6\VWHPDWLF6WXG\RI-HVXV, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009).
the humanity can be taken seriously: the earthly Jesus, his particular life and
death; and precisely this particular life and death as the presence and act of
Godself, so that this particular human life and death proves to be a part of
God’s life itself (cf. below, Ch. 4).
For the conception of divinity and humanity implied by this construct, KX
PDQLW\DQGGLYLQLW\FDQQRWEHVHHQDVRSSRVLWHV but rather as concurring, aim-
ing towards and harmonizing with each other. The terms of divinity and hu-
manity are to be thought in such a way that they can build unity together and
in harmony with each other. In this way, WKHSHUVRQRI-HVXV&KULVWUHPDLQVD
WKHRORJLFDOQRUPIRUERWKWKHWHUPµKXPDQLW\¶DVZHOODVWKHWHUPµGLYLQLW\¶
I would, therefore, propose to replace the traditional model of FRPPXQLFD
WLRLGLRPDWXP, which I consider to be the main problem of the Chalcedonian
substance thinking starting from the incarnation, with a more effective model.
As history has shown, FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP presupposes the two natures
as self-acting and opposing agents, either splitting the unity of Christ’s person
into two parts or fundamentally diminishing one of them. The use of this doc-
trine requires, in fact, that the unity of the person falls apart into two opposite
parts. No matter in which form it was applied, it proved to be aporetic any-
way: the YHUEDOLWHU use, resulting in paradoxical claims about the person, is
not backed up by a real communication of natures; the UHDOLWHU use would be
only one-way (HQK\SRVWDVLV), or it would result in an aporetic mixture (the
danger in Luther). When the natures stand as opposites to each other, there
are only two possibilities: either WKHRVLV, diminishing humanity, or NHQRVLV,
diminishing divinity. 501
This does not mean, however, that the christological aim would be a full
symmetry of “natures”. This proved to be impossible shortly after Chalcedon.
The asymmetrical declivity – or better: the one-way direction from the divine
to the human – as brought the first time by the concept of HQK\SRVWDVLV, is
501
Cf. PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 301: “The conflict between Lutherans and Reformed – and
within Lutheranism itself – over the communication of attributes shows the inescapable
dilemma of every Christology that begins with the statement of the incarnation in order to
reproduce the uniting of the Son of God with the humanity of Jesus beginning with his
birth rather than moving to the statement of incarnation as the goal of Christology in order
to find Jesus’ unity with God retroactively confirmed from his resurrection for the entirety
of his existence. If one thinks from the perspective of the incarnation as an event that took
place at Jesus’ conception and was concluded at his birth, one is forced on the one hand to
the consequent deification of Jesus’ humanity, in contradiction to the humanity of his
earthly life. Or on the other hand one will be subject to the criticism of having conceived
the unity of God with the man Jesus only incompletely and with reservations. If the two are
joined together in a real unity, the FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP is to be maintained not only
between the natures and the person but also between the natures themselves, thus the
communication of the divine attributes of majesty to the human nature. Of course, such a
unity means blending together; in this process the human nature does not simply remain
what it was and is before and outside of it.”
necessary. 502 However, not the way HQK\SRVWDVLV does it, because it diminish-
es humanity and results in WKHRVLV. The opposite attempt of NHQRVLV goes this
one-way direction as well, but, with its opposite solution, it loses the divinity.
Therefore, I propose to replace the FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP with a com-
bination of divine accommodation and the characteristic of the human being
as LPDJR'HL. In my view, the divine has still to have full activity in the in-
terpenetration of humanity, yet not as the WKHRVLV of humanity but as the ac-
commodation of the divine. This accommodation, however, cannot be con-
ceived as NHQRVLV but rather as SOHURVLV, as fulfilling of God’s own divinity.
At the same time, the accommodation makes sure that the humanity can be
developed fully, because as LPDJR'HL, humanity can be true humanity only
in relationship with God. 503 Therefore, in short, I aim to show that in Jesus
Christ both have its roots and its legitimacy: WKHRVLV RI WKH GLYLQH DQG DQ
WKURSRSRHVLVRIWKHKXPDQ WKHGLYLQL]DWLRQRI*RGLQKLVDFFRPPRGDWLRQWR
KXPDQDQGIXOOKXPDQL]DWLRQRIKXPDQVEDVHGRQWKHLUUHODWLRQVKLSWR*RG
And finally, because Christology does not stand alone, but opens up to so-
teriology, to the doctrine of the Trinity, and to theological anthropology in
general, it is to say: if the general terms of divinity and humanity are to be
defined christologically and derived from the humanity and divinity of Jesus
Christ, then the relation of humanity and divinity, as described in Chalcedon
with the famous four negative adjectives, can become a theological pattern
for the relation of God and human in general, or more precisely: of God’s
presence and acting in the world.504 The Chalcedonian definition preserves
the fundamental distinction between Creator and creation, God and the world:
God remains God and human remains human. Its key point is neither humani-
ty becoming divine (WKHRVLV), nor reducing divinity to true humanity, 505 but
the true humanity of humans in their relationship to God and the true divinity
of God in his relationship to his creation. And it says at the same time: wher-
ever God acts, it is always in the created forms, never in separation from it.
502
Cf. below, Ch. 6.
503
Cf. PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 321–322, and for a detailed explanation of both these fig-
ures below, Ch. 5 and 6.
504
Cf. GRILLMEIER, -HVXV1, 774: “[T]he person of Christ is the highest and unsurpass-
able kind of the connection between God and man, God and the world.“ And also RAHNER,
“Current Problems in Christology”, 182–183: “[W]e should now go on to first examine the
question […] how far and in what way would such a position [i.e., here: the Chalcedonian
DV\QFK\WRV concerning the constitution of an internally differentiated unity] makes it nec-
essary to go back to a PRUHJHQHUDO theory of the relationship between God and his world,
of which the relation ‘Logos – human nature’ would appear as a special case“. And also
SCHÖNBORN, *RWWVDQGWHVHLQHQ6RKQ, 147–150.
505
Cf. J.G. HERDER, %ULHIH ]XU %HI|UGHUXQJ GHU +XPDQLWlW. 'ULWWH 6DPPOXQJ (Riga:
J.F. Hartknoch, 1794), 8–9: “The divine in the humankind is the cultivation [Bildung] to
humanity.”
And YLFHYHUVD: although God acts with, in, and through created forms, it is
good enough, he can act within creation DV*RG With this Chalcedonian pat-
tern, Christology opens from the particular person of Jesus Christ to the uni-
versal pneumatological width and depth of the whole creation, being at the
same time its source: what was in Jesus Christ uniquely and unrepeatably en-
acted in a historical person holds for the presence of God as Spirit in the
whole world.506
506
It is nicely put in DALEY, “Unpacking the Chalcedonian Formula”, 183: The Chal-
cedonian decision, in fact, opened “a wider perspective that probably had never crossed the
minds of the drafters of the Chalcedonian formula itself: a new sense of the paradigmatic
importance of the person of Christ, in its very structure, for revealing God’s way of saving
and transforming humanity through nondestructive union, as the goal of creation itself. For
Leontius of Byzantium in the mid-sixth century, as for Maximus the Confessor in the mid-
seventh and John of Damascus in the mideighth, the Chalcedonian formula becomes, to an
increasing degree, more than just a summary of the varying terms and models used to
speak of Christ; it develops into the concrete, living model of how God acts to save and
‘divinize’ humanity, by establishing a relationship with the world and with each of us,
which – analogous to the person of Christ itself – makes us one with God in our concrete
mode of being who we are, without compromising either the natural distinctiveness of
what we are as creatures, or the inconceivable fullness of what God is.” I intend to develop
the direction of this thesis in detail in my next book dealing with pneumatological anthro-
pology.
Chapter 4
The Perspective of Christology:

The Resurrection
1. The Route of Christology: There and Back Again

1. The Route of Christology
5HVXUUHFWLRQDVWKH6WDUWLQJ3RLQW
In the previous chapters, I have tried to substantiate and indicate what I am
now going to say explicitly: Christology as the theological and critical reflec-
tion of the Christian faith, in accord with its fundamental Easter perspective,
is based on and proceeds from the perspective of the resurrection of Jesus
Christ.1 From the first chapter on, I have conceived Christology as the centre
of the whole theology. The resurrection is, then, the very centre of this centre.
With the resurrection, I start in the middle of Christology, because it is the
crucial point of intersection, which unites all important dimensions of the
person of Jesus Christ:
a) It shows clearly that the risen Christ is the earthly Jesus of Nazareth,
that the resurrected one is the crucified one and YLFH YHUVD. No division be-
tween the earthly Jesus and the risen Christ is possible. On the contrary, it is
through the resurrection where the life and death of the earthly Jesus get a
clear meaning, final legitimation, and their point.
b) It makes the Christology free from all speculative constructing of the
unity of the person of Jesus Christ. 2 The perspective of resurrection VWDUWV
from the unity of Christ’s person, in accord with the historical experience of
Jesus as the divine Christ: Jesus Christ as a person is simply a historically at-
tested fact.3 The resurrection definitely confirms – at least within the perspec-
tive of the Christian faith but this is the perspective theology is speaking from
1
Cf. above, Ch. 2.2.
2
Cf. above, Ch. 3.
3
Cf. BARTH, &KXUFK'RJPDWLFV IV/2, 66: “To put it even more simply, it all depends
on the simple fact of the existence and reality of Jesus Christ as it is attested in the New
Testament.” Similarly SCHOONENBERG, 7KH &KULVW, 66: Jesus Christ “is one person. This
fact, as we have said, is universally accepted. In the books of New Testament it is a supp o-
sition no one reflects on: everyone knows who is being spoken of when the names ‘Jesus’
or ‘Christ’ are pronounced.”
7KH5RXWHRI&KULVWRORJ\ 167
– that Jesus Christ is human and God in one person. 4 Personal unity of hu-
manity and divinity in him is thus a legitimate theological presupposition,
based on the historical experience and confession, with which all faith and
theology began.
c) It is the point of intersection between Christology from below and
Christology from above, creating, at the same time, the necessary space for
both. From the perspective of resurrection, the earthly life of the crucified
resurrected gets its fundamental meaning (and creates space for all important
questions of his particular fully human life and his self-understanding – for
his biography and his psychology as well). 5 And at the same time, the Chris-
tological perspective opens even beyond his earthly life in both directions: to
his preexistence and to his postexistence (creating space and legitimating the
theological dealing with the preexistence, Trinity, eschatology, and questions
of the eternity-time relation).6 The perspective of resurrection opens space for
a theologically conceived history, present time, and future; Christology from
this perspective opens up space for the theology of creation, soteriology, and
eschatology. 7
Despite it, the christological start from the perspective of resurrection is not so frequent in
theology.8 On the contrary, there are many alternative starting points, represented partly by
the big names of Christian theology:
a) The most common is the classical &KDOFHGRQLDQ &KULVWRORJ\, which was reigning
for a long time in both the East and the West, starting with the incarnation and dealing,
then, with the difficult questions of the duality of the natures and the unity of the person. 9
b) As a typical &KULVWRORJ\IURPDERYH could be characterized the Christology of Karl
Barth, who starts with the Trinity and the preexistence of Jesus Christ and conceives his
Christology within his complex and unique doctrine of atonement in a twofold dynamics of
4
Cf. DALFERTH, &UXFLILHGDQG5HVXUUHFWHG, 24; PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 136: “Had Jesus
not been raised from the dead, it would have been decided that he also hat not been one
with God previously. But through his resurrection it is decided, not only so far as our
knowledge is concerned, but with respect to reality, that Jesus is one with God and retroac-
tively that he was also already one with God previously.”
5
Cf. WENZ, &KULVWXV, 68; and below, Ch. 6.2.
6
Cf. PANNENBERG, 6\VWHPDWLF 7KHRORJ\ 2, 289, where he conceives the Christology
from above and the Christology from below as two complementary approaches, grounded
in the perspective of resurrection. Cf. also IDEM, “Christologie und Theologie”; WENZ,
&KULVWXV, 69–73.
7
Cf. also KASPER, -HVXVWKH&KULVW, 8–13.
8
To mention are in the first place W. PANNENBERG (-HVXV, 53–114; 6\VWHPDWLF7KHROR
J\2, 343–363), I.U. DALFERTH (&UXFLILHGDQG5HVXUUHFWHG, 39–82), G. WENZ (&KULVWXV,
27–45), M. WELKER (*RG WKH 5HYHDOHG, 55, fn. 49), G. O’COLLINS, SJ (&KULVWRORJ\), P.
POKORNÝ (7KH*HQHVLV, 61), or J.D. ZIZIOULAS (%HLQJDV&RPPXQLRQ, 55), however all of
them with their own specific accents.
9
Cf. above, Ch. 3.
168 &KDSWHU7KH3HUVSHFWLYHRI&KULVWRORJ\
“the way of the Son into the foreign country” and of “the homecoming of the Son of
man”.10
c) In contrast to it, other approaches like, e.g., OLEHUDOWKHRORJ\ or SURFHVVWKHRORJ\ try
to start consistently IURPEHORZ and search for the signs of divinity within the humanity of
historical Jesus.11 However, in these conceptions, Jesus remains mostly and on purpose
only human.12 The resurrection is, then, merely a symbol of hope, or, as it is the case often
in liberal theology, it is held, both with Reimarus and Schleiermacher, even as an unneces-
sary and useless fiction.13
d) An important starting point within the protestant theology is Luther’s DFFHQWRQWKH
FURVV, revived again in the 20th century (e.g. in E. Jüngel or J. Moltmann). The emphasis
lies on the dialectic of veiling and unveiling, on faith as an existential struggle on one line
with Luther’s question “How can I get a merciful God?” The cross is exactly this question
but – and that is the problem – not the answer to it. The cross itself is speechless, it is a
question hanging in the air, it is (or it seems to be) the end. “The cross is silent and renders
all silent. God was silent. Jesus died. The disciples ran away. The cross provides us with
no further understanding of human experience. There is no route from here to the resurrec-
tion message.”14 In the Gospels, the cross is not the last word. The story needs to be read
until the very end.
e) Christological conceptions of the Latin American OLEHUDWLRQWKHRORJ\ combine ele-
ments of the both last approaches and and elaborate it into a specific shape, which arises in
an authentic way from the local social situation of oppressed people. Liberation Christol o-
gy starts with the historical existence of Jesus as testified in the Gospels. In the centre of
this approach stands the cross as God’s solidarity with the oppressed. While J. Sobrino
points only to the cross, where the power of liberation and of the good news lies in bearing
of the cross, L. Boff sees the final point of all liberation – and, hence, the starting point for
Christology – in the resurrection.15
10
BARTH,.'IV/1, 171;.'IV/2, 20. Cf. above, petite at the end of Ch. 3.2.8.
11
Next to both named theological groups, exactly this is also the program of E.
SCHILLEBEECKX, -HVXV, 34 and 636, who searches for traces of transcendence within the
life-story of the man Jesus, as testified in the biblical texts, in order to make him manifest
as an invitation to God.
12
To liberal theology, cf. above, Ch. 1.1.2–3 and 2.1. To process Christology, cf. be-
low, Ch. 5.4.
13
Cf. VON SCHELIHA, “Kyniker”, 29, who states with respect to his emphasis on the
contingency of Christian dogma: “It seems to me to be very questionnable to construct the
ZKROH Christology from the resurrection.”
14
DALFERTH, &UXFLILHGDQG5HVXUUHFWHG, 45. To Luther cf. above, Ch. 3.2.5, to Jüngel
Ch. 7.2.2.5. A critique of the cross as a possible starting point of Christology expresses,
from his position, L. BOFF, 3DVVLRQ RI &KULVW 3DVVLRQ RI WKH :RUOG, trans. R.R. BARR
(Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1987), 115: “The cross cannot be posited as the generating prin-
ciple of a system of intellection […]. The cross is the death of all systems. It will not fit
into a framework. It bursts all bonds. It is the symbol of a total negation. It is sin and rejec-
tion of God.”
15
Cf. SOBRINO, &KULVWRORJ\DWWKH&URVVURDGV, 380; IDEM, -HVXVWKH/LEHUDWRU, 36–63,
272; BOFF, -HVXV &KULVW /LEHUDWRU, 290–291. To liberation Christology more in detail cf.
below, Ch. 6.3.
Therefore, I am convinced that the resurrection is the most appropriate star t-

ing point for Christology, it is the IXQGDPHQWDO KHUPHQHXWLFDO SHUVSHFWLYH.16
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the final answer, which sheds light upon
everything before. Resurrection is the last, identifying and revealing word, it
is the key which opens a new perspective – not only to the life of Jesus but
also on God and his relation to the universe. The resurrection brings the fu n-
damentally new perspective, in which things, relations, and occurences get a
new context and with it a new meaning and status. 17 For the Christian faith, it
was this perspective, which was leading. As I have said already before, it was
not the only possible and thus necessary perspective but a surprisingly new
and surprisingly plausible perspective, which, at the same time constituted,
the Christian faith.
7KH)XQGDPHQWIRUWKH6SHHFKRI5HVXUUHFWLRQ
This new perspective was expressed in the first Christian confessions, it has
been reflected more and more and later formulated in a theological way also.
In the beginning, however, stood obviously the surprising (or even unbeliev-
able, cf. Mat 28:17; Mk 16:14; Lk 24:11; John 20:25) notion and experience
that Jesus, who died on the cross and was buried, is alive (Lk 24:34). 18 And
that the most plausible explanation of this experience was that this experience
– and its recognition – cannot be just a chance or an achievement of some
human geniality, but it must be an act of God-Self, who is the only one to
overcome death (Rom 9:10; Acts 2:24.32; Phil 2:9). 19
From this recognition were born the first short confessions of this new
faith that express Jesus as the Christ, the Saviour, or even the Lord (1Cor
15:3b–5; Mt 16:16; Mk 8:29; Lk 4:41; John 11:27; Phil 2:11). 20 It was the
16
Cf. DALFERTH, &UXFLILHGDQG5HVXUUHFWHG, 158.
17
Cf. ibid.: “This is the subject of the Christian resurrection message. It sets the cross
within the context of the life of God and thus within the context of our life. This does not
negate, surpass or invalidate the cross. […] The cross as such is silent and renders all si-
lent. Not until it is interpreted by the word of the gospel in the context of the life of God
does it begin to speak.”
18
A nice argument makes N.T. WRIGHT, 7KH5HVXUUHFWLRQRIWKH6RQRI*RG (Minne-
apolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 699: “[W]hatever it was that the early Christians were ex-
pecting, wanting, hoping and praying for, this was QRW what they said, after Easter, had
happened.”
19
Cf. DALFERTH, &UXFLILHG DQG 5HVXUUHFWHG, 62–63. IDEM, “Volles Grab, leerer
Glaube?”, in 'LH:LUNOLFKNHLWGHU$XIHUVWHKXQJ, ed. H.J. ECKSTEIN and M. WELKER (Neu-
kirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2004), 284–289.
20
For the differentiated meaning of the Greek ku,rioj cf. POKORNÝ, 7KH *HQHVLV, 75–
76. W. FOERSTER and G. QUELL, “ku,rioj”, in 7K:17, vol. 3, ed. G. KITTEL (Stuttgart:
Kohlhammer, 1938), 1038–1094; F. HAHN, &KULVWRORJLVFKH +RKHLWVWLWHO LKUH *HVFKLFKWH
LPIUKHQ&KULVWHQWXP, 4th ed. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1974), 67–132.
perspective of resurrection, which already in the first years after Jesus’ death
integrated all different Christologies as different accents of the one mes-
sage.21
At the same time, the first Christian confessions after the resurrection fol-
lowed and interpreted further the experiences with the earthly Jesus and his
own words. This applies also for the so-called early Christological titles
(ku,rioj, Son of God, Son of man, Christ), which are not to be taken only as
after-Easter interpretations, but they arise from the life and work of the earth-
ly Jesus. 22 As I already tried to show above (Ch. 2.2), the Easter perspective
does not represent only a strict discontinuity (even artificially constructed by
Paul, as Harnack stated) but is founded on a strong continuity from the earth-
ly Jesus and from the experiences with him. “The earthly Jesus is part of the
Easter kerygma, which relates to him and through him affects the whole hori-
zon of his proclamation and his service”.23 The resurrection brought a new,
surprising but still plausible perspective also on the earthly Jesus and the ex-
periences of his followers so that, at the same time, resurrection is “the fact
that changes everything”. 24
The New Testament calls the message, the core of the Easter perspective
euvagge,lion, the Gospel (Rom 1:1; 10:16; Mk 1:14; 1Cor 15:1). It can have
different expressions and accents, but the very core or the “common denomi-
nator” is the resurrection. *RVSHOLVUHVXUUHFWLRQ.25 Without the resurrection,
there would not be in the biblical perspective any faith and any Gospel.
“As a historical statement we can say quite firmly: no Christianity without the resurrection
of Jesus. As Jesus is the single great ‘presupposition’ of Christianity, so also is the resur-
rection of Jesus. To stop short of the resurrection would have been to stop short.” 26
The resurrection brings thus DUDGLFDOO\QHZSHUVSHFWLYH, a twist, a new light

on the whole of reality. It is a new, discontinuous experience on the backdrop
of the continuity. 27 This can be shown at least on three levels:
21
Cf. POKORNÝ, 7KH*HQHVLV, 95–96, and above, the end of the Ch. 2.2.
22
SCHRÖTER, -HVXV XQG GLH $QIlQJH, 223. Cf. POKORNÝ, 7KH *HQHVLV, 74–109;
THEISSEN and MERZ, 7KH+LVWRULFDO-HVXV, 553–563. The classical work about the christo-
logical titles is HAHN, &KULVWRORJLVFKH+RKHLWVWLWHO.
23
24
MOLTMANN, 7KH:D\RI-HVXV&KULVW, 242.
25
Cf. POKORNÝ, 7KH *HQHVLV, 67. DUNN, -HVXV 5HPHPEHUHG, 826, footnote 4: “‘God
raised him from the dead’ is probably the earliest distinctively Christian affirmation and
confession. It is presupposed again and again in the earliest Christian writings”. Dunn adds
a long list of biblical texts. Cf. also BULTMANN, “Die Christologie”, 261: For Paul “Chris-
tology is WKHZRUGRI*RG”.
26
DUNN, -HVXV 5HPHPEHUHG, 826. Cf. DALFERTH, &UXFLILHG DQG 5HVXUUHFWHG, 31:
“Christian faith stands or falls with the confession that Jesus has been raised by God – and
Christian theology stands or falls with the clear and careful conceptual exposition of this
confession” (originally partly italicized).
a) Regarding the VRXUFH WH[WV, the Gospels: their point in the resurrection
makes the reader read the whole story once again, this time, however, in a
new perspective, which sheds new light on the main person, his works and
words.28 The story makes sense from its end, therefore, it is necessary to read
it from the end once again, now knowing, who the main person is. At the
same time, it is to say that the second reading does not make the first obso-
lete. Now, there exist two possible readings of the same text, two possible
perspectives on the same thing, a secular and a believing one. This reminds
the theology that it always speaks from a particular perspective of the Chris-
tian faith and as such does not make other perspectives obsolete.
b) Regading the SHUVRQRI-HVXV&KULVW: With the resurrection, Jesus ceased
to be solely the main preacher and became primarily the main content of the
Christian preaching. He ceased to be the subject of the proclamation and be-
came primarily the object of proclamation. Not only what he said but in the
first place who he was and what he achieved by his life and death, became the
most important issue. 29
c) This same shift applies also to the FHQWUDOPHVVDJH: now, the Gospel is
not what Jesus preached, now, the Gospel is he himself. It is not the Gospel RI
Jesus, as Harnack would like to have it, but now it is the Gospel DERXW Je-
sus.30
“[T]he first Christian preaching was not simply a repreaching of Jesus’ PHVVDJH; it was a
proclamation of Jesus’ UHVXUUHFWLRQ. That there was a turn from Jesus’ gospel to the gospel
about Jesus, from Jesus as proclaimer to Jesus as proclaimed, remains a fundamental per-
ception of the difference between pre-Easter Jesus tradition and post-Easter kerygma.”31
Within the reference to the same God of the Jewish tradition and of Jesus’
own message, the Christian proclamation applied the Easter perspective also
to the speech of God so far: “Christian discourse concerning God does not
27
Cf. DALFERTH, &UXFLILHG DQG 5HVXUUHFWHG, 80–82; DUNN, -HVXV 5HPHPEHUHG, 875:
“It also should be observed that ‘resurrection’ is indeed core belief from the beginning.
The ‘resurrection of Jesus’ is itself the EHJLQQLQJ of belief in Jesus as exalted, and not
simply an elaboration of some other affirmation or prior belief.”
28
DALFERTH, &UXFLILHG DQG 5HVXUUHFWHG, 159, calls this method “hermeneutical self-
application”: “[B]y interpreting an interpretative relationship (‘Jesus is the Christ’) DIUHVK
within its own interpretative horizon, the theological interpreter moves hermeneutically
between the two interpretative instances, from Jesus to Christ and from Christ to Jesus, so
that the resulting intensification of the original interpretation makes it possible to unde r-
stand what was originally stated better than it understood itself.”
29
BULTMANN, 7KHRORJ\RIWKH1HZ7HVWDPHQW, 33; cf. IDEM, “Die Christologie”, 266:
“The preacher must become the preached one because the decisive point is the fact (Daß)
of his preaching, his person but not his personality and its here and now, its event, its mi s-
sion, its address.”
30
Cf. POKORNÝ, 7KH*HQHVLV, 108.
31
DUNN, -HVXV5HPHPEHUHG, 876.
simply continue Jesus’s and Israel’s discourse concerning God; it redefines it

and understands it afresh in the light of Easter.” 32 Therefore, “[a]fter Easter,
whatever Jesus himself said must be said differently.” 33 With this shift, Chris-
tology gets also a clear soteriological dimension.34
I have said above that the new perspective was based on the surprising ex-
perience of Jesus being alive. Where did this experience come from? What is
the source of the Easter perspective? *7KHLVVHQ refers to the Easter visions
of the disciples, for which we have enough evidence and testimonies. There
should be no doubt that this was an “authentic subjective experience”. 35 Ac-
cording to Theissen, they are the result of GHDOLQJ ZLWK WKH FRJQLWLYH GLVVR
QDQFH between the expectations connected with Jesus and his end on the
cross. Among the first Christians, this led, in the end, to an intensified co n-
sensus, grounded in and enforced by the Jewish monotheism that despite his
death on the cross Jesus has to be exalted higher than any other power – hu-
man or divine. 36 Theissen explains, hence, the resurrection as a result of so-
cial psychological processes, as an interpretation of subjective experiences, as
a “mystery of religious imagination”, which led, in the end, to a “mythiciza-
tion of this human being” to a divine status. 37
In such an interpretation, the resurrection would be a result of a self-
persuading view, which refuses to accept a clear loss and creates, on the one
hand, the faith in the human subject, and, on the other hand, simultaneously
the object of this faith. This would then correspond with other liberal views,
which conceive the resurrection as a secondary projection of an internal exp e-
rience or as a myth created by faith. Religion lives, then, in a world of reli-
gious images, which have no direct link to reality, but, nevertheless and in an
ideal case, are somehow useful images for a good life in this world. 38
The interpretation of Theissen cannot explain, why it starts with the Easter
visions and – if they are purely subjective, regardless their authenticity – why
32
33
Ibid., 162.
34
POKORNÝ, 7KH*HQHVLV, 68–69.
35
THEISSEN, 5HOLJLRQRIWKH(DUOLHVW&KXUFKHV, 41.
36
Ibid., 41–60.
37
Ibid., 60.
38
Cf. the conceptions e.g. of Ch. Danz (above, Ch. 1.1.3, footnote 65), M.D. Krüger
(above, Ch. 2.2., at footnote 78) or M. Moxter (“Szenische Anthropologie”, 81–84). In the
Czech discussion represents this position O.A. FUNDA, -HåtãD PêWXV R .ULVWX (-HVXVDQG
WKH 0\WK RI &KULVW) (Praha: Karolinum, 2007): the revelation of the risen Christ was “a
psychic process, which happened in the minds of Jesus’ followers” (ibid., back cover), cf.
ibid., 172–173, where he refers positively to the interpretation of G. LÜDEMANN, 'HU
JURH %HWUXJ 8QG ZDV -HVXV ZLUNOLFK VDJWH XQG WDW (Lüneburg: zu Klampen, 1998). All
these approaches are based on the old Enlightenment figure of Reimarus, which splits the
historical Jesus from the proclaimed Christ stating that the latter is a construct of the
emerging Christian faith and church (cf. above, Ch. 2.1).
we should take them seriously. Furthermore: would subjective vision have the
power to start such a turn in the mood and such vitality and energy in a whole
group, as the texts of the New Testament portray it? Moreover: If there was a
subjective vision at the beginning, how could it be explained that the move-
ment, based on the mythization of a man, survived more than the first genera-
tions and even until now? 39 The reference to the “mystery of religious imagi-
nation” seems to emphasize this question since it shows that there is no satis-
fying answer.
Therefore, it is legitimate to presuppose that something “had to happen af-
ter his death which occasioned such new confessional phrases”. 40 P. Pokorný
points out that not the Easter visions were the subject of the further Christian
proclamation but their presupposed preceding source, which was interpreted
as the resurrection of Jesus. 41 To explain what went on after Easter, it is legit-
imate to presuppose an original “impulse”. 42 “However differently we inter-
pret the Easter appearances, it is clear that what is communicated through
them is an event that precedes them.” 43
Against all tendencies to conceive the resurrection only as a result of the
Easter faith or to reduce its reality only to the “expression of the significance
of the cross”,44 to reduce it to an internal picture of faith, to the ongoing
Christian proclamation or the community of the church is to stress that UHVXU
UHFWLRQKDVWRKDYHDQH[WHUQDOVWDUWLQJSRLQW, an external trigger, an external
impulse, an external ground, which is the cause of all items just named. The
resurrection, from the perspective of Christian faith, is the cause of the i m-
portance of the cross, of faith, of Christian proclamation, and of the commu-
39
Cf. POKORNÝ, 7KH*HQHVLV, 124–125: “There are no unbiased witnesses to the resur-
rection of Jesus. They are all at the same time the witnesses of faith, so that their testimony
always was and is exposed to the suspicion that it is a case of wishful thinking or halluc i-
nation (subjective vision), or the historization of a myth or ideology. This suspicion ca n-
not, however, be proved either. And it is belied by the sheer number of inwardly contingent
visions. The subjective conviction of the spiritual presence of the dead teacher or leader
can indeed return anew and persist among his followers after a period of depression, but it
dies with the people who came under the personal influence of the dead person. It does not
extend to wider circles and further generations. The declaration of the resurrection of Jesus
is of a different kind.”
40
Ibid., 122.
41
Ibid., 123.
42
Ibid., 119.
43
Ibid., 123.
44
R. BULTMANN, “New Testament and Mythology”, in IDEM, 1HZ7HVWDPHQWDQG0\
WKRORJ\DQG2WKHU%DVLF:ULWLQJV, trans. S.M. OGDEN (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984),
36.
nity of the church.45 Otherwise, without this presupposition the origin of the
Easter visions could not be explained, nor why we should take it seriously
and how they could start such a movement lasting over thousands of years,
where this perspective is in faith shared as well by those who did not have
these visions themselves.
The perspective of the Christian faith in its self-understanding is based on
this IXQGDPHQWDO LPSXOVH. As Pokorný shows, it is this impulse, which
grounds two mutually independent phenomena: the appearances or visions of
the resurrected Jesus and, at the same time, the Easter faith. Both are follow-
ing from the original impulse but there is no causality between them: the
Easter faith does not ground the visions, nor do the visions cause the Easter
faith.46 From both these phenomena arises then the Easter proclamation.
The important point is that it is the Christian proclamation, which inter-
prets the original impulse with the metaphorical term of resurrection. It is
therefore crucial to distinguish the original impulse from its Christian inter-
pretation, although we have no other access to the impulse than through the
Christian proclamation and through the visions of the resurrected, which are
in the biblical texts, however, already formed by the proclamation.
At the very beginning lies, thus, an eschatological act of God, which has
an impact also in human history. As an eschatological act of God, it exceeds
the sole dimension of history. It is not only an act ZLWKLQ the world, but as an
eschatological act of God, it is an act ZLWK the world. But as such, it also has a
historical dimension. 47
I will deal with these questions of ontology and historicity of resurrection
in detail later (Ch. 9). For now, dealing with the Easter perspective of resur-
rection as the fundamental KHUPHQHXWLFDO perspective of Christology means
two points that are important to hold:
a) The resurrected Jesus is no construction (be it a phantasy, or a pious pic-
ture of the courageous faith) but rather a practical recognition of faith, which
recognizes the resurrection as the act preceding its own existence, as an act
H[WUDPH and before one’s faith. It is a surprising and new experience, shed-
ding a fully new light on the whole reality. Within this frame, within the per-
spective of faith, the important question to be answered by Christology is:
when resurrected, who is this Jesus actually? Again: it is the ontological
question, which follows from the experience of the resurrected and this new
perspective. And it is the task of Christology to give an answer. Not only in
45
Cf. WENZ, &KULVWXV, 50: “We have to speak about the all-determining reality of God,
if we want to grasp the reality of Easter in a way, in which it can become the subject of a
believing trust in the meaning of fiducia.”
46
POKORNÝ, 7KH*HQHVLV, 10, 126–127, with a graphical scheme, and below, Ch. 9.1.
47
DALFERTH, &UXFLILHGDQG5HVXUUHFWHG, 79–80; POKORNÝ, 7KH*HQHVLV, 126. Cf. be-
low, Ch. 9.4.
the form of a story, not only by repeating, what Jesus said and did, but rather
to give an answer to the RQWRORJLFDO question regarding the person of Jesus as
well as his impact on the world. Theological, dogmatic, christological think-
ing is the necessary result of the encounter with the resurrected one.
b) Starting with the perspective of resurrection Christology still remains
ZLWKLQWKHLQWHUQDOSHUVSHFWLYH of the Christian faith. The starting point at the
resurrection is a point, which starts with the Christian interpretation of the
original impulse as resurrection. Therefore, this starting point and its chara c-
ter can become a subject of theological arguing as well. Nevertheless, I tried
to show, why I consider this point to be the most appropriate for a fundamen-
tal characterization of the Christian faith and to be the most plausible option
for Christology.
7KHUHDQG%DFN$JDLQ
If the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the very point of his life, which gives the
final meaning to everything he is and did, then it opens the route for an ap-
propriate PHWKRGLFDOSURFHGXUH in Christology. 48 In light of the resurrection,
the previous story of his life opens up its fundamental meaning. 49 Starting at
the resurrection, Christology goes therefore first noetically backward: now, it
is clear who died on the cross, how the words and deeds of the earthly Jesus
should be interpreted, what status should be given to his birth – it is the point
of the divine incarnation that allows his earthly life to be taken with ultimate
seriousness. This QRHWLFDOURXWH EDFNZDUG, then, does not stop at the incarna-
tion, because it is possible to ask the question, what was before. That is the
question of Christ’s preexistence, which leads into the heart of the divine life,
to the Trinity, and the outermost frame of the whole reality. From the per-
spective of resurrection, the whole existence and being of Jesus Christ un-
rolls. That is the key point that makes it possible to reconstruct his whole be-
48
Cf. DALFERTH, &UXFLILHGDQG5HVXUUHFWHG, 26–28.
49
SOBRINO, -HVXVWKH/LEHUDWRU, 44, objects: “The resurrection of Christ was necessary
for faith in Christ to appear, and it is therefore a necessary condition for any christology.
However, it is not a useful starting point, since until we are clear about who was raised
(Jesus of Nazareth), why he was raised (so that God’s justice might be made manifest
against a world of injustice), how we gain access to the risen one (in the end, through dis-
cipleship of Jesus), the resurrection does not necessarily lead to the true Christ.” Sobrino
misses in the resurrection as starting point the stress on the earthly Jesus. Yet, I cannot see,
as I try to show above (Ch. 2.2) where else could the resurrection lead. On the contrary, it
is only the resurrection RI WKH FUXFLILHG RQH, which provides the necessary ground for all
the answers, which Sobrino requires. Later, Sobrino partly corrects himself: “the UHDO start-
ing point is always, in one way, overall faith in Christ, but the PHWKRGRORJLFDO starting
point continues to be the historical Jesus” (ibid., 55). “[P]recisely after the resurrection he
was recognized as the Son of God, the quest for the meaning of his death became more
urgent, sharpening the question, ‘Why did Jesus die?’” (ibid., 211).
ing and existence in the opposite direction and with an RQWRORJLFDO LPSHWXV
(within an internal realistic position), that tries to think theologically to the
end, who Jesus Christ is in his whole being and how it is possible to think and
formulate the most important stations of it. 50 Christology is, then, like recon-
structing a detective story: knowing already, how it ended, we want to recon-
struct step by step, how could it happen, where were the turning points, what
is the real meaning of words and works, which was until now hidden in the
flow of history. 51
The perspective of resurrection, as the perspective starting with the decid-
ing divine act of the whole of history, gives a clear theological qualification
to the above-described position of internal realism. 52 The christologically
founded internal realism of the perspective of Christian faith is an HVFKDWR
ORJLFDO UHDOLVP.53 This means that all reality has, in the end, its measure in
this ultimate and revealing act of God; that all reality should be theologically
read against the backdrop of this eschatological reality; and that theology
should not forget to think things to the end. 54
This is the methodical procedure I have chosen to follow in the next chapters.
I will propose an attempt of an ontological reconstruction of the whole stor y
of Christ, starting with his preexistence (Chapter 5) and going through inca r-
nation and life (Chapter 6), death (Chapter 7), its soteriological meaning
(Chapter 8) and resurrection (Chapter 9) to the ultimate horizon of eternity-
time relation (Chapter 10) and to the question of Christology within the plu-
rality of religious traditions (Chapter 11). All of this, of course, being in an
intense connection with questions of soteriology, which arise immediately
from the christological theme.
50
To the ontological commitment of theology cf. DALFERTH, -HQVHLWV, 312–313; IDEM,
([LVWHQ]*RWWHV.
51
Cf. MOLTMANN, 7KH:D\RI-HVXV&KULVW, 76–77.
52
Cf. above, Ch. 1.2.3.
53
Cf. below, Ch. 9.4. Concerning this term cf. DALFERTH, “Theologischer Realismus”,
407, who describes with it the realism of K. Barth. Cf. also GALLUS, “Verschiedene We-
ge”, 245–250.
54
As MOLTMANN, 7KH :D\ RI -HVXV &KULVW, 181, puts it: “To think eschatologically
means thinking something through to the end.” I try to draw the lines to the very end in
both last chapters 10 and 11.
7ULQLW\DVWKH1HFHVVDU\%DFNJURXQG 177
2. Trinity as the Necessary Background

2. Trinity as the Necessary Background
7KH,PSRUWDQFHRIWKH7ULQLWDULDQ$SSURDFK
One more thing is to be stressed, although it is already implicitly clear from
what was said until now. Christology is possible only in the background of
Trinity. 55 It is a common theological notion from the early beginnings of the-
ology, shared across all major Christian traditions (orthodox, catholic,
protestant) that Christology, as Christology of the crucified and resurrected
Jesus, provides the epistemological ground for the doctrine of the Trinity,
whereas the Trinity provides the necessary logical and ontological context for
Christology. It was not by chance, that it was the question of Christ’s divini-
ty, which led almost necessarily to the formulation of the Trinitarian dogma.
And, similarly, it was no chance that right afterward, the first problem to be
solved after establishing the doctrine of the Trinity was the question of the
relation of divinity and humanity in Jesus Christ. Trinity and Christology
support each other in a fundamental way. Christology leads necessarily to the
Trinity, the Trinity makes it possible to think Christology to the very end. 56
Especially in western theology it took a very long time (actually until the
20th century) until this strength of the trinitarian theology was discovered
again.57 Under the influence of the Antique Platonic-Aristotelian concept of
God, for a long time the definition was leading, as Thomas puts it: “Deus est
omnino simplex.” 58 Something of it survives still in the tradition of theism. I
will try to show in the next chapters that at least some of the classical prob-
55
56
Cf. ibid. Dalferth – thinking consistently from the perspective of Easter – adds to the
trinitarian consequences of incarnation also the trinitarian consequences of the cross: “It is
no accident that both the attempt to conceive of God’s activity of justification on the cross
in dogmatic terms and the attempt to conceive of the incarnation event as God’s universal
saving activity lead to the doctrine of the Trinity. Where God is concerned, the christologi-
cal coincidence and the soteriological volte-face of consecration and incorporation enacted
on the cross make it necessary to conceive in specific terms of a personal Trinity. For only
in trinitarian terms can the VROXV'HXV be properly conceptualized, and only in trinitarian
terms is it therefore possible to fulfill the requirement that the genesis of the Christian faith
be described historically and reconstructed hermeneutically, and also that a theological
basis be established for its claim to validity.” Cf. ibid., 157–233.
57
An important foreplay – which is a certain shame for theology – were the big philo-
sophical concepts in German idealism: the philosophy of Hegel – actually a huge trinitari-
an conception where the Trinity is the outermost frame of all reality, and the philosophy of
the late Schelling, known as the philosophy of revelation and discovered in its final shape
in 1992 (F.W.J. SCHELLING, 'LH 8UIDVVXQJ GHU 3KLORVRSKLH GHU 2IIHQEDUXQJ, 2 vols
[Hamburg: Meiner, 1992]). A good introduction to the doctrine of Trinity from the catholic
perspective is offered by GRESHAKE, 'HUGUHLHLQH*RWW. Cf. also DALFERTH, &UXFLILHGDQG
5HVXUUHFWHG, 184–195.
58
THOMAS OF AQUIN, 67K I q3 a7.
lems and aporias in the theo-logy VHQVXVWULFWR – e.g. questions of divine apa-
thy and immutability (Ch. 5 and 7) and the relation of eternity and time (Ch.
10) – often arise and end in aporias because of the missing trinitarian frame,
which has its anchor in Christology.
Ch. Schwöbel brings the importance and the motivation of the trinitarian
approach clearly to the point:
“This resurgence of trinitarian theological reflection is motivated by the conviction, that
Christian faith is irreducibly trinitarian in character and that a distinctively theological and
authentically Christian perspective from which theology can engage in dialogue with the
rich diversity of non-Christian and secular views of reality is therefore necessarily trinitari-
an. […] Dissatisfaction with the theological possibilities of non-personal, unitarian or uni-
personalist conceptions of God leave open for a reasoned account of the central claims of
Christian faith about the person of Christ and his saving work is among the reasons for the
renewed interest in trinitarian theology, supported by disappointment with the inability of
many versions of Christian theism, conceived in terms of metaphysics of substance or a
philosophy of subjectivity, to do justice to the relational ‘logic’ of such central Christian
statements as ‘God is Love’.” 59
The trinitarian theology gets thus a fundamental status for the whole of theo l-
ogy: &KULVWLDQWKHRORJ\LVWULQLWDULDQWKHRORJ\ Once more Ch. Schwöbel:
“In spite of the different motivations for this trinitarian turn in many stands of recent the-
ology and the diverse expectations invested in it, there is nevertheless a considerable con-
sensus concerning the status and significance of the doctrine of the Trinity. The doctrine of
the Trinity is not regarded as one doctrine among others in the doctrinal scheme of Chri s-
tian dogmatics, so that changes in its conception would have only limited implications for
the systematic exposition of Christian faith. On the contrary, it is seen as determining the
systematic structure of Christian dogmatics and its content in all its parts. A trinitarian ap-
proach radically affects the exposition of who is the God in whom Christians believe, and
the presentation of what can be asserted about God’s being and the God-world relationship.
Therefore the doctrine of the Trinity determines what can theologically be said about God
as well as what can be stated about the world and humankind. Only because of this com-
prehensive status can trinitarian theology constitute a Christian theological perspective on
reality. The trinitarian turn in theology therefore has implication for the whole of Christian
dogmatics in all its parts.” 60
Only one thing is to be added explicitly: the source and the starting point of
trinitarian theology is Christology, respectively the original Easter experience
of the Christian faith that in the crucified and resurrected one was God -Self.
At the bottom of all trinitarian theology stands the (later in Nicea and Chal-
cedon explicitly formulated) confession of Jesus Christ as truly human and
truly God.
By now, it might be obvious that in my conception I presuppose the LGHQWL
W\ RI WKH LPPDQHQW DQG HFRQRPLF 7ULQLW\, as classically formulated by Karl
59
SCHWÖBEL, “Introduction”, 10.
60
Ibid., 11.
Rahner in his so-called “Grundaxiom”: “the economic Trinity is the imma-

nent Trinity and YLFH YHUVD”.61 The proper theological path leads, as stated
above, from Christology to the Trinity; not metaphysically from an abstract
tractate 'HGHRXQR with a speculative philosophical term of God to the trac-
tate 'H GHR WULQR, which is then limited by the previous one. 62 There is no
need to differentiate two Trinities because with the Christological starting
point with the crucified and resurrected true God and true human, there is no
anxious need to keep God in a kind of apathetic transcendence apart of all
processes of the worldly reality. It is the very point of the conception of reve-
lation as God’s self-revelation: what and how Jesus Christ is, so is God.
There is no different, other, or larger divinity somewhere beyond Christ.
What happened and was in Christ was God-Self. (This statement immediately
needs, however, the trinitarian concretization, that it was the second person of
the Trinity who became human in Christ.)
In the same sense, there is no need for the figure of the so-called H[WUD &DOYLQLVWLFXP,
which repeats the same on the Christological level but while trying to preserve the divine
Logos from all possible dangers of changing wordliness. It states that the divine Logos as-
sumed humanity in the incarnation, however, at the same time, it remained as /RJRV
DVDUNRV outside of the process: QRQFDURH[WUD/RJRQVHG/RJRVH[WUDFDUQH: “Mirabiliter
enim e coelo descendit Filius Dei, ut coelum tamen non relinqueret.” 63 My Christological
point is just the opposite: it was exactly the second person of the Trinity who went “into
the foreign country” and became human, leaving no “reserve” behind. 64
61
K. RAHNER, “Der dreifaltige Gott als transzendenter Urgrund der Heilsgeschichte”, in
0\VWHULXP 6DOXWLV, vol. 2, ed. J. FEINER and M. LÖHRER (Einsiedeln: Benzinger, 1967),
328, cf. ibid., 334–336 (“The Identity of the ‘economic’ and ‘immanent’ Logos”). Against
it POSPÍŠIL, -Håtã]1D]DUHWD, 173: “[H]owever, the words ‘YLFHYHUVD’ hide some dangers.
Whereas the economic Trinity is ontologically fully dependent on the immanent Trinity,
this relation does not hold in reversely because the freedom of the Eternal cannot be condi-
tioned ‘from without’ by the created form of his incarnation and revelation; God does not
become Trinity due to the processes in the salvation history!” Obviously, Pospíšil ca nnot
think one Trinity – he calls it “mixing up of the immanent and of the economic Trinity”
(ibid., 174) – and still divides two Trinities, where the immanent Trinity even “surpasses”
and is “independent on the economic Trinity” (ibid., 175). However, should there be two
Trinities, would it also imply two differring divinities, which is exactly the consequence
that should be avoided.
62
Cf. RAHNER, “Der dreifaltige Gott”, 325; J.D. ZIZIOULAS, %HLQJ DV &RPPXQLRQ
6WXGLHVLQ3HUVRQKRRGDQGWKH&KXUFK (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997),
40.
63
CALVIN, ,QVWLWXWLR UHOLJLRQLV FKULVWLDQDH II, XIII, 4, ed. A. THOLUCK (Edinburgh:
T&T Clark, 1874), 333. Cf. HEPPE, 'LH'RJPDWLN, 335, with more references; and above,
Ch. 3.2.6.
64
Cf. below, Ch. 5 and 6.
Only with such a courageous conception of God who really and fully enters
the world and humanity, the trinitarian framework can provide the dynamics,
which is necessary for the proper conception of God and Christology.
The trinitarian approach, this unique signature of Christian faith – although
the concept of Trinity may be the most complicated theological topic of all –
can be, then, a great theological instrument, which opens the possibility to
think of God-Self and his relation to the creation on more levels, in a com-
plex way and thus dynamically, making it possible to express the richness of
God’s acting (cf below, Ch. 10.2).
7KH&KDOOHQJHVRID&RQVLVWHQW7ULQLWDULDQ6SHHFKRI*RG
At the same time, however, it is a challenge for theology to keep this ap-
proach up. There is at least one huge tendency in the theological language
within the trinitarian frame, which concerns Christology, which is very often
used but is false. The roots of it reach into the biblical texts and to their unr e-
flected use of the term God in relation to Jesus Christ. For example, when
Paul says in the famous sentence in Rom 9:10: “If you confess with your
mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from
the dead, you will be saved.” “God” stands here obviously for “Father” and
this is also the traditional Christian view on the whole Old Testament: wher-
ever stands “God”, it should be understood as “Father”.
Nevertheless, this unreflected use, which mixes up the oneness of God
with the threeness of divine persons, is not restricted only to the biblical texts
but is quite often to read in many outstanding and respected authors and many
theological texts until today. The traditional answer says that because it is so
in the New Testament, is it theologically acceptable and one shall in such
cases understand “God” as “Father”. 65 Some theologians refer here to the tra-
ditional eastern conception of Trinity and to the so-called RUWKRGR[ SDWUR
FHQWULVP, where the divine unity is the presupposition for the divine threeness
and this unity is concentrated in the person of the Father as the source of di-
vinity. The Father is conceived “as God kat¾ evxochn”.66 With the speech of
65
Cf. K. RAHNER, “Theos in the New Testament”, in IDEM, 7KHRORJLFDO,QYHVWLJDWLRQV,
vol. 1 (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1961), 138–148, who tries to substantiate his
thesis that “God” is not simply the suppositon for Father, but that it rather signifies Father.
Rahner gives also plenty of biblical references for the occurrence of “God” representing
the Father.
66
Cf. ibid., 146; JOHN OF DAMASCUS, ([SRVLWLR ILGHL, 8,30; M.D. KRÜGER, *|WWOLFKH
)UHLKHLW (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 287–296. The conception is clearly and shortly
explained in ZIZIOULAS, %HLQJDV&RPPXQLRQ, 40–41 (cf. also above, Ch. 3.1.2): Divinity
is not founded in the divine RXVLD but rather in the K\SRVWDVLV of the Father: the Father
makes God one God. In the Father, all persons of the Trinity have their source and their
divinity: “the ontological ‘principle’ of God is the Father. The personal existence of God
(the Father) constitutes His substance, makes it hypostases. The being of God is constituted
the Father simply as God, the unity should be stressed and it should prevent
the one God from falling apart into three separate persons. The necessary
consequence is, however, an asymmetry in the inner trinitarian relations (the
Father is the source of divinity, originates the Son, and lets proceed the Spir-
it) tending to an equivocation in the term of the person (the person of the Fa-
ther is different from the persons of the Son and the Spirit).
This use seems to support a slight Arian tendency in the Christian theology
suggesting that there is God and next to him (and in this sense actually as if
outside of him) Christ. The problem thus does not lie in the fact that it is the
Father who should be understood as God in the strict sense. The problem lies
in the Christological consequence where it seems that Christ is not God in the
same sense as the Father or only in a secondary way: the asymmetical rela-
tions seem to imply an asymmetry in the divinity.
It can be seen in another typical expression, originating from the New Tes-
tament as well: the conception of Jesus Christ as the “Son of God”. The title
of the Son of God has its roots in the Old Testament conception of the ruler
or king as the adopted son od God (cf. Ps 2:6–7).67 Exactly due to this context
of adoption, this expression bears the same danger as mentioned in the previ-
ous case: there is God on one side, and then his Son on the other. 68 The Father
remains as if the “main” God. On one hand, for many Christians this makes it
possible to accept sentences like “The Son of God died on the cross”. This
sounds somehow usual and probably no Christian would object anything to it.
On the other hand, nevertheless, this is possible only due to the latent Arian
with the person” (ibid., 41). Here, the person of the Father makes the substance, hence the
term of K\SRVWDVLV, clearly favored by Zizioulas, comes again close to the term of RXVLD:
the person of the Father is the divinity. The being of God is thus identified with the person
of the Father, which, however, entails an equivocation of the term person within the Trini-
ty: only the Father is a person in the proper sense of the word; Son and Spirit are derived
from him and hence only secondary persons. Cf. also P. SCHOONENBERG, 'HU*HLVWGDV
:RUW XQG GHU 6RKQ (LQH *HLVW&KULVWRORJLH, trans. W. IMMLER (Regensburg: Pustet,
1991), 187–188, who conceives the Trinity as evolving from the person of the Father in the
moment of incarnation (cf. also below, Ch. 6.1).
67
Cf. S. SCHREIBER, “Von der Verkündigung Jesu zum verkündigten Christus”, in
&KULVWRORJLH, ed. K. RUHSTORFER (Paderborn: F. Schöningh/Brill, 2018), 77.
68
Cf. HENGEL, “The Son of God”, 89–90: “The ‘Son of God’ has become an estab-
lished, unalienable metaphor of Christian theology, expressing both the origin of Jesus in
God’s being (i.e., his love for all creatures and his unique connection with God) and his
true humanity.” Is this a correct expression of a trinitarian approach, when next to the true
humanity stands only a “unique connection with God”? Cf. also BARTH, &KXUFK'RJPDW
LFVIV/1, 207–210, and his dealing with the term ‘Son of God’. Barth comes to a dialectical
conclusion, which is quite typical for him: the title of the Son of God is “a true but inade-
quate and an inadequate but true insight and statement”. “We have no better term” and this
one is “very suitable and indeed indispensable if we are to say what has to be said concer n-
ing His deity” (ibid., 210).
tendency in this expression. In contrary to it, the correct trinitarian expression

would be “God the Son died on the cross”. This may sound for many Chris-
tians problematic, because now, there is Godself at stake, not “only” his
Son.69
The trinitarian theology is thus, on one hand, the fundamental expression
of the Christian faith, the framework of all christologically anchored theolo-
gy, and a great theological instrument for talking about of God. On the other
hand, however, it is a constant challenge for the theological thinking and the
correct theological speech.
69
I will try to think this provocative thought radically to the end, see below in Ch. 7.
Part Two

Chapter 5
Divine Preexistence: The Accommodation
With this chapter, I start the ontological reconstruction of Christology in the

above-mentioned sense: from the internal realistic perspective of the Chris-
tian faith trying to provide a plausible answer to the question ‘Who is Jesus
Christ?’ As already said in the previous chapter, the perspective of the resur-
rection, which as such presupposes a trinitarian frame, leads beyond the in-
carnation and allows us to ask what was before the incarnation.1 It allows
Christology to start with the preexistence, with the inner life of the divine
Trinity, before incarnation, before creation, before time. But again: this is
done always from the particular perspective of here and now, trying to think
things to the end (resp. in this case: to the beginning) with the rationality, lo g-
ic, terms and other instruments ZH have here and now. The necessary theolog-
ical speculation should provide a plausible – and sober – theory of the triune
God (i.e., theo-logy proper).
I will try to show that this topic is not a mere obligatory piece of theologi-
cal speculation, but rather that decisions made here preset fundamental limits
for further thinking and effect everything that comes next. It is, therefore, this
chapter where I will introduce one of the key terms of my christological co n-
cept: the term of GLYLQHDFFRPPRGDWLRQ.
However, the common definition of divinity or of God throughout most of
Christian history was not primarily trinitarian. Following the old Antique tra-
dition, Christian theology saw God defined not by the trinitarian dynamics
but by the exact opposite: by apathy and immutability. 2
1
Cf. PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 150–151: “Jesus’ unity with God, insofar as it belongs to
God’s eternal essence, precedes, however, the time of Jesus’ earthly life. From the idea of
revelation we attain access to the understanding of the old concept of Jesus’ preexistence.
At least this concept appears as a meaningful H[SUHVVLRQ for a material concern, that we,
too, must retain, namely, for Jesus’ full and complete affiliation with the eternal God. J e-
sus’ revelational unity with the God who is from eternity to eternity forces us conceptually
to the thought that Jesus as the ‘Son od God’ is preexistent. This is true even if we must
characterize the idea of preexistence taken by itself as a mythical concept.” And Pannen-
berg refers to the fact that preexistence is presupposed already by Paul (cf. Gal 4:4; Rom
8:3).
2
Cf. e.g. already THEODORET OF CYRUS, “Erranistes”, which are three dialogues on
Christ and Christology entitled “The Immutable”, “The Unconfounded” and “The Impassi-
ble”. As Theodoret writes: “For clearness’ sake I will divide my book into three dialogues.
186 &KDSWHU7KH$FFRPPRGDWLRQ
1. The Immutable God of the Theological Tradition3

1. The Immutable God of the Theological Tradition
hy<+h.a,( rv<åa] hy<ßh.a,( – “I am who I am”. With this name God introduces himself
to Moses in Ex 3:14. This phrase translates the Greek Septuaginta with evgw,
eivmi o` w;n – “I am the being one”. Already since Antique times, being was the
fundamental characteristic of God who is being resting in itself, unmoved,
immutable and without suffering. 4 The so-called D[LRPDRIGLYLQHLPPXWDELO
LW\DQGDSDWK\ (which I have repeatedly mentioned) come through the influ-
ence of Neoplatonism into Christianity and Christian theology so that “[s]ince
now, the Platonic apathy of God is the apriori of the orthodox image of God
in the whole church”. 5 Theology surely knew from the beginning that there is
a certain dynamics within God and in his love for humankind, where God is
not a mere static entity. 6 However, no change within God is possible, God has
to remain unchanged and thus must be immutable, i.e., also free from any suf-
fering because suffering changes the one who suffers, surrendering to a for-
eign power. If God should remain trustworthy and reliable, if God should
preserve and keep his identity, moreover: if God is – as it is already in Ploti-
nus – the eternal truth itself, then he cannot change, he has to remain immu-
table and forever the same. 7
The first will contain the contention that the Godhead of the only-begotten Son is immuta-
ble. The second will by God’s help show that the union of the Godhead and the
manhood of the Lord Christ is without confusion. The third will contend for the impas-
sibility of the divinity of our saviour” (“Erranistes”, in 3* 83, 30 = 1LFHQH DQG 3RVW
1LFHQH)DWKHUV, vol. II/III, 161).
3
In this chapter, I use material previously published in my article “Akomodace jako zá-
kladní regulativní pojem dynamického pojetí Boha [Accommodation as the Fundamental
Regulatory Term of a Dynamic Conception of God]”, 7HRORJLFNiUHIOH[H26 (2020/1), 83–
96.
4
Cf. the classical expression already in HOMER, ,OLDG 24,525: gods are “untroubled”.
Further GRESHAKE, 'HU GUHLHLQH *RWW, 341 (with further literature on the topic), and
WEINANDY, 'RHV*RG&KDQJH", 81 with a Tomist interpretation: “To say that God is ‘He
Who Is’ signifies that the proper nature of God is ‘to be.’ […]. Thus ‘He Who Is’ is the
proper name of God […] it denotes God’s proper form as LSVXPHVVH.”
5
“Die Platonische Apathie Gottes bildet von jetzt ab das Apriori der gesamten ortho-
dox-kirchlichen Gottesvorstellung.” ELERT, 'HU $XVJDQJ, 74, cf. 71–75; also H. KÜNG,
7KH,QFDUQDWLRQRI*RG, trans. J.R. Stephenson (New York: Crossroad, 1987), 525.
6
Cf. H. MÜHLEN, 'LH9HUlQGHUOLFKNHLW*RWWHVDOV+RUL]RQWHLQHU]XNQIWLJHQ&KULVWRO
RJLH (Münster: Aschendorff, 1969), 28–29.
7
Cf. PLOTINOS, Ennead V, 5,1-4, in 3ORWLQV6FKULIWHQ, vol. IIIa, ed. R. BEUTLER and W.
THEILER (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1964), 70–81; and also AUGUSTINUS AURELIUS, “De
libero arbitrio libri III”, II,12, title, in 3/ 32, ed. J.P. MIGNE (Paris, 1841), 1259: God is
“veritas incommunicabilis”; IDEM, “Confessionum libri XIII”, XI, 8,10, in ibid., 813: “ver-
itas stabilis”. Cf. I. SCHÜßLER, “Wahrheit/Wahrhaftigkeit IV. Philosophisch”, in 75( 35,
ed. H. BALZ and G. MÜLLER (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2003), 352.
7KH,PPXWDEOH*RGRIWKH7KHRORJLFDO7UDGLWLRQ 187
Following the teaching of Pseudo-Dionysios, the characteristics of God

were thus expressed primarily YLD HPLQHQWLDH using the universal quantifier
‘omni-’ or YLDQHJDWLRQLV using the negative prefix ‘in-’. Divine characteris-
tics are, then, omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience and infinity, inivisi-
bility and immutability. 8 Therefore, in the medieval theology, God is the ab-
solute being, which is wholly from himself, absolutely simple, not composite
of parts and thus immutable; hence, he cannot suffer (DVHLWDV VLPSOLFLWDV
LPPXWDELOLWDV LPSDVVLELOLWDV). Immutability and simplicity are, then, the
highest characteristics of God in the Platonic conception of Anselm of Ca n-
terbury as well as in the Aristotelian conception of Thomas of Aquin and
were repeatedly confirmed in official church documents. 9
Overall, the immutability and apathy of God were identified with divinity
itself. Then, however, there is no space in God for suffering or any change.
Thought radically through to the end, this would mean, that even the incarna-
tion of the Son, where the Logos EHFDPH flesh (John 1:14) would not be pos-
sible, because a suffering – and hence: human – God would in fact forfeit his
divinity. 10 In the end, the traditional conception of immutability presents an
aporetical and static picture of God that is not trinitarian. Karl Rahner, with
his unique ability to put the finger exactly on the problem and formulate a fit-
ting question, puts it nicely:
8
Cf. O. WEBER, *UXQGODJHQ GHU 'RJPDWLN, vol. I (Neukirchen, Moers: Verlag der
Buchhandlung des Erziehungsvereins, 1955), 485.
9
Cf. ANSELM OF CANTERBURY, &XUGHXVKRPR I, 8; THOMAS OF AQUIN, 67KI q3 a7
resp.: “Deum omnino esse simplicem” (cf. also 67K I, q9; 67K III, q46 a12); further evi-
dences in 7KHRORJ\&KULVWRORJ\$QWKURSRORJ\, ed. International Theological Commission
(1982), II B, http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/
rc_cti_1982_teologia-cristologia-antropologia_en.html (accessed February 13, 2020). The
immutability was defined as an official dogma the last time by Vatican I, cf. '+ 3001:
God is “una singularis, simplex omnino et incommutabilis substantia spiritualis”. Cf.
RAHNER, )RXQGDWLRQVRI&KULVWLDQ)DLWK, 219.
10
This was already an old objection of Celsus, cf. ORIGEN, “Contra Celsum libri octo”,
in 3* 11, ed. J.P. MIGNE (Paris, 1857), 1044C–D. This objection is mentioned also in the
official Roman-catholic document 7KHRORJ\&KULVWRORJ\$QWKURSRORJ\, II B 3, which ar-
gues against it with a quotation of THOMAS OF AQUIN, 67KI q9 a2c: “Therefore, since God
is not susceptible to change in any of these different ways, it is proper to him to be abs o-
lutely immutable”, confirming the traditional doctrine, but adding in a rather paradoxical
way: “But this immutability of the living God is not opposed to his supreme liberty, some-
thing that the event of the Incarnation clearly demonstrates” (7KHRORJ\ &KULVWRORJ\ $Q
WKURSRORJ\, II B 4.1). This lies still on the line of the old paradoxical statement of Gregori-
os Thaumaturgos (whom the documents also mentions, ibid., II B 3): “God has suffered in
Jesus Christ in an impassible fashion” (GREGORIOS THAUMATURGOS , $G7KHRSRPSXPGH
SDVVLELOLHWLPSDVVLELOL LQ'HR IV–VIII. Analecta Sacra Spicilegio Solesmensi parata 4, ed.
B. PITRA [Paris 1876–1882], 365–369).
“It cannot be denied that at this point the traditional theology and philosophy of the
schools gets into a dilemma. It treats first of God as one and three and extols his immut a-
bility, his infinite fullness of being possessed always from eternity to eternity, the ‘pure
act’ of God. But in this earlier treatise it does not advert to the fact that later in the treatise
on ‘Christ, the Word of God’ and ‘Christ, the man’ it has to say: and the Word became
flesh.”11
2. The Christological Complication

2. The Christological Complication
Within the broader theological frame, the Chalcedonian Christology in its de-
velopment as sketched in the previous chapter is a great disturbing element.
The christological dynamics clash with the divine immutability because it
speaks about incarnation and then even worse about suffering and death of
Jesus Christ – the true man and true God.
The traditional Christology struggled with this christological challenge
throughout its history and, except for some attempts partly shown above, re-
garding the relation of divine immutability and Christology, it ended in apori-
as. These aporias emerged mostly in christological questions (and attempted
answers) and were legitimately and heavily criticized since the Enlightenment
tradition from different sides (Schleiermacher and following him liberal the-
ology or trinitarian theology of the 20 th century):
a) Already at the very early stage of christological development the tradi-
tion made a strict differentiation or even GLYLVLRQ EHWZHHQ &KULVW¶V GLYLQLW\
DQGKXPDQLW\ regarding the immutability of the divine. This was the case on
both wings of the tradition the western (Tomus Leonis) and the eastern (Con-
stantinople II), with a clear outcome: only humanity changes, suffers and
dies. Divinity remains undisturbed, in the incarnation as well as in the suffer-
ings.
b) The difference between divinity and humanity was stressed so much
that they became not just differences to be united but rather RSSRVLWHV stand-
ing against each other.12
11
RAHNER, )RXQGDWLRQVRI&KULVWLDQ)DLWK, 219. Cf. similarly H.U. VON BALTHASAR,
“Mysterium Paschale”, in 0\VWHULXP6DOXWLV, vol.3/2, ed. J. FEINER and M. LÖHRER (Ein-
siedeln: Benzinger, 1969), 146, who, based on the hymn of Phil 2, speaks about a certain
“plus factor”, “to which the established formulae of the unchageability of God do not rea l-
ly do justice”.
12
WEINANDY, 'RHV*RG&KDQJH", 119, saw this precisely when dealing with the Ke-
noticists: Heavy problems with the unity of the person of Christ arise when we put it into
“a compositional framework” where “they become mutually exclusive”. Cf. also the pat-
tern of “zero-sum-game”, which B.G. EPPERLY, 3URFHVV 7KHRORJ\ $ *XLGH IRU WKH 3HU
SOH[HG (London/New York: T&T Clark, 2011), 41, applies to the relation of God and hu-
mankind: “In game theory and economics, zero sum games are ‘win-lose’ in orientation: if
I gain, you lose, whether in terms of resources, power, or chess pieces. In theology, this
7KH&KULVWRORJLFDO&RPSOLFDWLRQ 189
c) The whole Christology was constructed from the perspective of preex-

istence and incarnation, i.e., the unity of Christ’s person was constructed D
SRVWHULRUL, starting with the natures as counterparts, which had to be subse-
quently brought into unity. This was, in fact, possible only either at the ex-
pense of diminishing one of the “natures” and thus breaking the leading
Chalcedonian premise “vere deus – vere homo” (the solution of Cyril), or the
unity remained only proclaimed and the person of Christ tended to fall apart
into two self-standing parts and thus breaking the other leading Chalcedonian
premise of “the one and only Son” (the solution of Nestorius). 13
d) The important instrument which should arch over the split between
Christ’s humanity and divinity was the figure of FRPPXQLFDWLR LGLRPDWXP,
conceived, however, mostly only YHUEDOLWHU so that the unity of the person
was a merely declared unity of two opposites. Moreover, the communication
of idioms was possible only in one way, only from the divine to the human,
not in the opposite direction. God needed to be preserved from all human and
from mutability and finitude in the first place. Considered that this point was
made in Christology, i.e., within a space having the title “God became man”,
this was, in the end, the biggest paradox and the biggest apory.14
e) The result was a PHUHO\GLYLQHSLFWXUHRI&KULVW: the divinity had a much
stronger upper hand, which was the case in the doctrine of dyotheletism that
was received and developed primarily in the West, as well as in the rather
(but not only) eastern figure of WKHRVLV as the final aim of human existence.
f) All this subsequently contributed to a heavy ORVV RI &KULVW¶V KXPDQLW\
(which Luther and Schleiermacher tried to save both in their way and which
kenoticism stressed vis-à-vis the modern critique of the Enlightenment, how-
ever, not being able to overcome the split between the “natures”): in the tradi-
tional Christology, there was thus almost no space for a true and real humani-
means that any creaturely agency or creativity robs God of sovereignty, majesty, or pow-
er.”
13
This unsolvable apory is very nicely put by BEYSCHLAG, *UXQGULVV, 70, who de-
scribes the searched “dogmatic infrastructure” of this “fluctuating Christology” as “mono-
physitically closed as well as dyophysitically open”.
14
Precisely sees it, again, RAHNER, )RXQGDWLRQV, 220: “However we divide the predi-
cates which are apparently contradictory and of which one part does not seem to be able to
be predicated of God, it still remains true that this distribution to two realities, the divine
Word on the one hand, and the created human nature on the other, may not let us forget
that the one, created reality with its process of becoming is the reality of the Logos of God
himself. Hence after we have all the particulars of this division, the whole question begins
all over again. It is the question as to how to understand the truth that the assertion of
God’s immutability may not make us lose sight of the fact that what took place in Jesus as
becoming and as history here in our midest, in our space, in our time and world, in our
process of becoming, in our evolution and in our history, that this is precisely the history of
the Word of God himself, KLVRZQ becoming.”
ty of Christ. Paradoxically enough, right there, at this crucial point, there was
no space for a real humanity of God.15
4XRGHUDWGHPRQVWUDQGXP: because in the traditional concept, divinity and
humanity are not only different but rather opposite, true divinity is possible
only at the expense of humanity and true humanity only at the expense of di-
vinity. This has a destructive effect in Christology: Exactly where God should
be close to the human, moreover where God should EHFRPH human, God re-
mains – in order to preserve his divinity – too far, too static, too unhuman,
too unreachable, defensively and anxiously protected or else he would have
to cease being God. Such a conception of God, however, is weak, sterile and
such a God seems to be rather lifeless.
It is, therefore, necessary to reverse the traditional view mentioned by
Rahner, which deals first with the one God, then with Trinity and finally with
Christology. To avoid aporias, theology has to start where the roots of Chris-
tian faith lie: with Christology and, moreover, with Christology in the Easter
perspective, in the perspective of resurrection, where the earthly, crucified
and risen Jesus Christ proves to be the true God, God the Son. It is this chris-
tological dynamic, in its trinitarian context, which breaks from within “the
axiom of absoluteness, the axiom of apathy, and the axiom of immutability,
all of which are unsuitable axioms for the Christian concept of God”. 16
3. The Problem

3. The Problem
From this reversed point of view, it should be clear that what applies to the
divinity in Christology has to apply to divinity as such, i.e., it has to apply
already within the Trinity in the same way. It is still the same Godhead, the
same divinity, from this point of view without any change in the identity of
God. In Jesus Christ was no other God, no other or different divinity. Hence,
what was realized in Christ, had to be present within the divinity already be-
fore, at least as its possibility or ability.
15
However, for a long time, in the old and medieval church, the real humanity of Christ
was not a matter of the christological interest; christology focused on his divinity (or his
divinized humanity), which should bring salvation. The Chalcedonian “vere homo” re-
mained thus unfulfilled and underestimated for a long time, until the Enlightenment em-
phasized it (going, however, to the other extreme, emphasizing humanity at the expense of
divinity). Cf. GALLUS, “Christologické kořeny”, 22–26.
16
JÜNGEL, *RGDVWKH0\VWHU\, 373, who, however, holds the perspective of the cross
for the main theological perspective. In his well-known paraphrase of K. Barths theology
with the significant title *RG¶V %HLQJ LV LQ %HFRPLQJ (trans. J. WEBSTER, Bloomsbury:
T&T Clark, 2014) Jüngel stresses that the dynamics in God must be inevitably grounded in
the trinitarian conception of God.
7KH3UREOHP 191
Therefore, the point is not to abandon or break the thought of divine i m-

mutability. The immutability, however, needs to be stated with respect to the
whole Trinity, i.e., with respect to the act of incarnation also, which had to be
possible for the Son from the very beginning, eternally, already within the
inner divine life. God did not change his divinity in the incarnation, did not
become different in the second person in order to be incarnated and, some-
how suddenly, capable of change. He had to be able to become human as
such. The incarnating Logos had to have the same divinity as Father and Spir-
it, the one and only shared divinity by all divine persons. (That is the conse-
quence of the Nicene KRPRRXVLRV. Any other statement would lead to Arian-
ism and would break the unity of the triune God.) That means, however, di-
vinity as such has to be thought of as of being able to become human in prin-
ciple. The divine nature in principle has to be able to assume humanity, to as-
sume otherness. For the divine dynamics thus applies the same to what Bruce
McCormack requires (in his case with respect to a possible new kenotic theo-
ry): What we need today is a new conception of divine dynamics, which will
a) conceive divine dynamics leading to incarnation “original to the being of
God so that its concretization in time involves no change in God and, ther e-
fore, no split between the immanent Trinity and the economic Trinity,” and
which will b) understand the realization of these dynamics “in such a way
that no divestment of anything proper to God is entailed”. 17
However, and this is the point, in such conception *RG KDV WREHDEOHWR
DVVXPHRWKHUQHVVDQGVWLOOUHPDLQWKHVDPH. This does not mean that divine
immutability has to be theologically abandoned. From what was just said fol-
lows that the stress on the same unchanged divinity is as important as the
stress of divine dynamics. God must remain the same, identical with himself
to be trustworthy and reliable precisely as God, and as such, he has to be able
to assume otherness. Therefore, WKH G\QDPLFV DUH WR EH VHDUFKHG ZLWKLQ KLV
LPPXWDELOLW\18
Although the dynamic dimension of divinity is a modern critical corrective
and counterbalance to the substantial Chalcedonian thinking, it is still not
necessary to abandon the Chalcedonian frame. On the contrary, the Chalce-
donian formula offers – and I have pointed to it repeatedly in the previous
chapter already – one term, which can be used here, because it suitably
frames the searched dynamic space: the proper conception of divine immuta-
17
MCCORMACK, “Kenoticism”, 454–455.
18
Cf. PANNENBERG, “Christologie und Theologie”, in IDEM, *UXQGIUDJHQ V\VWHPD
WLVFKHU 7KHRORJLH Gesammelte Aufsätze, vol. 2 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1980), 139: “[T]he scope of this Christian confession of Jesus’ unity with God for the con-
ception of God, even in the theological tradition, is still far from being exhausted. This can
be explained to a large degree with the fact that the theological tradition under the influ-
ence of Greek attributes of divinity, especially of the immutability of God, thought of the
divine essence as of preceding all changes of history and being untouched by it.”
bility can start with the Chalcedonian avtre,ptwj. In what follows, I do not
want to understand this term as a sheer negation or as a name for a static sub-
stance. I want to understand it dynamically, because it does not describe only
a firm point, but rather opens a space, which has to be used as far as it gets.
How far it gets is told by the story of Jesus Christ (and Christology has to
elaborate it). I want to use this space of immutability and apply this concep-
tion not only to the divinity of the Logos but to divinity as such.
4. The Dynamic Space within the Divine Immutability

4. The Dynamic Space within the Divine Immutability
That God is essentially dynamic is not a new recognition. On the contrary, it
is a very old and actually even an original notion. It can be shown already on
the example of the above-mentioned name of God from Ex 3:14. As Hans
Küng remarks, the whole Old Testament testifies of God who is Spirit. 19 God
is thus not a static God but rather a OLYLQJ*RG. God is life, is himself living –
this is one of the most important rediscoveries of biblical exegesis in the 20 th
century and, at the same time, maybe alongside of love, the most fundamental
metaphor for God.20 It is this dynamic space, that is opened already by the
name of God from Ex 3:14: God is the one, who can and will determine him-
self in his freedom in the way he wants to be. A much more fitting translation
of the name of God instead of the static “I am who I am” would be the trans-
lation of Luther: “Ich werde sein, der ich sein werde”, or: “I am, who I will
be”, “I am, who I am becoming”, “I will be, who I will be in my freedom”.
Martin Buber translates: “Ich werde dasein, als der ich dasein werde”. 21 Di-
vine freedom includes these dynamics, mystery and a certain indefiniteness or
free self-definition. It is a clear signal that the demand for a dynamic concept
of God did not arise from a theological need, but rather that it grounds al-
ready in the Jewish roots of Christianity.
As the name of Hans Küng indicates, also the FDWKROLFWKHRORJ\RIWKH WK
FHQWXU\knows that a dynamic concept of God is needed. 22 Many of these the-
ologians have a deep sensitivity for these arising questions and are can for-
mulate them clearly. The best example here is again Karl Rahner’s, who came
with his own influential answer, which was then adopted by other theologi-
ans: “If we face squarely and uncompromisingly the fact of the Incarnation
19
KÜNG, ,QFDUQDWLRQ, 534–536.
20
Cf. I.U. DALFERTH, “Gott und Zeit”, in IDEM, *HGHXWHWH *HJHQZDUW =XU
:DKUQHKPXJ *RWWHV LQ GHQ (UIDKUXQJHQ GHU =HLW (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), 233–
234.
21
Cf. 'LHIQI%FKHUGHU:HLVXQJ, trans. M. BUBER and F. ROSENZWEIG, 10th ed., re-
print (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1992), 158.
22
Cf. among others MÜHLEN, 9HUlQGHUOLFKNHLW; GRESHAKE, 'HU GUHLHLQH *RWW;
KASPER, 'HU*RWW-HVX&KULVWL.
7KH'\QDPLF6SDFHZLWKLQWKH'LYLQH,PPXWDELOLW\ 193
[…], then we have to say plainly: God can become something. He who is not
subject to change in himself can KLPVHOI be subject to change LQ VRPHWKLQJ
HOVH.”23 God is not changeable in himself but rather in (or: on) something
else.24 There is thus a changeability of God. That is Rahner’s solution. How-
ever, such statement cannot remain without consequences for God, so that
Rahner adds:
“[W]e learn through the doctrine of the Incarnation that God’s immutability, without
thereby being eliminated, is by no means simply the only thing that characterizes God, but
that in and in spite of his immutability he can truly become something: he himself, he in
time. Moreover, this possibility is not to be understood as a sign that he is in need of some-
thing, but rather as the height of his perfection. This perfection would be less perfect if he
could not become less than he is and always remains.” 25
This also is an expression of divine freedom and perfection that God can limit
himself. For Rahner, this divine self-defining perfection is greater than a rigid
perfection grounded only in immutability. Nevertheless, it is obvious, at the
same time, that Rahner takes the changeability of God as a kind of self-
emptying: God can change only on something else, but right here, i.e., in Je-
sus Christ, God becomes something less than he always is and remains. Di-
vinity seems – against Rahner’s intention to preserve both divine changeabil-
ity and unchangeability fully in a dialectical relation – to be a bit shortened in
Christ. Thus the result is that Christ’s divinity is a bit different from the di-
vinity of the Father, who is unchangeable in himself.26 Although Rahner saw
the problem of divine immutability very precisely and clearly, and wonderful-
ly formulated it as a question, in the end, in his courageous answer won the
tradition and with it the untouchable immutability of God the Father. 27
23
RAHNER, )RXQGDWLRQV, 220. Cf. original German text (IDEM, *UXQGNXUV GHV *ODX
EHQV, 5th ed. [Freiburg: Herder, 1989], 218–219): “Wenn wir die Tatsache der Menschwer-
dung […] unbefangen und klaren Auges anblicken, dann werden wir schlicht sagen mü s-
sen: Gott kann etwas werden. Der an sich selbst Unveränderliche kann VHOEHUDPDQGHUHQ
veränderlich sein.” Cf. SCHOONENBERG, 7KH &KULVW, 83–86, the long footnote 16, and
IDEM, 'HU*HLVW, 120.
24
With this, Rahner actually reverses the traditional conception of HQK\SRVWDVLV, which
conceives the ground for the existence of Christ’s humanity not in itself but rather in some-
thing else, i.e., in the K\SRVWDVLV of the Logos (in this sense interprets the term of human
person in general J. RATZINGER, “Zum Personverständnis in der Theologie”, in IDEM¸
'RJPD XQG 9HUNQGLQJXQJ [München/Freiburg: Erich Wewel, 1973], 220–221.). I take
this fact as another substantiation of the point that, if we want to use the concept of HQK\
SRVWDVLV for the person of Jesus Christ in his incarnation and earthly lifefurther on, next to
it must stand a certain HNK\SRVWDVLV. Cf. ESSEN, 'LH)UHLKHLW-HVX, 42, and below, Ch. 6.1.
25
RAHNER, )RXQGDWLRQV, 221–222.
26
Cf. ibid., 220–221.
27
Cf. also PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 317–319.
7K:HLQDQG\ in his 'RHV*RG&KDQJH" (1985) also tries to maintain and defend the im-
mutability of God as necessary with his christological studies from a conservative neo-
Thomist point of view.28 The main thesis says: in his divinity, Logos has to remain immu-
table in order to let his humanity be fully human, i.e., mutable and, in the end, mortal “so
that it is truly God who is mutable and passible as man”.29 And YLFH YHUVD: if the Logos
would experience some change in becoming man, it would require a corresponding change
of humanity, whence true humanity would be destroyed as well. 30 The point is “that God
remains God, if it is to be *RG who is man, and the humanity must remain full and real, if
it is to be PDQ that he is” – that is the Chalcedonian framework. According to Weinandy,
Chalcedon already stresses the existence of the Logos “in two ways or modes: as God and
as man”.31 With the formula “God DV man” Weinandy tries, sympathetically, to stress the
unity of the person of Christ and to conceive him, contrary to the oldest christological tra-
dition, in a non-compositional way. On the other hand, when it comes to the passibility of
God, he strictly separates the natures in the old way of Constantinople II (Logos suffering
only as man, not as God).
In his divine immutability, God is conceived with Thomas as DFWXVSXUXV and thus de-
fended to be highly dynamic: “God is supremely immutable because he is supremely ac-
tive.”32 This, nevertheless, does not prevent the Logos in assuming humanity, which hap-
pens enhypostatically when the human nature is united to the immutable Logos. In this
way, the Logos as God becomes and is man meaning that the Logos subsists in man.33
Here, hidden in the traditional struggle with the question of how can an immutable God
become something and how can God with no relational potency enter into a relation, it
seems that Weinandy – probably unknowingly and following Thomas – next to the enhy-
postatical direction of human nature into the Logos, holds also the other direction, a kind
of HNK\SRVWDVLV of the Logos into humanity. 34 The basic problem of the christological uni-
ty is thus, according to Weinandy, conceptional: “As soon as one sees the incarnational act,
the ‘becoming,’ not as the substantial compositional union of natures forming a new being,
but as the person of the Logos taking on a new manner or mode of existence, of FRPLQJWR
EH FRPLQJ WR H[LVW as man, the questions and problems […] disappear.”35 That is a right
observation; however, at the critical point, Weinandy himself returns to the old schemes,
which drive the natures in Christ to a mutually excluding opposition, because he insists on
the FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP, be it only in the verbal use.
In its clear-sighted conservative standpoint trying to preserve the old doctrines and
Chalcedon in the first place, next to the sympathetic stress on the unity of the person (God
28
Cf. WEINANDY, 'RHV *RG &KDQJH", containing also a chapter about some modern
catholic concepts (Küng, Rahner, Galot, cf. ibid., 154–186). Cf. also his later book 'RHV
*RG 6XIIHU" (London: T&T Clark, 2000), defending the impassibility of God again with
Cyril, Aquinas, and FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP. Even more conservative neo-Thomist posi-
tion, which polemizes even with Weinandy, presents WHITE, 7KH,QFDUQDWH/RUG (cf. to it
more above, Ch. 3.3).
29
Ibid., 99.
30
Ibid., 187.
31
Ibid., 64.
32
Ibid., 78.
33
Ibid., 86.
34
Cf. below, Ch. 6.1 and THOMAS OF AQUIN, 67KIII, 1, 1, ad 1: God “novo modo crea-
turae se univit, vel potius eam sibi”.
35
WEINANDY, 'RHV*RG&KDQJH", 119.
as man) and next to the ek-hypostatical motion of God towards man (in spite of divine im-
mutability), this conception suffers still under some traditional weaknesses: The main
stress lies certainly in the fundamental fact that it is WKH/RJRV who became man. However,
coming to the passion, it is suddenly the Logos DVPDQ who suffers and dies (i.e., the solu-
tion of Constantinople II, which, surprisingly, Weinandy does not treat in his study). And
here, the question of full humanity arises again, because the “‘I’ is always that of the di-
vine Logos, but it is the ‘I’ of the divine Logos conscious of and knowing himself as man.”
Sadly, it is then not possible to state that “[t]here is a real human subjectivity of the Logos”
when there is no human I. 36 The picture does not become any clearer, on the contrary,
when Weinandy adds that regarding omniscience, the Logos as man could not be omnisci-
ent.37 The unity of the person falls thus apart again: it comes out that the existence of the
Logos in the mode as man is added to his existence as God, i.e., that Logos exists in two
modes of existence at once.38
An interesting and higly dynamic reformulation of Chalcedonian Christology was also
proposed by -:HUELFN in his “elementary Christology” *RWWPHQVFKOLFK (2016). He starts
with Easter, which is the turning point: “For Christians, Easter is the revelation in a theo-
logically qualified sense because here, ‘the historic person’ of Jesus is manifested as ‘the
decisive salvific act of God’.” 39 To elaborate this, Werbick accepts the Chalcedonian
frame, but, at the same time, he tries to develop it further by conceiving its originally static
terms dynamically. He defines thus, following neo-Chalcedonism, the term of K\SRVWDVLV
“as a reflexive reality”: A person is something “when it relates to what it is and exactly in
doing it, it is itself”.40 Therefore, when God becomes human, it is not divine NHQRVLV but
rather participation in humanity that enables humans to participate in the divine life. This
divine motion into humanity, then, is a “motion” that is the very heart of the God-Self.41
With this figure resulting in the fully human identity of Jesus, Werbick tries to interconnect
Christology from below with Christology from above in order to avoid the “metaphysical
monster” of enhypostatical Christology, which underestimated the reflexivity and subjec-
tivity of Christ.42 Therefore, Werbick tries to replace the old model of the unity of Christ’s
person, which operated with metaphors of natures being next to each other, with a concep-
36
Ibid., 121.
37
Ibid.
38
Ibid., 188. Here, Weinandy involves verbal-only use of FRPPQLFDWLR LGLRPDWXP,
which, however, does not help against the falling apart of the person of Christ. On the con-
trary, it is exactly what Weinandy refuses – a mere word game: “If the Logos personally
exists as God and as man then whatever pertains to each mode of existence can really and
truly be predicated of him. The communication of idioms is not a word game to stress how
close God and man are related, but specifies and articulates the fact that the Logos actually
in reality H[LVWV as God and as man.“ Thus, after a promising start, Weinandy ends in fact –
paradoxically enough because he himself clearly favors Cyril – on the (traditional and apo-
retic western) position of Leo. – To a similar result, although from a radically different
starting point, comes also SCHILLEBEECKX, -HVXV, 667. He conceives the unity of the di-
vinity and humanity in the person of Jesus as “hypostatic identification”, which he, howe v-
er, defines as an identity of two persons: of an infinite divine and a finite human one in
mutual HQK\SRVWDVLV.
39
WERBICK, *RWWPHQVFKOLFK, 239.
40
Ibid., 263.
41
Ibid., 266.
42
Ibid., 269.
tion and metaphors of being in each other (“Metaphorik des Ineinanderseins”).43 God is
communication and humanity realizes itself in the surrender to the divine. Werbick thus
seeks the unity on the ground of Constantinople III in combination with the idea of mutual
in-dwelling: Christ’s humanity realizes itself in being filled by the divine Logos and in
self-surrender to the Logos.44 However, the unity remains problematic in the end. Christol-
ogy from above and Christology from below cannot be unified, both keep their specific
accents. Therefore, Werbick proposes to keep both – and with it the human Jesus of Naza-
reth with the divine Logos – in a creative tension. The identity of Jesus with the Logos is,
in the end, a matter of faith. 45 The metaphors of mutual indwelling, which Werbick uses
programatically again and again, shall secure the incarnatory dynamic and show, in terms
of Spirit-Christology, that Christ’s divinity is the spiritual presence of the Logos fulfilling
the humanity of Jesus: The incarnation is the “self-communication and self-testimony of
God LQ the self-communication and self-testimony of the human Jesus of Nazareth”. 46 The
fullness of God, thus, – and this is Werbick’s very good and valuable insight – cannot ex-
clude the fullness of humanity, eternity cannot exclude time and finitude, absoluteness
cannot exclude particularity, as it was in the case of Platonic metaphysics. If God by his art
of being excludes the other, Christology becomes aporetical. 47 God must be conceived as
communication, as the one who can communicate himself to the other while letting the
others be themselves. Then, it is necessary to speak about a “becoming and changing
God”.48 “God is capable of human, LQILQLWXP HVW FDSD[ ILQLWL (the eternal can become fi-
nite); therefore, this one human who opened himself fully to God, can be capable of God:
ILQLWXPHVFDSD[LQILQLWL (the finite one can become eternal).” 49
However, Werbick cannot keep up this dynamic and very sympathetic starting position
until the end – he, as many others, fails at the most critical point: when facing the cross of
Christ. In the death of the Son, God is in it with him. However, this “does not need to lead
to the wholly paradoxical statement that God-Self died”. God is “involved in the death and
is even here still for the humans”. And “because God is in the death, his Son and his hu-
man siblings die into God (in Gott hinein)”.50 Christology thus does not solve the problem
of theodicy, it only thinks through the past events. Hence, following the Pauline metaphor
of NHQRVLV in Phil 2, Werbick conceives the ground of salvation in the cross of Jesus as di-
vine ultimate solidarity with humans, which leads, theologically, to breaking the old static
schemes in favor of the metaphor of divine-human indwelling. However, Werbick draws
this indwelling in an asymmetrial way: “God, the Logos, is present through the Spirit so
fully LQWKHKXPDQ-HVXV that he fills his human life-testimony with himself and makes the
human Jesus his self-testimony.”51 Against the backdrop of Constantinople III, the humani-
ty of Jesus steps to the background, though. And, against the backdrop of the cross, the
43
Ibid., 271–272. Werbick’s critique of the old model concerns also the figure of FRP
PXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP, cf. ibid., 277, fn. 75.
44
Ibid., 273, with reference to Schooneneberg’s critique of the de-personalization of
Christ’s humanity in the classical Christology.
45
Ibid., 279–280.
46
Ibid., 281; similarly ibid., 282: “Divine presence dwells within its own human pres-
ence so perfectly that this human can live, act, and dispense the presence of God.”
47
Ibid., 283–284.
48
Ibid., 284, fn. 92.
49
Ibid., 286.
50
Ibid., 291. Cf. below, Ch. 7.3.2.
51
Ibid., 292.
humanity of God steps to the background as well. However, similarly to Rahner, Werbick
saw at least the fundamental question clearly: “Christology not only says the decisive thing
regarding the mystery of the person of Jesus the Christ, but it says the decisive thing about
God who can be approached through the humanity of Jesus Christ and is there for humans
‘until the last’ and does not step out in the end when it comes to the ultimate point. The
Christology of the old church struggled with this consequence because it seemed to contra-
dict divine eternal perfection and omnipotence. Nevertheless, it is right here where the
challenge of Christology for theology lies. It must be conceived theologically in a way so
that there emerges no contradiction.” 52
On the opposite pole of the spectrum stands SURFHVV WKHRORJ\ with its pro-
grammatically highly dynamic concept of God. It criticizes the traditional
theism as an aporetical attempt “to integrate the vision of the living, active,
creative, and historically involved God, celebrated by the Hebraic tradition,
the incarnation of Jesus as the word made flesh who suffered at Calvary, and
the unchanging and impassive reality of Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover”, which,
in the end, wins resulting into the concept of divine immutability and impas-
sibility. 53 However, this does not mean that process theologians would wholly
abandon the aspect of divine immutability. Process theology wants to connect
God’s stability on one side with his dynamics on the other side. Therefore, it
speaks about its own concept as “dipolar theism”. 54
Further on, I will speak about process theology or SURFHVVWKHLVP, represented e.g. by Ch.
Hartshorne, D.R. Griffin, J.B. Cobb, or B.G. Epperly, as lying on the same line of thought
with SURFHVVWKRXJKW, as founded by A.N. Whitehead. This is neither necessary nor univer-
sally accepted. On the contrary, there are interpretations that strictly differentiate between
both process approaches, which have different focuses: while Whitehead focuses more on
the primordial nature of God, process theism deals intensively with the questions connec t-
ed to the course of history, as is, e.g., the question of theodicy.55
52
Ibid., 293.
53
EPPERLY, 3URFHVV7KHRORJ\, 35. Cf. J.B. COBB, JR. and D.R. GRIFFIN, 3URFHVV7KH
RORJ\ $Q ,QWURGXFWRU\ ([SRVLWLRQ (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976), 44; A.N.
WHITEHEAD, 3URFHVV DQG 5HDOLW\ $Q (VVD\ LQ &RVPRORJ\, ed. D.R. GRIFFIN and D.W.
SHERBURNE (London/New York: The Free Press, 1978), 342, 347. However, the question
is, whether the process-theological critique of “the traditional theism” fits. Cf. WEINANDY,
'RHV *RG &KDQJH", 126–127: “This is indeed a devastating array of criticisms. The only
problem is finding someone or some position to whom or to which they refer. One knows
to whom they are meant to refer – the Fathers and scholastic theologians, especially Aqui-
nas – but as Gilkey states: ‘What process philosophers of religion call ‘classical theism’ is
a strange hodgepodge that bears little historical scrutiny…’” (quote of L. GILKEY, “A The-
ology in Process: Schubert Ogden’s Developing Theology”, ,QWHUSUHWDWLRQ21 [1967], 449).
54
Cf. WHITEHEAD, 3URFHVV DQG 5HDOLW\, 345; COBB and GRIFFIN, 3URFHVV 7KHRORJ\,
47; D.A. PAILIN, *RG DQG WKH 3URFHVVHV RI 5HDOLW\ )RXQGDWLRQV RI D &UHGLEOH 7KHLVP
(London/New York: Routledge, 1989), 57–75.
55
Cf. J.B. COBB, JR., :KLWHKHDG :RUG %RRN (Claremont: P&F Press, 2008), 70; and
below, Ch. 10.1.
Process thought differentiates two poles, aspects, or natures in God: White-

head says that God “has a primordial nature and a consequent nature”. 56 Sub-
sequently, Hartshorne speaks about God’s “abstract essence” and “concrete
actuality”. 57 The whole process of the developing world is conceived panen-
theistically in God, who, in his consequent nature (or concrete actuality 58)
evolves ZLWK this cosmological process. This dynamic of the world in God is
anchored in the constant and stable first nature of God.
This first (Whitehead: primordial) nature represents the pole of stability
and immutability and goes therefore in the same direction as the conception
of God in the traditional theism. This nature of God is “limited by no actuali-
ty”, is “infinite”, “free, complete, […] eternal, actually deficient, and uncon-
scious”.59 The main difference to the traditional concept of God – signified
already with the last two characteristics – lies in the fact that God in this na-
ture, which precedes the world, is the divine awareness and sum of all actual
and future SRVVLELOLWLHV. It is, with Hartshorne, the “abstract essence” of God,
which needs to be concretely realized. 60 God is the “ground of possibility in
the processes of reality”. 61 Within this panentheistic conception, God in his
creative activity gives to every potential act its “initial aim”, an original im-
pulse. This is divine creation: God gives possibilities and an initial direction.
The realization of it lies, however, already in the hands of the real entities,
their realizations and their “subjective aims”. 62 God cannot force his creation
to do or to realize something, his influence in the world is not coercive but
56
WHITEHEAD, 3URFHVV DQG 5HDOLW\, 345. Cf. P. MACEK, %ĤK YH ILORVRILL &KDUOHVH
+DUWVKRUQD >*RGLQWKH3KLORVRSK\RI&KDUOHV+DUWVKRUQH@(Praha: OIKOYMENH, 2016),
46–47.
57
COBB and GRIFFIN, 3URFHVV7KHRORJ\47; PAILIN, *RGDQGWKH3URFHVVHVRI5HDOLW\,
65; MACEK, %ĤK, 118–120.
58
Although the name differs, both Whitehead and Hartshorne conceive this processual
pole of God in a “largely identical” way, whereas the first nature of God is concieved in
both thinkers differently, cf. COBB and GRIFFIN, 3URFHVV7KHRORJ\, 48.
59
WHITEHEAD, 3URFHVVDQG5HDOLW\, 345; cf. PAILIN, *RGDQGWKH3URFHVVHVRI5HDOLW\,
64.
60
Cf. WHITEHEAD, 3URFHVV DQG 5HDOLW\, 343–344; PAILIN, *RG DQG WKH 3URFHVVHV RI
5HDOLW\, 67–75. With his conception, Hartshorne is actually close to the old relation be-
tween SK\VLVand K\SRVWDVLV, cf. above, Ch. 3.1.2.
61
PAILIN, *RGDQGWKH3URFHVVHVRI5HDOLW\, 60.
62
Cf. WHITEHEAD, 3URFHVV DQG 5HDOLW\, 344; COBB and GRIFFIN, 3URFHVV 7KHRORJ\,
53. Ibid., 62, Cobb and Griffin criticize the Whiteheadian conception of primordial nature
as giving initial aims because it is too static and it actually does not provide enough space
for the receptive responsiveness of God, which is the primary stress and interest of process
theology.
rather persuasive. God “lures” his free and self-standing creation to new pos-
sibilities, waits for its free response, and participates in its existence. 63
This shows already that God has not only the transcendent nature: “God, as
well as being primordial, is also consequent”. 64 God is also immanent within
the world. God realizes himself and his possibilities in the process of the
world and with the world. The realization of the creation is, at the same time,
the realization of God himself. Process theism, therefore, knows about the
traditional absoluteness of God and also about the divine relativity and pro-
cessuality, which it stresses, because in comparison to the transcendent nature
of God as the sum of all possibilities this second nature is God’s UHDOLW\:
“The world does not really have to do with two ‘natures’ or ‘poles’ of God that stand ex-
ternally related to each other, the one influencing the world and the other being influenced
by it. Rather, the Primordial Nature is abstract, while the Consequent Nature is God as ful-
ly actual.”65
In the world, the God-given and God-grounded possibilities become real. And
God reacts dynamically to what happens in the world, his consequent nature
is thus a “derivative nature”, it is “derived from the temporal world”, “conse-
quent upon the creative advance of the world”. 66 As such, this nature is there-
fore “determined, incomplete, consequent, ‘everlasting’, fully actual, and
conscious”.67 God changes with the world, realizes himself with all its new
realizations. In his second nature, God can be thus also “temporal, relative,
dependent, and constantly changing”. 68 God evolves with the cosmos because
everything new is new also for God and in the life of God. The world “con-
tributes to and shapes God’s experience”. “Accordingly, while God persists
as the source of possibility and order through all changes, God also is shaped
by all changes. God is adventurous, too.” 69 In his concrete actuality, God em-
braces and is at the same time shaped by the sum of all actual entities, of all
reality and its actual potentialities, because, “[i]n the first place,” as White-
head insisted, “God is not to be treated as an exception to all metaphysical
principles, invoked to save their collapse. He is their chief exemplification.” 70
Within this panentheistic conception, God in his concrete actual nature is the
still changing sum of all realized entities, which become part of divine life.
This is God’s “sympathetic responsiveness”: “an active receptiveness made in
63
This, however, with a “particular providence for particular occasions”, cf. EPPERLY,
3URFHVV7KHRORJ\, 51.
64
WHITEHEAD, 3URFHVVDQG5HDOLW\, 345.
65
COBB and GRIFFIN, 3URFHVV7KHRORJ\, 62.
66
67
Ibid.
68
69
EPPERLY, 3URFHVV7KHRORJ\, 49–50.
70
the light of an intended creative influence upon the future”. 71 The world par-
ticipates in God and his possibilities and they both develop together towards a
constantly greater perfection. This means that in his realization in the world
God does not lose himself or something of his divinity – just the opposite is
the case: in his particular realizations in the world and through the world,
God becomes more and more himself.
In general, this processual stress on the full immanence of God in the
world without losing his divinity, on his dynamic responsiveness and ability
to change, to adapt, to react and to influence the world with the persuasive
offering of new possibilities is a very sympathetic direction of theological
thinking. Nevertheless, in the particular execution of this line of thought, it
fails. Paradoxically, the process theology is in danger exactly of what it tried
to avoid: because of the constant change of God’s nature within the world,
God cannot keep and control his identity so that within the process of history,
God loses himself. God is constantly differing from himself, at the end whol-
ly different from who he was at the beginning. The abstract primordial es-
sence remains, in the end, an empty and vague category, overruled massively
by the concrete realized self-realization of God within the process of cosmic
history. The second, constantly changing – and therefore not clearly and firm-
ly identifiable – nature of God overshadows the first nature, which remains
always only partly realized, wholly depending on the development of the
world. In the end, God stands in danger of going down within the massive
flow of new and new ambiguous actualities of the world process, instead of
being able to save his creation from this self-dynamics of the world. Com-
pared to Rahner, the other extreme wins here: constant change beyond any
possibility of recognition of God’s identity, which he in his dependence on
the development of the world cannot keep. “In difference to the model of Pla-
tonism, something new is not only possible, but it is rather constantly the
case. However, where something new emerges permanently, this new be-
comes permanently old, at the same time.” 72
A christological concept, inspired by the process theology, was proposed in the 50’s by 1
3LWWHQJHU in his 7KH:RUG,QFDUQDWH (1959). He tries to connect the classical christological
roots in the doctrine of Trinity and Christ’s full humanity and full divinity with a dynamic
conception of God, world and human. 73 Pittenger writes decidedly and in a kind of confess-
ing manner from the perspective of Christian faith and the Christian church. His main in-
71
72
I.U. DALFERTH, “Theologie der Zeit: alte und neue Zeit”, in =HLWVWUXNWXUXQG$SRND
O\SWLN LQWHUGLV]LSOLQlUH %HWUDFKWXQJHQ ]XU -DKUWDXVHQGZHQGH, ed. U. FINK and A.
SCHINDLER (Zürich: NZN, 1999), 101. Cf. IDEM, “Gott und Zeit”, 235 and 260; further
also, from a conservative catholic standpoint WEINANDY, 'RHV *RG &KDQJH", 124–153,
who appreciates the process theology for questions and problems it has raised, but is very
critical of its answers.
73
PITTENGER, 7KH:RUG,QFDUQDWH, 179.
terest is the person of Jesus Christ – yet he reserves the term of person for the divine-
human unity of the incarnatedWord in Jesus Christ.74 Therefore, seen against the backdrop
of the old Christological debates, he follows rather the Antiochene Christology, stresses
the full humanity including a true human consciousness.75 In his conception, the person of
Jesus Christ is thus the deepest possible unity of divine Word and human potential, it is the
indwelling of the Word in human, where humanity is “the adequate RUJDQRQ”, “the instru-
ment for expressive Deity”, “‘instrument’ or ‘vehicle’ for the Eternal Word”.76 Christ “ac-
tualizes in human nature that transcendental divine principle which is at the root of man’s
being”.77 The Trinity is thus not conceived directly as personal but rather as three subsist-
ent modes or “aspects” of divine being, as “God the Ultimate Source, God Self-
Expressive” and “God Responsive”.78
This is very strongly reminiscent of Schleiermacher (cf. above. Ch. 3.2.8), although
Pittenger mentions him in his book only once and as an aside. This similarity is confirmed
also in the soteriological respect, where the historic life and person of Christ is present to
the church through the “total impression of his accomplishment” as it is testified in the
New Testament.79
The main inspiration, which he received from process theology, sees Pittenger in the
panentheist view of reality, in which God as the self-expressive Word is always present in
his creation and is in an intimate relationship with it, with humanity in particular.80 Incar-
nation is understood as the enduring incarnational presence of God in the World. Jesus
Christ’s uniqueness, then, does not lie in some qualitative difference to all humans but ra-
ther in the gradually different – because perfect or most intense – fulfillment of humanity
by the Self-Expression of the Word and its orientation towards God. “What is ‘diffused’
elsewhere ‘at sundry times and in diverse portions’, is ‘focused’ in our Lord Jesus
Christ.”81 Pittenger, hence, also knows and works with a certain accommodation. However,
it goes in the opposite direction than in my proposal: what has to accommodate – or, in
Pittenger’s terms: adapt – is not divinity but humanity. “Jesus Christ is the true man in
whom the Word who is True God has for himself a supremely adapted means of human
self-expression.” In him, “[m]an is ‘made towards God’: man becomes KLPVHOI, true man,
in the degree that he is thus conformed to the Word of God.” 82 However, this adaptation –
which is, at the same time human freedom – consists of human surrender to the divine
good. 83 Again, this is a very similar thought to Schleiermacher (and e.g. to Tillich, to
whom Pittenger refers more often).
Therefore, with an appreciation of the dynamics, positive relation of divinity and hu-
manity and their mutual closeness, the same critique can be applied, as was applied to
Schleiermacher’s conception. In Pittenger, God and his Word are rather a principle, which
74
Ibid., 183.
75
Ibid., 10–14, 178–189. Despite all talk of deepest union, the person of Christ is, in the
end, the “FRLQFLGHQFH of the divine and human acts” (ibid., 181, cf. 189). Here, Pittenger
cannot avoid the traditional dangers of the Antiochene approach.
76
Ibid., 130–131, 180–181, 188.
77
Ibid., 167–168.
78
Ibid., 218 and 225.
79
Ibid., 65, 176.
80
Ibid., 155, 180, 231.
81
Ibid., 240–241.
82
Ibid., 181 and 182.
83
Ibid., 244–245.
dominates humanity that surrenders to God. But still, God and human are oriented towards
each other, God is not only the transcendent entity, but is present in his creation. However,
the one, who has to change and adapt, is the human in order to be useful for God as his
RUJDQRQ. This, again, despite all talk of a personal union as “a deep, enduring, and enrich-
ing unity”, raises paradoxically the question of true humanity, which was from the very
beginning the main interest of Pittenger, but which, however, comes to its ultimate free-
dom only in its self-surrender.84
,8'DOIHUWK in his &UXFLILHGDQG5HVXUUHFWHG (German orig. 1991) sketches a concep-
tion of God’s being that critically learned from process theology but that tries to correct its
weaknesses. He differentiates God’s “essence” as “the totality of his potential relationships
with the other” from God’s “reality” as “the totality of his actual relationships with the
other”, which is “only ever a part of his potential relationships”. God’s reality thus changes
depending on the actual relations – and this is his life, which consists of the “succession of
God’s realities”, while his essence remains the same and secures the identity of God in his
reality. In his realities, God realizes his essence, which, however, is not identical “with any
one of these realizations or with their totality”. God as Father, Son and Spirit “actualizes
his essence in ever-new forms”, being, however, always differentiated in his essence from
these particular realizations.85 The realization of particular relationships is always God’s
own self-determination. “God determines himself as God” through the realization of par-
ticular relationships. However, with this self-determination, “God does not constitute him-
self as God […] but lives as God”: “What God is, and how God is real in concrete terms, is
the outcome of his self-determination and the consequence of the fact that God is.” 86 In
Jesus Christ, God revealed himself “irrevocably and conclusively”. Jesus Christ is thus
God’s self-revelation and as such, God’s “self-disclosure of his self-definition to us”.87
Dalferth tries, obviously, to connect the legitimate theistic presupposition of one God
with the Trinity. However, he does it by introducing the difference between – and thus
splitting God’s being to a certain extent into – God’s essence and reality, as if copying the
pattern of immanent and economic Trinity. This raises the question, what is the relation of
this theistic dimension of his concept of God with the Trinity. It seems that Dalferth identi-
fies the Trinity rather with the essence of God: in Jesus Christ as God’s self-revelation,
God did not reveal “just one of his specific realities but his essence, which defines all his
realities”.88 What are, then, the realizations, i.e., the reality of God as comprehensible for
us, which would be, in this case, different from the trinitarian persons? The Trinity seems
to remain hidden behind the reality of God, to which Dalferth tries to establish a connec-
tion through the term of SHULFKRUHVLV that he posits on the point of transition between
God’s being and his creation: 3HULFKRUHVLV is “the process, intrinsic to God’s being, the
formation of personal differences in which God’s life is actualized as love. This takes place
in such a way that, as living love, it renders the finite (i.e., that which is other than God) as
possible and actual, while binding it, as creation, to the creator in a manner distinct from
all purely external relatedness. Thus, on the basis of his perichoretic differentiation as the
ground of creation, God is at once both operative and at work in creation without thereby
removing the differences between himself and it.” 89 It seems that Dalferth’s dynamic con-
84
Ibid., 285.
85
86
Ibid., 170.
87
Ibid., 180.
88
Ibid., 176.
89
Ibid., 232–233, fn. 118.
7KH$FFRPPRGDWLRQDVWKH)XQGDPHQWDO2QWRORJLFDODQG5HJXODWRU\7HUP 203
ception leaves open the question how should we concieve of God, who is “essentialy sim-
ple” but, at the same time, thought of “in trinitarian terms”.90
Nevertheless, despite all my critique of both the above-mentioned approaches

of some catholic and process theologians, their dynamics are to be appreciat-
ed. At the same time, the analysis of these concepts made clear, where are the
important borderlines of the key term avtre,ptwj, i.e., of the immutability of
God, which are not to be crossed over, if the searched and more appropriate
conception of God should not fall into one of both extremes: God must re-
main God, and, at the same time, he has to be capable of a certain change so
that he can come out from himself and make the incarnation and the humanity
of God thinkable and possible. W. Pannenberg stated this as one of the condi-
tions for an appropriate term of God:
“God in his eternal identity is still to be understood as a God who is alive in himself, who
can become something and precisely in so doing remain true to himself and the same. […]
The change cannot be held remote from God’s inner being. But this does not necessarily
affect his identity. To be sure, such identity can be conceived together with a becoming in
God himself only if time and eternity are not mutually exclusive.” 91
To fulfill this aim the sought after conception of God in its dynamics has to
be rooted in the Trinity and, at the same time, it has to be fitting and appro-
priate within the Trinity (i.e., in God himself) as well as in Christology (i.e.,
towards humans). Should eternity and time (or divinity and humanity) be
thought of in unity against the trinitarian backdrop, then the immutability of
God cannot be added as something external; rather, it has to be rooted in the
divine being itself. 92
5. The Accommodation as the Fundamental Ontological

and Regulatory Term
5. The Accommodation as the Fundamental Ontological and Regulatory Term
Onto the point of intersection of these two poles, which can be given various
names – eternity and time, divinity and humanity, stability and change, same-
ness and difference, individuality and relation to the other, identity and d y-
namics – and which should be both united in the searched conception of God,
I propose to set the term DFFRPPRGDWLRQ.
The term of accommodation is not unknown in theology. Being originally a common rhe-
torical category, which denoted the adjustment of speech to the audience, it was used in
theology since the old church for God’s adaptation to the human capacity of understand-
90
Ibid., 163–164.
91
92
To the eternity-time relation cf. below, Ch. 10.
ing.93 This term was discussed the most, however, later in 16.–19. century, mainly in con-
nection with questions of human language and with the question of the relationship b e-
tween the Word of God and the Bible in its historical condition. 94 In Calvin, accommoda-
tion is factually present in the form of a “loose group of notions” and expresses the conde-
scendence of God and his readiness “to accept the human weakness and lethargy”. To this
readiness counts also the incarnation. 95 Later, this term emerges intensively in Spinoza,
whose critical treatment of the Bible led, at the end of the 18 th century, to the so-called
“accommodation controversy (Akkommodationsstreit)” dealing with the question of how
far until the adaptation of the Word of God to the human’s insufficient capacities means a
falsification of the Word.96 The term of accommodation was then, with Schleiermacher’s
hermeneutics, expelled from the hermeneutics as a category for a forged meaning of a
text.97 It survives as a rather loose category either for divine condescendence or, mainly in
the catholic missiology, as a synonym for acculturation. 98
With the term of accommodation, I want to meet a fundamental theological

demand. W. Pannenberg expressed it already more than forty years ago, but it
is still valid. Looking at the eternal God who came to the world as a defense-
less child,
“[t]heology liked to remain with the paradoxes which come up when this divine act is seen
against the backdrop of the Jewish thought of omnipotence or of the Greek conception of
God’s immutability which is superior to the world. There were made only rare attempts,
which tried to do one step further and re-examine such conceptions of God’s divinity from
the perspective of God’s presence in the cross and in the resurrection of Jesus. However,
93
Cf. U.H.J. KÖRTNER, “Accommodation”, in 533, vol. 1, ed. H.D. BETZ et al. (Lei-
den/Boston: Brill, 2007), 29; L. DANNEBERG, “Von der DFFRPPRGDWLR DG FDSWXP YXOJL
über die DFFRPPRGDWLRVHFXQGXPDSSDUHQWLDPQRVWULYLVXV zur DHVWKHWLFD als VFLHQWLDFRJ
QLWLRQLVVHQVLWLYDH”, in +HUPHQHXWLFD6DFUD, ed. T. JOHANSSON et al. (Göttingen: De Gruy-
ter, 2010), 314–338.
94
Cf. KÖRNTER, “Accommodation”, 29, with reference to Hilarius, Flacius, Quenstedt,
Semler and Hamann. Cf. also H. THIELICKE, *HVSUlFKHEHU+LPPHOXQG(UGH (Stuttgart:
Quell-Verlag, 1964), 19–22, who uses accommodation when explaining the question of the
verbal inspiration for the American audience.
95
J. BALSERAK, “Accommodatio Dei”, in &DOYLQ+DQGEXFK, ed. H.J. SELDERHUIS (Tü-
bingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 368 and 371. Cf. also IDEM, “‘The Accommodating Act par
excellence?’: An Inquiry into the Incarnation and Calvin’s Understanding of Accommoda-
tion”, 6FRWWLVK -RXUQDO RI 7KHRORJ\ 55 (2002/4), 408–423, showing that the term of ac-
commodation refers to a very broad field of meanings. In this Calvinian direction, i.e., as
God’s adaptation to human weakness, which culminates in the incarnation of the Son, is
the accommodation understood also by WEBER, *UXQGODJHQ I, 457–458. Cf. also
DANNEBERG, “Von der DFFRPPRGDWLRDGFDSWXPYXOJL”, 322–327.
96
DANNEBERG, “Von der DFFRPPRGDWLRDGFDSWXPYXOJL”, 357–379.
97
L. DANNEBERG, “Schleiermacher und das Ende des Akkommodationsgedankens in
der KHUPHQHXWLFDVDFUD des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts”, in -DKUH³5HGHQEHUGLH5HOL
JLRQ´, ed. U. BARTH and C.-D. OSTHÖVENER (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2000), 194–246.
98
H. THIELICKE, (WKLN, vol. II/1, 5th ed. (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1986), 190–201;
RAHNER, )RXQGDWLRQV RI &KULVWLDQ )DLWK, 290; B. WALDENFELS, “Akkommodation”,
/7K., vol.1, ed. W. KASPER et al., 3rd ed. (Freiburg: Herder, 2006), 290–292.
this step is necessary and inevitable if we should take literally what it means that God re-
vealed himself in Jesus Christ and only in him definitely, or – which is the same – that the
person of Jesus of Nazareth is one with the divine essence. If this is true then the specifi-
cally Christian understanding of God is to be gained from the character of the story of J e-
sus. This happened, at least in a rudimentary way, in the formation of the trinitarian doc-
trine. However, the dualism between the doctrine of the Trinity and the common concep-
tion of God was not overcome. The development of a specifically Christian concept of God
has stopped here halfway and the Christian theology faces today the difficult challenge to
drive this development forward.”99
I will try to do it now.

It is always risky to introduce a new term. Regarding accommodation, it is
not a completely new term; however, its theological meaning is not being
used anymore. The point is thus rather, to fill this old, once used term with a
new meaning. This is no less risky. Nevertheless, I want to try it because I am
convinced that at this point, accommodation is a very fitting term which can
help to overcome old aporias. However, I do not mean to replace with it the
old terms and characteristics of divinity, I do not intend to speak from now
only of accommodation and push away love, mercy or freedom. I want to put
the accommodation to all these traditional terms as their IUDPLQJRQWRORJLFDO
WHUP and, as such, their IXQGDPHQWDO UHJXODWRU\ WHUP, which will give all
these terms a certain orientation, course, and declivity.
Today, the term of accommodation is known primarily in the field of op-
tics: the lens of the eye accommodates when it focusses on objects of various
distances. I want to understand this term exactly in this direction, however, in
a theological meaning and interpretation: God accommodates to the other
without losing his divinity or himself. The divinity of God entails exactly
this: that God is flexible, elastic and can conform himself to the other. In con-
trary to the (almost no more used) old theological conception of accommoda-
tion, which interpreted it defensively as divine self-limitation to and com-
promise with the imperfect and weak human capability, I would like to give
to this term an offensive and positive meaning: accommodation is not God’s
concession to the humans but rather the fulfillment and realization of his es-
sence. On one side, I go in the same direction as the idea of NHQRVLV or as pro-
cess-theology: God comes out of himself and adapts to the other. However, I
put exactly the opposite sign in front of the bracket so that in this process, the
exact opposite of God’s self-emptying is the case: with the accommodation,
the essence of God is not being diminished, it is not being veiled, but rather it
comes exactly here to itself, is being fulfilled and asserted. Accommodation
is not NHQRVLV of divinity but rather its “SOHURVLV”.100
99
PANNENBERG, “Theologie und Christologie”, 139–140.
100
SCHWÖBEL, “Christology and Trinitarian Thought”, 143.
A similar line of thought is to be found primarily in K. Barth, in his complex combination

of divine condescendence and human elevation, where God remains God in his conde-
scendence and incarnation and, at the same time, becomes human. 101 God is free to define
himself: “The Godhead of the true God is not a prison whose walls have first to be broken
through if He is to elect and do what He has elected and done in becoming man. […] His
Godhead embraces both height and depth, both sovereignty and humility, both lordship and
service. He is the Lord over life and death. He does not become a stranger to Himself when
in His Son He also goes into a far country. He does not become another when in Jesus
Christ He also becomes and is man. Even – and why should we not say precisely? – in this
He is God in supreme constancy, in supreme affirmation of His faithfulness, not only to us
but primarily and supremely to Himself.” 102 Then, Barth summarizes: “If we shake off the
spell, and try to think of the Godhead of God in biblical rather than pagan terms, we shall
have to reckon not with a mutability of God but with the kind of immutability which does
not prevent Him from humbling Himself and therefore doing what He willed to do and ac-
tually did do in Jesus Christ, i.e., electing and determining in Jesus Christ to exist in divine
and human essence in the one Son of God and Son of Man, and therefore to address His
divine essence to His human, to direct it to it. Even in the constancy (or, as we may calmly
say, the immutability) of His divine essence He does this and can do it (new and surprising
and alien though it may be to human eyes blinded only by their own pride) not only with-
out violation but LQVXSUHPHH[HUFLVHDQGDIILUPDWLRQRI+LVGLYLQHHVVHQFH.”103
And clearly also W. Pannenberg: “With the critique of the idea of a NHQRVLV or self-
emptying of God in the act of incarnation, we have pointed in the direction how we can
think of God as of the reality which within the story of Jesus determines this story itself
and with it also all that happens in the world, i.e., how can we understand the story of Jesus
in its relation to God without falling back into the aporias of the old incarnation theology.
The key point is the insight that the incarnation is to be thought of not as self-emptying but
rather as self-realization of God.”104
With this, I try to use fully the space framed by the Chalcedonian avtre,ptwj:
God adapts to the human without losing his divinity and his identity. On the
contrary, in this positively understood adaptation God realizes his being fully.
*RG6HOI *RG¶V EHLQJ LV DFFRPPRGDWLRQ Thereby, God does not become
101
Cf. the key paragraphs in BARTH, &KXUFK 'RJPDWLFV IV/1, § 59.1, 150–204: “The
Way of the Son of God into the Far Country” for the self-humiliation of God, and ibid.,
IV/2, § 64.2, 20–154: “The Homecoming of the Son of Man”, for the elevation of human.
102
BARTH, &KXUFK 'RJPDWLFV IV/2, 84. Cf. IDEM, &KXUFK 'RJPDWLFV IV/1, 179–180:
“God is always God even in His humiliation. The divine being does not suffer any change,
any diminution, any transformation into something else, any admixture with something
else, let alone any cessation. The deity of Christ is the one unaltered because unalterable
deity of God. Any subtraction or weakening of it would at once throw doubt upon the
atonement made in Him. He humbled Himself, but He did not do it by ceasing to be who
He is. He went into a strange land, but even there, and especially there, He never became a
stranger to Himself.”
103
BARTH, &KXUFK'RJPDWLFVIV/2, 85 (my italics). Cf. IDEM, &KXUFK'RJPDWLFVIV/1,
187, where Barth redefines divine omnipotence: “His omnipotence is that of a divine pleni-
tude of power in the fact that (as opposed to any abstract omnipotence) it can assume the
form of weakness and impotence and do so as omnipotence, triumphing in this form.”
104
PANNENBERG, “Theologie und Christologie”, 141–142.
something else, as it is exactly the case in Jesus Christ. Here, he does not be-
come human in the sense that he would stop being God. And he does not re-
main God in the sense that because of his immutability, he cannot become
human. The Chalcedonian frame remains preserved: God remains God and
human remains human, but God becomes human in the sense that he can cre-
ate an undisturbed unity with the human – although God and human are dif-
ferent – because God can accommodate to the human and accept humanity
without ceasing to be God, for his divinity grounds in this dynamic ability of
accommodation.
This whole line of thought, ZKLFKZRXOGEHRWKHUZLVHIDLUO\VSHFXODWLYH, is
led by christological intentions, as already the reference to the Chalcedonian
frame indicates. ,WLV&KULVWRORJ\ – and the unity of divinity and humanity in
one person, which it expresses – ZKLFKLVWKHVWDUWLQJSRLQWIRUDQ\IROORZLQJ
WKLQNLQJDERXW*RG, of his essence and of his relation to creation. The person
of Jesus Christ in the (still classical) Chalcedonian interpretation as true God
and true human is the basic and fundamental form of God’s accommodation.
It is exactly here where it comes out and can be theologically grasped, who
God in himself is. Christology (together with pneumatology, which develops
this basic form of God’s accommodation further on to all humans and all cre-
ation) marks the outreach and depth of God’s accommodation. Christology
shows, how far God is able to go towards the human and, at the same time, to
reveal himself still as God. In the person of Jesus Christ, God comes not only
besides or with the creation but rather DV creation. God is present as God in
the fully human life of Jesus. Nevertheless, he does not become simply hu-
man, but the accommodation makes it possible to EHKXPDQDV*RG. It is the
deepest expression of the unity of the person of Jesus Christ, in which divini-
ty and humanity do not blend, they remain distinct, and still, they create an
inmost unity. 105
However, not that the mutable human would have to adapt to God, not that
such unity would be possible only in the way that human would be divinized
in order to become acceptable for God. The aim is not some WKHRVLV of the
human. The point is the accommodation of *RG, the point is God himself,
who comes toward his creation and accommodates to it without losing him-
self, and, at the same time, without waiting to see whether the creation would
be good enough for him. God accommodates to his creation and hereby, he
fulfills and proves his dynamic being. This coming toward the creation is thus
not NHQRVLV; the traditional polarity of WKHRVLV of human and NHQRVLV of God is
105
JÜNGEL, “Thesen zur Grundlegung der Christologie”, 277, puts it his way: “The be-
ing of Jesus Christ is on the one side God’s self-relation as the relation to the humanity of
the man Jesus and on the other side the self-relation of the man Jesus as the relation to
God.”
here overcome. Instead, God’s accommodation realizes here itself as divine

SOHURVLV.106
In the unique person of Jesus Christ, and then, also, in the work of the
Spirit all over the universe, it can be shown, who God is in himself: from
eternity set and oriented to the other. The dynamics of this oriented setting is
expressed in an appropriate way in the old Cappadocian thought of mutual
SHULFKRUHVLV of divine persons. 107 God is life and dynamic. Within the Trinity,
this means that God accommodates in himself to himself, provides space for
himself, as one person he is set and oriented to the others, is here for the oth-
ers, together with them and only in this way really, differentiated and thus
living dynamic life.108
Based on this insight, it should be now possible to sketch basic ontological
aspects of this conception of God: The fundamental level is accommodation
in God himself, the inner-trinitarian SHULFKRUHVLV as the ground of God’s be-
ing. In his being, God is essentially dynamic, he is the ongoing accommoda-
tion already DGLQWUDin his inmost life, not only DGH[WUD in Christ and Spirit.
In difference to the Eastern-orthodox patrocentric (and slightly subordina-
tional) conception of God, where Father is the source of divinity (IRQVGLYLQL
WDWLV) and with his divinity constitutive for the divinity of both Son and Spirit
and for the divine unity at the same time, in my conception the Father –
moreover: the Father in the first place – accommodates also to the other two
persons.109 The idea of accommodation supports in this way the unity of God,
which is grounded in this inner perichoretical life of God. 110 The inner-
trinitarian accommodation represents, at the same time, the pole of stability
and immutability, of God’s identity and sameness. It is this perichoretical in-
ner life of God as the inner-trinitarian accommodation, which does not
change and thus is stable and immutable. It is fundamentally a dynamic sta-
bility. In this dynamic stability, God remains the same because he remains the
106
Thus, the justification by grace, stressed in the reformation, finds also its anchor in
this gracious and accommodating presence of God with his creation, in his creation and, in
Jesus Christ, even DV creation. The accommodation proves to be the ground for VRODJUDWLD,
it has also a clear soteriological dimension and consequences. Cf. more in detail the end of
this chapter.
107
Cf. JOHN OF DAMASCUS, “Expositio fidei” 8 (I 8), 29, 263; S. STAMATOVIĆ, “The
Meaning of Perichoresis”, 2SHQ7KHRORJ\2016/2, 303–323.
108
Against Thomas of Aquin (cf. above in this chapter, fn. 9), it would be hence more
appropriated to say: Deus non est omnino simplex. Deus est Trinitas.
109
Concerning Eastern-orthodox patrocentrism cf. above, Ch. 4.2.2 and RAHNER, “The-
os in the New Testament”, 146–147; JOHN OF DAMASCUS, “Expositio fidei”, 8 (I 8), 30.
KRÜGER, *|WWOLFKH)UHLKHLW, 287–296.
110
Cf. PANNENBERG, 6\VWHPDWLF7KHRORJ\1, 385: “The persons are not first constituted
in their distinction, by derivation from the Father, and only then united in perichoresis and
common action. As modes of being of the one divine life they are always permeated by its
dynamic through their mutual relations.”
same in his inner life. In the accommodational SHULFKRUHVLV, God remains the
lord of his life and the source of his own freedom inwards and outwards. 111
A possible objection could say: Is God not unfree because he must still accommodate?
Here, it is to say that the accommodation characterizes God’s inner life. As living, God
accommodates in himself as the three persons perichoretically permeating each other in a
common being of love. Inwardly, accommodation expresses the dynamics of divine life.
To stop accommodating would mean to stop living, to stop being God, which is absurd.
Outwardly, however, God is not obliged to accommodate. His inner life would be suff i-
cient for him. God does not need creation for his own being God. Any accommodation
outwards is, hence, always accommodation by grace when God reveals his inner being to
the creation. Also his incarnation, i.e., the ultimate case of his accommodation, was an act
of freedom, not of some necessity. God did not have to incarnate. That he became human,
was thus an act of his freedom.
At the same time, this dynamic stability of God’s inner life points to the out-
most frame and aim of all reality: being oriented to the other, accommodation
points to community, to community in the life with God in particular. This is
the aim of the whole universe.
Another but related question is that of accommodation as ceaseless activity in relation to
peace and rest, which is mostly associated with the image of community with God (or even
in God). Here, it is to say, that peace cannot mean total passivity and stillness, which
would lead in fact to isolation and solitude. One can experience peace the most in the long
run when it is a peace with others and when the other can adapt to one’s needs. This is ex-
actly what accommodation brings.
Therefore, accommodation proves to be the fundamental framing term, which

should determine all following speech about God. It has thus two poles: It is
an RQWRORJLFDO WHUP, which builds the frame of the whole concept of God.
And, as such, it is a UHJXODWRU\WHUP for all following speech about God. My
point is thus not to replace the traditional characteristics of divine life and of
divine being, those remarkable and tradition-burdened terms like love, grace,
and freedom. Accommodation should not replace them, nor compete with
them, nor become a superordinate term, from which all other would follow. It
should rather be their framework and help specify their profile: the thought of
accommodation should determine how these terms should be understood
when used for God.
The term of accommodation stands close to the term of ORYH in particular, as it was devel-
oped in the theology of the 20 th century. 112 Probably the most noticeable theological con-
111
This notion remains valid also regarding the cross and the resurrection, which in Je-
sus Christ belong also to the inner life of God and hence to his identity. Cf. to it below, Ch.
7, 9 and 10.
112
Cf. e.g. BARTH, &KXUFK'RJPDWLFV IV/2, 86: “What is, then, the divine essence? It is
the free love, the ommpotent mercy, the holy patience of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”
P. TILLICH, “Love, Power and Justice”, in IDEM, 0DLQ:RUNV+DXSWZHUNH, vol.3: Writ-
ception was proposed by Eberhard Jüngel. 113 Facing this conception, accommodation
proves to be a necessary corrective. Jüngel defines love as “the event of a still greater self-
lessness within a great, and justifiably very great self-relatedness”.114 Is it so, then love
contains a certain kenotic moment: Jüngel talks of “surrender”, which contains “the turning
away from oneself and the turning to someone else” in order to establish “a new self-
relationship”, “so that I come to myself from the furthermost distance, or better, am
brought to myself. The incomparable ardor of love which conceals the most radical di s-
tance of a person from himself within it leads to an event of nearness”.115
Applied to the Trinity, Jüngel says: “God has himself only in that he gives himself
away. But, in giving himself away, he has himself. That is how he is. His self-having is the
event, is the history of giving himself away and thus is the end of all mere self-having.”116
God as love unites the work of Father and Son when God identifies himself with the dead
Jesus. This unifying love is the work of the Spirit. God’s love, therefore, needs to be ex-
pressed in trinitarian categories.
Obviously, Jüngel presents a clearly trinitarian and therefore appropriately dynamic
conception of God. Nevertheless, it seems that the moment of selflessness, of turning away
from oneself stands here for the second person of the Trinity. This fits to a large degree
with the cross and the death of Jesus, which is Jüngel’s leading hermeneutical perspective,
but it does not fit in regard to the inner life of God in general, it does not fit to the term of
love as the principal characteristic of divinity. In Jüngel, God is love in the full sense (and
not only the loving one or the beloved one) “only on the basis of the fact that God as the
loving one sends this his beloved Son into the world, which means to a certain death; that
the loving one separates himself from his Son; that as the loving one he subjects himself to
lovelessness in the beloved”, i.e., in the inner self-differentiation in the incarnation and in
re-uniting of this self-differentiation in the Spirit.117 God seems to be love in the full sense
only with the death and resurrection of Jesus: “As this history, he is God, and in fact, this
history of love is ‘God himself’.”118 This history of love, however, seems to endanger the
divinity of the Son, putting him on the pole of divine selflessness, opening in its christo-
logical consequences thus once again the door into the blind alley of kenoticism. There-
fore, this conception of love does not seem to be appropriate as the central term of divinity.
Correcting this point, the concept of accommodation tries to conceive God’s turning to
someone else not as self-emptying or selflessness but rather as fulfillment and self-
ings in Social Philosophy and Ethics (Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 1988), 584–639.
PANNENBERG, 6\VWHPDWLF 7KHRORJ\ 1, 422–448. DALFERTH, &UXFLILHG DQG 5HVXUUHFWHG,
222–223. Cf. also V. BRÜMMER, 7KH 0RGHO RI /RYH $ 6WXG\ LQ SKLORVRSKLFDO WKHRORJ\,
(Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993); W.G. JEANROND, 7KH 7KHRORJ\ RI /RYH (London:
T&T Clark, 2010), 239–259; J. PIEPER, “On Love”, in IDEM, )DLWK+RSH/RYH, trans. R.
and C. WINSTON (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997), 139–282. – But of course, the con-
ception of God as love is originally biblical, cf. 1John 4,8. Many important thinkers were
influenced by it (cf. e.g. AUGUSTINUS, 'H7ULQLWDWH9,,,DQG;9 [Hamburg: Meiner, 2001];
S. KIERKEGAARD, :RUNVRI/RYH [Princeton: Princeton UP, 1998]; or F. NIETZSCHE, 7KH
*D\6FLHQFH, trans. J. NAUCKHOFF [Cambridge/New York: Cambridge UP, 2001]).
113
JÜNGEL, *RGDVWKH0\VWHU\, Sect. 20: “The God Who Is Love”, 314–330.
114
Ibid., 317.
115
Ibid., 321, 324
116
Ibid., 328.
117
Ibid., 327.
118
Ibid., 328.
confirmation of divinity and as an intensification of divine essence. Hereby, the accommo-

dation is the basis also for God’s love, which is sustained and made possible by accommo-
dation. Love is, then, the particular expression and the particular realization of accommo-
dation. It forms and shapes the incarnation of the Son as an act, in which divinity comes to
fulfillment leading to the ultimative end in the cross of Jesus Christ, where God accommo-
dates even to death. This is, then, indeed, a moment of selflessness but not in the sense of
selflessnes only of divinity ZLWKLQ the person of Jesus Christ; rather in the sense of self-
lessness RI WKHZKROHSHUVRQ of Jesus Christ as the ultimate concretization of God’s love. 119
This becomes then the leading image also for the human selfless love. Surprisingly, Jüngel
himself also points, in the end, in this direction by introducing the category of overflowing:
“A ‘still greater selflessness in the midst of a very great, and justifiably great self -
relatedness’ is nothing other than a self-relationship which in freedom goes beyond itself,
overflows itself, and gives itself away. It is pure overflow, overflowing being for the sake
of another and only then for the sake of itself. That is love. And that is the God who is
love: the one who always heightens and expands his own being in such great self-
relatedness still more selfless and thus overflowing.” 120
What is grounded in the inner-trinitarian life is then realized also outwardly,

in the relation to the creation. This happens in a paradigmatic, singular and
unique way in the person of Jesus Christ (and then in its universal pneumato-
logical actualization). In Jesus Christ, God presents himself not only as ori-
ented to the other; this orientation is rather realized in the intimate and in most
form of a person, in which divinity and humanity unite.
What is manifested in Jesus Christ, hence, is the same inner-trinitarian di-
vinity; the term of divinity remains univocal: what is valid within the Trinity,
is valid also for the divinity of Jesus Christ. And YLFH YHUVD: the divinity of
Jesus Christ is still the same, the one and only divinity, not some derived or
other divinity. This means, at the same time, that there is no difference be-
tween the so-called immanent and economic Trinity, that – with K. Rahner’s
“Grundaxiom” – “the economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity and YLFHYHU
VD”.121 There is only one divinity. And the divinity of Jesus Christ is this di-
vinity.
The person of Jesus Christ, as the unique and central case, shows thus
some important characteristics of the accommodation as such:
a) Accommodation is God’s creative activity. In his relation to creation,
God FUHDWHV harmony between himself and his creation, he creates and enters
into the unity with human. This notion was expressed already in the old con-
cept of HQK\SRVWDVLV: it is God who creates and constitutes the unity of him-
119
This moment, then, i.e., the death of Jesus Christ, is a moment that from inside punc-
tures the immutability of God, brings something new into the divine life and changes it
forever – it brings the death, which is from now on, as the death of Jesus Christ, a part of
divine life as well. Cf. to it more in detail below, Ch. 7 and 10.
120
Ibid., 369.
121
K. RAHNER, “Der dreifaltige Gott”, 328. Cf. above, Ch. 4.2.1.
self and human. This unity is thus achieved not through some kind of God’s
retreat, self-emptying or FLPFXP but rather through God’s full activity. 122
b) Exactly hereby, divine accommodation creates space for the other. This
is a notion clearly expressed in Chalcedon, which is fundamental and remains
valid as a christological key rule: even in the inmost unity of Christ’s person
God remains God and human remains human (“unconfused – undivided”).
God’s accommodation creates space, in which God lets the human be fully
human. Herein and hereby, God proves to be truly God. It is therefore possi-
ble to say with C. Gunton that the Trinity is the “space to be human”: 123 the
fullness of divine self-realization and the space for humanity do not mutually
exclude each other. On the contrary, the space for human is grounded already
in God himself, already within his accommodation, and it is fulfilled in par-
ticular in the incarnation of Jesus Christ.
c) Accommodation, then, defines also this space of humanity, it gives to it
a clear shape so that the human can become what he or she should be: “hu-
man corresponding to God” – and this in his/her relation to God as well as in
his/her relation to other humans, as is it expressed in the biblical notion of
LPDJR'HL.124
Here, the traditional contraposition between divinity and humanity is over-
come: accommodation as the prime characteristic of divinity, on one side, and
humanity in the image of God, on the other, correspond with each other. God
and human do not exclude mutually one another anymore (as it was the case
often in the theological tradition following the antique conception of God),
nor do they merely stand next to each other (as was the case in western theol-
ogy in its interpretation of Chalcedon), but they are rather set and oriented
essentially and ontologically to each other. This corresponds with and fits the
christological concretization as well. Accommodation in its coordination and
harmony with the LPDJR'HL can thus better express the aim intended in the
doctrine of FRPPXQLFDWLR LGLRPDWXP: the full unity of the person of Jesus
Christ without diminishing his full divinity or humanity.125
Nevertheless, the accommodation of God reaches further. As already men-
tioned above, it has not only an ontological but also a soteriological dimen-
sion. It is the ontological ground for what is concretized christologically and
pneumatologically in the reformation doctrine of justification by grace (VROD
JUDWLD). The factual existence of humans is characterized by the fact that hu-
man cannot fulfill his or her determination to be the image of God. Through
122
I try to follow and critically reshape the concept of HQK\SRVWDVLV more below, Ch.
6.1.
123
C. GUNTON, “Trinity, Ontology and Anthropology. Towards a Renewal of the Doc-
trine of the ,PDJR'HL”, in 3HUVRQV'LYLQHDQG+XPDQ, ed. IDEM and CH. SCHWÖBEL (Ed-
inburgh: T&T Clark, 1991), 53: “Trinity as space to be human.”
124
JÜNGEL, “Humanity in Correspondence to God”, 124–153. Cf. below, Ch. 6.2.3.
125
I will develop this more in detail in the following Ch. 6.
selflove, humans push God away and, thereby, distort one’s self and one’s
essence, incurvating more and more into oneself. The harmonious community
of God and human is fundamentally distorted and corrupted by sin. And right
here, accommodation proves again to be the fundamental character of God’s
being: God proves his divinity by showing that for him, there is no otherness
or foreignness he could not enter into without losing himself. This is a sur-
prising moment, stressed intensively by the scriptures of the New Testament
(cf. e.g. Rom 3:21–25; Phil 2:6–11; 1John 4:7–21) and later by the refor-
mation and protestant theology: God does not wait nor violate humans. God
does not wait until humans make himself or herself acceptable for God, until
he or she starts at least to cooperate and concur, until he or she makes at least
the first step in the right direction. This is exactly what a sinner cannot do. At
the same time, God does not violate humans in order to make them acceptable
for himself. This would break human autonomy and freedom. Therefore, God
adapts himself to human, not YLFHYHUVD. Herewith only, God brings what can
transform humanity: overcoming the power of sin through the cross and res-
urrection of Jesus Christ and by forgiving sin through the Spirit. 126
The term of accommodation plays an important role in the conception of the well-known
Swiss psychologist -HDQ3LDJHW, who focuses on the development of individual psycholog-
ical abilities and cognitive functions.127 This development involves three processes: the
adaptation of an organism to its environment, the adaptation of intelligence, and the estab-
lishment of epistemological relations. 128 All these processes – this is the basic notion and
presupposition of Piaget – develop not only in an isolated way within the subject, nor are
they only influenced by the external objects as a “mere perceptive recording” but always in
mutual interaction of the subject with its environment. 129 The subject not only receives ex-
ternal inputs that are simply given, but also constructs its own structures in interaction with
external conditions.130
For this double-sided process, Piaget differentiates between DVVLPLODWLRQ and DFFRPR
GDWLRQ. “Assimilation is the integration of external elements into evolving or completed
structures of the organism.” 131 When assimilating, the organism responds to a stimulus not
with an immediate reaction but rather by interpreting the stimulus and assimilating it into
the cognitive structures of the subject, and with an appropriate reaction. Assimilation thus
means that some circumstances of the stimulus are accepted, whereas other circumstances
can be excluded. Before the reaction, the assimilation adapts the stimulus to the preceding
cognitive structures of the subject. In this process, the continuity of the structures is pr e-
served and, at the same time, new elemens are integrated into these structures.132 The as-
126
Cf. below, Ch. 8.
127
Cf. in short J. PIAGET, “Piaget’s Theory”, in 3LDJHW DQG +LV 6FKRRO, ed. B.
INHELDER et al. (New York: Springer, 1976), 11–23.
128
Ibid., 11–12.
129
Ibid., 21.
130
Ibid., 13.
131
Ibid., 16–17.
132
Ibid., 18.
similation preserves the identity by an interpretative adaptation of the external impulses to

the subject.
The counterpart process, always present together with the assimilation, is DFFRPPRGD
WLRQ. Accommodation is here “any modification of an assimilatory scheme or structure by
the elements it assimilates”, i.e., the changing impact of external elements on the cognitive
structures of the subject. In order to preserve the identity of the subject, accommodations
can proceed “only within certain limits imposed by the necessity of preserving the corre-
sponding assimilatory structure”. Therefore, “there is no assimilation without accommoda-
tion” and YLFHYHUVD.133 However, the outer frame is the assimilation: “every new accom-
modation is conditioned by existing assimilations”.134 The balance of assimilation and ac-
commodation is, then, the domain of intelligence.135
Now, this concept of Piaget can serve as a good prism for the traditional term of God:
here, the assimilation of the external conditions to the divinity is much stronger than any
possible accommodation of God to the external environment. In the traditional Christolo-
gy, God can accommodate only to the extent that his assimilatory structure, i.e., his immu-
table static identity, is not touched. Which means: God can barely accommodate, because
he cannot change.136 “Accommodation through assimilation” is brought here to the edge of
almost complete assimilation without any accommodation. Human nature in Christ is ei-
ther divinized, i.e., assimilated to the divinity (East), or comes next to the divinity with its
own agenda so that divinity remains undisturbed (West).
In my concept, I would like to turn over the scheme and speak rather of divine assimi-
lation through accommodation: the outer frame is divine accommodation, his dynamic and
flexible being, which is able to adapt to the other, however, without losing his identity. In
Piaget’s terms: the basic assimilatory structure of God is his accommodation, his dynamics
oriented to the other. God does not assimilate anything to him directly, neither the persons
of the Trinity, nor his creation; God accommodates mutually within the Trinity and also to
his creation and this makes his identity. The ultimate case is Jesus Christ, in whom God
becomes human and accommodates fully even to death.137 It is the moment of the death of
Jesus Christ, where, then, also one line of divine assimilation has its place. However, hu-
manity is not assimilated but rather sin and death. The other line of divine assimilation is
God’s presence and acting in the world in the Spirit. However, this is not a direct but rather
a mediated assimilation of the creation through the communication of faith. Not coercive,
as process theology would call it but rather persuasive. God creates new possibilities and
persuades humans to use them in their freedom. In this way, God assimilates his disturbed
and corrupted creation back to being good creation: through the death of Jesus Christ and
133
Ibid., 18–19.
134
Ibid., 20.
135
Ibid.
136
Cf. ibid., 19, where Piaget defines, what happens in such case, when “assimilation
RXWZHLJKV accommodation”: the individual “evolves in an egocentric or even autistic direc-
tion”.
137
Cf. ibid., 20, where Piaget defines the opposite case: “[W]hen accommodation pre-
vails over assimilation to the point where it faithfully reproduces the forms and movements
of the objects or persons which are its models at that time, representation […] evolves in
the direction of imitation. Imitation through action, an accommodation to models that are
present, gradually extends to deferred imitation and finally to interiorized imitation.” Does
not this go in a certain – and of course very hyperbolic – way the direction of incarnation?
the proclamation in the Spirit leading to faith, to the remission of sins, and to the Christian
praxis.138
Being the fundamental regulatory term, accommodation can suitably serve

theological talk about God because it corresponds with the biblical founda-
tions, with the christological rooting as well as with the accents of refor-
mation theology, without abandoning the traditional characteristics of divini-
ty, which, however, get a clear shaping. At the same time, accommodation
connects together theological ontology (accommodation as God’s being it-
self), soteriology (accommodation as the basis for VRODJUDWLD) and eschatolo-
gy (the final participation of all creation in divine life as the very aim of a c-
commodation).
138
Cf. below, Ch. 8 and 11.3.
Chapter 6
The Incarnation
What was developed in the previous chapter with accommodation as the gen-
eral principle of divinity that is oriented to the other is now to be concretized
with respect to the person of Jesus Christ and to the particular act of the reali-
zation of divine accommodation in the incarnation. In other words, now is the
time to focus again on the old problematic and one of the central points of
Christology: how can divinity and humanity in Jesus Christ create a unity of
his person? On the one hand, starting with the resurrection, the unity of his
person is the first fact with which we are starting. The unity of his person is a
self-evident thing and therefore presupposed in any following thought. On the
other hand, the question still remains how should we conceive it. How can we
think this unity as a unity of true divinity and true humanity in this particular
person if it should still be valid that it is exactly the perspective of resurrec-
tion, which brings the notion of this twofoldness into play? How shall we
conceive that he who was crucified and resurrected was true God and true
human simultaneously?
Now, regarding my previous chapters, it is more than obvious that in the
history of Christian thought there were many attempts to give an answer to
this question. I will now propose my own attempt at an answer combining the
newly established conception of divine accommodation with the originally
biblical notion of human as LPDJR 'HL. However, exactly because there has
been a long tradition, and also in respect to my own thesis that, christologi-
cally speaking, we need to go with Chalcedon beyond Chalcedon, I will try to
follow up some of the old notions, conceptions, and terms, yet without copy-
ing them simply 1:1. I will try to use them critically and work with them in a
rather creative way. It should be another expression of my aim to read the ex-
isting tradition critically and develop it further in a discussion of ecumenical
width. 1
I will begin with two steps: first, I will focus on the divinity in its relation
to humanity, on God becoming human; and then on the humanity in its rela-
tion to divinity, on human, who is constituted as oriented towards God. In the
final third subchapter, I will deal with the complex identity of the person of
Jesus Christ and his earthly life.
1
As many before me did, cf. e.g. SCHLEIERMACHER, 7KH &KULVWLDQ )DLWK, § 95, 389–
390.
$FFRPPRGDWLRQLQ3URFHVV 217
1. Accommodation in Process: An Attempt

with the HQK\SRVWDVLVor New Wine into Old Wineskins2
1. Accommodation in Process
In the first step, I will return to Chalcedon or rather to its neo-Chalcedonian
interpretation. What follows now is a slightly speculative attempt to sketch
the ontology of incarnation, based on my previous critical appreciation of
Chalcedon and on the term of accommodation.
From a trinitarian perspective, the notion remains valid that the subject of
incarnation is the second person of the Trinity. Shortly after Chalcedon, it
was made clear that a balanced symmetry between the “natures” is not possi-
ble, that the divine-human relation in the person of Jesus Christ bears a cer-
tain orientation, direction, or declivity from the divine to the human. Divinity
is constitutive; humanity comes next. The problem, however, how this hap-
pens and how this is to be thought of, i.e., how this should be theologically
conceived, was never solved in a satisfactory way.
The best, although in no way final solution so far, was, still, the concept of
HQK\SRVWDVLV. Its intention, the impetus towards the unity of the person pre-
serving God’s primary activity, which would not sideline the humanity, and
the whole DSRWHOHVPD as a back looking, theoretical reconstruction of the real
person of Jesus Christ has still some fascination and attraction, and has been
acceptedPXWDWLVPXWDQGLV by many until today.3
*HRUJ (VVHQ in his study 'LH )UHLKHLW -HVX (2001) tried to reformulate the conception of
HQK\SRVWDVLV in connection with the modern term of person and with the theory of self-
consciousness in terms of a theory of individual freedom. 4 He reconstructs critically and in
detail the development of the conception of HQK\SRVWDVLV starting with the Cappadocian
theology over the so-called FRUSXV/HRQWLXP to Maximus Confessor and the Third council
of Constantinople. Then, in a critical dialogue with K. Rahner and P. Schoonenberg and
following the line of Descartes – Locke and Hume – Kant – Schleiermacher – Henrich and
Krings (and Pröpper) – and Pannenberg, Essen proposes his own attempt at expressing the
unity of Christ’s humanity and divinity in terms of Jesus’ fully human freedom as the free-
dom of the God-Son. His starting point is thus the modern situation after the anthropologi-
cal turn with its developed theory of subjectivity conceived as finite freedom. Essen seeks
to adapt the old dogmas to this modern structure, which, in his view, not only corresponds
with the aims of the old doctrine, but even overcomes its substance thinking. 5 It is not pos-
sible anymore to follow simply the old conception, because, in its substance thinking (two-
natures model), it leads inevitably into aporias. The old conception of HQK\SRVWDVLV needs,
therefore, to be refomulated on the ground of a more appropriate framing: on the ground of
2
This subchapter was in a shorter version published in my article “The Importance of
the Chalcedonian Distinction”, 285–286.
3
Cf. BARTH, &KXUFK'RJPDWLFVI/2, 162–163; IV/2, 90–91; PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 337–
344; IDEM, 6\VWHPDWLF 7KHRORJ\ 2, 389; DALFERTH, &UXFLILHG DQG 5HVXUUHFWHG, 152;
SCHWÖBEL, “Christology and Trinitarian Thought”, 142.
4
ESSEN, 'LH)UHLKHLW-HVX.
5
Ibid., 20, 141.
218 &KDSWHU7KH,QFDUQDWLRQ
the transcendental philosophy of freedom, i.e., as the determination of the freedom of Jesus
Christ.6 The old ontology of substance has to be transformed into the theory of self-
consciousness so that the term person itself can be de-substantialized.7 The base for such a
new reformulation should be provided by the transcendental term of person, which estab-
lishes one’s subjectivity as freedom: at first only in a formal sense, however, this formal
sense is the base for encounter with others as other finite freedoms. With the acknowledg-
ment of the others as freedom, one’s own freedom realizes itself as a real freedom in the
material respect also.8 In relation to the self, this freedom becomes subject; in relation to
the world, this freedom becomes person. 9 At the same time, when considering the condi-
tions for the possibility of the existence of plural finite freedoms, i.e., when making the
transcendental reflection, one comes to the idea of God as the unconditioned freedom and
the ground of one’s particular existence, which lies beyond one’s availability and dispos-
al.10 This structure of human person, with its dependence on the absolute freedom, should
serve as a defense against the “latent monophysitic tendency” of the traditional conception
of HQK\SRVWDVLV, and, at the same time, provide a ground for the interconnection of personal
humanity with personal divinity, because human freedom in this structure obviously can be
addressed by God and is open to it.11
In his own proposal, Essen starts with the finite human freedom of Jesus. He stresses
that a real freedom must be self-standing and that a concept of creaturely freedom must –
contrary to the old doctrines of the church – entail the possibility of differing from the will
of the Creator. This self-standing freedom, however, must be interpreted theologically not
as a lack but rather as the purpose and aim of the Creator. The creation of a self-standing
freedom is to be conceived as a sign and symbol of God’s love. Here, Essen joins the Anti-
ochene tradition and Maximus Confessor, who insisted on full human freedom. 12 For the
unity of this self-standing freedom with the Logos, Essen uses the concept of HQK\SRVWDVLV,
resp. what he calls “the Alexandrine intuition”: that the incarnated trinitarian person of the
Son is the very subject of all acting of Jesus Christ. 13 The unity of humanity and divinity is
constituted through human freedom – with its possibility to differ from the will of God – in
which Jesus turns and conforms himself to the will of God to the extent that this human
freedom is identical with the freedom of the Logos and becomes the medium and “Re-
alsymbol” of God’s love. 14 Humanity and divinity overlap and become immediately one:
“The divine freedom of the Father and the freedom of Jesus are freedoms, which immedi-
ately decided mutually for each other.” 15 The will of Jesus is, then, the same as the will of
the Father, although their freedoms are different freedoms. Against Pannenberg, Essen thus
states that in his freedom, Jesus was immediately related and immediately knew himself to
be the Son. Ontologically, he was immediately and directly identical with the Son, alt-
6
Ibid., 21, 204.
7
Ibid., 246.
8
Ibid., 177–180.
9
Ibid., 180–181.
10
Ibid., 250.
11
Ibid., 192, 284. This point is the most important point of the transcendental approach
in the modern catholic theology since K. Rahner: the human is open toward God. Moreo-
ver, the human is ontologically the question, to which God is the answer.
12
Ibid., 245.
13
Ibid., 121, 271.
14
Ibid., 272–280, 291, leaning on a term of K. Rahner.
15
Ibid., 292.
hough noetically this relation seemed to be indirect. 16 This makes him different from all
other people. In this point, his self-consciousness as the self-consciousness of the Son was
unique and had to be established already before the earthly life of Jesus.17 The human free-
dom of Jesus is thus to be conceived as enhypostatical in the freedom of God and the di f-
ference of freedoms should be conceived as the internal structure of God-Self. The acting
of Jesus in his freedom is thus conceived appropriately when it is understood as the acting
of God in Jesus.18 Then, the human freedom of Jesus Christ can be the medium of God’s
love and self-revelation for all people.19
The theses and points of Essen’s thoughts, however, seem to point further than he was
able to notice. It is, maybe, not a chance that his book ends with questions concerning fun-
damental theological insights: incarnation, NHQRVLV and Trinity. The strongest frame of his
thought is the modern theory of freedom, yet still, he seeks an interpretation for HQK\SRVWD
VLV, which would allow him to come to the conclusion that “this freedom [the human free-
dom of Jesus] DV a truly human one LV the freedom of the divine Son”, so that it can be
shown that incarnation in the sense of John 1:14 is more than a mere connection with a
human or an indwelling in a human. 20 Is not an HNK\SRVWDVLV – as a necessary counterpart
to HQK\SRVWDVLV – what Essen seeks here? Further, he seeks an interpretation of NHQRVLV,
which could conceive God’s becoming a finite human not as a “depotentiation but rather –
on the contrary – ‘as an H[SUHVVLRQ of the eternal deity‘“.21 In other words, Essen seeks a
non-kenotic conception of NHQRVLV, NHQRVLV rather as SOHURVLV. According to his own pre-
suppositions, if Jesus Christ is the self-revelation of God, then the structure of revelation
has to be the internal structure of God-Self. When God is able to reveal himself in the
finite life of Jesus as God and accept the finite humanity without ceasing to be God, do-
es not this go in the direction of accommodation? Finally, there is no wonder that these
indices raise questions regarding the Trinity: regarding the essential attributes of God
and regarding the trinitarian persons.22
In the light of these final points, Essen’s critical and modern reformulation of the old
conception of HQK\SRVWDVLV would require a reformulation itself in order to also draw the
lines explicitly where they seem to go implicitly. Yet they seem to me to go in the right
direction.
The main problem of the enhypostatical model is that it knows only one di-
rection, the assumption of humanity into divinity, which, in the end, results in
diminishing humanity. With respect to the later critique of this old thought, it
would be necessary to enrich it also with the other direction: from divinity
towards humanity.
16
Ibid., 295.
17
Ibid., 290, 292.
18
Ibid., 294.
19
Ibid., 287, 295.
20
Ibid., 299–300.
21
Ibid., 302, quoting PANNENBERG, 6\VWHPDWLF7KHRORJ\2, 320 (cf. the German origi-
nal PANNENBERG, 6\VWHPDWLVFKH 7KHRORJLH 2, 361, where the expression is stronger: die
Gottheit des Sohnes darf “nicht als Einschränkung, sie muß als Betätigung der ewigen
Gottheit des Sohnes aufgefasst werden”.
22
ESSEN, 'LH)UHLKHLW-HVX, 317–335.
The Chalcedonian formula uses two terms for the unity of the person of Je-
sus Christ, which it puts simply next to each other without any more precise
determination of their relation: K\SRVWDVLV and SURVRSRQ. As already men-
tioned above, in the Creed of Chalcedon, they both come from different
sources: K\SRVWDVLV from the Alexandrine school of Cyril, SURVRSRQ from
Leo’s Tome, which concurred here with the Antiochene line of thought (as
expressed e.g.in the Formula of Reunion 433), which preferred for the unity
rather this term.23 Both these terms put next to each other open an interesting
space, in which the question arises, if SURVRSRQ – also regarding the follow-
ing development of the term of person in the western philosophy and theolo-
gy until the Enlightenment toward personality – could be taken as a specifica-
tion of K\SRVWDVLV.
That some specification would be necessary is confimed also by the fact
that the term of K\SRVWDVLV suffered under an equivocation in its trinitarian
and christological use: whereas in the doctrine of the Trinity, K\SRVWDVLV was
defined as the term for the trinitarian persons, in Christology, this term
emerges as the term for the unity of the person of Jesus Christ embracing
both the divine and the human nature. 24 The neo-Chalcedonian conception of
HQK\SRVWDVLV tried to overcome this inconsistency. It resulted, however, into
diminishing the humanity of Christ, which was conceived only as human na-
ture in general without any particular attributes. They were given to the hu-
man nature from the divine K\SRVWDVLV, which served as the constitutive per-
sonal dimension also for the anhypostatical human nature. 25
This one-sidedness needs to be corrected. Therefore, I will now propose
my own DSRWHOHVPD – a back looking theoretical reconstruction of the incar-
nation process. I will use the old terms in a creative way, which will lead in
the end to breaking them from within.
First, I will open the space between K\SRVWDVLVand SURVRSRQ: further on, I
will understand K\SRVWDVLV as a person of the Trinity – this is the starting
point of the whole process, the WHUPLQXV D TXR. Whereas concerning SURVR
SRQ, I will now conceive it in the modern understanding of the Latin SHUVRQD,
i.e., as human personality in its development.26 This will be, then, the final
point of the incarnation, the WHUPLQXV DG TXHP, however, without losing di-
vinity somewhere along the way from the first to the second. Now, there is a
fundamental difference between those two: three divine K\SRVWDVHLV are not
three personalities – this would be a sheer tritheism. And a human personality
23
24
Cf. above, Ch. 3.1.2, fn. 86.
25
Cf. more in detail above, Ch. 3.2.2.
26
Cf. DALFERTH, &UXFLILHGDQG5HVXUUHFWHG, 148–153, who follows the development of
the term ‘persona’ from its Antique roots over Tertullian, Chalcedon, Boethius and Richard
of St. Victor to the modern age and Hegel, in whom person is defined as “VHW RI HYHQWV
within which personality is formed” (ibid., 151).
cannot be defined only as K\SRVWDVLV in the trinitarian sense because it lacks

completely an own distinct existence and with it the particular huma nity and
its development, which would open the door to docetism.27
Here is, then, the place for the classical concept of HQK\SRVWDVLV: against
the backdrop of the trinitarian theology, it is clear that the subject of every-
thing that follows is the second K\SRVWDVLV of the Trinity, i.e., the Son, the
Logos.28 He and his free decision to incarnate stands at the beginning of the
whole process. This is the basis for all following declivity and dynamics. The
whole process is not a concurrence of two original principles, divinty and
humanity, but rather starts in God and with God himself.
Now, based on his essential orientation to the other, the K\SRVWDVLV of the
Son in-creates within himself his own humanity into a hypostatic unity. This
is the only possible way, should the danger of an extreme Nestorianism be
avoided, which states that divinity assumes an already constituted whole hu-
man (DVVXPSWXVKRPR). This, in the end, would lead to adoptianism. 29 So far
goes the traditional concept of HQK\SRVWDVLV where the divinity is the frame,
leading force, and superior power. Regarding humanity, it aims to WKHRVLV,
which, however, robs humanity of its fullness.
To balance this one-sidedness there must thus follow one more step in the
opposite direction: a certain HNK\SRVWDVLV, a motion, which creates the space
for humanity and its full and free development. 30 Only then can the person of
Jesus Christ, which is being constituted, develop from a K\SRVWDVLV into a real
personality (without ceasing to be the K\SRVWDVLV of the Son). In my concep-
tion, this is made possible due to accommodation as the basic characteristic
of divine being.
27
Cf. again SCHLEIERMACHER, 7KH&KULVWLDQ)DLWK, § 97.2, 399–400: “But the worst is,
that the human nature in this way can only become a Person in the sense in which this is
true of a Person in the Trinity, so that we are confronted with the dilemma, that either the
three Persons must, like human persons, be individuals existing independently by them-
selves, or Christ as man was not such an independent individual – an assertion which gives
us a completely docetic picture of Him.”
28
This Trinity-anchored point is the main objection of Schleiermacher against the tradi-
tional doctrine, cf. SCHLEIERMACHER, 7KH&KULVWLDQ)DLWK, § 96.1, 392.
29
Cf. POSPÍŠIL, -Håtã]1D]DUHWD, 132. In western theology, this position was represent-
ed also by some modern Scotist theologians, e.g. by the school of Déodat de Basly, cf.
SCHOONENBERG, 7KH&KULVW, 67.
30
Cf. similarly GRILLMEIER, -HVXV1, 773: The traditional conception “looked from the
perspective of Christ’s humanity towards the divine subject. That is correct, if we think
also the opposite direction. We could speak about an ex-hypostasis or ek-stasis of the di-
vine which tends from the divinum into human ex-sistence”. Cf. also ZIZIOULAS, “On Be-
ing a Person”, 46, who closes his text with a sentence one would like him to have devel-
oped more: “This hypostatic fullness as otherness can emerge only through a relationship
so constitutive ontologically that relating is not consequent upon being but is being itself.
The K\SRVWDWLF and the HNVWDWLF have to coincide.”
In this second, ek-hypostatic motion comes the shift from K\SRVWDVLV to

SURVRSRQ (personality) when the divine K\SRVWDVLV of the Son in its hypostatic
unity with its own humanity accommodates to the humanity, which means:
the Son hands over his K\SRVWDVLV to the humanity as its own hypostasis. 31
With this, it comes to what I call µHQK\SRVWDWLFDO LQYHUVLRQ¶ as though the
enhypostatical positive would be turned into a negative like a shirt can be
turned inside out. With this turn, human personality is constituted: the K\SRV
WDVLV of Christ – in the countermovement of HNK\SRVWDVLV towards human ex-
istence – becomes a personality. Humanity does not thus remain only within
the divine, this K\SRVWDVLV becomes outwardly human also. It becomes a hu-
man personality with all space for its organic development. It is only with this
second step that we can say that Logos really became human, that the Word
really became flesh (John 1:14). The concept of HQK\SRVWDVLV was able to
think only the opposite direction.
At the same time, this entails that with respect to soteriology, which cannot
be missing, with this inversion God enters the world – meaning the “old”
world. As a true human personality, God participates in the ambiguous world
disturbed and corrupted by sin. He does not remain untouched by it: the Word
became flesh, VDU[. As a real human, Jesus Christ lives in the conditions of
the sinful world having the same VDU[ as any other human, i.e., flesh, which is
tempted by sin, however, without having surrendered to it (cf. Heb 4:15, to
which refers also the Creed of Chalcedon).32 In this sense, God does not seek,
in a kind of Platonic manner, someone equally perfect to himself. On the con-
trary, with the accommodating incarnation, he goes “into a foreign country”,
into otherness, into non-divinity in order to create a space for true humanity
right there.33
The stress on the true humanity of Jesus Christ was the key point, which brought the Dutch
Jesuit theologian 3LHW6FKRRQHQEHUJ in the 1970’s to his conception of “reversed HQK\SRV
WDVLV”. Schoonenberg starts with the biblical fact of Jesus’ full human person. Being a per-
son is, according to Schoonenberg, primarily a human category. Jesus was thus primarily a
human person. 34 All Christology, therefore, has to be Christology from below and can go
always only in the direction from the world to God, from humanity to divinity, never YLFH
31
Cf. above, Ch. 3.2.2., the K\SRVWDVLV in Leontius of Jerusalem as a multi-relational ba-
sis of the person of Jesus Christ (NRLQHK\SRVWDVLV), being at the same time for each nature
LGLNHK\SRVWDVLV (own, proper K\SRVWDVLV), as if the divinity would be able to adapt to hu-
manity and its needs. Cf. UTHEMANN, “Definitionen und Paradigmen”, 110–113.
32
This was an important point for SCHLEIERMACHER, 7KH&KULVWLDQ)DLWK, § 94.1, 385–
386.
33
Cf. K. BARTH, &KXUFK 'RJPDWLFV IV/1, 157: “The Way of the Son of God into the
Far Country” with the German original “Der Weg des Sohnes Gottes in die Fremde”,
IDEM, 'LHNLUFKOLFKH'RJPDWLNIV/1, 171.
34
SCHOONENBERG, 7KH&KULVW, 88.
YHUVD.35 We know Jesus first in his human person and only within this we can call him a
divine person.36
This means, however, that the eastern neo-Chalcedonian Christology, which subse-
quently became dominating with its conception of HQK\SRVWDVLV also in the West, made a
fundamental mistake: it has left the humanity to be anhypostatic, without the humanity
having an own hypostasis. According to Schoonenberg, this denies the full humanity of
Jesus. To correct it, we have to start with the full human person of Jesus, which cannot be
concieved anhypostatic. On the contrary, it is this full humanity that gives space for – in
the end anhypostatic – divinity. Schoonenberg summarizes: “The concept developed here
regarding Christ’s being-person is a reversal of the Chalcedonian pattern insofar as it is
influenced by neo-Chalcedonism, which has become our current christology. Now not the
human but the divine nature in Christ is anhypostatic, with the proviso, moreover, that this
is valid inasmuch as we do not know the person of the Word outside the man Jesus. How-
ever, it is primarily not the human nature that is enhypostatical in the divine person but the
divine nature in the human person.” 37
Later, also under the effect of the critique of W. Kasper, 38 Schoonenberg adapted his
conception and added to it also the classical HQK\SRVWDVLV: “Presupposed is a christology
which starts from the true and unabridged humanity of Jesus. […] The human person of
Jesus Christ can be called the second divine person inasmuch as God in his second mode of
being as Logos is present in Jesus, is the sustainer of Jesus’ personal and historical human
being, and this in a definitive, eschatological manner which is thus decisive for the whole
world. […] Jesus Christ is sustained by God in this mode of being, without in any way b e-
ing impaired in his human personality. Conversely in Jesus this mode of God’s being be-
comes person. Therefore one can speak of an enhypostasis of Jesus in the Logos (in classi-
cal fashion but without any sort of anhypostasis). Conversely, too, one can speak of an
enhypostasis of the Logos in the man Jesus. The mode of God’s being as Logos thereby
becomes divine person in the fullest sense of the word.” 39
35
SCHOONENBERG, “Trinity – The consummated covenant: Theses on the doctrine of
the trinitarian God”, in 6FLHQFHV5HOLJLHXVHV6WXGLHVLQ5HOLJLRQ 5 (1975/6), 111: “1/ All
our thinking moves from the world to God, and can never move in the opposite direction.
2/ Revelation in no way suspends this law. Revelation is the experienced self-
communication of God in human history, which thereby becomes the history of salvation.
3/ With reference to God’s Trinity, this law means that the Trinity can never be the point
of departure. There is no way that we can draw conclusions from the Trinity to Christ and
to the Spirit given to us; only the opposite direction is possible. 4/ For Christology this law
means: (a) that the point of departure for Christology cannot be the pre-existent Logos, but
only Jesus Christ as he lived, as he died, as he lives as the Risen One; (b) that the content
of Christ’s divine pre-existence can be determined only from his earthly and glorified life;
(c) that consequently a statement about the pre-existent Logos without reference to the
earthly and glorified Christ is an empty statement.”
36
Cf. SCHOONENBERG, 7KH&KULVW, 87: “[T]his Word is person in Jesus through its be-
ing man, […] it is divine person through being a human person.”
37
Ibid.
38
Cf. e.g. KASPER, -HVXV WKH &KULVW, 232; and Schoonenberg’s short reply to it,
SCHOONENBERG, “Spirit Christology and Logos Christology”, in %LMGUDJHQ,QWHUQDWLRQDO
-RXUQDOIRU3KLORVRSK\DQG7KHRORJ\38 (1977/4), 363.
39
SCHOONENBERG, “Trinity”, 115.
However, in this later conception called by Schoonenberg himself ³UHFLSURFDO HQK\

SRVWDVLV´, the classical concept of HQK\SRVWDVLV seems to be interpreted in a slightly shifted
way. On the one hand, Schoonenberg writes: “[P]resent in Jesus is also the ground, the hy-
postasis, of Jesus’ human reality. So I can subscribe to the classical doctrine that this hu-
man reality of Jesus is en-hypostatic in the Logos (provided that it is not an-hypostatic in
itself, which I shall explain presently). In my book The Christ I inverted this classical doc-
trine, replacing the HQK\SRVWDVLV of Jesus’ human reality in the Logos by the HQK\SRVWDVLV
of the Logos in Jesus’ human reality […]. This inversion I maintain (for reasons which,
again, I shall explain presently) but not the exclusivity of it. So I propose to speak of a UH
FLSURFDO enhypostasis […].” Then, however, he adds his explanation of what, in his view,
should represent the classical HQK\SRVWDVLV: “Because each presence of God in a creature
includes the presence of that creature in God, the HQK\SRVWDVLV of the Word in Jesus (which
I proposed and maintain) includes the HQK\SRVWDVLV of Jesus in the Word (which I now af-
firm with the classical doctrine).” 40 This seems to be a different understanding of HQK\SRV
WDVLV than in the reversed form: it is a kind of HQK\SRVWDVLV common to all creation, not
specifically to the person of Christ. It is rather participation than HQK\SRVWDVLV in a strict
sense.41 The “strict” HQ\KSRVWDVLV seems to be only the reversed one. Nevertheless, its aim
is “superseding the two natures of the one person by a paramount presence of God in this
human person”.42
In his late work 'HU*HLVWGDV:RUWXQGGHU6RKQ (1991), Schoonenberg elaborates his
thesis of reciprocal enhypostasis to a broadly biblically-founded Spirit-Christology, which
should, with the emphases of the synoptical Gospels from below, amend the classical Jo-
hannine Logos-Christology from above.43 This should, again, stress the full humanity of
Jesus in contrast to the emphasis on his divinity in the classical theology. 44 With this, his
Christology gets a clear triniarian framing. On the other hand, however, Schoonenberg
40
SCHOONENBERG, “Spirit Christology and Logos Christology”, 364–365.
41
Cf. ibid., 365: “This way I think that I have satisfied the concern of alarmed theologi-
ans and of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith. It can be said that ‘the mystery of
Jesus Christ consists only in the fact that God, in revealing himself, was present in the
highest degree in the human person Jesus’, because that fact (and even ‘only t hat fact’)
includes that the human person of Jesus is present in, sustained by, enhypostatic in God's
Logos. It can be said that in Jesus’ ‘human person God is supremely present’, because this
includes that this human person is sustained by, or enhypostatic in, God’s revealing Word.
We can speak of Jesus as ‘being the supreme and final expression of divine Revelation’,
because this includes that the entire Word of God, in all its fullness, became flesh in him.
The concern of the Congregation and of authors like Kasper is justified inasmuch as the
expressions they object to are not elaborated to include a presence and an enhypostasis
which is reciprocal.”
42
SCHOONENBERG, 7KH &KULVW, 92. In this point, Schoonenberg comes very close to
Schleiermacher.
43
SCHOONENBERG, 'HU*HLVW, 95–96.
44
Ibid., 105–106. One of the consequences, which are important for Schoonenberg, is
the difference between Jesus’ sinlessness as LPSHFFDQWLD (i.e., the fact that he did not sin)
and his traditionally emphasized LPSHFFDELOLWDV (i.e., that he could not sin). Schoonenberg
stresses the first and rejects the latter: the importance of Jesus’ sinlessness lies exactly in
the fact that he did not sin, although he – as the true human in our world – could: “God
who cannot sin assumed in Jesus the possibility of sin just as the immortal God assumed in
him our mortality” (ibid., 109).
falls into problems with the person of Jesus Christ as the incarnation of both Word DQG
Spirit, which results, in the end, in an equivocation with his term of trinitarian persons. 45
This equivocation is based already in his starting point in the eastern patrocentrism:
Schoonenberg conceives God in the beginning only as one person, the Father, who has two
principles with him: the Word and the Spirit. It is only the incarnation, which personalizes
not only the person of Jesus Christ, but with it also the trinitarian persons of the Son and of
the Spirit, yet both in a different way, which brings a strange redundancy into the concept
of incarnation.46 The moment of incarnation is thus, at the same time, a point of trinitarian
theogony. 47 The Trinity develops also, along with the human development of Jesus. In his
resurrection, Jesus becomes the Lord and Christ and fully becomes the Son of God. Hu-
manity and divinity in Christ develop toward the person together.48 Following his older
idea, for Schoonenberg, this personalisation is not only the case in Jesus but also in every
human. 49
Overall, Schoonenberg’s impulses brought a fresh wind, although it had no followers.
Nevertheless, with his conception, he was able to break the static picture of divinity. Tak-
ing seriously the verse John 1:14, which speaks about divine becoming, he adds: “I do not
deny that immutability can, and must, be predicated of God, but I deny that God is only
immutable. I want to predicate mutability of God as well, and doing so I am in the compa-
ny of a good number of theologians. God is immutable and mutable, and both at the same
time. He is immutable in his divine being and mutable in his self-communication, which
coincides with his being.” With all this, Schoonenberg obviously did not want to diminish
divinity, as some were afraid; there is in no way a place for a kenotic tendency: “[T]he
Logos as the sustaining modality of God’s being is no less divine than it is portrayed in
classical christology (SHUKDSVHYHQPRUHGLYLQHVLQFHLWDOORZVWKHPDQ-HVXVWREHZKROO\
PDQ).”50 Here, Schoonenberg is very close to the conception of accommodation.
In the resulting picture, the humanity here is no mere garment for the divine,
but is internally interpenetrated with it. The divinity is present everywhere
through, with, and in this human person (and this person amidst the real
world with all its ambiguities – our world). Therefore, everywhere humanity
is at work, divinity is at work as well. The more Jesus Christ is human, the
more is he divine, and YLFHYHUVD.51 Unconfused and undivided, in mutual uni-
ty. The subject of all activity (and passivity!) is thus the one and same person
of Jesus Christ and that is the most important point.52
45
Ibid., 152–154 and 177–218, explicitly 205.
46
Ibid., 187–188, 203 and 215–217.
47
Cf. to it the conception of the late SCHELLING, 8UIDVVXQJ, who, however, conceives
as the starting point of the trinitarian theology the moment of creation.
48
SCHOONENBERG, 'HU*HLVW, 114 and 200–201.
49
Ibid., 203.
50
SCHOONENBERG, “Trinity”, 115 (my italics).
51
GRILLMEIER, “Das Verhältnis”, 151, asserts this already for the conception of HQK\
SRVWDVLV, where it, however, cannot work because of the diminished human nature. Such
assertion can have its place only after HQK\SRVWDVLV is amended also by HNK\SRVWDVLV.
52
A similar thought, yet formulated anthropologically and starting from and stressing
the humanity with its point in WKHRVLV, can be found also in BOFF, -HVXV&KULVW/LEHUDWRU,
197: “Hence it is only by means of the ‘You’ that the ‘I’ becomes what it is. The ‘I’ is an
However, this inversion breaks the neo-Chalcedonian metaphysics at the

same time from within – like a new wine in old wineskins does. Now, it can
serve rather as a metaphor or indication of the direction of how the person of
Jesus Christ should be conceived in order to preserve the most important in-
tention of all Christology, which the neo-Chalcedonian conception also tried
to maintain: the unity of divinity and humanity in the person of Jesus Christ.
2. 9HUHKRPR
2. Vere homo
3HUVRQDQG3HUVRQDOLW\ZLWKLQ2QH¶V,GHQWLW\
At this point, Christology not only touches anthropology; here, it becomes
anthropology, Christology is here identical with anthropology. 53 This means:
should the Chalcedonian “vere homo” be taken seriously, then, what applies
here to Christ has to apply to every single human. Moreover, if Jesus Christ
was truly human, then his humanity should define what humanity is in gen-
eral. Christ’s humanity should be prototypical for all. It was already said
above that what divinity is, is to be taken from the story of the crucified and
resurrected one. Now, this applies in the same way for humanity. 54
In my speculative enhypostatical inversion, I have arrived to a point where
the SHUVRQ of Jesus Christ is constituted in its full humanity, as though inter-
penetrated everywhere by the divinity, and hence “ready” for human life, for
normal human development, for developing into a human SHUVRQDOLW\. Now,
this is the very fundamental christological and anthropological differentia-
tion, which I will apply to antropology and Christology – in this order.
Therefore, what follows now, will be at first an anthropological sketch,
which will implicitely lean on my previously developed christological
thoughts. Nevertheless, I will formulate it as though purely anthropological
(subchapters 2.1–2.3). And only then, in a second step (subchapter 3), will I
make the christological foundation explicit, testing at the same time, if this
now sketched picture of humanity fits also the person of Jesus Christ.
echo of the ‘You’ and in last analysis, a resonance of the divine ‘You’. The more human
beings relate to other and go out of themselves, the more they grow and become human.
The more they are in the other, the more they are in themselves and become themselves.
The more Jesus existed in God, the more God resided in him. The more the man-Jesus
dwelled in God, the more he was divinized. The more God existed in Jesus, the more God
was humanized. The man-Jesus was in God in such a way that they became identified: God
made himself human so that the human could become God.”
53
I will deal with the anthropological questions more in detail in my study about theo-
logical anthropology, which should follow after this christological study in short.
54
Cf. above, Ch. 3.3.
9HUHKRPR 227
Let us turn back to the fundamental anthropological differentiation be-

tween person and personality:
3HUVRQ, as I will understand it further on, stands for the vertical dimension
of humanity, which is constituted and guaranteed by God and thus unavaila-
ble to human’s deliberate disposal, deciding, and acting (human as God’s cre-
ation).55 A human becomes a person by God individually establishing a rela-
tionship with him or her, not by one’s decision, will or action. Being a person
is given to everyone individually by God, it is not a result of one’s own abili-
ties or actions. As such, one’s personhood is the indispensable ground for any
following human self-realization, which it ontologically precedes (the
uniqueness of personhood).56
It is thus to differentiate between the unique SHUVRQKRRG constituted by God and between
the LQGLYLGXDOLW\, which is a matter of the horizontal dimension and develops always and
only within social environment. Whereas the personhood precedes ontologically the per-
sonality, individuality does not ontologically precede sociality, but rather follows from it.57
With SHUVRQDOLW\ I understand the horizontal dimension of human existence,

the dimension of self-realization and creativity within the complex web of
one’s individuality and sociality. This is the dimension of human develop-
ment, deciding and acting, always embodied, always in the social interaction
with others, which is constitutive of one’s individuality. 58
While trying to grasp one’s personality, there are also two processes to be differentiated:
following the anthropological discussion of the 20 th century we can differentiate the VHOI
and the ,. While the VHOI is a synchronic term conceiving our personality in its development
in time, constituted always through the social interaction, the , is a diachronic term: it is
55
Hence, I am not responsible WKDW I am a person. I am responsible KRZ I am a person.
Cf. I.U. DALFERTH and E. JÜNGEL, “Person und Gottebenbildlichkeit als Grundkategorien
christlicher Anthropologie”, in &KULVWOLFKHU*ODXEHLQPRGHUQHU*HVHOOVFKDIW, vol. 24, ed.
F. BÖCKLE et al. (Freiburg: Herder, 1981), 69.
56
Cf. DALFERTH, &UXFLILHG DQG 5HVXUUHFWHG, 152: “In the first process human beings
become human in the sense of personal counterparts to God; it is a process that must be
expounded theologically as the story of God the creator, reconciler, and perfecter, in rela-
tionship with whom human beings owe their inalienable dignity as persons, it is the pr e-
requisite and foundation of the processes by which they DV persons become (or fail to be-
come) subjects, individuals, and personalities – more or less identical with themselves.”
57
Cf. DALFERTH and JÜNGEL, “Person und Gottebenbildlichkeit”, 93.
58
With the terms and conception of person and personality I follow the essential study
of DALFERTH and JÜNGEL, “Person und Gottebenbildlichkeit”, 68–69, who set as the main
term the term of person, which is then differentiated into two levels of “developing into a
person [Werden zur Person]” and “developing as a person [Werden als Person]”. The first
is the constitution of one’s personhood, the latter the constitution of one’s personalit y.
“One can rather, based on his personhood, realize one’s humanness but not one’s person-
hood. […] One LV a person. One can never PDNH oneself to person. In the contrary to it, one
is not only human, rather one makes oneself also always to human” (ibid.). Cf. also
DALFERTH, &UXFLILHGDQG5HVXUUHFWHG, 151–152.
the everytime new attempt to grasp my self from the momentuous point in time, projecting
simultaneously into this always actual I the wholeness of my still unfinished life with its
remembered past, experienced present and estimated future.59
Regarding the tradition and development of the theologically fundamental,

however very complicated term of person, this differentiation makes it possi-
ble (when we add to it also the enhypostatical inversion) to bind together –
and at the same time to differentiate appropriately – the trinitarian term of
K\SRVWDVLV, the christological term of SHUVRQ (K\SRVWDVLV and SURVRSRQ), and
the anthropological term of person stretched, since the Enlightenment, to the
meaning of individual SHUVRQDOLW\. The whole development thus comes here
to the end having a comprehensible structure.
On the other hand, the differentiation between person and personality in
the anthropological sense has some important consequences. Regarding the
complexity of relations it is to say that in a structured way, it situates every
human into a triple irreducible relation – to God, to others, and to oneself. 60
Now, it is clear that ontologically, none of these relations can be isolated or
dismissed, although humans in their lives try to displace the relation to God
and to the others (then, theology speaks about sin in its prominent form of
DPRUVXL, self-love).61
Regarding the individual, it is obvious that the vertically constituted di-
mension of the person and the horizontal process of establishing personality
are two dimensions of one human being, two dimensions of a unity, of the
same reality. This means that the whole of a human life entails both these di-
mensions, that the ultimate term of full humanity – the individual LGHQWLW\ –
59
Cf. W. PANNENBERG, $QWKURSRORJ\ LQ 7KHRORJLFDO 3HUVSHFWLYH, trans. M.J.
O’CONNELL (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1985), 236–237: “The premise here is the
idea of the self, which, on the one hand, is mediated through the dialogically structured
social sphere and therefore shows itself to be constituted by the symbiotic exocentricity of
the individual, and with which, on the other hand, the ego knows itself to be identical in
the for-itselfness of its self-consciousness.” And ibid., 240: “Each of us is an ego at every
moment of our existence. We are still becoming our selves because we are still on the way
to our selves in the wholeness of our existence. Yet we are also somehow our selves at the
present moment, namely, insofar as we are persons. The word ‘person’ establishes a rela-
tion between the mystery – which transcends the present of the ego – of the still incom-
plete individual life history that is on the way to its special destiny and the present moment
of the ego, in the claim laid upon the ego by our true self, and in the anticipatory con-
sciousness of our identity.” Cf. also the wider context ibid., 191–242.
60
Cf. DALFERTH and JÜNGEL, “Person und Gottebenbildlichkeit”, 60: “The human be-
ing is the being, which – on the basis of an incommutable relation of God to him – is a VHOI
UHODWLRQ, stands in a ZRUOGUHODWLRQ and has a *RGUHODWLRQ.”
61
Cf. P. GALLUS, “Verantwortliche Rede von der Sünde”, &RPPXQLR 9LDWRUXP LX
(2018/2), 137–170.
9HUHKRPR 229
consists of the concurrence of both these dimensions. The identity of a human

individual is complete only when embracing both these dimensions. 62
From which follows that if we want to grasp an individual identity, we
cannot reduce the individual only to his or her personality. The individual in
his or her wholeness cannot be explained and fully understood only from his
or her horizontal dimension. A human in the complexity of one’s whole being
is more than we can perceive and experience. E. Jüngel puts it precisely:
“The whole person can only be experienced as such when the totality of the person has
been transcended. This means that we become whole not from within ourselves or from our
own resources but only from outside ourselves. Part of the truth of the totus homo, the
whole person, is nos extra nos esse, being outside ourselves. If we wish to experience our-
selves as whole persons, we must experience more than ourselves.” 63
A human being is more than his or her existence: “The truth of a human and
the existence of a human are not identical.” 64
At the same time, with the irreducibility of humans brought only to their
horizontal dimension and with the God-guaranteed vertical dimension, in
which the person is constituted, the inalienable dignity of every human per-
son is grounded and guaranteed. A human person is not the mere sum of
one’s roles, functions, interpretations, self-realizations, actions, passions and
omissions, which one has, does, or develops during life. Human dignity is
achored in the vertical dimension of the person, i.e., beyond the dimension of
personality.65 “We cannot therefore lose or squander our personhood even if –
for whatever reason – we are not in a position to become subjects, individu-
als, or personalities.”66
However, this vertical constitution and relation cannot be deduced from
the horizontal dimension either. The postulate of the vertical dimension of the
person is a statement of faith, it is a theological assertion (christologically an-
chored!), “which accredits to the human more than one can experience about
62
Cf. DALFERTH and JÜNGEL, “Person und Gottebenbildlichkeit”, 94–96. To the dis-
parate interpretations of the term and different particular conceptions of identity in the cur-
rent discussion cf. the well-informed study of C. ZARNOW, ,GHQWLWlWXQG5HOLJLRQ (Tübing-
en: Mohr Siebeck, 2010). In his own proposal, Zarnow speaks from a position of late mod-
ern liberal theology, which works only within the horizontal and individual dimension of
personality searching for a religious self-interpretation of one’s self, which should be able
to overcome experiences of fragmentarity and non-identity with oneself. The goal of iden-
tity is the self-transparency (ibid., 305). However, in this respect, our identity remains al-
ways fragmentary. Experiencing this failing, a way opens through religious language to
God as to a symbolical expression of a greater immediacy than the fragmentary self-
relation can provide (ibid., 306).
63
JÜNGEL, “Humanity in Correspondence to God”, 127.
64
DALFERTH and JÜNGEL, “Person und Gottebenbildlichkeit”, 62, 88.
65
Ibid., 63.
66
oneself through an analysis of one’s own existence.” However, this ‘more’ is

no additional quantity of being but rather a new quality and qualification of
one’s being human as being person. 67 The notion of this constitutive dimen-
sion follows from the perspective of faith, in which one makes “an experience
with the experience”, a new experience with the existing experience so far,
discovering that my existence is constituted and carried from without, i.e.,
that my existence is a gifted existence resting on a dimension and relation I
have not constituted, developed, or controlled myself.68
The anthropological framing term of identity opens herewith into a very
complex width and depth. It transcends all the usually used terms, which try
to grasp the human existence in its core like soul, person, personality, subjec-
tivity, individual, self or I and, at the same time, it structures and unites all of
them.69 However, in this complex width and depth, the identity is very uneasy
to grasp. It proves already on the individual and social level: individually, no
one can keep in mind all one’s actions, words or memories. No one can grasp
one’s own identity in its complexity and wholeness. So, when we add to this
notion the whole social dimension – because a firm part of my identity are
my relations to others, both positive and negative, and hence a part of my
identity are the perspectives of others on me – then, the impossibility to grasp
one’s identity becomes obvious all the more.70
Therefore, regarding our still unfinished lives and, also, regarding the ex-
ternal constitution of one’s person and thus of one’s identity, it is clear that
for JUDVSLQJRIWKHZKROHRIRQH¶VLGHQWLW\, an external point of view is need-
ed. It is not possible to grasp one’s identity fully from within. It is possible
only from without, when the whole is finished and perceived in the complexi-
ty and fullness of person and personality, i.e., only eschatologically, which
means, in the end: to grasp one’s identity in its whole is possible only for God
and from the perspective of God. It will turn out who we are only at the end.71
Until then, it is not possible to say in a definitive way, who we are or are not.
In this way, the definitive identity of humans can be and is sustained only by
God.
Yet still, this does not mean a resignation of one’s identity at all. Although
it is not possible now to grasp one’s identity fully and in its whole extent, it is
67
DALFERTH and JÜNGEL, “Person und Gottebenbildlichkeit”, 63.
68
Cf. EBELING, :RUWXQG*ODXEHIII, 22; JÜNGEL, “Drei Vorbemerkungen”, 8.
69
Cf. DALFERTH and JÜNGEL, “Person und Gottebenbildlichkeit”, 89–94. In my con-
ception, except for ‘person’, all remaining terms are related to the horizontal dimension of
personality, i.e., to the personality in its self-realization and its relations.
70
Cf. A. SCHUELE, “Transformed into the Image of Christ. Identity, Personality and
Resurrection”, in 5HVXUUHFWLRQ 7KHRORJLFDO DQG 6FLHQWLILF $VVHVVPHQWV, ed. T. PETERS et
al. (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans, 2002), 232, referring to D. Parfit.
71
This idea leads to the theologically inevitable thought of the Last Judgement. Cf. be-
low, Ch. 9.6.2.
9HUHKRPR 231
possible to grasp it proleptically, as if in an anticipatory way, when following

the appropriate guideline. This is the case when humans are said who they are
from without, from someone who has the external perspective, i.e., from God
and from God only. When they recognize that their identity is anchored in
ZKRVH they are. This is the perspective of IDLWK, which lets God say who we
are, and which accepts the primacy of God’s constitution and God’s address
of humans. Or – expressed in the terms of human identity – this is the case
when humans orientate themselves and their lives within the horizontal di-
mension along the vertical dimension, when the God-constituted person be-
comes leading also for personality, when life is lived and directed by the rela-
tion to God, i.e., in faith.
The opposite way would then be the VLQIXO way. It would mean to start from the other end,
from the particularity of self and momentary ‘I’. It would mean to reduce one’s identity
only to the dimension of personality and to establish here one’s life by one’s own powers
trying to define the identity by oneself, from within. The relations to the others and to God,
then, would be based on this egoistic setting, would become only secondary or would be
even forced out. Such self-established identity, however, would be, from a theological
point of view, always a perverted identity, rather a pretension and projection of one’s ego,
always a “more or less broken form” than a real identity.72 It is a reversal of the proper or-
der, which turns the humans upside down in the illusion to stand finally on one’s own feet.
Such attempt, however, cannot but miss the target. It cannot grasp the real identity. The
result is thus a caricature of identity leading either to a titanic overestimation of one’s own
abilities or to a loss of orientation within oneself, in multiple part-identities, which one
cannot unify.73
,GHQWLW\DQG1DPH
To grasp one’s identity in a definitive way is possible only eschatologically.
In present time and from within, identity is too complex to be fully grasped.
Nevertheless, we can do it (primarily in the view of each of us on oneself, not
on others) proleptically in faith where the futural eschatology becomes pre-
sent, when seeing the horizontal dimension of personality in unity with the
vertical dimension of person. Yet still, already within the horizontal dimen-
sion of personality, the identity is a very complex thing. Adding the vertical
dimension, the identity threatens to become overcomplex and thus impossible
to grasp and, which is paradoxical enough because it would go exactly the
opposite direction than it was meant to – to disintegrate. There is, however,
one phenomenon, which can suitably express our identity and which can
serve in an appropriate way as its integral: WKHSURSHUQDPH. The identity can
be best expressed by the proper name, which, in connection with a particular
72
PANNNEBERG, 6\VWHPDWLF7KHRORJ\3, 562.
73
To the problem of the so-called “Patchwork-Identity” cf. H. KEUPP, “Patchworkiden-
tität – riskante Chancen bei prekären Ressourcen”, http://www.ipp-muenchen.de/texte/
keupp_dortmund.pdf (accessed November 30, 2020).
person, puts the singularity, unsubstitutability, and complexity of a human in

the most precise way.
To this context fits very well the theory of 6DXO .ULSNH, who conceived
proper names as “rigid designators”. 74 A proper name is a rigid designator not
in itself and as such, but because it bears a unique reference to its referent.
And this is true regardless of which properties this referent has or which are
attributed to it or regardless of propositions, which we can make about it.75 It
is thus possible to refer to someone meaningfully regardless of our
knowledge about him or her, yes even when we attribute to him or her false
characteristics. The meaning of the proper name is set through the unique ref-
erence, not through some characteristics or properties of the referent. 76
The reference is constituted in the situation of “initial baptism”, in which
the reference of a proper name is set: “Here the object may be named by os-
tension, or the reference of the name may be fixed by a description.” 77 It is
then this reference, which is passed on in any further use together with the
proper name: “When the name is ‘passed from link to link’, the receiver of
the name must, I think, intend when he learns it to use it with the same refer-
ence as the man from whom he heard it.” 78
Next to the explanation of how the reference of a proper name is constitut-
ed and fixed independently of particular properties or characteristics, Krip-
ke’s theory stresses also a fact, which is theologically fundamental and corre-
sponds nicely with the above-mentioned external constitution of humans.
Proper names can express exactly this external constitution because the same
is the case with the proper names themselves. We do not give names to our-
74
S.A. KRIPKE, 1DPLQJ DQG 1HFHVVLW\, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1980), 1–15,
48–49, 71–105.
75
According to Kripke, the reference of a rigid designator is valid in all possible worlds
and also in situations, in which is not true what we state about the referent. Even here, the
reference is still the same, to the same referent: “When I say that a designator is rigid, and
designates the same thing in all possible worlds, I mean that, as used in RXU language, it
stands for that thing, when ZH talk about counterfactual situations” (ibid., 77, cf. 6).
76
Cf. GROSSHANS, 7KHRORJLVFKHU5HDOLVPXV, 28. Therefore, people can have identical
names, but the reference to each of them will be, nevertheless, unique. With this always
special reference, the identical names in fact “count as distinct names” (KRIPKE, 1DPLQJ
DQG1HFHVVLW\, 8). So that it holds that “rigidity has nothing to do with the question of two
people having phonetically the same name” (ibid., 8, fn. 9). Also, Kripke deals with the
opposite possibility that one and the same thing was given two different names. Then, both
these names have identical referent and their identity is a necessary truth (cf. ibid., 102–
105; GROSSHANS, 7KHRORJLVFKHU5HDOLVPXV, 27).
77
KRIPKE, 1DPLQJDQG1HFHVVLW\, 96. The description does not mean to give a synony-
mous meaning of the name, it does not give a meaning, but rather its function is to fix the
reference (ibid., 5, 15 and 96, fn. 42).
78
Ibid., 96. This means that the reference is tightly bound with the community and its
history: “It is by following such a history that one gets to the reference” (ibid., 95).
9HUHKRPR 233
selves, but the name is given from without and humans accept it. In Christian
practice, this was traditionally bound to the ritual of baptism to which also
Kripke points (although today, the name is given mostly right after birth).
Anyway, with this external origin, the proper name points out in a fundamen-
tal way that the identity of a human transcends this sole empirical identity be-
cause it is constituted from without. 79
It is a proper name by which a human is known in his or her surroundings
(and even for oneself). Names make humans accessible and addressable, and
they help to identify a particular human in the course of time and thanks to it,
one remains identifiable even beyond the boundary of death: at least for some
people for some time 80 and – which is the theological point – for God eternal-
ly. Already a nice biblical metaphor knows that the names are written in
heaven or in the book of life (cf. Dan 12:1; Lk 10:20; Rev 3:5).
Our whole identity and existence as if intensifies and thickens in the prop-
er name. This is a very old notion, known very well already in the Old-
Testament times. 81 In the rigid connection with a unique person, the proper
name is a kind of a container for all our relations to other people, to oneself
and also to God.82 Therefore, in my opinion, the proper name can serve as a
good fundament for the continuity even beyond the boundary of death. The
proper name is firmly bound to a particular person in the course of the time of
his or her life, while, however, not being an ontological part of this person.
The name is no immortal anthropological element, yet it is bound to the per-
son so closely that it can LGHQWLI\ him or her, it signifies and comprises his or
her identity, and thus makes it possible to relate to this person.83 Moreover,
79
PANNENBERG, $QWKURSRORJ\, 240, tries to grasp the uniqueness of the still unfinished
individual story with the term “face”. Although going in the similar direction, in my opin-
ion, the proper name has a considerably wider range.
80
Here, the fixed reference comes clearly out, when a deceased one “lives further on in
our memories”, as it is often put in death notices.
81
What states H. BIETENHARD, “o;noma”, in 7K:17, vol. V, ed. G. KITTEL (Stuttgart:
W. Kohlhammer, 1954), 253, is still valid: “The whole OT was aware of the meaning of
the proper name. The name stands for the person, it fixes its identity and is a part of it. Of-
ten can be said: ‘What someone’s name is, that’s who he is.’”
82
Adequately, the name is one of the protected personal data today. To know some-
one’s name is fundamental on many levels (among family and friends, in the space of law,
of economics, of state administration etc.). One of the most damaging and worst reparable
ways how to damage someone is to damage his or her reputation, i.e., his or her name. Cf.
J. MRÁZEK, /XNiãRYVNi SRGREHQVWYt >3DUDEOHV LQ /XNH@ (Jihlava: Mlýn, 2007), 93, who
points to it in his exegesis of the parable of the dishonest manager (Lk 16:1–8): “In various
businesses, too, can happen that the loss of the name is worse than a particular loss of
money; and YLFHYHUVD: the retaining of the name is more important that retaining e.g. of a
competent manager, who, however, may have compromised himself.”
83
I am aware of all problematic borderline cases: unborn children without names, who,
however, are still persons FRUDP 'HR, although their personality could not develop; or
the proper name does not die with the person, but outlives the particular phys-
ical existence.
Therefore, the proper name plays a key role in the resurrection. First, be-
cause a name makes humans addressable, God can call and calls everyone by
his or her name: “I have called you by name, you are mine” (Is 43:1). This
means, at the same time, that God accepts and respects human names; he re-
spects the constitution and development of our identity in our time and histo-
ry. This is also a kind of divine accommodation. God does not need to give
everyone a special name. He constitutes the person of every single human,
accepts the human name for this person and can deal with this very human
life in its humanity.
Second, because the name is a container of human identity and its integral
and because the name, being nothing ontologically anthropological and yet
still rigidly bound to a particular existence, does not die and lasts beyond the
boundary of death, it is possible – for those who knew the referent of the
name – to keep up the relation to him or her at least in the mode of remem-
brances. For God, then, the rigid relation through the proper name is the fun-
damental instrument for resurrection: ZKRKDVDSURSHUQDPHFDQEHUHVXU
UHFWHG.84 The identity of a deceased person does not get lost, although the
whole human dies, but it is firmly bound to the proper name. Then, God can
resurrect the individual to a self-standing existence not based on some im-
mortal internal anthropological element but rather as if EDVHG RQWKHJURXQG
SODQRIRQH¶VSURSHUQDPH. In the resurrection, the deceased gets – based on
the groundplan of one’s proper name – “the form of being-for-themselves
[Fürsichsein]” again.85
,PDJR'HL
Humanity was defined as unity of personhood and personality, as personality
led in its self-realization within the tension of its sociality and individuality
by the constitutive dimension of God-given personhood. This is the aim of
change of name in the course of life (change of surname at the wedding). Yet it should still
be considered, in how far is this a meaningful shift in one’s identity – or even an attempt to
establish a new identity? I will deal with all these questions more in detail in my next book
on theological anthropology.
84
This is not meant exclusively to say that who does not have a proper name could not
be resurrected (e.g. the unborn children). Since it is God who creates the person, then God
knows us better than we know ourselves. God knows humans deeper than what their name
can express, God knows humans beyond human knowability: “interior intimo meo, et supe-
rior summo meo” (AUGUSTINUS, “Confessionum Libri XII” III, 6,11, in 3/ 32, 688).
Hence, God knows those whom we could not know, too. Here, I only want to emphasize
that who has a proper name can be VXUHO\ resurrected. This, then, does not have to apply
only to humans.
85
PANNENBERG, 6\VWHPDWLF7KHRORJ\3, 606.
9HUHKRPR 235
the traditional and biblical term of LPDJR 'HL, which tries to express, what
true humanity is and what the true aim of humanity is.86
The biblical origin of this term is based, in fact, on a single place in Gen
1:26–27, which recurs in two more places in the OT (Gen 5:1 and 9:6) and in
two places in the NT (2Cor 4:4 and Col 1:15). 87 Gen 1:26 speaks about God
creating human “in our image, according to our likeness” and this dual term
made history.88
LXX translates FHOHP and GHPXW as eivkw,n and o`moi,wsij, Vulgata, then, as LPDJR and VLPLOL
WXGR. The originally biblical and quite rare term became a central theological term. Irenae-
us of Lyon followed the old Platonic tradition, which knew o`moi,wsij qew|/ as an ethical im-
perative to get as close to the divine ideal as possible, and in the polemic with Gnostics
differentiated between LPDJR and VLPLOLWXGR: what remained after the fall, is only the LPD
JR. 6LPLOLWXGR has to be gained again during the history of salvation. 89 With this differen-
tiation, a twofold perspective was opened: the image of God in humans is a remaining on-
tological character, which, however, needs to be brought to full perfection (similitude). 90
The differentiation between image and similitude thus offered the assignment to nature and
grace, resp. to the differentiation of natural and supernatural. 91 While the Reformation, fol-
lowing a radical thought of Augustine that with the fall Adam lost the image of God, 92 re-
86
Cf. C. WELZ, +XPDQLW\ LQ *RG¶V ,PDJH $Q ,QWHUGLVFLSOLQDU\ ([SORUDWLRQ (Oxford:
Oxford UP, 2016).
87
There are two more occurences in deuterocanonical books (Wis 2:23 and Sir 17:3)
and then another interesting place in Gen 5:3 (only two verses away from Gen 5:1 and,
hence, certainly mentioned on purpose) where Adam “became the father of a son in his
likeness, according to his image”. Cf. M. PRUDKÝ, *HQHVLV, vol. I (Prague: CBS UK,
2018), 119. In the NT cf. further Col 3:10; Heb 1:3; 1Cor 15:49; Rom 8:29; Jam 3:9; 1Cor
11:7.
88
.
Wnte_Wmd>Ki WnmeÞl.c;B. . It is not a SDUDOHOLVPXVPHPEURUXP, rather a balanced combination
of a FRQFUHWXP and a DEVWUDFWXP, of closeness and distance, augmented, moreover, with
two different prepositions, cf. G. FISCHER, *HQHVLV ±. HThK AT (Freiburg: Herder,
2018), 152. Here also more literature on the topic. – Concerning the prepositions, already
LXX and Vulgata blur their difference and translate both simply with kata,, resp. with DG.
English translations have mostly “in our image, according to/after our likeness”. However,
it would overload the biblical text if we would want to deduce from it some further onto-
logical specifications of the LPDJR regarding the question, whether the LPDJR is an onto-
logical substance of humans or rather their purpose they have to fulfill.
89
Cf. CH. MARKSCHIES, “Image of God II. Christianity”, in 533, vol.6, ed. H.D. BETZ
et al. (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2009), 415–416, with reference to PLATO, “Theaitetos” 176
A/B (in 3ODWRQLVRSHUDvol. I, ed. E.A. DUKE et al. [Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995], 329), and
PLATO, 5HVSXEOLFD 613b (in 3ODWRQLVRSHUD vol. IV, ed. I. BURNET [Oxford: Oxford UP,
1978]).
90
Cf. MARKSCHIES, “Image of God”, 415–417; H. CROUZEL, “Bild Gottes II. Alte
Kirche”, in 75(, vol.6, ed. H.R. BALZ and G.L. MÜLLER (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1993), 499–
502.
91
CROUZEL, “Bild Gottes II. Alte Kirche”, in 75(6, 500–501.
92
Cf. AUGUSTINUS, “De genesi ad litteram libri XII“ VI, 27,38 in 3/ 34, ed. J.P.
MIGNE (Paris 1865), 355.
fused to differentiate between the image and the similitude and understands the image of
God rather in terms of the quality of the relation to God than in terms of some substantial
quality of human essence, humanism and later the Enlightenment understood the image
more as a purpose of human life one has subsequently to achieve. In the 20th century, a
controversy was raised by the thesis of E. Brunner that even after the fall, there remains a n
untouched “formal image of God” in humans, a “formal essential structure”, which is their
being human, their “subjectivity and freedom”.93 Nowadays, the term of LPDJR 'HL plays
an important role in the ethical discussion. It is the Christian foundation of the dignity of
every human person, which coincides with the actual discussion of human rights, which are
based on the thought of inalienable dignity. 94
It is obvious that the theological tradition of LPDJR'HL led to the tendency to identify
the image of God in humans with some of their substantial characteristics. The answers to
this question were manifold, on one hand developing with the time, on the other hand
keeping the same intentions: LPDJRis the immortality of the soul; it is the upright posture
signifying the ability of self-transcendence, of relation to something above us and of open-
ness to the others and world; it is the human spirit as the highest part in the trichotomy
body-soul-spirit; it is the human intellect; it is the ability of speech; it is human skilful pro-
gress and self-determining development of human potentiality in freedom, in distance to
one’s animal instincts, it is the self-creation and education (%LOGXQJ) aiming to become,
what we should be: true, i.e., moral humans; it is the dominion over the created world.95
However, all these ideas are in the end problematic. If the LPDJR is identified with
some human characteristic, there are certainly people who lack exactly this characteristic,
like people with handicaps and disabilities or old people or little children. On the other
hand, should the LPDJR be identified rather with a goal humans should achieve, who would
93
Cf. E. BRUNNER, 'RJPDWLNII (Zürich: Zwingli-Verlag, 1950), 67. Here, Brunner ob-
viously follows Kant (combined with Kierkegaard, cf. also E. BRUNNER, 0DQ LQ 5HYROW
$&KULVWLDQ$QWKURSRORJ\, trans. O. WYON [Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1947],
125–187) and gets, therefore, close to those modern theological conceptions, which try to
establish theology on a formal term of freedom won through a transcendental analysis.
Next to the conception of K. Rahner cf. primarily TH. PRÖPPER, 7KHRORJLVFKH$QWKURSROR
JLH.
94
Cf. the meanwhile famous statment of J. HABERMAS, *ODXEHQXQG:LVVHQ, Frieden-
spreis des deutschen Buchhandels 2001 (Berlin: Suhrkamp 2001), 15, who is otherwise
critical towards religions, that the biblical conception of the image of God “expresses an
intuition, which in this context [i.e., in the context of human freedom and mutual recogni-
tion] can mean something also to someone who is religiously unmusical [religiös un-
musikalisch].” Therefore, according to Habermas, this is one of religious terms, which can
be translated into the secular language and which shows the “not yet depleted semantical
potentials” of the religious language (ibid., 14).
95
Cf. MARKSCHIES, “Image of God”, 415–417; JÜNGEL, “Humanity in Correspondence
to God”, 135–153; J. MOLTMANN , 0HQVFK" &KULVWOLFKH $QWKURSRORJLH LQ GHQ .RQIOLNWHQ
GHU*HJHQZDUW(Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1971), 156–160. The last option follows from the
immediate context in Gen 1:26–27.
9HUHKRPR 237
be able to achieve it? And what about those who do not fulfill these criteria? Are they less
people or less God’s creation? 96
However, the proper meaning of the term of LPDJR'HL is not to be searched

in a human attribute or ability. From the biblical meaning follows that it is
rather “a material figuration and functional representation of divinity”. 97 And
although the old Israel was forbidden to depict God, to have a statue of God
at home was a common cultural habit everywhere around. 98 The metaphor of
human (DGDP, i.e., every human!) as the image of God was therefore utterly
clear and, at the same time, utterly new.99 Its point, thus, does not lie in a
character of human being as such that could be identified without the relation
to God. If the LPDJR is basically a living representation of God, then, it is not
possible to search for it without a reference to God but rather only from the
FRUDPGHR perspective.100 “The primary point of orientation for the definition
of the human – that is a substantial point of the speech of the image of God –
is God, not the rest of the creation.” 101
Therefore, as already stated in the beginning of this subchapter, the term of
LPDJR'HL should unite both fundamental dimensions of the human being, the
vertical and the horizontal ones. It aims to characterize a good human life as
the development of personality within the tension of one’s sociality and iden-
tity directed by the God-given personhood.
The best universal definition thus seems to me to be the definition suggest-
ed by Ingolf U. Dalferth: LPDJR'HL means to be “the place of God’s presence
for the others”.102 Besides the fact that it corresponds with the biblical roots
96
The best answer – at least at the first sight – seems thus to be the first mentioned: the
immortality of human soul. However, this solution is problematic as well. More on its
problems cf. below, Ch. 7.1.1.
97
PRUDKÝ, *HQHVLV, 119. FISCHER, *HQHVLV, 152, translates FHOHP directly and without
hesitation as “statue of God” and refers next to others also to B. Janowski’s “human as the
living statue of God” (cf. B. JANOWSKI, “Die lebendige Statue Gottes. Zur Anthropologie
der priesterlichen Urgeschichte”, in IDEM, 'LH:HOWDOV6FK|SIXQJ, Beiträge zur Theologie
des Alten Testaments 4 [Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2008], 140–171). Cf.
also M. MOXTER, “Anthropologie in systematisch-theologischer Perspektive”, in 0HQVFK,
ed. J. VAN OORSCHOT (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), 141–142.
98
PRUDKÝ, *HQHVLV, 119–120.
99
Ibid., 120.
100
Cf. DALFERTH, “Mit Bildern leben”, 78: “If we want to understand what LPDJR'HL
means, we should not look primarily at the human, but we should rather pay attention to
what God does on the human and for the human. If we would want to show characteristics
of the image of God on the human life, would it be as misleading as considering the hor i-
zon beyond Bodensee for a characteristic of the mountains seen there.”
101
Ibid., 81.
102
Ibid., 85, originally partly italicized. Dalferth formulates this definition as a defini-
tion of Jesus Christ as the true image of God, i.e., it has christological, not anthropological
origin.
of the term (and even respects also the ban on depicting God), this definition
unites in a masterfully simple way all important dimensions: it unites the ver-
tical dimension with the horizontal, however saying clearly that there is a
clear declivity and direction from the vertical to the horizontal. ,PDJR'HL is
the relation to God, which should be present also in other horizontal relations.
And then, it unites one’s individuality with sociality: the point is to be here as
oneself, yet representing God for the others.
This definition has several consequences. I start with the most important
one: With this conception of LPDJR'HL as a point of intersection between re-
lation to God and relations to the others, this definition clearly orientates the
human towards God. It does not conceive humanity somehow isolated or in
concurrence with God. On the contrary, it places every human as being essen-
tially directed towards God. At the same time, this orientedness towards God
does not exclude the analogical orientedness towards other people. Hence,
there is no space for any competing or rivalrous relations, be it between hu-
manity and divinity, or between individuality and sociality. To be the image
of God means to be the image of the accommodating God, that is, to be
opened to the other and be able to move towards him.
“To be the place of God’s presence for the others” is a definition of the
SXUSRVH of being human. However, this purpose does not lie in a specific
quality, in a substantial character, in an anthropological constant, equipment,
or in a phenomenon of human being as such; neither is it a purpose which
humans would set for themselves by themselves.
“To address humans as LPDJR'HL means, therefore, to declare them to be the place of sal-
vation, to which they did not determine themselves, but to which they rather were deter-
mined by God. In this and in nothing else lies their difference from other creatures, regard-
less in whatever may lie the difference of humans from other living beings genetically, bio-
logically, or culturally. In the theological perspective, the dignity of the human does not lie
in anything that he is, or has, or can become by himself but rather only in what he becomes
through God making himself present in freedom: in being the place of God’s presence.” 103
This means: “It is not the ability to self-determination what a human is dis-
tinguished by in the end but rather the inability to determine himself to be the
place of God’s presence – and despite it to be made to it.”104
,PDJR'HL is thus a reality and a purpose at the same time. It is the actual,
given, already valid purpose, it is the preset characteristic of the space one is
put into, now with the task to fulfill it. ,PDJR'HL is a promission and a task
at the same time. It is a condition of, and, at the same time, an instruction to
one’s proper mode of living.
Because it is nothing self-produced and nothing self-determined, because it
is firmly bound to the God-constituted dimension of person, which should be,
103
Ibid., 86.
104
Ibid., 87.
7KH,GHQWLW\RI-HVXV&KULVW 239
then, leading and realized on the level of personality, the image of God is
nothing one could lose. ,PDJR'HL means to be created as a unique, original,
individual person to a purpose. This determination cannot be lost. It is impo s-
sible to lose one’s createdness, to lose the fundamental difference of Creator
and creation.
At the same time, because it is an inalienable characteristic, LPDJR'HL can
apply to every single human, regardless of one’s abilities, roles, age, handi-
caps, capacities or potentials. Theologically, it is WKH basis for human digni-
ty.105
In summary: ,PDJR 'HL is the leading frame and the programme for the
dynamic space of life, into which human is posited. It shows clearly that no
neutral definition of humanity is possible because true humanity evolves FR
UDP 'HR, based on God-given created personhood, which determines the
space of personality to be realized. Therefore, humanity is not a neutral cate-
gory, but rather it means a space, which is already always preset and defined
in a certain way with LPDJR 'HL as its purpose and programme. It is within
this space, that the dynamics of creation should develop. Creation and hu-
mans in particular should develop their created, God-given possibilities in
order to become true creation, true humans. Therefore, humans are not just
simply what they are, but they shall also become, what they are meant to be.
The point of being the image of God is hence not a Platonic o`moi,wsij qew|/
or even WKHRVLV, the aim is not to cross the line between God and humans, be-
tween Creator and creation. The proper aim of humanity is, on the contrary,
DQWKURSRSRHVLV, becoming true human, the image of God: the place of God’s
presence for the others.106 This was realized and fulfilled in the humanity of
Jesus Christ.
3. The Identity of Jesus Christ

3. The Identity of Jesus Christ
Is Jesus Christ true human, all this should apply also to his identity in the uni-
ty of his person and his personality.
105
Cf. SPAEMANN, 3HUVRQV, 236–248.
106
Cf. JÜNGEL, “Humanity in Correspondence to God”, 152–153: “Humanity in corre-
spondence to God – we are such as we remain human among others, becoming ever more
human through them and for them and so with them: KRPRKRPLQL KRPR, man is man to
man.” And also M. LUTHER, “Operationes in Psalmos. 1519–1521”, in :$ 5 (Weimar:
Hermann Böhlau, 1892), 128,36–39, who puts it in a pointed way when he speaks of a kind
of de-divinization of humans because for him, true human is defined by knowing about
one’s own sinfulness: “Humanitas seu (ut Apostolos loquitur) carnis regno, quod in fide
agitur, nos sibi conformes facit et crucifigit, faciens ex infoelicibus et superbis diis homi-
nes veros, idest miseros et peccatores.”
&RQFHUQLQJ WKH FRQVWLWXWLRQ DQG GHYHORSPHQW RI &KULVW¶V KXPDQLW\ The

enhypostatical inversion should show that Jesus’ humanity does not simply
stand next to his divinity, but rather that in Jesus Christ God becomes man DV
God so that humanity is neither just the other, self-acting part of his united
person nor a mere garment for divinity. 107 The result of the enhypostatical in-
version was the constituted person of Jesus Christ ready for developing its
own personality. Therefore, it is to say that the person of the human Jesus
Christ is identical with this result of the enhypostatical inversion. It is the
second person of the Trinity with all its potential to develop its own humani-
ty: “In Jesus’ becoming of a person thus takes place God’s becoming hu-
man.”108 The vertical dimension is thus constituted by the God-Son. This is
an important point, developed already by Schleiermacher: God’s constitution
of humanity is a person-forming activity. 109 The human person is formed by
God-Self. Then, however, “what is true of Jesus Christ is true of every human
being: without personhood there can be no humanness, but our personhood
emanates wholly and exclusively from God himself.” 110 At the same time,
there is – only one but important – difference: whereas in Jesus Christ the
person is rooted in the uncreated second person of the Trinity, who becomes
human through enhypostatical in-creation of humanity and subsequent enhy-
postatical inversion, in the case of all other people, the constitution of person
is also a divine activity but not on God-Self, rather on someone other: it is not
an incarnation but rather a new creation of a new human personhood.111
Concerning humanity, Jesus Christ has everything other people have as
well, he is not missing anything.112 In his humanity, he is a unity of human
107
PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 342, puts it very well: “Jesus’ divinity is not a second ‘sub-
stance’ in the man Jesus in addition to his humanity. Then precisely as this man, Jesus is
the Son of God and thus himself God. Consequently, he is not to be thought of as a synthe-
sis of the divine and the human. The unity of God and man in him is much more intensive
than the concept of a synthesis can express. Nor does something new, a third thing, result
from a mixture of the two. Nor is the humanity absorbed in divinity so that it disappears.
Precisely LQ his particular humanity Jesus is the Son of God.”
108
Cf. DALFERTH and JÜNGEL, “Person und Gottebenbildlichkeit”, 81.
109
Cf. above, Ch. 3.2.8, and also PANNENBEG, -HVXV, 346.
110
DALFERTH, &UXFLILHG DQG 5HVXUUHFWHG, 152. However, “emanates” is a misleading
translation of the original: “Personsein sich aber ganz und ausschließlich Gott selbst
verdankt” (DALFERTH, 'HUDXIHUZHFNWH*HNUHX]LJWH, 156).
111
Cf. ibid.
112
Starting with human parents. True humanity of Jesus would be barely defensible, if
he, in his humanity, would not have a wholly human origin, i.e., from human parents.
There is no reason why it could not be possible to state that Joseph was his biological f a-
ther. As I try to stress repeatedly, humanity and divinity cannot exclude each other. There-
fore, a human father does not exclude the divine Father. In this sense, then, the story of
Jesus’ birth in the Gospels cannot be read as biology but rather as a theological narration
stressing his more than human origin. Cf. already SCHLEIERMACHER, 7KH&KULVWLDQ)DLWK,
person and personality. As a constituted human person, he is now “ready” for

a common human development with everything that belongs to it. This thus
opens the full range of humanity and the space for Jesus’ full personality.
Now, it is possible to say that Jesus had or was a fully human ‘I’ and self with
fully human self-consciousness; now, there is all necessary space to conceive
his inner human development as a subsequent awareness and realization of
his divine-human unity.113 Moreover, there is also space for the work of the
Holy Spirit in the life of Jesus and in his relation to the Father in particular. 114
It is, therefore, possible to raise the question of Jesus’ psychology or, e.g., of his messianic
self-consciousness. We do not have enough sources to give a complex answer to these mat-
ters regarding his personality, let alone to grasp the whole identity of Jesus from this side,
as the quests for historical Jesus tried it (cf. above, Ch. 2). However, it is legitimate to deal
with these questions and it should be possible to give at least some particular answers
based on the sources we have.
Because of the fundamental emphasis on Jesus’ historical existence and his humanity
as the starting point of all Christology, I will mention here briefly the conceptions of Latin
American OLEHUDWLRQWKHRORJ\. -RQ6REULQR, who follows up the work of Leonardo Boff and
others,115 presented a clear christological view from his position in his book -HVXVWKH/LE
HUDWRU (1993), influenced fundamenally and in an authentic way by the situation of the op-
pressed people in Latin America: “This book has been written in the middle of war, of
threats, of conflict and persecution.” 116 It starts programmatically with the historical exist-
ence of Jesus as it is testified in the Gospels (and almost exclusively only in the Gospels
within their realistic understanding of the whole story117) and puts into the centre the cruci-
fied Jesus.118 Coming from the particular situation of the poor, who raise the claim to know
Christ better and who consider themselves to be the addressees of the Kingdom of God,
this approach expresses, at the same time, the – meanwhile quite common – critique of the
§ 97.2, 405: “Consequently everything rests upon the higher influence which, as a creative
divine activity, could alter both the paternal and the maternal influence in such a way that
all ground for sinfulness was removed, and this although procreation was perfectly natural
– as indeed only this creative divine activity could avail to give completeness to the natural
imperfection of the child who was begotten. The general idea of a supernatural conception
remains, therefore, essential and necessary, if the specific pre-eminence of the Redeemer is
to remain undiminished. But the more precise definition of this supernatural conception as
one in which there was no male activity has no connexion of any kind with the essential
elements in the peculiar dignity of the Redeemer; and hence, in and by itself, is no constit-
uent part of Christian doctrine.”
113
I follow here Pannenberg’s conception of the “indirectness of Jesus’ identity with the
Son of God” (PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 334–354).
114
Ibid., 408.
115
Cf. Boff’s biblical-founded approach in BOFF, -HVXV&KULVW/LEHUDWRU and the collec-
tion of his important christological books in German translation in IDEM, -HVXV &KULVWXV
GHU%HIUHLHU, trans. H. GOLDSTEIN and K. HERMANS (Freiburg: Herder, 1986).
116
SOBRINO, -HVXVWKH/LEHUDWRU, 7.
117
Ibid., 60–63, cf. 88–93 on miracles.
118
Ibid., 62: “Seen in terms of the reality of Latin America, if Jesus ‘died like that’, it is
very plausible to assert that ‘he lived like that’.”
traditional high Christology, of the traditional “Christ of faith”, in whom the real humanity
is reduced and who seems thus to be too abstract, too high, too reconciling and pacifying,
too absolute, suiting with all this rather to the image of the oppressors.119 Sobrino speaks
here even about “Christ without Jesus”. 120 Therefore, this conception wants to start with
“an analysis of the life and fate of Jesus”, following the statement of L. Boff: “The libera-
tion christology elaborated from the standpoint of Latin America stresses the historical J e-
sus over the Christ of faith.” 121
Jesus Christ is understood as the presence of transcendence in history: there is “a his-
torical element (Jesus) and a transcendental element (Christ)”. 122 However, proceeding de-
cidedly from below and starting with the historical Jesus, Sobrino does not speak about
Jesus as the incarnated Logos but rather, in a non-trinitarian way, as the Son of God. The
first authority for him is the Scripture, while councils and dogmas are “posterior to scrip-
ture”.123 With this starting point, he wants to present a new and better picture of Christ.
This new picture is based on Jesus’ practice, i.e., on his activities, which transformed the
reality toward the Kingdom of God. 124 This practice, which is kept in narratives and “hand-
ed down to us” is a reality started by Jesus, which we keep alive.125 Against all liberal
tendencies, which turn the piousness into the inwardness of humans, liberation theology
stresses the practical outcomes of faith, the need for a real liberation. The spirit of this
practice must become real. Jesus was empowered “within that practice, and not in his pure
inwardness”. Spirit and practice – keeping both together should preserve the Christian faith
from both extremes: from a pure spiritualism as well as from a pure activism. In this way,
the start with the practice of the historical Jesus should have also a “mystagogical poten-
tial”.126 It is the practice of Jesus, which opens an access to his inner life also. 127
Although Sobrino speaks about Jesus as the presence of transcendence, divinity, or
God’s love in history, this is the strongest line in his conception of the person of Jesus
Christ: the human Jesus started the “practice with spirit” in a literally in-spiring way, and
we should carry on with it. 128 This, however, is possible only from the position of disciple-
ship.129 Sobrino thus conceives Jesus as if in the line with Rom 1:4: through his practice,
through continual conversions toward God and, finally, through his surrender to God in
faith, Jesus can be declared to be the Son of God. 130 Not differing from other people, Jesus
119
Cf. BOFF, -HVXV&KULVW/LEHUDWRU, 279: “[T]he historical Jesus makes clear the con-
flict that any liberative praxis will provoke and points up the probable destiny of any pr o-
phetic bearer of a liberation project.”
120
SOBRINO, -HVXVWKH/LEHUDWRU, 14, 35, 79, 126–129.
121
Ibid., 22 and 35, quoting BOFF, -HVXV&KULVW/LEHUDWRU, 279. Cf. also P. JANDEJSEK,
&KULVWRORJLH]SRPH]t-DFTXHV'XSXLV5RJHU+DLJKWD-RQ6REULQR>&KULVWRORJ\IURPWKH
)URQWLHUV-DFTXHV'XSXLV5RJHU+DLJKWDQG-RQ6REULQR@ (Praha: Karolinum, 2019).
122
123
Ibid., 40. Cf. SOBRINO, &KULVWRORJ\DWWKH&URVVURDGV, 311–345.
124
The Kingdom of God is the dominating metapher in the whole work, cf. SOBRINO,
-HVXVWKH/LEHUDWRU, 67–134; cf. also BOFF, -HVXV&KULVW/LEHUDWRU, 282–286.
125
126
Ibid., 52.
127
Ibid., 54.
128
Ibid.
129
Ibid., 55.
130
Cf. ibid., 147–159, and 135, Sobrino’s leading question of that chapter: “who was
God for Jesus?”
excercised true love. And where “human beings exercise true love, there is God”. 131 There-
fore, in Sobrino, Jesus seems to be primarily an outstanding representation of love and, as
such, a model to be followed. Regarding the prophetic dimension, Sobrino sees Jesus in
one line with “the classic prophets of Israel, of Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah…,
and in that of the modern prophets, Archbishop Oscar Romero, Bishop Emiliano Proaño,
Martin Luther King, Jr …”132 Jesus thus “‘illustrated’ the reality of the true God”. 133
This picture of Jesus rather as a model and first mover of a new movement in history is
confirmed also in Sobrino’s soteriology, which, however, exactly therefore fails. Sobrino
can say that “it was not just any human being who died on the cross, but the Son of
God.”134 However, it is not the pain or the cross itself that brings salvation. It is the person
of Jesus and the fact that he “was pleasing to God, and was therefore accepted by God”. 135
This fact should be salvific: Jesus was “faithful even to the cross”. His faith was pleasing
to God. As such, Jesus “is the revelation of the KRPRYHUXV, the true and complete human
being, not only of the YHUHKRPR, that is of a human being in whom, as a matter of fact, all
the characteristics of true human nature are present.”136 Jesus was thus not only true hu-
man, but, moreover, fulfilled the true humanity and revealed it in himself. Surprisingly,
according to Sobrino, it is this realization of true humanity, which is salvation: salvation
means being KRPRYHUXV. It is true and fulfilled humanity that saves. It seems, however –
and in this point Sobrino’s christologically anchored soteriology fails by becoming only a
soteriology of a model and its imitation – that this humanity has to be realized by everyone
individually: Now, “we human beings know now what we are, because the truth about our-
selves, which we sinfully kept captive, has been liberated. And since the central core of
this true humanity is Jesus’ great love for human beings, we can assert that love exists and
that not only does evil make its presence felt on this earth, but we are also enfolded in love.
How powerful this love is, is another matter, but at least – and this least is a most – human
beings have been able to see love on earth, to know what they are, and what they can and
should be.”137 Obviously, Jesus revealed the truth about humans, however, the realization –
the salvation – is still in front of us. Sobrino struggles here with the effect of Jesus’ death
on other’s particular lives. This only confirms the role of Jesus as a model and starter: the
ball is now in our corner. What Jesus did, was “an invitation to continue it […]: Jesus
leaves us the legacy of being Servants like him. On this principle, Jesus’ cross as the cul-
mination of his whole life can be understood as bringing salvation.” However, “[t]his sav-
ing efficacy is shown more in the form of an exemplary cause than of an efficient cause.
But this does not mean that it is not effective: there stands Jesus, faithful and merciful to
the end, inviting and inspiring human beings to reproduce in their turn the KRPRYHUXV, true
humanity.”138 In other words: Jesus did not bring salvation, he only demostrated it, he
showed, what it looks like, and gave us the instructions, how to do it. Now, salvation is in
the hands of everyone. However, is this not a rather terrifying message for the poor, weak,
oppressed, powerless, and suffering people? Is there not any salvation IURP their weakness,
suffering? Is there not any salvation from the sinful world?
131
Ibid., 158.
132
Ibid., 179.
133
Ibid., 180.
134
Ibid., 219.
135
Ibid., 228.
136
Ibid., 229.
137
Ibid., 229–230.
138
Ibid., 230.
Sobrino defends himself from what he calls a rush to resurrection. In his words, “it is
necessary to dwell on the scandal of the cross in itself” until history goes on, which pro-
duces more and more crosses.139 For him, paradoxically enough, the liberation consists in
God’s participation in the world where the suffering is not removed, but rather borne. 140
Participating in this suffering – and that is the mystery of theodicy – God-Self “does not
act or speak, does not intervene, lets things […] simply be”. 141 God is present in the cross
of Jesus, moreover: “God is crucified.” He is not apathetic, indifferent, he did not opt out.
However, Sobrino cannot say more about the suffering of God than that God “suffered on
Jesus’ cross and of those of this world’s victims by being their non-active and silent wit-
ness”.142 The mystery of suffering, even of God’s suffering, cannot be abandoned. The
cross cannot be abandoned, it must be borne.143 Facing suffering, even God becomes non-
active and silent. Sobrino calls this God’s solidarity and it is the ultimate point of his sote-
riology: “What God's suffering on the cross says in the end is that the God who fights
against human suffering wanted to show solidarity with human beings who suffer, and that
God's fight against suffering is also waged in a human way. […] What God's suffering
makes clear in a history of suffering is that between the alternatives of accepting suffering
by sublimating it and eliminating it from outside we can and must introduce a new course,
bearing it. However, we must also add that in bearing this suffering God says what side he
is on, what struggles he is in solidarity with. God's silence on the cross, as a silence that
brings suffering to God himself, can be interpreted, very paradoxically, as solidarity with
Jesus and with the crucified of history: it is God's portion of the necessary suffering in-
volved in the historical struggle for liberation.” 144 According to Sobrino, God’s solidarity
should encourage “liberation rather than resignation”. 145 However, is this not – facing So-
brino’s conclusions – only a pious wish? Is there, in all the real suffering, any real redemp-
tion? Or is the final word only the paradoxical statement that salvation, even the historica l-
ly realized salvation, consists in bearing of the cross and in proclaiming of the identity of
the suffering (“crucified”) people of today with the Suffering Servant and even with the
crucified Christ?146
Sobrino’s book ends with the cross, not with resurrection, and Sobrino does it on pur-
pose. Yet, he knows that the cross is not the “last word on Jesus, nor is the cross of the
crucified peoples God's final word to them. But I do not think that we should thereby make
139
Ibid., 234.
140
Cf. BOFF, -HVXV&KULVW/LEHUDWRU, 289: “When Jesus embraces death of his own free
will, he reveals the total freedom of himself and his projects.He points up one concrete
way of fleshing out the reality of God’s kingdom when he accepts death out of love.” And
ibid., 290: “The cross demonstrates the conflict-ridden nature of every process of liberation
undertaken when the structure of injustice has gained the upper hand. Under such condi-
tions liberation cannot come about only through martydom and sacrifice on behalf of oth-
ers and God’s cause in the world. That is the route which Jesus consciously chose and ac-
cepted.”
141
142
Ibid., 243–244. Sobrino tries to follow the strong thesis of Moltmann, however, he
wholly misses the trinitarian framework, the perspective of resurrection, and the radicality
of Moltmann’s thought. Cf. below, Ch. 7.2.2.6.
143
Ibid., 242.
144
Ibid., 245–246.
145
Ibid., 246.
146
Ibid., 262 and 271.
the liberative aspects of Jesus’ life depend only on his resurrection.” 147 Nonetheless, com-
pared to what Sobrino proposes, would not there be much more hope knowing that there is
God who has the power of the final liberation – of resurrection – despite all real evil, suf-
fering and death? 148
What a difference to /%RII, who sees the point of the whole liberation process in the
resurrection. This changes, then, the whole perspective: It is the resurrection, which “rea l-
izes and fulfills his [i.e., Jesus’] program in its eschatological form”. The resurrection is
“the triumph of life and the explication of all its latent potentialities. It is the liberation of
life from all its obstacles and conflicts in history. It is already an eschatological reality; as
such it reveals God’s ultimate intention for human beings and the world. The resurrection
unveils the life that was hidden in Jesus and that could not be devoured by the cross. It
connotes full liberation as something that is completely a grace from God. The resurrection
points to the goal and fulfillment sought by every liberation process: arrival at complete
freedom.” The perspective of resurrection changes, then, also the view on death and its
sense: “The resurrection of the crucified Jesus shows that it is not meaningless to die for
other human beings and God. In Jesus’ resurrection, light is shed on the anonymous death
of all those who have lost out in history while fighting for the cause of justice and ultimate
human meaningfulness.” Through the power of resurrection, then, Jesus is not only a sym-
bol or a model to be followed, but is himself present with his people: “Thanks to his resur-
rection, Jesus continues to exist among human beings, giving impetus to their struggle for
liberation.”149 Therefore, for Boff, the resurrection is the starting point for Christology. 150
Jesus thus lived a fully human life, in which the accommodating K\SRVWDVLV of
the Logos developed also its own human person and personality. He lived a
life, in which the vertical dimension was leading, anchored in his relation to
the Father. And it was this relation to the Father, which proved himself to be
147
Ibid., 272.
148
However, as Sobrino’s earlier book on Christology proves, the fact of resurrection
would not help his conception, when resurrection remains understood only as an event in
Jesus’ story without any wider ontological impact, to which we either relate in faith or it
has no meaning. To have a wider effect, according to Sobrino, resurrection would require a
lot of previous notions: “Understanding the resurrection of Jesus today, then, presupposes
several things. One must have a radical hope in the future. One must possess a historical
consciousness that sees history both as promise and as mission. And one must engage in a
specific praxis that is nothing else but discipleship – the following of Jesus […]. The last
condition seems to be the most necessary because it is praxis inspired by love that concre-
tizes Christian hope as a hoping against hope, and because love is the only thing that opens
history up. Like knowing God, knowing the resurrection of Jesus is not a one-time event,
something given once and for all. Our horizon of understanding must be constantly fash-
ioned anew. Our hope and praxis of love must be kept alive and operational at every mo-
ment. Only in that way can Jesus’ resurrection be grasped not only as something that hap-
pened to him alone but as the resurrection of the ‘firstborn’ and a promise that history will
find fulfillment” (SOBRINO, &KULVWRORJ\ DW WKH &URVVURDGV, 380–381.). All that Sobrino
requires, would be possible, when resurrection is not taken as a particular event, which we
must still actualize but rather as the fundamental ontological perspective from which we
are looking.
149
All previous quotes from BOFF, -HVXV&KULVW/LEHUDWRU, 290–291.
150
BOFF, -HVXV&KULVWXVGHU%HIUHLHU, 39.
identical with the Son of this Father. It was only through this detour over the
Father, in that it was possible also for the earthly Jesus himself to grasp his
own identity (John 10:30). 151 However, exactly this detour was the main lead
for his own human existence (not an immediate self-consciousness as God-
Son, which would tend to sideline his full humanity as it was the case in the
traditional church Christology).
“He did not live in dependence upon the Son; this obvious understanding of the enhyposta-
sis of Jesus in the Logos does not do justice to the historical features of the life of Jesus.
Rather, he lived in dependence of the Father, but precisely in so doing showed himself to
be one with the Son.”152
This is an important effect of divine incarnatory accommodation.153

It belongs to the human existence that one gets a name. ‘Logos’ or ‘God-
Son’ would not be enough in this case. Concerning Jesus, there is primarily
his particular earthly life, his particular human life with all its activities and
passivities, with all its relations and connections, which shapes his personali-
ty and with it his identity. The name of Jesus of Nazareth marks, then, the
identity of this man, which, on the other hand, does not deplete his earthly
life only, but rather goes beyond it: in its origin, Jesus’ life is closely bound
to the Father. In the end of this life, the person of Jesus of Nazareth proves to
be – already since his birth – much more: the Christ, the God-Son himself.
And exactly for the end of his earthly life, his name plays an important role:
Jesus has a name, therefore, he can be called by the Father into life again, he
can be resurrected (cf. below, Ch. 9.4).
&RQFHUQLQJLPDJR'HL At several places in the New Testament – in a cer-
tain opposition to the Old Testament – Jesus Christ alone is stated to be the
true image of God (2Cor 4:4; Col 1:15; cf. John 12:45; 14:9; Rom 8:29).154
However, because the LPDJR 'HL is an anthropological category, it is to be
explicitly applied to Jesus Christ TXD KRPR. Jesus Christ LQ KLV KXPDQLW\ is
the true image of God.155 Applied to the whole being of Jesus Christ, this
151
PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 335. ESSEN , 'LH)UHLKHLW-HVX, 210, fn. 12, names theological
conceptions, which follow Pannenberg’s figure of the “dialectic of the Sonship”.
152
153
It opens space also for questions like, e.g., whether the mission of Jesus did not fail
in the end. Cf. ibid., 349, and Pannenberg’s polemic with Bultmann in the footnote 48.
154
Cf. A. PETERS, “Bild Gottes IV. Dogmatisch”, in 75(, vol. 6, ed. H.R. BALZ and
G.L. MÜLLER (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1993), 506–507. Therefore, Peters says that at the be-
ginning, one has to choose, whether to start with an indispensable image of God in all peo-
ple with Christ as its highest manifestation, or whether to attribute the image of God only
to Jesus, while all other people have lost it in Adam’s fall. However, this alternative is not
exclusive.
155
Cf. similarly JÜNGEL, *RGDVWKH0\VWHU\, 350, who speaks of the man Jesus as of
YHVWLJLXP WULQLWDWLV: “However, in that sense, the man Jesus alone can be exclusively as-
serted to be the ‘vestige of the Trinity.’”
would end either in an apory (God is the image of God) or it would, in the
way of liberal theology, divest Jesus of his divinity (Jesus is only the image
of God).156
Accordingly, in the course of his earthly life, his humanity was visible and
dominating. And because his life was firmly anchored in the vertical dimen-
sion and led by it, Jesus fulfilled the determination, purpose, and goal of hu-
manity: to be the place of God’s presence for the others. He did it in his hu-
manity in a prototypical and unique way, being himself true human and true
God. His humanity became the place of God’s presence NDW¶H[RFKHQ. And he
did it in an exemplary way, being true human and living in common condi-
tions of our world. He lived his earthly life in correspondence to the God-
given purpose of human life, according to the God-preset space of humanity.
Besides, Jesus’ life, death and resurrection prove that the thesis about the
goal of human life and of LPDJR'HL in DQWKURSRSRHVLV, in true humanity, is
right. As the fulfillment of the image of God, Jesus in his humanity did not
become divine; the Chalcedonian distinctions are insofar fitting and pre-
served.157 Rather, the goal of his life proved to be IXOOKXPDQLW\RI*RG in or-
der to be, as human, the true image of God.
This is the result and the fulfilled goal of what I have indended to show:
that divinity in its accommodation and humanity with its purpose in the LPD
JR 'HL create a harmony. They do not exclude one another, they are not in
opposition to each other. On the contrary, God in his accommodation is ori-
ented towards the other, towards his creation, towards humans. And humans
in their origin in God and in the frame and purpose of their existence as the
image of God, as places of God’s presence for the others, are – together and
in communion with others – oriented towards God. What holds in Jesus
Christ in this respect, applies also generally for all people. And what is true in
humanity in general, holds also in Jesus Christ: God and human can create a
unity because they are from the beginning oriented and directed toward each
other.158
Therefore, in Christology, I consider the conception of divine accommoda-
tion and humanity as LPDJR'HL as a much better expression of the unity of
the person than the traditional doctrine of FRPPXQLFDWLR LGLRPDWXP, while
156
Cf. above, the small print at the end of Ch. 2.1 concerning the term of the SLFWXUH in
liberal theology.
157
Cf. PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 325: “Nonetheless, it can be acknowledged that the Chris-
tological tradition stemming from the Council of Chalcedon certainly preserved a reference
to the actual personal unity of God and man in Christ in the concept of hypostatic or per-
sonal union, even though and just because it has been more of a problem than a solution for
the time immediately ensuing and for later Christology.”
158
In the wide context of history of religions, this stresses PANNENBERG, “Christologie
und Theologie”, 142–144.
also still preserving the fundamental Chalcedonian distinctions that remain

valid.
I will not withhold, but rather I want to mention it thankfully that I was brought on the
trace of this solution by K. Rahner’s thoughts on the Chalcedonian avsugcu,twj: “The Chal-
cedonian avsugcu,twj must not be taken in a sense which would result in the denial in fact of
a union between the Logos and his human nature which was still being affirmed verbally.
But this would be the case if neither on the side of the Logos (because he is immutable)
nor on the side of the human nature there were present a real ontological determination
other than that which would exist even if there were no unity.” Rahner explains, then, in
the footnote to this statement: “All ‘unconfused’ says is that the same One is truly God and
truly man and not some third thing in between. It does not however deny the unity, the
human nature's state of having given itself away (das Sich-selbst-weggegeben-sein) to the
Logos. It is precisely the task of theology (one which is set by the Chalcedonian formula
but has not yet been performed) to throw light on (which does not mean to dissolve the
mystery of) why and how this thing, which has suspended itself in this way, not only re-
mains what it was, but in the most radical sense, unsurpassably and definitively ratified,
becomes what it is: a human reality. But this only becomes possible once it has been
shown how in the essence of man this tendency to become self-suspended upon the abso-
lute God (in the ontological, not just the moral sense) belongs to his most basic constit u-
tion. Thus the highest actuation (unobliged, only once and for all realized in event) of this
obediential potency (and this is no purely negative determination, no purely formal non-
repugnance) makes the self-suspended thing all the more man in the most radical sense,
precisely unites it thus with the Logos. And it needs to be shown too how this self -
suspension can be a datum of man's selfconsciousness, because it belongs to his self -
consciousness to have, ontically and existentially, a disponibility open to God's disposal
and the absolute mystery, that disponibility towards becoming self-suspended which is su-
premely realized and brought to consciousness in the unio hypostatica.” 159 My dear reader
has certainly noticed the differences of my conception to Rahner, however, the main line of
his thought was very helpful to me: The relation of divinity and humanity must be mutual,
oriented towards each other and valid not only for Christ but rather in principle for all hu-
mans and for God-Self, also apart from the hypostatic union.
Moreover, there is also a clear result for christologically anchored theological

anthropology, which should have its roots right here: When trying to grasp
full humanity theologically, the way to do it in both Christology and anthro-
pology is not, as it would seem in our scientific time, to reduce or to interpret
away God and the divinity in order to explain everything in a purely human
way and in order to adapt everything to be in the pattern of natural sciences.
The way is not to deplete Jesus of all divinity to make him fully human and
on the same level with all other humans. The way is, theologically, the exact
opposite. It is necessary to start with Jesus Christ and his true humanity, still,
but this is the very point: Jesus’ humanity was fundamentally constituted by
and remained in strong relation with the Father. )XOO KXPDQLW\ WKXV FDQ EH
JUDVSHGRQO\LQFRQQHFWLRQZLWK*RG Therefore, the appropriate way how to
159
RAHNER, “Current Problems in Christology”, 170–171, and fn. 3.
conceive full humanity in Jesus together with the humanity of all people is
not to diminish, sideline, or even delete the divinity of Jesus but WRSRLQWRXW
WKH*RGUHODWHGQHVVRIHYHU\KXPDQ, to conceive humans as always related to
God, respectively as beings God is always related to, being himself the
origin, frame and direction of their existence.160
160
Cf. DALFERTH, &UXFLILHGDQG5HVXUUHFWHG, 152–153: “$QWKURSRORJLFDOO\ this means
that Jesus Christ and the Spirit are already playing a crucial role in our development into
persons without waiting until we begin our development as persons. The rug is thus pulled
out from under the abstract (modern) antithesis between human autonomy and human rela-
tionship with God, since the process by which we achieve autonomy and our creatureliness
are to be regarded, without confusion and without division, as two sides of the same cir-
cumstance – namely, that God, in his freely available love, allows us to live in and through
his presence.”
Chapter 7
The Death of Jesus Christ
1. Identity and Death

1. Identity and Death
As it was already shown, if Christology is the theological basis for anthropo l-
ogy, then christological statements have an important impact on anthropology
and YLFHYHUVD: What holds in anthropology, has to be valid in the same way
also for the person of Jesus Christ. With the topic of death, I enter maybe the
most critical point in Christology. The suffering and death of Jesus Christ
was WKH disturbing element in Christology from its very beginning and, at the
same time, it has been the foundation of salvation, at least in the western the-
ology. I will focus on the topic of Jesus’ death in its anthropological and on-
tological meaning (which will set the foundations for soteriology that will be
fully developed in the next chapter).
I will deal first with the question, what is death, how is it that we should
conceive of this border, which should be soteriologically overcome. Howev-
er, salvation entails not only the overcoming of death. In itself, the mere
overcoming of death is not necessarily salvific; despite the actual and deep
disruption of finite human life, one could imagine even worse – endless – suf-
fering in the after-death life. It would then seem to be better to close this life
without any continuation so that death could be taken positively as the final
liberation (be it in Platonic or, e.g., a Buddhist way).1 Salvation is rather an
undisturbed communion with God and participation in his life. Overcoming
death is thus not the goal of salvation but only the way to salvation, since an
undisturbed communion with God and undisturbed participation in his life is
not possible in this life, which is finite and corrupted by sin in both its per-
sonal and transpersonal dimension. Next to the idea of a Last Judgement,
which is thus necessary to conceive facing the enduring sin, corruption and,
1
Cf. A. SCHOPENHAUER, 'LH:HOWDOV:LOOHXQG9RUVWHOOXQJII, Sämtliche Werke, vol.
2 (München: Piper, 1911), 580: “Ueber dies Alles nun aber ist der Tod die große Gelegen-
heit, nicht mehr Ich zu seyn: wohl Dem, der sie benutzt. […] Das Sterben ist der Augen-
blick jener Befreiung von der Einseitigkeit einer Individualität, welche nicht den innersten
Kern unsers Wesens ausmacht, vielmehr als eine Art Verirrung desselben zu denken ist:
die wahre, ursprüngliche Freiheit tritt wieder ein, in diesem Augenblick, welcher, im ange-
gebenen Sinn, als eine UHVWLWXWLRLQLQWHJUXP betrachtet werden kann. […] Der Buddhaisti-
sche Glaube nennt jenes 1LUZDQD, d.h. Erloschen.”
,GHQWLW\DQG'HDWK 251
hence, guilt and injustice in this life (cf. below, Ch. 9.6.2), overcoming death
is still an important point of eschatology: to achieve salvation in its fulness,
the continuity of human self over the boundary of death is necessary. There-
fore, the first question is what this boundary is and whether and how can the
human self be preserved when crossing it and going beyond it.
Traditional Christology suffered a long time under the fact that the prob-
lem of death and its overcoming was discussed apart from Christology, as if it
would be a merely anthropological matter. However, as already mentioned,
theological decisions made here have a direct impact also within Christology.
Therefore, I will proceed now – in a certain similarity with the structure of
the previous chapter – from anthropology to Christology: first, I will briefly
introduce two established concepts of death and its overcoming and will look
at what impact each concept would have on the death of Jesus Christ in order
to identify their strong and weak sides. Then, I will trace the historical devel-
opment of the struggle with Christ’s death until some important concepts of
the 20th century. In the third subchapter, I will offer my own christological
solution.
7KH&RQFHSWLRQRI,PPRUWDO6RXODQG,WV&ULWLTXH
7KH&RQFHSWLRQ
The classical answer of theological anthropology, established in theology
very firmly for a really long time, to the question of the continuity of human
identity over the boundary of death was, and still partly is, the conception of
the immortal soul.
The heavy protestant critique of the first half of the 20 th century saw in this doctrine a for-
eign Platonic element steming from a Greek way of thinking based on soul-body dualism,
which should allegedly be in absolute opposition to the biblical concept of resurrection. 2 In
response to this criticism, catholic authors insist that this doctrine stems from biblical roots
and is thus genuinely Jewish-Christian.3 It is obvious that Christian theology assumes some
2
Cf. the classical study of O. CULLMANN, ,PPRUWDOLW\ RI WKH 6RXO RU 5HVXUUHFWLRQ RI
WKH 'HDG" (London: Epworth Press, 1960), 8: “The fact that later Christianity effected a
link between the two beliefs and that today the ordinary Christian simply confuses them
has not persuaded me to be silent about what I, in common with most exegetes, regard as
true; and all the more so, since the link established between the expectation of the ‘resur-
rection of the dead’ and the belief in ‘the immortality of the soul’ is not in fact a link at all
but renunciation of one in favour of the other. 1 Corinthians 15 has been sacrificed for the
Phaedo.”
3
Cf. the also classical text from J. RATZINGER, (VFKDWRORJ\ 'HDWK DQG (WHUQDO /LIH,
trans. M. WALDSTEIN (Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 1988), 145:
“[T]he frequently encountered notion of a Hellenistic-Platonic dualism of soul and body,
with its corollary in the idea of the soul’s immortality, is something of a theologian’s phan-
tasy.” “The view of the afterlife, the span of time between death and resurrection which
developed in the early Church, is based on Jewish traditions of the life of the dead in She-
252 &KDSWHU7KH'HDWKRI-HVXV&KULVW
elements of Platonism here, however, at the same time, with considerable changes and ad-
aptations.4 Pannenberg puts it well: “After initial hesitation Christian theology accepted the
thought of the immortality of the soul and combined it with the biblical hope of resurrec-
tion. In the process the Platonic doctrine underwent incisive changes since in its original
form it had been found hard to reconcile with the biblical understanding of our relation to
God.”5 The originally “heterogenous ideas” were thus PXWDWLV PXWDQGLV “cojoined” to an
important doctrine.6 Its classical elaboration came with the medieval synthesis by Thomas
of Aquin and this doctrine was repeatedly confirmed by official church statements. 7 After
the heavy critique of this conception from some protestant theologians in the first half of
the 20th century, the discussion moved on for both sides, which required both sides to re-
consider and correct their starting positions, where both the immortal soul as well as the
opposite theory of total death were proved to be aporetic. The catholic wing put more
stress on immortality not as an anthropological element but rather as God’s creational
grace – and some catholic theologians even came up with a new conception of resurrection
at the moment of death (G. Greshake, G. Lohfink).8 On the other hand, the protestants
learned to appreciate the very important moment of continuity through death for preserving
one’s identity, which the conception of immortal soul can provide, so that some protestant
theologians came very close to it. Overall, the discussion resulted in a manifold spectrum
of different opinions on both sides and the confessional boundary was blurred. Therefore,
on one side, the conception of postmortal existence of the soul can be considered for “a
legitimate anthropological-eschatological implication of the New Testament message of
ol, traditions transmitted and given christological focus by the New Testament” (ibid.,
146). Therefore: “The idea of the soul as found in Catholic liturgy and theology up to the
Second Vatican Council has as little to do with antiquity as has the idea of the resurrection
(ibid., 150). Cf. J. PIEPER, 'HDWKDQG,PPRUWDOLW\ (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969),
116. A very knowledgeable insight into this problematic offers the unpublished dissertation
of O. KOLÁŘ, 1HVPUWHOQRVW D PH]LVWDY GXãH Y VRXþDVQp HVFKDWRORJLL Y QČPHFNp MD]\NRYp
REODVWL>,PPRUWDOLW\DQGWKH,QWHUPHGLDWH6WDWHRIWKH6RXOLQWKH&XUUHQW(VFKDWRORJ\LQ
WKH *HUPDQ6SHDNLQJ $UHD@ (Prague: Charles University, Protestant Theological Faculty,
2006), cf. here 14–17.
4
The main Platonic source is of course Phaedo, cf. PLATO, “Phaedo”, 79a–82e (duality
of body and soul, reincarnation of souls), 105a–108e (immortality), in 3ODWRQLVRSHUDvol.
I, ed. E.A. DUKE et al. (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995), 88–186.
5
PANNENBERG, 6\WHPDWLF 7KHRORJ\ 3, 571. To the main differences between biblical
and Platonic view of humans cf. ibid., 571–573: biblically, immortality is God’s gift; hu-
man is not just soul but rather unity of soul and body; soul does not reincarnate, but repre-
sents a unique identity of single individual, it is an individual soul.
6
Ibid., 573.
7
Cf. THOMAS OF AQUIN, 67KI, qLXX–LXXVII; 67KIII supl, qLXIX and LXX. The
immortality of the soul teaches explicitly Fifth Lateran Council 1513 (papal bull “Apostol-
ici regiminis”, '+ 1440) or the papal decree on Thomism from 1914 ('+ 3615: the soul
“sua natura incorruptibilis est atque immortalis”). Also cf. RATZINGER, (VFKDWRORJ\, 132–
140.
8
Cf. G. GRESHAKE, “Tod und Auferstehung” , in &KULVWOLFKHU*ODXEHLQPRGHUQHU*H
VHOOVFKDIW, vol. 5, ed. F. BÖCKLE et al. (Freiburg: Herder, 1980); G. GRESHAKE and G.
LOHFINK, 1DKHUZDUWXQJ ± $XIHUVWHKXQJ ± 8QVWHUEOLFKNHLW, QD 71, 4th ed. (Frei-
burg/Basel/Wien: Herder, 1982). The position of Greshake and Lohfink ignited an intense
inner-catholic debate, cf. against it RATZINGER, (VFKDWRORJ\, 104–112; 251–260.
Christ’s definitive win over death”. At the same time, however, it is also legitimate to ask
in how far is this conception “adequate to the core and criteria of Christian faith, i.e.,
whether it develops the Gospel and thinks it to the end correctly”. 9
The conception of the immortal soul presupposes that a human is a composi-

tum of a material and immaterial element: of body and soul, where the soul is
“forma corporis” and the body “anima formatum”. 10 Both create a psycho-
physical unity of a human being so that it holds that “homo non est anima
tantum”.11 However, the bearer of one’s identity is the soul and the soul
alone, although as a mere “pars naturae” it does not make the whole of a hu-
man being and cannot be called a person.12 Nevertheless, this gives the soul a
higher quality at least eschatologically and soteriologically.13 And just be-
cause the soul is a “part” of the human nature, it can – although it is a very
shaky state – exist separately from the body as DQLPD VHSDUDWD (departed
soul).14 This happens at a very risky point: in death. In the traditional concep-
tion, death is defined as the VHSDUDWLRQRIERG\DQGVRXO.15 While the mortal
body dies, the immortal soul does not die and waits for the resurrection. 16
9
KOLÁŘ, 1HVPUWHOQRVW, 17.
10
Cf. the Council in Vienne 1312 ('+ 902) and THOMAS OF AQUIN, 67KI, q75 a4, a5.
11
THOMAS OF AQUIN, 67KI, q75 a4; GRESHAKE, “Tod und Auferstehung”, 89–90. This
unity of two elements with opposite characteristics has fascinated thinkers ever since, it
thus became the leading example for the possibility of union of two different natures also
in Christology, cf. above, Ch. 3.2.2.
12
Cf. RATZINGER, (VFKDWRORJ\, 179: “Just as the soul is defined in terms of matter, so
the living body is wholly defined by reference to the soul. The soul builds itself a living
body, a self-identical living body, as its corporeal expression. And since the living body
belongs so inseparably to the being of man, the identity of that body is defined not in ter ms
of matter but in terms of soul.” THOMAS OF AQUIN, 4XDHVWLRQHV GLVSXWDWDH GH SRWHQWLD
GHL, 9, 2 ad 14: the soul is “pars rationalis naturae, […] ideo non est persona”.
13
Christianity struggled from its beginning, often without success, with varied but om-
nipresent tendencies to underestimate, suppress or even despise the body. At least here, the
superiority of the soul is firmly rooted in theology too, cf. KOLÁŘ, 1HVPUWHOQRVW, 217.
14
Cf. in detail J. PIEPER, 'HDWK, 32–46. The Aristotelic definition of soul as “forma
corporis” would not allow it: a sole form cannot exist alone, by itself, in a Platonic way of
an idea. The problem of immortality of the soul, “even when brought to the highest level of
thought” like in Thomas, remains aporetic in this point (KOLÁŘ, 1HVPUWHOQRVW, 217).
15
Cf. PIEPER, 'HDWK, 33, refering to Thomas of Aquin, K. Rahner and Eccl. 12:7 (in fn.
4).
16
On this point, some authors try to follow Thomas one step further stating that death
concerns the human as a whole, not only the body: “Death is the end of the whole and real
human, not only the doom of the body but rather of the spiritual soul as well, to the extent
to which the soul realizes itself in the bodily-material sphere” (GRESHAKE, “Tod und
Auferstehung”, 90). However, this is an analogy to the aporetic figure used in the old
Christology for the death of Christ, who suffered and died only “in flesh”, in his human
nature. – Or, in a similar conception, death can only be predicated about human as a whole
and as such, it deeply affects the soul as well. The soul is not immortal but rather inde-
What was united in order to see the human as an unparted whole, is still
based on a dual structure, which, in the moment of death, becomes a duality:
“Thus a duality distinguishing the constant from the variable factors in the
making-up of man is necessary, being demanded, quite simply, by the logic
of the question. Hence the indispensability of the body-soul distinction.”17
And because – at least according to this conception – the matter is constantly
changing and thus cannot be constant, the constant has to be the soul. 18 The
preserved body-soul distinction makes it thus possible to keep up both the
continuity (soul) and discontinuity (body) of the human being.
This, however – and I have to mention it here already, because it is a very important point
– leads, in fact, to an HTXLYRFDWLRQLQWKHWHUPRIGHDWKDQGG\LQJ: while for the body death
means doom, for the soul it is nothing more than a damage. Even if we could say that the
whole human dies and thus with him both his body and soul – in the sense that they en-
counter death – being GHDG is afterwards only the body, not the soul.
The immortality or indestructibility of the soul in death is, however, – and

this was one of the important shifts in the traditional doctrine – not an inborn,
substantialist ontological quality of the soul itself, which, then, would not
need God to conquer death, but the immortality is rather grace of the Creator
and the fidelity of God to his good creation, which God does not want to get
lost and perish.19 It is this indestructible relation of God to his creation, in
which the immortality of the soul is grounded. Humans are created funda-
mentally in a relationship with God, i.e., in “a relationship which entails inde-
structibility”, in an openness to God. And this openness is the soul. 20 “Since
God is the God of the living, and calls his creature, man, by his name, this
creature cannot be annihilated.” 21 Immortality of the soul is hence not a mat-
ter of nature, yet still, as a gift from the Creator it is “inherent in creation”.22
This is why the conception of the immortal soul is called today (from those
who hold it) “dialogical immortality” (contrary to the monological concep-
tion, once strong in the tradition, which saw immortality as a natural quality
of human soul). 23 Immortality cannot be explained only from the side of hu-
structible, and although after death, it is rather a kind of a torso and cries for resurrection
and reconstitution of the psycho-physical unity, it “remains in being” (PIEPER, 'HDWK, 37).
Yet still, in both conceptions, death is not the end for the soul: it remains thus immortal
and separated from the body.
17
RATZINGER, (VFKDWRORJ\, 158, refusing still all “dualism”, which would be rather a
characteristic of Plato’s conception.
18
Ibid.
19
Cf. PIEPER, 'HDWK, 117–130; RATZINGER, (VFKDWRORJ\, 153–154.
20
RATZINGER, (VFKDWRORJ\, 154.
21
Ibid., 157–158.
22
Ibid., 157.
23
Cf. ibid., 150–161; GRESHAKE, “Tod und Auferstehung”, 90–93.
mans alone but rather only from human relationship with God. What makes
humans immortal is their “relatedness, or capacity for relatedness, to God”. 24
Resurrection is, then, in accord with the tradition, conceived as the resur-
rection of the body. In the resurrection, the soul gets a body again in order to
restore the human as a whole, although the materiality of the body is a subject
of discussion. 25 The redemption concerns thus again the human in his or her
wholeness. In death, the human suffers a loss of one’s all experienceable rela-
tions (the death of the body), but God guides him or her through death (the
immortal soul) and renews him or her again in his or her wholeness (resurrec-
tion of the body and its reuniting with the soul). 26
$SSOLFDWLRQWR&KULVWRORJ\
Because Jesus Christ is a true human, all this must apply to him and his hu-
manity also and might have thus an important impact on soteriology. Howev-
er, this is exactly the point – a crucial one! – which has been missing in the
theological debate of this traditional anthropological-eschatological topic.
In Christology, next to the body-soul distinction steps up also the funda-
mental christological distinction of Christ’s divinity and humanity. 27 The
conception of the immortal soul, therefore, specifies the old traditional con-
ception of Christ’s suffering and death. Now, it is not possible to simply say
that Christ suffers and dies in his human nature as such. A more detailed dif-
ferentiation is necessary. Now, death of the human nature means only the
death of the body, while the immortal soul suffers the parting from the body
but does not die. The immortal divine nature guides the immortal human soul
through death and then, they wait together (unconfused and undivided) for
resurrection.28 In doing so, metaphorically speaking, Christ overcomes the
24
RATZINGER, (VFKDWRORJ\, 155.
25
The conception of resurrection in the moment of death seems not to need any body
actually, indentifying immortality directly with resurrection and speaking of an “internali-
zation of matter into the self-process of human spirit”, cf. GRESHAKE, “Tod und Aufer-
stehung”, 117 and 107: “Immortality means the definitive life with God in the communion
with the risen Lord. This immortality is resurrection”. This is criticized heavily by
RATZINGER, (VFKDWRORJ\, 165–194.
26
GRESHAKE, “Tod und Auferstehung”, 116–119.
27
N.B.: it is not the same. Immortal soul does not represent divinity here – that would
be a sheer Apollinarism. Both immortal soul and mortal body are “parts” of Christ’s KXPDQ
nature. However, at the same time and paradoxically enough, it was the relation of the im-
mortal soul and the mortal body, which brought an analogy for the relation of both Christ’s
natures in his death for the old church. Cf. A. GRILLMEIER, “Der Gottessohn im Toten-
reich”, =HLWVFKULIW IU NDWKROLVFKH 7KHRORJLH 71, first part (1949/1), 1–53; second part
(1949/2), 184–203.
28
Cf. e.g. AUGUSTINUS, “In Joannis evangelium tractatus“ XLVII, 10, in 3/35, ed. J.-
P. MIGNE (Paris, 1864), 1738: “[I]n principio erat Verbum, et Verbum erat apud Deum, et
power of death, opens the gates of Sheol, and brings life into the middle of
death.29 Subsequently, through the resurrection his (glorified) body is reunit-
ed with the soul, both being accompanied – and, actually, never having been
abandoned – by the Logos. Therefore, Christ walks through death as the win-
ner.
7KH&ULWLTXHRIWKH&RQFHSWLRQRI,PPRUWDO6RXO
The indisputably strong side of this concept is definitely the preservation of
the FRQWLQXLW\RIKXPDQLGHQWLW\ over the boundary of death. 30 This continuity
is a fundamental point in the Christian soteriology, unmistakably confirmed
by theologians across the theological spectrum, and, it is also the first argu-
ment of catholic theologians against the conception of total death proposed by
the protestant theology around the middle of the 20th century. 31
On the other hand, this conception of immortal soul contains some serious
problems. First of them is the idea of the soul as a VHSDUDEOH ³SDUW´ of hu-
mans, which can have – albeit in an only non-standard way and in a non-
standard state of death – a stand-alone existence. In opposition to the con-
temporary conception of human beings as bio-psycho-socio-spiritual beings –
i.e., of humans as a unit with mutiple dimensions, which are unseparably in-
tegrated into the unity of a personal being – the conception of human as a
unity of body and soul, on one side, reduces the dimension of human only to
two dimensions and does not thus differentiate the variety of dimensions of
human existence well enough. On the other side, it separates both these enti-
ties, body and soul, too much. An indication of a problem here can be seen in
Deus erat Verbum. Ex quo enim Verbum caro factum est, ut habitaret in nobis (Joan. 1,14),
et susceptus est a Verbo homo, id est totus homo, anima et caro; quid fecit passio, quid
fecit mors, nisi corpus ab anima separavit? Animam vero a Verbo non separavit. Si enim
mortuus est Dominus, imo qui mortuus est Dominus; mortuus est enim pro nobis in cruce;
sine dubio caro ipsius exspiravit animam: ad tempus exiguum anima deseruit carnem, sed
redeunte anima resurrecturam. A Verbo animam separatam esse non dico.” And also
THOMAS OF AQUIN, 67K III, q50 a2 and 3: even after Christ’s death, divinity remains
joined with the body, which lies in the grave, as well as with the soul, which descends to
hell. The Logos is hence on two places at the same time.
29
Cf. RATZINGER, (VFKDWRORJ\, 157.
30
Cf. e.g. PANNENBERG, 6\VWHPDWLF7KHRORJ\3, 573: “The identity of future with pre-
sent bodily life is basic if the hope of resurrection is to have any meaning.”
31
Cf. RATZINGER, (VFKDWRORJ\, 106: “If there is no soul, and so no proper subject of
such a ‘sleep’, who is this person that is going to be really raised? How can there be an
identity between the human being who existed at some point in the past and the counterpart
that has to be re-created from nothing?” On the protestant side agrees e.g. T. MAHLMANN,
“Auferstehung der Toten und ewiges Leben”, in 'LH=XNXQIWGHU(UO|VXQJ, ed. K. STOCK
(Gütersloh: Chr. Kaiser, 1994), 117–118, fn. 27: “If the identity is secured only with God’s
new creation, and first of all: if the continuity is secured only with God’s memory, then
identity without continuity is […] a empty metaphor.”
the fact that the substantiation of the possibility ofDQLPDVHSDUDWD brings se-
vere difficulties for the proponents of this conception. 32 However, it is pre-
cisely this point, the possibility of a stand-alone soul (as the bearer of the
identity) without the body, on which the whole conception hangs and de-
pends.33
Closely bound to it is the SUREOHPRILPPRUWDOLW\, which is the main theo-
logical problem of this conception. 34 Immortality stands for the continuity
beyond the boundary of death, namely for the continuity of human identity.
For this continuity, some substrate on the side of humans is necessary – even
when we do not call it explicitly a “soul”.35 There is thus an element in hu-
mans, be it a gracefully given element from God, which secures the immortal-
ity and the continuity of human identity beyond death. Exactly this, then, is
the most criticized point.
When humans bear in themselves their own immortality it necessarily
weakens the EUXWXPIDFWXP of death. If death destroys, in fact, only the body
and not the human identity itself, if we can be – based on the fact that we are
humans – sure that there is simply something immortal in us, then, there is
actually nothing to fear (which, however, stands in a heavy contradiction to
our experience – to the deep human fear of death). Death is, then, the end on-
ly for the body. For the soul, it is a boundary where it loses its body but it is a
32
Cf. PIEPER, 'HDWKDQG,PPRUWDOLW\, 117–130. RATZINGER, (VFKDWRORJ\, 119–132. G.
GASSER, “Einleitung: Die Aktualität des Seelenbegriffs”, in 'LH $NWXDOLWlW GHV 6HHOHQEH
JULIIV, ed. G. GASSER and J. QUITTERER (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2010), 19.
33
Cf. RATZINGER, (VFKDWRORJ\, 109: The point is “the continuing authentic reality of
the person in separation from his or her body. The idea of the soul meant to convey nothing
other than this.”
34
For Hegel, e.g., the immortal soul is the main moment of religion, cf. G.W.F. HEGEL,
9RUOHVXQJHQ EHU GLH 3KLORVRSKLH GHU 5HOLJLRQ, vol. II, Werke, vol. 17 (Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp, 1986), 260; cf. IDEM, /3K5, vol. III: The Consummate Religion, ed. P.C.
HODGSON (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008), 208.
35
It is not possible to postulate human immortality only from the side of God, as some
theologians suggest trying to stress the immortality as God’s grace, cf. the short note going
in this direction in RATZINGER, (VFKDWRORJ\, 155: immortality is man’s “relatedness, or
capacity for relatedness”. On the protestant side cf. P. ALTHAUS, 'LHOHW]WHQ'LQJH, 4th ed.
(Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1933), 109: “The Christian faith does not speak about immor-
tality of the soul, but rather about the ‘immortality’ or indefeasibility of human personal
relation to God.” That a substrate is necessary also on the human side – and there is no rea-
son, why one should not use the traditional term of soul for this substrate – say among oth-
ers RATZINGER, (VFKDWRORJ\, 155 (the immortal relation to God was “given to man […] to
be his very own posession”) and 251; A. AHLBRECHT, 7RG XQG 8QVWHUEOLFKNHLW LQ GHU
HYDQJHOLVFKHQ 7KHRORJLH GHU *HJHQZDUW (Paderborn: Bonifacius, 1964), 18; R.CH.
HENNING, “Die protestantische Seele – der Mensch vor Gott”, in 'LH $NWXDOLWlW GHV
6HHOHQEHJULIIV, ed. G. GASSER and J. QUITTERER (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2010),
354 and 357; or KOLÁŘ, 1HVPUWHOQRVW, 218.
boundary, which the soul can fluently cross. 36 The fundamental importance
thus shifts from the moment of death to the question: What happens with the
soul beyond death? In other words, death is not the main problem anymore.
The conditions of the after-life become much more important. Death touches
humans only from without and not from within because it does not concern
one’s identity but only the outer body. Moreover, concerning the immortal
soul, sin does not seem to play any disturbing role.
In the christological context, however, such an anthropological setting has
fatal consequences: If Christ, as a true human, had also an immortal soul,
then his existence did not end with his death. To the contrary, his soul went
through it and, hence, Christ as himself GLGQRWGLH – at least in the sense that
death did not mean the end for him, only the separation of his soul from his
body.37 In his case it becomes clear what consequences it has when we weak-
en the fact of death: with it, the soteriological relevance of Christ’s death is
weakened as well.
Moreover, he himself might have overcome death in this way but regard-
ing us it does not matter, and, actually, it is a bit needless because we all have
the immortal element in us, which does not yield to death. That is the fatal
consequence: supposing that everyone has an immortal element, the death of
Christ is useless and obsolete, because everyone posesses the fundament of
one’s after-life and hence the fundament of one’s salvation by oneself (at
least as the precondition of coming to the Last Judgement). Due to our own
immortality, the death of Jesus Christ becomes useless. The only thing we
need is someone to resurrect our bodies and to decide what happens with us
in the after-life. For this, however, neither Christ’s incarnation and life, nor
his death is actually needed – or it only acts as a function of the model we
should imitate, but it has no ontological function, it does not mediate the jus-
tifying grace, which brings the forgiveness of sin. With this, the soteriological
stress shifts from the grace in Christ to the stress on human deeds, which b e-
come soteriologically relevant again. Hand in hand with it goes a soteriologi-
cal uncertainty – which is, regarding the certainty of immortal soul – quite
paradoxical.
36
Then, it is necessary to assume some intermediate state, as it is the case in the catho-
lic theology, where souls rest until the final resurrection, e.g. something like purgatory,
Sheol or hell. (Paradoxically enough, it is not possible to assume – as the metaphor of she-
ol would suggest – any kind of a kingdom of the dead: the body decays and the soul is not
dead. There is no one left for dwelling in a kingdom of the dead.) Or, it is possible to work
with the theologically popular idea of resurrection in the moment of death (which, howev-
er, has to deal with the question of the body), cf. GRESHAKE, “Tod und Auferstehung”;
IDEM and LOHFINK, 1DKHUZDUWXQJ; on the protestant side HENNING, “Die protestantische
Seele”, 356–359.
37
This is, again, the problem of the equivocation in the term of death, which causes an
unsharpness here that is not reflected upon further on when speaking about death.
The main soteriological importance shifts hereby heavily from the second
article of the Creed to the first: the leading instance is the grace of creation.
This, however, relativizes to a large extent the importance of Christ. Christol-
ogy becomes only an appendix to the first article, because for the creation as
well as for the eschatological judgement, the grace and competence of the Fa-
ther suffices.
This is a result of the fact that the problem of the immortal soul is mostly
treated without any connection to Christology and is typically discussed out-
side of the christological context. 38 And YLFHYHUVD: christological and soterio-
logical tractates work with an unreflected and incoherent understanding of
death, often because the immortal soul is treated in the eschatology at the
very end – which, however, heavily affects the preceding whole of theolo-
gy.39 In this case, eschatology threatens to tear down a large part of the previ-
ous construction. Hereby, in fact, the soteriological centre of gravity shifts
from Christology to the creation, the grace of creation supersedes the grace of
the cross and makes Christology obsolete. Christian hope gets an undoubted
anthropological anchor (which, at first sight, can appear to be a big ad-
vantage. However, upon a second review, it is christologically and soteriolog-
ically fatal).
7RWDO'HDWK
7KH&RQFHSWLRQ
In the conception of total death – as the title already suggests – the whole of
the human being with all its dimensions dies. However, the anthropological
conception is different than in the previous case. Here, a human being is an
essential and indivisible unity of all its dimensions including body and soul: a
human is a bio-psycho-socio-spiritual unit. 40 The term of the soul is not dis-
carded, although it is rarely used or there are other terms preferred, e.g. “in-
ner man”.41 However, the soul as a dimension of the human being has only an
38
RATZINGER, (VFKDWRORJ\, 153–154, is aware of this context, however, it does not
have any effect on the development of his argumentation.
39
Cf. POSPÍŠIL -Håtã]1D]DUHWD, 271–301, interpreting the cross of Christ as a satisfac-
tory sacrifice, stressing with it, in fact, the importance of human action, which should col-
lect supernatural merits (ibid., 295), and, paradoxically, reducing Christ to a mere model:
the life of Jesus is “a model way for divinization of human” (ibid., 287).
40
In 2002, the classical biopsychosocial model of G. Engel (mentioned first in 1961, cf.
G.L. ENGEL, “To the editor”, 3V\FKRVRP0HG 23 [1961], 426–429), was expanded by the
WHO for the Palliative Care explicitly with the spiritual dimension (cf. https://www.who.
int/cancer/palliative/definition/en/ [accessed April 24, 2020]).
41
Cf. CULLMANN, ,PPRUWDOLW\ RI WKH 6RXO, 20. However, it is very paradoxical that
Cullman, contrasting sharply the immortal soul and the resurrection of the dead (ibid., 8)
with the thesis that in death the whole of the man dies (ibid., 15), follows, then, for the
anthropological role and not a soteriological role.42 In principle, the immor-

tality of the soul is being refused. 43 The soul is one dimension of human ex-
istence, inseparably joined to the body and bodily manifestations and acts, it
cannot exist on its own. It is a GLPHQVLRQ of the existence, not a “pars natu-
state of death the biblical metaphor of sleep, where the naked inner man without body
sleeps and waits for the resurrection (ibid., 32–33). Hereby, in fact, he turns back to the
idea of immortal soul. Cf. RATZINGER, (VFKDWRORJ\, 106. Nevertheless, according to P.
LAMPE, “Paul’s Concept of a Spiritual Body”, in 5HVXUUHFWLRQ7KHRORJLFDODQG6FLHQWLILF
$VVHVVPHQWV, ed. T. PETERS et al. (Grand Rapids, W.B. Eerdmans, 2002), 114, this corre-
sponds with the theology of Paul: “Temporarily, between individual death and resurrec-
tion, the self exists even without a ‘body’, without the first physical one, which is stripped
off in death, and without the future spiritual one, which will be given at the resurrection.
Paul calls this status ‘sleep’. Later Hellenistic theologians were ready to define this self as
an immortal nucleus within us […].” R. VON BENDEMANN, “SWMA PNEUMATIKON –
Unsterblichkeit der Seele oder Auferstehung des Leibes?”, in $XIHUVWHKXQJ, ed. PH. DAVID
and H. ROSENAU (Münster: LIT, 2009), reminds against Cullmann that contrary to Cull-
mann’s sharp contrast between the immortal soul and the resurrection, in ancient Judaism,
there was a wide range of post-mortem conceptions. Cullmann’s view is, therefore, over-
simplifying on both sides because the terms of body and soul themselves were used in va r-
ious groups in various ways: “We have to count with the possibility that what one of the
interpretating groups understands with ‘body’ could for the other side mean ‘soul’” (ibid.,
89).
42
When the term of soul occures, it is mostly within the anthropological body/soul or
mind/brain debate. In the recent years, three interdisciplinary volumes of text from differ-
ent authors were published, all edited by theologians (and one philosopher), dealing with
this question: 'DV /HLE6HHOH3UREOHP $QWZRUWYHUVXFKH DXV PHGL]LQLVFKQDWXUZLVVHQ
VFKDIWOLFKHUSKLORVRSKLVFKHUXQGWKHRORJLVFKHU6LFKW, ed. F. HERMANNI and T. BUCHHEIM
(München: Wilhelm Fink, 2006); 'LH $NWXDOLWlW GHV 6HHOHQEHJULIIV ,QWHUGLV]LSOLQlUH
=XJlQJH, ed. G. GASSER and J. QUITTERER (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2010);
/HLEEH]RJHQH 6HHOH" ,QWHUGLV]LSOLQlUH (UNXQGXQJHQ HLQHV NDXP QRFK IDVVEDUHQ %HJULIIV,
ed. J. DIERKEN and M.D. KRÜGER (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015). Only two texts from
the first volume deal explicitly with the questions of eschatology. The most authors, how-
ever, can unite on the thesis that the concept of soul still has a unsubstitutable role as a ir-
replaceable symbol, although blurred and hardly to define, which can, however, help to
integrate the particular dimensions of human existence and express thus the sociality,
uniqueness and unsubstitutability of the individual as well as one’s relation to the tran-
scendence (cf. the contributions of G. Gasser, J. Quitterer and U. Lüke in the second vol-
ume and of J. Dierken and R. Barth in the third). Cf. also G. BRÜNTRUP, 'DV/HLE6HHOH
3UREOHP (LQH (LQIKUXQJ (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1996); $XIHUVWHKXQJGHV /HLEHV ±
8QVWHUEOLFKNHLWGHU6HHOH, ed. G. BRÜNTRUP et al. (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 2010).
43
Representatively and clearly E. JÜNGEL, 'HDWKWKH5LGGOHDQGWKH0\VWHU\, trans. I.
and U. NICOL (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1975), 120: “[T]here is no immortality of
the soul.” Cf. also VON BENDEMANN, “SWMA PNEUMATIKON”, 118, summarizing his
exegesis of 1Cor 15: “The important text of 1Cor 15 shows that, for Paul, not only the
body dies and that resurrection is possible only through a new creative action of God, but
also that the human ‘soul’ cannot be the continuum between this life and the future one.
The soul is the subject of the annihilation of all earthly matters as well.”
rae”. The identity of a human, then, is built by the whole of the human per-
son, including the body; the dimension of soul is not its exclusive bearer. On
the contrary, the important markers of human identity, by which we can iden-
tify each other, are very often bound to body: face, figure, appearance, voice,
the manner of a handshake, etc. In the same way is it false to conceive of the
body as an instance, which becomes old and fragile over the course of time,
whereas soul becomes more and more mature and enriched.44 Very often the
soul, too, becomes old, as if rigid, or even senile. There is no moment in the
course of time, neither for the body, nor for the soul, which would represent
the wholeness of the human life and thus bear the full identity, not even at the
point of death.
As wholly mortal, every human lives in the horizon of ILQLWXGH. Here,
finitude, as a positive term, should be distinguished from death as a negative
term:45 Finitude belongs to human life, to its nature and naturality and shapes
the human life in a fundamental way. Without this horizon, a human would
not be what he or she is. 46
“[A]ny dissolution of the temporal boundaries of human life would involve the dissolution
of human individuality. To take an absurd example: a person who existed before his birth
would be someone else. The same would hold with regard to the utopian postulate of a
continuation of human life beyond death. In this connection ‘I’ would certainly be infinite.
However, ‘I’ would not be I. On these general grounds alone, the hope of resurrection must
be something quite different from hope in endless continuity.” 47
The natural finitude of a human, although we can speak of it only as a bound-

ary and regulative term, is nothing negative. It is a finitude, which does not
interrupt relations and does not move humans away from God. It is a finitude
open towards the future, which humans accept by trusting in God as the wel-
come end of one’s labor.48 It is a finitude, which does not require judgement,
44
This argument puts KOLÁŘ, 1HVPUWHOQRVW, 226: While the body in the moment of
death cannot represent the whole of a human life, the soul “in the course of life ripens and
in this ripe form, which bears the imprint of the life-story, is it the bearer of identity of the
particular subject”.
45
Cf. PANNENBERG, 6\VWHPDWLF7KHRORJ\2, 271–272: “[F]initude does not always have
to include mortality. The eschatological hope of Christians knows a finitude of creaturely
existence without death. Hence death cannot be necessarily a part of the finitude of crea-
turely existence. Only of existence in time is it true that the finitude of life and mortality
go together.” Cf. also IDEM, 6\VWHPDWLF7KHRORJ\3, 560.
46
Cf. ibid., 556–563. Among others, Pannenberg refers to the debate on the meaning of
death between Heidegger and Sartre.
47
JÜNGEL, 'HDWK, 119–120. Jüngel reverses the traditional argument in a surprising
way: the problem, which destroys my identity, is not death as the total interruption of all
my relations, but rather immortality as endless prolongation!
48
Cf. W. HÄRLE, 2XWOLQH RI &KULVWLDQ 'RFWULQH, trans. R. YULE and N. SAGOVSKY
(Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans, 2015), 415, with reference to Gen 3:19; E. JÜNGEL,
“Death VII. History of Dogma and Dogmatics”, in 533, vol. 3 (Leiden/Boston: Brill,
because it is not deformed and perverted by sin and death. Therefore, when
something from this positively conceived finitude flashes through human dy-
ing, not every death has to be interpreted as evil. Especially in the Christian
perspective – even under the conditions of life corrupted by sin – a “good
death” can exist, i.e., a non-tragic, redeeming death or a death after a fulfilled
and satisfying life (cf. e.g. Gen 25:8: “Abraham breathed his last and died in
a good old age, an old man and full of years.”).49
However – and here comes the hamartiological stress, which in the con-
ception of immortal soul does not play any important role – humans refuse to
reconcile with their finitude and try to overcome it by negating it. This drives
humans to immoderate self-love, to vast egoism and to boundless imagination
of one’s own immortality: HULWLVVLFXW'HXV (Gen 3:5). With all this, paradoxi-
cally, humans in their egoistic self-isolation and intended self-transcendence
sharpen and deepen their finitude, which takes the form of death. 50 The more
one tries to escape one’s own finitude, the more one drives oneself towards
death. Finitude is thus not the same as mortality and death. In this conception,
GHDWK is not a natural part of life, nor God’s punishment for sin, but rather,
going with the intentions of Rom 6:23, it is “the wages of sin”, the conse-
quence of sin and sinning, it is finitude perverted by sin, and, therefore, fun-
damentally speaking, it is WKH XOWLPDWH LQWHUUXSWLRQ RI UHODWLRQVKLSV, which
humans have started with their inappropriate self-love, with DPRUVXL as one
of the basic forms of sin. 51 It is the sin, which breaks off relationships and
isolates humans when it concentrates them on themselves and drives them
away from God and others. Death is, then, the point and the ultimate conse-
quence of this sin: it is the total loss and breaking-off of all relations, which
2007) 698; IDEM, 'HDWK, 92; BARTH,.'III/2, 767. The particular terminology differs in
particular authors. Cf. also the classical theater play 7KH0DNURSXORV$IIDLU by K. ČAPEK,
dealing with the meaninglessness of infinite existence contrasting with the fear of death.
49
Hereby, I definitely do not mean euthanasia (which could be translated also as “good
death”). CH. TAYLOR, $&DWKROLF0RGHUQLW\"(University of Dayton, 1996), 21, points in
the right direction. According to him, our times suffer under a “widespread inability to
give any human meaning to suffering and death, other than as dangers and enemies to be
avoided or combatted. This inability is not just the failing of certain individuals; it is en-
trenched in many of our institutions and practices, for instance the practice of medicine,
which has great trouble understanding its own limits, or conceiving some natural term to
human life.”
50
Cf. PANNENBERG, 6\VWHPDWLF7KHRORJ\3, 560–561.
51
Cf. ibid., 563: “Thus our finitude becomes death for us. It would not have been this
could we have lived our life as a totality in acceptance of our own finitude and hence with
reference to the reality of God that transcends our finitude and that both links our own ex-
istence to that of all other creatures and at the same time limits it by them.” Cf. also
JÜNGEL, 'HDWK, 90, who differentiates between “abrupt break” and “end”; IDEM, “Death”,
in 533 3, 698; and also K. RAHNER, =XU 7KHRORJLH GHV 7RGHV, QD 2 (Freiburg: Herder,
1958), 30.
brings the breaking-off of the whole life. Only then, death is painful, hostile,
tragic, and unacceptable.
The term ‘death’ is here thus being used univocally: death is the end of the
human being as of the subject of all his or her relationships; from the human
view, therefore, it is the interruption and breaking-off of all relations. 52 Here-
by, this conception takes death more seriously into account: death is total end
of the whole human being. There is nothing in humans themselves that could
outlast death. The human being is an inseparable bio-psycho-socio-spiritual
unit and when a human dies, he or she dies with and in all these dimensions.
In this conception, death is actually uncomplicated and simple: it is the end of
a human, of the whole human being.53 Nevertheless, it is not the end of all
things.54
For any continuation, i.e., in this conception: for resurrection, the human is
dependent entirely on an intervention from without. The stress on the seri-
ousness of death makes the resurrection as resurrection not only of the body
but of the whole human being equally serious. Yet, at the same time, equally
serious complications arise concerning the continuity of human identity be-
yond death. The traditional answer seeks a solution in the metaphor of *RG¶V
PHPRU\, in which the dead are kept until resurrection. Along this memory,
then, through the work of the Spirit the dead will be resurrected to the eternal
life.55 Resurrection, then, means renovation and restoration of this identity
remembered by God to its own being.
52
This is the definition of death of JÜNGEL, 'HDWK, 115: “[D]eath is the event of rela-
tionlessness in which the relationships in which man’s life is lived are completely broken
off.” Similarly RAHNER, =XU 7KHRORJLH GHV 7RGHV, 30: Death is “interruption from with-
out”.
53
Cf. JÜNGEL, 'HDWK, 115: “When a man dies, he can only be what he was.” Also CH.
SCHWÖBEL, “Resurrection 5. Dogmatics”, in 533, vol. 11 (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2012),
146.
54
Cf. JÜNGEL, 'HDWK, 90. Theologically speaking, an end is to be distinguished from a
breaking-off in the sense that as far as the latter is concerned, nothing follows. Beyond this
hiatus there is nothing, only the total absence of relation. Whereas on the other side of the
end there is God. Beyond that which has come to an end there is not simply nothing, but
the same God who was in the beginning.” (ibid., 90).
55
Cf. PANNENBERG, 6\VWHPDWLF 7KHRORJ\ 3, 606: “In this light the resurrection of the
dead and the renewal of creation may be seen as the act by which God through his Spirit
restores to the creatures’ existence that is preserved in his eternity the form of being-for-
themselves. Herein the identity of creatures needs no continuity of their being on the time
line but is ensured by the fact that their existence is not lost in God’s eternal present.” Sim-
ilarly JÜNGEL, 'HDWK, 120: “It is as finite that man’s finite life is PDGHHWHUQDO. Not by end-
less extension – there is no immortality of the soul – but through participation in the very
life of God. Our life is KLGGHQ in his life. In this sense the briefest form of the hope of res-
urrection is the statement: ‘God is my eternity.’ He will make everything whole; ever y-
thing, including what we have been.”
Instead of God’s memory, some conceptions stress rather the work of the Holy Spirit a nd
try to mediate between both above sketched conceptions. Based on a trichotomical anthr o-
pology, the Spirit is seen as the fundamental element in the constitution of the human per-
son, which sustains a human being through one’s whole life, remains the whole time in the
background, and is thus “the hidden co-author of our story of life”. 56
On one side stands 5&K +HQQLQJ who heavily criticizes the total-death theory and
tends with his conception rather to the immortal soul. According to him, death cannot de-
stroy a human being as a person FRUDP'HR. Human beings remain preserved even beyond
death, however not through their own power but rather in the Spirit. “The Holy Spirit sub-
lates, in the Hegelian sense, the life of the individual. In him, the individual outlasts death
in his characteristic ‘being-for-himself [Fürsichsein]’.”57 The individual identity remains
hidden in the Spirit or in the “consciousness of God”. Henning calls this the soul, although
without any bodily substrate. 58 At the same time, the death is a point of total transfor-
mation of the human being in terms of Tillichian “essentification”.59 Moreover, beyond
death time and eternity are the same. 60 Henning thus follows Greshake’s theory of resur-
rection in the moment of death, opening, however, the eschatological focus from individual
to general resurrection, to DSRNDVWDVLVSDQWRQ.61
On the other, yet, in the end, quite similar side stands &K/LQN, who takes the stance of
the total-death theory.62 He also stresses that the continuity of human identity is sustained
by the Spirit who grounds the human subject and functions as the spirit of this particular
human, however, it is important to stress that the Spirit is not this subject himself. The
Spirit has its own life within the human life as body-soul-unity. This helps in the moment
of death when the human returns its spirit to God. This does not touch the divine Spirit
who is immortal and returns to God, but rather preserves the identity of the human being.
This identity will be resurrected again in the transformed unity of body and soul. 63 The
turning point is the twofold function of the S/spirit, which constitutes the “immortal rela-
tion”: as the divine Spirit, he constitutes the relation to the human, as the human spirit he
constitutes the human relation to God. “The human spirit is the immanence of God’s Spirit,
and God’s Spirit is the transcendence of the human spirit.”64 This, however, raises critical
questions: is it possible to identify the human spirit with the divine Spirit so that the core
of every human person would be the Holy Spirit itself? And how does the previous state-
ment comply with the Spirit that lives in the human life an own life and is not the human
subject itself? The first question leads to divine status of all humans. The second to the
56
HENNING, “Die protestantische Seele”, 357. Cf. CH. LINK, “Unsterblichkeit der Seele
– Auferstehung des Leibes”, in 'DV /HLE6HHOH3UREOHP, ed. F. HERMANNI and T.
BUCHHEIM (München: Wilhelm Fink, 2006), 234: the Spirit grounds the unity and the
structure of body and soul and makes human a subject.
57
HENNING, “Die protestantische Seele”, 357.
58
R.CH. HENNING, “Was ist, wenn ich sterbe?”, in 'DV /HLE6HHOH3UREOHP, ed. F.
HERMANNI and T. BUCHHEIM (München: Wilhelm Fink, 2006), 261.
59
Ibid., 258.
60
HENNING, “Die protestantische Seele”, 358.
61
HENNING, “Was ist, wenn ich sterbe?”, 261.
62
LINK, “Unsterblichkeit der Seele”, 237.
63
Ibid., 235: “As the death is an event of the whole life, the resurrection also must be an
event of whole life.”
64
Ibid., 236, quoting J. MOLTMANN , 7KH&RPLQJRI*RG&KULVWLDQ(VFKDWRORJ\, trans.
M. KOHL (London: SCM Press, 1996), 73.
aporia of the total-death theory that whatever returns to God after death is not the subject
and the identity of the deceased human but only a copy or imprint of it.
'HDWKRI-HVXV&KULVWDV+XPDQ'HDWK
The christological application of the whole-death theory works with a differ-
ent soteriological frame than the model of the immortal soul. Here, soteriolo-
gy is firmly anchored not in the first but rather in the second article of the
Creed, in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Herewith, not only the
fact of death is taken very seriously, but it is the death of Jesus Christ in pa r-
ticular that gets the highest importance. The death of Jesus Christ is neither
only one case among many others nor a kind of risky test, whether Jesus – as
well as other people – can make it through. Here, the death (and the resurrec-
tion) of Jesus Christ becomes a soteriological turning point.
Therefore, it is necessary that Christ really GLHG and not only went through
death. In order to conquer death, he had to really die.65 By a mere passing
through, death would not be conquered and beaten once for all but only for
the particular individual (i.e., Jesus in this case), which is similar to the model
of immortal soul. Therefore, Christ had to take up death on himself and truly
die.66 The death of Jesus Christ is thus, in the end, death in God, and from
now on it is a lasting moment of God’s life. 67 Herewith, death as the ultimate
65
However, it is very rare when a theologian can state the really whole death of Jesus
Christ, although the immortal soul is not the problem in this conception because the soul
dies as well. The problem is rather the divinity of Christ and its involvement in human
death. Cf. below in this chapter.
66
Cf. CULLMANN, ,PPRUWDOLW\RI WKH6RXO, 15: “Because Jesus underwent death in all
its horror, not only in His body, but also in His soul […] He is regarded by the first Chris-
tians as the Mediator of salvation, He must indeed be the very one who in His death con-
quers death itself. He cannot obtain this victory by simply living on as an immortal soul,
thus fundamentally not dying. He can conquer death only by actually dying, by betaking
Himself to the sphere of death, the destroyer of life, to the sphere of ‘nothingness’, of
abandonment by God. When one wishes to overcome someone else, one must enter his ter-
ritory. Whoever wants to conquer death must die; he must really cease to live.” Similarly
JÜNGEL, 'HDWK, 111–112 (partly my own translation): “The Easter stories describe the out-
come of this encounter. They tell of a YLFWRU\. However, it is significant that the description
is not of a God who strides through the gates of death as though through a triumphal arch.
Death is not vanquished by simply disposing of it and leaving it behind. […] leaving death
behind can only mean: to have it in front of us anew. Death remains the old death. All that
happens is the eternal recurrence of the same.” And ibid., 121: “[T]he risen One is pro-
claimed as the crucified One. It is not just a matter of saying that this dead man is alive or
that he lives on. The resurrection does not cancel out the crucifixion.”
67
JÜNGEL, 'HDWK, 112, drives this idea to an extreme point when he says that death has
left in God a “sting” from now and forever so that God is the one who “has capacity for
LQILQLWH suffering, and it is because of his love that he suffers infinitely. 7KLV is why he is
death’s conqueror.”
enemy is definitely beaten and the road to good finitude and to the resurrec-
tion is opened.
The death of Jesus Christ shapes the pattern of and creates the necessary
background for every following thought about death. It is thus the opposite
approach as in the previous model: here, the general anthropological concep-
tion of death is not applied to Christology, but it is rather the death (and re s-
urrection) of Jesus Christ from which all anthropological key principles are
derived for the conception of death (and of resurrection) in general.68
Dead Jesus Christ is then resurrected by the Father. Resurrection is a new
creation, a new act of creation, 69 a new creation from nothing, 70 which as the
perfect self-revelation of God even surpasses the first creation. 71
&ULWLTXHRIWKH7RWDO'HDWK7KHRU\
This conception, apostrophized by some as total destruction or “annihila-
tion”,72 has been criticized for its inability to maintain the continuity of hu-
man identity beyond death, for the impossibility to call the dead in the Last
Judgement to be responsible for their lives in front of God (if death is a total
annihilation, there is nobody to be called; nevertheless, it is responsibility that
is indestructible in human life73), and also for the general philosophical in-
communicability of resurrection, if there should be total discontinuity after
death.74
All this criticism is closely bound to the first and most serious point: When
death means total death and total interruption of all relations, i.e., when death
means total discontinuity, who will it be, who shall be resurrected, when
nothing outlasts death? How is continuity within total discontinuity possible?
How can it be ensured, at least in thought, that the resurrected one will be
identical with the deceased, i.e., that it will be me who will be resurrected and
not my perfect double or copy? 75
68
Cf. ibid., 120–121.
69
CULLMANN, ,PPRUWDOLW\RIWKH6RXO, 16; JÜNGEL, 'HDWK, 111: resurrection is a crea-
tion of a “new man”.
70
J. RINGLEBEN, :DKUKDIW DXIHUVWDQGHQ =XU %HJUQGXQJ GHU 7KHRORJLH GHV OHEHQGL
JHQ*RWWHV (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998), 119 with reference to Rom 4:17.
71
Ibid., 122.
72
GRESHAKE, 7RGXQG$XIHUVWHKXQJ, 114.
73
Cf. GRESHAKE and LOHFINK, 1DKHUZDUWXQJ, 120.
74
GRESHAKE, 7RGXQG$XIHUVWHKXQJ, 114–115.
75
J. HICK, 'HDWK DQG (WHUQDO /LIH (Lousville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994),
279–296, tries to avoid further problems by conceiving resurrection without any hesitation
as a creation of a double: resurrection is “divine creation in another space of an exact ps y-
cho-physical ‘replica’ of the deceased person” (ibid., 279). However, Hick ends in a wild
speculation about multiple spaces and multiple replicas bringing his idea of resurrection
very close to a certain conception of reincarnation.
The authors representing this conception tend to see the resurrection in

terms of a new creation or of a re-creation of what was kept in God, namely
in God’s memory. 76 However, that is not a solution, because there is no con-
tinuity of identity. On the contrary, the problem becomes worse: With a new
creation, a new subject emerges.
“The reawakening of resurrection would be for him a new creation. The man who rises at
the resurrection may be like the man who died but he cannot be the same as he – since it
necessarily follows that with death the man who was has reached his definitive end.” 77
In its wholly legitimate tendency to leave all activity on God’s side and to as-
cribe the continuity over the boundary of death to God’s grace and only to it,
this approach rules out any bearer of a possible continuity on the side of hu-
mans. Therefore, the troublesome question still remains, whether this en-
deavor of leaving all continuity on God’s side does not necessarily make any
continuity over the boundary of death impossible. At the same time, as al-
ready emphasized above, this continuity of identity – that I will be me and
not my perfect clone, double or copy – is absolutely fundamental for Chris-
tian soteriology (including the idea of Last Judgement as the basic moment
for reestablishing of justice where it must be necessary to call every single
individual to responsibility, cf. below, Ch. 9.6.2). Hence, is it really possible
to leave simply everything only on God and settle for a paradox of hoped
continuity without any real continuity, or to refer to a mystery higher than our
reason that, although death is total end for humans, God can resurrect them
without creating, in fact, only an ideal double? 78
Nevertheless, even if theology would be satisfied with this paradoxical
“solution”, this conception still would be contradictory regarding the wider
76
Cf. JÜNGEL, 'HDWK, 120–121: The resurrection is the final gathering of all in God
based on the actualization of “redeemed past”. “The past which is redeemed is a past in the
presence of God. It is he who makes it present to himself, and in so doing – here at least
the word is appropriate – glorifies it. The past in the presence of God cannot in any sense
be a dead past.” “Our life is KLGGHQ in his life.” CULLMANN, ,PPRUWDOLW\RIWKH 6RXO, 15:
“Furthermore, if life is to issue out of so genuine a death as this a new divine act of crea-
tion is necessary. And this act of creation calls back to life not just a part of the man but
the whole man – all that God had created and death had annihilated.” RINGLEBEN,
:DKUKDIW DXIHUVWDQGHQ, e.g. 106 or 110, speaks about new creation (“Neuschöpfung”) or
even explicitly about re-creation (“Wiedererschaffung”).
77
RATZINGER, (VFKDWRORJ\, 251. Similarly KOLÁŘ, 1HVPUWHOQRVW, 215: “After the res-
urrection from the dead, God will surely have some relation to the newly created people.
However, these people will not be identical with those who used to live here on earth. They
may have be perfectly alike them, however, they will not be them because they perished in
death totally.” Cf. also HENNING, “Was ist, wenn ich sterbe?”, who deals with the danger
of a double extensively, criticizes heavily the total-death theory and tends, therefore, to a
modified conception of immortal soul.
78
Cf. RINGLEBEN, :DKUKDIWDXIHUVWDQGHQ, 114.
frame of creation: on one hand, this conception counts on God’s omnipo-

tence, which can overcome even total death; on the other hand, this omnip o-
tent God is obviously not able to create his creation in a way, which would
stand up to death: “What kind of omnipotence is this, that has to let its crea-
tion to perish first, in order to recreate it the more gloriously again?” 79 Does
not the total death cast doubt upon creation as such? The conception of im-
mortal soul points exactly to this question and to the appreciation of human
created structure and equipment, stressing the grace of creation to be stronger
than the power of death. The conception of total death, on the other hand,
takes more seriously the radicality of human freedom and its corruption by
sin: the unnecessary and contigent fact of sin and death and their radicality is
the fundamental fact in the course of human history, which makes the unsur-
passable justifying grace of God necessary. However, the question remains if
this can happen only at the cost of total discontinuity. Simultaneously, this
problem shows in a clear way, how far and deep the power of sin and its cor-
ruption reaches, so that the final question is: Is there anything LQ KXPDQV
WKHPVHOYHV, which would be stronger than sin and death? The attempt to see
the answer in the only one-sided relation of God to humans obviously does
not solve the problem.
Should there be no continuity over the boundary of death, the whole con-
struction falls apart from within. This is most obvious when applied to soteri-
ology and to the person of Jesus Christ himself: “Jesus Christ may have died
for us, however, not us but someone else will get a share on the eternal life.
The promises, once given to us, will be fulfilled upon someone else – upon
our perfect doubles.”80 Then, the kingdom of God would not be a fulfillment
of our history but rather its replacement. And, what is the worst, Jesus Christ
himself would be present only in his ideal copy, because it also applies him:
if he really died, in the strong sense of the word, and if there is no continuity,
then what can be resurrected would be only his perfect double. That is aporet-
ic already regarding his humanity; regarding his divinity, the idea of a divine
double or copy is plainly absurd. Even more absurd than the idea of the death
of God.
Obviously, both concepts – the immortal soul and the total death – fail in
the soteriological respect. However, there does not seem to be a third or a
middle way, which would connect the strong sides and avoid the weak ones.
This would mean to unite total discontinuity and continuity.81 Both sketched
conceptions seem to be rather opposites. Nevertheless, the careful dear reader
has already certainly noticed my inclination to the total-death theory. Yet, as
79
KOLÁŘ, 1HVPUWHOQRVW, 215.
80
Ibid.
81
Cf. E. STOCK, “Tod V. Dogmatisch”, in 75(, vol.33, ed. G. MÜLLER et al. (Berlin:
De Gruyter, 2002), 616–617.
'HDWKRI-HVXV&KULVW±'HDWKRI*RG 269
shown above, this theory also needs some corrections, resp. better answers to
its weak points. I will try to propose my own solution based on the total-death
approach, mainly for two reasons: it takes seriously death and sin, which
makes anthropology much more vivid, because it opens a wide space for phe-
nomens of life. At the same time, within this stress on anthropology and ha-
martiology, cross and resurrection of Christ play the central soteriological
role, which they should have. However, I will have to avoid the dangers of
this approach. On the anthropological level, I will counter the main problem
of continuity by pointing to the essential role of the SURSHUQDPH, which goes
far beyond of its importance as a sole QRPHQ (cf. above, Ch. 6.2.2); on the
soteriological level, I will develop a concept of RQWRORJLFDO UHORFDWLRQ RI
GHDWK in the cross of Jesus Christ (cf. below, subch. 3.2).
Yet first, I will turn back to Christology and deal with the importance of
the cross and with at least some conceptions in history of theology, which
tried to take Christ’s death on the cross in its ultimate seriousness: as the
death of God.
2. Death of Jesus Christ – Death of God

2. Death of Jesus Christ – Death of God
7KH&URVVRI-HVXV&KULVW
The focus on the cross as the fundamental soteriological event is a traditional
stress of the western theology since times of old. However, as shown above,
when the person of Jesus Christ is conceived to be rather divine, where the
divinity is absolutely immutable and impassible and thus untouchable by
death, and when on the human side the immortal soul is added as the tradition
did it for long centuries, then the fundamental importance of the cross gets
lost – the cross can actually be bypassed and it becomes obsolete because sal-
vation takes places elsewhere and otherwise than in the death of Jesus Christ
on the cross. The resulting picture is somewhat strange: in the history of
Christian thought, there stand immediately next to each other, yet without any
necessary mediation, the powerful tradition of the divine Jesus Christ with
impassible divinity hand in hand with the immortal soul on one side. On the
other side, there is the simultaneous stress on the importance of Christ’s
cross, which brings the redemption from our sins that is so often pictured in
various artworks, songs and in the liturgy. 82 It is a result of the theological
82
This can be seen nicely already in JOHN OF DAMASCUS, ([SRVLWLR ILGHL 71–80 (III,
27–IV, 7) and 84 (IV, 11) where Damascenus vividly describes all assets of Christ’s cross.
However, Christ’s death as death of his body only, in fact, cannot bring anything of those.
With his systematization, Damascenus laid the fundaments of the future theology where
these two ideas exist in a parallel way next to each other for long centuries: the soteriologi-
cal stress on the cross and the ontological inability to meet its importance; the tendency to
inability to unite two different theological ORFL, and also a result of the deci-
sion to start with an abstract term of God rather than with God’s self-
revelation in Jesus Christ. 83
The crucifixion of Jesus is the best witnessed historical fact of Jesus’ life,
actually the only fact reliably witnessed from extra-biblical sources. Jesus
was crucified and died on 14 th Nisan 30 (according to John) or on 15 th Nisan
27 or 34 (according to the synoptic Gospels). 84 However, the cross alone does
not bring the theological answers. Alone and as such, as a historical event, the
cross rather is and makes speechless:
“The cross is silent and renders all silent. God was silent. Jesus dies. The disciples ran
away. The cross provides us with no further understanding of human experience. There is
no route from there to the resurrection message. The cross is soteriologically silent.” 85
Standing isolated and alone, the cross tells only a story of a man condemned
as a political rioter who died on a cross as many before him. Here, the cross
would tell only a story of a particular life, which, in the end, failed. The cross
seems to rebut everything that Jesus preached. It makes the impression that
God has left and forgotten him. As such, the cross is no more than a useless
heroic death of a just man, a sacrifice without any guarantee, an irrational
leap into uncertainty of what comes next.
Should the cross be the final point of previous expectations and develop-
ment, then there are some motifs that were traditionally connected with the
meaning of the cross and offered interpretations independent of Easter. All
are mutually intertwinned:
a) &URVVDVVDFULILFH, following and closing the Old Testament tradition of
sacrifice for guilt and sin (Lev 4–5 and 14; Rom 3:25; Heb 9; Rev 5:6). The
sacrifice brings the reconciliation with God and averts a punishment for of-
fences bigger than humans can redress. However, these sacrifices needed to
be repeated. Seen from the perspective of Good Friday, the question arises
how can a particular sacrifice be conceived as an ultimate sacrifice once for
all? And still, a sacrifice justifies this life – how could it transcend the frame
of this life and bring a victory over death?
b) &URVVDVYLFDULRXVDFW (Lev 16; John 1:29) – this motif is closely joined
with the previous one, it is actually another dimension of sacrifice: instead of
many, one dies bearing their sins. However, how could such death be thought
see salvation in the cross, but to carry it out rather in the divinization of human, as it is the
case e.g. in Thomas. Cf. O.H. PESCH, 7KRPDVYRQ$TXLQ*UHQ]HXQG*U|H0LWWHODOWHUOL
FKHU7KHRORJLH(LQH(LQIKUXQJ, 2nd ed. (Mainz: Matthias Grünewald Verlag, 1989), 329.
83
Cf. J. MOLTMANN, 7ULQLW\ DQGWKH .LQJGRP 7KH 'RFWULQH RI *RG, trans. M. KOHL
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 21–23.
84
85
of in order to conceive it as a death universally for all? Can a particular ind i-

vidual represent many or even all?
c) &URVVDVWKHGHDWKRIWKHFKRVHQRQH, who was supposed to lead and to
be followed (Isa 7:14–15; 9:5–6; 11:1–5; Da 7:13–14; Mat 16:27; Mat 20:28;
Lk 24:26; Acts 3:13,26). In this case, the cross as such would rather be a fail-
ure of all hopes leaving behind a paradoxical and counter-factual conviction
that it still had some sense.
d) Cross as a concretization of the VXIIHULQJVHUYDQW (Isa 52:13–53:12; 1Pt
2:21–25). This motif actually binds together and concretizes all the previous
ones. However, regarding the identity of the suffering servant, it remains un-
clear, whether this figure can be simply conceived as an individual, or wheth-
er it is a collective person referring to the nation of Israel. 86
All these motifs have their importance and their SDUWLFXODYHUL (and I will
deal with some of them more in the next chapter, cf. below, Ch. 8). Without
resurrection, however, they all end in aporias because they are missing the
very point that would give them a clear meaning and a basis for soteriological
development of their important moments. In itself, the cross is unpleasantly
concrete and particular: it is a cross in one particular moment in time and of
one particular person so that common ideas and expectations can be hardly
projected into it if it is not specified how does this particular event relate to
other times and human lives. Moreover: it is a cross, which has brought
death. It is thus unpleasantly crude, because it is rather a thick line, the end.
The cross gets its bearing soteriological dimension only IURPWKHSHUVSHF
WLYH RI UHVXUUHFWLRQ.87 Only resurrection sheds a clear light on the cross and
on what has happened on the cross.
Only from the perspective of resurrection is it possible to state and show the full meaning
of what E. Käsemann tried to say starting with the theology of the cross: “The sole distin-
guishing feature that radically separates Christianity and its Lord from other religions and
their gods is the cross.” And I.U. Dalferth adds: “Ernst Käsemann’s assertion reminds us
emphatically that the decisive difference between Christians and non-Christians does not
lie in the divergence between their resurrection hopes and ideas of God, their distinctive
concepts of reality or expectations of salvation, their attitudes to life or their lifestyles, but
that any differences in this area are due to one fundamental distinction that is symbolized
by the cross. […] We can reach an understanding about concepts of God; together we can
86
Cf. H.-J. HERMISSON, 'HXWHURMHVDMD ± , Biblischer Kommentar, Altes
Testament XI/3 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017), 309–469, esp. 455 – 460; U.
BERGES, -HVDMD±, HThK AT (Freiburg: Herder, 2015), 208–278, esp. 227–228.
87
Next to Dalferth, Pokorný and others who stress the perspective of resurrection cf. al-
so MOLTMANN, 7KH &UXFLILHG *RG, 182: “Only in the light of his resurrection from the
dead does his death gain that special, unique saving significance which it cannot achieve
otherwise, even in the light of the life that he lived […], because only it says who really
suffered and died here.” M. WOLTER, “‘Für uns gestorben’. Wie gehen wir sachgerecht mit
dem Tod Jesu um?”, in )U XQV JHVWRUEHQ 6KQH ± 2SIHU ± 6WHOOYHUWUHWXQJ, ed. V.
HAMPEL and R. WETH (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2010), 4.
admit our awareness of the utter dependence of our existence; we do not dispute the role of
the religious dimension in helpig us to cope with the contingency of human life; and we
can come to an arrangement concerning organized religion and the church. But at the cross
there is a parting of the ways. Before the cross all our deductions and conclusions; our ef-
forts to illuminate, clarify, and provide metaphysical explanations; and our attempts at
moral legitimization and aesthetic assesment come to naught. The cross is an affront: it
contradicts all our expectations and all that we take for granted. It demands that we revise
our ideas about God and about our life and our world.”88
Only from the perspective of resurrection is it clear ZKR died on the cross. In
this way, the cross gets its fundamental context: the context of God’s life in
connection with the context of our lives. 89 Only here, the cross gets its full
meaning, depth and radicality, which should not be belittled or put aside.90
On the contrary: the perspective of resurrection stresses the more that the
cross must be taken really seriously now. The context of God’s life as the
immediate and fundamental context of the cross does not make the meaning
of the cross easier. On the contrary, it makes it deeper and much more radical.
Now, it is clear who died on the cross: it is clear that this death was the GHDWK
RI*RG. This is a dimension of the cross, which has hanged in the air through-
out the whole history of theology since the oldest times. However, in spite of
the importance and centrality of this problem, only few theologians dared to
consider it deeper. Therefore, it is time to think of it as deep as it gets, to the
end.
'HDWKRI*RG"
To take the cross of Jesus Christ really seriously in its whole depth and rad i-
cality means to take it as the cross, on which God-Self dies. The death of Je-
sus Christ is death of God. Until the 20 th century, this would have been a
shocking expression. It had been intentionally avoided in theology for a very
long time, almost for 2000 years, until the theology of the 20th century – en-
couraged to it also through some philosophical impulses – dared to thematize
it directly and say it with full awareness. Yet still, the assertion that the death
of Jesus was the death of God needs to be specified, corrected, and elaborated
more fully. First, I will mention some important stations and conceptions,
which had the courage to speak about the death of God. Then, I will develop
my own approach.
88
Both quotes from DALFERTH, &UXFLILHGDQG5HVXUUHFWHG, 40, quoting E. KÄSEMANN,
'HU5XIGHU)UHLKHLW, 5th ed. (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1972), 90.
89
90
Cf. ibid., 49–52, where Dalferth points to four common belittlements of the cross of
Christ.
7KH2OG&KXUFK
The problem of the death of God was known already in the old church. It
comes out clearly in many texts in the form of particular remarks and asser-
tions, which, however, remain mostly further undeveloped. 91 Justin Martyr
holds firmly the immutability of God, yet still, he says that God Logos suf-
fered: “homo factus est ut perpessionum nostrarum particeps factus.” 92 Ire-
naeus writes about the incarnated Word of God, which was crucified so that
“the impassible was made passible”. 93 Melito puts it as a paradox: the impass-
ible suffers. 94 Tertullian characterizes the Christian faith against Marcion as
“mortuum deum credere”, while against Praxeas he refuses this kind of
speech about God.95 The patristic era obivously knew about this problem,
dared to express it, but the Fathers could not really and consistently think this
idea. Symptomatically, and similarly to the following church tradition, the
patristics also recoiled from it in the last step.
The FUX[LQWHUSUHWXP was always the interpretation of 0DW, i.e., of Jesus’ cry on the
cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The question was: who cries here?
If divinity was impassible, then, only humanity can suffer. However, in the case of Jesus
Christ as true God and true man, this meant to split his natures, which is exactly what the
old church often did. Ambrose for example, as Athanasius or the Antiochenes, claimed that
here only man cries.96 According to Cyril, Jesus cries here not in his own name but rather
in the name of the common human nature. He cries to the Father not for his own sake but
for our sake.97
In modern times, a paradoxically similar position is found in theologians who stand
close to the liberal position and conceive this moment as the fundamental self-denial of
Jesus, in which he, at the same time, points to the Father and becomes fully transparent for
the Father. With his self-denial, Jesus points away from himself to the Father and right in
doing this he is the Christ. This is the case e.g. of P. Tillich, who conceived the death of
Jesus as a self-sacrifice of Jesus, i.e., of everything finite, to himself as the Christ, the rep-
resentative of New Being.98 M.D. Krüger speaks about the cross as the moment, where Je-
sus literally “crossed himself through” and in this self-negation he sacrificed himself whol-
91
To the following cf. ELERT, 'HU$XVJDQJ, 71–75, 95–97.
92
JUSTINUS, “Apologia” II, 13, in 3*6, ed. J.-P. MIGNE (Paris, 1857), 467.
93
IRENAEUS, “Adversus haereses” III, 16, 6, in 3* 7, ed. J.-P. MIGNE (Paris, 1857),
926.
94
Quoted in ELERT, 'HU$XVJDQJ, 73.
95
Cf. ibid. and TERTULLIAN, “Adversus Marcionem” II, 16, in 3/ 2, ed. J.-P. MIGNE
(Paris, 1844), 303; IDEM, “Adversus Praxeam” 29, in ibid., 193–195.
96
PELIKAN, 7KH&KULVWLDQ7UDGLWLRQ, 245–246.
97
ELERT, 'HU$XVJDQJ, 95. Similarly today WHITE, 7KH,QFDUQDWH/RUG, 308–339, who
interprets synoptic Gospels with Johannine high Christology in order to interpret away der-
eliction, separation from God, and despair of Jesus. According to him, it is a cry of desire
and hope for the humankind and for himself because Jesus in his divine self-consciousness
knew the aim of his suffering. However, this would mean that Jesus on the cross says
something what he actually does not mean.
98
Cf. TILLICH, 6\VWHPDWLF7KHRORJ\II, 123.
ly to the Unconditioned. In this way, he became the true image of God. In the self-denial of
his own divinity, Jesus became transparent to God all the more.99
Paradoxically, what should be considered as the death of God in the beginning, was
concieved in this particular line of thought, in the end, as the confirmation that it was not
God who died here but rather his truest human witness. 100
A different interpretation of this verse is provided by theologians of the 20 th century,
who conceive the death of Jesus Christ as the death of God. E. Jüngel stresses the “christo-
logical as”: Here, God cries DV the human Jesus. And the human Jesus cries to the absent
God, which proves his relatedness to God, DV the Son of God. 101 J. Moltmann, then, puts it
radically: here, God cries against God. 102
As already stated before, the impassibility of God was a commonplace in the

theology of the old church in the East and in the West (cf. above, Ch. 3.2.1).
For both wings of the old theology, Jesus Christ was a personification of the
soteriological paradox that he could and could not suffer at the same time. In
the western theology, as represented by /HR, and his Tome, the difference of
the natures and their separate actions are stressed so that it was clear that
what suffered was the humanity of Christ only, and, based on the FRPPXQLFD
WLR LGLRPDWXP, the suffering could be predicated about the whole person of
Jesus Christ. The eastern &\ULOOLQH conception of Christ’s hypostatic unity
was different. The subject of all actions was not the person of Jesus Christ, in
which both natures concur, but rather – based on the PLDSK\VLV formula – the
divine Logos, as the second person of the Trinity. Whereas in Leo, the divine
nature was the subject of non-suffering and the human nature of suffering, in
Cyrils view “both the suffering according to the flesh and the not-suffering
according to the divine nature have God as their subject”. This is because
“whatever is predicated of Christ’s flesh must be predicated of the Word who
is the genuine owner of that flesh”. 103
This, however, leads straight to the assertion of the death of God (in this
case: of the Logos). And Cyril was indeed able to write this extreme notion
down. In the 12th anathema added to his third letter to Nestorius he says: “The
Word of God suffered in the flesh, was crucified in the flesh, and tasted death
in the flesh.”104 Compared to the common sense of his time, Cyril seems to go
really far in stating the suffering of the Word of God. However, even he
could not make it consistently to the end. The suffering is, in the end, restrict-
ed again only to the flesh: the triple addition of “in the flesh” means “in the
99
KRÜGER, 'DVDQGHUH%LOG&KULVWL, 504–505. Cf. also above, Ch. 2.1.
100
Cf. among others e.g. HAIGHT, -HVXV, 45 (more to Haight’s conception below, Ch.
11.1.1)
101
JÜNGEL, *RGDVWKH0\VWHU\, 361–362. To Jüngel cf. below, subch. 2.2.5.
102
MOLTMANN, 7KH&UXFLILHG*RG, 150–151. To Moltmann cf. below, subch. 2.2.6.
103
ANATOLIOS, “Soteriological Grammar”, 171.
104
CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA, “Third Letter to Nestorius”, in MCGUCKIN , 6W&\ULORI$O
H[DQGULD, 275 (= 3*77, 121D). Cf. above, Ch. 3.2.1.
flesh only”. In the last step, Cyril paradoxically makes an Antiochene-

western sidestep and differentiates the natures without any higher unity. Di-
vinity must remain untouched.105
Cyril was close, but he could not think of the cross as of the death of God
either. The topic was then raised again in the so-called WKHRSDVFKLWLFFRQWUR
YHUV\ (cf. above, Ch. 3.2.1). The Scythian monks, trying to defend Chalcedon
against Nestorianism with a cosinstent stress on the unity of Jesus Christ
rooted in the trinitarian K\SRVWDVLV of the Logos (standing with this in the line
with the nascent neo-Chalcedonianism), came with the formula “one of the
Trinity was crucified”.106 This was tough: the suffering was ascribed here not
to Jesus Christ, to the incarnated Logos but directly to the person of the Trini-
ty. The Scythian monks may have searched for a compromise or rather a con-
currence between Chalcedonian two natures and the Cyrilline PLDSK\VLV
formula,107 but regardless of their motivation, they saw precisely what Chal-
cedon would mean if there should be a real unity of Christ’s person, on which
it is necessary to insist: “The goal of the whole endeavour is […] to validate
the Chalcedonian system of language in the sense of the unity of Christ.” 108 It
is, therefore, no wonder that they had no success with their formula in Rome,
which primarily stressed the twoness of the natures and would not accept any
hint of monophysitism. However, it was this stress that led to the final com-
promise, in fact turning back to the position of Cyril. One of the versions of
the formula sounded “unus ex Trinitate passus in carne” and the addition of
“in the flesh”, which stems from 1Pt 4:1, opened the possibility of restricting
the suffering only to the human nature of Christ: Christ suffered in the flesh
and only in the flesh. This was, then, acceptable also for Rome, which con-
firmed the Scythian formula in 533.109
In the Eastern theology, the final dot made the 5th Council in Constantino-
ple 553, which, in its 10th anathematism, codified – together with the neo-
Chalcedonian interpretation of Chalcedon – the original Cyrilline solution:
“Ei; tij ouvc o`mologei/( to.n evstaurwme,non sarki. ku,rion h`mw/n VIhsou/n
Cristo,n ei;nai Qeo.n avl hqino.n kai. ku,rion th/j do,xhj kai. e[na th/j a`gi,aj
105
Cf. above, Ch. 3.2.1., quotation at the footnote 142.
106
The formula had different variations, all, however, going in the same direction, cf.
ELERT, 'HU$XVJDQJ, 107. GRILLMEIER, &KULVW2/2, 317, mentions three variants: unus ex
Trinitate “passus”, “crucifixus” or even “mortuus”. It followed the theopaschitically ex-
tended Trishagion from 510 attributed to Petrus Fullo: “Holy God, holy mighty, holy i m-
mortal, crucified for our sake, have mercy on us”, cf. ibid., 253–254. In general, it is a
remarkable, however probably only a linguistic detail that the debate, actually until the 20th
century, spoke mainly about VXIIHULQJ of Christ or of God and not directly about his death.
107
Cf. GRILLMEIER, &KULVW2/2, 327–333.
108
Ibid., 331.
109
Ibid., 340.
tria,doj\ o` toiou/toj avna,qema e;stw)”110 In the question of Christ’s suffering

regarding the unity of his person, all stress was hereby set on the little word
sarki.. The figure of FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP made it then possible to attri-
bute this human suffering to the person of Jesus Christ as such. 111 However,
the strict Chalcedonian consequence of the unity of Christ’s person, which
the Scythian monks with their formula precisely saw, was avoided, just the
same way as Cyril avoided the last step as well. The final compromise re-
mained only on the level of two natures, attributing the suffering only to the
humanity. It was not able to draw consequences within the Chalcedonian
frame for the unity of Christ’s person also, which would mean that God in his
divinity participates somehow in the suffering and death of Christ as well. As
long as the divine apathy and immutability was the highest norm – obviously
even higher than the Chalcedonian christological solution – no other solution
was possible. An other solution would require a different conception of God
and divinity. And that was not the case for a very long time in the history of
theology. Therefore, the solution of Constantinople II was actually estab-
lished and kept as the standard and orthodox solution until the 20 th century
and, within the official catholic and eastern-orthodox theology, it is still the
only acceptable answer to the question of Christ’s suffering and death. 112
0DUWLQ/XWKHU
Until the 20 th century, there were actually only two major exceptions, only
two thinkers who dared to talk theologically about the death of God and to
say: in Jesus Christ, God-Self died.113 The first was Martin Luther. He explic-
itely denies the above-mentioned classical solution of Constantinople II: “If I
would believe that only the human nature suffered for me, then Christ would
be a bad Messiah to me, he himself would rather need a Messiah.” 114 And
then, he draws the final consequence that Cyril and the tradition were not able
to draw: “God in his nature cannot die. But where God and human are unified
in one person, then it is truly said: God’s death, when the human dies who is
one thing or one person with God.” 115 Although Luther was not consistent in
110
'+ 432: “If anyone does not confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, who was crucified
LQWKHIOHVK, is true God and Lord of glory and one of the holy Trinity, let him be anathe-
ma.” Cf. GRILLMEIER&KULVW2/2, 341.
111
112
Cf. above, Ch. 5.
113
JÜNGEL, *RG DV WKH 0\VWHU\, 66, adds also the mystical medieval tradition and re-
minds on Meister Eckhart in particular.
114
LUTHER, “Vom Abendmahl Christi. Bekenntnis”, in :$26, 320,10–13. To Luthers
Christology with its strong and weak sides, with its inconsistencies and oscillations cf. in
general above, Ch. 3.2.5.
115
LUTHER, “Von den Konziliis und Kirchen”, in :$50, 590 and – together with the
previous quote – also FC SD VIII, in %6/., 1029–1031.
his statements and oscillated between a merge of both natures and the classi-
cal position of Constantinople II, his unrestrained thinking was unique, pro-
vocative and clear-sighted. After long centuries, someone was finally able to
draw the last consequences from the old distinctions. However, Luther re-
mained alone for another three hundred years.
*HRUJ:LOKHOP)ULHGULFK+HJHO
Maybe even more influential for modern theology than Luther with his theol-
ogy of the cross, but similarly alone-going was G.W.F. Hegel.116 In his work,
the idea of the death of God plays an important role in his search for the ulti-
mate and highest unity of all, of being and thinking, of universality and pa r-
ticularity, of eternity and finitude, of community and individuality, of identity
and non-identity – a unity, which thus must embrace also all difference and
negativity in order to come again to itself; a unity, which becomes fully self -
transparent to itself, self-reflecting, knowing about itself, i.e., a self-conscious
subjectivity. This absolute unity and subjectivity is God.
Thus, if God should not remain only a static being or objective idea with-
out any particular content, limited by what is not God, then he has to embrace
particularity and difference, yet these as KLVRZQ particularity and difference
in order to integrate, elevate, and overcome it. This is the basic structure of
Hegel’s dialectic crowned with the term of $XIKHEXQJ (sublation). And this is
also the structure of subjectivity as self-consciousness: of the finite subjectiv-
ity of human spirit as well as of the eternal subjectivity of God as Spirit. 117
The identical structure of both these subjectivities is the crucial point of H e-
gel’s philosophy of religion.
However, the final unity of the finite and eternal subjectivity cannot be ac-
complished in the finite and particular human reflection of the idea of the Ab-
solute. The human reflection as finite – be it in the elevated form of transcen-
dentality, which Hegel calls the “metaphysic of subjectivity” – can always be
116
Cf. primarily JÜNGEL, *RG DV WKH 0\VWHU\, 63–100, who, apart from other precise
observations, points also to the implementation of Luther’s theological emphases in the
late Hegel, including the speech of “death of death (mors mortis)”, cf. ibid., 90–93; J.
YERKES, 7KH&KULVWRORJ\RI+HJHO (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1978); KÜNG, ,QFDUQDWLRQ;
I. LANDA, “Smrt Boha – smrt smrti [Death of God – Death of Death]”, 7HRORJLFNiUHIOH[H
16 (2010/1), 76–92.
117
W. BONSIEPEN, “Einleitung”, in G.W.F. HEGEL, 3KlQRPHQRORJLH GHV *HLVWHV
(Hamburg: Meiner, 1988), XLIV, points out Hegel’s disputable presupposition of realistic
epistemology: “The conception of Hegel stands and falls with the presupposition that there
is experience of a substantial reality, which can be appropriated not only in the intuition, in
the feeling and in the imagination, but rather in the grasping thought.” Similarly LANDA,
“Smrt Boha”, 80–82, pointing to the criticism of D. Henrich.
only the opposite of the Absolute, its continual negation. 118 The final unity
has thus to be accomplished by God-Self. Therefore, exactly this negation
must be integrated into the idea of the Absolute as its own integral mo ment –
not only metaphorically but concretely. At this point, at the very end of his
early text )DLWK DQG .QRZOHGJH (1802), in the last (and very complex and
long) sentence, Hegel uses the phrase ‘death of God’ for the first time and
expresses with it the moment of negation within the Absolute. This moment
means in fact the death of God and it needs to be integrated into the process
of God’s life as a kind of “speculative Good Friday”. Only then, integrating
also his own negation, God can be conceived as real freedom. 119
Hegel obviously envisions an ontological concept, which is rooted in the
life of God as the ultimate frame of all reality. He sketches a sort of theogo-
ny, the process of God’s life, whose aim is to come to a self-conscious and
self-transparent subjectivity as the absolute Spirit. 120 The structure of the He-
gelian dialectic is thus a form of a trinitarian thought – and Hegel himself
conceives God as Trinity in the process of God’s life. However, he does it
slightly differently than the classical theological conception. In Hegel, God
goes through a life process as if in stages, from his abstract being through the
incarnation in Jesus Christ as the other of himself (GDVDQGHUHVHLQHUVHOEVW)
to the Spirit, who unites and sublates both and reconciles God and the world.
In this process, the death of Jesus Christ plays an important role. Hegel elabo-
rated it more in his 3KHQRPHQRORJ\RIWKH6SLULW and, in the first place, in his
/HFWXUHVRQWKH3KLORVRSK\RI5HOLJLRQ. From the perspective of construction
of theories, Hegel thus seeks “to interconnect the theory of religious con-
sciousness with philosophical theology (the theory of the Absolute)”. 121 The
moment of intersection of both these frames is his speculative Christology
and the moment of the death of Jesus Christ in particular.
In the 3KHQRPHQRORJ\ RI6SLULW, Hegel develops the thought that in Jesus
Christ, the originally universal – yet therefore abstract – Spirit, who has been
a common substance until now, after the rise of his self-consciousness be-
comes a particular subject. 122 The incarnation as an important step of God’s
trinitarian life-process is the essence of Christianity as revealed religion:
118
G.W.F. HEGEL, )DLWKDQG.QRZOHGJH, trans. W. CERF and H.S. HARRIS (New York:
State University of New York Press, 1977), 189.
119
Ibid., 190. Cf. JÜNGEL, *RG DV WKH 0\VWHU\, 63–76; KÜNG, 7KH ,QFDUQDWLRQ, 162–
174; D.S. ANDERSON, +HJHO¶V6SHFXODWLYH*RRG)ULGD\7KH'HDWKRI*RGLQ3KLORVRSKL
FDO3HUVSHFWLYH (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996), 186.
120
Cf. G.W.F. HEGEL, 3KHQRPHQRORJ\ RI 6SLULW, trans. A.V. MILLER (Oxford: Oxford
UP, 1977), 467–473.
121
LANDA, “Smrt Boha”, 84; YERKES, 7KH&KULVWRORJ\, 162.
122
Cf. HEGEL, 3KHQRPHQRORJ\, 426: The emerging self-consciousness of the Spirit is
“the night in which substance was betrayed and made itself into Subject”.
“This incarnation of the divine Being, or the fact that it essentially and directly has the
shape of self-consciousness, is the simple content of the absolute religion. In this religion
the divine Being is known as Spirit, or this religion is the consciousness of the divine B e-
ing that it is Spirit. For Spirit is the knowledge of oneself in the externalization of oneself;
the being that is the movement of retaining its self-identity in its otherness.”123
In Jesus Christ (although Hegel never mentions the name of Christ in the
Phenomenology124), the unity of the divine self-conscious Spirit and of the
human spirit (or mind) is constituted, which knows the Spirit as self-
consciousness, i.e., as Spirit: “Spirit is known as self-consciousness and to
this self-consciousness it is immediately revealed, for Spirit is this self-
consciousness itse1f. The divine nature is the same as the human, and it is
this unity that is beheld.” 125 This particular human “is the immediately pre-
sent God”.126
At the same time, incarnation is the self-emptying of God.127 However,
Hegel interprets this self-emptying as the ultimate power and strength of God:
“The absolute Being which exists as an actual self-consciousness seems to have come
down from its eternal simplicity, but by this coming down it has in fact attained for the
first time to its own highest essence. […] Thus the lowest is at the same time the highest;
the revealed which has come forth wholly on to the surface is precisely therein the most
profound. That the supreme Being is seen, heard, etc. as an immediately present self-
consciousness, this therefore is indeed the consummation of its Notion; and through this
consummation that Being is immediately present qua supreme Being.”128
The incarnation of God is not only his NHQRVLV but rather his SOHURVLV!129
This powerful divine self-emptying culminates in the death of Jesus Christ,
which means a twofold loss: it is “the loss of substance as well as of the Self,
it is the grief which expresses itself in the hard saying that ‘God is dead’.” 130
God, upon being negated by becoming a subject, negates himself once again
in this particularity in order to reconcile his divinity with his human particu-
larity: it is the idea “that by bringing to pass its own externalization, in its his-
torical incarnation and death, the divine Being has been reconciled with its
123
Ibid., 459; cf. 465: “There are thus three distinct moments: essence, being-for-self
which is the otherness of essence and for which essence is, and being-for-self, or the
knowledge of itself in the ‘other’. Essence beholds only its own self in its being-for-self; in
this externalization of itself it stays only with itself: the being-for-self that shuts itself out
from essence is essence’s knowledge of its own self.”
124
Cf. JÜNGEL, *RGDVWKH0\VWHU\, 89.
125
HEGEL, 3KHQRPHQRORJ\, 460.
126
Ibid., 462.
127
Ibid., 457.
128
Ibid., 460.
129
Cf. above, Ch. 5.5.
130
Ibid., 455.
[natural] existence.”131 This double negation, the reconciliation of the univer-

sal being of God with his particular existence, which both die and are over-
come and thus reconciled, is the Spirit. “The most painful negation, death,
belongs to God’s history and is constitutive for the speculative concept of
God: *RGLVVSLULW.”132
From the death of the incarnated God-man, the Spirit rises in the form of
common self-consciousness. “The dead divine Man or human God is LQKLP
VHOI the universal self-consciousness; this he has to become explicitly IRUWKLV
VHOIFRQVFLRXVQHVV.”133 The death of Christ makes the particular conscious-
ness of God universal. “[T]he non-being of this particular individual” is trans-
formed “into the universality of the Spirit who dwells in His community, dies
in it every day, and is daily resurrected.” 134 Thus, the point of Christology is
pneumatology; and pneumatology, in the end, is ecclesiology: the Spirit “is
its FRPPXQLW\”.135 From here, however, Hegel needs one more step to be
done: towards the absolute knowledge.136
131
Ibid., 475 (orig.: Es geht um die Vorstellung, “daß durch das *HVFKHKHQ der eigenen
Entäußerung des göttlichen Wesens, durch seine geschehene Menschwerdung und seinen
Tod das göttliche Wesen mit seinem Dasein versöhnt ist”, G.W.F. HEGEL, 3KlQRPHQROR
JLH GHV *HLVWHV [Hamburg: Meiner, 1988], 511). Cf. IDEM, 3KHQRPHQRORJ\, 476: “The
death of the Mediator is the death not only of his natural aspect or of his particular being-
for-self, not only of the already dead husk stripped of its essential Being, but also of the
abstraction of the divine Being. […] The death of this picture-thought contains, therefore,
at the same time the death of the abstraction of the divine Being which is not posited as
Self. That death is the painful feeling of the Unhappy Consciousness that *RG +LPVHOI LV
GHDG. This hard saying is the expression of innermost simple self-knowledge, the return of
consciousness into the depths of the night in which ‘I’ = ‘I’, a night which no longer di s-
tinguishes or knows anything outside of it. This feeling is, in fact, the loss of substance and
of its appearance over against consciousness; but it is at the same time the pure VXEMHFWLYLW\
of substance or the pure certainty of itself which it lacked when it was object, or the imme-
diate, or pure essence. This Knowing is the inbreathing of the Spirit, whereby Substance
becomes Subject, by which its abstraction and lifelessness have died, and Substance ther e-
fore has become DFWXDO and simple and universal Self-consciousness.”
132
JÜNGEL, *RGDVWKH0\VWHU\, 89.
133
HEGEL, 3KHQRPHQRORJ\, 473.
134
Ibid., 475; cf. 476: “The death of the Mediator as grasped by the Self is the superses-
sion of his objective existence or his SDUWLFXODU being-for-self: this particular being-for-self
has become a universal self-consciousness.”
135
Ibid., 473.
136
It is because “[i]n revealed religion the spirit knows itself only as the object of con-
sciousness and not yet as the unity of both, not yet as self-consciousness. Therefore reli-
gion must be overtaken by philosophy. But this final act in the history of the spirit is not
simply an overtaking of religion by philosophy, and certainly not making faith superfluous
through knowledge, as Hegel has constantly been accused. For, as far as the content of the
representations is concerned, the truth of revealed religion is identical with absolute
knowledge” (JÜNGEL, *RGDVWKH0\VWHU\, 80).
In the (QF\FORSHGLDRI 3KLORVRSKLFDO6FLHQFHV (1830) Hegel writes: “The

UHOLJLRQ […] can be considered as starting with the subject, in which religion
takes place, as well as starting in an objective way with the absolute Spir-
it.”137 While in his 3KHQRPHQRORJ\ Hegel went the first way, in his /HFWXUHV
RQWKH3KLORVRSK\RI5HOLJLRQ he goes the latter. Here, he elaborates more on
his speculative Christology and focuses also much more on the death of
Christ.138
The idea of God is the eternal reconciliation, which proceeds as the trini-
tarian process where the antithesis of God’s universality and particularity are
sublated: “God is the one who as living spirit distinguishes himself from him-
self, posits an other and in this other remains identical with himself, has in
this other his identity with himself.” 139 In the idea of God, the antithesis is
thus implicitly sublated. Now, it needs to be sublated also explicitely, in a
sensible external existence, where the final sublatedness of this antithesis is
the subject, a subjective consciousness of a particular and single human be-
ing.140 It is this point, where the antithesis became manifest and requires,
therefore, reconciliation, to which Hegel points when he refers to Gal. 4:4:
“When the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son.” 141
In the end, the antithesis is the incongruous difference between the eternal
God and the finite human. However, Hegel sees humanity with its finitude
and naturalness as evil. If God is good, then what the antithesis to God is
must be evil. Thus, it is the “other-being, the finitude, the weakness, the frail-
137
G.W.F. HEGEL, (Q]\NORSlGLH GHU SKLORVRSKLVFKHQ :LVVHQVFKDIWHQ , vol. III:
Die Philosophie des Geistes. Mit den mündlichen Zusätzen (Frankfurt am Main: Suhr-
kamp, 1970), § 554, 366.
138
Cf. P.C. HODGSON, +HJHODQG&KULVWLDQWKHRORJ\. $5HDGLQJRIWKH/HFWXUHVRQWKH
3KLORVRSK\RI5HOLJLRQ (New York: Oxford UP, 2007), 155–176.
139
HEGEL, /3K5 III, 311; cf. 321, fn. 196: “But we have already seen what God is in
and for himself: he is this life-process, the Trinity, in which the universal places itself over
against itself and therein remains identical with itself.”
140
Ibid., 313: “In order for it [this divine-human unity] to become a certainty for hu-
manity, God had to appear in the world in the flesh [cf. John 1:14]. The necessity that God
[has] appeared in the world in the flesh is an essential characteristic – a necessary deduc-
tion from what has been said previously, demonstrated by it – for only in this way can it
become a certainty for humanity; only in this way is it the truth in the form of certainty.”
And this had to be done in “MXVW RQH KXPDQ EHLQJ”: “The substantial unity [of God and
humanity] is what humanity implicitly is; hence it is something that lies beyond immediate
consciousness, beyond ordinary consciousness and knowledge. Hence it must stand over
against subjective consciousness, which relates to itself as ordinary consciousness and is
defined as such. That is exactly why the unity in question must appear for others as a sin-
gular human being set apart; it is not present in the others, but only in one from whom all
the others are excluded.”
141
Ibid., 310.
ty of human nature”. 142 It does, nevertheless, no harm to the divine unity,

which overcomes this evil otherness with love, i.e., as spirit, and builds a real
unity: “[T]he substantiality of the unity of divine and human nature comes to
consciousness for humanity in such a way that a human being appears to con-
sciousness as God, and God appears to it as a human being.” 143 Hegel tries –
as is obvious throughout his text – to keep up the classical christological em-
phases on YHUHGHXV±YHUHKRPR:
“It is the Son of Man who speaks thus, in whom this expression, this activity of what sub-
sists in and for itself, is essentially the work of God – not as something suprahuman that
appears in the shape of an external revelation, but rather as [God's] working in a human
being, so that the divine presence is essentially identical with this human being.” 144
The turning point is, then, the death of Jesus Christ as the death of the unity
of human and divine. It is a turning point not only for faith but rather for the
whole history – and for God himself. 145 “*RGKDVGLHG*RGLVGHDG – this is
the most frightful of all thoughts, that everything eternal and true is not, that
negation itself is found in God.” 146
These few lines contain the ultimate statement, where the death of God in
Jesus Christ is – finally, after many centuries since Chalcedon – taken with
ultimate seriousness and where the proper consequence is drawn from it. The
death of Jesus Christ is also the death of God, not only of his human nature.
The human death as the deep point of negation is now a part of God’s own
life.
“But this humanity in God – and indeed the most abstract form of humanity, the greatest
dependence, the ultimate weakness, the utmost fragility – is natural death. ‘God himself is
dead,’ it says in a Lutheran hymn, expressing an awareness that the human, the finite, the
fragile, the weak, the negative are themselves a moment of the divine, that they are within
God himself, that finitude, negativity, otherness are not outside of God and do not, as ot h-
erness, hinder unity with God. Otherness, the negative, is known to be a moment of the
divine nature itself.”147
Nevertheless, Hegel specifies, what this point means. It is not the end at all.
*RGDFWXDOO\GRHVQRWGLHLQWKHIXOOVHQVHRIWKHZRUG; he is not annihilated in
142
Ibid., 311–312.
143
Ibid., 312.
144
Ibid., 320.
145
Cf. Ibid., 321, fn. 196: “With the death of Christ, however, the reversal of con-
sciousness begins. The death of Christ is the midpoint upon which consciousness turns;
and in the comprehension of it lies the difference between outward comprehension and that
of faith, which entails contemplation with the Spirit, from the Spirit of truth, the Holy Spir-
it. […] Only faith comprehends and is conscious of the fact that in Christ this truth, which
has being in and for itself, is envisaged in its process, and that through him this truth has
been revealed for the first time.”
146
Ibid., 323, fn. 199.
147
Ibid., 326. To the mentioned Lutheran hymn cf. JÜNGEL, *RGDVWKH0\VWHU\, 64.
this process because a twist happens. Instead of God, something other dies:
death itself comes to its own death. It is a negation overcome by its own
power: “the negation of negation”. 148
“[T]he process does not come to a halt at this point; rather, a reversal takes place: God, that
is to say, maintains himself in this process, and the latter is only the death of death. God
rises again to life, and thus things are reversed.” 149
Obviously, death is conceived here not as a mere separation of body and soul,
as a moment of disintegration, it is not an event but rather an effective power,
with which something happens here. It is the power of negation, which, as
such, is negated again and thus reversed. In the middle of death, life rises
again. This is resurrection, resurrection from death. 150 However, the im-
portant point now is who or what is resurrected.
While God comes out of death because he is infinite, right at the point of
death and thanks to it, it becomes clear what is the alien element: it is the fi-
nite humanity that – albeit being a moment of God’s life – finds in death its
end and is overcome:
“Concerning Christ's death, we have still finally to emphasize the aspect that it is God who
has put death to death, since he comes out of the state of death. In this way, finitude, hu-
man nature, and humiliation are posited of Christ – as of him who is strictly God – as
something alien. It is evident that finitude is alien to him and has been taken over from an
other; this other is the human beings who stand over against the divine process. It is their
finitude that Christ has taken [upon himself], this finitude in all its forms, which at its fur-
thest extreme is evil. This humanity, which is itself a moment in the divine life, is now
characterized as something alien, not belonging to God. This finitude, however, on its own
account (as against God), is evil, it is something alien to God. But he has taken it [upon
himself] in order to put it to death by his death. As the monstrous unification of these abs o-
lute extremes, this shameful death is at the same time infinite love. It is out of infinite love
that God has made himself identical with what is alien to him in order to put it to death.
This is the meaning of the death of Christ. It means that Christ has borne the sins of the
world and has reconciled God [with the world (2 Cor. 5:18–19)].”151
Yet still, Hegel’s conception of reconciliation is reconciliation of opposites.

Humanity is opposite to divinity because it is finite, which means for Hegel
that it is evil. He repeats it too often to be ignored. Therefore, the final recon-
ciliation must mean overcoming evil, which means, in the end, RYHUFRPLQJ
KXPDQLW\.
“For the true consciousness of spirit, the finitude of humanity has been put to death in the
death of Christ. This death of the natural has in this way a universal significance: finitude
and evil are altogether destroyed. Thus the world has been reconciled; by this death it has
148
HEGEL, /3K5III, 324, fn. 199.
149
Ibid.
150
Cf. ibid., 323, fn. 199: “God rises again to life, and thus things are reversed.”
151
Ibid.
been implicitly delivered from its evil. In the true understanding [Verstehen] of death, the
relation of the subject as such [to death] comes into view in this way. Here any merely his-
torical view comes to an end; the subject itself is drawn into the process. The subject feels
the anguish of evil and of its own estrangement, which Christ has taken upon himself by
putting on humanity, while at the same time destroying it by his death.” 152
Obviously, Hegel cannot sufficiently distinguish the evil from the humanity.
Through the idea of finitude as evil, humanity itself gets an evil taste and
must be thus overcome in the death of God:
“On the one hand, the meaning attached to death is that through death the human element
is stripped away and the divine glory comes into view once more – death is a stripping
away of the human, the negative. But at the same time death itself is this negative, the fur-
thest extreme to which humanity as natural existence ‘is exposed; God himself is [involved
in] this.’”153
Therefore, the final summarization says:

“This is the explication of reconciliation: that God is reconciled with the world, or rather
that God has shown himself to be reconciled with the world, that even the human is not
something alien to him, but rather that this otherness, this self-distinguishing, finitude as it
is expressed, is a moment in God himself, although, to be sure, it is a disappearing mo-
ment.”154
The YHUHKRPR, stressed in the beginning, vanishes in the end. Humanity “is
stripped away” and God in his divinity, in “what-subsists-in-itself returns to
itself, first comming to be spirit thereby”. 155 God came to his point. However,
human was left behind on the way. Precisely as E. Jüngel puts it:
“God became man in Jesus Christ in order to distinguish definitively between God and
man forever, and this fundamental soteriological aspect is not dealt with by Hegel, but i n-
stead is turned into its opposite. Hegel’s God needs man, who thereby becomes divine
himself. It may be that the God who is in the process of coming to himself uses man and in
that act of ‘development’ elevates him to himself. It may be that man uses God while en
route to the depths of the spirit, so that instead of crying out to God ‘from the deeps’ (GH
SURIXQGLV), he elevates himself to his true height ‘out of the deeps’ (HSURIXQGLV). Which-
ever option is chosen, the end result is that one has used, has exploited and destroyed the
other.”156
This notion is confirmed also with the outmost frame of Hegel’s thought: the
human knowledge of God is, in the end, nothing else than God’s self-
knowledge in and through a finite subject, in and through the other, which
God needs in order to become the ultimate self-knowing and self-conscious
unity of all: “God is God only inasmuch as he has the knowledge of himself.
152
Ibid., 325, fn. 199.
153
Ibid., 326.
154
Ibid., 327.
155
Ibid.
156
JÜNGEL, *RGDVWKH0\VWHU\, 94–95.
Furthermore, his self-knowledge is his self-consciousness in human and it is

the human knowledge RI God, which proceeds to the self-knowledge of the
human LQGod.”157 In the end, human and the world as the posited otherness
of God are both instrumentalized so that God can come to himself. They are
necessary for God to be established as Spirit, but they do not have any own
purpose as such.
Regarding God, however, the death of Christ makes it clear – and this is
another strong and important point of Hegel’s conception – that the death of
Christ as the death of God makes sense only with the background of the Trin-
ity. God has thus to be thought of as triune, although in the Hegelian form of
a permanent proceeding sequence, which eternally sublates the inner differ-
ence and manifests itself as love:
“From it develops the consciousness that knows that God is triune. The reconc iliation in
Christ, in which one believes, makes no sense if God is not known as the triune God, [if it
is not recognized] that God is, but also is as the other, as self-distinguishing, so that this
other is God himself, having implicitly the divine nature in it, and that the sublation of this
difference, this otherness, and the return of love, are the Spirit.” 158
The death of Christ is, then, not “a single act but the eternal divine history: it
is a moment in the nature of God himself; it has taken place in God him-
self”.159
On the other hand, however, in correspondence to the final goal of all in
the Spirit, the late Hegel keeps the same figure he presented already in his
3KHQRPHQRORJ\: the death of God in Jesus Christ means, at the same time,
the transformation of the particular existence to the spiritual universality. The
point of the death of Christ is its “spiritual interpretation”, i.e., the faith of the
Christian community, which recognizes in Christ the revelation of God-
Self.160
“It is with the FRQVFLRXVQHVV of the community – which thus makes the transition from
mere humanity to the God-man, to the intuition, consciousness, and certainty of the union
and unity of divine and human nature – that the community begins; this consciousness con-
stitutes the truth upon which the community is founded.” 161
The risen God is a solely spiritual issue and is thus, consistently, seen and ex-
perienced only by and through faith. 162 Again, Christology runs into pneuma-
157
HEGEL, (Q]\NORSlGLHIII, § 564, 374; YERKES, 7KH&KULVWRORJ\, 172.
158
HEGEL, /3K5III, 327; YERKES, 7KH&KULVWRORJ\, 163–164.
159
HEGEL, /3K5III, 327–328.
160
Ibid., 326.
161
Ibid., 327.
162
Cf. ibid., 324, fn. 199: “After his resurrection, Christ appeared only to his friends.
This is not an external history for unbelievers; on the contrary, this appearance occurs only
for faith. […] This history is the explication of the divine nature itself. If in the first sphere
we grasped God in pure thought, then in this second sphere we start from the immediacy
tology and the final point of pneumatology is ecclesiology: the common con-
sciousness of God, which is identical with the Spirit (because, in the end, as
already stressed above, the Spirit is constituted as self-knowledge of God in
the common human spirit).163
After Feuerbach’s critique of all theology and religion as a sole projection of anthropology
to the heavens and after the heretical cry of Nietzsche’s Madman that God is dead, 164 this
parole was put on the flag of the so-called GHDWKRI*RG WKHRORJ\ in the 1960s (G. Va-
hanian, P. van Buren, H. Cox, Th.J.J. Altizer, D. Sölle and others). Often refering to Hegel,
death-of-God theologians stressed under their provoking parole rather the death of the tra-
ditional metaphysical concept of God, which leads to the stress on incarnation and sacrifice
of God in Jesus Christ as the leading pattern for Christian praxis of faith. E.g. Th. Altizer
tries to substantiate that the oppresive God of the past Christian era died so that the divine
process of spirit becoming flesh can proceed and with the death of God, humanity was fi-
nally liberated to become what it should be: the great humanity divine. 165
However, the question is, whether the announced death of God is here conceived as
deep as in Hegel, or whether it is rather a provocative parole meaning the end of a partic u-
lar concept of God.166 H. Thielicke, who dealt at large with this movement, posited it to be
rather an apory: “The slogan cannot be meant literally since it involves a logical contradic-
tion. Either the God who is now dead never really was God, so that this death is in fact on-
ly the death of an earlier illusion, or the death of God means simply that he is dead for us,
that a certain experience of God has gone, that a prior certainty has been extinguished, that
a recognized concept of God has been weakened or revised, so that God himself is not real-
ly dead, but only a form of our faith or of our view of God. ‘If God LV dead, he cannot die,’
for there has never been a God and Feuerbach is right. ‘Only EHOLHI in God can die,’ and it
appropriate to intuition and sensible representation. The process is now such that immedi-
ate singularity is sublated: just as in the first sphere the seclusion of God came to an end,
and his original immediacy as abstract universality, according to which he is the essence of
essences, has been sublated, so here the abstraction of humanity, the immediacy of subsis t-
ing singularity, is sublated, and this is brought about by death.”
163
Cf. JÜNGEL, *RGDVWKH0\VWHU\, 96–97: “Hegel's view that through the incarnation
and death of God there comes the resurrection of an absolute spirit which transforms the
unity of divine and human nature into a universal must be disputed by theology as a threat
to the concrete being of Jesus Christ and to the proper distinction between God and man.
The WKHRORJLFDO criterion for the correct description of the christological unity of divine
being and human being is respect for the uniqueness of Jesus Christ; the consequence of
that uniqueness is the concrete distinction between God and man. To say that God does not
desire to come to himself without man posits a permanent difference between the human
God and the human man.”
164
Cf. NIETZSCHE, 7KH*D\6FLHQFH, Nr. 125, 121–122: “‘Where is God?’ he cried; ‘I’ll
tell you! :HKDYHNLOOHGKLP – you and I! We are all his murderers. […] God is dead! God
remains dead! And we have killed him! How can we console ourselves, the murderers of
all murderers!”
165
TH.J.J. ALTIZER, 7KH*RVSHORI&KULVWLDQ$WKHLVP (Philadelphia: Westminster Press,
1966), 102–122 (“The Self-Annihilation of God”).
166
Cf. E. JÜNGEL, “Vom Tod des lebendigen Gottes. Ein Plakat”, in IDEM, 8QWHUZHJV
]XU6DFKH (München: Chr. Kaiser, 1972), 108–109, who calls it, therefore, an unacceptable
equivocation in the term ‘God’.
can do so ‘only if there is no God. For if God is, he will constantly find recognition and
kindle new faith.’”167
.DUO5DKQHU
On this point again, K. Rahner saw the problem precisely, which arises al-
ready from the Chalcedonian orthodoxy and which the tradition left rather
unsolved. He acknowledges a “grain of truth” “in the heretical death-of-God
theology” and, following his model of God changing not in himself but in an-
other, he criticizes the traditional Christology for separating the two natures
too much:
“If someone says that the incarnate logos ‘merely’ died in his human reality, and implicitly
understands this to mean that this death did not touch God, he has only said half of the
truth and has left out the really Christian truth. The ‘immutable God’ does not indeed ‘in
himself’ have a destiny and hence neither does he have a death. But because of the Incar-
nation he KLPVHOI, and not just the other, does have a destiny in the other. Like the humani-
ty of Christ, this very death expresses God in the way that KHKLPVHOI is and wanted to be in
relation to us by a free decision which remains valid forever.”
This death is thus the “death RI*RG in his being and in his becoming in the
other of the world”. And this whole and short paragraph ends with the often-
quoted sentence: “The death of Jesus belongs to God’s self-expression.”168
Obviously, Rahner senses that it is necessary to go beyond the traditional
Christology and to let God be touched by death in Jesus Christ, and not only
partly but wholly. The “really Christian truth” is the truth of God’s death in
Jesus Christ. However, although Rahner saw and diagnosed the problem pre-
cisely, he did not propose a solution. Though he has at least indicated a direc-
tion.
(EHUKDUG-QJHO
Jüngel follows Rahner in the critique of the tradition and tries as well to go
beyond it:
“God, through love, shares the pain of death. The statement of the ancient church with r e-
gard to WKHLQFDUQDWLRQ is not one which should be repeated without at the same time mak-
ing this declaration. God’s becoming man implies that God shares with man the misery of
death. If the statement did not carry this implication then it would amount to little more
167
H. THIELICKE, 'HUHYDQJHOLVFKH*ODXEH, vol. I (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1968), 312,
quoting CH. SCHREMPF, “Friedrich Nietzsche”, *HVDPPHOWH:HUNH, vol.9, III, 278. Cf. in
Thielicke the whole Part II “Situation und Aufgabe der Theologie im Zeitalter des ange-
nommenen ‘Todes Gottes’”, THIELICKE, 'HU HYDQJHOLVFKH *ODXEH I, 305–565. Cf. also
KÜNG, ,QFDUQDWLRQ, 169–174, there also further literature on both the American and the
German debate.
168
RAHNER, )RXQGDWLRQV, 305. Cf. also above, Ch. 5.4.
than a verbal flourish. Nevertheless, properly understood, it is this statement which is de-
finitive for the Christian understanding of the word ‘God’.”169
Who God is, was manifested on the cross of Jesus Christ. Following Luther
and Hegel, for Jüngel, the cross is the centre and heart of the whole of Chris-
tian theology: theology is possible only as WKHRORJLDFUXFLV and thus must be
necessarily trinitarian.
However, inspite of a certain popularity of the death-of-God theme due to
the death-of-God theology, Jüngel, referring to Hegel’s conception of the
death of God, states that this topic is “a theological challenge still to be done”
so that he believes (after having sketched this topic in Luther) to enter
“a field not yet explored”.170 Although Jüngel tries to follow both Hegel DQG
Luther, his own position concerning the conception of the death of Jesus
Christ is closer to Hegel than to Luther. Paradoxically, he who stressed the
theme of the death of God in Jesus Christ in the theology of the 20 th century
more than anyone before him, hesitates, in the end, to do the last step.
Jüngel starts with the courageous statement that in the death of Jesus God
himself “VXIIHUHG this death”. This, however, means that
“God has exposed himself to the essential act of death, which is alien to him. In the event
of Jesus’ death, the essence of God and the essence of death encounter in a way, in which
the essence of the one, when exposed to the essence of the other, questions its own es-
sence.”171
This means for God that he suffered death. However, in this suffering, God
could bear this negation and, at the same time, he “GHSULYHG death of its own
HVVHQFH”, whence death lost its power. “The negation, which the death should
carry out on God, went ontologically beyond its power.” 172
This is exactly what Hegel meant and said when he spoke about the death
of God: in the attack of death on God in Jesus Christ, God could maintain
himself so that the result was the negation of the attacking negation, the death
of death. However, the same question, which Hegel could be asked as well:
did God really die, when he may have suffered death, but proved as the
stronger one? Can we speak really about a GHDWK of God, or is it rather God’s
HQFRXQWHU with death, going, in the end, in the same direction as the tradition-
al Christology?
It is a real paradox that it is Jüngel, to whom this question is addressed. Already since the
theopaschitic controversy one could observe that theology spoke rather about God’s suffer-
ing than about God’s death, as if the latter would be too harsh, brutal or even heretical –
although with the suffering was mostly considered also the death of Jesus Christ on the
cross, so that this was rather an issue of the habits of language. Yet still, when set opposite
169
JÜNGEL, 'HDWK, 110.
170
JÜNGEL, “Vom Tod des lebendigen Gottes”, 110 and 116.
171
Ibid., 120. Exactly the same words also in JÜNGEL, 'HDWK, 111.
172
JÜNGEL, “Vom Tod des lebendigen Gottes”, 120.
to each other, there is a clear difference between suffering and death: who suffers, does not
need to die as well. Jüngel seems to end here in a paradox stating that God suffered death,
but proved as the stronger one and could maintain himself LQ death.173
Jüngel’s considerations on this topic end with an important soteriological

stress. Jüngel, as well as Hegel, conceives death not as a mere separation of
body and soul but rather as a power – a power, which in the end suffers the
loss and loses its definitive power: “Was der Tod DXVVLFKVHOEVWKHUDXV noch
zu verwirklichen vermag, ist nicht mehr Wesen, sondern nur noch Un-
wesen.” 174 This death, which wanted to capture God, was now itself captured
by God. This means that “wherever death comes, God himself comes. ,QWKLV
ZD\ God kills death.”175 The paradoxical outcome thus says: “not only with
God, but rather because with God, therefore also with death itself did some-
thing KDSSHQ.” God was not changed, but death was, so that, according to
Jüngel, we should speak about an equivocation in the term of death. 176
Overall, Jüngel’s position can be summarized the best with his own state-
ments, which he considers to be the ultimate expression of the theological an-
swer: “God defines himself as God on a death person.”177 Through this axio-
ma, Jüngel tries to establish the term of God as a trinitarian term, which
makes it possible to think the person of Jesus Christ in the end as the unity of
both humanity and divinity:
“The resurrection of Jesus from the dead means that *RG KDV LGHQWLILHG KLPVHOI ZLWK WKLV
GHDG PDQ. And that immediately means that God identified himself with Jesus’ God-
forsakenness. And that means further that God identified himself with the life lived by this
dead man. […] God’s identification with the dead Jesus implies a self-differentiation on
God’s part. The being of this dead man defines God’s own being in such a way that one
must speak of a differentiation between God and God. But it must immediately be added
that it is an act of God himself who effects his identity with the dead Jesus and as its pr e-
condition the differentiation of God and God. […] *RGGHILQHVKLPVHOI when he identifies
himself with the dead Jesus. At the same time he defines the man Jesus as the Son of God,
as an old New Testament formulation puts it (Rom. 1:4). The kerygma of the Resurrected
One proclaims the Crucified One as the self-definition of God.”178
173
Cf. the title of the corresponding chapter in JÜNGEL, 'HDWK, 95: “The Death of Jesus
Christ. (Death as God’s Passion.)” The tendency of avoiding of the connection between
God and death and speaking rather about God and suffering is quite common, cf. also
WEINANDY, 'RHV*RG6XIIHU".
174
JÜNGEL, “Vom Tod des lebendigen Gottes”, 120.
175
Ibid., 123.
176
Ibid., 124.
177
Ibid., 121.
178
JÜNGEL, *RGDVWKH0\VWHU\, 363–364 (first italics P.G.). Cf. ibid., 383: “God goes
into the far country when he goes to the death of Jesus. But even in death, he involves him-
self in nothingness, but he is not conquered by nothingness. Even in the far country of
death, God comes to himself. Thus he is the victor over death! God comes to himself even
in the death of Jesus Christ, the Father to the Son.”
However, the question still remains, if this figure of a kind of a secondary

self-identification of God with the dead Jesus can meet the last consequences
of the death of God in Jesus Christ. 179 The question remains, if God’s self-
identification, prolonged in this secondary way retroactively backwards to the
whole existence of Jesus, does not come actually too late; if it would not be
necessary to conceive the identity of God and human in Jesus Christ already
from his birth, be it noetically in a backwards-view on his existence from the
perspective of the Easter message.180 And then, hence, if it would not be nec-
essary to think of the death of Jesus Christ from the beginning as the death of
true God and true human in one person.
-UJHQ0ROWPDQQ
“[E]very theology which claims to be Christian must come to terms with Je-
sus’ cry on the cross,” is the programmatic motto of Moltmann’s attempt of
thinking the cross to the very end. 181 Therefore, according to him, Christology
cannot deal only with the resurrected Christ, or only with the life of Jesus.
There is no either – or. Moreover, one cannot forget the death of Jesus Christ.
But all these are moments of the existence of the same person: “The risen
Christ is the historical and crucified Jesus, and vice versa.” 182 However, even
the cross shows its full meaning only in the light of resurrection, in a back-
wards-reading of the whole story. 183
“By his resurrection Jesus is qualified in his person to be the Christ of God. So his suffer-
ing and death must be understood to be the suffering and death of the Christ of God. Only
in the light of his resurrection from the dead does his death gain that special, unique saving
significance which it cannot achieve otherwise, even in the light of the life that he lived.”
Only the resurrection “says ZKR really suffered and died here”. 184 Jesus Christ
is thus always the resurrected one, who was crucified, and, at the same time,
the crucified one, who was resurrected. The christological starting point has a
179
A step further goes Jüngel in E. JÜNGEL, “Das Sein Jesu Christi als Ereignis der
Versöhnung Gottes mit einer gottlosen Welt: Die Hingabe des Gekreuzigten”, in IDEM,
(QWVSUHFKXQJHQ*RWW±:DKUKHLW±0HQVFK (München: Chr. Kaiser, 1980), 283: “The faith
in the identity of the Son of God with the crucified one necessitates the confession that in
and with the human Jesus God himself suffered and died.”
180
As Jüngel’s critical colleague and counterpart PANNENBERG,-HVXV, 141, says: “For
the light that falls back on the pre-Easter Jesus from the resurrection involves his person as
a whole. […] If Jesus as a person is ‘the Son of God,’ as becomes clear retroactively from
his resurrection, then he has always been the Son of God.”
181
MOLTMANN, 7KH&UXFLILHG*RG, 153.
182
Ibid., 160.
183
Cf. ibid., 162.
184
Ibid., 182.
twofold focus on the resurrection of the crucified one and on the cross of the
resurrected one.185
Then, when we look on the death of Jesus Christ, it is not a mere human
death anymore. It takes into question not only the person of Jesus but also his
whole proclamation, and, with it, also the divinity of Jesus’ God and the Fa-
therhood of his Father:
“In the words ‘My God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ Jesus is putting at stake not only his
personal existence but his theological existence, his whole proclamation of God. Thus ul-
timately, in his rejection, the deity of his God and the fatherhood of his Father, which Jesus
had brought close to men, are at stake. From this point of view, on the cross not only is
Jesus himself in agony, but also the one for whom he lived and spoke, his Father.” 186
Therefore, the proper meaning of the outcry of Jesus on the cross, quoting
Psalm 22, shows a deep chasm in God-Self: it says “‘My God, why hast thou
forsaken PH?’ but at the same time, ‘My God, why hast thou forsaken WK\
VHOI?’”187
According to Moltmann, this chasm leads to a “revolution in the concept
of God”: in the suffering and death of Jesus stands God against God. 188 This
statement, on one hand, raises questions regarding Moltmann’s concept of
Trinity: his language seems to be ‘triistic’ too much. Moltmann himself con-
firms this suspicion, when he conceives the unity of God, in the end, in a very
loose way, as a mere addition of three self-standing divine persons together to
a mutual relation: “I think that the unity of the dialectical history of Father
and Son and Spirit in the cross on Golgotha, full of tension as it is, can be de-
scribed so to speak retrospectively as ‘God’.” God is, then, a retrospective
name for a story. It is not
“another nature or a heavenly person or a moral authority, but in fact an ‘event’ [Gescheh-
en, i.e., a lasting event or even a process]. […] In that case there is in fact no ‘personal
God’ as a person projected in heaven. But there are persons in God: the Son, the Father and
the Spirit.”189
185
Ibid., 187; cf. 204: “Thus the centre is occupied not by ‘cross and resurrection’, but
by the resurrection of the crucified Christ, which qualifies his death as something that has
happened for us, and the cross of the risen Christ, which reveals and makes accessible to
those who are dying his resurrection from the dead.”
186
Ibid., 150–151.
187
Ibid.
188
Ibid., 152, and Moltmann quotes the words of Goethe: “Nemo contra deum nisi deus
ipse.” This is quoted also in JÜNGEL, *RGDVWKH0\VWHU\, 119 and 346. However, Jüngel
who does not conceive Trinity as ‘triistically’ as Moltmann does it cannot draw the conse-
quences of this statement to their very end in the death of Jesus as the death of God (cf.
above in this chapter, subch. 2.2.5).
189
Then, God is rather a space, an open circle, “an eschatological process open
for men on earth, which stems from the cross of Christ”. 190 However, Molt-
mann is still able to speak also simply about “God”. 191
On the other hand, Moltmann has reached a depth here, which no theologi-
an before him was able to. It was made possible through his conception of
Trinity. Following Paul’s “God was in Christ” (2Cor 5:19), Moltmann infers:
“Logically this means that God (himself) suffered in Jesus, God himself died
in Jesus for us.” 192 However, his solution differs radically from the classical
solution of divine suffering and death only in the human nature of Christ as
well as from the Rahnerian suffering on something other. Moltmann con-
ceives the death of Jesus Christ as the death of God consistently within the
Trinity and avoids in this way the old danger and qualm of theopaschitism
because he precisely differentiates, also within the Trinity, who is suffering
and how:
“The Son suffers and dies on the cross. The Father suffers with him, but not in the same
way. There is a trinitarian solution to the paradox that God is ‘dead’ on the cross and yet is
not dead, once one abandons the simple concept of God. Theopaschite talk of the ‘death of
God’ can be a general metaphor, but on closer inspection it will not hold.” 193
The talk of the cross needs to be consistently trinitarian. Therefore, Molt-

mann specifies that it is not precise enough to say that the death of Jesus
Christ was the death of God:
“Jesus’ death cannot be understood ‘as the death of God’, but only as death LQ God. The
‘death of God’ cannot be designated the origin of Christian theology, even if the phrase has
an element of truth in it; the origin of Christian theology is only the death on the cross in
God and God in Jesus’ death. If one uses the phrase, it is advisable to abandon the concept
of God and to speak of the relationships of the Son and the Father and the Spirit at the
point at which ‘God’ might be expected to be mentioned. From the life of these three,
which has within it the death of Jesus, there then emerges who God is and what his God-
head means. Most previous statements about the specifically Christian understanding of
talk about ‘the death of God’ have lacked a dimension, the trinitarian dimension.” 194
The cross is the very centre of all theology, which has no other option than to
be trinitarian theology because it is the cross, which manifests the differentia-
tion of the divine persons: “The cross stands at the heart of the trinitarian b e-
ing of God; it divides and conjoins the persons in their relationships to each
other and portrays them in a specific way.” 195 Therefore, “the theology of the
190
Ibid., 249.
191
Cf. also Moltmann’s reply to this critique in 'LVNXVVLRQ EHU -UJHQ 0ROWPDQQV
%XFKµ'HUJHNUHX]LJWH*RWW¶, ed. M. WELKER (München: Chr. Kaiser, 1979), 174–184.
192
193
Ibid., 203.
194
Ibid., 207.
195
Ibid.
cross must be the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of the Trinity must
be the theology of the cross, because otherwise the human, crucified God
cannot be fully perceived.” 196
This thorough trinitarian approach implies, then, that the cross has differ-
ent effects within the Trinity: The Son dies, whereas the Father suffers the
death of his Son.
“We cannot therefore say here in patripassian terms that the Father also suffered and died.
The suffering and dying of the Son, forsaken by the Father, is a different kind of suffering
from the suffering of the Father in the death of the Son. […] The Son suffers dying, the
Father suffers the death of the Son. The grief of the Father here is just as important as the
death of the Son. The Fatherlessness of the Son is matched by the Sonlessness of the Fa-
ther, and if God has constituted himself as the Father of Jesus Christ, then he also suffers
the death of his Fatherhood in the death of the Son.” 197
Therefore, God does not die, but rather God in Christ dies. It is a death in
God, where one person of the Trinity, the Son, dies. The Father suffers the
death of his Son, but does not die.
The conception of the death of Jesus Christ not as death of God but rather
as GHDWKLQWKHWULQLWDULDQ*RG makes it possible for Moltmann to keep both
important points: in this death, it was really God who died, namely the second
person of the Trinity. At the same time, because it was not death of all per-
sons of the Trinity, God could overcome death in the resurrection of Jesus
Christ. In this way, however, the cross hits God as well and it hits him fully:
“The Christ event on the cross is a God event. And conversely, the God event takes place
on the cross of the risen Christ. Here God has not just acted externally, in his unattainable
glory and eternity. Here he has acted in himself and has gone on to suffer in himself [an
sich selbst].”198
196
Ibid., 241.
197
Ibid., 243. Cf. Moltmann’s reformulation, what would this mean in the old substance
terms of two-natures Christology: “If one wanted to present the event within the frame-
work of the doctrine of two natures, one could only use the simple concept of God (esse
simplex). In that case one would have to say: what happened on the cross was an event b e-
tween God and God. It was a deep division in God himself, in so far as God abandoned
God and contradicted himself, and at the same time a unity in God, in so far as God was at
one with God and corresponded to himself. In that case one would have to put the formula
in a paradoxical way: God died the death of the godless on the cross and yet did not die.
God is dead and yet is not dead” (ibid., 244). A UHDOLWHU understanding of such sentences
would be obviously contradictory. The only possibility, which remains here, is to restrict
this paradox to the level of verbal predication about the person of Christ only. With this,
we would land close to Leo (and Cyril) again (cf. above in this chapter, subch. 2.2.1, and
Ch. 3.2.1).
198
Ibid., 205.
Therefore, the event of the cross has a deep impact on God and on the old
conception of divine immutability. Moltmann acknowledges at this point the
SDUWLFXODYHUL of kenoticism:
Christology “cannot seek to maintain only a dialectical relationship between the divine
being and human being, leaving each of these unaffected; in its own way the divine being
must encompass the human being and vice versa. That means that it must understand the
event of the cross in God’s being in both trinitarian and personal terms. In contrast to the
traditional doctrine of the two natures in the person of Christ, it must begin from the totali-
ty of the person of Christ and understand the relationship of the death of the Son to the Fa-
ther and the Spirit.”199
However, Moltmann knows very well that the cross is not a self-diminishing
or a self-evacuation of God but rather the point of his umost divinity: “God is
not greater than he is in this humiliation. God is not more glorious than he is
in this self-surrender. God is not more powerful than he is in this helpless-
ness. God is not more divine than he is in this humanity.” 200
Although Moltmann keeps up the Rahnerian *UXQGD[LRP regarding the
identity of the immanent and economic Trinity and although he, consistently
enough, breaks the old Augustinian rule of RSHUD7ULQLWDWLVDGH[WUDVHPSHU
LQGLYLVD, which is both sympathetic and theologically consistent, his concep-
tion of Trinity with its triistic tones remains questionnable. Nevertheless,
against this backdrop, he made it to think the old question of suffering of God
in Christ finally through to the end. This – central! – piece of the puzzle has
been missing for long centuries.
Now, it is time to think through to the end the implications of this thought.
3. Death of Jesus Christ as Death in God

3. Death of Jesus Christ as Death in God
7KH7ULQLWDULDQ&RQVHTXHQFHVRIWKH'HDWKRI-HVXV&KULVW
The results of both previous subchapters – what is death and how is the cross
of Christ to be conceived – are two important pieces of a puzzle, which are
now to be put together and into the wider context of the previous chapters.
If death is not just a state one should pass through, or a mere change of the
mode of existence but rather the end of the whole person, i.e., if there is noth-
ing in the human, what would outlast beyond the boundary of death, if there
is nothing immortal in humans – and if, at the same time, the Chalcedonian
major rule of “unconfused and undivided” should be preserved – then, it is
necessary to hold with Moltmann that in the death of Jesus Christ the whole
of his person dies. In Jesus Christ dies – and this means: ends, ceases to live,
199
Ibid., 205–206.
200
Ibid., 205.
'HDWKRI-HVXV&KULVWDV'HDWKLQ*RG 295
loses all relations, ceases to be the subject of his relations – the true God and
the true human at once, undivided and unparted. It means that God in Christ
not only suffered, not only was compassionate and sympathetic with the hu-
man nature, not only guided the human soul or identity through death but ra-
ther that God suffered and died in Christ exactly in the same way as the hu-
man in Christ. This is WKH XOWLPDWH SRLQW RI *RG¶V DFFRPPRGDWLRQ. God ac-
commodates in Christ to human, which means that God accommodates in
Christ to death. And, as pointed out above, this is not to be taken as divine
weakness but, exactly on the contrary, as the proof of the ultimate divine
power. In Christ, God enters wholly into the human condition, i.e., he enters
also human death and dies.201
However, this does not mean that God as such died; that the divine life
ended as a whole; that after the Good Friday, there would not be any God a-
nymore. A simple term of God would lead to such an aporetic end. But, as the
important conceptions of the 20 th century all stressed, the necessary back-
ground for the thinking of the death of Jesus Christ as the death of God is
trinitarian theology. The point of trinitarian theology is that God in his triuni-
ty has three persons who are all in themselves fully divine and possess full
divinity, but who, at the same time, as distinct persons create a divine unity,
which, however, does not mean an addition of three divinities, but it is still
the same one divinity possessed fully by each of them. This was expressed in
the old notion of SHULFKRUHVLV, in the mutual indwelling of divine persons.
And it is exactly this dynamic, which is the fundamental point of my concep-
tion of divine accommodation.
Therefore, it is to say and stress with Moltmann that the death of God in
Jesus Christ was not simply the death of God (just, so, flatly and wholly,
without any further specification). Neither God ceased to exist (the atheist
critique of God), nor was it the death of the metaphysical, transcendent, i m-
mutable picture of God (the death-of-God theology processing the atheistic
critique), but it was rather the death LQGod. The trinitarian conception makes
it possible to say both: that in Jesus Christ, God really and wholly died, yet
that still, this was not the end of the whole divine life. The death of Jesus
Christ as the death of God, however, hit this divine life in a fundamental,
unique, unprecedented, and unrepeatable way. It is the consequence of the
201
Cf. JÜNGEL, 'HDWK, 110, who tries to point this out as well, but, in fact, does not go
far enough with his formulation: “The statement of the ancient church with regard to WKH
LQFDUQDWLRQis not one which should be repeated without at the same time making this dec-
laration. God’s becoming man implies that God shares with man the misery of death. If the
statement did not carry this implication then it would amount to little more than a verbal
flourish. Nevertheless, properly understood, it is this statement which is definitive for the
Christian understanding of the word ‘God’.” This formulation could be signed as well by
the traditional Christology, where God does not die but accompanies the human soul
through death.
backwards-looking perspective of resurrection, which I try to reconstruct on-

tologically in these chapters: if the resurrection showed that in this resurrect-
ed one is God-Self and that this resurrected one is the crucified one, then God
cannot be apathetic, impassible, immutable, and untouchably absolute. Then,
God is dynamic and his power grounds in this his dynamic ability, in short: in
the accommodation. From the perspective of resurrection it is obvious that
God entered the world and assumed full humanity without ceasing to be God,
yet he still accommodated himself to human because in his power he can af-
ford it (cf. the enhypostatical inversion, above, Ch. 6.1): in his accommoda-
tion, he can be and remain God also in the human conditions and does not
need to avoid even the radicality and abruptness of human death. God does
not save from death by avoiding it and keeping it as far away as possible but,
on the contrary, by entering and undergoing it himself. That is why it is to
say: in Jesus Christ, God himself dies. God-Son dies. Not only the Son of
God but rather God-Son, God-Logos, the second person of the Trinity, who
wholly entered humanity and became human (as a consequence of the identi-
ty of the immanent and economic Trinity, cf. above, Ch. 4.2.1). His humanity
and divinity cannot be separated. And because of the ultimate accommoda-
tion to the human, when the human dies, having in himself nothing that could
outlast beyond death, then God, who is unified with him inseparably, dies as
well.
The notion that the second person of the Trinity really ceases to live and
dies has serious consequences. Their formulation goes even a step beyond
what Moltmann was able to say. Regarding Trinity, the death of Jesus Christ
puts a hole into the divine life itself: for three days – the darkest days in the
whole history – the Father loses his Son and, in this respect, his direct Father-
hood; the Son dies and the divine life has suddenly an empty spot, a person
missing, a hole, a darkness, a silence surrounding the dead Jesus Christ. 202
What remains for these darkest three days is thus not Trinity but rather – KRU
ULELOH GLFWX – RQO\ D GLYLQH%LQLW\. Next to it, there is still the corpse of the
dead Jesus Christ and, also, his name (cf. above, Ch. 6.2.2 and 6.3).
This is very radical and harsh. However, in my opinion, the consequences
of the Chalcedonian Christology reach this far. Only this conclusion means to
think the Chalcedonian Christology fully and radically through to the very
end. At the same time, it shows how far reaching also is God’s accommoda-
tion to humans, his love, and freedom. And, this is not to be omitted, it also
shows how deep sin reaches, with death as its ultimate consequence. Until
one has not arrived at this point, the famous dictum of Anselm of Canterbury
202
Already the Tuebingen orthodoxy was able to say: “Moriente Christo in ipsa Trini-
tate funus fuisse” (St. Gerlach, quoted in BAUR, “Glanz und Elend der Tübinger Orthodox-
ie, in IDEM, /XWKHUXQGVHLQHNODVVLVFKHQ(UEHQ [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1993], 305, fn.
53; cf. also RINGLEBEN, :DKUKDIWDXIHUVWDQGHQ, 167–168).
'HDWKRI-HVXV&KULVWDV'HDWKLQ*RG 297
stands still firm: “Nondum considerasti, quantum ponderis sit peccatum. You
still have not considered how serious and heavy sin is.” 203 Here, it is clear
what VDU[ means, what the flesh means, what the old humanity corrupted by
sin means, which Jesus Christ beared and did not avoid its consequences, alt-
hough sin leads to death. Nevertheless, it is right here, from this ultimately
deep point, where soteriology can start and proceed (cf. next Ch. 8).
7KH2QWRORJLFDO5HORFDWLRQRI'HDWK
As Luther, Hegel and Jüngel stressed, the event of the death of God in Jesus
Christ has an impact not only on God, his being and his life but also on death
itself.204 In the death of Jesus Christ, something fundamental happened with
death itself. Unlike the traditional Aristotelian-Thomist conception where
death is rather a moment of separation or a space one has to pass through, I
conceive – following the above-mentioned thinkers and the biblical concep-
tion in the first place (cf. e.g. Rom 5:12; 6:23; 1Cor 15:55–56; Ps 73) – GHDWK
DVDSRZHU, as the ultimate power of sin and thus as the deepest perversion:
death – unlike the positive term of finitude – tries to break and cut off all re-
lationships, tries to isolate totally and, hence, to have the last word, to be the
definitive power controlling humans and all living creation. 205 Death, as the
ultimate wage of sin, is thus not a mere epiphenomenon but rather a power,
which tries to establish its own autonomy independent of God and which is to
be taken very seriously. The depth of its power in its full range shows and
confirms the death of Jesus Christ. This is the measure for the power of death.
With the death of Jesus Christ, a fundamental shift with death itself hap-
pened: because the death of Jesus Christ is the death LQ God, death, attacking
and killing Jesus Christ, got to a new place: it was UHORFDWHG. With the death
of Jesus Christ, death got a new context. It does not rule autonomously and
does not stand alone anymore, having the definitive and last word. With the
dead Jesus Christ, death itself comes into God, becomes a part of God’s own
life – yet, in the end, an overcome part, as the resurrection will show. From
this moment on, death does not mean the last dark autonomy, but gets a new
place and context. It is not erased and destroyed but overcome. It still has
some power but not the last word anymore. Soteriologically, this means that
everyone, who dies after Christ’s death, dies not alone but rather in God.206
The parole of the old hymn “Media vita in morte summus – in the middle of
life we are surrounded by death” is reversed: from now on, death is surround-
ed by life: “Sic media morte in vita sumus – in the middle of death we are
203
ANSELM, &XUGHXVKRPR I, 21, 74–75.
204
Cf. e.g. JÜNGEL, “Vom Tod des lebendigen Gottes”, 122–125; and above, subch. 2.
205
For my conception of sin and evil see also GALLUS, “Verantwortliche Rede”.
206
Regarding the question of dying before Christ’s death in the context of the question
of eternity-time relation, cf. below, Ch. 8.4.2 and 10.
surrounded by life.” 207 Even in the middle of death, the human is surrounded
by God’s life – i.e., by the life of the one, who has the power of creating and
re-creating and who has even the power YLVjYLV death: the power of resur-
rection.
207
M. LUTHER, “Enarratio psalmi XC (1534/35)”, in :$ 40/III (Weimar: H. Bohlaus
Nachfolger, 1930), 496,3–4; cf. “Sermon auf das Evangelium Luc. 1”, in :$12 (Weimar:
Hermann Böhlau, 1891), 609,17–18; JÜNGEL, “Death”, in 5333, 698.
Chapter 8
Salvation: The Cross as Vicarious

and Representative Sacrifice?
This chapter in particular brings terminological problems, which are the case when one
tries to interconnect different language families. Like Latin, English differentiates between
sacrifice and victim, whereas German (or Czech) translates both with the same word
(Opfer, oběť) so that when speaking about the cross of Christ in these languages, although
considering the cross primarily as sacrifice, the meaning of “victim” is present as well. 1
Much more complicated, nevertheless, is translating the German term ‘Stellvertretung’
appropriately, which was established in German theology starting in the late 18th century as
the central term of soteriology. It contains the dimensions of substitution, vicariousness
and representation so that there is not a single English term, which could be used for it. I
decided to start with “vicarious representation” and I will subsequently try to differentiate
and sort its dimensions.2
1. Soteriology and Its Current Challenges

1. Soteriology and Its Current Challenges
If we really know something about Jesus, then, it is the fact that he died. This
is the most certain historical IDFWXP (confirmed even from non-biblical
sources and thus historically more reliable than other facts from Jesus’ life).
However, Christian faith and theology see in this event something more than
a mere historical fact. This was not an ordinary death of an ordinary man: J e-
sus Christ died IRUXV. It is the confession of WKLV fundamental soteriological
1
Cf. V. HAMPEL and R. WETH, “Vorwort”, in )U XQV JHVWRUEHQ 6KQH ± 2SIHU ±
6WHOOYHUWUHWXQJ, ed. EIDEM (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2010), VII; J. SCHRÖTER,
“Sühne, Stellvertretung, Opfer. Zur Verwendung analytischer Kategorien zur Deutung des
Todes Jesu”, in 'HXWXQJHQ GHV 7RGHV -HVX LP 1HXHQ 7HVWDPHQW, ed. J. FREY and J.
SCHRÖTER (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 66; S. BRANDT, “War Jesu Tod ein
‘Opfer’?”, in 'DV.UHX]-HVX*HZDOW±2SIHU±6KQH, ed. R. WETH (Neukirchen-Vluyn:
Neukirchener, 2001), 64–76.
2
It was inspired by the translators of Bonhoeffer’s Works, who translate “Stellver-
tretung” as “vicarious representative action”, cf. D. BONHOEFFER, 6DQFWRUXP &RPPXQLR,
DBWE, vol. 1, trans. R. KRAUSS and N. LUKENS (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), 120,
ed. note 17. It is, therefore, not by chance that the identical title of the book of D. Sölle (D.
SÖLLE, 6WHOOYHUWUHWXQJ (LQ .DSLWHO QDFK GHP µ7RGH *RWWHV¶ [Stuttgart: Kreuz Verlag,
1965]) was translated into English as “Christ the Representative” (Philadelphia: Fortress
Press, 1967), picking up the favoured dimension of Sölle’s conception of “Stellvertretung”.
300 &KDSWHU7KH&URVVDV9LFDULRXVDQG5HSUHVHQWDWLYH6DFULILFH"
meaning of Christ’s death, which is the fundamental emphasis primarily of

the theology of Paul (u`pe.r h`mw/n/SURQRELV – Rom 5:8; 1Thess 5:10) and “the
precise point of Christian confessions from the outset”. 3 And it is this inter-
pretation of the death of Jesus Christ, in which the conception of salvation
has been anchored since the oldest Christian times. This soteriological gram-
mar “for us” was often concretized as “for our sins”: Jesus Christ died for our
sins that he himself beared (Rom 5:6; 2Cor 5:21). Said in the liturgical lan-
guage: Jesus Christ is the DJQXV'HLTXLWROOLWSHFFDWDPXQGL (John 1:29: the
lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world). His death was the substi-
tutionary and representative death for all, for the whole world. Therefore, the
western theology – and the reformation theology in particular – stressed that
the salvation of the whole world is rooted in this event and nowhere else.4
Already since early Christianity, over Augustine, Calvin and the reformed theology, until
the 20th century, there was an ongoing discussion within Christian theology regarding who
belongs to the “us” for whom Jesus Christ died. It is the question of God’s HOHFWLRQ, which
would then split mankind into two groups of the elected, who will participate in salvation,
and – let’s say it with caution – non-elected.5 Then, however, the sacrifice of Jesus Christ
is restricted only to the elected; it is not universal to the word, but remains universal only
within a pre-defined group of people.6 It was the doctrine of election in Karl Barth’s
Church Dogmatics, which can be still considered for a satisfying and final solution of this
question in terms of a Trinity-anchored Christology: Jesus Christ himself is the elected
representative and, at the same time, the substitutionally reprobated one. Salvation thus
opens universally to the whole world and to all. 7 In my own conception, this universal out-
reach of salvation will be important as well: the christological “for us” definitely means
“for all”. There is no one, for whom Jesus Christ has not died (cf. below, subch. 4.2).
However, in modern times, this traditional centre of Christian faith and theo l-
ogy collides more and more with the decreasing understandability of the ce n-
tral terms used on this field. The traditional terms often try to express concep-
tion and images, which, for the modern rationality, are difficult to understand
and seem to lead to aporias. It concerns, in particular, the conception of YLFDU
3
DALFERTH, &UXFLILHG DQG 5HVXUUHFWHG, 237; cf. also E. KÄSEMANN, “Die Heils-
bedeutung des Todes Jesu nach Paulus”, in =XU %HGHXWXQJ GHV 7RGHV -HVX H[HJHWLVFKH
%HLWUlJH, ed. H. CONZELMANN (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1967), 18.
4
Cf. shortly and concisely e.g. D. BONHOEFFER, “Lecture Course: The Nature of the
Church”, in IDEM, '%:(,vol.11, trans. A. SCHMIDT-LANGE et al. (Minneapolis: Fortress
Press, 2012), 296–299. The eastern theology was more focused on incarnation and con-
ceived salvation as WKHRVLV, cf. above, Ch. 3.2.2 (Enhypostasis), 3.2.4 (Western medieval
Christology and soteriology) and 3.2.5 (M. Luther).
5
Cf. e.g. the famous sentence of CALVIN, ,QVWLWXWLR, III, 23, 1 (155): “[I]psa electio, nisi
reprobationi opposita, non staret.”
6
The early reformed theology interpreted in this sense the universal biblical statements
like e.g. 1Tim 2:4: God “desires everyone to be saved”. Cf. CALVIN, ,QVWLWXWLR, III, 24, 16–
17 (180–181): “everyone” or “all” is to be related to the elected only.
7
BARTH, &KXUFK'RJPDWLFVII/2, § 33.
$WRQLQJ6DFULILFH 301
LRXV UHSUHVHQWDWLRQ of Christ’s suffering and death, and the conception of

Christ’s death as an DWRQLQJ VDFULILFH. These two conceptions, intertwinned
with each other, raise several difficult or even aporetical questions: How
should it be possible that someone dies for the others? What does this mean
for him and for the others? Is it possible to bear sins and guilt of someone
else? How can an individual bear sins and guilts of all? What would it mean
for our future sins and guilts? And how is the effect of a 2000 years old event
for present time actually to be conceived and for the particular lives of to-
day’s people? The urgency of such questions increases even more when one
considers that they touch the very centre of Christian faith. 8 A systematic the-
ological reflection and an attempt for a solution might be here even more
necessary than elsewhere.
It should be said that the above-mentioned problems of traditional soteriology play an im-
portant role for liberal theology because they support their arguments that the traditional
doctrine and the traditional Christology got old and needed to be radically revised or even
abandoned as useless (cf. above, Ch. 1.1.3 and 2.1). However, the widely shared counter-
argument says that the lack of understandability and usability today does not necessarily
and automatically mean that these terms should be wholly abandoned, and, moreover, that
with these questionable terms we should abandon also the events and theological concepts,
to which these terms refer. Current attempts, therefore, try to reconsider the roots of these
terms and conceptions and try to differentiate better, what they intend to say from how
they say it (cf. below in this chapter, subch. 4.1).9
2. Atoning Sacrifice

2. Atoning Sacrifice
The ancient solution for dealing with sin in front of the divine, with the guilt
and the remission of sin and guilt was the ritual of atoning sacrifice, which in
a very corporeal and illustrative way answered the question of how is it pos-
sible that someone dies for someone else. The sacrificial animal died LQVWHDG
8
There is a wide agreement across the spectre of theological opinions on the fact that
the situation and its questions are serious, cf. HAMPEL and WETH, “Vorwort”, V; J. FREY
and J. SCHRÖTER, “Vorwort”, in 'HXWXQJHQ GHV 7RGHV -HVX LP 1HXHQ 7HVWDPHQW, ed.
EIDEM (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), V–VI.
9
Cf. in the first place DALFERTH, &UXFLILHG DQG 5HVXUUHFWHG, 235–313. Further also
SCHRÖTER, “Sühne, Stellvertretung, Opfer”, 51–72; B. JANOWSKI, “Das Leben für andere
hingeben. Alttestamentliche Voraussetzungen für die Deutung des Todes Jesu”, in 'HXWXQ
JHQGHV 7RGHV-HVX LP 1HXHQ 7HVWDPHQW, ed. J. FREY and J. SCHRÖTER (Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 2005), 97–118; WOLTER, “‘Für uns gestorben’”, 1–16; 'DV.UHX]-HVX*HZDOW±
2SIHU ± 6KQH, ed. R. WETH (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2001); 2SIHU WKHROR
JLVFKHXQGNXOWXUHOOH .RQWH[WH, ed. B. JANOWSKI and M. WELKER (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhr-
kamp, 2000), primarily Part III; R. DEINES, “Der Tod des Gottessohnes und das ewige
Leben der Menschen”, in 'LH5HGHYRQ-HVXV&KULVWXVDOV*ODXEHQVDXVVDJH, ed. J. HERZER
et al. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), 183–210; D. EVERS, “Das Kreuz Jesu Christi als
Wende. Hermeneutische Überlegungen zu Jesu Leiden und Sterben”, in ibid., 211–235.
of the sinner, it paid for the sins of someone else. The guilt in front of God,
which one was not able to get rid of by oneself, was – symbolically, yet actu-
ally more than only symbolically and to a certain extent rather very literally –
transferred on to an animal, which represented a particular human or a group
of people and this animal was then killed or driven out into the dessert (cf. the
sacrifices for sin in Lev 4–5 and the ritual of atonement in Lev 16 in particu-
lar). The self-identification with the representing animal might have been
symbolic, yet the fact that the wages of one’s own sin is death (Rom 6:23)
could be experienced in a very real way. It was thus obvious that the sinner
was the one who deserved the punishment, which was taken away through the
atoning sacrifice.
“[A]tonement is something different from making reparations. Atonement is for when rep-
arations cannot be made. The idea of atonement presumes that there is a transgression
ZKLFK FDQQRW EH SDLG RXW, a kind of debt that simply cannot be reckoned in ledgers and
balanced like other debts. It is not possible of such a transgression, such a debt to be ca n-
celled out by KXPDQ GHEWRUV. It remains there. Any extinction of the debt can only come
with the extinction of the debtor. It is not VRPHWKLQJ, no matter how much, but their OLYHV
that they must give in order to atone for their debt.” 10
However, this practice always concerned only a particular group of people

and was done always DGKRF. It was thus necessary to repeat it (either depend-
ing on the situation or regularly and periodically).
Exactly this necessity of repetition gave rise to doubts and questions con-
cerning the different levels of a sacrifice’s functionality: Is such sacrifice sat-
isfying enough for the commited sin? How can the permanent danger of fall-
ing into a mere automatism be averted? Is an animal a satisfying representa-
tive of humans? And even when the sacrifice would be a human individual,
would it actually suffice for the sins of the community? Would there be a
possibility of a definitive sacrifice, once and for all – for all times and for all
humans – without the necessity to repeat it? 11
Already from these questions it is obvious that the Christian answer to the
rising uncertainty has been WKHFURVVRI-HVXV&KULVW. On the one hand, the in-
terpretation of the cross follows the Old-Testament tradition and the language
of sacrifice contained therein. However, the sacrifice of Jesus Christ is al-
ready posited in the New Testament as the end of the common sacrifice prac-
tice.12 So that, on the other hand, the sacrifice has a shifted meaning and is
declared a closed issue on the cross and thus, at least in its ancient form,
overcome. It loses its soteriological meaning, which is from now on concen-
trated exclusively and only to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. As such, this sacri-
10
JÜNGEL, -XVWLILFDWLRQ, 158–159.
11
Cf. ibid., 160–161.
12
$WRQLQJ6DFULILFH 303
fice is the final point and, at the same time and based on the above-mentioned
reasons, the end and the critique of all sacrificial practices.13
This transformation and subsequent overcoming of sacrifice in the cross of
Jesus Christ contains at least four VKLIWV:
a) In Jesus Christ, God-Self became human. The cross of Christ is thus a
sacrifice where God-Self is the one who sacrifices and, at the same time, the
one who is sacrificed. The cross of Jesus Christ is WKHVHOIVDFULILFHRI*RG as
human. God is the only actor.14
b) As the self-sacrifice of God, this sacrifice is done RQFH DQG IRU DOO,
without any necessity to be repeated – and even without the possibility to be
repeated again.15
13
Ibid., 269–291.
14
JÜNGEL, -XVWLILFDWLRQ, 164.
15
Cf. JÜNGEL, -XVWLILFDWLRQ, 162: “There is no meaningful sacrifice that can follow.” –
On the other hand, the sacrifice of Christ and its liturgical repetition is the very heart of the
catholic mass, it is the central point of eucharist, which re-presents in a bloodless way (LQ
FUXHQWH) Christ’s sacrifice on the cross (cf. the Decree of the Council of Trent, '+ 1738–
1743 and the Canones, '+ 1751–1752). In the period of reformation, next to the intense
dispute on the presence of Christ in the eucharist, the reformed theology in particular at-
tacked the catholic conception and practice of mass interpreting it as a repetition of
Christ’s sacrifice. Cf. 7KH+HLGHOEHUJ&DWHFKLVP, q. 80, with even sharpened formulations
in the second and third edition in reaction to the Council of Trent: “Question: How does
the Lord’s Supper differ from the Roman Catholic Mass? Answer: The Lord’s Supper de-
clares to us that all our sins are completely forgiven through the one sacrifice of Jesus
Christ, which he himself accomplished on the cross once for all. It also declares to us that
the Holy Spirit grafts us into Christ, who with his true body is now in heaven at the right
hand of the Father where he wants us to worship him. [But the Mass teaches that the living
and the dead do not have their sins forgiven through the suffering of Christ unless Christ is
still offered for them daily by the priests. It also teaches that Christ is bodily present under
the form of bread and wine where Christ is therefore to be worshiped. Thus the Mass is
basically nothing but a denial of the one sacrifice and suffering of Jesus Christ and a con-
demnable idolatry.]” It was the matter of the latest ecumenical development when the
Council of Reformed Churches declared: “In response to a mandate from Synod 1998, the
Christian Reformed Church’s Interchurch Relations Committee conducted a study of Q&A
80 and the Roman Catholic Mass. Based on this study, Synod 2004 declared that ‘Q&A 80
can no longer be held in its current form as part of our confession.’ Synod 2006 directed
that Q&A 80 remain in the CRC’s text of the Heidelberg Catechism but that the last three
paragraphs be placed in brackets to indicate that they do not accurately reflect the official
teaching and practice of today’s Roman Catholic Church and are no longer confessionally
binding on members of the CRC” (https://www.crcna.org/welcome/beliefs/confessions/
heidelberg-catechism, accessed May 12, 2020). The current Roman Catholic theology
holds with the 2 nd Vatican Council that the priest “sacrificium eucharisticum in persona
Christi conficit [!] illudque nomine totius populi Deo offert” (“acting in the person of
Christ, he makes present [?] the Eucharistic sacrifice, and offers it to God in the name of
all the people”, /XPHQ *HQWLXP 10, '+ 4126, English translation from https://www.
vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen
c) This sacrifice relates universally WRDOO, to the whole creation.

d) As self-sacrifice of God, this sacrifice brings certain and GHILQLWLYH UH
PLVVLRQRIDOOVLQV.16
After the cross of Christ, which was the definitive and ultimate sacrifice,
the term of sacrifice was transformed into a rather spiritual or ethical term,
becoming central to Christian ethics.17
This was more or less the traditional answer, which was held firmly in
western theology (regardless if catholic or protestant) until the Enlighten-
ment. Under the domination of Anselm’s satisfaction theory as presented in
his &XU GHXV KRPR, it was shaped by juridical rather than biblical language
and terminology: Christ’s sacrifice was the necessary punishment and satis-
faction for human sin, by which the wrath of God was atoned so that his jus-
tice could be restored.18
The juridical language and the critique of traditional theology in the En-
lightenment, based on the anthropological turn, led later in the 20 th century to
a profound debate about the category of sacrifice. While R. Bultmann de-
clared the talk of the sacrifice to be inadequately mythological and refused it,
the Old Testament scholar H. Gese defended the atoning sacrifice as the only
appropriate expression of the meaning of Christ’s death in its wholeness and
depth.19 As Dalferth points out, actually, they both tried to find an appropriate
expression of the basic soteriological fact that Christ did not die just for hi m-
self but for us.20 What was searched for was thus an appropriate conception of
vicarious representation.
The same direction in thinking was confirmed also in the following critical
debate about the term of God in the conception of the satisfaction theory,
which appeared subsequently as too dark. The result of this debate showed
_gentium_en.html, accessed May 12, 2020). The stress lies obivously on the re-
presentation of the unique and singular sacrifice of Christ and, also, on the participation of
the church on this sacrifice sacrifying itself for the world (cf. &DWHFKLVP RI WKH &DWKROLF
&KXUFK, § 1368).
16
In previous chapters, I tried to substantiate the first point, which is the ontological
foundation of Christology. In this chapter, I will try to substantiate the remaining three
points, which are the content of soteriology.
17
Cf. DALFERTH, &UXFLILHGDQG5HVXUUHFWHG, 251–255; JÜNGEL, -XVWLILFDWLRQ, 165–167.
18
Cf. below, subch. 3.2; ANSELM OF CANTERBURY, &XUGHXVKRPR; PANNENBERG, -H
VXV, 42–43.
19
Cf. BULTMANN, “New Testament and Mythology”, 34; H. GESE, “Die Sühne”, in:
IDEM, =XUELEOLVFKHQ7KHRORJLH$OWWHVWDPHQWOLFKH9RUWUlJH(München: Chr. Kaiser, 1977),
105; DALFERTH, &UXFLILHGDQG5HVXUUHFWHG, 239–244, 261–269.
20
DALFERTH, &UXFLILHGDQG 5HVXUUHFWHG, 241–242 and 281: “With the removal of the
soteriological relevance of the sacrificial cult, the cross simultaneously marks the cancell a-
tion of the soteriological relevance of the category of sacrifice: Christian soteriology is
possible without this category, but it is impossible without what is said with the aid of this
category in the New Testament about the cross of Christ and hence about us.”
9LFDULRXV5HSUHVHQWDWLRQ 305
clearly, what holds already for the New Testament: it is not God, who needs
atonement. In this process, God is not the object but rather the subject of
atonement because it is the human who needs to be atoned and reconciled.
7KHKXPDQLVWKHRQO\REMHFWRIDWRQHPHQW.21 The cross of Jesus Christ brings
atonement with God IRUKXPDQV.
This line of thought also aims at the problem of vicarious representation:
the effect of the cross, the christological “for us” is here interpreted as “in our
place”, “representing us”. This idea presupposes a point of identification or
interconnection between Christ, his cross and other people. It is, in the end,
exactly this conception, which lies at the heart of Christian soteriology, but
which, at the same time, appears to be contradictory. Thus, the crucial ques-
tion is: What does the Pauline “in Christ” mean? How are we interconnected
with Christ and his cross? For the problem of an appropriate conception of
soteriology, the answer to this question is decisive.
3. Vicarious Representation

3. Vicarious Representation
([FOXVLYLW\DQG,QFOXVLYLW\
To this traditional question, there is a traditional answer, of course, which is
still maintained also by some protestant theologians. 22 The factual back-
ground is the neo-Chalcedonian conception of incarnation as HQK\SRVWDVLV
(cf. above, Ch. 3.2.2.): In the incarnation, the trinitarian person of the Son as-
sumes into itself the human nature, which as such does not have any of its
own particular form of being (is anhypostatical), but rather gets it and finds it
in the K\SRVWDVLV of the Logos. Next to the divine nature, the divine K\SRVWD
VLV becomes the particular form of being also for the human nature. There-
fore, this assumption is not an assumption of a whole and previously consti-
tuted human (DVVXPSWLRKRPLQLV), but it is rather an assumption of an imper-
sonal human nature (DVVXPSWLR QDWXUDH), which in this assumption gains its
particular and concrete being, its personhood and – because this personhood
is constituted by the divine K\SRVWDVLV – also some divine attributes. Incarna-
tion is here thus conceived rather as LQGLYLQL]DWLRQ: there is an obvious
asymmetry between the full divine nature and the divinized human nature,
which gets, instead of particular human attributes, the divine ones.
21
Cf. F. NÜSSEL, “Die Sühnevorstellung in der Dogmatik und ihre neuzeitliche Prob-
lematisierung”, in 'HXWXQJHQ GHV 7RGHV -HVX LP 1HXHQ 7HVWDPHQW, ed. J. FREY and J.
SCHRÖTER (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 91; HAMPEL and WETH, “Vorwort”, VI–VII.
22
Cf. JÜNGEL, -XVWLILFDWLRQ, 161–162; CH. GESTRICH, &KULVWHQWXPXQG6WHOOYHUWUHWXQJ
5HOLJLRQVSKLORVRSKLVFKH 8QWHUVXFKXQJHQ ]XP +HLOVYHUVWlQGQLV XQG ]XU *UXQGOHJXQJ GHU
7KHRORJLH (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), 389.
Although this conception triggered the long-lasting tendency of emphasiz-

ing more the divinity of Christ at the expense of his humanity, which was
more and more diminished (cf. my critique above, Ch. 3.2.2 and the attempt
to correct this conception, Ch. 6.1), for the conception of vicarious represen-
tation this conception brings a very elegant solution: The human nature in the
form of common human I\VLV is what all people have in common, what is
shared in every individual life and what is its ground. Thus, the common hu-
man I\VLV serves here as a kind of a universal bus or container that encom-
passes every human life regardless of its individual specifics (like sex, ge n-
der, race, character, intelligence etc. as if it were the common human material
before its further particular specification) and, also, regardless of time (before
Christ or after). This can be, then, easily and variously applied in soteriology
(and also in the Christian proclamation, cf. Gal 3:28): Jesus Christ enco m-
passes men and women, black, white, brown, and all others because he is as if
generally elevated above all particular differences. This matches exactly the
leading soteriological pattern of the old church, as it is expressed in the so-
called formulas of interchange: “Quod non est assumptum, non est sanatum.
What was not assumed, is not healed.” 23 When God in Christ assumed the
human I\VLV, he assumed all possible humanity. Understood in hyle-morphic
terms: he assumed the common dough from which all people are formed.
This is the common theological ground for soteriological conceptions re-
garding the effect of Christ’s cross. In principle, there are two basic ways one
can develop a soteriological conception of vicarious representation: the (ra-
ther) exclusive and the (rather) inclusive way.24
The H[FOXVLYH FRQFHSWLRQV stress the fact that in his death, Christ has ac-
complished something that no other human could and that no other human
after Christ’s death needs to accomplish anymore. Here, Christ is the VXEVWL
WXWLRQ of humans, he dies LQVWHDGRI them. Close to this position is Anselm of
Canterbury, who says with his satisfaction theory that Christ brought suffi-
cient satisfaction once and for all (VDWLVIDFWLRYLFDULD). The problem of these
conceptions is that they at first, in fact, leave aside the one who needs and ini-
tiates the sacrifice, resp. to whose benefit the sacrifice is done. The whole
process is focused on the sacrificed one and his work and merit. Driven to the
extreme in a hypothetically absolute form, the one who should benefit from
the sacrifice, is not even necessary at all, for the satisfaction itself he becomes
obsolete. Yet, after the sacrifice has been brought, its effect turns paradoxi-
cally into its contrary: Once the substitution is complete, the debth was paid,
23
Cf. GREGORY OF NAZIANZ, Ep. 101, 3* 37, 181–184; cf. also the early Christian
(SLVWOHWR'LRJQHWXV 9, belauding the “sweet exchange”.
24
This differentiation stems probably from A. Ritschl, cf. S. SCHAEDE, 6WHOOYHUWUHWXQJ
%HJULIIVJHVFKLFKWOLFKH6WXGLHQ ]XU 6RWHULRORJLH (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 627, fn.
8.
and the substitute carried away all the problems, then the substituted ones are
free and do not need their substitute anymore. In fact, he has made himself
obsolete for the actual lives of people living after his sacrifice. There remains
the enduring profit of his sacrifice, for sure, but beyond that only gratitude,
pious remembrance, and may be his self-giving life as a model to be fol-
lowed.
The LQFOXVLYHFRQFHSWLRQV try to encompass the one who benefits from the
sacrifice into the process of sacrifice itself. Therefore, for this approach the
term of vicarious representation fits more than the (rather exclusive) substitu-
tion. In these conceptions, the stress lies on human participation in the death
of Jesus Christ, which, at the same time, can be directly used in Christian
proclamation providing it with some existential tones. Jesus Christ, in his
person and in his life and work, encompasses all humans, he is present in
them and they in him: We all are somehow present in Christ and in his death,
we die with him. Here, humans die ZLWK Christ, his death is our death, his fate
is our fate, what happened to him, happened to all. Yet, this point is, at the
same time, the biggest problem of this conception: There has to be a point of
identification between the whole of humankind and Christ. However, the con-
struction of such a point after the Enlightenment critique of the traditional
theological structures is very problematic, as I will show below. Driven to the
extreme – if Christ should not be downgraded to a mere model of conduct and
become only a solidary and sympathetic guide on one’s individual life-path –
an absolute inclusivity would lead to the loss of one’s self, the represented
humans in Christ would lose their individual character and their subjectivi-
ty.25
With the Enlightenment critique of traditional soteriology, which was
dominated by Anselm’s satisfaction theory, the common opinion shifted quite
massively in the direction of the inclusive vicarious representation. However,
as Schaede rightly points out, both the exclusive and inclusive ways cannot
be posited as mutually excluding opposites:
“[I]t is the nature of any vicarious representation [Stellvertretung] that it binds together the
exclusive and the inclusive moments. The point is always that the existence, activity or
passivity of the representing instance is related to the existence, activity or passivity of the
represented instance. Concerning the fact that the represented instance itself is not present,
does not act or does not let something happen to it, every vicarious representation is exclu-
sive. And concerning the fact that the processes of the vicarious representation are related
25
Paul seems to go in this direction in Gal 2:20: “It is no longer I who live, but it is
Christ who lives in me.” Therefore, there were in the Christian tradition also conceptions
that saw the dissolving of one’s identity in Christ as the final goal, namely, mysticism. In
the modern times, Schleiermacher’s conception goes this way (cf. above, Ch. 3.2.8). Cf.
also SCHAEDE, 6WHOOYHUWUHWXQJ, 628, who, however, sees the absolute extreme of inclusivity
in solidarity. PANNENBERG, 6\VWHPDWLF7KHRORJ\2, 435–436, puts it correctly and stresses
at this point the necessary exclusive element within his otherwise inclusive conception.
to the represented instance, it is inclusive. The vicarious representation lives on this dialec-
tics between inclusivity and exclusivity.” 26
However, as I intend to show below, not only do both of these foci have their
severe problems, but the idea of vicarious representation is questionnable as
such and should thus be replaced by a soteriological conception, which sees
the bigger picture of salvation in more trinitarian terms, yet while preserving
both foci (exclusivity and inclusivity) as legitimate moments or elements of
salvation.
6RPH7UDGLWLRQDO6ROXWLRQV
In the patristic era, soteriology operated intensively with the idea that death
was a legitimate punishment from the devil for human sin. With Christ’s
death, however, the devil, being deceived, punished in an illegitimate way
someone who had not sinned. Herewith, the devil lost his right on the lives of
humans altogether.27 However mythological this idea might be (and survived,
maybe exactly therefore, in the common piousness until the Middle Ages),
the core of this idea aims in the right direction, which I will develop more b e-
low: Christ beared the fate we should bear. His death did not change the
claim of the devil directly, but it changed the claim of death on humans and
through it, the whole got a new context and frame. “The real emphasis of
most patristic doctrines of redemption rests on the victory over death”, an-
chored, however, already in the act of incarnation, not in the cross itself. 28
Athanasius, then, leaves the devil out and conceives the cross as the vicarious
representative sacrifice according to the law of God. Jesus dies “instead of
all” and thus “for all”.29
From here leads a straight line to the western conception of $QVHOP – to his
VDWLVIDFWLRQWKHRU\. Anselm explicitely refuses the concept of the deception of
the devil, because with this, the devil would be acknowledged to have a legit-
imate ultimate claim on humans. 30 It is God who has the only ultimate claim
on humans. However, with human sin, his justice was offended. Thinking in
juridical categories and terms, Anselm proposes his theory, which is based on
the conception of restoration of God’s justice through satisfaction for com-
mited sins. Sins must be punished, otherwise the world order would be bro-
26
SCHAEDE, 6WHOOYHUWUHWXQJ, 627.
27
Cf. CH. GESTRICH and T. HÜTTENBERGER, “Stellvertretung V. Kirchengeschichtlich
und systematisch-theologisch”, in 75(, vol.32 (Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 2001), 147,
who name Ireneus, Origen, Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine and Gregory
the Great. Similarly PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 275–277.
28
29
GESTRICH and HÜTTENBERGER, “Stellvertretung”, 147.
30
ANSELM, &XUGHXVKRPR I, 7–8 (20–29); cf. PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 276.
ken.31 Human sin is radical: through it humans owe God everything they have
and there remains nothing with which they could pay.32 Except there would
be – according to the rule of the old Roman law – a satisfaction for the com-
mited sins (DXWSRHQD±DXWVDWLVIDFWLR).33 Then, humans could be saved. Sat-
isfaction, however, is more than a sole paying back what humans owe to God:
satisfaction would mean to pay back more than the obligatory debt – a merit
needs to be added.34 But humans cannot pay back their debts. A satisfying
merit before God can only be brought by God himself. To save humans, ob-
viously, it must be a human who pays, because the concern is human sin. At
the same time, however, it has to be God who only can bring the satisfaction
and redemption. There is thus this necessity of the inner structure of satisfac-
tion – which matches the penitentiary practice of the medieval church – and
which requires Jesus Christ as the true human and the true God at the same
time to bring the satisfaction. 35 This satisfaction for all human sins and thus
for all humans was the cross of Christ, which Christ beared freely. For him
who was without sin, death was not a punishment for sins, but it was a free,
spontaneous and thus meritable act of obedience.36
Since the Enlightenment, the satisfaction theory has been intensively criticized on many
points: for its juridical way of thinking about atonement and salvation as the equalization
of sins;37 for the mechanism of divine justice and the God-human relation that is based on
human merits; for the all-ruling structure of satisfaction and justice (LXVWLWLDVLYHUHFWLWXGR)
– the beautiful (!) order of creation (RUGR), its QHFHVVLWDVand UDWLR, which even God has to
obey and follow;38 for a dark picture of a God of order instead of a God of love, who re-
31
ANSELM, &XUGHXVKRPR I, 12 (41–42). Sins cannot be simply forgiven: “Si non pu-
nitur, inordinatum dimittitur.”
32
Ibid. I, 20–21 (70–77).
33
Ibid. I, 13 (46).
34
Ibid. I, 11 (40): every sinner “plus debit reddere quam abstulit […]. Sic ergo debet
omnis qui peccat, honorem deo quem rapuit solvere; et haec est ‘satisfactio’, quam omnis
peccator deo debet facere.”
35
Ibid. II, 6–7 (96–99).
36
Cf. ibid I, 9–15 (28–51), I, 19–25 (66–89), II, 11 (110–117); SCHAEDE, 6WHOOYHU
WUHWXQJ, 274–309; MENKE, “Musste einer für alle sterben? Eine kritische Bilanz der Opfer-
Christologie”, in )UXQVJHVWRUEHQ6KQH±2SIHU±6WHOOYHUWUHWXQJ, ed. V. HAMPEL and
R. WETH (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2010), 191–222 (here further literature);
NÜSSEL, “Die Sühnevorstellung”, 75–80. PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 42–43, notes a fundamental
difference to the patristic and eastern conceptions of salvation: For the satisfaction, Anselm
needs primarily Christ’s perfect humanity, not his divinity. The divinity serves only to se-
cure the sinlessness of Christ, the enhypostatic elevation of human nature (cf. ANSELM,
&XUGHXVKRPR I, 8 [26]). The satisfaction is done by Christ’s humanity.
37
ANSELM, &XUGHXVKRPR I, 3 (16).
38
Ibid., I, 1 (12), I, 11 (40), I, 12 (44), I, 15 (50), explicitely I, 21 (76): “Nec deus ullum
obligatum aliquatenus debito peccati assumere potest ad beatudinem, TXLDQRQGHEHW” (my
italics). However, Anselm foresaw this objection, cf. ibid. II, 5 (94–97), II 17–18 (134–
149).
quires the payback of debts through sacrifice and who is, therefore, the one who needs to
be atoned; for the necessity to punish sins, which is more important than God’s gratious
forgiving; for the conception of the human, who is defined only by obedience and as a con-
stant debtor.39
This conception, then, displaced all other soteriological theories in the west-
ern theology (both catholic and protestant) for a very long time. 40
Unlike the West, the East stressed the idea of imitation of Christ towards
the divinization of human more: Christ goes in front and prepares the way
and space, which all others should follow. 41 The basis for this conception is
the formulas of interchange, which lead – through the christological concep-
tion of FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP elaborated in a specific way in the concep-
tion of HQK\SRVWDVLV, where Christ’s humanity gets divine attributes (cf.
above, Ch. 3.2.1 and 3.2.2) – to the idea of a certain “exchange” between be-
lievers and Christ. The West, although it sets different christological empha-
ses and does not work with the conception of WKHRVLV that much, incorporates
this term of the originally business language (FRPPHUFLXP) into its liturgy. 42
Later, the concept of wonderful exchange (DGPLUDELOHFRPPHUFLXP, wun-
derbarer Tausch, fröhlicher Wechsel) plays a central role in /XWKHU¶VVRWHULRO
RJ\ (cf. above, Ch. 3.2.5). Unlike in Anselm’s position, Christ bears not only
the consequences of the sin and the punishment for it to satisfy the corrupted
justice, but he bears the sin itself because Christ identifies himself with the
sinners. 43 In fact, there is a double exchange: first within the incarnation,
where, in the hypostatic union, one nature participates in the other (FRPPXQL
FDWLRLGLRPDWXP in its real version), and then the atonement, where the sinner
participates in Christ’s justice and vice versa (soteriological XQLRFXP&KULVWR
as DGPLUDELOHFRPPHUFLXP).
The IROORZLQJ SURWHVWDQW WKHRORJ\, however, could not maintain Luther’s
radical emphases and, to a large extent, turned back to the satisfaction theo-
39
Cf. GESTRICH and HÜTTENBERGER, “Stellvertretung”, 148; PANNENBERG, -HVXV,
277; NÜSSEL, “Die Sühnevorstellung”, 80–94. HICK, 7KH 0HWDSKRU, 112–126, offers a
massive critique of the conception of atoning sacrifice. However, with his argumentation,
he runs into an open door and, moreover, the object of his critique is rather a straw man
than some real theological positions.
40
GESTRICH and HÜTTENBERGER, “Stellvertretung”, 148. The term VDWLVIDFWLR YLFDULD
itself, however, originates from the Lutheran orthodoxy of the 17 th century.
41
Ibid., 147–148, naming partly the same names as in the previous paragraph (cf.
above, fn. 27). The important soteriological elements and lines obviously do not exclude
one another, it is more about different emphases than about concurring conceptions.
42
Cf. ibid., 148, naming Augustine and Leo I. Until today, the Preface of the Christmas
offertory prayer belauds the “wondrous exchange”. Cf. CH. SCHÖNBORN, 7KH 0\VWHU\RI
WKH,QFDUQDWLRQ, trans. G. HARRISON (New Jersey: Paulist Press, 2013).
43
GESTRICH and HÜTTENBERGER, “Stellvertretung”, 149.
ry.44 However, it did not stress Christ’s merits anymore, but emphasized ra-
ther his obedient suffering as the vicarious bearing of punishment for human
sin.45
A profoud critique of vicarious representation presented already at the end
of the 16th century )DXVWR6R]]LQL (Socinus). He refused the satisfaction theo-
ry and, at the same time, questioned the possibility of transferring one’s ind i-
vidual sins or merits (reduced in his view only to moral issues) to someone
else. Morality is not transferable, a particular person in its relation to its own
sin and guilt is irreplaceable and unsubstitutable. 46 This thesis of the irre-
placeability and unsubstitutability of the individual became the centre of the
critique also in the Enlightenment. The peak and the final word of this cri-
tique, at least for this epoch, is found in ,.DQW:
A debt “is not a transmissible liability which can be made over to somebody else, in the
manner of a financial debt […] but the most personal of all liabilities, namely a debt of sins
which only the culprit, not the innocent, can bear, however magnanimous the innocent
might be in wanting to take the debt upon himself for the other.” 47
Kant, however, considers the idea of a vicarious representation of Christ sole-

ly functionally. According to him, it is a mere religious idea, which, still, can
help in shaping one’s consciousness.
“It is totally inconceivable, however, how a rational human being who knows himself to
deserve punishment could seriously believe that he only has to believe the news of a satis-
faction having been rendered for him, and (as the jurists say) accept it XWLOLWHU, in order to
regard his guilt as done away with, indeed, to such an extent (to its very roots) that a good
life conduct, for which he has not made the least effort so far, would be even for the future
the unavoidable consequence of his faith and his acceptance of the proffered relief.” 48
The guilt is intransferrable and the individual imputability of guilt is today still the
ground and condition for a just trial. However, at the same time, guilt can be shared. The
extermely individualistic model of guilt as it can be found in Socinus, Kant, or A. Ritschl
was overcome by the insight into the fundamental sociality of the human and his or her
guilt: “It is grounded in the social character of human existence that every person continu-
ally deals in responsibilities that include other people to some degree.” 49 When a little
child starts to cry loud in the bus, the guilt and responsibility from the view of the fellow
travellers falls not only on the child itself but often also on his accompanying parent, who,
44
Although, as PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 43, rightly points out, the aim of satisfaction theo-
ry “is foreign to the authentically protestant understanding of salvation” (translation modi-
fied by me).
45
GESTRICH and HÜTTENBERGER, “Stellvertretung”, 149. Cf. also above, Ch. 3.2.6,
where the structure of satisfaction theory has its christological place within the protestant
orthodoxy in the JHQXVDSRWHOHVPDWLFXP.
46
NÜSSEL, “Die Sühnevorstellung”, 80–81.
47
KANT, 5HOLJLRQ, 89.
48
Ibid., 123; cf. NÜSSEL, “Die Sühnevorstellung”,85–88; SCHAEDE, 6WHOOYHUWUHWXQJ,
602–624.
49
PANNNEBERG, -HVXV, 265, cf. 264–269.
then, feels embarrassed and guiltily. The guilt can be and is being shared and beared to-
gether.50
After Kant, the death of Jesus Christ was not interpreted in the terms of satis-
faction anymore. His death is rooted either in his obedience to the Father, or
it is simply a consequence of incarnation. 51 The importance of the death on
the cross was being reduced subsequently to the extent that in Schleierma-
cher, the cross of Christ does not bring anything new between God and hu-
mans being only the expression of Christ’s solidarity with the sinners.52
-)LVFKHU, who belongs to the contemporary and radical adversaries of the
idea of vicarious representation, takes it in the christological respect to the
edge: Death is intransferrable, in both the exclusive and inclusive sense.
“If here [in the exclusive conception] is in question, how would it be possible that another
one takes away the guilt and death from me, then there [in the inclusive conception] is in
question, how would it be possible that my death happens in a death of another one, that
my life is sacrificed with the life of another one, and how would it be possible at all that I
should identify myself with another one in the sense of a subject transfer, which should
include all this. If the objection against the conception of exclusive vicarious represent a-
tion is that guilt cannot be taken over and transferred to another in the same way as it is not
possible with death, then the question is, whether this objection should not be raised
against the idea of the inclusive vicarious representation in the same way as well. On no
other place is the human as irreplaceable as in his or her death. How should it be possible
that in the death of Jesus – should it be conceived in the sense of the inclusive vicarious
representation – could happen my own death and the giving away of my life to God, which
shall redeem myself from all my guilt involvement? How can a foreign death be my own
death?”53
The vicarious representative dimension of Christ’s death primarily in its e x-

clusive dimension was stressed again by the dialectic theology of the 20 th
century. On the contrary, : 3DQQHQEHUJ – and with him many others54 –
stressed the inclusivity of Christ’s death: the death of Christ – originally ex-
50
Cf. U. WILCKENS, “Das Kreuz Christi, die Mitte des Glaubens aller Christen”, in )U
XQVJHVWRUEHQ6KQH±2SIHU±6WHOOYHUWUHWXQJ, ed. V. HAMPEL and R. WETH (Neukirchen-
Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2010), 29.
51
NÜSSEL, “Die Sühnevorstellung”, 88.
52
SCHLEIERMACHER, 7KH &KULVWDQ )DLWK, § 101.4, 435–438, cf. § 104, 451–466; cf.
NÜSSEL, “Die Sühnevorstellung”, 89.
53
J. FISCHER, *ODXEHDOV(UNHQQWQLV (München: Chr. Kaiser, 1989), 79–80. Cf. the fa-
mous first Invokavit-Sermon of M. LUTHER, 3UHGLJWHQGHV-DKUHV, in :$10/III, 1–2.
54
Cf. GESTRICH and HÜTTENBERGER, “Stellvertretung”, 150–151; PANNENBERG, -H
VXV, 263–264; MENKE, 6WHOOYHUWUHWXQJ; IDEM, “Musste einer für alle sterben?”, 191–222,
who proposes to read the whole history of Christian spirituality as the history of the incl u-
sive vicarious representation (ibid., 218); GESTRICH, &KULVWHQWXPXQG6WHOOYHUWUHWXQJ; M.
BIELER, %HIUHLXQJ GHU )UHLKHLW =XU 7KHRORJLH GHU VWHOOYHUWUHWHQGHQ 6KQH (Freiburg:
Herder, 1996). Cf. also S. SCHAEDE, “Substitution IV. Theology”, in 533, vol. 12, ed.
H.D. BETZ et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 332–334.
clusive as a closed event and still keeping this exclusive moment as death in-
stead of others – opens in an anticipatory way to a wide inclusivity, showing
the representative obedience of Christ to the Father.
“The thought here of inclusive representation makes Jesus the representative of all humani-
ty. This is in keeping with Paul's description of Christ as the second Adam. There takes
place in him paradigmatically that which is to be repeated in all the members of the hu-
manity that he represents.”55
From the Easter perspective, the story of Jesus manifests itself as an open sto-
ry to which belongs in a fundamental way also the history of its reception
among the believers. This happens primarily in the baptism where a human
connects his or her future death with the death of Christ, which changes here-
by into a death within hope. In this proleptical way, Christ’s death is the vi-
carious representative suffering for the punishment, which originally should
fall upon the human. At the same time, his obedience is the inclusive para-
digm for every believer baptized in his name. 56
It holds in principle, what was said above: there cannot be a plainly excl u-
sive or a plainly inclusive conception. Every conception, which is closer to
one of these poles, struggles with the other. However, both poles or foci face
severe problems. The question is whether these problems can be solved, or
whether the conception of vicarious representation should not be abandoned
at all. With some adaptations, I will argue for the second option.
3UREOHPVRI7UDGLWLRQDO6ROXWLRQV
The objections against the traditional solutions target different particular
points as well as the conception of vicarious representation as a whole. I will
now try to differentiate the particular problems of the exclusive and of the
inclusive approach, although they are often cross-related. It should help to
judge the conception as a whole at the end of this subchapter.
55
PANNENBERG, 6\VWHPDWLF7KHRORJ\2, 429–430.
56
Ibid., 416–437; IDEM, -HVXV, 263–264; critically against Pannenberg’s use of the term
vicarious representation for his own conception SCHAEDE, 6WHOOYHUWUHWXQJ, 629, who ob-
jects that Pannenberg’s conception is not actually a conception of vicarious representation,
but rather a conception of a solidary prolepsis, of Christ as a paradigm, which lets his b e-
lievers die and rise again with hope. I would agree that Pannenberg misinterprets his own
conception by naming it inclusive, because there is explicitely also as strong exclusive
moment: “In the expiatory character of the death of Jesus the exclusive element of his vi-
carious death, the death of one who is innocent for sinners, comes to expression. But ob e-
dience to God, for the sake of which Jesus accepted death, is paradigmatic for all of us”
(PANNENBERG, 6\VWHPDWLF 7KHRORJ\ 2, 435). The inclusive moment in Pannenberg, as
Schaede correctly points out, turns out to be rather a hopeful prolepsis than a true inclusivi-
ty.
3UREOHPVRI7UDGLWLRQDO([FOXVLYH$VSHFWV
Some of the problems related to the exclusive conception were mentioned al-
ready when having dealt with the satisfaction theory, which clearly represents
an exclusive approach (cf. above in this chapter, subch. 3.2). Here, Christ dies
instead of all humans, he is their full substitute, while other humans are actu-
ally not needed anymore. 57 He provided the satisfaction once and for all,
which, paradoxically, makes his suffering and death a closed part of history
so that the question arises, what is its actual meaning.
Besides, already Anselm knew that the sin of humankind and its harm of
God’s justice endlessly transcend the human possibilities of paying it back. 58
Later, Schleiermacher objected against the vicarious satisfaction that Christ
would have to suffer endlessly because the sin of the humankind is endless.59
3UREOHPVRI7UDGLWLRQDO,QFOXVLYH$VSHFWV
The traditional conception of inclusivity, surviving partly until today, worked
well with the ancient idea of common human SK\VLV, which Jesus Christ as-
sumed and with it all possible humanity. Problems arise here regarding the
universality of the common SK\VLV as well as regarding the particularity of
this SK\VLV in Christ’s humanity. As it turned out already in the critique of the
concept of HQK\SRVWDVLV (cf. above, Ch. 3.2.2), this humanity lacks concrete
human shapes. Yet, regarding the historical personality of Jesus, he was not a
human in general, but, on the contrary and in a very concrete way, he was a
particular human individual, moreover: a particular male. How could this par-
ticular individual encompass all possible humanity with all its analogical par-
ticularities, should not his particular humanity be diminished to the idea of a
common, yet unspecific and unspecified human SK\VLV (as it was the case in
the tradition)? For it is his particular and concrete humanity, which is the
fundamental expression of his true humanity because there is no other hu-
manity than the particular and concrete humanity.
In other words, this evokes the principal question whether there is some-
thing like a common and unspecified human SK\VLV at all (in the sense of a
nominalist objection against the realism of universals, where universals –
such as SK\VLV – precede the particular things); or whether humanity does not
exist rather always only in the form of particular individuals and never in a
univocally common and unspecific form (in the nominalist or phenomenolog-
ical sense, where universals come as subsequent abstractions from particular
things).
57
Cf. the critique of D. SÖLLE, &KULVW WKH 5HSUHVHQWDWLYH, 43–50: Christ cannot be a
substitute in the sense of the German “Ersatz” – replacement.
58
ANSELM, &XUGHXVKRPR I, 20 (71–75); cf. MENKE, “Musste einer für alle sterben?”.
59
Should the conception of common human SK\VLV prove to be untenable

and should theology not only appeal to a vague mystical identification (e.g. of
the believer and of the picture of Christ in faith, as liberal theology does it),
then there would arise an absolutely fundamental need for an appropriate
conception, which would allow one to think a point of inclusion of believers
into Christ or vice versa. This is the crucial point of all inclusivity and I will
turn to this below again.
A common soteriological starting point is often the biblical (Pauline) way
of talking about the death of all as included in Christ and his death: “we have
died with Christ” (Rom 6:8). However – as it is explicitly obvious in the fol-
lowing verses of the just quoted place in Paul’s epistle to Romans – this idea
operates with an equivocation in the term of death: Christ died on the cross
and, hereby, he died to sin once for all (Rom 6:10). According to Paul, we
died with him, however, not on the cross but only in the latter meaning (Rom
6:11). The inclusive idea presupposes here its exclusive counterpart: When all
died in Christ, they died, then, at least partly, in a different way than Christ.
The death of Christ was different from the death of all who died with him:
Christ died on the cross, we died with him to the sin. Paul plays with this
equivocation or shifted meaning to express his crucial soteriological point. A
theological conception starting with this idea, however, should clearly differ-
entiate between the exclusive and the inclusive element and thus between the
death of Christ and our death. Nevertheless, the question of how to conceive
the soteriologically crucial phrase “with him” or “in him” still remains.
At the same time, the hermeneutical question is connected with this problem of how to
work with the biblical texts. They are very often taken in an axiomatic way, such that their
terms are directly transposed into theology as if they were terms with clear meaning and
understanding. However, the ongoing research of the New Testament shows that these cen-
tral biblical terms and ideas are not univocal but mostly undefined, polysemantic, or they
integrate different strings or lines of thought. Therefore, the current research turns back to
the roots of the traditional ideas in the biblical terms like the Pauline terms of atonement,
sacrifice, death, etc. and explores their semantic fields and treats them as PHWDSKRUV rather
than as terms, which could be directly used in theology. 60
)XUWKHU3UREOHPVRIWKH&RQFHSWLRQRI9LFDULRXV5HSUHVHQWDWLRQ
The Pauline groundwork for the idea of vicarious representation touches an-
other bundle of problems also. It is here where the question of our place in
60
Cf. WOLTER, “‘Für uns gestorben’”; IDEM, “Der Heilstod Jesu als theologisches Ar-
gument”, in 'HXWXQJHQGHV7RGHV-HVXLP1HXHQ7HVWDPHQW, ed. J. FREY and J. SCHRÖTER
(Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 297–314; J. FREY, “Probleme der Deutung des Todes
Jesu in der neutestamentlichen Wissenschaft. Streiflichter zur exegetischen Diskussion”, in
ibid., 3–50; SCHRÖTER, “Sühne, Stellvertretung, Opfer”; JANOWSKI, “Das Leben für an-
dere hingeben”.
the history of salvation has its roots: in Paul’s statement that Jesus Christ ZDV
crucified and resurrected, Christ’s vicarious death and resurrection are past
events, it happened already – this is the very fundament of all Christian proc-
lamation and all traditional christocentric soteriology. The Easter is the firm
foundation, on which the eschatological hope is based because it goes to-
wards the living Christ. This eschatological hope is rooted in a past event and
has a twofold impact: for future and for the present. In its very substance, it is
a “doubled” or “telescopic” eschatology: 61 The Christian hope awaits and
looks for a fulfilled future, for an encounter with the living Christ, who, ho w-
ever, does not remain closed in the future, but breaks from the future already
into the present time as &KULVWXVSUDHVHQV. The main eschatological motion is
thus as if against the flow of time from the future into the present and, at the
same time, it is rooted in a past event.
This is, what Paul intends to elaborate and what builds the foundation of
his soteriology. However, the tension between the future and the present time,
between the theologically well known “not yet” and “yet already”, brings
theological problems. In the same sense that Christ’s death is not the same as
our death to sin, there is an analogical tension in the continuation of Paul’s
quoted word: “But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also
live with him” (Rom 6:8). In the next verse, Paul refers to Christ’s resurrec-
tion. Yet Christ’s resurrection is a past event as well, just as his death. A
strict parallel regarding us, however, is not possible. Paul knew very well that
the statement “If we have died with Christ, we have been also resurrected
with him” would open the door for a unacceptable and inappropriate Chris-
tian triumphalism of a Gnostic shape, which, moreover, would not match em-
pirical experience because we are not there yet. We live in a tenseful interim,
in a PHDQWLPH, in a time between the resurrection of Jesus and the end of time
(resp. the second resurrection – our resurrection).
However, exactly this rejected conclusion draws the epistle to Colossians: “When you were
buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of
God, who raised him from the dead” (Col 2:12, cf. also Col 3:1). This shift in the theologi-
cal diagnosis of the current state of Christians in Colossians is probably the deciding theo-
logical reason against the direct authorship of Paul. Obviously, regarding this theological
thesis, whether Christians are also already resurrected, there is an innerbiblical polemic.
Col 2:12 is theologically in agreement e.g. with John 5:24 (and with Eph 2:5, which is di-
rectly dependent on Col), but is in direct opposition to 1Cor 4:8, where Paul criticizes
those who consider themselves to be already in the heavenly Kingdom of God, and to
2Tim 2:18, which criticizes some who claim “that the resurrection has already taken
61
With this term and conception came in the 1930s the Czech New Testament scholar
J.B. Souček, cf. P. POKORNÝ, “Jesus’ Death on the Cross. Literary Theological and Histor-
ical Context”, in IDEM, -HVXV LQ *HVFKLFKWH XQG %HNHQQWQLV (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck,
2016), 183, fn. 29.
place”. This seems to be an implicit polemic with the eschatology of Col. 62 It is important
to notice that the author of Col shifts the meaning of resurrection to present eschatology
when he interprets baptism as resurrection through faith. This would posit into the theolog-
ical conception of resurrection a metaphorical shift or even an equivocation because the
resurrection of Jesus would be of a different character than the resurrection of Christians in
the baptism.63 Next to it, such a conception would open all the risky questions of whether
there can be a holy life without any sin under current conditions – which is also the main
topic of Col that tries to walk on the thin line between Christian holiness and Gnostic tri-
umphalism.
The character of this ‘meantime’ between the event of Christ’s cross and the
time of final redemption is an enduring challenge for theology. Here, the new
‘yet already’ crosses with the old ‘not yet’, which still persists; soteriology
crosses with hamartiology and grace with sin. Vis-à-vis the victory of Christ,
Christian theology has always had an inclination to belittle sin, evil, and
death – which, however, still remain and persist also SRVW &KULVWXP FUXFL
IL[XP – as if they were already overcome. How is it possible to say that sin,
evil, and death were overcome, when we still suffer, fail, and die? It is our
experience that VLQ HYLO DQG GHDWK DUH QRW GHILQLWLYHO\ RYHUFRPH. What did
change in this matter with Christ’s death? 64 This is one of the questions,
which current soteriology has to face and to which it should give a satisfying
answer.
Also, the fundamental Christian confession and theological statement that
Christ died for our sins, which were forgiven, indicates a number of prob-
lems. From the ethical point of view: How is it with sins, which I will commit
in the future? Christ’s vicarious death obviously cannot be a general pardon
for every wickedness to come. And from the theo-logical point of view: Did
not God forgive sins also before Christ was crucified? Or was this forgiving
somehow incomplete or partial? Why should the forgiveness of sins be bound
exclusively to Christ’s death? And how should, then, this forgiveness be con-
62
Cf. P. POKORNÝ, /LWHUiUQtDWHRORJLFNê~YRGGR1RYpKR]iNRQD>,QWURGXFWLRQWRWKH
1HZ 7HVWDPHQW ,WV /LWHUDWXUH DQG +LVWRU\@ (Praha: Vyšehrad, 1993), 213–214; P.
POKORNÝ and U. HECKEL, (LQOHLWXQJLQGDV1HXH7HVWDPHQW6HLQH/LWHUDWXUXQG7KHROR
JLHLPhEHUEOLFN (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 632–633.
63
On the contrary, M. BARKER, “Resurrection: Reflections on a New Approach”, in
5HVXUUHFWLRQ, ed. S.E. PORTER et al. (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 98–105,
identifies resurrection with baptism and tries to conceive also the resurrection of Jesus as
his renewal in baptism. However, this leads to obscure statements: Jesus “‘became’ the
Son of God, became the Messiah and experienced his own ‘resurrection’ as that was under-
stood within the temple tradition” (ibid., 102). He “believed himself to be the risen Lord
from the moment of his baptism” (ibid., 103).
64
Cf. NÜSSEL, “Die Sühnevorstellung”, 94: “It is the question, then, how the idea of in-
clusive representation can be made clearer and more plausible facing the fact that human,
who exists in the condition of this world, has his or her death still before him or her and,
empirically for oneself, cannot realize any unity with Christ.”
ceived across time so that it may reach people before and after Christ? Obvi-
ously, with the question of the inclusive vicarious death as the remission of
our sins, questions of the time relations between other people and Christ
(Lessing’s broad ditch of history) arise quite massively.
Again, with the problem of vicarious representation arise a complex bun-
dle of questions and problems, which all meet at the central and crucial point:
how is the point of representation, i.e., the inclusivity of all people in Christ
to be conceived? Or, said in different terms: How should the transfer of iden-
tity from us to Christ and from Christ to us to be conceived (i.e., how is the
DGPLUDELOHFRPPHUFLXP to be thought of)? How does one conceive not only a
symbolical but an RQWRORJLFDO identification of Christ and other people? How
does one conceive our real share in Christ’s death? Moreover, how does one
conceive this all on the exclusive basis, because there and then, it was Christ
who died on the cross and not us? In the theological respect, this is the most
complicated point: “In the systematic description of substitution [Stellver-
tretung], it is especially difficult to define precisely how Christ identifies with
sinners.”65
A very interesting attempt of a new interpretation proposed ,8'DOIHUWK, who refuses the
idea of vicarious representation as such in both its forms of inclusivity and exclusivity:
“Christ is therefore not externally connected with us as our representative in a transaction
between human beings and God. The confessional statement ‘Jesus GLHG IRU XV’ does not
mean that he died LQVWHDG RI XV or LQ RXU SODFH (in the sense of avnti,), as one might say
when speaking of someone who rescued a child from a burning house but lost his own life
in the process. But it also does not mean that he died IRURXUVDNH or EHFDXVHRIXV (in the
sense of u`pe,r), as one might say when speaking of someone who lost his own life in a
(possibly unsuccessful) rescue attempt, or whose action set for his fellow human beings an
inspiring example of selfless dedication on their behalf. Interpretations like these all imply
a YLFDULRXV DFWLRQ or a YLFDULRXV GHDWK. If this idea is worked out within the framework
either of a juridical conceptual model of law and penalty or of a cultic conceptual model of
sacrifice and atonement, it is expounded as a VXEVWLWXWLRQ of one side for the other, as the
replacement of the offender or victim by another living being (human or animal) that suf-
fers the relevant consequences of his or her place. This in turn presupposes that those who
participate in this substitutionary or vicarious action are understood ontologically as indi-
viduals who exist independently of the action and of each other, so that the action in turn
can be apprehended merely as an external, exclusionary transaction between them. If we
try to think of the salvific significance of Jesus Christ in this sense, we perceive him as a
specific individual who, by his actions and suffering, accomplished a work from which
other individuals can benefit by allowing the effects of this work to have an impact on
them. But this quasi-causal thinking using the model of an acting subject and the conse-
65
SCHAEDE, “Substitution”, 334. PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 268, tries to establish substitu-
tion as a “universal phenomenon in human social relationships”: “Substitution as such can-
not be a miraculously supernatural uniqueness of Jesus.” However, Pannenberg conceives
this social substitution as a substitution in a role or function, which does not match the
substitution of Christ and of his death, which needs to be ontological, should it fulfill the
soteriological purpose.
quences of his activity blurs the fact that the Christian resurrection confession attributes
the accomplishment of RXU salvation not simply to Jesus’ activity but to *RG¶V activity in
and through Jesus Christ. It also entirely robs God’s saving activity in Jesus Christ of its
personal character, obscuring the fact that the issue is not merely, or even primarily, what
Jesus did or suffered but what he LV in his actions and suffering: the creaturely locus of the
self-disclosing presence of God’s creative and all-renewing love.”66
To avoid all these blind alleys, Dalferth draws every important element into the
framework of God’s life and God’s present activity: our lives and also the life of Jesus
Christ, both with their contexts, are set into the context of the life of God. 67 God is the pri-
mary context and, also, God is the primary actor here. This changes the direction: “[I]t is
not I who transfer my identity to Christ, but rather I am content to accept that KHKDV iden-
tified himself with me.”68 God makes himself present in the human condition. Herewith,
Jesus’ story of life becomes open and inclusive. However, not in the sense of an inclusive
vicarious representation, but in the sense of a new context, which our life gets when it is
incorporated into the open and inclusive story of Christ: “It includes the story of each one
of us, and each of our stories presupposes his story and is carried forward by it. […] none
of our stories can be given its true meaning unless it is integrated into his story. His story is
the SUHstory, the XQGHUO\LQJstory, and the SRVWstory RIHYHU\ human story – this, indeed,
is the source of universality. But this does not blur the distinction between his story and
our story, since his extends into ours and is continued by it and beyond it. In fact, this i n-
timate link emphasizes the irreversible arrangement of these stories: his story includes
ours, and ours included his. His story is the context that establishes and affirms the truth of
our story; our story is the context in which the truth of his story is demostrated.” 69
Dalferth understands thus the inclusivity of Jesus’ story as the UHFRQWH[WXDOL]DWLRQ RI
RXU VWRULHV. The life story of Jesus becomes the new context of our individual stories,
which are not divested of their individuality, but which get in this new context a new iden-
tity.70 I consider this point of Dalferth’s conception to be the key to an appropriate concep-
tion of the universality of Christ’s cross.
However, Dalferth makes one more step. This new recontextualization is not the work
of humans but the activity of God with humans, in which God “incorporates” our story into
Christ’s story. Jesus Christ is thus not primarily an individual but rather a “collective per-
son” or “corporate Christ”. 71 This concept aims again back to the idea of inclusive repre-
sentation and Dalferth seems to confim it saying: “Jesus is not the producer of a work of
salvation; he is the mediator who, in his own person, brings us before God and God before
us; he is thus the locus at one and the same time of God’s presence with us and our pres-
ence with God.”72 However, with this step from the very plausible recontextualization to
the incorporation into a corporate Christ, the above-mentioned problems seem to rise
again: what should this incorporation be and how is this “locus” in Christ’s person to be
conceived?
In the end, Dalferth’s very promising conception fails on the point, which is very
common in the history of soteriology and especially in the protestant tradition (and I will
66
67
Ibid., 302–303.
68
Ibid., 275.
69
Ibid., 303–304.
70
Cf. similarly SCHAEDE, 6WHOOYHUWUHWXQJ, 640.
71
DALFERTH, &UXFLILHGDQG5HVXUUHFWHG, 304 and 300.
72
Ibid., 305.
try below to differentiate carefully and to conceive it differently): he overloads the christo-
logical part of salvation, as if the whole of salvation in both important points of Christ’s
cross and of its outreach into our lives would have to be conceived christomonistically. It
comes out more and more clearly that a conception of ontological inclusivity of Christ’s
cross or of his person is self-contradictory and cannot fulfill, what it promises.
What cannot be abandoned, is the universality of atonement and salvation in

Jesus Christ. At the same time, we have seen that a big problem is the ques-
tion of how an ontological participation on this universal event or person is to
be thought. How can we participate in Christ, when Christ and we are differ-
ent persons, moreover living in different times? 73 The idea of the ontological
understanding of inclusive representation in the tradition, however, is deeply
engraved into the basic Christian structures, into thinking as well as into the
religious practice of life and worship – as it is expressed in a long row of
christological metaphors in theology, liturgy, hymns and songs etc. that often
lean on the Pauline language. The problem is that they lead, in fact, to a chris-
tomonist interpretation of atonement and salvation: the atonement, the salva-
tion, the redemption, its outreach and its appropriation to a particular human
is then interpreted in christological categories only. At the same time, this of-
ten biblical-metaphorical language is being taken ontologically, without any
deeper theological reflection. This can, then, explain the problematic fact,
that – however clear the aim of these categories and metaphors is, i.e., to
grasp the universal effect of Christ’s cross – the theological reflection re-
mains often only at the level of postulates, or the ontological identification of
Jesus Christ with humankind is simply and directly presupposed without any
further reflection.74 Nevertheless, this is an explanation of the origin of this
problem, not a justification of this procedure, which seems to be very pro b-
lematic, yes nearly impossible. However vague or metaphorical, the concep-
tion of inclusive representation has obviously “a high systematic fascination”
73
Cf. SCHAEDE, 6WHOOYHUWUHWXQJ, 636: The problem is “the time assignment of the sote-
riological intervention of Christ and of the effect of this intervention for those, to whom is
it addressed”. To do it in an appropriate way, there would be needed “an eschatological
elaboration of soteriology, which would describe the intervention of Christ as an event
within time and space and, at the same time, as an eternally qualified event.” This is exac t-
ly what I will try to do below, in Ch. 10.
74
This is a precise observation of NÜSSEL, “Die Sühnevorstellung”, 93–94, when she
mentions that in the exegesis, there is a tendency to avoid the problems of the conception
of vicarious representation with the interpretation of representation as “existential repre-
sentation (Existenzstellvertretung)”, however, without any closer specification of how
should be this representation conceived. A classical example here would be again Luther,
who, on this central place, simply uses the metaphorical language of wondrous exchange
between Christ and us (next to other metaphors like e.g. the marriage, cf. LUTHER, “Von
der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen” [1520], in :$7, 25–26). Cf. also PANNENBERG, -H
VXV, 263, who, at the central point, uses the metaphor “community of Jesus’ dying”.
7ULQLWDULDQ7UDQVIRUPDWLRQRIWKH7UDGLWLRQDO&KULVWRPRQLVP 321
for Christian soteriology. “However, to this fascination, there is no corre-

sponding clarity.” 75
Therefore, I will join the radical voices in the debate and propose WRDEDQ
GRQDQGWKHQWRUHLQVWDOO the conception of vicarious representation different-
ly. This can in no way mean to throw away the soteriological importance of
the cross. On the contrary, exclusivity and inclusivity as highly important
moments are to be both preserved and elaborated but not within the frame of
vicarious representation – and, moreover, not only christologically, not only
as moments of the cross. Exclusivity and inclusivity are both fundamental
dimensions of the whole process of salvation. Yet, salvation with its exclu-
sive and inclusive moment, and with its objective and subjective dimension,
is to be elaborated rather in trinitarian terms. Here, the cross plays a central
role, however, and at the same time, salvation cannot be reduced in a chris-
tomonistic way to the cross only. It must be put into the trinitarian context,
which will make it possible to conceive appropriately both the exclusivity and
the inclusivity and to emphasize the soteriological importance of the cross of
Jesus Christ.
4. Trinitarian Transformation of the Traditional Christomonism

4. Trinitarian Transformation of the Traditional Christomonism
7KH&KULVWRORJLFDO.H\3RLQW%HDULQJRI)DWH
The theological debate, which arose within the last twenty years, reacts to the
questioning of the traditional soteriology by returning to the New Testament
in order to clarify the terms used and, with them, the soteriological meaning
of the cross of Jesus Christ as such. 76 The main notion is the thesis that the
Bible uses these words and terms and metaphors to express this meaning;
however, our task is not to simply repeat these metaphors or to provide them
with a theological legitimation. The aim is QRWWRNHHSWKHVHPHWDSKRUV. The
point is WRNHHSZKDWWKHVHPHWDSKRUVH[SUHVV and what they point to, and to
express WKLV in a theologically appropriate way for the current time and ra-
tionality. “[S]peaking of the salvific significance of the death of Jesus means
speaking of his death in such a way that what is expressed is what the New
Testament is seeking to say of him when it describes him as an atoning sacri-
fice.”77 The discussion thus stresses, what was already mentioned, that terms
like “atonement”, “sacrifice”, “vicarious representation” etc. are theological
interpretations of biblical witness, which – when using these ideas, if at all –
75
76
Cf. NÜSSEL, “Die Sühnevorstellung”, 90–91.
77
DALFERTH, &UXFLILHGDQG5HVXUUHFWHG, 269 (originally italicized).
works with them not as with terms but rather as with metaphors. 78 It is only in
the last few decades that these terms become a subject of theological discus-
sion in both respects: in the outreach of these terms as well as in their ind e-
terminateness. 79 Therefore, some try to determine these terms and ideas bet-
ter, some refuse them radically. 80 What is important is the variety of the ELEOL
FDO ZLWQHVV, which ascribes to the cross of Christ GLIIHUHQW PHDQLQJV H[
SUHVVHG LQ GLIIHUHQW IRUPXODWLRQV. The New Testament exegesis shows that
Paul often uses and adapts different commonly known motifs (paradoxically,
he does not mention Isaiah 53, which is thematically the closest to the vicari-
ous sacrifice; this is found only later in the early church). Hence, only one
interpretation of the cross cannot be presupposed in Paul either.81 What is im-
portant, however, is that the different biblical meanings of Christ’s death do
not compete with each other. All are based in the biblically indisputable fact
that in Jesus Christ God-Self acted in a decisive way and that this acting of
God involves also Jesus’ death. 82
This notion makes it possible not to cling to the term of vicarious represen-
tence too strictly. Especially, when the very centre of the term is the aporeti-
78
As already noted, the term of “vicarious representation (Stellvertretung)” stems from
the 17th century; similarly, the term of atonement is not biblical, but stems from the Ger-
man law. These terms are thus “secondary systematizations, with whose help the interpre-
tations of the New Testament can be brought to a general and abstract level” (WOLTER,
“‘Für uns gestorben’”, 2; cf. NÜSSEL, “Die Sühnevorstellung”, 69). Cf. also SCHRÖTER,
“Sühne, Stellvertretung, Opfer”, 69–70. According to him, it is fundamental and necessary
to confront these ideas and modern abstract concepts in a detailed way with the texts of the
New Testament, where these ideas have to prove their legitimacy.
79
Cf. GESTRICH and HÜTTENBERGER, “Stellvertretung”, 145: vicarious representation
is a “basic category, whose implications are not fully exposed yet.” “It is a problem that
‘vicarious representation (Stellvertretung)’ – although to a large extent not clarified yet –
ripens in the last years to an integral, which wants to include many soteriological and ethi-
cal aspects.” Therefore, it is always necessary to define as precisely as possible, what one
means by vicarious representation – cf. SCHAEDE, 6WHOOYHUWUHWXQJ, 629, who criticizes Pan-
nenberg that he uses the term of vicarious representation, but that he, in fact, means some-
thing different.
80
Cf. e.g. HAMPEL and WETH, “Vorwort”, V: “[T]he classical categories for the inter-
pretation of Jesus’ death like ‘atonement’, ‘sacrifice’ and ‘vicarious representation’ in the
first place, are not sustainable – or at least not understandable any more.” Cf. also
FISCHER, *ODXEHDOV(UNHQQWQLV, 79–80; DALFERTH, &UXFLILHGDQG5HVXUUHFWHG, 304–305,
and the contributions in the volumes 'HXWXQJHQGHV 7RGHV-HVXLP 1HXHQ 7HVWDPHQW and
)UXQVJHVWRUEHQ.
81
Cf. SCHRÖTER, “Sühne, Stellvertretung, Opfer”, 65–66; PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 246–
251.
82
SCHRÖTER, “Sühne, Stellvertretung, Opfer”, 70; cf. KÄSEMANN, “Die Heils-
bedeutung”, 23.
cal figure of inclusive identification of Jesus Christ with other people. 83 As I

indicated already, such identification cannot be conceived and thought.
Therefore, the cross cannot be taken as vicarious representative death in the
traditional meaning either. Since the critique regarding the satisfaction theo-
ry, it is obvious that the effect of the cross cannot be conceived as a mere vi-
carious work, with which our debt was erased (the traditional exclusive con-
ception). However, it is neither possible to conceive the cross as if it were the
cross of all of us so that we all were incorporated into Christ or Christ into us
(the traditional inclusive conception). 84 It is not possible to think us in Christ
or Christ in us without diminishing or de-subjectivizing one of both entities,
because we are different persons and personalities. However, “the semantical
relevance of the term of vicarious representation for soteriology stands and
falls with the possibility to think this identification.” 85
Therefore, because the conception of vicarious representation is too close-
ly bound to the conception of the inclusive representation, I plea for abandon-
ing this conception. Vicarious representation in the inclusive meaning is not
possible. What is to be distinguished, however, is the inclusive PRPHQW of
salvation. This point is absolutely fundamental and cannot be missing – it
would be an impossible conception of salvation, if there were not people in-
cluded into it. The inclusive moment needs thus to be saved and preserved
and must find its appropriate place.
Now, when the inclusive moment was removed and saved for another
place, it is, however, possible to re-install the term of vicarious representation
(or even substitution) again in a modified meaning. I follow here J. Schröter,
who considers the content of the term of vicarious representation fundamental
because it “expresses a basic aspect of the meaningful interpretation of Jesus’
death”. Schröter defines this interpretation as follows: “The fate of Jesus
Christ, caused not by himself but by the guilt of other people, was, however,
beared by him on their place.” 86 Vicarious representation means here that “Je-
sus enters into the place of others and takes over the fate, which was actually
meant for them” (cf. 2Cor 5:21; Gal 3:13). 87 Obviously, this formulation
83
Cf. SCHAEDE, 6WHOOYHUWUHWXQJ, 641: “With the term of vicarious representation only
cannot be grasped the deciding point of Christ’s action.”
84
In ecclesiology, following the metaphor in 1Cor 12:27 and Eph 4:11–16, this is then
often connected with the aporetic idea of the FKXUFKDVWKHERG\RI&KULVW: “Christ existing
as the church-community” (BONHOEFFER, “The Nature of the Church”, 299). Cf. P.
GALLUS, “Gotteswerk und Menschenwerk im Gottesdienst”, in ,Q GHU *HJHQZDUW *RWWHV
%HLWUlJH ]XU 7KHRORJLH GHV *RWWHVGLHQVWHV, ed. H.-P. GROSSHANS and M.D. KRÜGER
(Frankfurt am Main: Hansisches Druck- und Verlagshaus, 2009), 164–170.
85
86
SCHRÖTER, “Sühne, Stellvertretung, Opfer”, 67; cf. KÄSEMANN, “Die Heils-
bedeutung”, 21.
87
SCHRÖTER, “Sühne, Stellvertretung, Opfer”, 68.
stresses more WKH H[FOXVLYH PRPHQW of Christ’s sacrifice. However, this idea
could aspire for a basic consensus in the discussion and could provide a good
starting point, which can now be elaborated more.88 From the ontological
point of view, this is not vicarious representation in the sense of an ontologi-
cal identification of Christ and other people (and thus of an inclusive vicar i-
ous representation). It is not identification but a YLFDULRXV EHDULQJ RI IDWH,
which should have fallen upon the sinful human. Christ does not assume
QDWXUDKXPDQD, a common human SK\VLV but rather the fate of a sinner. This
is precisely the important difference, which will play a major role further on:
the point is not an incorporation of Christ into us or of us into Christ. The
point is the vicarious bearing of fate, the vicarious bearing of the conse-
quences of human sin in the form of death, which separates humans from God
and which humans would have to bear themselves also. Only in this meaning,
one could call this a vicarious death, a death in our place, a death, which
would be “normally” determined for us. Hence, and that is the point, Christ’s
death is QRW our death. The death, which Christ died, was PHDQW to be the
death of all of us. However, thanks to him, it is not anymore. This emphasizes
the exclusive point of the whole process and if there should be any use of the
term of vicarious representation or substitution in the christological meaning,
then it should be done only in this specifically exclusive sense of bearing fate
in the place of others.
This opens space for a different soteriology than the one based on the for-
mula of interchange: Jesus Christ was a particular human, a man who lived in
a particular time, space, culture etc. He did not assume the common human
nature as such or in its whole (also because there is nothing like this) – yet, in
order to become the ground of universal salvation, he did not need to. By
bearing the fate of the sinner to its end – and, with his resurrection, even be-
yond it – he changed the ultimate ontological frame and thus the situation for
all. The conception of salvation that is based on the incarnational interchange
of God and the common human nature is made obsolete. There is no need to
press all people into the humanity of Christ anymore and to construe a chris-
tomonical participation of all people in the particular humanity of Jesus. Jesus
Christ does not need to be a universal container of all human existences. On
the contrary, this approach opens space for the elaboration of his full humani-
ty. Now, the full humanity of Jesus with all its particularity and particular in-
dividuality can be maintained because humanity exists always only as partic-
ular humanity. The stress on the exclusive dimension grounds the salvation
not on the participation on his person but rather on what he brought, or better,
what he borne instead of all other people: the death of the sinner. However,
because Jesus Christ shared the situation – i.e., the existence within the sin-
88
Cf. e.g. PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 263–264; IDEM, 6\VWHPDWLF 7KHRORJ\ 2, 435;
GESTRICH, &KULVWHQWXPXQG6WHOOYHUWUHWXQJ, 389;
corrupted world – with all people, but he was the only one who had to bear
the negative outcome of it in full depth and strength, his death is not a closed
historical event, which would make its current actuality obsolete. The fate of
Jesus Christ as fate intended for every sinner is still a mirror of every human
existence. Yet, the important point is that it already happened, that his death
is already a past event and thus a firm anchor of Christian hope, which does
not need to look naively into the future with uncertainty how it all will end.
Based on the death of Jesus Christ as a past – yet not a closed, and thus actu-
ally obsolete – event, Christian hope gets its firm and still actual root.
However, as was already mentioned, the exclusive element itself is not
enough for a conception of salvation. There is also the question of how the
salvation comes to the particular human, the question of WKHLQFOXVLYHGLPHQ
VLRQ. I am convinced that this dimension – in contrast to a powerful stream in
the tradition – FDQQRWEHFRQFHLYHGFKULVWRORJLFDOO\. Salvation is not a chris-
to-monist process – despite the tradition (and the protestant tradition in par-
ticular) conceived it so very often. 89 The basis of an appropriate conception of
salvation needs to be a PRUHSUHFLVHGLIIHUHQWLDWLRQEHWZHHQWKH FKULVWRORJL
FDODQGWKHSQHXPDWRORJLFDOVLGHRIVDOYDWLRQ – hence, a more precise trinitar-
ian thinking. It is to say that with the help of christological categories the tra-
ditional conception of vicarious representation tries to solve problems, which,
in fact, belong to the sphere of pneumatology, while the attempt of solely
christological solution fails. Therefore I call such conceptions “chris-
tomonist”. Next to it, this overload of Christology – at least in modern
protestant theology – is in my opinion one of the fundamental causes of the
often-mentioned and often-criticized pneumatological deficit of the western
theology. 90 This is to be corrected through a consistently trinitarian concep-
tion of salvation.91
89
As a fitting example of the christomonist conception cf. e.g. the conception of Schlei-
ermacher, where Christ as the Redeemer assumes the believers into the community with
himself, into the community of his God-consciousness (cf. above, Ch. 3.2.8). Cf. also
BONHOEFFER, “The Nature of the Church”, 298. Differently Hegel, in whom Christ is only
one passing step in the whole process, which too quickly runs into pneumatology and has
its final point in the Spirit present as the believing community (cf. above, Ch. 7.2.2.3 and
Bonhoeffer’s “Christ existing as church-community”, ibid., 299 [originally italicized]).
90
It stems partly already from Augustine’s conception of Trinity, where the Spirit is
solely the bound of love (YLQFXOXPFDULWDWLV) between the Father and the Son, which made
history in the modern times especially through its modification in the highly influential
theological philosophy of Hegel. In current times, the idle space of pneumatology try to fill
up evangelical and pentecostal theologies, falling, however, often into the other extreme of
overloading pneumatology.
91
This point stresses J. DUPUIS, SJ, 7RZDUG D &KULVWLDQ 7KHRORJ\ RI 5HOLJLRXV 3OXUD
OLVP (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1997), 207. More to his inclusively pluralist conception cf.
below, Ch. 11.1.1.2.
The christological overload and the missing differentiation between Chris-

tology and pneumatology within the process of salvation fails primarily in
following two points: Firstly, in a christomonist conception, the objective part
of salvation is overloaded. All emphasis lies on the cross, while the subjective
part of salvation, the individual appropriation of salvation, comes short.92
Everything important is done with Christ’s sacrifice (which is, however, cor-
rect!) and concerning individual believers, the issue is only to get to know or
to discover the already realized reality (which is the weak point).93 Just as
God in three persons is a wider category than the one person of the Son (who
is WRWXV 'HXV but not WRWXP'HL), salvation is a wider category than Easter.
However, the stress on the soteriological definitiveness of the cross, is, at
the same time, a wholly appropriate defense against the opposite tendency to
oveweight the pole of the subjective realization of salvation and ascribe to it a
soteriologically constitutive moment. The cross of Christ is not a mere open-
ing of a possibility of salvation, which anyone can or cannot use. Neither is it
just a first step or first half, which must be amended and completed by its ap-
propriation through particular humans. 94 The task is quite difficult and com-
plex here. It is necessary to hold the soteriological definitiveness of the cross,
which does not need any other supplements. However, at the same time, this
must not mean reduction of the LQGLYLGXDO DSSURSULDWLRQ RI VDOYDWLRQ to a
mere taking notice (the so-called ILGHV KLVWRULFD: to believe that something
indeed had happened and consider it for truth). The appropriation of salvation
92
This is a common point of critique from liberal theology, which objects against the
traditional doctrine that its concept of subjective faith tends heavily towards a mere affir-
mation or assent to some historical or doctrinal facts; that faith is reduced only to the cor-
rect doctrine, while piousness and inwardness of faith vanishes completely.
93
Cf. e.g. the already classical conception of K. Barth, who conceives faith as a three-
step “acknowledgement – recognition – confession” (Anerkennen – Erkennen – Bekennen,
BARTH, &KXUFK'RJPDWLFVIV/1, 758; to the details, contexts and critique of Barth’s con-
ception cf. GALLUS, 'HU 0HQVFK, 462–494 and 523–540), and the above-mentioned and
today also already classical objection against it from C.G. BERKOUWER, 7ULXPSK GHU
*QDGH LQ GHU 7KHRORJLH .DUO %DUWKV (Neukrichen: Verlag der Buchhandlung des Er-
ziehungsvereins, 1957), 245.
94
Cf. PANNENBERG, 6\VWHPDWLF7KHRORJ\2, 428–429, who puts atonement next to the
vicarious sacrifice and writes, regarding both: “As the offer of reconciliation made by the
one side must be accepted by the other if there is to be reconciliation, so the expiation
grounded in Christ's vicarious death needs appropriation by confession, baptism, and faith
on the part of each individual. Otherwise, neither vicarious expiation nor reconciliation can
be depicted as an event that was concluded in the death of Christ (Rom 5:10). In both cases
we must see an inclusive statement. But the inclusive sense of representation has an antic i-
patory function. There must be repetition in the process of propagating the gospel by apos-
tolic proclamation and appropriation through faith, confession, and baptism.” Therefore, I
will try to differentiate atonement (or reconciliation), where two parts are needed to con-
summate it, from salvation, which does not necessarily wait for its confirmation by the
other part (cf. below).
– the birth of faith – must be an H[LVWHQWLDOWXUQLQJDQGFUHDWLYHPRPHQW. It

is not possible to say – as was the danger in the extreme consequence of the
satisfaction theory – that, when the salvation in Christ was definitely fulfilled,
there is nothing to be added to it. Then, the salvation as a closed event loses
any actuality for current time because its benefits are sure or even automati-
cally received and the event itself can be thus forgotten.
The second problem of a christomonist soteriology is the overloading of
Christ’s triumph over death and sin. If the theology says that cross was the
final victory over death and sin, their relevance for the present time is largely
relativized.95 However, death and sin are the exact realities, which still tor-
ment the humans deeply and repeatedly. The proclaimed victory over death
becomes, then, rather a postulate, which does not correspond with the experi-
enced reality.96 Obviously, death, suffering, evil and sin have not been over-
come yet so that one could get theologically over them quickly to the final
victory.
Additionally, there would also be the implication hanging in the air that
the future sins are forgiven as if in advance, even before they will be com-
mited, which would lead to ethically scandalous ends (and which uses to be a
repeated argument of the atheistic critique of Christian hypocrisy in the peni-
tence praxis).
These problems show indirectly as well that the relationship of particular individuals to
Christ cannot be construed directly through Christology. However, the strongest counter-
argument from the praxis of the church and Christians is the fact that the tradition formu-
lates this relation very often, intentionally and decidedly christologically, in a manifold
variety of metaphors, which are deeply engraved into the piousness and liturgy. Already
the very early tradition brings diverse motifs for the expression of the meaning of Jesus’
death. However, for Paul, this tradition was “not radical enough” so that he “deepened,
corrected and re-interpreted it”. Still, the tradition “gave a meaning to the mystery of Je-
sus’ cross and taught people to see as salvation, what originally had to appear as a disaster.
It did it, however, without the critical sharpness, which is the specific characteristic of
Pauline theology, and was, therefore, appropriate for liturgical use.” 97
95
E.g. NÜSSEL, “Die Sühnevorstellung”, 92, speaks about “the abolishment (Auf-
hebung) of the power of sin”.
96
Cf. ibid., 94.
97
KÄSEMANN, “Die Heilsbedeutung”, 23; cf. EVANGELISCHE KIRCHE IN HESSEN UND
NASSAU, “Stellungnahme des Leitenden Geistlichen Amtes zur umstrittenen Deutung des
Todes Jesu als ein Gott versöhnendes Opfer, in )UXQVJHVWRUEHQ6KQH±2SIHU±6WHO
OYHUWUHWXQJ, ed. V. HAMPEL and R. WETH (Neukirchen: Neukirchener, 2010), 259–261,
which insists on the importance of the disputable metaphor of the sacrifice for the liturgical
practice.
&KULVWRORJLFDO*URXQGLQJRI6DOYDWLRQ
All this, however, cannot weaken in any way the main and fundamental thesis
that the cross of Jesus Christ had a XQLYHUVDOLPSDFW. It is definitely to main-
tain that there is no one for whom Jesus Christ would not die; there is no one
on whose life the cross of Jesus Christ would not have a fundamental, onto-
logical, salvific effect. 98 Hence, I firmly insist on the biblical u`pe.r h`mw/n, i.e.,
on the fact that Jesus Christ died “for us” (Rom 5:8; 8:34; 1Thess 5:10).99
However, this is not necessarily to be conceived in the terms of vicarious rep-
resentation: “Not every formulation with the preposition u`pe.r needs already
to be called vicarious representation.” 100
98
This is described in a very vivid way and with the characteristic preaching-style of
his dogmatics by K. Barth in his Christology, cf. BARTH, &KXUFK 'RJPDWLFV IV/1, 630:
“There is not one for whose sin and death He did not die, whose sin and death He did not
remove and obliterate on the cross, for whom He did not positively do the right, whose
right He has not established. There is not one to whom this was not addressed as his justi-
fication in His resurrection from the dead. There is not one whose man He is not, who is
not justified in Him. There is not one who isjustified in any other way than in Him – be-
cause it is in Him and only in Him that an end, a bonfire, is made of man’s sin and death,
because it is in Him and only in Him that man's sin and death are the old thing which has
passed away, because it is in Him and only in Him that the right has been done which is
demanded of man, that the right has been established to which man can move forward.
Again, there is not one who is not adequately and perfectly and finally justified in Him.
There is not one whose sin is not forgiven sin in Him, whose death is not a death which has
been put to death in Him. There is not one whose right has not been established and con-
firmed validly and once and for all in Him. There is not one, therefore, who has first to win
and appropriate this right for himself. There is not one who has first to go or still to go in
his own virtue and strength this way from there to here, from yesterday to tomorrow, from
dark ness to light, who has first to accomplish or still to accomplish his ownjustification,
repeating it when it has already taken place in Him. There is not one whose past and future
and therefore whose present He does not undertake and guarantee, having long since ac-
cepted full responsibility and liability for it, bearing it every hour and into eternity. There
is not one whose peace with God has not been made and does not continue in Him. There
is not one of whom it is demanded that he should make and maintain this peace for hi m-
self, or who is permitted to act as though he himself were the author of it, having to make it
himself and to maintain it in his own strength. There is not one for whom He has not done
everything in His death and received everything in His resurrection from the dead. Not
one. That is what faith believes.”
99
Cf. Rom 8:26, which indicates that the soteriological “for us” has also a pneumato-
logical dimension, and, hence, should be conceived theologically in a trinitarian way.
100
SCHRÖTER, “Sühne, Stellvertretung, Opfer”, 68. Cf. KÄSEMANN, “Die Heils-
bedeutung”, 18: In Paul, “the phrase ‘for us’ is always the central motive. It encompasses
both meanings ‘for our good’ and ‘in our vicarious representation’.” Similarly
PANNENBERG, 6\VWHPDWLF7KHRORJ\2, 417–418: “We must be cautious, then, if we are in-
clined to find the thought of expiation self-evident when we run across the words ‘for us’
with no further elucidation. The expression might well signify no more than ‘in our favor’
or ‘on our behalf.’”
Moreover, as already said, the salvific dimension of the cross cannot be

read and understood simply from the historical event of the cross itself: “The
cross as such is silent and renders all silent. God was silent. Jesus died. The
disciples ran away. […] The cross is soteriologically silent.” 101 One more step
is to be taken, which brings the most fundamental theological perspective into
play: WKH SHUVSHFWLYH RI UHVXUUHFWLRQ and, hence, the perspective of faith,
which is woken up by the resurrection. 102 It is only the resurrection, which
sheds a clear light also on the cross. Only in this light do we know, what kind
of event this cross was and who died on it. Only from the perspective of res-
urrection comes out that everything what happened at Easter reaches far be-
yond a mere particular historical event and that it reveals its universal impact.
Christ’s cross and resurrection turns out to be HVFKDWRORJLFDO HYHQWV, i.e.,
events, in which God-Self is in play in a fundamental way, which is why they
have a fundamental effect on the whole relationship of God as Creator to his
creation. It turns out that it has thus a universal effect for the whole of reality
(inclusive the reality of God-Self). Therefore, the resurrection – and in its
light also the cross – are not just events within the world and its history, they
are not only particular historical facts, but they are primarily HYHQWVZLWKWKH
ZRUOG. That is events, which change the whole framework, the whole setting,
the whole paradigm, within which the history of the world develops. 103
In this direction went already my interpretation of Christ’s death as a vi-
carious representative bearing of fate, which was originally meant for all hu-
mans. However, and this is the correction of the second problematic point
mentioned in the previous subchapter, this does not mean automatically that
Christ’s death must be conceived directly as death IRURXUVLQV, as it is in the
tradition very often the case. Already the survey of the New Testament shows
that in Pauline theology (besides the Epistle to Hebrews, which focuses on
the idea of Christ’s atoning sacrifice once for all, cf. Heb 10:12), the death of
Jesus Christ is connected with the motive of taking sins away only on a few
places (1Cor 15:3; Ga 1:4). 104
The traditional solution, where Jesus Christ takes away the sins of all hu-
mans, is aporetic in both of its versions: in the exclusive approach – should
101
102
Cf. WOLTER, “‘Für uns gestorben’”, 4: “The interpretation of Jesus’ death as a
salvific death is a consequence of the Easter faith. On one side, it is made SRVVLEOH only
through the Easter faith; on the other side, it becomes QHFHVVDU\ only through the Easter
faith as well.”
103
For more details see below, Ch. 9.4, and Ch. 10.
104
Cf. SCHRÖTER, “Sühne, Stellvertretung, Opfer”, 64. KÄSEMANN, “Die Heilsbedeu-
tung”, 21, points out that Gal 3:13 and 2Cor 5:21 – two places usually used as proofs for
the idea of Christ’s vicarious represetative suffering for our sins – actually relate to another
problematic. In fact, they indicate rather that Christ beared our original fate DVVLQQHUV than
that he died directly for our sins bearing them himself.
his death be understood as a satisfaction for all human sins – Christ would
have to suffer nearly endlessly; and, because his sacrifice is a past event, it
would lose its actuality for today. In the inclusive version, no point of identity
is possible that would allow us to transfer one’s sins to someone else and to
secure in this way a real expiation and forgiveness of sins, which are always
individual and intransferable; and also, in both cases, the problem of future
sins remains, which would be forgiven already in advance and their serious-
ness would be thus fundamentally weakened.
Therefore, I propose to conceive the death of Jesus Christ primarily not as
a salvific death for sin but rather as FRQTXHULQJRIGHDWK as the ultimate cons-
quence of sin (cf. Rom 6:23 and above, Ch. 7.3), and only secondarily,
through the victory over death, as salvific death for sin. The important diffe r-
ence lies in the fact that in my view, Jesus Christ did not bear the sins of all
humans, but he beared, overcame and thus fundamentally changed WKHVWDWXV
DQG WKH FRQVHTXHQFHV RI VLQ. With his death, Jesus Christ beared the fate,
which would belong to all humans as sinners: succumb to death as to the ul-
timate power, which isolates humans from all relations and even from God.
With his death, Jesus Christ RYHUFDPH WKLV LVRODWLRQ RIGHDWK and opened
again the eschatological, i.e., for now only partially and fragmentarily real-
ized and realizable possiblity of finitude in its original positive sense (cf.
above, Ch. 7.1.2.1). He overcame death by having exposed himself to it and
having beared it – he did not run away, nor walked through in an immortal
manner, but he really died. At the same time (and here, I adopt and reshape
the old patristic idea of the deception of the devil, cf. above in this chapt er,
subch. 3.2), death as the isolating power was mistaken when it captured him,
because it captured someone, whom it could not legitimately claim. There-
fore, on Jesus Christ, death failed and was definitely broken in the resurre c-
tion.
With the resurrection, GHDWK ZDV UHORFDWHG (cf. above, Ch. 7.3.2): it was
divested of its autonomy and ultimate reigning power, because in Jesus Christ
it became a part of divine life, which proved to be the greater frame of all r e-
ality. Death was moved into divine life – not abolished, but moved, relocated
– and here, within these limits of the more powerful divine life, it carries on
to exist and to have effect in world history. Nevertheless, since the death of
Jesus Christ, death does not separate and isolate from God – on the contrary:
everyone who dies after Christ dies in God. Death itself was thus posited into
the horizon of the good finitude as the original nature of creation.
I do not want the question to remain unanswered, how is it with people who died before
Christ and how does the death of Jesus Christ relate to those who died before him. 105 I
105
Pointing to this problem is one of the core pieces of the critique of the traditional
theology by the proponents of theological pluralism, cf. HICK, 7KH 0HWDSKRU, 112–133;
SCHMIDT-LEUKEL, *RWW, 278. To both conceptions more in detail see below, Ch. 11.1.1.
think that it can be said that after Christ, Christians (or Christians at least) die differently
that people before Christ, because Christians can die with more specific and clearly
grounded hope. People before Christ, believing in God, had a different hope, not so specif-
ic and so well grounded. This proves the best the above-mentioned practice of sacrifice,
which subsequently brought questions, whether this practice is enough for being expiated
and thus becoming acceptable for God. After the death of Christ, there is no doubt regard-
ing salvation anymore (although there are many questions regarding what will happen with
commited sins and evil and how justice should be definitely carried out). However, be-
cause the death and resurrection of Christ were not only historical events, but, at the same
time, eschatological events that changed the whole frame of history, this horizon and hope
applies to them as well, although they could not perceive it in their lives. It is to maintain
that the hope of final resurrection is valid to all, regardless of whether they were deceased
before or after Christ, because his death and resurrection have a universal impact and ef-
fect, even across times. This, however, is possible to say from the perspective SRVW
&KULVWXP. This perspective allows us to say that even the life and death of people before
Christ proceeded ontologically in the horizon of Christ’s death and resurrection, because it
was the same God who related to them as well, although it was not the same way and the
same relation as after Christ. To maintain this notion, there is trinitarian background neces-
sary, again. On this background, it is to say that this same God of then and today does not
relate to the world only in one way. He is neither only the transcendent Creator, nor only
the historically particular Saviour but always also the Spirit, who re-presents and intercon-
nects both previous relations and dimensions. The point of trinitarian theology and soteri-
ology is to see all these relations synoptically in an internally differentiated unity. 106
In this way, through the strongest side and ultimate consequence of sin in
death, the death of Christ ZHDNHQV VLQ, which is through the relocation of
death eschatologically overmastered. Again, the sin is not abolished but
overmastered, overcome. The overcoming of death weakens the power of sin
in a fundamental way, although sin remains severe in its actual consequences.
Sin remains sin, it still leads to death. At first sight, this sentence seems to
undermine the importance of the cross. However, although the sin was not
abolished and destroyed, still, from death and exactly from there – and there-
fore also from sin – there is redemption. There has been a fundamental
change, although sin remains sin and leads to death. In one respect, the power
of sin was broken and destroyed. The cross of Jesus Christ is the definitive
HQGRIVLQDVPRUWDOVLQ. Sin ceases to be deadly and thus ultimately danger-
ous. Facing the cross, VLQORVHVLWVVRWHULRORJLFDOrelevance, although it keeps
still its practical and existential relevance, as we know very well from our
daily experience. Nevertheless, although sin still has painful consequences,
there is redemption from it. On the other hand, there still remains space for
human autonomy and freedom.
The death of Jesus Christ thus reveals the depth of human sin in its whole
extent. It shows, where to does sin lead, how far reaching is its capacity to
106
Cf. more to this below in Ch. 10.2.
separate and isolate humans from God.107 At the same time, this death is also
the fundamental overcoming of the ultimate power of sin and the opening of
the door toward the final destruction of sin as such in the Last Judgement as
the place, where everything will be purified, corrected, and renewed in its
original integrity. 108 The cross of Christ identifies sin in its whole depth,
moreover: it identifies VLQDVVXFK. With this, the cross makes it eschatologi-
cally possible to distinguish sin from sinner. With this, the cross brings the
fundamental soteriological differentiation concerning humans, which will
play an important role for the forgiveness of sin as well as for the idea of the
Last Judgement (cf. below and also Ch. 9.6.2). The cross thus is not a general
pardon for all human sins that ever existed, exist and will exist but rather a
break-up of their soteriological relevance.
Regarding the relationship of Christ’s death to death in general and to sin,
I plead, therefore, for a better differentiation. The traditional formulation that
Jesus Christ died for our sins is an abbreviation, which needs to be more ap-
propriately elaborated in the theological reflection. Firstly with a more pr e-
cise differentiation between the overcoming and abolishing of sin and death,
secondly with a better differentiation between the christological and the
pneumatological dimension as the exclusive and inclusive dimension of sal-
vation on the trinitarian background.
3QHXPDWRORJLFDO&RPPXQLFDWLRQRI6DOYDWLRQ
It is a strong side of trinitarian theology that it allows us to conceive of the
relationship of God to the world within three dimensions. This plurality in
unity is to be theologically applied also in soteriology. Just as the christologi-
cal ground of salvation in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ is an
event ZLWK the world, it must have – should it be actual and present for every
particular human – a fundamental meaning also ZLWKLQ the world, in history.
In the soteriological respect, this means in the first place that it must UHDFK
RXWWRWKH SDUWLFXODUKXPDQ and include him or her. 109 The inclusive dimen-
sion of salvation cannot be missing. Without it, there would not be any salva-
107
Because sin is not only a human act but also a power over humans, cf. GALLUS,
“Verantwortliche Rede von der Sünde”.
108
Cf. SCHAEDE, 6WHOOYHUWUHWXQJ, 631: “The death of Christ can be very well understood
as the judgement about the form of existence of sin, which with this death ceases to have
any future, in which sin would definitively determine the human existence.”
109
SCHAEDE, ibid., 632, in the context of Kant’s critique of intransferability of guilt (cf.
KANT, 5HOLJLRQ, 89), points to a problem in the traditional conceptions of vicarious repre-
sentation, where Christ may break the bonds of sin and punishment on an objective level,
however, he cannot break the bonds of particular personality and his or her personal sin on
the subjective level. This point shows the overload of Christology in these conceptions as
well. Obviously, the effect of the cross on the individual life is to be conceived and elab o-
rated pneumatologically within a consistent frame of trinitarian theology.
tion. Therefore and as such, this inclusive dimension cannot be conceived as

a closed historical event, but this dimension needs to be effective and existen-
tial. It has to bring something new and it has to change something fundamen-
tally – it has to contain DFUHDWLYHRQWRORJLFDOPRPHQW. Hence, this dimension
must be communicable in order to communicate the ground of salvation to
any particular human. And this communicability must be its salvific moment:
“0\VWHULXPWULQLWDWLV is the sum of the Gospel and its proper ‘content’ – however, this con-
tent DVWKHHYHQWof revelation itself. The mystery of revelation does not become less mys-
terious through understanding and comprehending but rather the more mysterious. As such,
it is communicable. And this communicability is its VRWHULRORJLFDO quality.”110
Yet, communication is a domain of the Spirit and hence of pneumatology.

:KHUHDV &KULVWRORJ\ HODERUDWHV WKH RQWRORJLFDO JURXQG RI VDOYDWLRQ LQ WKH
FURVV DQG WKH UHVXUUHFWLRQ RI -HVXV &KULVW WKH SDUWLFLSDWLRQ RQ WKLV JURXQG
DQG LWV FRPPXQLFDWLRQ WR D SDUWLFXODU KXPDQ LV WR EH FRQFHLYHG SQHXPDWR
ORJLFDOO\, as the work of the Spirit, who actualizes the salvation grounded in
the cross always anew: for a particular human, in a particular time, in a con-
crete way, through a concrete communication.
Human communication is always a FRPPXQLFDWLRQ LQ VLJQV – there is no other way to
communicate, at least for humans. God’s incarnation and accommodation in the Chalcedo-
nian terms in this respect means that God accepted these human conditions also regarding
the possibilities of communication: he entered into the space of communication of signs
(into the semiosis), became human, yet still remained also divine and managed to com-
municate himself as God by the created human means. Therefore, the semiosis as the space
of communicated signs is the most proper space of the acting of the Spirit. 111
Communication is not a sole IODWXVYRFLV, it is not only an intellectual recogni-

tion without any following and deeper effect. On the contrary, communica-
tion brings a new understanding, sets things into a new context and hereby,
communication WUDQVIRUPV the existing orientation in life and with it also the
existing praxis. Communication has an existential impact, because in respect
to what we have understood we adapt, change, and restructure our orientation
and our praxis of life. In its very core, communication is the most influential,
existential, and thus life-changing means. The pneumatological communica-
tion, therefore, brings exactly this: a radically new orientation of the praxis of
life, because it posits a human LQWRDUDGLFDOO\QHZFRQWH[W – into the context
of the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ and, hence, into the context of
the life-story of Jesus Christ. In this newly opened perspective, this context of
Christ’s life-story becomes the QHZFRQWH[W of one’s own life-story, which is
hereby radically transformed: the new context, positing a particular human
110
JÜNGEL, “Das Verhältnis”, 269–270.
111
Cf. above, Ch. 1.2.1, and DALFERTH, (YDQJHOLVFKH 7KHRORJLH DOV ,QWHUSUHWD
WLRQVSUD[LV; IDEM, .RPELQDWRULVFKH 7KHRORJLH 3UREOHPH WKHRORJLVFKHU 5DWLRQDOLWlW, QD
130 (Freiburg: Herder, 1991), 99–158; GALLUS, “Orientující teologie”.
FRUDP'HR, brings DQHZLGHQWLW\.112 It is thus not a transfer of some foreign

identity or replacing one’s own identity with a foreign identity – which is im-
possible to think without ORVLQJ one’s own identity –, nor is it an incorpora-
tion into some foreign identity. It is a re-contextualization of one’s existing
identity, which renews this identity so radically that this identity becomes a
new one. It is a fundamental change of context, of horizons and of perspec-
tive, so that further on, the particular human sees oneself in the differentiation
of the old identity (which does not simply vanish) and of the new identity,
given through the new effective context. 113 At the same time, next to this nec-
essary individual dimension, it is an integration into the community of those,
who share this new and graciously given context of life.
This frame allows us, then, to formulate the remission of sin as an always
individual remission of one’s concrete sins. As already noted, it is the cross-
that identifies the sin in its whole depth and, at the same time, makes it possi-
ble – at least eschatologically for God – to draw the difference between sin
and sinner. In this sense, the new context of one’s particular life brings also ,
and in a fundamental way, the cognition of sin as one’s own sin and sets the
frame and conditions for its remission. Therefore, we can say that sin is being
remitted by God always anew based on the overmastering of sin and of its
last consequence in Jesus Christ. However, it is being remitted always as a
particular and concrete guilt and as the Gospel about remission of a concrete
wrongdoing. The cross of Christ is thus the FRQGLWLRQIRUWKHSRVVLELOLW\DQG
UHDOLW\RIUHPLVVLRQRIVLQ, which proceeds DOZD\VLQDQLQGLYLGXDOZD\RQWKH
SQHXPDWRORJLFDOEDVLV. Remission of sin is never a sole taking account of a
passed event; it is not a sole erasure of a debt, which was noted somewhere
else, without any change here and now. The remission of sin is not and can-
not be a factual confirmation of the VWDWXV TXR; it efficiently leads to trans-
formation, to a renewal of the sinner, to the renewal of the orientation and
praxis of life, to the restoration of the original purpose and relations of a hu-
man.114
112
Cf. FISCHER, *ODXEH DOV (UNHQQWQLV, 84. This moment is very well conceived in
SCHLEIERMACHER, 7KH &KULVWDQ )DLWK, § 109.4, 503–504, who speaks about a “person-
forming” effect of the Christological renewal of one’s life: “[F]or God the individual is not
previously a personality at all in this reference, but merely a part of the mass out of which
persons come to exist through the continuance of the creative act from which came the Re-
deemer.”
113
Cf. DALFERTH, &UXFLILHGDQG5HVXUUHFWHG, 78. This can be seen and experienced in
a very plastical way in attending the eucharist, to which a human comes as the old human
and leaves as the new one.
114
Which is a point that already Anselm knew, cf. ANSELM, &XU GHXV KRPR II,3;
SCHAEDE, 6WHOOYHUWUHWXQJ, 285. Otherwise, it would be a “cheap grace”, as Bonhoeffer
called it.
The individual pneumatological communication of salvation (individually

to particular people through the usual human communication) thus does not
add anything to the ground of salvation in the death and resurrection of Jesus
Christ, but rather it transforms the particular life-praxis in an always actual
way (faith). Hence, the salvation does not depend ontically on the faith of the
individual; without faith, however, it would not be manifested in the world
and its history. Faith as a phenomenon of history is a contingent occasion
emerging from and within human interpersonal communication, which is,
nevertheless, the space for the activity of the Spirit. Maintaining and pro-
claiming of faith is thus, at the same time, an important task, it is a space for
free human cooperation (in the form of more or less successful interpersonal
communication), which is anchored in the objective reality of Christ’s cross
and resurrection.
Therefore, it is important to differentiate between VDOYDWLRQDQGDWRQHPHQW
(or reconciliation).115 Salvation – as seen from the perspective of Christian
faith – has its ground in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which al-
ready happened and cannot be undone. The cross and resurrection as events
with the world have an ontological impact on the whole universe so that for
Christian faith, there holds the biblically witnessed hope (stressed again pri-
marily in the reformation theology) that salvation does not ontically depend
on human activities or passivities, even when there is no (or no appropriate)
believing answer from below. On the contrary, for reconciliation, there must
be two sides, two partners. 116 While for salvation the christological dimension
is constitutive, concerning atonement, the pneumatological dimension is
equally important. For both salvation and atonement, the cross is grounding
and fundamental. For atonement, however, faith on the human side is neces-
sarily needed.117 Therefore, some people experience the atonement already
during their life, when they come to the reconciliation with God through
faith. However, because faith is a contingent issue, which cannot be forced,
but originates through the Spirit within human communication freely as one’s
new self-understanding FRUDP'HR, then for some people reconciliation does
not happen during their life. Here, the idea of the Last Judgement gains a high
115
However, such differentiation mostly has not been done. Cf. G. WENZ, *HVFKLFKWH
GHU9HUV|KQXQJVOHKUHLQGHUHYDQJHOLVFKHQ7KHRORJLHGHU1HX]HLW, 2 vols (München: Kai-
ser, 1984 and 1986); IDEM, 9HUV|KQXQJ 6RWHULRORJLVFKH )DOOVWXGLHQ, Studium Systemati-
sche Theologie, vol. 9 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015).
116
As PANNENBERG, 6\VWHPDWLF7KHRORJ\2, 428, reminds.
117
This is my answer to the question, which raises PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 272: “That is
an extremely important question for all Christian missions and for the self-understanding
of Christianity in the midst of humanity: Does only the person who believes in Jesus with a
conscious decision have a share in the nearness of God that he has opened? Or must ac-
count be made for an unconscious participation in salvation by men who never or only su-
perficially came into contact with the message of Christ?”
importance because it is to be conceived primarily as the SRLQW RI XQLYHUVDO

UHFRQFLOLDWLRQ. Hereby, the Last Judgement can be charged with positive as-
sociations (cf. below, Ch. 9.6.2).
7ULQLWDULDQ6RWHULRORJ\RI+LVWRU\
It subsequently turns out that soteriology has to be and is a part of a wider
theological frame, which plays a crucial role, because soteriology follows
some presuppositions – and, at the same time, aims to some consequences –
which reach beyond its own boundaries.
First, Christology is not possible without trinitarian theology. The theolog-
ical interpretation of incarnation, Easter, and pneumatologically mediated in-
dividual faith clearly go in this direction, because only trinitarian theology
can provide a frame, within which these events can be thought of adequately.
Therefore, christologically anchored soteriology tries to interconnect a triple
context: the life of God, the particular life of Jesus of Nazareth and the al-
ways individual and particular life of humans. 118
These contexts or dimensions of salvation cannot be separated; the acting
of God within history needs to be seen in a differentiated unity and cannot be
reduced to one dimension. When the tradition did this the soteriological con-
cepts ended in aporias – as it turned out, e.g., with the conception of vicarious
representation, which was very often conceived only christologically. The
task of the trinitarian theology is, however, to see the acting of God internally
differentiated but in unity. From this perspective, it should be possible to re-
interpret the classical formula (which in its classical interpretation led to sev-
eral problems and aporias as well) “RSHUD7ULQLWDWLVDGH[WUDVHPSHULQGLYLVD
VXQW (all the works of the Trinity outside of God-Self are indivisible)”.119
God’s acting is internally differentiated, yet it is still the acting of one God.
Single dimensions of God’s acting cannot be isolated or even put against each
other in competition. Thus for the conception of salvation, neither the cross
alone, nor the individual appropriation of salvation in faith alone (nor the re-
ality of human as the creature of God in the image of God) suffices to be
mentioned and taken in account; (although still, the cross alone is the ontical-
ly sufficient ground for salvation). The one cannot be without the other (and
the third), although in every one of these dimensions God is fully present as
God. There is, therefore, no reason to ask (whether positively or critically),
whether e.g. the objective ground in Christ’s cross would be sufficient for a
conception of salvation, or whether the salvation could happen even without
the cross. God’s multilayered acting contains a dynamism, with which it
gravitates towards a certain direction. And this gravitation does not allow us
118
119
Cf. AUGUSTINUS, “In Joan. ev. tractatus” 20,3, 3/ 35, 1957–1958. Explicitely oc-
curs this formula, however, only later in the scholastic theology.
to stop in the middle of it, because this whole trinitarian dynamic is carried
and held by the unity of God.
In my opinion, the trinitarian frame makes it possible to keep up the uni-
versality of salvation in Jesus Christ without any necessity to construct an in-
clusive vicarious representation in a solely christological way, which, in fact,
would reduce salvation only to its christological ground. In my proposal, both
important dimensions – the exclusive and the inclusive one – are not covered
only christologically, but both are identified as two complementary sides of
one and the same trinitarian salvific process: first, there is the exclusivity of
Christ’s cross and resurrection, which created a new ontological context for
every particular life. Then, through pneumatologically mediated faith, this
life can be included into this new context. Therefore, the necessary inclusivi-
ty of salvation is not constructed into the person of Jesus Christ and his death,
but it is rather, through pneumatological mediation, ascribed to the new con-
text, which universally opens with the story of Christ and which “entitles us
to hope that what is true for him is and will be true also for us: avpe,qanen –
evta,fh – evgh,gertai [he died, he was buried, he was raised].”120
120
Chapter 9
The Resurrection
Now, I follow up what I elaborated above in Chapter 4 and presupposed fur-

ther in all other chapters and want to remind on the fundamental points: The
resurrection of Jesus Christ is the basic confession of Christian faith, its start-
ing and central point, which opens a new perspective on the whole of reality.
As P. Pokorný unmistakably puts it: for the first Christians including the au-
thors of the New Testament texts, “Gospel is resurrection.”1 Hence, WKHSHU
VSHFWLYH RI UHVXUUHFWLRQ LV WKH EDVLF KHUPHQHXWLFDO SHUVSHFWLYH RI &KULVWLDQ
IDLWK – already the texts of the New Testamtent are fundamenally shaped by
it.2 Therefore, the perspective of the resurrection is the fundamental perspec-
tive of Christology and, with it, also of the whole of Christian theology.
Now, it is time to look closer, what the resurrection is, what is this consti-
tutive elemtn of the fundamental perspective of faith and theology. I will first
sketch three fundamental hermeneutical questions and my hermeneutical
starting point (subch. 1). Then, I will deal with the historical questions
(subch. 2 and 3). Finally, I will try to give my own answer regarding the res-
urrection of Jesus Christ (subch. 4) and the related questions of its impact on
God and humans (subch. 5) and soteriology (subch. 6).
1. The Hermeneutics of Resurrection

1. The Hermeneutics of Resurrection
7KUHH+HUPHQHXWLFDO4XHVWLRQV
The theme of resurrection has always raised important questions on different
levels. Besides a wide exegetical debate, there are at least three circles of
problems, which I want to mention. 3
1
2
Cf. e.g. DUNN, -HVXV5HPHEHUHG, 826–828; D. ALLISON, 5HVXUUHFWLQJ-HVXV7KH(DU
OLHVW&KULVWLDQ7UDGLWLRQDQG,WV,QWHUSUHWHUV (New York/London: T&T Clark, 2005), 228–
269.
3
Regarding the exegetical debate on resurrection cf. primarily ALLISON, 5HVXUUHFWLQJ
-HVXV; THEISSEN and MERZ, +LVWRULFDO -HVXV, 474–511; DUNN, -HVXV 5HPHPEHUHG, 825–
879; POKORNÝ, 7KH *HQHVLV; M. WOLTER, “Die Auferstehung der Toten und die Aufer-
stehung Jesu”, in 0-7K;;,9: $XIHUVWHKXQJ, ed. E. GRÄB-SCHMIDT and R. PREUL (Leip-
zig: EVA, 2012), 13–54; $XIHUVWHKXQJ±5HVXUUHFWLRQ, WUNT 135, ed. F. AVEMARIE and
7KH+HUPHQHXWLFVRI5HVXUUHFWLRQ 339
The first hermeneutical question deals with the basic character of resurrec-
tion: What kind of “event” do we deal with? Is it really an HYHQW, or is it ra-
ther an interpretative SHUVSHFWLYH we are speaking from? Is it an object we can
investigate, or rather a point of view, from which we talk? It would be false
to put these both possibilities against each other as opposites. However, tak-
ing resurrection solely as a perspective, as a bracket before all other ques-
tions, there would be the danger of a closed fideistic circle. There has to be
always the possibility of asking the question, what happened at Easter. What
was it that followed after the cross? What was it that gave rise to the Easter
faith, to the Easter testimonies, and the Christian church? There has to be the
possibility to ask the ontical question, what is it that Christians call “resurrec-
tion”?
With this ambition, 17:ULJKW in his 7KH5HVXUUHFWLRQRIWKH6RQRI*RG (2003) tries to
break the possible fideistic danger of theology as a closed epistemological circle.4 Asking
as a historian – and refusing, at the same time, the famous and still irritating rule of E. Tro-
eltsch that history cannot deal with what does not have any analogy in history5 –, Wright
wants to show that “the best historical explanation” (even with an “unrivalled power”) for
the rise of Christianity and of “the historical data at the heart of early Christianity” “is that
Jesus was indeed bodily raised from the dead” and, hence, that the tomb must have been
empty. The empty tomb takes Wright as the most important argument for the reality of a
bodily resurrection.6 He seeks thus a realistic reading of resurrection as in the case of the
Gospels and in early Christianity and tries to establish this interpretation as the best even
from the point of view of a modern historian. He dedicates to this purpose many hundreds
of pages of profound scholarship concerning the historical circumstances, ideas, move-
ments, and biblical exegesis. Nevertheless, when one looks at his hermeneutical presuppo-
sitions more closely, on his search for as objective historical arguments as possible, in the
H. LICHTENBERGER (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001); WRIGHT, 7KH 5HVXUUHFWLRQ; J.

BECKER, 'LH$XIHUVWHKXQJ-HVX&KULVWLQDFKGHP1HXHQ7HVWDPHQW (Tübingen: Mohr Sie-
beck, 2007); H. KESSLER, 6XFKW GHQ /HEHQGHQ QLFKW EHL GHQ 7RWHQ (Düsseldorf: Patmos,
1985); KRÜGER, 'DVDQGHUH%LOG&KULVWL, 499–508, with a detailed discussion of German
literature; RINGLEBEN, :DKUKDIW DXIHUVWDQGHQ; B.D. CHILTON, 5HVXUUHFWLRQ /RJLF +RZ
-HVXV¶)LUVW)ROORZHUV%HOLHYHG*RG5DLVHG+LPIURPWKH'HDG (Waco: Baylor UP, 2019);
K.J. MADIGAN and J.D. LEVENSON, 5HVXUUHFWLRQ 7KH 3RZHU RI *RG IRU &KULVWLDQV DQG
-HZV (Hew Haven/London: Yale UP, 2008); 7KH5HVXUUHFWLRQ, ed. S. DAVIS et al. (Oxford:
Oxford UP, 1997); 5HVXUUHFWLRQ 7KH 2ULJLQ DQG )XWXUH RI D %LEOLFDO 'RFWULQH, ed. J.H.
CHARLESWORTH et al. (New York/London: T&T Clark, 2006), with bibliography ibid.,
233–240; 5HVXUUHFWLRQ, ed. S.E. PORTER et al. (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press,
1999).
4
WRIGHT, 7KH5HVXUUHFWLRQ, 20–23.
5
Cf. ibid., 18: “Ironically, then, it is precisely the uniqueness of the rise of the early
church that forces us to say: never mind analogies, what happened?” And also ibid., 712,
with a precise observation: “The fact that Jesus’ resurrection was, and remains, without
analogy is not an objection to the early Christian claim. It is part of the claim itself.” (Cf.
above, Ch. 2.)
6
Ibid., 8, 686–696, 717–718.
340 &KDSWHU7KH5HVXUUHFWLRQ
end, he sees it necessary “to begin with at least on the worldview within which we come to
it”.7 In the course of his investigation, he comes to points, which lie “beyond strict histori-
cal proof” so that “[i]t will always be possible for ingenious historians to propose yet more
variation of the theme of how the early Christian belief could have arisen, and taken the
shape it did, without either an empty tomb or appearances of Jesus”. 8 So that, in the end,
Wright also admits the necessary perspectivity and particularity of every approach because
they are always part of what he calls a “worldview”, i.e., of an internal perspective: “I do
not claim that it constitutes a ‘proof’ of the resurrection in terms of some neutral stand-
point. It is, rather, a historical challenge to other explanations, other worldviews. Precisely
because at this point we are faced with worldview-level issues, there is no neutral ground,
no island in the middle of the epistemological ocean, as yet uncolonized by any of the war-
ring continents. […] Saying that ‘Jesus of Nazareth was bodily raised from the dead’ is not
only a self-LQYROYLQJ statement; it is a self-FRPPLWWLQJ statement, going beyond a reorder-
ing of one’s private world into various levels of commitment to work out the implica-
tions.”9 That is a wholly correct observation. However, can such an approach still claim
historical objectivity? Given this, would it not be more appropriate to say already at the
beginning that one argues here historically, but, still, lead by and speaking within of the
frame of the Christian faith instead of trying to convince all that the Christian view is ob-
jectively the best?10
However, with this question, one enters – be it hypothetically and not existen-
tially – the internal perspective of Christian faith. The speech of resurrection
is a speech from the internal perspective of Christian faith; it is an answer to a
7
Ibid., 27 (orig. italicized).
8
Ibid., 694.
9
Ibid., 717.
10
Cf. ALLISON, 5HVXUUHFWLQJ-HVXV, 201, 345–350, coming to a similar conclusion. Be-
sides, on the level of establishing scientific theories and interpretations, his judgement of
Wright’s argumentation shows nicely the difference between the claim of a strictly rational
proof, which Wright represents here, and convincing plausibility of a theory, which Allison
is missing: “Although I am bound to respect Wright’s informed judgement, although I
think that the tomb was probably empty, although I am sure that the disciples saw Jesus
after his death, and although I would be personally delighted to espy dramatic divine inter-
vention in the world, I remain unconvinced – not that Wright’s belief in Jesus’ literal resur-
rection must be wrong, but that his apologetical moves really amount to evidence that de-
mands the verdict he so relentlessly summons us to return. His argument, which put more
faith in historical reason that I can summon, does not and cannot raze all the arguments of
those with a different view” (ibid., 347). Another similar case would be e.g. the strictly
rational argumentation of R. SWINBURNE, 7KH 5HVXUUHFWLRQ RI *RG ,QFDUQDWH (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 2003), 204–215, where he presents his argument for the high probability
of the thesis that “Jesus was God incarnate who rose from the dead” (ibid., 215) in the way
of formal logic (cf. also IDEM, :DV -HVXV *RG" [Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008] and IDEM,
“Evidence for the Resurrection”, in 7KH5HVXUUHFWLRQ, ed. S. DAVIS et al. [Oxford: Oxford
UP, 1997], 191–212, where Swinburne bases his argument on a sequence of probabilities).
Obviously, plausibility is still more than cold rational logic or high probability, although it
needs both. It has to have also the power of a convincing diagnose. Concerning plausibility
as the highest goal of today’s scientific argumentations and perspectives see above, Ch.
1.2.1
question, which came from outside, yet with an expression, which is an inte-
gral part of an inside-perspective. This is an important distinction: one can
always ask the historical question. However, regarding the resurrection of Je-
sus, a historian can come only to the general conclusion that something had
happened there, which gave rise to the early church. And he can point out that
these people themselves described this impulse as resurrection. However,
based only on these inside-answers, without any connection to a particular
perspective, the historian cannot decide whether this could be held for a his-
torical fact. As a historian, he can only judge what degree of probability or
plausibility would such an answer have and for whom.11
The second question touches on the same problem as the leading soterio-
logical concepts mentioned in the previous chapter. Rather than as a term, the
concept of “resurrection” that stems mainly from Second Temple Judaism12 is
understood as a PHWDSKRU:13 both the verbs avnista,nai (cf. Lk 2:34; Jn 11:25;
1Cor 15:12; Rev 20:5) and evgei,rein (Mt 11:11; Mk 6:14; 1Cor 15:4; Phil
1:17; Heb 11:19) mean primarily “rise up”, “stand up”, or “wake”. 14 Both
verbs may be translations of the same Aramaic root (k-v-m).15 Although their
meaning quickly shifted in the Christian use – they occur here very often in
passive forms indicating that it was God who acted here (SDVVLYXPGLYLQXP)
– to the resurrection of Jesus and of the dead in general, their metaphorical
character is obvious. They do not provide a technical description; they are not
definitions or technical terms. Rather, they are attempts to grasp, via analogy
or metaphor, something for which there has not been an appropriate word un-
11
To this topic cf. above, Ch. 1.2 and Ch. 2.
12
Cf. the contributions in 5HVXUUHFWLRQ7KH2ULJLQDQG)XWXUHRID%LEOLFDO'RFWULQH,
ed. J.H. CHARLESWORTH et al. (New York/London: T&T Clark, 2006), in particular the
closing article of J.H. CHARLESWORTH, “Conclusion: The Origin and Development of
Resurrection Beliefs”, ibid., 218–231, who shows that the conception of resurrection was
clearly present not only among the Pharisees. Differently S.E. PORTER, “Resurrection, the
Greeks and the New Testament”, in 5HVXUUHFWLRQ, ed. IDEM et al. (Sheffield: Sheffield Ac-
ademic Press, 1999), 52–81, who tries to prove that the concept of bodily resurrection
came to Judaism and Christianity rather from Greek roots than from the Old Testament:
“[I]f some forms of Judaism did hold to a view of a bodily resurrection, this concept did
not come from the Old Testament, and neither apparently from widespread development
within forms of Judaism of the time” (ibid., 68). “It appears that both Jewish thought and
then, inevitably, Christian thought came under the influence of Greek and then Graeco-
Roman assumptions regarding resurrection” (ibid., 80).
13
Cf. DALFERTH, &UXFLILHG DQG 5HVXUUHFWHG, 74–75; PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 74–75;
IDEM, 6\VWHPDWLF 7KHRORJ\ 2, 346–351; DUNN, -HVXV 5HPHPEHUHG, 876–879, and many
more. It can be held for a wide consensus.
14
Cf. M.B. O’DONNELL, “Some New Testament Words for Resurrection and the Com-
pany They Keep”, in 5HVXUUHFWLRQ, ed. S.E. PORTER et al. (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic
Press, 1999), 136–163.
15
POKORNÝ, 7KH*HQHVLV, 66; O’DONNELL, “Some New Testament Words”, 138.
til now. If, however, they are metaphors, then metaphors for what? And met-
aphors of what kind? 16
The third hermeneutical question follows immediately: if “resurrection” is
a metaphor, then does it relate to some VHOIVWDQGLQJUHDOLW\, or is it rather a
symbolic underlining of a dimension of a reality, which already has been
there and is here only grasped from another point of view? It was R. Bult-
mann who conceived resurrection only as the “expression of the significance
of the cross”.17 For him, the resurrection does not refer to a second event next
to the cross, but it stresses the importance and the meaning of the cross. Res-
urrection, thus, is not an event, not something that would happen to Jesus, but
it is rather an interpretation of what happened to Jesus.
Somewhere halfway toward Bultmann’s position is the position of some contemporary
catholic theologians, who are in line with the official doctrine conceiving resurrection as a
real event, but who lay all the soteriological emphasis on the cross of Jesus so that resur-
rection remains almost fully separate as something that happened to Jesus, however, with-
out any deeper importance and significance.18 G. O’Collins speaks, therefore, about a
“strange neglect of the resurrection” in contemporary catholic theology.19
All these hermeneutical questions also touch on the question of the historicity
of the resurrection, with which they are closely bound and on which they
have a significant effect (cf. below, subch. 2 and 3). However, before dealing
16
Concerning metaphors and metaphorical language cf. the profound study of E.
JÜNGEL, “Metaphorical Truth. Reflections on the Theological Relevance of Metaphor as a
Contribution to the Hermeneutics of Narrative Theology”, in IDEM, 7KHRORJLFDO (VVD\V,
vol. I, trans. J. WEBSTER (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 70, who speaks about the unique
ability of the metaphorical language to express an “increase of being (Mehr an Sein)”,
which makes the metaphorical language a more specifying language. – To the common
apocalyptical and eschatological metaphors in Judaism like e.g. vindication by God or as-
sumption of soul into heaven cf. ALLISON, 5HVXUUHFWLQJ -HVXV, 324–325, and primarily
WRIGHT, 7KH5HVXUUHFWLRQ, 32–206.
17
BULTMANN, “New Testament and Mythology”, 36.
18
A clear example of this is POSPÍŠIL, -Håtã]1D]DUHWD, who takes more than 90 pages
to elaborate his soteriology of Jesus’ meritory death on the cross. On more than 20 pages
he discusses all possible particular dimensions of the cross (satisfaction, redemption, sacri-
fice, atonement, meritory cause, descent among the dead) and, only at the very end, he
deals with the resurrection on only two pages with the leading statement: “[T]he resurrec-
tion is an act of God in favor of Jesus of Nazareth, therefore, compared to the cross, it has
no soteriological value of human acting of the incarnate Son of God” (ibid., 306).
19
G. O’COLLINS, SJ, “Some Representative Works on the Resurrection”, in &RPSDVV 45
(2011/4), 10; cf. also F.S. FIORENZA, “The Resurrection of Jesus and Roman Catholic
Fundamental Theology”, in 7KH 5HVXUUHFWLRQ, ed. S. DAVIS et al. (Oxford: Oxford UP,
1997), 211–248, who brings an overview of different positions, which he differentiates into
two groups: the first accentuates rather the life of Jesus (R. Pesch, Schillebeeckx, Oberli n-
ner, Verweyen), the other tries to prove apologetically the historicity of resurrection (Pa n-
nenberg, Craig, Swinburne, O’Collins).
with it, I want to return to some important points regarding the biblical
sources and to one interpretation, which in my opinion provides a very handy
instrument and a very useful differentiation for interpreting resurrection.
7KH)XQGDPHQWDO+HUPHQHXWLFDO6WUXFWXUH
I mentioned already that the texts of the New Testament are written from the
perspective of resurrection and they are thus shaped by the Easter faith. In the
Gospels, the resurrection is the point of the whole story, which compels the
reader to read the story once again from this new perspective (cf. above, Ch.
4). However, the resurrection itself is not described anywhere in the New
Testament. In the narratives of the Gospels, there is everytime and in every
Gospel in the same way a meaningful JDS: the texts describe the crucifixion,
death, and burial of Jesus – and what follows is the amazement of the women
in front of the empty tomb where they are confronted with the message of
resurrection. The Gospels focus obviously on the reality of the crucifixion
and death – and then on the testimony of resurrection, either by women com-
ing from the empty tomb, or by those who met the risen one after the resur-
rection.
In the debate about the resurrection, there are thus two firm and historical-
ly reliable points: the death of Jesus on one side and the Easter experiences of
his followers, resp. the testimonies of these experiences, on the other side,
which lead quickly to the emergence of the first Christian groups.20 It is para-
doxical, regarding resurrection, that we only have indices of what happened
before and after. 7KHDFWRUSURFHVVRIUHVXUUHFWLRQLWVHOIUHPDLQVKLGGHQ, bib-
lically as well as historically. Hence, in this question, the answer depends on
a (reasoned!) theological judgment.
After resurrection, the Gospels focus on the message of the resurrection
and on the appearances of the risen Jesus. However, the appearances clearly
serve to maintain the proclamation of the resurrection, they support the reality
of the resurrection, not YLFHYHUVD. According to the Gospels and Paul, the ris-
en Jesus showed himself only to some people, not to all: in the Gospels only
to his disciples, according to Acts 9 (cf. Gal 1:13–24) to his former enemy
Saul, and according to 1Cor 15:6 later to more than 500 people at once, “most
of whom are still alive”.21 It was obviously possible – that is the meaning of
this sentence – to verify the testimony of the resurrection as real. This is the
20
Cf. POKORNÝ, 7KH*HQHVLV, 148: “[T]he time between the first visions and the proc-
lamation of the resurrection was a span that can be reckoned in terms of days and weeks
and not of years.”
21
1Cor 15:3b–5 is the oldest formula of resurrection, which Paul himself received from
a previous tradition and elaborated it. Cf. H. F REIHERR VON CAMPENHAUSEN, 'HU$EODXI
GHU2VWHUHUHLJQLVVHXQGGDVOHHUH*UDE (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1952), 10–11; POKORNÝ,
7KH*HQHVLV, 63–66; PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 89–92; CHILTON, 5HVXUUHFWLRQ/RJLF, 67–151.
point: it was enough to hear and to realize that the message of resurrection is
true, the point was not to meet the risen in person – the church was not estab-
lished as the community only of those who VDZ the risen Lord. The appear-
ances are not the point of the resurrection. On the contrary, the appearances
are there to support the message of the resurrection. Its reality is the point of
the appearances. The direct and visionary encounters with the risen Jesus
were not what was interpreted as saving, not even the message as such or
sheer faith but rather WKHUHDOLW\RIKLVUHVXUUHFWLRQ. Not the direct encounter,
not the message, not the faith, it is the “objective” reality of his resurrection,
which changes everything; and this is the point and content of the proclama-
tion and the source and object of faith. As P. Pokorný puts it:
“The Easter appearances, one dimension of which we can characterise phenomenologically
as visions, are in the New Testament bound up with the event of the resurrection as its
manifestations […]. :KDWLVSURFODLPHGDEURDGLVWKHUHIRUHQRWWKHYLVLRQVEXWWKHUDLV
LQJXSRI-HVXV.”22
Pokorný, therefore, differentiates IRXUHOHPHQWV or steps in the process of res-

urrection and emerging Easter faith, which he systemizes in the following
scheme:23
Easter appearances
The raising of Jesus Easter
(eschatological act proclamation
of God)
Faith of the disciples
The fundamental point and the anchor of the whole is the SUHFHGLQJLPSXOVH,
the eschatological acting of God, which is later, in the proclamation, inter-
preted as “resurrection”. This eschatological act is supported in the appear-
ances of the risen one. In parallel to it, i.e., not as the cause of the appearanc-
es, the eschatological act of God creates the Easter faith. Taken together with
the experiences from the encounters of the risen Jesus, it becomes the starting
point of the Christian proclamation of resurrection. This proclamation, then,
as if retrospectively, finds words and metaphors for what happened and elab-
orates subsequently the Christian message by starting from established for-
mulas and evolving towards deeper and deeper theological reflection.
The parallellity and simultaneousness of the appearances and of the emer-
gence of faith, as it is sketched also in the scheme, is of theological im-
portance for Pokorný:
“[W]e cannot explain the appearances of the risen one as an objective proof that produced
faith as its consequence. This would not be faith, it would not be a real inner change in
22
Ibid., 123 (italics mine).
23
Ibid., 127.
7KH+LVWRULFLW\RI5HVXUUHFWLRQ 345
people, and those who had not ‘seen’ but only ‘believed’ would be at disadvantage (cf.
John 20:29b). The interpretation in faith of the Easter vision as a sign of the resurrection of
Jesus is, therefore, an effect of the resurrection as the new act of God that is parallel with
and complementary to the visions. The Easter appearances and the Easter faith are two di-
mensions of the new reality, which as a single complex event changes the condition of hu-
mankind as well as the attitude of the witnesses.” 24
Neither the faith is a product of the visions (and of the visions only), nor are
the visions a product of faith. 25 The visions do not stand higher than faith,
which is born from the message testifying Christ as present, i.e., from audi-
tion (Rom 10:17). And neither of these phenomena is the final point, rather,
both point beyond themselves to the very source of this all, to the action of
God, which was interpreted as the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
With his scheme, Pokorný brings a useful and complex instrument for the
interpretation of resurrection. Now, one can play with it and try to arrange the
particular elements into a different sequence, which, then, would express a
different explanation of the whole process. One can put it e.g. this way: ap-
pearances – faith – proclamation. Here, the faith and the following proclama-
tion would depend on the visions as the beginning and source of the whole.
Or, one can put it this way: faith – appearances – proclamation. Then the ap-
pearances would be the outcome of faith, from wherever the faith emerged.
Or, in an only binary scheme: proclamation – faith. This would go in the di-
rection of Reimarus and his interpretation of the emergence of the church as
an intended forgery (cf. above, Ch. 2.1). With this, however, I already
touched on the question of the historicity of the resurrection, which will be
the topic of the next subchapter. Nevertheless, I want to stress that – at least
compared to the biblical conception – the alternative explanations are mostly
reductive insofar as they try to explain the whole process only with some of
the IRXU elements that Pokorný names.
2. The Historicity of Resurrection

2. The Historicity of Resurrection
Since the start of the modern christological debate, there has emerged a multi-
tude of positions and opinions regarding the question: how far can one treat
the resurrection as a historical event? I will group the answers to this question
into five alternatives.26
24
Ibid., 126–127. Cf. similarly WOLTER, “Die Auferstehung”, 47–48.
25
Against PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 96, who argues against Strauss’ subjective-visions hy-
pothesis, but makes the Easter faith dependent on the visions: “The Easter appearances are
not to be explained from the Easter faith of the disciples; rather, conversely, the Easter
faith of the disciples is to be explained from the appearances.”
26
Cf. DALFERTH, &UXFLILHGDQG5HVXUUHFWHG, 67–70, who differentiates three basic po-
sitions. ALLISON, 5HVXUUHFWLQJ -HVXV, 199–213, sees seven; G. ESSEN, +LVWRULVFKH
a) The first answer is simple: there never was anything like resurrection. It
GLGQRWKDSSHQ in any way (be it a symbolic or spiritual one). Jesus either did
not actually die, 27 or he remained dead and the resurrection message is either
a misinterpretation or a forgery. 28 However, regarding the first, there is a
strong evidence for Jesus’ real death. 29 Regarding the latter, the forgery-
theory was refuted already by D.F. Strauss. 30
b) As already mentioned above, according to some interpretations, the talk
of resurrection does not refer to a self-standing reality, but it is rather a V\P
EROLF H[SUHVVLRQ of the importance of the life and the message of Jesus.
Therefore, resurrection is something that did not happen to Jesus but is rather
an interpretative metaphor. In this way, R. Bultmann conceived the resurrec-
9HUQXQIW XQG $XIHUZHFNXQJ -HVX 7KHRORJLH XQG +LVWRULN LP 6WUHLW XP GHQ %HJULII JHV
FKLFKWOLFKHU :LUNOLFKHLW (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, 1995), 295–296, only two.
One could differentiate quite deliberately also in other ways. Cf. also PANNENBERG, -HVXV,
88–106.
27
DALFERTH, &UXFLILHG DQG 5HVXUUHFWHG, 67, going through the whole history, names
Basilides, H.E.G. Paulus and J.D.M. Derrett.
28
Concerning resurrection as forgery, it is well-known that this interpretation mentions
already Mt 28:11–15; it appears, then, in Celsus (cf. ORIGEN, “Contra Celsum” 2,55, in 3*
11, 883–886) and, in the modern era, it was the interpretation of H.S. Reimarus (cf. above,
Ch. 2.1, and below, fn. 30, the critique of Strauss). For more detailed references to differ-
ent interpretations, which presuppose rather an error in the judgement of the actors back
then (e.g. women coming to a wrong tomb, or someone moved the body of Jesus), see
ALLISON, 5HVXUUHFWLQJ -HVXV, 201–204; DALFERTH, &UXFLILHG DQG5HVXUUHFWHG, 68, men-
tions D. Cupitt’s interpretation of resurrection as “an unintentional misinterpretation of
natural phenomena”.
29
Cf. DALFERTH, &UXFLILHG DQG 5HVXUUHFWHG, 67–68: “[T]here have always been too
many well-documented historical facts countering both these lines of argument, as set out
in the detailed Gospel accounts of the crucifixion. The early Christian confessions and
Jewish anti-Christian polemic were equally certain that Jesus had indeed died on the
cross.”
30
Cf. STRAUSS, 'DV/HEHQ-HVX, vol. II, 653–654: Celsus “and some of the more con-
temporary like the Fragmentist of Wolfenbüttel joined accusation of the Jews as mentioned
in Matthew that the disciples stole the corpse of Jesus and later, with an agreement in the
same bad way, feigned the stories about his resurrection and appearances. This suspicion is
refuted already with the notion of Origen that a self-invented lie of the disciples could not
fascinate the disciples to such a steady proclamation of the resurrection of Jesus, when fa c-
ing the biggest dangers. Also today, the apologists insist by right that the enormous turna-
round from the deepest desperation and total hopelessness of the disciples facing the death
of Jesus to the power of faith and enthusiasm, with which they proclaimed him as the Mes-
siah at the immediately following Pentecost, could not be explained when, in the mea n-
time, there would not have happened something extraordinarily encouraging or, more con-
cretely, something that convinced them of the revival of the crucified Jesus. However, this
does not prove in any way that this convincing event had to be a real appearance of the
risen one or that it had been an external process at all.”
tion as the “expression of the significance of the cross”. 31 W. Marxsen took it

as the symbolic confirmation of the fact that “the Jesus thing (die Sache Je-
su)” is continuing. 32 The message of resurrection is another interpretament of
one’s own coming to faith:
“It is important to recognize that the early church was undoubtedly interpreting a reality,
the reality of personal faith. This reality was felt to be a miracle: here God was at work. In
order, now, to express this divine activity – in order to hold fast to God’s preeminent part
in the birth of one’s personal faith – it was interpreted with the help of the statement: Jesus
is risen.”33
However, both Bultmann and Marxsen presuppose a preceding action of God,

although not in the form of the bodily resurrection of the dead Jesus but ra-
ther in the emergence of Easter faith as an eschatological act.34
c) This is different in interpretations, which conceive the resurrection as a
matter of VXEMHFWLYHSHUVXDVLRQ. Resurrection did not happen, it is not based
in an external act of God, it is rather a result of “wishful thinking on the part
of the disciples”,35 or an interpretation based only on a subjective state of
mind (“psychogenic projections”).36 There is thus not a theological but rather
31
BULTMANN, “New Testament and Mythology”, 36.
32
W. MARXSEN, “Die Auferstehung Jesu als historisches und als theologisches Prob-
lem”, in IDEM et al., 'LH%HGHXWXQJGHU$XIHUVWHKXQJVERWVFKDIWIUGHQ*ODXEHQDQ-HVXV
&KULVWXV, 7th ed. (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1968), 9–39; cf. more in detail POKORNÝ, 7KH
*HQHVLV, 120.
33
W. MARXSEN, 7KH5HVXUUHFWLRQRI-HVXVRI1D]DUHWK, trans. M. KOHL (Philadelphia:
Fortress Press, 1970), 139. Cf. similarly already K. BARTH, 'HU5|PHUEULHI, 2nd ed. (Mün-
chen: Chr. Kaiser, 1922), 175; or S. MCFAGUE, 0RGHOVRI*RG7KHRORJ\IRUDQ(FRORJL
FDO1XFOHDU$JH (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1989), 59. For more details and further lit-
erature see DALFERTH, &UXFLILHGDQG5HVXUUHFWHG, 68, fn. 66, and ALLISON, 5HVXUUHFWLQJ
-HVXV, 209–212.
34
Cf. BULTMANN, “New Testament and Mythology”, 36–37.
35
DALFERTH, &UXFLILHG DQG 5HVXUUHFWHG, 68, naming D.F. Strauss and his so-called
‘subjective-vision theory’ in the first place. Concerning the wishful thinking of resurrec-
tion on the part of the disciples, CHARLESWORTH, “Conclusion”, 227, brings a counter-
argument: “[T]he authors of the New Testament documents do not record any evidence of
such a wish. In fact, they independently, and in diverse ways, stressed that the followers of
Jesus resisted such a belief.” And he names concrete examples. – To the conceptions of
Strauss, Bultmann, Marxsen, and, next to them, also Schillebeeckx and R. Pesch cf.
KESSLER, 6XFKHWGHQ/HEHQGHQ, 161–208.
36
Term of P.F. CARNLEY, “Response”, in 7KH5HVXUUHFWLRQ, ed. S.T. DAVIS et al. (Ox-
ford: Oxford UP, 1997), 29. Following Strauss, this is the position e.g. of J. HICK, 7KH
0HWDSKRU RI *RG ,QFDUQDWH &KULVWRORJ\ LQ D 3OXUDOLVWLF $JH (Louisville: Westmin-
ster/John Knox Press, 1993), 24.Similarly CHILTON, 5HVXUUHFWLRQ/RJLF, 196, who, from
the position of a consistent historian, states that “the resurrection – although not in itself a
historical event – becomes historical when Jesus’ agency exerts itself among his followers”
where it “emerges within their human actions” etc. However, “to speak of the agency of
Christ itself, the very content of the resurrection, is an inference drawn IURP historical in-
a psychological interpretation for the talk of resurrection, which confuses

phantasy with reality.37 The most radical ones interpret resurrection simply as
hallucinations, i.e., as fictional phantasy.38 Others see in it rather subjective
visions or a more or less reasonable result of a deep self-persuasion, coming,
e.g., from coping with the heavy loss and grief. The latter is the interpretation
of G. Theissen or D. Allison.
“[T]he evolution of the Jesus tradition – as reconstructed by many modern scholars, ac-
cording to which large portions grew backwards from the telling of his end – matches a
pattern, a process of memorialization, commonly found in bereavment. […] Shortly after
his death, the followers of Jesus saw him again, sensed his invisible presence, overcame
their guilt by finding sense in his tragic end, idealized and internalized their teacher, and
remembered his words and deeds. Given that similar circumstances often attend the b e-
reaved in general, it may be that, to some extent, Christian theology and experience were
summoned forth and shaped not just by the pre-Easter Jesus and belief in his postmortem
vindication but also by the psychological process that trailed his disciples’ loss. Indeed, it
may be no exaggeration to say that the Christian church is in some ways the :LUNXQJVJHV
FKLFKWH of what the disciples’ bereavement wrought.” 39
As I already noted when dealing with Theissen above (Ch. 4.1.2), this inter-
pretation does not match the fundamental biblical notion that the source of
the new Easter perspective is a new eschatological act of God – the funda-
mental impulse, interpreted in the Christian proclamation as resurrection is
missing here. Without this external point, without this fundamental H[WUDPH
of faith, however, this interpretation cannot explain how a movement based
on processes of bereavement would outlast the next generation and how
would it spread also to those who did not know the earthly Jesus in person. 40
ference”. Christ is “[r]isen from the dead in the experience of his disciples” who “per-
ceived him as corporeal consciousness”. “The direct experience of Jesus as risen from the
dead is not historical […]. But his followers’ responses to their experiences were and re-
main powerfully historical” (ibid., 200). For an explanation of resurrection, therefore, Chil-
ton refuses all conventional answers (“simple historical fact, delusion, grave robbery, and
the like”) and seeks “unconventional means” (ibid., 210). Also J.D.G. DUNN, -HVXVDQGWKH
6SLULW (Grand Rapids: Wm.B. Eerdmans, 1975), 133, states: “The possibility that these
were solely subjective visions cannot be ruled out.”
37
To the psychological side of the visions cf. PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 95–98.
38
Most prominently today, following Strauss, G. Lüdemann, cf. e.g. -HVXV¶ 5HVXUUHF
WLRQ )DFW RI )LJPHQW", ed. P. COPAN and R.K. TACELLI (Downers Growe: InterVarsity
Press, 2000), 45; G. LÜDEMANN, 7KH5HVXUUHFWLRQRI-HVXV+LVWRU\([SHULHQFH7KHROR
J\, trans. J. BOWDEN (London: SCM Press, 1994); LÜDEMANN and ÖZEN, :KDW 5HDOO\
+DSSHQHGWR-HVXV. Similarly also G. KAUFMANN, 6\VWHPDWLF7KHRORJ\$+LVWRULFLVW3HU
VSHFWLYH (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1968), 418–434. Cf. ALLISON, 5HVXUUHFWLQJ
-HVXV, 204–207.
39
ALLISON, 5HVXUUHFWLQJ -HVXV, 374–375, coming from his own experiences of be-
reavement, cf. ibid., 269–299. A similar argument brings already HICK, 7KH0HWDSKRU, 24
and 38.
40
Similarly also PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 95–98.
Overall, the resulting picture sketches a tradition with very questionnable

subjective grounding, which raises the question, why one should take it seri-
ously. Without the external impulse, the talk of resurrection – and, hence, the
whole existence of Christian faith, church, and theology – would not make
enough sense; it would actually only be a deliberate community of people
who share the ideals and values of Jesus. Then, Christians would only be an-
other humanistic fellowship based solely on the personal conviction that such
a way of life has a good sense.41 Herewith, the soteriological point of the
Christian faith would become quite vague. 42 The perspective of resurrection,
however, promises more (cf. below, point e), and subch. 4).
In his Christology from below -HVXV $Q ([SHULPHQW LQ &KULVWRORJ\ (1979), ( 6FKLOOH
EHHFN[ searches for the decisive impulse, which caused the reassembling of the disciples
leading to the emergence of the church. He finds it in the conversion of Peter, who was the
first one that realized what it means to believe in and follow after Jesus and who found a
new enthusiasm for belief.43 Thus, the Easter experience is “the faith-motivated experience
and confession of the power of God that has brought the crucified One to life again”. 44 So
far, in Schillebeeckx, Easter seems to happen primarily in the hearts of the disciples. How-
ever, he explicitly refuses the solely subjective interpretation of resurrection stating that it
has an objective aspect, though one which cannot be entirely separated from the subjective.
Resurrection happened to Jesus, “personally, after his death”, and yet it is “inseparable
from the Easter experience, or faith-motivated experience, of the disciples”. “[N]o Easter
experience of renewed life was possible without the personal resurrection of Jesus”, whi ch
precedes any Easter experience, although the “experience of that reality and the reality of
the experience […] are here inseparable”. 45
Lately, 0' .UJHU in 'DV DQGHUH %LOG &KULVWL (2017) also proposed an attempt to
conceive the visions of the resurrected precisely and explicitly on the edge of objectivity
and subjectivity. He takes the Easter as the “grounding datum of the Christian faith”. 46
However, the Easter occurences are bound to the visions of the risen Jesus, not to the res-
41
This would go strongly in the direction of how liberal theology, with all its critique of
church and doctrine, sees Christianity.
42
Next to it, G. O’COLLINS, SJ, “The Resurrection: The State of the Questions”, in 7KH
5HVXUUHFWLRQ, ed. S.T. DAVIS et al. (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997), 8, refering to S.T. DAVIS,
5LVHQ,QGHHG0DNLQJ6HQVHRIWKH5HVXUUHFWLRQ (London: SPCK, 1993), 40, brings an ar-
gument concerning the trustworthiness of the biblical authors: “[A]ny revisionist theory
that takes all this variegated language to have referred only to changes in the disciples
turns the New Testament writers into either ‘obtuse communicators’, who were unable to
express their intended meaning, or ‘deceptive communicators, who intentionally hid their
intended meaning behind the words they used’.”
43
SCHILLEBEECKX, -HVXV, 389. Similarly HICK, 7KH0HWDSKRU, 24, who points to Peter
as the first among possible others, who experienced in himself an inner voice (which
should be similar to Paul’s experience on his way to Damascus). According to Hick, these
experiences were of the same type as near-death experiences.
44
Ibid., 397.
45
Ibid., 645 and 647. In a similar direction goes WOLTER, “Die Auferstehung”, 52.
46
KRÜGER, 'DVDQGHUH%LOG&KULVWL, 506.
urrection itself.47 Krüger conceives resurrection as an appearance in one’s faith, as an event

where Jesus “became the image of God (BildZHUGXQJ Jesu)”, which means that Jesus “EH
FDPH an objectifying image of God, which, as the image-object, is not objective […],
meaning that it manifests itself only in faith and not independently from faith”. 48 Krüger
struggles with the objectivity and subjectivity of the appearances of the risen Jesus and
tries to keep them on the edge between both, holding, on one side, their independence of
the subjective faith, and, on the other side, the fact that we have no witnesses of the resur-
rected one independently of faith. In the end, this leads Krüger to diminish of the objectivi-
ty of Easter: “The risen one was neither an appearance of a being, which was independent
of it – i.e., a revelation of a person, who would be separable from the Easter appearances.
Nor was the risen one an appearance without being – i.e., the subjective vision of Jesus’
disciples, who did not want to bring themselves to admit his failure. Rather, the Easter ap-
pearances were a process or being, which consist of its appearing. […] The Easter appear-
ances should be understood as a perceivable sign (wahrnehmungsnahe Zeichen), which
broke the physical world, included the imagination and, at the same time, framed this im-
agination in a productive turn so that it was possible to imagine and to realize a counterfa c-
tual freedom. […] on the basis of their image-character, the Easter appearances share the
character of non-objective objects.”49 Struggling with the externality of Easter events as
expressed in the paradoxical notion of a non-objective object, Krüger, in the end, cannot
maintain their reality independently of faith. On the contrary, he localizes their realization
in faith only: “If the Easter appearances in the sense of an image were, in principle, a being
in its appearing, then, they cannot be separated from their appearing, which means from
their realization in faith.”50 It seems that, for Krüger, resurrection was also something that
happened only to the disciples and not to Jesus and that is possible only for believers.
Therefore, there are similar questions arising as in the case of Theissen and Allison. With
his conception, Krüger gets close to the position of liberal theology.
This problem also touches on the question of the FKDUDFWHU RI WKH YLVLRQV. In polemic
with the subjective-vision theory, some authors presuppose that to see the risen Jesus re-
quired a special kind of seeing, to which one must be enabled by God’s grace (“grace-
assisted seeing”) or faith. Against it, others defend the opinion that the disciples saw Jesus
with their “normal” perceptive abilities. 51
d) Next to all these, there are also positions, which simply insist on the KLVWR
ULFLW\ RI WKH UHVXUUHFWLRQ of Jesus: the resurrection of Jesus was a historical
event. What the Gospels describe, was a concrete moment in human history
when Jesus was bodily raised from the dead. The most famous in the last dec-
47
Ibid., 507: “To be a Christian means to stand within the effect of what happened at
the Easter.” However, what happened were the appearances of the risen Jesus, beyond
which it is impossible to get (they are “unhintergehbar”).
48
Ibid., 504, fn. 37.
49
Ibid., 505, orig.: “Die Ostererscheinungen sind im Sinn eines wahnehmungsnahen
Zeichens zu begreifen, das die physikalische Welt unterbrach, die Einbildungskraft einb e-
zog und diese Einbildungskraft zugleich in produktiver Wendung so einklammerte, dass
eine kontrafaktische Freiheit vorstellig und realisierbar wurde.”
50
Ibid.
51
Cf. S.T. DAVIS, “‘Seeing’ the Risen Jesus”, in 7KH5HVXUUHFWLRQ, ed. S. DAVIS et al.
(Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997), 126–147; DUNN, -HVXV5HPHPEHUHG, 872–874; BECKER, 'LH
$XIHUVWHKXQJ, 273–287.
ades has been still the position of W. Pannenberg but there are also others
next to him, both on the catholic and protestant side. 52
However, Pannenberg’s vote for the historicity of resurrection was often misinterpreted.
He did not seek “to provide a historical demonstration to ground Christian belief in the
resurrection” nor “argued that this historical demonstration is independent of faith”. 53 His
thesis is much more differentiated – he tries to show the logic and importance of the resur-
rection message, which puts the event of resurrection inevitably into the centre. This, how-
ever, does not make things easier. On the contrary, it raises questions about the character
of resurrection. Pannenberg states that it is only the resurrection – the resurrection of the
FUXFLILHG Jesus, however –, which was the starting point of the Christian faith and procla-
mation and which is the final confirmation of his claim to authority. 54 Therefore, without
resurrection, this claim, which Jesus raised in a proleptical way aiming to its eschatological
confirmation, and with it the whole christological conception based upon it would remain
“an empty assertion”.55 The resurrection is thus the central point of the whole. However, as
it turns out in a while, a not uncomplicated one regarding its historicity. In the polemic
with the subjective-visions hypothesis, Pannenberg stresses that the testimonies about
Easter events, which we have today in the biblical texts, are based on the tradition of vi-
sions and on the tradition of empty tomb, which are LQGHSHQGHQW on each other. For Pan-
nenberg, this strenghtens the probability of resurrection, but he formulates it in a very cau-
tious way: “If the appearance tradition and the grave tradition came into existence inde-
pendently, then by their mutualy complementing each other they let the assertion of the
reality of Jesus’ resurrection […] appear as historically very probable, and that always
means in historical inquiry that it is to be presupposed until contrary evidence appears.” 56
For Pannenberg, the reality of resurrection is directly connected with its truth: if we state
52
Cf. e.g. BARTH, &KXUFK'RJPDWLFVIV/1, 333: “The resurrection of Jesus Christ from
the dead, with which His first SDURXVLD begins to be completed in the second, has in fact
happened. It has happened in the same sense as His crucifixion and His death, in the hu-
man sphere and human time, as an actual event within the world with an objective con-
tent.” M. WELKER, “Theological Realism and Eschatological Symbol Systems”, in 5HVXU
UHFWLRQ. 7KHRORJLFDO DQG 6FLHQWLILF $VVHVVPHQWV, ed. T. PETERS et al. (Grand Rapids:
Wm.B. Eerdmans, 2002), 41: “His resurrection GLGWDNHSODFHLQDFHUWDLQVSDWLRWHPSRUDO
VORWLQKLVWRU\. And the reality of his resurrection is shaped by a specific bodily existence
in space and time.” WRIGHT, 7KH5HVXUUHFWLRQ, 8: “[T]he RQO\ possible reason why early
Christianity began and took the shape it did is that the tomb really was empty and that peo-
ple really did meet Jesus, alive again and […] that […] the best historical explanation for
all these phenomena is that Jesus was indeed bodily raised from the dead. “ Similarly, as
the best explanation of biblical facts, takes it W.C. Lane, cf. -HVXV¶ 5HVXUUHFWLRQ, 31–32.
The historicity of resurrection is also defended intensively by G. O’COLLINS, SJ, 7KH5HV
XUUHFWLRQRI-HVXV&KULVW (Milwaukee: Marquette UP, 1993);IDEM, -HVXV5LVHQ$+LVWRUL
FDO )XQGDPHQWDO DQG 6\VWHPDWLF([DPLQDWLRQ RI &KULVW¶V 5HVXUUHFWLRQ (New York/Mah-
wah: Paulist Press, 1987); IDEM, (DVWHU )DLWK %HOLHYLQJ LQ WKH 5LVHQ -HVXV (New York/
Mahwah: Paulist Press, 2003).
53
So understands it FIORENZA, “The Resurrection of Jesus”, 216.
54
PANNENBERG, 6\VWHPDWLF7KHRORJ\2, 343–344; IDEM, -HVXV, 66.
55
56
Ibid., 105, for the context cf. ibid., 88–106. Similarly IDEM, 6\VWHPDWLF 7KHRORJ\ 2,
343–363.
that the resurrection happened, then, we should not be shy to mark it as a historical event:
“If we would forgo the concept of a historical event here, then it is no longer possible at all
to affirm that the resurrection of Jesus or that the appearances of the resurrected Jesus real-
ly happened at a definite time in our world. There is no justification for affirming Jesus’
resurrection as an event that really happened, if it is not to be affirmed as a historical event
as such.”57 Later, Pannenberg specifies what he means with “historicity”, which the notion
of the resurrection of Jesus Christ itself, in his view, implies: it means simply its facticity,
i.e., “the fact that it happened at a specific time”. 58 In case of resurrection, however, its
facticity “will be contested right up to the eschatological consummation of the world b e-
cause its uniqueness transcends an understanding of reality that is oriented only to this
passing world and because the new reality that has come in the resurrection of J esus has
not yet universally and definitively manifested itself.” 59 Yet, this definitive manifestation is
bound to the eschatological resurrection of all: “[F]or its final verification, the Christian
message of the resurrection of Jesus needs the event of an eschatological resurrection of
the dead. […] Hence the Christian Easter message will be contested as long as the general
resurrection of the dead and the coming again of Jesus are still future.” 60 It is thus obvious
that Pannenberg knows very well the problem: he argues that it is plausible to assume that
the resurrection of Jesus was a historical event, which, however, can be confirmed only at
the end of history. Until then, the historicity of resurrection – and, with it, the truth of the
Christian proclamation – remain disputable (XPVWULWWHQ).
e) The last option even goes a step further by claiming that the resurrection of
Jesus Christ, in its fundamental character, is PRUH WKDQ KLVWRU\.61 I.U.
57
58
PANNENBERG, 6\VWHPDWLF 7KHRORJ\ 2, 359, 360–361. Cf. ibid., 361: “‘historically’
does not mean ‘historically provable’ […]. It means that an event actually took place.”
59
Ibid., 361.
60
Ibid., 350–351.
61
Cf. DALFERTH, &UXFLILHG DQG 5HVXUUHFWHG, 69–82; IDEM, “Volles Grab”, 284–289;
POKORNÝ, 7KH *HQHVLV, 119–128; KESSLER, 6XFKW GHQ /HEHQGHQ, 217, 237–238;
SCHUELE, “Transformed into the Image of Christ”, 223; MOLTMANN, 7KH :D\ RI -HVXV
&KULVW, 242; partly also G. THOMAS, “‘Er ist nicht hier!’ Die Rede vom leeren Grab als
Zeichen der neuen Schöpfung”, in 'LH:LUNOLFKNHLWGHU$XIHUVWHKXQJ, ed. H.-J. ECKSTEIN
and M. WELKER (Neukrichen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2001), 207, who states: “The resurrec-
tion is both: an ‘event’ of the story of Jesus Christ and, at the same time, a meta -
communicative ‘event’ ZLWK the story of Jesus Christ, in which God owns himself up to
him and reveals him as Christ.” Or ESSEN, +LVWRULVFKH9HUQXQIW, 382 and 384: “The resur-
rection of Jesus eludes the empirical-historical ascertainability”, yet “the risen one mediat-
ed himself into history in the appearances”. Paradoxically, K. Barth belongs to this group
as well, cf. BARTH, &KXUFK 'RJPDWLFV III/2, 446: “We may well accept as history that
which good taste prevents us from calling ‘historical fact’, and which the modern historian
will call ‘saga’ or ‘legend’ on the ground that it is beyond the reach of his methods, to say
nothing of his unavowed assumptions. It belongs to the nature of the biblical material that
although it forms a consecutive historical narrative it is full of this kind of history and con-
tains comparatively little ‘history’ in Bultmann’s sense. The creation narratives in Gen. 1 –
2, for example, are history in this higher sense: and so too is the Easter story, except for a
tiny ‘historical’ margin. Why should it not have happened? It is sheer superstition to sup-
pose that only things which are open to ‘historical’ verification can have happened in time.
Dalferth speaks about the metaphor of resurrection as an interpretation, as

“inference”, “creative abduction”, or even “hermeneutic event” referring to
an eschatological act of God, which transcends the level of history. 62 In this
approach, resurrection refers neither to an event in the mind or heart of the
disciples (being rather a psychological term), nor to an event in the Easter
history after crucifixion (being rather a historical term, whose historicity is to
be proven and defended), but, in a fundamental way, it is conceived as a WKHR
ORJLFDOWHUP. It refers to an act of God and to an HYHQWLQWKHOLIHRI*RG first
and foremost. The creative abduction aiming to such an act of God helped,
according to Dalferth, connect and bridge two opposite experiences of the
disciples at Easter: Jesus is dead – Jesus lives.
“The only remaining option, as far as they could see, given the premise of Jesus’ identity
and the irreconcilability of his experiences, was to seek a solution, and this solution finds
its expression in the Easter confession: UDLVHGE\*RG.”63
This interpretation, however, is an “DSSOLFDWLRQRI-HVXV¶VPHVVDJHFRQFHUQ

LQJ *RG¶V VDYLQJ DQG OLIHJLYLQJ SUHVHQFH WR -HVXV KLPVHOI. […] This early
Christian answer therefore speaks firmly RI *RG and means precisely that
God whom Jesus had proclaimed.” The message of resurrection is thus not an
idea or a phantasy of the disciples, but rather “it conveys an DFWRI*RG that
transcends anything that can be grasped historically.”64 The resurrection is
not a divine miracle within our world, it is much more: it is “an HVFKDWRORJL
FDOTXDOLILFDWLRQRIRXUZRUOGDVDZKROH, affecting the entire world and not
just some elements of it. It brought to light, ZLWKLQ this world, the ultimate
truth and destiny RI WKH ZRUOG DV D ZKROH.”65 Dalferth can thus say that the
resurrection is “not a historical fact” that simply follows after the cross. The
cross is “in principle a verifiable historical fact; the second [i.e., the resurrec-
tion] is not.” 66 The resurrection has a different ontological character. It is not
“a historical event that happens LQ the world […]. Rather, it is an eschatologi-
cal event that happens WR the world (DQ der Welt).”67 With this new and es-
chatological event, which originates solely from the acting of God, there
There may have been events which happened far more really in time that the kind of things
Bultmann’s scientific historian can prove. There are good grounds for supposing that the
history of the resurrection of Jesus is a pre-eminent instance of such an event.”
62
DALFERTH, 'HU DXIHUZHFNWH *HNUHX]LJWH, 69: the confession of resurrection is a
“durchaus schlußfolgernde” answer (the English translation, &UXFLILHG DQG 5HVXUUHFWHG,
69, does not put it precisely); IDEM, “Volles Grab”, 289, 301; H. KESSLER, “Auferstehung
Christi III. Systematisch-theologisch”, in /7K.,vol. 1, ed. W. KASPER, 3rd ed. (Freiburg:
Herder, 2006), 1186.
63
64
Ibid.
65
Ibid., 77.
66
Ibid., 79.
67
Ibid.
comes “a fundamental change to the frame of reference”: from the experience

of the cross, which is a part of our perspective as creatures and thus of the
historical and “old” world (qualified as such through the experience of some-
thing radically new), to the new perspective of the Creator. This fundamental
change, however, cannot be done by any intensification of the old perspec-
tive.
“On the contrary, the divine perspective is distinguished by the way it relates our creatur e-
ly perspective (‘Jesus is dead’) and the creator’s perspective (‘Jesus lives’) to each other,
so that it becomes possible to see through Jesus’s life, suffering, and cross to an implicit
truth that is impenetrable from a historical perspective alone yet explicitly articulated in
the confession of faith in the resurrection of Jesus as the central eschatological turning
point of world history.”68
The appearances, then, are participation in “God the creator’s perspective on

Jesus”, which are imparted to the disciples “by God the Spirit”. This perspec-
tive “opens our eyes to the divine view of Jesus, of ourselves and our world,
and of God himself, showing us the truth about our reality under the cond i-
tions in which we exist as created beings and as sinners.” 69 The creative ab-
duction rooted in the Easter experiences is thus the point of birth for the faith
from the Spirit. 70
3. Bodily Resurrection: The Empty Tomb

3. Bodily Resurrection: The Empty Tomb
The second important biblical tradition concerning the Easter events is the
tradition of the empty tomb. 71 Its principal problem is its occurrence only in
the Gospels (originating all probably from Mark 16,1–8 or a pre-Markian tra-
68
Ibid., 80.
69
Ibid., 81.
70
Cf. ibid., 70: “Accordingly, no attempt at theological explication can be convincing
unless one of its central considerations is that the resurrection confession owes its exist-
ence not merely to a story from the past but always to a present experience as well: the ori-
gins of Easter faith are rooted equally in the story of Jesus and in the story of the confess-
ing community. Hence it cannot refer back to God’s act of resurrection to resolve any cog-
nitive and emotional dissonances without qualifying ERWK points of reference in the light of
this act, in other words, acknowledging Jesus DV &KULVW ad its own faith as the ZRUN RI
*RG¶V6SLULW, and thus perceiving – initially implicitly but before long explicitly as well –
the WULQLWDULDQ GLIIHUHQWLDWLRQ within God’s action.” Cf. also above, Ch. 8.4. To the basic
outline of Dalferth’s theology see GALLUS, “Verschiedene Wege”.
71
Among others cf. WRIGHT, 7KH 5HVXUUHFWLRQ, 585–738; ALLISON, 5HVXUUHFWLQJ -H
VXV, 299–337; THEISSEN and MERZ, 7KH+LVWRULFDO-HVXV, 499–503; DUNN, -HVXV5HPHP
EHUHG, 828–841; H.-J. ECKSTEIN, “Bodily Resurrection in Luke”, in 5HVXUUHFWLRQ 7KHR
ORJLFDODQG6FLHQWLILF$VVHVVPHQWV, ed. T. PETERS et al. (Grand Rapis: Wm. B. Eerdmans,
2002), 115–123; THOMAS, “‘Er ist nicht hier!’”.
%RGLO\5HVXUUHFWLRQ7KH(PSW\7RPE 355
dition72), while Paul does not mention it at all, although he knows about Je-
sus’ burial (1Cor 15:4) and – this is the strongest argument – although it
would serve his argumentation in a very fitting way.73 Does it mean that he
did not know it and that this tradition is only the later addition with a sole lit-
erary nature, which is made up within the logic of resurrection as ERGLO\ res-
urrection?74 How far, then, can this tradition be taken as a fundamental sup-
port of the historicity and bodiliness of the resurrection of Jesus?
The variety of possible answers to these questions are wide. For the au-
thors of the Gospels, the empty grave is crucial. 75 N.T. Wright builds his
whole argumentation on the facticity of the empty grave, which is to him a
necessary condition for the bodily resurrection. 76 W. Pannenberg stresses its
independency on the tradition of appearances and takes it because of this mu-
tual independency as an important testimony to the historicity of resurrec-
tion.77 H.F. von Campenhausen stated that before the disciples encountered
the risen Jesus or confessed his resurrection, they already knew about the
empty tomb.78 G. Thomas calls the story of the empty tomb “a risky narrative
staging a gap, i.e., staging something that we cannot describe yet that indeed
happened”.79 K. Barth calls the empty tomb “an indispensable sign” of resur-
rection despite its legendary character. 80 Also for H. Küng, stories of the
tomb are “legendary elaborations of the message of the resurrection”. 81 P.
Pokorný declares that the story about the empty tomb is “a later etiology of
the veneration of the empty tomb in Jerusalem”. 82 For H. Kessler, the empty
72
Cf. KESSLER, 6XFKWGHQ/HEHQGHQ, 118; A. YARBRO-COLLINS, “The Empty Tomb in
the Gospel according to Mark”, in +HUPHVDQG$WKHQD%LEOLFDO([HJHVLVDQG3KLORVRSKL
FDO7KHRORJ\, ed. E. STUMP and T.P. FLINT (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press,
1993), 107–137.
73
Cf. ALLISON, 5HVXUUHFWLQJ-HVXV, 306.
74
To these questions, cf. ibid., 305–306, 314–316.
75
Cf. ECKSTEIN, “Bodily Resurrection”, 123.
76
WRIGHT, 7KH5HVXUUHFWLRQ, 8.
77
PANNENBERG, -HVXV, 105. Cf. ALLISON, 5HVXUUHFWLQJ -HVXV, 332, who, in his way,
joins both Wright and Pannenberg here: “Visions of Jesus, without belief in his empty
tomb, would probably have led only to faith in Jesus’ vindication and assumption to heav-
en, not to belief in his resurrection from the dead.” This is, indeed, the conception of those
theologians who favor the interpretation of resurrection as based on a subjective persua-
sion. Explicitly e.g. SCHMIDT-LEUKEL, *RWW, 273.
78
CAMPENHAUSEN, 'HU$EODXI, 50; to Campenhausen cf. J. ADAM, “Das leere Grab als
Unterpfand der Auferstehung Jesu Christi”, in 'LH:LUNOLFKNHLWGHU$XIHUVWHKXQJ, ed. H.-J.
ECKSTEIN and M. WELKER (Neukrichen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2001), 59–75; further also
ALLISON, 5HVXUUHFWLQJ-HVXV, 325–326.
79
THOMAS, “‘Er ist nicht hier!’”, 201: “risikoreiche narrative Inszenierungen einer
Leerstelle, d.h. des Nichtbeschreibbaren und doch Geschehenen”.
80
BARTH, &KXUFK'RJPDWLFVIII/2, 453.
81
H. KÜNG, 2Q%HLQJD&KULVWLDQ, trans. E. QUINN (New York: Doubleday, 1976), 364.
82
tomb loses its importance because it cannot be a constitutive element for

Christian faith – what it can produce is only terror (Mk 16:8). 83 Some biblical
scholars treat the story about the empty tomb only as a Markian literary fic-
tion.84 Others suppose that the women on Sunday morning did not find Jesus’
grave or found another one, which gave rise to the tradition of the empty
tomb.85 Or, on the other far side of the spectre, G. Lüdemann clearly declares
that the grave was not empty but rather full, and the body of Jesus “rotted
away”.86
The biblical sources obviously do not provide us with sufficient material
for an unambiguous decision. 87 Theological reasoning must come into play.
Important considerations of this kind are presented by ,8'DOIHUWK in his ar-
ticle “Volles Grab, leerer Glaube? [Full Tomb, Empty Faith?]” (1996). In a
provocative way, Dalferth reconsiders the necessity of the empty tomb and
bodily resurrection of Jesus vis-à-vis some weighty theological arguments,
which help to enlighten the merit of the problem.
What is the focus of the argumentation in this case, asks Dalferth, the emp-
ty tomb, or, rather, the faith in the crucified and resurrected Jesus? Is the
empty tomb a condition, or, rather, a consequence of resurrection? “The proof
that the tomb was not empty would touch the faith only if the confession of
resurrection of Jesus would lose its ground with it.” 88 Dalferth, however,
doubts the theological significance of the empty tomb: older and, for the res-
urrection, more fundamental is the tradition of appearances and, moreover, an
empty tomb alone cannot be a sufficient reason for a confession of resurrec-
tion. Yet, he draws his thesis even one step further by considering the oppo-
site case: even a full tomb could not be, still, a sufficient reason DJDLQVW res-
urrection.
“A tomb can be empty due to many reasons: empty tombs do not provide an impulse for a
confession of resurrection (cf. Mt. 28:13–15). And that Jesus was risen, must not mean that
his earthly body could not be in the grave any more.” 89
83
KESSLER, 6XFKWGHQ/HEHQGHQ, 124.
84
Cf. YARBRO-COLLINS, “The Empty Tomb”; ALLISON, 5HVXUUHFWLQJ-HVXV, 301–302.
85
Cf. ALLISON, 5HVXUUHFWLQJ-HVXV, 202 and 333–334, with detailed references and Al-
lison’s own conjecture. Also cf. CHILTON, 5HVXUUHFWLRQ/RJLF, 185: “Just as Jesus’ surviv-
al of crucifixion, however improbable, cannot be dismissed formally as a possibility, theft
and confusion over the gravesite are also not impossible.”
86
LÜDEMANN and ÖZEN, :KDW5HDOO\+DSSHQHGWR-HVXV, 135.
87
This confirms also, with his typical sobriety, ALLISON, 5HVXUUHFWLQJ-HVXV, 331–332,
as well as THEISSEN and MERZ, 7KH +LVWRULFDO -HVXV, 499–503, who name seven argu-
ments related to the empty tomb with their pro et contra and come to the same conclusion:
“[T]he empty tomb cannot be either demonstrated or refuted with historical-critical meth-
ods” (ibid., 502).
88
DALFERTH, “Volles Grab”, 283.
89
Ibid., 293–294.
The tradition of the empty tomb has to help to maintain the confession of res-
urrection, but this relation between the empty tomb and resurrection is only a
one-way relation: the empty tomb maintains the resurrection but the resurrec-
tion does not want to provide a reason for the empty tomb. 90 Therefore,
Dalferth points out his provocative question about the relation of the empty
tomb and resurrection: “Would it be impossible that Jesus was risen, if the
tomb was QRW empty?” Would a full tomb make the appearances impossible?
I.e.: “:DV-HVXVULVHQRQO\ZKHQWKHWRPELVHPSW\"”91 This raises the ques-
tion about the nature of resurrection.
For Dalferth, it is a question of the identity of the risen one: does the iden-
tity of the risen Jesus depend on the body so much that without a bodily res-
urrection Jesus could not participate in God’s eternal life? Here, Dalferth
makes his theological point, drawing the line further to the Christian hope in
a common resurrection: “Precisely this is the Christian hope that no believer,
who dies and rots away, will be excluded from the life in, through, and with
God.”92 For the Christian hope of resurrection, the rotting away of our bodies
is not a problem. On the contrary, the hope stands despite the decay of all
matter. “The resurrection of the dead does not exclude their rotting away and
does not cancel it. The same is valid for Jesus Christ.” 93 Here, Dalferth turns
the direction of argumentation and starts with the common resurrection,
whose character must be the same as of the resurrection of Jesus – presuppos-
ing that Jesus had to be “dead in the same way as the others who passed away
– which, in fact, includes the rotting away of the body”. 94 To show the very
heart of the problem, Dalferth connects, in a fundamental way, the christolo g-
ical question of the empty tomb and resurrection with the question of soteri-
ology. When Jesus did not die the same way as we do, if it is not possible to
say that his body also could rot away and he could still rise despite it, then the
Christian hope of resurrection would have to search another basis, on which it
could be grounded. “,I LW ZRXOG EH LPSRVVLEOH WKDW WKH FUXFLILHG DQG UHVXU
UHFWHGRQHURWWHGDZD\LQWKHWRPEKHZRXOGQRWEHWKHEDVHIRUWKHKRSHRI
RXUUHVXUUHFWLRQLQWKHOLIHRI*RG”95 Dalferth does not want to say that the
90
Ibid., 294: “The empty tomb is not what the Christian confession of resurrection
wants to explain or substantiate, the contrary is the case: 7KHUHIHUHQFHWRWKHHPSW\WRPE
VKRXOGKHOSWRVXEVWDQWLDWHWKHFRQIHVVLRQRIUHVXUUHFWLRQRIWKHFUXFLILHGRQH6XEVHTXHQW
O\WKLVFRQIHVVLRQVXEVWDQWLDWHVWKHDSSHDUDQFHVRI-HVXV+RZHYHUWKHFRQIHVVLRQRIUHV
XUUHFWLRQVKDOOQRWJLYHUHDVRQVIRUZK\WKHWRPELVHPSW\ The tomb could be empty for
wholly different reasons: it would not be necessary to presuppose a resurrection.”
91
Ibid.
92
Ibid., 295.
93
Ibid.
94
Ibid., 295–296.
95
Ibid., 296.
tomb necessarily was full. 96 He tries to show that even a full tomb of Jesus
would not change anything for Christian hope and for the reality of resurrec-
tion. And he does it with a powerful argument.
In principle, Dalferth deals with the question of the univocity of resurre c-
tion. Therefore, it is to ask: Was Jesus’ resurrection the same as the expected
future resurrection of all? Or was he raised differently, at least in some re-
spect? Here, I want to stress that there is at least one principal difference: the
past tense of Christ’s resurrection. He already ZDV raised. And more – he was
also recognized as KLPVHOI being raised (Mt 28:9–10; John 20:19–29, alt-
hough, according to the biblical texts, with some difficulties or hesitations
(Lk 24:13–49; John 20:11–18). Moreover, these recognitions of the risen Je-
sus were not only visions, momentuous appearances, or some short revela-
tions (cf., however, Acts 9:1–9) but mostly an encounter. 97
Which is connected with the other important point that I want to mention
dealing with Dalferth’s argument: one’s identity – as well as the recognition
of the risen Jesus – is always an embodied identity. Dalferth knows this.
However, her stresses that the bodiliness of our existence is not the carrying
base for our identity: “The identity of Jesus and our identity, DOUHDG\QRZLQ
WKLVHDUWKO\OLIH, does not lie in the story of our body but rather in the acting
of God.”98 That is correct. Nevertheless, our identity cannot be separated
from our bodiliness either (as, e.g., the conception of the immortal soul does,
cf. above, Ch. 7.1.1). This is the point also in the encounters with the risen
Jesus. His identity is at least guaranteed by his bodily expressions and even
his crucifixion wounds (John 20:20), which are preserved after the resurrec-
tion as well. Therefore, although our identity does not have its ground in our
bodily existence, it cannot be wholly separated from it – our identity is to be
conceived and thought of always as embodied. 99 That is exactly, what, e.g.,
Paul also does in 1Cor 15:44 when he tries to describe the resurrected exist-
ence as sw/ma pneumatiko,n (spiritual body). 100 And because the biblical wit-
96
So, mistakenly, THOMAS, “‘Er ist nicht hier!’”, 207, fn. 68.
97
Cf. KESSLER, 6XFKWGHQ/HEHQGHQ, 216.
98
99
This is a good point of SWINBURNE, “Evidence for the Resurrection”, 199; unmistak-
ably MOLTMANN, 7KH:D\RI-HVXV&KULVW, 256: “The apocalyptic symbol of the resurrec-
tion of the dead always means the whole dead individual in his or her personhood, body
and soul. This person cannot be spiritualized without being destroyed: raising means being
raised bodily, or it is not raising at all. The early Christian faith in the risen Christ means
the whole Christ in person, body and soul: Christ's resurrection is bodily resurrection, or it
is not a resurrection at all.” Cf. also THOMAS, “‘Er ist nicht hier!’”, 192–193: the missing
body in the empty tomb stands for the bodily continuity between the earthly and risen J e-
sus.
100
Cf. RINGLEBEN, :DKUKDIW DXIHUVWDQGHQ, 111–116; WOLTER, “Die Auferstehung”,
36–38; LAMPE, “Paul’s Concept of a Spiritual Body”. VON BENDEMANN, “SWMA
PNEUMATIKON”, 113, stresses the discontinuity of all anthropological structures (of the
nesses count on Jesus’s resurrection very early after his death, on the third
day already, it is logical to assume that Jesus was raised with his (somehow
transformed) body.
Therefore, the last argument of Dalferth does not hold. He writes:
“Must the tomb have been empty, when Easter should have happened? The answer can be
only: no. Because what would have changed for the witnesses of the appearances if the
tomb was not empty? They would still have two ununifiable experiences: Jesus is dead –
Jesus is alive. The full tomb would confirm the first experience. The latter would be, then,
provocative all the more.”101
It is to say that the two ununifiable experiences of the disciples, which

Dalferth precisely sees, are not two SDUDOOHO experiences. Rather, the latter
revokes the first. The experience of Jesus being alive overcomes the experi-
ence of his death. It does not mean that Jesus – alike the Schrödinger’s cat –
is now dead and alive as well. When risen, Jesus ZDV dead, but now is not
dead anymore. Resurrection is not a paradoxical statement YLVjYLV enduring
death, but it is rather the overcoming of death by cancelling its power.102 Je-
sus rises from the dead, however, at the same time, as the one he was before:
he is resurrected as crucified.
Regarding the empty tomb as such this means that the empty tomb cannot
be taken as the proof for resurrection – in fact, the line of interpretation goes
exactly the opposite way.103 For itself, the empty tomb remains silent and
there are many possible explanations of it. The empty tomb does not point to
resurrection. We do not speak about resurrection because the tomb was emp-
ty. On the contrary, it is the impulse of resurrection that points to the empty
tomb. Only in the light of resurrection, the empty tomb takes on a new mean-
ing. Therefore, the empty tomb is the – also historically probable, yet second-
ary – consequence of resurrection: We speak about the empty tomb because
resurrection happened.
body as well as of the soul) and interprets the spiritual body as “an underivatively new cre-
ation of God”.
101
102
Cf. THOMAS, “‘Er ist nicht hier!’”, 207, who speaks about the beginning of the new
creation.
103
That the empty tomb itself does not point to the resurrection, is an important point,
which is stressed by KESSLER, 6XFKWGHQ/HEHQGHQ, 123. The dumbfounding emptiness of
the tomb needs an interpretation grounded elsewhere than in the darkness of an empty
tomb. Nowhere in the New Testament is the empty tomb the origin of faith, except the be-
loved disciple in John 20:8.
4. What Was the Resurrection of Jesus Christ?

4. What Was the Resurrection of Jesus Christ?
Considering the preceding discussion, it is now possible to say what resurrec-
tion is. Resurrection is a metaphorical term that expresses the hermeneutical
result of the inference of the Easter witnesses who, after the experience of
death and burial of Jesus, experienced a wholly new, surprising, and trans-
formed presence of a living Jesus. After the most radical experience of dis-
continuity in the death of Jesus Christ, the new situation was based on an ex-
perience of surprising continuity, which was radically new. This means that it
could not be predicted or deduced from the previous development. The new
notion caused a shock and a revaluation of all values.
This new experience, interpreted as resurrection – and this is the important
point – has roots in an HVFKDWRORJLFDODFWRI*RG, i.e., in an act of God that
has a fundamental ontological impact on the whole of reality. In the first
place, this act is an event ZLWKLQWKHWULQLWDULDQOLIHRI*RG: the Father through
his Spirit raised the dead Jesus Christ from the dead. 104 This means that the
Father through the Spirit gave back to Jesus Christ his own being-for-himself,
his individual being and life, now, however, transformed through the victory
over death. Yet, at the same time, this happened in a continuity with the pre-
vious earthly life of Jesus Christ, secured by his SURSHU QDPH. The Father
through the Spirit called Jesus Christ from the dead in his previous identity –
i.e., he resurrected Jesus Christ really as himself – into a transformed new life
based on the ‘groundplan’ of his proper name (Ch. 6.2.2). With this act, the
Son as Jesus Christ returned back into the life of God, which was hereby re-
stored again as the life of the Trinity.105
Because resurrection as an eschatological act has a primarily theological
nature as an event in the divine life, it has an ontological impact on the whole
of reality. Resurrection thus is QRW SULPDULO\ D KLVWRULFDO HYHQW. It is not an
event simply within world history that follows the crucifixion. It is primarily
DQHYHQWZLWKWKHZRUOGZKHUH*RGDFWVRQWKHZKROHRIUHDOLW\.106 Resurrec-
tion is primarily the definitive self-definition of God and, as such, it changes
the outermost frame of the world.107 This means that on the ontological level,
104
It was thus an act of the Father through the Spirit without any participation of the
Son. Jesus Christ did not rise by his own power as some old biblical strata might indicate
(cf. John 2:19 and 10:17, and O’DONNELL, “Some New Testament Words”, 139), as later
e.g. Leontius of Jerusalem put it (cf. UTHEMANN, “Definitionen und Paradigmen”, 115–
117), and as today e.g. WHITE, 7KH,QFDUQDWH/RUG, 364–367, states.
105
This has several important consequences for both the conception of God as Trinity,
and for the creation and its relation to God, cf. below in this chapter, subch. 5, and also Ch.
10.2.
106
107
Cf. ibid., 158: it is “the HVFKDWRORJLFDO VHOILGHQWLILFDWLRQ DQG UHGHILQLWLRQ RI WKLV
*RGE\*RGKLPVHOI and is therefore the GLVFORVXUHRIKLVXOWLPDWHVHOIGHILQLWLRQ”.
:KDW:DVWKH5HVXUUHFWLRQRI-HVXV&KULVW" 361
the resurrection has a universal impact. In this sense, there is no other compa-
rable event or act to the resurrection because through the resurrection of Jesus
Christ, history and createdness with its finitude was integrated into eternity
(cf. below, Ch. 10).
However, as a meta-historical or trans-historical event it reaches into the
reality of the world as well. 108 It would not be real, if it would not be some-
how real also for our history and within our history. 109 Therefore, it also has a
KLVWRULFDO GLPHQVLRQ DQG SDUWLFXODU KLVWRULFDO HIIHFWV – the appearance(s) of
the risen Jesus (to the disciples but not only to the disciples, cf. Acts 9:1–9).
And, independently of the appearances, the tradition of the tomb, which was
probably empty indeed.
1) An important argument for the empty tomb, although we do not know how old exactly
the text is, is the anti-Christian polemic mentioned in Mt 28:11–15, which counts on an
empty tomb, for whatever reason.110 2) The first witnesses were women. Because of the
impossible role of women as witnesses in the society then, this fact is hardly a fictional
one.111 3) Finally, the Gospels speak about bodily resurrection. It has to be of some im-
portance, why the tradition favored this interpretation instead of others that were known in
108
Cf. POKORNÝ, 7KH *HQHVLV, 126; BARTH, &KXUFK 'RJPDWLFV III/2, 451; THOMAS,
“‘Er ist nicht hier!’”, 220; KESSLER, “Auferstehung Christi”, 1185.
109
This is an important and plausible point from Pannenberg (cf. above, subch. 3), who
is joined also by other theologians, cf. ALLISON, 5HVXUUHFWLQJ -HVXV, 324: “And if there
was no reason to believe that his solid body had returned to life, no one would have
thought him, against expectation, resurrected from the dead.” Similarly FIORENZA, “The
Resurrection of Jesus”, 246–247: “Whereas it is clear what is meant by an event that takes
place in space and time, it is difficult to fathom such an event, if it is an event, that trans-
cends space and time. It seems to me that such an event, if it is even to be considered, must
in some specific way be related to historical time and empirical space. Otherwise one can
question whether it is an ‘event’ or even historical.”
110
Cf. ALLISON, 5HVXUUHFWLQJ-HVXV, 312, who is, however, rather skeptical about this
argument. Similarly, with a different counter-argument of many possible empty tombs
around, THEISSEN and MERZ, 7KH+LVWRULFDO-HVXV, 500. On the contrary, what cannot hold
as an argument is the ambiguous fact of the missing evidence of a veneration of a tomb
where Jesus should have been buried. It is true that it would have no logic to spread the
message of bodily resurrection when there was the tomb of Jesus, which was not empty.
However, we cannot be sure, whether it was known where the tomb of Jesus is and whether
this is not the reason of the missing evidence. On the other hand, a veneration of empty
tomb would not have any logic: the object of veneration was the risen Jesus, while his
tomb was not important anymore. A veneration of a tomb would indicate rather a funda-
mental misunderstanding of the resurrection. Moreover, the existence of an empty tomb as
such does not prove the resurrection. In this sense, it is no wonder that the evidence of a
veneration of an empty tomb is missing (cf. more in detail ibid.; ALLISON, 5HVXUUHFWLQJ
-HVXV, 316–320; DUNN, -HVXV5HPHPEHUHG, 837–838; THOMAS, “‘Er ist nicht hier!’”, 220,
fn. 110).
111
Cf. THEISSEN and MERZ, 7KH+LVWRULFDO-HVXV, 501: “[I]f the story of the tomb were
a secondary ‘invention’, would it not haven been possible to refer to men who were capa-
ble of attesting the fact of the empty tomb?”
Judaism of that time, like the conception of vindication by God or of assumption of the
soul to heaven, which would suffice to explain the appearances as vision of the glorified
Jesus without an empty tomb indicating bodily resurrection.112
As the result of their historical-critical enquiry, Theissen and Merz offer two possibili-
ties regarding the empty tomb. The tradition is either secondary: the search for Jesus’ tomb
was incited by the Easter faith grounded in the appearances of Jesus and subsequently an
empty tomb nearby Golgatha was interpreted as the empty tomb of Jesus because no one
knew, where exactly Jesus was buried anyways. Or, the location of Jesus’ tomb was
known, it belonged probably to Joseph of Arimatia, who buried Jesus there. The women
found this tomb empty but remained silent, afraid of being accused of robbery. It was the
message about the appearances, which gave a clear interpretation to the “enigmatic ‘empty
tomb’”.113 To me, the latter possibility seems to be more plausible (although Theissen him-
self would probably favor the first).
The tradition of the tomb may be secondary. It has an obvious inferential logic: it main-
tains the message of resurrection as bodily resurrection. Yet still, regardless of it, there is
no reason not to presuppose that the tomb was not empty. Although, theologically, it is not
an absolutely necessary condition for resurrection (as Dalferth tried to show), if the tomb
were not empty, it would bring some complications for the interpretation of resurrection
(not only against the backdrop of the biblical texts, which clearly testify the risen Jesus as
the crucified one but also, e.g., for the interpretation of the Creed, which confesses “resur-
rection of the body”). Not so much in the sense that it would make the resurrection of Jesus
Christ dubious, but rather, and primarily, because our identity is always an embodied iden-
tity. If it should be preserved, then body in some sense is necessary.
The so-called ³KLVWRULFDO ULP´ of the Easter events, as is, e.g., the empty
tomb, stresses a fundamental ontological and soteriological point: it shows
that eschatology is not a process that would be parallel to our time and history
with its finitude. Insofar as the Easter events are eschatological events, they
touch and cross with our history. With it, our embodied and finite reality is
taken seriously also on the ultimate ontological and soteriological level, even
VXE VSHFLH DHWHUQLWDWLV. The character of our being as involved in time and
space, in history and, as such, finite, is nothing that would have to be laid
aside or overcome in order to achieve salvation and the final goal of the uni-
verse. All that appears as old in the radically new perspective, is not can-
celled and thrown away. On the contrary, it is being taken seriously. And alt-
112
To the eschatological conceptions of Judaism cf. ALLISON, 5HVXUUHFWLQJ-HVXV, 332;
CHILTON, 5HVXUUHFWLRQ/RJLF, 45–64; A.F. SEGAL, “Life after Death: The Social Sources”,
in 7KH5HVXUUHFWLRQ, ed. S.T. DAVIS et al. (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997), 90–125; MADIGAN
and LEVENSON, 5HVXUUHFWLRQ. THEISSEN and MERZ, 7KH+LVWRULFDO-HVXV, 500, remark that
Jewish eschatology knew also the conception, according to which the dead body rests in
the grave until the end of time while the spirit of the deceased is already with God. Clearly
DUNN, -HVXVDQGWKH6SLULW, 120: “[I]t is questionable whether without an empty tomb ei-
ther the disciples would have interpreted their ‘resurrection appearance’ experience in
terms of resurrection, or many would have believed them when they proclaimed, ‘God has
raised Jesus from the dead’ – that is, as a past event, before the general resurrection.”
113
hough in the new perspective it appears as old and thus surpassed, it remains
preserved as corrected and healed because despite its oldness it contributed to
the identity of the creation and the world and thus cannot get lost, if the tem-
porally shaped identity of the creation should be preserved in its whole-
ness.114
The most important effect of resurrection, however, was the HPHUJHQFHRI
WKH&KULVWLDQIDLWK as faith based on the resurrection message, and the begin-
ning of Christian proclamation of the Gospel as the good news about resur-
rection as God’s powerful and victorious presence overcoming even death.
Both, primarily the appearances and then also the tradition of the empty tomb
contributed to and were a part of the process of the abductive inference of
resurrection, which interpreted in this way the eschatological act of God as it
was experienced in the new presence of a living Jesus. This new notion and
new perspective that is grounded in the eschatological act of God was the
cause of the radical turn of the first witnesses from a deep depression to a
new enthusiasm. Christian faith is born from the experience of the presence
of the risen and living Jesus through the Spirit. As such, it is not handed over
to and inherited by the next generations, but is acquired individually again
and again through the same experience of the same present Jesus through the
Spirit (cf. above, Ch. 2.3).
Therefore, it does not hold that the Easter faith was born from the appear-
ances of the risen Jesus. In this case, only those would have faith, who saw
the risen one, which were not so many. It could not explain the faith of the
next generations, which would have to be born in a different way – would not
it be a different faith, then? The argument of Pokorný holds here: blessed are
those who did not see but believe (John 20:29b). 115 Faith does not need a vi-
sion of Jesus as its necessary condition.
The same is valid against the opinion that the visions of Jesus are a result
of faith, that faith was the necessary condition for a vision (or even for resur-
rection). It is important to stress that Jesus did not appear only to those who
believed in him:
“Distinguished humanists have stressed that Jesus appeared, in a resurrected form, only to
those who had followed him and believed in him. They thus claim that the faith of Jesus’
followers generated belief in Jesus’ resurrection. These thinkers miss a major narrative
[…] Paul is the parade example of a ‘nonbeliever’ believing in Jesus’ resurrection.” 116
Therefore, the insight of Pokorný is important and right: the emergence of

faith on one side and the visions (or better: encounters) on the other are two
parallel processes. Easter faith is dependent neither on the appearances, nor
114
To the time-eternity relation inclusively the moment of correction and healing,
which the tradition calls The Last Judgement, cf. below, subch. 6.2 and Ch. 10.
115
Cf. POKORNÝ, 7KH*HQHVLV, 126–127.
116
CHARLESWORTH, “Conclusion”, 225–226.
on the empty tomb. It is born from the experience of the present and living
Jesus through the Spirit and maintained through other testimonies and events,
which contribute to a better and better abductive understanding and deepen-
ing of faith. The appearances and the Easter faith have the same source: the
eschatological act of God interpreted in the Christian proclamation as the res-
urrection of Jesus.
As such, the resurrection is PHWDKLVWRULFDO. It is not an ‘objective’ fact,
which could be directly examined by historical methods. A historian can state
the surrounding events and consider the impulse that gave rise to these events
and testimonies. The interpretation of this event, however, is an inference of
faith, not of a historical method or of a historically provable fact. Resurrec-
tion is PRUH WKDQ REMHFWLYH. It is thus true that the resurrection is DFFHVVLEOH
RQO\ LQ IDLWK. Nevertheless, this does not mean that resurrection would be
constituted by faith or that it would somehow be dependent on faith. Resur-
rection GRHVQRWGHSHQGRQIDLWKDOWKRXJKLWFDQEHUHFRJQL]HGDQGFRQIHVVHG
RQO\LQIDLWK. Ontology is not epistemology. 5DWLRHVVHQGL is not UDWLRFRJQR
VFHQGL. Resurrection does not have its reality only in faith – although this is a
statement made from the perspective of faith (and it is not possible in another
way. That is the consequence of the internal realism). From this perspective,
faith raises its universal claim that resurrection is ontologically valid beyond
faith for all. Both UHVXUUHFWLRQDQGIDLWK are of the same character: they both
come from the Spirit, have spiritual or pneumatic origin (and then, both are
also embodied in a particular being). Therefore, they belong and correspond
to each other. And because of this character of both, they both have a univer-
sal dimension: The resurrection is an event of XOWLPDWHUHDOLW\ for the whole
world, although perceived as such only by some. Faith is a universal possibil-
ity of all, although realized only by some. Both, however, aim to become the
realized ultimate reality for all.
With the resurrection, a radically new perspective was opened, which
sheds a new light on the whole of reality. From now on, anchored in the res-
urrection of Jesus Christ as WKH eschatological act of God, the HVFKDWRORJLFDO
SHUVSHFWLYH becomes the leading perspective of faith and, hence, of theology.
The perspective of resurrection becomes the fundamental hermeneutical point
of view. What came out at the end of the story of Jesus’ life, proves to be an
anticipation of the final destiny of the whole cosmos. Yet, exactly this future-
rooted point becomes now the point of beginning, the fundamental anchor
and the ultimate outline and norm for the Christian perspective of the whole
reality. As a proleptical point, i.e., as a point of the final purpose and future,
which, however, already happened, it opens a specific span and gives to the
Christian ontological view of the whole a specific ground and orientation.
The internal perspective of Christian faith and theology is thus HVFKDWRORJLFDO
UHDOLVP – a realism, which takes as WKHreal and normative reality the reality
of God’s acting and presence as it was manifested in the life, death, and res-
urrection of Jesus Christ. It is the eschatological reality that comes as if

against the flow of time from the eschatological future toward the present,
revealed in a past event as a prolepsis of HVFKDWRQ.117
This does not mean that Christian faith and theology now sees only resur-
rection everywhere. Because this perspective is anchored in the resurrection
of the FUXFLILHG Jesus, theology reads the reality in an irreducibly twofold
perspective of an external view on one side and of the internal theological
view on the other: of crucifixion and resurrection, of old and new, of the
world and of the world as God’s creation, of the nature corrupted by sin and
of God’s loving grace.118
As the definitive self-definition of God, the cross and the resurrection of
Jesus Christ simultaneously determine the meaning of the term µHVFKDWRORJL
FDO¶, which does not point to the HVFKDWD as the tradition did for a long time,
but rather – in a consistent christological and thus, subsequently and neces-
sarily trinitarian interpretation – to the one who is the HVFKDWRV.119 ‘Eschato-
logical’ thus means that it is the crucified and resurrected Jesus Christ at the
backdrop of the Trinity, who, from now on, determines all Christian agendas,
in faith as well as in theology:
“But if eschatology engages primarily with the eschatos, its scope becomes identical with
that of Christology so that it governs the whole of theology. It then deals no longer with
individual eschata but with the subject only: Jesus Christ, his life and teaching, his cross
and resurrection, and the soteriological consequences of all of these for the human race and
the whole of creation.”120
Anchored in the story of Jesus Christ and in the horizon, which his story
opened, eschatology – according to its WULQLWDULDQ URRWV – proves also to be
multidimensional, covering all dimensions of being:
It is firmly anchored in the event of crucifixion and the resurrection of Je-
sus Christ, which already happened and are thus the SHUIHFWXP that we have
already always as the backdrop that carries the whole Christian existence.
117
Cf. above, Ch. 4.1.3, DALFERTH, -HQVHLWV, 312–313, and IDEM, “Theologischer Real-
ismus”, 407. The orientations and directions are important here: the first motion and direc-
tion is not our evolving toward the future but rather God’s coming from his eschatological
future toward us, which provides us with a firm ground in the cross and resurrection of Je-
sus Christ and taking us as if with him toward the HVFKDWRQ. Cf. C.E. BRAATEN, 7KH)XWXUH
RI*RG5HYROXWLRQDU\'\QDPLFVRI+RSH (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1969), 29–30, who
differentiates IXWXUXPand DGYHQWXV.
118
To the polyperspectivity of theology and to the specific theological combination of
particular perspectives cf. DALFERTH, “Theologischer Realismus”, 413–417, and GALLUS,
“Verschiedene Wege”.
119
120
Ibid., 197.
It relates intensively to the SUHVHQW WLPH, i.e., to the Christian ‘meantime’

where Jesus is present through the Spirit, inspiring and reviving the commu-
nication of faith and the Christian proclamation.
And, it opens hope for the IXWXUH, which, based in the eschatological resur-
rection of Jesus Christ where the ultimate work of God’s love and the point of
the whole creation is already done, reaches beyond the boundary of death and
hopes for the final justice for all creation that would enable an undisturbed
and harmonic participation in the life of God.
In this multidimensionality, resurrection is the manifestation of WKHWUXWKRI
WKHZKROHFUHDWLRQ showing its most proper nature: the whole cosmos as crea-
tion comes from God, lives in the presence of God, and aims toward an en-
during and undisturbed community with God.
5. Ascension and the Enriched God

5. Ascension and the Enriched God
Beyond incarnation and crucifixion, resurrection is the final and ultimate
point of intersection of the divine life and history. This fact has ontological
consequences for both sides: for God as well as for the created universe.
Regarding the OLIHRI*RG, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is his return into
the inner life of the Trinity. (The tradition called this Ascension. Therefore,
the traditional order as based on Acts 1:9 should be reversed: the ascension
ontologically precedes the message of resurrection.) However, with this re-
turn from the ‘foreign country’ (K. Barth), there returns more to God and into
God than there was before. In Jesus Christ, the Son (Logos) returns into the
divine life itself again, however, now as Jesus Christ, as the incarnated, cruci-
fied, and resurrected true God and true human. Since the resurrection, the life
of God is – actually already since the incarnation but with the return in the
resurrection now fully, intensively, and definitively – enriched with humani-
ty. God after resurrection is the HQULFKHG*RG. From this moment on, a firm
part of God’s own life is Christ’s full humanity with everything, which he
went through: incarnation, birth, life-story, and crucifixion. Now, God has
eternally, what he at first did not have, and what he then, after the incarna-
tion, had only in the time-bound, temporal, finite, and unfinished modus: hu-
manity as a fully developed and finished human personality. Now this whole
of human person and personality of Jesus, his whole identity, becomes part of
the internal divine life; it is integrated into the divine identity in mutual SHUL
FKRUHVLV, without ceasing to be wholly human.
It is an important point that the resurrection is a work of the Father in the
Spirit. It was, hence, God’s own act and God’s own decision that enriched the
inner divine life with the life-story of Jesus. The acceptance of Jesus Christ
with his humanity within the eternal divine life is thus – next to Jesus’ incar-
$VFHQVLRQDQGWKH(QULFKHG*RG 367
nation and death – the third fundamental act of *RG¶VVHOIGHILQLWLRQ (cf. be-
low, Ch. 10.2).
This has very important consequences also IRU WKH FUHDWLRQ, as I touched
on already above. It means that the temporality is being taken as seriously as
is ever possible. The representing point for temporality is here, in the first
place, the proper name of Jesus – a temporal issue that comes from the finite
time-space. It represents and bears his earthly identity with all his activities,
passivites, and relations, which Jesus summoned during his life and which
thus were not a part of the divine life before (cf. above, Ch. 6.2.2). The Father
respects Jesus’ proper name and calls him by it, resurrecting him to a new life
based on the ‘groundplan’ of his name – i.e., with all his earthly experience
and identity.
Therefore, temporality is now a part of God’s inner life. Eternity does not
exclude temporality (cf. below, Ch. 10). On the contrary, temporality is ac-
cepted and assumed into eternity. Nothing gets lost, the finite life has its de-
finitive value, which remains preserved. This fact has an immense importance
with respect to soteriology. (At the same time, this notion requires a point of
correction and healing. The tradition calls this the Last Judgement, cf. to it
below). When finite humanity, as the representant of all temporal and finite
creation, is from now on a part of the divine life, then there is a path opened
for all temporal and finite creation towards God. The resurrection of Jesus
Christ is the fulfilled and realized mutual orientation of God toward the other
and of creation toward its God-Creator. Therefore, it is the basis for participa-
tion of all creation in the divine life; it is the basis for the participation of all
time and temporality in eternity.
In this way, the resurrection taken as the crowning point in the life of Je-
sus, which was originally wholly particular, touches and opens the ultimate
dimension of all reality. This is the deepest dimension of the eschatological
character of his resurrection: it touches the ultimate ontological frame of all
reality. With his resurrection, the ultimate ontological frame has changed.
The created universe is now something, which it has not been before: there is
a KRSH ZLWKXQHTXLYRFDOO\ FOHDU JURXQGLQJDQG URRWLQJ, and there is a clear
ontical direction and the presumed final outcome of whole world history in
the participation in divine life, which was already proleptically realized in the
resurrection of Jesus Christ.
6. Common Resurrection and the Last Judgement

6. Common Resurrection and the Last Judgement
&RPPRQ5HVXUUHFWLRQ
This has far-reaching soteriological consequences, which I will briefly
sketch.121 The ontological ground is the UHORFDWLRQ RI GHDWK in the death of
Jesus Christ and the soteriological importance of the SURSHUQDPH. The com-
bination of both these elements should be enough to secure the continuity of
the individual identity beyond death toward salvation in God.
Since the death of Jesus Christ, everyone who dies, dies in God and no-
where else because, with the death of Jesus Christ, GHDWKZDVUHORFDWHG into
God (cf. above, Ch. 7.3.2). Therefore, every human dies a death, which was
already ontologically overcome, i.e., overcome in its finality and definitive-
ness. The human dies really and wholly, but does not fall into absolute noth-
ingness, because death itself is enclosed in God. The human dies, but his or
her name as the integral – not the bearer, but rather the integral or complex
and rigid designator (cf. above, Ch. 6.2.2) – of one’s life remains known: to
at least some people around for some time and eternally for God, who has the
power to call a human to life again, to give him or her again his or her being-
for-oneself. This is not a new FUHDWLRH[QLKLOR. Not from nothing; rather, God
resurrects the human as if from God-Self because that is where – after
Christ’s death, which relocated death as such – all creatures die. Resurrection
is thus God’s new call by one’s proper name into God’s space, into the partic-
ipation in God’s life so that, in the end, God can be all in all (cf. 1Cor 15:28).
The human dies in God and is resurrected in God. This means that there is no
point where the human would fall away from God’s reign or “hand” (as a fa-
voured metaphor puts it), in death either.
However, based on the definition of human identity as a fundamental in-
tersection of individuality and sociality, it is not possible to conceive the re s-
urrection only individually. 122 One’s identity is constituted also through social
relations. Therefore, should one’s identity be preserved and restored in the
resurrection, others are needed as well. For me to be me, I need the others as
well. This point of intersection of individuality and sociality – i.e., the point
of one’s own development in the broad context of various relations and views
of the others, which participate in the constitution and development of one’s
identity – is very well represented by the SURSHUQDPH. Therefore, one’s res-
urrection can be conceived as resurrection based on the ‘groundplan’ of one’s
proper name, because the name interconnects all these relations, develop-
ments and perspectives throughout one’s whole life. The resurrection is thus
to be conceived not only individually but complexely horizontally. The resur-
121
More to the anthropological side of salvation see my next study on anthropology.
122
Cf. HENNING, “Was ist, wenn ich sterbe?”, 261.
&RPPRQ5HVXUUHFWLRQDQGWKH/DVW-XGJHPHQW 369
rection cannot be a resurrection of an isolated individual, it has to enclose

one’s individuality DQG sociality – therefore, it must be, at the same time, a
restoration of relationships. When I should be there, the others must be there
as well.
Hence, due to these ontological reasons at the level of human identity, the
resurrection must be UHVXUUHFWLRQ RI DOO. However, this does not mean that
resurrection is identical with salvation.
7KH/DVW-XGJHPHQW
To take the temporal history and all particular temporal lives seriously means,
at the same time, to take seriously sin, guilt, evil, and corruption of good cre-
ation and of relations – i.e., to take seriously the phenomena that contradict
God’s good creation, the purpose of human existence, and love. According to
the basic Christian and theological insight into the existence of humans and
of the whole creation, the corruption reaches really deep: there is not one who
is righteous and good (cf. Rom 3:10–18; Ps 14:2–3). No one is without sin.
The whole creation is corrupted by sin and evil and longs for justice and
peace, which the creation in its corruption is not able to establish, produce, or
maintain. Yet, what contradicts God’s loving nature cannot participate in his
eternal life; that would not be salvation. There must be, therefore, a point of
selection and purification, a point of final justice and atonement.
The traditional idea of the Last Judgement is important exactly for this.
This is the point where the fundamental soteriological distinction between
sinner and sin – made possible also by the cross of Jesus Christ, which shows
sin in its whole depth and makes thus this distinction possible (cf. above, Ch.
8.4.2) – will play a crucial role. In the Last Judgement – and this means: in
the final eschatological view of God – sin will be differentiated from the sin-
ner, the first will be destroyed definitely, while the latter will be preserved.
Paul uses here the picture of purifying fire (1Cor 3:13–15).
Concerning the extent of salvation, there are two levels of argumentation:
Because sin and evil are SDUDVLWHV, which need a substrate to exist (like e.g.
viruses in biology), it is the Christian hope that there won’t be anyone who
would be destroyed wholly with his or her sin. Sin is a deep corruption of na-
ture, yet cannot become nature. There is no pure sin or pure evil. Both sin and
evil are parasites on God’s good creation. 123 That is the argument at the level
of creation. Christologically, it holds that there is no one for whom Jesus
Christ would not die; that there is QRVLQZKLFKZRXOGEHPRUHSRZHUIXOWKDQ
WKHVDFULILFHRI-HVXV&KULVW. The ultimate consequence of sin was death. Yet,
123
Cf. P. GALLUS, “Bůh a zlo [God and Evil]”, 7HRORJLFNi UHIOH[H 23 (2017/2), 107–
126; IDEM, “Verantwortliche Rede von der Sünde”.
death was overcome with Christ’s cross and resurrection. Therefore, it is rea-
soned that not only resurrection, but salvation as well will concern DOO.124
Moreover, in correspondence to both fundamental dimensions of human
identity in its individuality and sociality, sin and evil do not corrupt only the
individual life but also one’s relations with others. In this respect, the Last
Judgement is to be conceived not only as a point of correction and purifica-
tion but also as a point of FRPPRQDWRQHPHQWUHVWRUDWLRQDQGUHQHZDO of the
whole complex web of all possible relations. Human relations are burdened
with a lot of difficulties, damages, injustice, hate etc. A restoration of these
relationships, however, cannot mean to forget or even to erase the memory of
it, as some theologians suggest. 125 Here also, the temporal history must be
taken seriously so that nothing can get lost because human identity is shaped
also by disturbed or negative relations. Forgetting or erasure of memory
would not be the solution because it would deeply harm the whole of one’s
identity; if the past should be taken seriously, it must not be erased, it must
rather be saved. What happened cannot be undone, but it can be healed.
+HDOHG PHPRU\ – in the sense of reconciled and forgiven memory as a foun-
dation for reconciled relations – is a much better concept, which could be ap-
plied here, along with the fitting biblical remark in Isaiah 65:17: “The former
things shall not be remembered or come to mind.” 1RWUHPHPEHULQJ – not in
the sense of forgetting but in the sense of not coming to mind, not recalling,
not reawakening. Hence, healed memory means not remembering painful
things that happened. Not remembering them because they do not hurt any-
more so that there is no need to remember them – for humans among each
other as well as for God. The resurrected Jesus bears still the wounds on his
body – the temporal history is not forgotten or erased, but it is healed, it caus-
es no pain anymore.
The final point of the Last Judgement is the individual personality trans-
parent toward its God-grounded person, purified and reconciled in the com-
plexity of all its relations, and, hence, in the wide sociality with all others (cf.
above, Ch. 6.2.1). At this point, one will finally see one’s own identity in its
fullness: undisturbed and uncorrupted by sin, reconciled and renewed in the
orientation towards others and God in love, and with all of one’s potentiali-
124
Cf. PANNENBERG, 6\VWHPDWLF 7KHRORJ\ 3, 585: “[H]uman society and the race as a
species cannot reach fulfillment without the participation of all the members.” However,
Pannenberg leaves the possibility open that, for some members of the human society, this
could mean “eternal pain by reason of the contradiction between the way they have lived
their earthly lives and their destiny”.
125
Cf. M. VOLF, ([FOXVLRQDQG(PEUDFH$7KHRORJLFDO([SORUDWLRQRI,GHQWLW\2WKHU
QHVV DQG 5HFRQFLOLDWLRQ (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 131–140; IDEM, 7KH (QG RI
0HPRU\ 5HPHPEHULQJ 5LJKWO\ LQ D 9LROHQW :RUOG (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006); P.
RICOEUR, /DPpPRLUHO¶KLVWRLUHO¶RXEOL (Paris: Seuil, 2000), 633–776.
&RPPRQ5HVXUUHFWLRQDQGWKH/DVW-XGJHPHQW 371
ties.126 At this point, i.e., in the moment of full participation on God’s life, it
will be revealed who we really are. Only at this point will our identity come
to its fullness and will be made whole. The particularity of every individual
human story will only become full by participation in eternity. The particular
human story will not be divinized, nor will it lose its identity; on the contrary,
only by the participation in eternity will it fulfill its purpose as a particular
existence. Only in mutual participation in God’s life can humans be truly hu-
mans and creation can be truly creation.
126
Cf. DALFERTH and JÜNGEL, “Person und Gottebenbildlichkeit”, 95; JÜNGEL, 'HDWK,
120–121.
Chapter 10
God, Time, and Eternity
1. Eternity and Time1

1. Eternity and Time
In the last step, Christology becomes open to the universal horizon and raises
the important ontological questions regarding the relationship of eternity and
time and of particularity and universality. In fact, this chapter could stand at
the very beginning of a Christology as well. I decided to put it rather at the
end because it is intensively interwoven with the previous line of thought
and, in a certain sense, the punchline of the whole structure, although it is, at
the same time, the groundwork and the condition for the whole structure as
well. Yet the most imporant thing is that this chapter is not skipped because it
bears a specific danger. Should it become simply an addition, after the previ-
ous theological work is done without considering this frame of reference,
then it could undermine the whole. This is the danger of eschatology as the
ultimate frame because it shapes the whole reality and, also, its theological
interpertation. Thus, when it is not considered from the beginning, it could
suddenly throw a wholly different light on the intra-temporal thinking and
conceptions; it could make them even obsolete or destroy their aims. If it
holds that time is somehow framed and held up by eternity – as it is the case
in the most of theological conceptions – then the theological conception of
eternity has a fundamental importance for the conception and relevance of
time and times, temporality, and history, which evolves in time. Here, Chris-
tology with its grounding in the earthly story of Jesus Christ is no exception.
Although the concept of time is uneasy to grasp because it falls apart into
different times, from a theological point of view, the concept of eternity is
easier to define. 2 What is of my interest here, is thus not the character of time
or times; it is not the question of the estimated objectivity or subjectivity of
time and our perception of time. Rather, the question goes to the UHODWLRQRI
WLPHDQGHWHUQLW\. Eternity, however, at least from a theological perspective,
1
I have published the first draft of this chapter in P. GALLUS, “Der Tod Jesu Christi,
Zeit und Ewigkeit”, 1=67K560 (2018), 531–537.
2
Further on, I will use simply ‘time’ or ‘temporality’ to mark the counterpart of eterni-
ty. However, it is to say right here, at the beginning, that there is not simply one and al-
ways univocal WLPH but rather plurality of different WLPHV, cf. DALFERTH, “Gott und Zeit”,
239–242; D. EVERS, 5DXP±0DWHULH±=HLW (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), 357–360.
(WHUQLW\DQG7LPH 373
is one of the fundamental characteristics of God. Therefore, the question

raised here is the question of the relationship of *RGDQGWLPH. The formula-
tion of the question is that simple. The attempted answer, however, is a true
brainteaser. Facing christological questions this holds even the more.
There have been two principle answers to the question of the character of
eternity: Either HWHUQLW\LVEH\RQGWLPH and thus, it needs to be conceived as a-
temporal or trans-temporal. Or, HWHUQLW\LWVHOILVWHPSRUDO: be it that God has
his own time, or, that he shares the same time with the created world. 3
7KH7UDGLWLRQDO&RQFHSWLRQ*RGDERYH7LPH
The first answer is the classical answer of $XJXVWLQH in book XI of his Con-
fessions. 4 In the background of his thought stands the Platonic and Neopla-
tonic term ‘eternity’, which Augustine, as the first one in history, connects
with a theological conception. 5 On one hand, he conceives eternity – i.e., the
eternal, still-standing present – with Plato as the source of time (conf. XI,
11).6 Time is a creation of God (conf. XI, 13). In the end, it is eternity that
holds the three modes of time (future, present, and past) together.7 On the
3
L. NEIDHART, *RWW XQG =HLW (Münster: Aschendorff, 2017), calls these groups “eter-
nalists” and “temporalists”. In his own conception, he works with a rather philosophical
term of God (“Perfect-Being-Theology”, ibid., 45), argues against the “open theism” (rep-
resented e.g. by W.L. Craig, ibid., 7) and votes for the classical “eternalist” solution (ibid.,
208–209).
4
Cf. AUGUSTINUS, “Confessionum Libri XIII”, in 3/32, ed. J.-P. MIGNE (Paris, 1841),
659–869 (further referred to directly in the text as to “conf.”; English translation: SAINT
AUGUSTINE, &RQIHVVLRQV, trans. H. CHADWICK (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998).
5
Cf. CH. SCHWÖBEL, “Time V. Philosophy of Religion, Dogmatics and Ethics”, in 533
12, 722.
6
Cf. PLOTINOS, Enn. III, 7, 2, in 3ORWLQV6FKULIWHQ IVa, 307–311, who, also, conceives
the eternity as a simultaneous wholeness. E. JÜNGEL, “Thesen zur Ewigkeit des ewigen
Lebens”, =7K.97(2000)81, sees the classical understading of eternity – without any ref-
erence to Augustine – rooted already in Parmenides’ concept of being, from which any
becoming and passing away is excluded and which is conceived as a “spaceless and time-
less VLPXOWDQHRXVQHVV (Zugleich, nu/n o`mou/ pa/n)”. W. MESCH, 5HIOHNWLHUWH *HJHQZDUW
(LQH6WXGLHEHU=HLWXQG(ZLJNHLWEHL3ODWRQ$ULVWRWHOHV3ORWLQXQG$XJXVWLQXV (Frank-
furt am Main: Klostermann, 2003), 308–309, and 340, speaks about an unclear background
of Augustine’s concept of eternity and stresses its Platonic origin.
7
Already PLOTINOS, Enn. III, 7, 1, when thinking of the eternity-time relation, starts
with the idea of eternity. Cf. L. KARFÍKOVÁ, ýDV D ĜHþ 6WXGLH R $XJXVWLQRYL ěHKRĜRYL
]1\VV\ D %HUQDUGRYL 6LOYHVWULV >7LPH DQG /DQJXDJH 6WXGLHV RQ $XJXVWLQH *UHJRU RI
1\VVD DQG %HUQDUG 6LYHUWULV@ (Praha: OIKOYMENH, 2007), 48: “The human spirit thus
cannot unite itself in its stretch over the three dimensions of its present unless it is helped
from without.” Similarly MESCH, 5HIOHNWLHUWH*HJHQZDUW, 320 and 329: without eternity as
the original idea and criterion, Augustine would not be able to elaborate the question of the
nature of time. Cf. also DALFERTH, “Theologie der Zeit”, 89; PANNNENBERG, 6\VWHPDWLF
7KHRORJ\1, 406.
374 &KDSWHU*RG7LPHDQG(WHUQLW\
other hand – and with a much greater emphasis than Augustine puts on the
createdness of time, he conceives of the origin of time in eternity with Ploti-
nos as IDOO, i.e., as a transition to a qualitatively lower and corrupted exist-
ence. Then, however, time can be only a very weak analogy or picture of
eternity if it is an analogy or a picture of it at all.8 This opens a deep chasm
between eternity and time. When eternity is attributed with being, then, it is
actually impossible to say that time or temporal world “is” as well; then, in
fact, the temporal world “is” not. 9 Eternity and time belong to different cate-
gories; moreover, it seems that they belong to opposite categories so that, in
the end, they have to be posited against each other without any possibility of
mediation or transition between them. 10 Eternity excludes time; it is its “abso-
lute negation”. 11
Indeed: Augustine characterizes eternity with immutability (conf. XI, 14)
and LQILQLW\. On the contrary, everything temporal is subject to change and
corruption and is ILQLWH (conf. IX, 4).12 The finitude is “the outstanding char-
acter of time”. 13 Eternity is the synchronous and full presence of everything,
or, expressed with the classical definition of Boëthius: “LQWHUPLQDELOLV YLWDH
WRWD VLPXO HW SHUIHFWD SRVVHVVLR (perfect possession altogether of an endless
life).”14 Therefore, Augustine characterizes eternity as QXQFVWDQV, as the im-
mutable, complex, and complete present (conf. XI, 11), contrary to the tem-
poral QXQFIOXHQV, whose present as an immediately passing moment without
any duration (conf. XI, 15) slips through one’s fingers to the past (conf. XI,
11.14.21).
Here, the apory of Augustine’s central term of present is obvious. W. Mesch puts it pre-
cisely: “Either the present passes away constantly without any possibility to be a point in
time, or it is a point, without any possibility to pass away.” 15 Obviously, there is an equiv-
ocation in Augustine’s conception of the present. “In fact, in his talk about the created and
8
Cf. PLOTINOS, Enn. III, 7, 11, in 3ORWLQV 6FKULIWHQ IVa, 336; JÜNGEL, “Thesen zur
Ewigkeit”, 82; PANNENBERG, 6\VWHPDWLF7KHRORJ\1, 408.
9
This a consequence of the Platonic ontology, which stands in the background of Au-
gustine’s thought and which works only with the difference “true being – deficient being”,
as MESCH, 5HIOHNWLHUWH*HJHQZDUW, 339, points out. Cf. PLOTINOS, Enn. III, 7, 6, in 3ORWLQV
6FKULIWHQIVa, 320, who differentiates between “being” (w;n) and “true being” (avlhqw/j w'n).
10
DALFERTH, “Theologie der Zeit”, 95.
11
MESCH, 5HIOHNWLHUWH*HJHQZDUW, 311.
12
Cf. PLOTINOS, Enn. III, 7, 6, in 3ORWLQV6FKULIWHQIVa, 318–320.
13
TILLICH, 6\VWHPDWLF7KHRORJ\I, 274.
14
BOETHIUS, “De consolatione philosophiae”V, 6, 4, in IDEM, 7UDFWDWHV7KH&RQVROD
WLRQRI3KLORVRSK\, trans. H.F. STEWART and E.K. RAND (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1968),
400, 9–11 and 401. JÜNGEL, “Thesen zur Ewigkeit”, 81, shows the roots of this formula in
Parmenides.
15
(WHUQLW\DQG7LPH 375
the eternal present, Augustine uses two different terms of present, which are as different as
the Creator and the creation.”16
The conception is construed from a perspective as if one would stand and the
time would flow against him from the future toward the past. Therefore, time
can be grasped only in the anamnetic activity of the human spirit (the notion
of time is a certain GLVWHQWLR DQLPL, conf. XI, 23), who only can unify and
make present all three dimensions of time in their wide span. In the anamne-
sis of human spirit, the three dimensions of time are present as memory, sight
and expectation. As such, they can also be grammatically differentiated and
finally unified as WKUHHPRGLRI WKHSUHVHQWWLPH: “a present of things past, a
present of things present, and a present of things future” (conf. XI, 20). 17
The SUREOHPV RI $XJXVWLQH¶V FRQFHSWLRQ are known; they were reflected,
named, and commented on many times already: paradoxically enough, the
strongest mode of time in Augustine is not the present, as he wanted to have
it but rather the past. It is the past where all the flowing time is summoned in
the end.
“The irreversibility of time’s flow from the future into the past really makes every-
thing past: there is a past past, a present past and a future past. So if any one time is
supposed to be particularly close to eternity, then in this respect it is the past, not the pr e-
sent. The past is the end of all things.”18
Due to this and to the categorial difference to eternity, the reality of time is,
in fact, undermined. “Time proves to be a phenomenon, which is permanently
in the transition to non-being. It is evanescence and annihilation, a defective
mode of being. Therefore, it cannot be clearly grasped as the &RQIHVVLRQHV
complain.”19
Simultaneously, from the perspective of eternity, everything that God has
in front of him as present is already always a past event. The flow of time ,
hence, does not have any meaning for God.
For God, “[w]hat becomes and passes away within time is what was already there since
eternity. Within time, there is nothing new that could be expected: Everything new is al-
ready always there since eternity; and whatever becomes within time can only become
old.”20
16
DALFERTH, “Gott und Zeit”, 259.
17
As MESCH, 5HIOHNWLHUWH*HJHQZDUW, 323–342, shows, this does not mean that in Au-
gustine, time would be only a subjective perception. Time must have also an self-standing
reality, “which cannot be derived from the ability of the spirit, because it is the time, which
makes the termporal process of the spirit possible” (ibid., 334).
18
J. MOLTMANN, *RG LQ &UHDWLRQ $Q (FRORJLFDO 'RFWULQH RI &UHDWLRQ, trans. M.
KOHL (London: SCM Press, 1985), 117.
19
20
Ibid., 98. In this context, Dalferth points out that the orientating power of this histor i-
cally important conception failed in the modern time exactly due to this impossibility of
In this conception, God-Self is conceived in a static way. 1XQFVWDQV is an ab-

solute point; it is the fullness of all, immovable, immutable. Augustine’s o n-
tological presuppositions, which make eternity the only true – because immu-
table – being must necessarily lead to a narrowed view of time where all mo-
tion means a deficiency and points to its factual non-being. 21 The eternity
may have a certain duration also, however, without any before and after; it is
a duration, which spans over all times and beyond. This is in harmony with
the antique concept of God who was characterized with the axioma of apathy
and immutability. However, such an eternally immutable God is incompatible
with the christological foundation of Christian faith and its trinitarian back-
ground.22
This means, at the same time, that time cannot add anything to God; noth-
ing that happens within time has any meaning for eternity. From the point of
view of eternity, the whole history thickens to a single point, in which ever y-
thing has already always been set. For eternity, as such, all development
within time is unimportant and, in fact, obsolete. 23
Thus, in principle, time stands in a negative relation and counter-position
to eternity. Hence, salvation can be conceived only as salvation RXW IURP
time. True freedom is possible only as freedom IURP all temporality. Because
the truth – God-Self – is beyond time. Therefore, time can be, if at all, only a
very weak hint to eternity, which should be used in its pointing function to-
ward eternity (XWL), but, then, laid away again in order to enjoy God truly and
unburdened (IUXL).24
This apory of time, then, is reiterated also in the purpose of the human: “The time-structure
and sign-structure, which belongs to our FUHDWHGQHVV, seems thus to stand in an unsolvable
conflict with our SXUSRVHDVFUHDWXUHV. Isn’t it so that – in order to become what we shall
be – we must become what we cannot be: temporal creatures beyond time, and sings-using
beings that exist without the use of signs?” 25
This blocks all paths to a possible positive relation of God to time – although
time was created through the eternal Logos-Son (conf. IX, 7–8). Hence,
anything new. The modern man wants to go forward, yet the eternity of God was “experi-
enced more and more as the warrant of the old and as an obstacle for the new”.
21
22
Cf. above, Ch. 5. In Augustine’s Confessions, Christ has only the position of some-
one who orientates the soul toward God. In the notion of Jesus Christ as the Mediator, the
soul can grasp the scattered times (conf. XI, 29; cf. DALFERTH, “Gott und Zeit”, 255 and
257–258). However, Augustine cannot give any christological value to time. Cf. also
PANNENBERG, 6\VWHPDWLF7KHRORJ\ 1, 409.
23
It is paradoxical enough that the ideas about time are a part of Augustine’s explana-
tion of Genesis (cf. conf. XI, title).
24
Cf. DALFERTH, “Zeit der Zeichen”, in IDEM, *HGHXWHWH *HJHQZDUW =XU :DKUQHK
PXQJ*RWWHVLQGHQ(UIDKUXQJHQGHU=HLW (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), 209.
25
Ibid.
(WHUQLW\DQG7LPH 377
God’s coming into the time – i.e., any possible Christology, is made incon-
cievable with this position.
However, the critique of Augustine’s conception did not lead to the aban-
donment of it. With some necessary corrections, his conception remains still
an essential base for modern theological thinking and for many modern con-
ceptions, which build on the insights of Augustine26. What has been received
and further elaborated is, primarily, the simultaneous wholeness of all times,
which proved to be a strong and bearing idea: God as always the whole full-
ness of everything – even of those events, which, for us, are already past or
still future.27 In this, God proves to be the Lord of eternity DQG time because
he has his own whole being freely with him also. He is the Lord of the
wholeness and thus wholly free. Therefore, he is the guarantor of all times
and their aim. In this lordship he is constant, faithful to himself and his crea-
tion, and always the same. 28
This emphasis of this concept of eternity, which became classical, was
then combined with a dynamic concept of God (cf. above, Ch. 5.4), which is
the most fundamental correction of Augustine’s model. According to it, God
is not to be conceived as a static being but rather as OLIH. God has also motion
in himself, he has a “before and after”; next to his VWDUH, there is also a
IOXHUH.29 God’s life has also a future, although it cannot be differentiated from
his present,30 because in God-Self, there is “a space for a becoming”. 31 More-
over, “God’s being is in becoming” 32 – it is a G\QDPLV, the “self-process of
the life of God”33, the “eternal history” of divine life. 34
Alongside this dynamic term of God and hand in hand with it, there is the
second major correction of the Augustinian model: the positive determination
26
Cf. SCHWÖBEL, “Time”, in 533 12, 722: “Augustine’s theory of time […] deter-
mines the agenda of thought about time.” Against it JÜNGEL, “Thesen zur Ewigkeit”, who,
in his treatise on eternity and time, does not mention Augustine not a single time. He sees
the roots of the traditionally dominant term of eternity in Parmenides, Plato, and Plotinos
(ibid., 81).
27
Cf. PANNENBERG, 6\VWHPDWLF7KHRORJ\1, 404.
28
Cf. JÜNGEL, “Thesen zur Ewigkeit”, 85.
29
BARTH, &KXUFK'RJPDWLFVII/1, 615 and 611.
30
PANNENBERG, 6\VWHPDWLF7KHRORJ\1, 410. Ibid., 409–410, Pannenberg points to the
time-bridging present as to Augustine’s far-reaching discovery for theology and the con-
cept of God’s eternity.
31
Ibid., 438. In Pannenberg, the frame for the space of becoming is the relation of im-
manent and economic Trinity, or, in particular, the incarnation, which makes it clear and
allows us to say about God “that he himself became something that he previously was not
when he became man in his Son”.
32
This is the title of E. Jüngel’s paraphrase of the theology of K. Barth.
33
RINGLEBEN, :DKUKDIWDXIHUVWDQGHQ, 181.
34
MOLTMANN, 7ULQLW\ DQG WKH .LQJGRP, 190, cf. 95; IDEM, 7KH &UXFLILHG *RG, 246;
JÜNGEL, *RGDVWKH0\VWHU\, 101. Cf. also DALFERTH, “Gott und Zeit”, 236.
of the eternity-time relation based in the WULQLWDULDQ WKHRORJ\. Already K.

Barth called to set free the theological concept of eternity “from the Babylo-
nian captivity of an abstract opposite to the concept of time”. 35 The eternity
needs to be set into a positive relation to time because it is the source of time.
And, as the source of time in its three dimensions, the eternity as such must
be a structured eternity, it must unite “origin, present and future” without
blurring their distinctiveness.36 Eternity is thus “God-Self in the process of
his existence as Father, Son and holy Spirit”. 37
In the end, the positive relation to time is anchored christologically: in
Christ, God accepts time for himself also. This means that eternity inherently
bears a “potentiality of time”. God is not only “timeless” but in Christ also
“temporal”.38 In correspondence to the unity of divinity and humanity in
Christ, also the relation of eternity to time is put in a positive way. At the
same time, it is valid also YLFHYHUVD: Only due to the positive setting of eter-
nity to time is it possible that the eternal God in Christ became a human in
time. Then, time does not pass away into the past, but rather is anchored in
the past and goes forward to the future, toward God as the source and the fi-
nal aim of time.39 Thus, in the trinitarian model, God embraces the timeless
eternity as well as time; he includes the difference to time as well as its over-
coming.
$OWHUQDWLYH&RQFHSWLRQV*RGLQ7LPH
Differently constructed conceptions mostly criticize the point that is central to
the traditional model: the Augustinian-Boethian conception of eternity as the
simultaneous presence of all time dimensions.
The Dutch-South African reformed theologian /- 9DQ GHQ %URP starts
with the thesis that eternity is not an attribute of God or a characteristic of his
nature but rather a “characterization of the time concept”.40 Eternity thus does
not belong to the part of God (while time would belong to the part of the
creation). Eternity belongs to the part of time – to which, then, God-Self be-
longs as well. God is not conceived above and beyond time but rather in time
35
BARTH, &KXUFK'RJPDWLFV II/1, 611; cf. R. SCHULTE, “Zeit und Ewigkeit”, in &KULV
WLFKHU *ODXEH LQ PRGHUQHU *HVHOOVFKDIW, vol. 22, ed. F. BÖCKLE et al. (Freiburg: Herder,
1982), 171: “Time is to be conceived as a SURPLVHRIHWHUQLW\.”
36
JÜNGEL, “Thesen zur Ewigkeit”, 84; cf. PANNENBERG, 6\VWHPDWLF7KHRORJ\1, 405.
37
JÜNGEL, “Thesen zur Ewigkeit”, 80.
38
BARTH, &KXUFK'RJPDWLFVII/1, 617. Barth conceives eternity in three dimensions as
“pre-temporality, supra-temporality and post-temporality” (cf. ibid., 619–640).
PANNENBERG, 6\VWHPDWLF7KHRORJ\1, 406, remarks rightly that, in regard of incarnation, it
would be better to speak rather about God’s “in-temporality” than “supra-temporality”.
39
BARTH, &KXUFK'RJPDWLFVIII/2, 529–530.
40
L.J. VAN DEN BROM, “Eternal Life VI. Dogmatics”, in 533, vol. 4, ed. H.D. BETZ et
al. (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2008), 571.
(WHUQLW\DQG7LPH 379
(although not necessarily in the “human” time because he has his own, divine
time); or as the one who has all time so that our time is embraced within his
trinitarian time. 41
With the examples of Pannenberg’s and Moltmann’s eschatological con-
ceptions, Van den Brom criticizes what I have just done also: the spatial way
of speech about time and eternity – “spatializing time and eternity” – as if
time and eternity were spaces, in which God acts and from which he some-
how comes here.42 Then, time is understood in a realist way, which makes it
into an objective entity that exists objectively and independently from events.
“If time can be embraced by something else, it is assumed to be a thing.” 43
It is, however, a principal question, wheter it would be possible at all to speak about time
in a non-spatial way;44 whether in our thinking, the category of time is not connected with
the category of space that much that we already always think spatio-temporally and cannot
think one without the other (when, e.g., something takes place in time). The principal con-
tribution to this question is Kant’s characterization of space and time as necessary repre-
sentations, which ground all other intuitions. 45 Moreover, should eternity be conceived as
something that is still qualitatively different from our time, would it be as inappropriate or
metaphorical to use the time-terms for eternity as well.46 Spatial and temporal categories
for eternity would be thus both as inappropriate – and, therefore, both metaphorically as
possible.
Contrary to it, theology should speak in relational and trinitarian categories.

Eternity means that “God has all the time he needs for the fullness of the trin-
itarian life”.47 It is not a space next to the present time but rather what comes
after this present time. This is valid for the human as well as for God-Self,
whose being is in his trinitarian life and embraces thus also its evolving.
Therefore, one could say that God has his future – as eternal future – still be-
fore him.48 For eternity is “an appropriate characterization of the reality of the
41
L.J. VAN DEN BROM, “Eschatology and Time. Reversal of the Time Direction?”, in
7KH)XWXUHDV*RG¶V*LIW, ed. D. FERGUSON and M. SAROT (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000),
167.
42
Ibid.
43
VAN DEN BROM, “Eschatology and Time”, 162, fn. 9, against Pannenberg.
44
Cf. the above-mentioned definition of Augustine: in the human perception, time is
GLVWHQWLRDQLPL; cf. also PLOTINOS, Enn. III, 7, 13, in 3ORWLQV6FKULIWHQIVa, 344–349.
45
I. KANT, &ULWLTXH RI 3XUH 5HDVRQ, trans. P. GUYER and A.W. WOOD (Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1998), B 37–73 (157–192). Cf. E. JÜNGEL, “Eternity III. Dogmatics”, in
533, vol. 4, ed. H.D. BETZ et al. (Leiden/Boston: Brill), 2008, 576, who points out in his
conception explicitely that the eternity of God separates as space and time (without split-
ting apart). Cf. also IDEM, “Thesen zur Ewigkeit”, 81 and 84.
46
Cf. NEIDHART, *RWWXQG=HLW, 199 and 203–204.
47
VAN DEN BROM, “Eschatology and Time”, 167.
48
Against the thesis of Pannenberg and Moltmann that God comes from the future into
the present time where he acts.
relationships in [] communion of life with the triune God”.49 Eternity is a

quality of time, or better, of life – in any sense of duration, of motion, of ac-
tivity, of a dynamic, which has a before and after.
Therefore, it is unacceptable for Van den Brom to conceive of eternit y as
of the simultaneous presence of all time dimensions. 50 In a such conception,
time would be conceived in the best case as “an enigmatic, timeless temporal-
ity”.51 He criticizes the conception of eternity as QXQFVWDQV because it lacks
any motion, wherefore everything must fall into singularity, into one point
without any possibility of transcience where all differences vanish and all
events blur into one unspecific point. 52 This would mean that the beginning of
time would be identical with its end; creation would become one with salva-
tion.53 Time would lose its motion and, with it, its dramatic and contingent
character because God sees everything at once. The flow of time in the clas-
sical conception, according to Van den Brom’s critique, is perceivable and
real only from within creation, only in the internal perspective of the created
world. For God, everything is real at once, simultaneously. And even worse:
Simlutaneity means not only that God sees everything at once and simultane-
ously, but rather that he FUHDWHV everything simultaneously: the whole world
is created as “a timeless block universe” where all changes are only cosmetic
and imaginary because everything is preset and given by God (although it
cannot yet be perceived by human observers).54 The last consequence of the
conception of eternity as simultaneity is, then, an – unwanted but total – de-
termination of everything (inclusively the free human will) because “the es-
chaton itself is already part of the picture, being given with creation”. 55 Such
a conception of eternity thus proves to be “more deterministic than any tradi-
tional doctrine of decrees has ever been. Its deterministic eschatology ne-
49
VAN DEN BROM, “Eternal Life”, 5334, 571.
50
Cf. similarly Tillich, who, one one hand, stressed the importance of the concept of
life also for God’s being (TILLICH, 6\VWHPDWLF7KHRORJ\ I, 241). On the other hand, he re-
fuses to understand eternity as “simultaneity” because it “would erase the different modes
of time” (ibid., 274). Eternity as the QXQFHWHUQXP “is moving from past to future”. Future
remains open, yet God can anticipate it (ibid., 275–276).
51
VAN DEN BROM, “Eternal Life”, 533 4, 571, as characterization of Pannenberg’s
concept of eternity.
52
53
At this point, Pannneberg criticizes Tillich’s refusal of the traditional conception (cf.
above, fn. 50) as a misunderstanding because the eternal simultaneity is traditionally un-
derstood as “seeing together of what is different. Constitutive differences remain”
(PANNENBERG, 6\VWHPDWLF7KHRORJ\1, 407, fn. 153).
54
VAN DEN BROM, “Eschatology and Time”, 161–162.
55
Ibid., 162. About this problem knew already the old theology, which also tried to
solve it, cf. THOMAS OF AQUIN, 6XPPD FRQWUD JHQWLOHV, trans. A.C. PEGIS (New York:
Doubleday, 1955), q LXVII, 221–225, who deals with this problem through the question
whether God can have a knowledge of future contingent events.
(WHUQLW\DQG7LPH 381
glects the value of history that is supposed to be saved in the first place”. 56 In
the following, Van den Brom draws devastating conclusions for the funda-
mental theological building stones: The history of Jesus Christ and Spirit
within time do not bring anything for God either, they are only “Cambridge
changes”, which result in a docetic Christology. 57
This critique is shared and elaborated even stronger also by SURFHVVWKHRO
RJ\ (cf. also above, Ch. 5.4). It criticizes the traditional Christian theology in
its 2000-years-long search for how to unify the biblical picture of the living
God with the Antique Aristotelian idea of the Unmoved Mover, which is apo-
retical and must thus fail. Jesus’ suffering on the cross cannot be harmonized
with divine apathy. 58 If God already knows everything in his eternity, then
everything has already been decided and determined. “Accordingly, our expe-
rience of creativity and freedom are ultimately a sham, since all of our actions
are already known and, by implication, decided by God.” The consequence is
a perverted theodicy: All evil must be considered actually for good because it
is a part of God’s plan. 59 There is no change possible in God, whence, e.g.,
the intercession has no sense because it cannot change anything – we pray
“only for our sake alone”.60 God lives still with the same “world of a glance”
where nothing new can emerge. Such eternal and all-knowing God becomes,
however, boring, unloving, and incapable of real relations. 61 This God was
attributed with characteristics, “which belonged exclusively to Caesar”. 62 Ac-
cording to the critique of process theology, God’s eternal all-knowingness as
a consequence of the Boethian concept of eternity fails, then, also in Chris-
tology: “[I]f the cross and resurrection were already known in advance, Jesus’
suffering was charade both for God and, perhaps, for Jesus himself.”63
Process theology puts the conception of God as a power against it, which
does not act in the world in a coercive but rather in a persuasive way; which
is ever-growing and evolving in time; and which through “the call and re-
sponse of divine and human creativity leads to greater expressions of power
in the relationships among the creator and the creatures”.64 God gives energy
56
57
Ibid., 166.
58
EPPERLY, 3URFHVV 7KHRORJ\, 35. However, process theologians obviously did not
take much notice of the recent development, at least in protestant theology, like is, e.g., the
critical elaboration of the traditional concept of eternity in the 20 th century.
59
Ibid., 36.
60
Ibid.
61
Ibid., 37–38.
62
63
EPPERLY, 3URFHVV7KHRORJ\, 36. DALFERTH, “Gott und Zeit”, 235, points out that in
this point, the criticism of process theology meets the christological and trinitarian critique
of the traditional model.
64
EPPERLY, 3URFHVV7KHRORJ\, 41.
and possibilities to his creation and waits for their realization, participates in
the suffering of the world and is panentheistically present in all processes d i-
recting everything with his love to the final goal. However, God can see the
future only in its potentialities. He himself participates in the adventure of
their realization. This means that, reciprocally, the creaturely realizations of
God-given possibilities change God in his existence (i.e., in the second or
consequent nature) as well. God acts in time, he experiences time. At the
same time, in order to see all possibilities of the creation and being the sum of
the unrealized possibilities of the creation (God’s first or primordial nature),
God remains outside of time. In this way, God embraces the universe wholly.
In his creatory way, as the giver of possibilities and as the persuasive power
within creation, he can influence everything and is being influenced himself
by every reality at the same time. 65 Process theology differentiates thus time
and eternity within God:
“While the real world exists wholly within time, God is both timeless-eternal as well as
acting in time. In his eternal and immutable first nature is he the sum of all possibilities; in
his temporal second nature, which permanently changes with the process of the world, is
he the epitome of all reality.”66
Both sketched alternative conceptions try to set God and time into a closer
relation and to think of God in a dynamic way: Van den Brom conceives God
with his own time, which flows parallel to the created time; process theology
conceives God as realizing himself in the created time. Both approaches at-
tempt to solve the problem of time predetermined by eternity with the idea of
God’s own temporality, which itself has a still open future. Van den Brom
makes sure that God has all time and stresses the concept of hope and prom-
ise as a concept that is not spatial but purely temporal.67
At this point, however, the biggest difficulties for both conceptions come
up: Can a God, who is still in process or even still evolving, guarantee his
own future – and, with it, the future of the whole creation? Is not the hope,
then, rather a vague assurance facing a rather unsure future? In the exact op-
posite to the problem of the rigid Augustinian eternity where nothing new is
possible, here, the new “is rather constantly the case. However, where some-
thing new emerges permanently, this new becomes permanently old, at the
same time.” Then, not only time but also God with it, lead into “a permanent
becoming-old of the new”.68
65
Ibid., 51.
66
67
BROM, “Eschatology and Time”, 167.
68
DALFERTH, “Theologie der Zeit”, 101. Dalferth adds more critical points to the con-
ception of God in process theology: it is impossible to conceive of FUHDWLR H[ QLKLOR as a
free decision of God; God cannot give any orientation for life in the world; the eternity-
7ULQLW\7KH2QWRORJ\RIWKH(WHUQLW\7LPH5HODWLRQ 383
While in Van den Brom it is not clear how the transcendence of God does
relate to the immanence of time, in process theology it remains unclear how
the transcendence of God can be secured at all. Despite all differences, both
these conceptions lack the same thing: a consistent root in trinitarian theolo-
gy. Only trinitarian theology could so far manage to present such a dynamic
idea of God that can unite God’s eternal transcendence with his immanence in
time.
2. Trinity: The Ontology of the Eternity-Time Relation

2. Trinity: The Ontology of the Eternity-Time Relation
I will now try to sketch my view of the eternity-time relation as the outmost
frame of all reality. I will lean more on the classical Augustinian-Boethian
conception in its modern critical elaboration, yet I will also constantly em-
phasize the dynamic concept of God against the backdrop of Trinity. What
follows is thus a FRQFLVHVXPPDU\RIWKHZKROHGLDJQRVWLFDOQDUUDWLYHRIP\
WKHRORJLFDOFRQFHSWLRQ as I tried to elaborate it in detail in all previous chap-
ters.
When thinking about eternity, there is no other starting point possible than
one based on our experience, which is always an experince of time and in
time.69 Here we stand, we can do no other. We have no God-eye perspective;
our perspective is thus always particular (cf. above, Ch. 1.2). Therefore, we
can only speak about eternity (as well as about any other ontological matters)
with a certain “courage for speculation” 70 and only in contrast to time. How-
ever – as it follows from the previous subchapter – not conceiving time as the
negation of eternity but rather conceiving eternity as the condition for the
possibility of time. 71 Eternity is the theological answer to the question: Where
from time?
In the theological perspective, the question of the eternity-time relation is
the question of the relation between God and his creation. It is, however, not
necessary to remain on this general level. This relation has its clear anchor –
a point where the Creator and his creation come very close to each other.
Moreover, there is a point where God-Self enters into his creation and be-
comes creation (without ceasing to be God), where eternity enters into time
and even becomes temporal. According to the core of Christan confession,
time relation is narrowed to the problem of consistency of God’s first nature outside of
time and his consequent nature in time.
69
This knew already THOMAS OF AQUIN, 6XPPDWKHRORJLFDI, q10 a1 resp. (“in cogni-
tionem aeternitatis oportet nos venire per tempus”), as JÜNGEL, “Thesen zur Ewigkeit”, 81,
notes.
70
)U XQV JHVWRUEHQ 'LH %HGHXWXQJ YRQ /HLGHQ XQG 6WHUEHQ -HVX &KULVWL, EKD-
Grundlagentext (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2015), 184.
71
Cf. PANNENBERG, 6\VWHPDWLF7KHRORJ\1, 406, fn. 150.
Jesus Christ is this point of intersection of eternity and time, of divinity and
creatureliness (cf. above, Ch. 1.1). Against the backdrop of the trinitarian pat-
tern accepted in Nicea, Chalcedon expressed it concisely and clearly: Jesus
Christ is YHUHGHXV and YHUHKRPR (cf. above, Ch. 3). Therefore, logically, it is
Christology that should be the theological starting point for a conception of
the eternity-time relation. The perspective of Christian faith and theology
starts with Jesus Christ as the grounding history of God in the world and with
the world:
“Christian thinking and talking of God are essentially shaped by the story of Christ. Ac-
cording to Christian understanding, without consideration of the christological fundament
and of the trinitarian shape of the concept of God, it is not possible to conceive of God as
Creator in an appropriate way.” 72
Then, if we want to speak about Jesus Christ from the perspective of Chris-
tian faith, we have to start at that point, where it clearly came out, who Jesus
Christ was and is: we have to start at his resurrection. For it is the event of
resurrection, which throws a clear light on his death and life (cf. above, Ch.
4.1). It is this event from which Christian proclamation and the biblical wit-
ness regarding the crucified and resurrected one develops. The starting point
in the resurrection connects thus the life of the earthly Jesus and his acting
with the biblical tradition, which itself is written already from the resurrec-
tion perspective, and with the emerging Christian tradition and doctrine. This
foundation of Christology makes it possible, from the internal Christian per-
spective, to connect Christology from below with Christology from above,
while building on the continuity between the earthly Jesus and the apostolic
tradition because the resurrected one is the earthly Jesus and YLFH YHUVD (cf.
above, Ch. 2.2).
The question of the eternity-time relation, which should be anchored chris-
tologically, not only has a trinitarian background, but leads inevitably and
explicitly to a trinitarian conception. The question is not only ‘How does God
relate to time’? It now becomes a much more specific shape because it asks,
‘How does God relate to time, when he himself entered into it through Jesus
Christ?’ This question requires a trinitarian answer that, then, builds the ulti-
mate frame for the whole narrative (cf. above, Ch. 4.2).
Moreover, this question provokes another one. When God himself entered
time through Jesus Christ, it must have clearly had some effect on the world.
Eternity entering time must obviously bring at least a fundamentally new per-
spective on all reality. Yet there must be an effect not only for the world. The
temporal history of Jesus Christ was God’s own history. Therefore, this histo-
ry must have some effect for God-Self also. Both these sides and effects of
this unique event must be taken into consideration. It must have serious co n-
72
DALFERTH, “Gott und Zeit”, 238–239.
sequences for the creation when it is *RG who enters created time. And, it
must have serious consequences for the divine life, when God entered the
created world and EHFDPHDSDUWRILW.
It should be stressed that we are not talking about mere possibilities. The
theological conception of the eternity-time relation, with all its speculative
flair, is rooted firmly in the reality of Jesus Christ. In his person – as is the
confession of Christian faith and as it is reflected upon by Christian theology
– divinity and humanity create a full unity. A relation of eternity and time is
thus not only a wished possibility, but it could become and became reality.
The person of Jesus Christ shows the fundamental fact that an intersection
between eternity and time, between divinity and humanity, between God and
world is possible. Both categories do not stand against each other as enemies
or opposing magnetic poles that would repel each other. A unity of them is
possible. For further elaboration of the eternity-time relation this means, in a
fundamental way, that both eternity and time must not be conceived as oppo-
sites but rather in a mutual potential relation, in a potential orientation to-
wards each other. (WHUQLW\ PXVW EH FRQFHLYHG DV SULQFLSDOO\ DEOH WR DFFHSW
WLPH7LPHPXVWEHFRQFHLYHGDVSULQFLSDOO\DEOHWRDFFHSWHWHUQLW\
The christological anchoring of the eternity-time relation against the back-
drop of the Trinity sketches, at the same time, WKH HVWLPDWHG URXWH IRU WKH
ZKROH WKHRORJLFDO DGYHQWXUH: starting with the resurrection of the crucified
one, the path opens into the largest conceivable width going from Christology
to the Trinity, which should connect God’s immanence and transcendence
and make clear the ultimate frame of all reality. Then, the theological path
turns back and, with the Trinity in the background, focuses on the world as
God’s creation and the space of God’s Trinity-structured acting, taking seri-
ously time, history, and all events evolving in space-time (inclusively sin and
evil). In the last step, the life of God and the history of the universe with all
its particular lives and stories should be brought to the (purified and trans-
formed) mutual eschatological communion (cf. above, Ch. 4.1.3).
This route from the particular topic of Christology there (to the doctrine of God), back
again (to the doctrine of creation), and further on to the doctrine of eschatology) draws, at
the same time – and along the lines of the boundaries of an acceptable internal realism
from a particular perspective – an outline of a current WKHRORJLFDORQWRORJ\. Within these
lines and in this context, in my opinion, it is time to free the term of ontology from the
Babylonian captivity of a pre-critical metaphysics and establish it again as an appropriate
term for what any particular perspective has and must have: its own conception of the out-
most frame, its own general narrative, which makes it possible to live and orientate in the
world in a certain particular way. Every particular conception has its – more or less explic-
itly developed – view of the whole (which is permanently corrected by the life in the form
of trial and error and thus abductively); every particular conception has thus an internal
universal ambition. When this universal ambition as one’s internal image of the whole is
elaborated, it can be called an ontological concept within the frames of internal realism.
This means, at the same time, that there can be (and is, indeed) a plurality of ontological
concepts with a universal ambition. (The question, then, is, whether they find a way to a
mutual dialogue, clash or indifference, cf. below, Ch. 11.) An ontological conception thus
does not raise a claim of undoubted metaphysical absoluteness but rather of an abductively
fitting diagnosis of the experienced reality from a particular perspective (cf. above, Ch. 1.2
and especially Ch. 1.2.3 concerning the crucial difference between universal and absolute
claims). In my opinion, this is exactly what theology – knowingly and explicitly admitting
that it always speaks from a particular stance – should dare in order to be able to give rea-
sonable answers to (legitimate!) questions of how things actually are.
This ambitious plan, however, requires an adequately ambitious and dynamic

concept of God. I propose, therefore, to introduce into Christian thinking
about God the term of DFFRPPRGDWLRQ as the fundamental ontological and
regulatory term for the concept of God’s being (cf. above, Ch. 5). A concept
of God who can adapt to the other while remaining God is, in the end, strong-
er than the traditional concept of an immutable, impassible and apathetic
God. Accommodation marks the essential ability of God to go toward the
other without losing himself, to react and to adapt to the other without any
diminishing of his divine being. On the contrary, the accommodation is the
realization of God’s being and of his essence. His adapting to the other is,
therefore, not a NHQRVLV but rather the SOHURVLV of his essence and life. It is the
fulfillment of the essential character of God: of his orientation toward the
other, as it is already the case in the mutual SHULFKRUHVLV of the persons of the
immanent Trinity. God remains God exactly where he accommodates to the
other. Therefore, the accommodation is, at the same time, the preservation of
God’s being himself. As accommodating, God remains the Lord of his own
trinitarian life. The divine accommodation is thus the realization of God’s
freedom, in which God as God can orient himself toward the other.
This means that God accommodates primarily in himself, DG LQWUD, in his
internal self-differentiation. The accommodation is the fundamental regulato-
ry term and the fundamental dynamic expression already for the immanence
of God. This creates, then, the possibility of his accommodation also to the
creation, DG H[WUD. God is set or attuned to the other. Primarily within the
Trinity, then also toward the creation. Within the creation, the external rela-
tion of God reaches its peak in the relation to humans.
The human, which, as a creation of God, stands already always in the pres-
ence of God, is created to be the image of God. The purpose of human life,
thus, is to fulfill his or her determination – to live as LPDJR 'HL. In other
words, humans are created to be the created analogy of divine accommoda-
tion. Their purpose is to be WKHSODFHRI*RG¶VSUHVHQFHIRURWKHUV. This pur-
pose was fullfilled wholly by Jesus Christ, who, in his humanity, is the true
image of God (cf. above, Ch. 6).
Overall, God proves, from his essence, from the very beginning, in him-
self, and through himself that he is oriented toward the other and attuned on
the other; correspondingly, the fundamental human orientation proves to be
the orientation toward God within the human relation to other creation as
well. *RGDQGKXPDQWKXVFRUUHVSRQGRQWRORJLFDOO\WRHDFKRWKHU This mu-
tual orientation towards each other is then confirmed and brought to its final
point in the unity of the person of Jesus Christ, in whom God becomes hu-
man, and, at the same time, remains God so that God is present as God and
also and at the same time as human. The unity of Jesus Christ mirrors the on-
tological frame for the eternity-time relationship: eternity does not stand as an
opposite to time (as is the case in Augustine, Nestorius, or later in the kenot-
ics), nor does it stand only in a cooperative relation next to time (as in the
western interpretation of Chalcedon), but eternity is always positively orient-
ed toward temporality: “True eternity includes this possibility, the potentiality
of time. True eternity has the power to take time into itself, this time, the time
of the Word and Son of God. It has the power to be temporal in Him.” 73
Therefore, when it is right to conceive of God’s being dynamically, to
conceive of it as life, as a certain becoming, then HWHUQLW\LVDGXUDWLRQWKDW
IORZV, it is a story and history. At the same time, however, the strong point of
the classical Boethian concept of eternity needs to be preserved: in the life of
God, nothing passes away into the past, but God has everything permanently
present as present time. What was, is not musealized but rather concentrated
and intensified. 74 Moreover, it is not only a matter of the past, but it is a pre-
sent moving to the future.75
In this living eternity, God has the temporality in its wholeness in front of
him. He remains the Lord of time. God sees the temporality, at first, as a pos-
sibility; after his decision to create it becomes a reality. 76 It is thus the deci-
sion to realize creation, i.e., to realize temporality, which constitutes a before
and after in God’s eternity and brings eternity into motion. 77 First, within the
73
BARTH, &KXUFK'RJPDWLFV II/1, 617.
74
JÜNGEL, “Eternity”, in 5334, 576; IDEM, “Thesen zur Ewigkeit”, 84–85.
75
It is an important point of G. THOMAS, “Resurrection to New Life. Pneumatological
Impliciation of the Eschatological Transition”, in 5HVXUUHFWLRQ7KHRORJLFDODQG6FLHQWLILF
$VVHVVPHQWV, ed. T. PETERS et al. (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans, 2002), 261, that mostly,
in the traditional eschatology, “the key metaphor is FORVXUH. Nothing new can happen since
creation comes to the end.” However, the resurrection to a new life should not be con-
ceived only retrospectively as an end of the past whole but also and primarily prospective-
ly, as the beginning of something new.
76
When eternity in itself would not flow, it would be hardly possible to conceive of a
decision to creation, which is something new in God-Self. However, AUGUSTINE, Conf.
XI, 31, holds that eternity does not flow. Cf. KARFÍKOVÁ, ýDV D ĜHþ, 47. That creation
would still be possible tries to prove also D.H. MELLOR, “History without the Flow of
Time”, 1=67K28 (1986), 68–76.
77
For the differentiation of the possibility and the realization of the creation within
God-Self cf. the conception of the late SCHELLING, 8UIDVVXQJ1, 14, which is highly inter-
esting also theologically; and, as a commentary to it, KRÜGER, *|WWOLFKH)UHLKHLW, 179.
Trinity, God relates to himself. Then, he decides, in his freedom, to also in-
clude creation in this relation.
Should this be possible to conceive, already the inner being of God must be conceived a p-
propriately. In this way, the self-relation of God is the condition of the possibility for his
relation to the creation. The fullness of these relations in their harmony is the final goal of
God’s being and of his creation. As the final point, therefore, salvation is the participation
of everything in the life of God – in harmony, yet with the preservation of the fundamental
difference between Creator and creation and with the preservation of their particular identi-
ties – as it is the case already within the Trinity where its mutual SHULFKRUHVLV does not blur
the differences between the persons, but rather where their identity is constituted and con-
firmed in these mutual relations. God creates the world, in which he is present (Spirit) and
which he at one historical point directly enters (Son); at the same time, God remains trans-
cendent, i.e., beyond the world (Father). From the beginning, the created universe is consti-
tuted as creation standing FRUDP'HR, with its clear purpose and goal to participate as crea-
tion in the divine life – i.e., in its freedom and creativity, which, in the course of time, de-
velops a rich plurality of realities. The creation gets its purpose from without, i.e., without
any necessity to elaborate it by itself or to achieve it only under some condition, which
would need to be fulfilled in advance. God creates reality with its purpose and frame and,
also, with its potentialities, which should be developed and realized. In other words, crea-
tion with its possibilities should realize itself DVFUHDWLRQ. For this, God gives to his crea-
tion freedom, inspiration, and creativity (i.e., his Spirit) to realize and use these possibili-
ties. The space of creation with its preset soteriological frame and goal is thus primarily
and fundamentally the space of created freedom and responsibility, which should be real-
ized appropriately – i.e., in the relation FRUDP'HR.78
From the perspective of the Father, all dimensions of time are indeed seen
simultaneously. However, this does not need to be conceived determin-
istically (against the critique of Van den Brom and process theology). The
simultaneous view of the Creator does not exclude created freedom, exactly
in the same way as the transcendence of the Father does not exclude the act-
ing of the Spirit within the world. God creates the world with its freedom,
creativity, and spontaneity. This means that he opens a SDUWLFXODUDQGFOHDUO\
GHPDUFDWHG time-space for creaturely freedom; he creates a network of possi-
bilities and maintains this free time-space, acts within it in his Spirit and re-
acts to the realizations of creaturely freedom. With his act of creation, the Fa-
ther sets this free time-space, which he, at the same time, has present in its
whole, yet – and this is the important point – in its differences, in its differen-
tiated structure of before and after, with its differentiated particular events
78
The motivation of creation and its soteriological aim is thus set positively from the
beginning. It is not motivated by sin, e.g., as the reformed protestant orthodoxy conceived
it: that without sin, history and christologically mediated salvation would not be necessary
at all (“The incarnation of the eternal Son of the Father took place only because of the fall
into the sin, so that the Son – when the humankind would not fall – would not have come
into the flesh”, HEPPE, 'LH'RJPDWLN, 323). Human sin is not the necessary condition for
incarnation or for salvation.
and their mutual relations and dependencies. Thus, God has time in front of
him in its span, in its full range, in its outstretch and in its flow, in its course,
development, and evolution. For the Father, time unfolds simultaneously, yet
dynamically as a differentiated present, in which he himself acts in the Spirit
and in which he is also present at any of its moments. 79 In this way, God can
be conceived as the Lord of time, which is an important and strong point
within the classical conception.
However, the question, why did God create the world at the beginning like this and not in
any other way, remains unanswered – and with it also the most difficult theological ques-
tion: the problem of theodicy.80
With this conception of eternity-time relation, God can be conceived as the eschatologi-
cal winner (cf. below and above, Ch. 8.4), who holds history in his hands despite evil and
human sin and will enforce his justice as the justice of his creation. Nevertheless, the ques-
tion remains open, why did history have to go this painful way – from which, however,
there is redemption.
Anyway, in the beginning God creates the universe with its termporality out-
side of God-Self where nothing was before (FUHDWLRH[QLKLOR) and establishes
a relation with it through his Spirit. He creates space and time for the encoun-
ter with himself and places this space-time at the disposal of the creation in
its independence.81
Later, God-Self enters into this created and Spirit-guided time-space in Je-
sus Christ as human. This can be conceived as the way of the Son into a for-
eign country. 82 Here, in his humanity Jesus Christ fulfills the purpose of hu-
manity and thus the purpose of creation: he exists as LPDJR'HL, as the place
of divine presence for the others. And exactly here, in Jesus Christ the earthly
time (and space) becomes *RG¶VRZQWLPH (and space) – once more and in a
different way than in the act of creation or in God’s presence among his crea-
tion through his Spirit. Temporality does not remain external to God; on the
contrary, in Jesus Christ, it is included into the life of God itself. In Jesus
Christ, God lived in time himself and exposed himself to time in a first-hand
experience of it. From this follows that God-Self takes temporality very seri-
ously.83
79
Cf. EVERS, 5DXP±0DWHULH±=HLW, 360–361.
80
One of the most disturbing questions reagrding evil and theodicy raised A. Flew:
Could not God create a creation where humans could decide only between good possibil i-
ties? (Quoted in W. JOEST, )XQGDPHQWDOWKHRORJLH, 3rd ed. [Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1988],
227). Reformulated with a biblical metaphor: Must the tree have been in paradise? For not
the serpent, but already the sheer existence of the tree awakens problems.
81
Cf. JÜNGEL, “Thesen zur Ewigkeit”, 84; SCHULTE, “Zeit und Ewigkeit”, 169–170.
82
Cf. BARTH, &KXUFK'RJPDWLFV IV/1, 157.
83
Among other consequences, this fact stresses the importance of the research about the
earthly (or historical) Jesus (cf. above, Ch. 2).
Moreover, Jesus Christ as true human and true God suffered on the cross
and died. In Jesus Christ, in the unity of his person, God-Self as the second
person of the Trinity dies. The death of Jesus Christ is thus GHDWKLQ*RG: the
whole of God does not die; the second person of the Trinity dies. But he real-
ly dies, he ceases to exist for three days. In Jesus Christ, God accommodates
to human and humanity until death, completely. This is the extreme, yet con-
sistent and ultimate consequence of God’s accommodation. The three days
from Good Friday until the Easter Sunday are thus three darkest days in histo-
ry. During this time there is an empty spot in the Trinity; one person is miss-
ing. In fact, during these three days there is only a Binity left (and the dead
Jesus with his proper name, which will play an important role soon; cf. also
above, Ch. 7).
In the soteriological effect, the death of Jesus Christ brought the overmas-
tering of death itself (death of death) as of the crucial and most powerful in-
strument of sin. Simultaneously, the cross had serious consequences for the
life of God itself. The death of Jesus Christ as the death of God in God marks
a fundamental and deep incision in the life of God. It brings something that
was not in God before; it brings a fundamental change. “The cross has
changed God.”84 From this moment on, death is in God-Self; it becomes a
moment of the divine life. The temporal death of Jesus Christ is thus the clos-
est connection – moreover, in this moment, it is a parallelization or even a
SRLQWRILQWHUVHFWLRQEHWZHHQWHPSRUDOLW\DQGHWHUQLW\. Therefore, WKHFURVVRI
-HVXV&KULVWLVWKHYHU\PLGGOHRIHWHUQLW\
However, the death of God in Jesus Christ is not a continuous, eternal
event in the life of God; it is not an eternal suffering. It was overcome in and
by the UHVXUUHFWLRQ so that down the road death is still present in the life of
God as an already overcome moment. :KLOHWKHFURVVZDVSULPDULO\DQHYHQW
ZLWKLQWKHZRUOGDSDUWRILWV KLVWRU\ZKLFKKRZHYHUKDVYHU\VHULRXVDQG
IXQGDPHQWDOFRQVHTXHQFHVIRUWKHHWHUQDOOLIHRI*RGWKHUHVXUUHFWLRQLVSUL
PDULO\DQHYHQWZLWKWKHZRUOGZKLFKKRZHYHUKDVYHU\VHULRXVDQGIXQGD
PHQWDO FRQVHTXHQFHV IRU WLPH DQG KLVWRU\ The resurrection is primarily an
event in the eternal life of God, it is the renewal of the life of God in its ful l-
ness. Yet, it has also a temporal, i.e., historically accessible side: primarily in
the appearances of the crucified and resurrected, the Easter faith, and the
emergence of Christian proclamation that resulted from the message of resur-
rection (cf. above, Ch. 9). Ontologically, the resurrection is the root of faith.
It opens a new universal perspective, in which the world can be comprehend-
ed and grasped in a new way through the new understanding of the person of
84
DALFERTH, “Volles Grab”, 304. Cf. also Hos. 11:8, who speaks about a “turn in the
heart of God”. Later, this was taken on by Luther and others and interpreted in a christ o-
logical way, cf. O. BAYER, 0DUWLQ/XWKHUV7KHRORJLH(LQH9HUJHJHQZlUWLJXQJ (Tübingen,
Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 193–194.
Jesus Christ. Therefore, the perspective of resurrection is the central theologi-

cal perspective (cf. above, Ch. 4). 7KHUHVXUUHFWLRQRI-HVXV&KULVWLVWKXVWKH
YHU\PLGGOHRIWLPHDQGWHPSRUDOLW\ 85
With the resurrection of Jesus Christ where the Son – raised by the Father
and the Spirit based on the ‘groundplan’ of his proper name (cf. above, Ch.
6.2.2) – returns back from the foreign country, the temporality in the repre-
sentative form of the earthly life of Jesus also becomes a part of the life of
God. Therefore, with the resurrection of the crucified Jesus, God becomes
enriched with something that he did not have before: humanity and temporali-
ty. With this, the path to the eschatological communion with God is opened,
which will be realized in the final resurrection and the renewal of creation.
Because of the trinitarian differentiation of this whole process – where the
Father remains in the transcendent eternity, while the Son becomes wholly
concrete and datably temporal – the Christian faith conceives from the begin-
ning the meaning and effect of the cross and the resurrection as universal, as
valid for all; which means: for all through times, for the whole humankind
that ever lived, lives, or will live.86 However, the traditional – and in the
modern time more and more favored – conception of inclusive vicarious rep-
resentation, which should theologically substantiate the universal outreach of
the cross and the resurrection, fails because it cannot conceive in an appropri-
ate way the point of identification of Christ and the believer. Salvation cannot
be conceived only christomonistically, it must be conceived consistently
alongside the structure of trinitarian theology. The cross and resurrection of
Jesus Christ are the ontological foundations of universal salvation. At the in-
tersubjective level, however – without the necessity to construe some point of
mystical unity where the individual would lose his or her identity and would
merge mystically with Christ – the effect and meaning of the cross and resur-
rection for the individual and particular life in a particular time must be me-
diated pneumatologically. 7KH6SLULW is the instance, which can relate to dif-
ferent and multiple times; the Spirit is the multitemporal and multispatial
connection between the eternity of the Father and the particular situation and
place in the world; the Spirit awakens the faith and brings a new orientation
for a particular life through appropriation of the salvation, which was fulfilled
once and for all in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is the Spirit
who connects our temporality with the temporality of God in Jesus Christ and
with the eternity of the Father. Therefore, the effect of the christological
foundation cannot be conceived immediately in christological terms but ra-
ther in pneumatological terms (cf. above, Ch. 8).
85
With this, the initial decision and task to start with the perspective of resurrection and
to conceive the whole Christology from this point is substantiated and obtained.
86
Cf. e.g. SCHULTE, “Zeit und Ewigkeit”, 143.
God’s relation to temporality is thus to be conceived consistently in the

trinitarian way: God is not only eternal but also temporal. Moreover, not only
simply temporal but also multi-temporal. The trinitarian conception thus
avoids the mistake of the old classical conception, where God is only eternal
and timeless. The trinitarian living God relates to time in a threefold way:
– as the Father, he is the WUDQVWHPSRUDOLW\ of the divine life.
– as the Son, he is the WHPSRUDOLW\ of the divine life.
– as the Spirit, he is the PXOWLWHPSRUDOLW\ of divine life.87
This threefold relation of God to time, however, is not to be conceived only
in an additive way, only standing next to each other. Rather, in correspond-
ence with the old conception of mutual SHULFKRUHVLV of the persons of the
Trinity, the time-relations of God should also be conceived in the mutual in-
terconnection and permeation. 88 When speaking about the eternity of God, all
three of these dimensions in their mutual unity should be considered – this
makes thinking about eternity and time in the trinitarian context a very com-
plex endeavour.
To conceive of eternity in Boethian terms only as simultaneity is thus,
from the perspective of trinitarian theology, too little. (WHUQLW\LVQRWRQO\WKH
WUDQVWHPSRUDO VLPXOWDQHLW\ RI WKH )DWKHU; it cannot be reduced only to one
dimension of God’s relation to time. 89 It encloses also God’s own temporality
in the Son and the presence of the Spirit in time, which bridges and connects
times and spaces. Therefore, it is not possible to say that in the eternal simul-
taneity the whole of time shrinks to one single point because the time in Jesus
Christ was and is God’s own time as well. What is simultaneous for the Fa-
ther (which does not mean “identical” because the simultaneity does not blur
the differences of the whole time-span) – i.e., the whole process and devel-
opment of time with its fundamental points of creation, incarnation, cross,
and resurrection of Jesus Christ – that is temporal for the Son and the Spirit.
Although to the Father, the cross and the resurrection are simultaneously pre-
sent, for the Son (and the Spirit), these were the three darkest days in history.
Time and eternity do not exclude each other, not even in God-Self. On the
contrary, temporality – i.e., the time-space of creation, which was also the
time-space of Jesus Christ – is exactly in its inner differentiation and span the
event that marks the before and after in the life of God itself. -HVXV &KULVW
WKURXJKKLVFURVVDQGUHVXUUHFWLRQLVWKHYHU\PLGGOHRIERWKWLPHDQGHWHUQL
W\
87
In general, and here in particular, I stand close to the conception of DALFERTH, “Gott
und Zeit”, which proved to be a good guide through this very complex and difficult topic.
88
Cf. A.I.C. HERON, “The Time of God”, in *RWWHV =XNXQIW ± =XNXQIW GHU :HOW )HVW
VFKULIW IU -UJHQ 0ROWPDQQ ]XP *HEXUWVWDJ, ed. H. DEUSER et al. (München: Chr.
Kaiser, 1986), 238, who speaks about a “circumincessio”.
89
DALFERTH, “Gott und Zeit”, 266.
Eternity is the motion, flow, story, and duration of the divine life. The
whole of eternity is thus to be conceived as constantly open forward. The fu-
ture end of time and temporality cannot mean that nothing new could be pos-
sible in eternity either. There must also be some IXWXUHIRUHWHUQLW\.90 A future
that is God for himself, which he already always sees, but which comes and
will come yet. A future, which God will share also with his creation, a future
of the communion with the divine life. The “notion of SHUIHFWLRQ is not neces-
sarily coupled with closure, and completion need not imply an ending”. 91 The
richness of the eternal God is inexhaustible. It is rich exactly in the fact that it
is becoming still richer. 92
90
Cf. JÜNGEL, “Thesen zur Ewigkeit”, 84, who conceives the Spirit as the future of the
whole divine life.
91
THOMAS, “Resurrection to a New Life”, 261.
92
Cf. EVERS, 5DXP±0DWHULH±=HLW, 373–374: “The definition of eternity by Boethius
as the ‘complete and perfect possession of infinite life’, which was often received and a p-
preciated, can be accepted as having a theological meaning only when the possession of
the limitless life in time is not conceived again as a timeless and thus static matter but ra-
ther as an active aquisition.”
Chapter 11
Christology in Postmodern Plurality
Roger Haight complains that a chapter on this topic often used to be “ad-
dressed at the end of a christology as an addendum or corollary”. 1 It is true
that with this chapter, my study comes to its end. However, when I now open
the particular topic of Christology to the broad context of the interreligious
dialogue, I hope to show that the previous thoughts have a direct impact on
this topic and that they present a reasonable ground for the point in this ques-
tion as well.
1. On the Way toward Postpluralist Humility

1. On the Way toward Postpluralist Humility
The current trends in this field are ‘theology of religions’ or ‘interfaith theol-
ogy’. In the postmodern world, Christian theology is not the only one – on the
contrary: it only represents a particular perspective of one religion. It must
therefore make clear its relation to other religious traditions (although the
pressure and impulse to clearly grasp this relation comes often from inside of
theology and Christianity as a reaction to its own traditional exclusivism ra-
ther than from a real encounter with other traditions). 2
However, Christology – and maybe not only at first sight – does not seem
to be a suitable ground for an interreligious encounter. Christology seems to
be more intra-faith than a handy starting point for a possible inter-faith dia-
logue. Christology is not what connects, but rather what parts, even more than
different conceptions of divinity or humanity. Christology is the GLIIHUHQWLD
VSHFLILFDof Christianity. Yet as such, it is the inevitable groundstone for the
profile of Christianity and Christian theology. This was at least, what I have
tried to show in previous chapters.
I see two possibilities, how to approach the postmodern plurality. To work
with Christian specifics and, more or less, turn them down in order to find a
common ground with other traditions, or, to preserve the specifics but to turn
down the claim of Christianity.
1
HAIGHT, -HVXV, 395.
2
Cf., e.g., an overview of possible approaches in KNITTER, ,QWURGXFLQJ; G. D’COSTA,
&KULVWLDQLW\ DQG :RUOG 5HOLJLRQV (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 6–33; P. HOŠEK,
1DFHVWČNGLDORJX>2QWKH:D\WRZDUGD'LDORJXH@ (Praha: Návrat domů, 2005), 65–118.
2QWKH:D\WRZDUG3RVWSOXUDOLVW+XPLOLW\ 395
&KULVWLDQLW\DPRQJ2WKHU5HOLJLRQV
Christian conceptions and proposals, which have dealt with Christianity wit h-
in the current plurality of religions, chose mostly the first possibility: Christi-
anity is one of many religions or traditions, its specifics are, therefore, as par-
ticular as the specifics of any other tradition. There is nothing unique in
Christianity that would surpass its particularity, that would be generally
unique from an absolute point of view, and that could thus ground the superi-
ority of Christianity to other traditions. Because in Christianity, its claim of
uniqueness and its specifics have been tightly bound to the universal salva-
tion in Jesus Christ as the incarnated God, these conceptions attack Christol-
ogy in the first place: when the appropriate way to cope with the pluralist sit-
uation is to turn down the Christian specifics as only particular specifics of
one religion, then, it means to WXUQGRZQWKHFKULVWRORJLFDODQGVRWHULRORJLFDO
FODLP rooted in the uniqueness of Jesus Christ and, at the same time, to put
the Christian faith and the figure of Jesus Christ into a wider context of other
traditions as one possibility among many others.
From the very beginning Christianity had to face “the enormous pressures exacted on
Christian theology to surrender this disconcerting stress on the particularity of God. From
its encounter with the philosophical theology of Hellenism and the many religious move-
ments influenced by it, Christianity has time and again been confronted with the temptation
to make the Christian understanding of God conform to the picture of a universal timeless
and non-spatial ultimate Reality.”3
Under the influence of the anthropological turn in the Enlightenment and its
critique of religion, the continental liberal theology (and other conceptions
following its direction in this point) tried to frame Christian faith primarily
into a universal anthropological pattern. Not God, to whom we do not have
any direct access, but rather the KXPDQUHOLJLRQDQGUHOLJLRXVQHVV is the prop-
er focus of study and development. “It is to man that religion pertains, to
man, as one who in the midst of all change and progress himself never chang-
es.”4 Religion is grounded in the feeling of absolute dependency (Schleierma-
cher), in the transcendental moral (Kant), in love to God and humans (Har-
nack), in the ultimate concern (Tillich), in the self-transparency and self-
enlightenment of faith (Danz, N. Slenczka), in the imagination, which con-
ceives God as a necessary and useful projection (Krüger). 5 In these concep-
tions, Jesus is rather an ideal human with an exceptionally strong God-
consciousness and relation to God, who is the picture of an ideal Christian
life and ethics that believers should follow. He even may be the best, primari-
3
SCHWÖBEL, “Particularity”, 35–36.
4
HARNACK, :KDWLV&KULVWLDQLW\", 8.
5
Cf. also e.g. U. BARTH, *RWW DOV 3URMHNW GHU 9HUQXQIW (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck,
2005). To the critique of liberal theology cf. DALFERTH, 'LH:LUNOLFKNHLWGHV0|JOLFKHQ,
207–430.
396 &KDSWHU&KULVWRORJ\LQ3RVWPRGHUQ3OXUDOLW\
ly in leading people toward God but not absolutely unique and only. And, of
course, he is not the incarnated God. 6
3OXUDOLVP
The same irritation that liberal theology has been provoking on the continent,
ignited in the English speaking world the – today already classical – pluralist
conception of -RKQ+LFN.7 He sees himself and his theology explicitly in con-
tinuity with the liberal tradition and with its critique of traditional dogma, i.e.,
the christological dogma of Nicea and Chalcedon in particular.8 According to
Hick’s conception – as he formulated it already in his article “Jesus and the
World Religions” in the very discussed volume 7KH 0\WK RI *RG ,QFDUQDWH
(1977) – the root of all problems lies in the concept of incarnation. Later, he
brought it clearly to the point: “If he [Jesus] was indeed God incarnate, Chris-
tianity is the only religion founded by God in person, and must as such be
uniquely superior to all other religions.” 9 Therefore, Hick tries to show that
the figure of Jesus – a man of “tremendous spiritual power”, “intensely and
overwhelmingly conscious of the reality of God”, “man of God”, “open to
God” and “powerfully God-conscious” – was only secondarily deified. 10
Seeking proofs for his thesis within the biblical scriptures (and also for anal-
ogies in other religions), Hick, in a typical liberal manner, posits the synoptic
Gospels as “communal ‘memories’ of Jesus” against the Gospel of John be-
ing “a profound theological meditation in dramatic form” and formed “fairly
6
To liberal theology and some of the named conceptions cf. above, Ch. 1.1.3 and Ch.
2.1.
7
This is obvious e.g. from the intense mutual polemic with B. Hebblethwaite, who
copes with Hick’s conception repeatedly and whom Hick himself repeatedly quotes as one
of his major opponents representing the traditional orthodoxy. Cf. HICK, 7KH 0HWDSKRU;
HEBBLETHWAITE, 7KH,QFDUQDWLRQ, and above, Ch. 1.2.3, fn. 114. Next to the famous vol-
ume 7KH 0\WK RI *RG ,QFDUQDWH, another important programmatical set of pluralist texts
(by the authors themselves considered for “the theological Rubicon”) is 7KH0\WKRI&KULV
WLDQ8QLTXHQHVV7RZDUGD3OXUDOLVWLF7KHRORJ\RI5HOLJLRQV, ed. J. HICK and P.F. KNITTER
(Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1987). – To the pluralism of Hick, Pannikar, Smith and others
cf. e.g. KNITTER, ,QWURGXFLQJ, 109–172; D’COSTA, &KULVWLDQLW\, 9–18; HOŠEK, 1DFHVWČN
GLDORJX, 91–105; S.M. HEIM, 6DOYDWLRQV 7UXWK DQG 'LIIHUHQFH LQ 5HOLJLRQV (Maryknoll:
Orbis Books, 1995), 13–126; W. PANNENBERG, “Religious Pluralism and Conflicting
Truth Claims”, in &KULVWLDQ8QLTXHQHVV5HFRQVLGHUHG7KH0\WKRID3OXUDOLVWLF7KHRORJ\
RI5HOLJLRQV, ed. G. D’COSTA (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1990), 96–106.
8
Cf. HICK, 7KH0HWDSKRU, 18 and 9.
9
HICK, 7KH0HWDSKRU, ix; cf. similarly already in “Jesus and the World Religions”, 180:
“If Jesus was literally God incarnate, and if it is by his death alone that men can be saved,
and by their response to him alone that they can appropriate that salvation, then the only
doorway to eternal life is Christian faith.” Cf. similarly SCHMIDT-LEUKEL, *RWW, 277.
10
HICK, “Jesus and the World Religions”, 172–173.
late in the first century”. 11 Whereas the synoptic Gospels are centered around
Jesus’ teaching about the kingdom of God, in the Fourth Gospel “Jesus is the
subject of his own preaching; and the church’s theology has largely followed
the Johannine re-writing of his teaching”. 12 Not mentioning Paul at all (again:
typically for the liberal approach, cf. above, Ch. 2.1), Hick sees the main mis-
take of church doctrine in taking literally what was originally meant as myth
or metaphor. The incarnation as the elaborated idea of God’s sonship does not
describe ontology, it rather declares Jesus’ “significance to the world”. 13 In
the current context of other religions, however, Jesus is one of many spiritual
leaders who are all mediations of the divine Logos. Following another im-
portant liberal shift, started by Schleiermacher and elaborated by D.F. Strauss
in the first place, Hick differentiates between the divine Logos as the pres-
ence of the Ultimate Reality (as he calls God) and the human representatives
or mediators of the Logos. Regarding the global situation, we must see the
whole of humankind as the object of God’s love. However, regarding the plu-
rality of cultures, there is not only one revelation possible. Rather, God re-
veals himself through different men “in their state of ‘natural religion’”. 14
Hence, we can say that all people are saved by the Logos, but we cannot say,
all people are saved by Jesus of Nazareth. 15
Some twenty-five years later, Hick published his Christology with the title
7KH0HWDSKRURI*RG,QFDUQDWH (1993). This text did not ignite such a huge
polemic anymore, moreover, the title itself declares a slight shift in Hick’s
position: he put aside the term of myth and speaks about the incarnation in
terms of metaphor.16 Nevertheless, his position remains in fact the same: in-
carnation is a metaphor for the man Jesus who “embodied, or incarnated, the
ideal of human life lived in faithful response to God, so that God was able to
act through him”. 17 Therefore, Christianity is “one among a number of differ-
ent human responses to the ultimate transcendent Reality that we call God”. 18
Hick summarizes his own position explicitly as an alternative to the tradition-
al church Christianity:
“The alternative is a Christian faith which takes Jesus as our supreme (but not necessarily
only) spiritual guide; as our personal and communal lord, leader, guru, exemplar, and
teacher, but not as literally himself God; and which sees Christianity as one authentic con-
11
Ibid., 171–172.
12
Ibid., 176.
13
Ibid., 179.
14
Ibid., 180.
15
Ibid., 181. To the discussion of the myth-debate cf. DALFERTH, &UXFLILHG DQG 5H
VXUUHFWHG, 1–37.
16
HICK, 7KH 0HWDSKRU, 12. But the metaphor, when extended, can be developed into
myth, ibid., 105.
17
Ibid., ix.
18
Ibid.
text of salvation/liberation amongst others, not opposing but interacting in mutually crea-
tive ways with the other great paths.” 19
The problem with Christian theology is still the same: “Jesus the eschatologi-
cal prophet was transformed within Christian thought into God the Son come
down from heaven to live a human life and save us by his atoning death.” 20
This transformation, then, became the ground for Christian superiority. 21 In-
stead of this, Hick wants to present his “own preferred conjecture”, which
dominates his book and which is, however, based on quite deliberately cho-
sen biblical references and on the work of E.P. Sanders. The result shows Je-
sus as an eschatological prophet, whose figure was secondarily transformed
over the figure of a miracle-making man to his finally spiritual meaning for
all.22 Yet, Hick holds this universal spiritual meaning of Jesus: “Nevertheless
he was so transparently open to the divine presence that his life and teaching
have a universal significance which can still help to guide our lives today.” 23
However, Jesus “did not understand himself to be God”.24 This is the content
of the “Nicene-Chalcedonian dogma”, which “collapsed” though, because the
church was never able to elaborate its reasonable and uncontradictional
meaning.25 For Hick, putting himself into a position of a neutral historian, it
is clear that either the divinity of Jesus can be objectively shown and main-
tained, or there was nothing like that. Rather, following the Troeltschian
premise, there cannot be anything absolutely unique and the Christian church
is not different from other human societies.26 Similarly, Jesus Christ was one
of the great religious figures who “in their different ways ‘incarnated’ the
19
Ibid., 162–163.
20
Ibid., 5.
21
Ibid., 9.
22
Hick’s conjecture is based on a selection of New Testament texts, among others the
Lukan texts from the Road to Emmaus, where the disciples call Jesus “prophet mighty in
deed and word” (Lk 24:19), and from Peter’s sermon on Pentecost in Acts 2, where Peter
calls Jesus “a man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that
God did through him among you” (Acts 2:22). Both these texts should have preserved the
original and authentic view of Jesus. However, when one reads both texts to the end, it is
obvious that they presuppose bodily resurrection and call Jesus “ku,rioj”. This context – at
least as one of the possible developments of the early tradition – does not play any role for
Hick.
23
Ibid., 26.
24
Ibid., 27.
25
Ibid., 29, cf. 45: “[E]very attempt to explicate it [the dogma of Chalcedon] proves
unacceptable, it can only function as a ritual utterance whose sense must not be examined
too closely and which can only serve to inhibit and stultify thought.” Cf. critically to it
SCHMIDT-LEUKEL, *RWW, 287.
26
HICK, 7KH0HWDSKRU, 34. Cf. against it the critique of N.T. Wright, above, Ch. 9.1, fn
5.
ideal of human life lived in response to the divine Reality”. 27 Therefore, Hick
proposes the model of “plural incarnations”, where, however, the term ‘incar-
nation’ is understood rather as a metaphor for divine presence in a human be-
ing. 28
Hick sees thus the solution in taking DOOWKHRORJLFDOODQJXDJHDVPHWDSKRU
LFDO: it is best when we take all the terms of church Christology as metaphors
for the importance of Jesus. 29 And it is a “perennial theological mistake”
when one takes “metaphorical language literally”. 30
“A good metaphor – Jesus as a ‘son of God’, one in whom the divine Spirit was powerfully
present and whose life has revealed to others the reality and love and claim of God – was
turned into the metaphysical theory that Jesus had two natures, one human and the other
divine. That theory has never been able to be formulated in a coherent and intelligible way
that is also religiously acceptable; but the living metaphor in which it is rooted, combined
with the aura surrounding dogmatic formulations within the church, has ensured that the
attempts to make sense of it continue to this day. The original metaphor of incarnation can
express the distinctively Christian response to Jesus as mediating God's saving presence.
This response was embodied in a life of common discipleship, thereby creating the Chris-
tian community. And the son of God metaphor is part of the private, idiosyncratic family
speech of this community. But it should not be turned into a metaphysical dogma which is
supposed to have objective and universal truth.” 31
This brings, however, another important point, which is hidden between the
lines: when we take all terms as metaphors then we make them into a matter
of religious speech, not of theology. For theology, they become obsolete be-
cause theology – at least the ‘right’ theology – knows and expresses better
and more precisely what these metaphors actually intended to say themselves.
And, at the same time, it raises the claim that only this theology prescribes
what is to be taken as metaphor and what we should take literally.
“The idea of the incarnation of God in the life of Jesus, so understood, is thus not a met a-
physical claim about Jesus having two natures, but a metaphorical statement of the signifi-
cance of a life through which God was acting on earth. In Jesus we see a man living in a
startling degree of awareness of God and of response to God’s presence.”32
Metaphors are religious metaphors; they form the Christian experience and
faith. However, Hick states here implicitly – and this is a point of critique
commonly expressed against the pluralist conceptions in general – that what
the Christian tradition says and repeated for centuries about Jesus is not pre-
cisely what it actually wants to say. The religious speech is here implicitly
27
Ibid., 98.
28
Ibid., 89–98.
29
Ibid., 99–111, cf. 78 for the conception of NHQRVLV, and 153 for Trinity.
30
Ibid., 114.
31
Ibid., 79.
32
Ibid., 106.
accused that it VD\VVRPHWKLQJWKDWLWGRHVQRWPHDQ. The pluralist theologian

knows better while a believer does not understand one’s own words.33 This is
one of the irritating points in the pluralist approach. 34
Followingly, the question necessarily arises, whether it has any sense to
keep up the metaphorical speech when it is that risky and when believers who
express their faith in metaphors face the danger that they actually believe
falsely. Obviously, Hick does not differentiate between the ZD\ RI UHIHUULQJ
and the UHIHUHQW itself. When the way of referring is wrong, then, according to
Hick, the referent is also wrong. 35 However, it is this presupposition that is
wrong.
Closely bound to it is another critical point: IURPZKLFKVWDQFHGRSOXUDO
LVWVVSHDN? They seem to criticize the particular traditions from a view from
nowhere, from a presumably objective point of view, from a God-eye per-
spective, which sees the proverbial elephant from a distance in its whole, but
which, however, in reality does not exist.36
In his attempt of a global point of view, Hick tries to reframe the view on
religions. First, he postulates
33
Implicitly, Hick draws this line of factual argument to its fatal end (with the example
of original fall into sin): “For if we believe that there never was a human fall from an orig-
inal paradisal state, why risk confusing ourselves and others by speaking as if there were?”
(ibid., 116). In the end, the metaphorical language makes itself obsolete.
34
The more paradoxical is one of Hick’s final statements: “But it is not for us Chri s-
tians to tell people of other traditions how to do their own business. Rather, we should at-
tend to our own. It is to this task that I have been trying to contribute in this book.” The
problem of the pluralist approach is exactly this: that it says how all religions have it and
prescribes how they should have it. For similar critique cf. also HEIM, 6DOYDWLRQV, 143.
35
In a truly oversimplified way, Hick shows this lack of differentiation at the very end
of his book, cf. ibid., 163: “The ideas of the Trinity and of the two natures of Christ are in
fact incomprehensible to most people. In comparison a non-traditional Christian faith can
be genuinely simple and yet profound. Consider the belief that there is an ultimate trans-
cendent Reality which is the source and ground of everything; that this Reality is benign in
relation to human life; that the universal presence of this Reality is reflected (‘incarnated’)
in human terms in the lives of the world’s great spiritual leaders; and that amongst these
we have found Jesus to be our principal revelation of the Real and our principal guide for
living. This is basic religious faith in a Christian form. It is our human response to the
mystery of the universe, powered by religious experience and guided by rational thought.”
Is the mere fact that something is complicated really an argument for abandoning it or for a
deliberate simplification?
36
Cf. SCHMID-LEUKEL, *RWW, 224–226, who underlines the perspectivity of all know-
ledge. This correct notion, however, is in contradiction with the factual claim of the plur a-
list position, which ignores that it speaks itself from a particular position as well; cf. HEIM,
6DOYDWLRQV, 158. In this context, it is interesting to mention that within the global interreli-
gious dialogue, the pluralist approach is maintained by Christian theologians only (cf.
HOŠEK, 1DFHVWČNGLDORJX, 101–102).
“an ultimate transcendent reality (which I am referring to as the Real) which, being beyond
the scope of our human concepts, cannot be directly experienced by us as it is in itself but
only as it appears in terms of our various human thought-forms.”37
Then, second, the particular deities and religions are identified “as different
manifestations of the Real within different historical modes of human con-
sciousness”, representing the transforming presence of the Real in human
life.38
There is thus, on one hand, the Real, which is, however, unaccessible –
Hick conceives it as the Kantian ‘Ding an sich’. 39 Nevertheless, it can be ex-
perienced in various human phenomena – in religions, which are thus always
human answers, human conceptions of the divine, or even human con-
structs.40 These are always shaped by different individual and cultural factors,
which “consitutes an uniquely shaped and coloured ‘lens’ through which we
are concretely aware of the Real” in its particular manifestations. 41 This
means, however, that although we can feel that there is a Real ‘an sich’, we
can never approach it as such. The deities of particular religions are only in-
dicators or signposts towards the Real, never the Real itself; or rather, they
are deformations of the Real – which Hick himself admits in the end:
“Putting all this together, the picture that I am suggesting can be outlined as follows: our
human religious experience, variously shaped as it is by our sets of religious concepts and
practices, is a cognitive response to the universal presence of the ultimate divine Reality
that, in itself, exceeds human conceptuality. This Reality is manifested to us in ways
formed by a variety of human ideas, as the range of divine personae and metaphysical im-
personae witnessed to in the history of religions. Each major tradition, built around its own
distinctive way of thinking-and-experiencing the Real, has developed its answers to the
perennial questions of our origin and destiny, constituting more or less comprehensive and
coherent cosmologies and eschatologies. These are human creations which, by their associ-
ation with living streams of religious experience, have become invested with a sacred a u-
thority. However, they cannot all be wholly true; probably none is wholly true; perhaps all
are partly true.”42
37
Ibid., 140.
38
Ibid. and 143.
39
In my study 3UDYGD XQLYHU]LWD D DNDGHPLFNp VYRERG\ >7UXWK 8QLYHUVLW\ DQG $FD
GHPLF )UHHGRP@, 22–61, I tried to show that when considering our relation to reality, we
cannot remain standing with Kant, but we have to proceed to the positions as represented
by Peirce, Putnam, and Habermas (who all have a Kantian background). Their positions
show clearly that our stance is always particular; that the pure reason is never transcenden-
tally pure but rather always concretely situated, and that, therefore, a certain pragmatism in
our relation to the external reality is necessary, based on the diagnostic rationality in the
perspective of internal realism (cf. also above, Ch. 1.2.1).
40
HICK, 7KH0HWDSKRU, 4: “For our concepts of God are human constructs.”
41
Ibid., 141.
42
Ibid., 146.
What seems at first sight to be an acceptable fact of human inability to reach

to God (ILQLWXP QRQ FDSD[ LQILQLWL), pays dearly for God, who proves to be
unable to enter into the human reality as God-Self. Yet this is exactly, what
Christian faith confesses and has as its ground: that God became human, that
God in Jesus Christ entered the finite reality. Stressing the direction from b e-
low, the outreach of particular religions in their particular metaphors towards
God, Hick cannot think of the opposite direction: that God could enter or re-
veal himself DV*RG. With this, he misses the self-understanding of Christian-
ity in its most fundamental point and, moreover, the self-understanding of
every religion because no religion, which worships a divinity, would say that
this divinity is not God-Self but only his incomplete and fragmentary mani-
festation. Hick’s reframing of the God-world relationship thus does not match
the lived faith: his God remains too far and unable to communicate as God -
Self with the world. And the religions remain too low being forced to get sat-
isfied only with particular and deformed manifestations of the Real. 43
The last critical point against such a pluralist construction concerns the
Real itself: WKH Real presupposes that there is one God, only one universal
Reality. Do really all religions believe in the same divinity in the end? Such a
statement would presuppose even more than a God-eye view; it would have
been a view, which sees the whole LQFOXGLQJ God-Self.
With his pluralist theology of religions *RWWRKQH*UHQ]HQ (2005), 36FKPLGW/HXNHO goes
firmly but with a mild tone, in the footsteps of Hick. At the beginning of his christological
chapter, he mentions the objection against the pluralist position as a “farewell to Christi-
anity”, which is motivated mostly christologically: in the view of its opponents, pluralism
cannot be united with a Christian interpretation of Jesus. 44 As was seen in Hick, the inter-
nal perspective of Christian faith contradicts the external perspective of religions in plural-
ism. Schmidt-Leukel, however, tries to mediate between both lines of thought with his
stress on the theology of revelation. According to him, revelation (and salvation) are a uni-
versal issue: “the self-revelation of God is already always given to every human.” 45 In the
middle of this revelation-based conception stands Jesus, yet not as the self-revelation of
God but as the revelator-communicator (not revelator-instructor because revelation is a
matter of communication, not of instructions or informations), i.e., as one of the mediators
between God (who, in his self-revelation, is the content of revelation) and the human as the
receiver of the revelation.46 Schmidt-Leukel, like Hick, conceives thus Jesus explicitly as a
prophet, who was a mediator of divine Logos that is different from Jesus: Jesus mediates
“who God is for us”.47 This is to be stressed: for us, not for everybody, and even not for all
43
However, Hick explicitly rejects inclusivism as well as exclusivism because they both
insist, in the end, on the superior position of Christianity, cf. ibid., 147–148.
44
SCHMIDT-LEUKEL, *RWW, 270.
45
Ibid., 275.
46
Ibid., 270–271.
47
Ibid., 274, cf. 275–276.
Christians.48 Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, therefore, are not the constitutive points of
salvation – the only constitutive point is the self-revelation of God –, they are only its par-
ticular representation, which, at least for some, opens the path toward salvation. 49 This,
however, makes it possible for Schmidt-Leukel, contrary to Hick, to accept the notion of
incarnation in a metaphorical sense, where – in an almost Nestorian manner – one strictly
differentiates between Jesus and Logos. 50 Then, Schmidt-Leukel can interpret the dogma of
Chalcedon in a positive way, although with a massive shift on the part of Jesus’ divinity:
“We can understand Chalcedon in this way: First, it maintains the real and true humanity
of Jesus who – as Chalcedon says – was ‘like us in all things apart from sin’. Second,
Chalcedon expresses that this human became indeed the medium of the self-disclosure of
God. The classical two natures relate thus to the medium and to what is mediated: as the
mediator of the salvific presence of God, Jesus is truly human; and what is mediated
through him is truly God.” 51 Obviously, the ‘natures’ do not pertain to Jesus in the same
way: while he LV fully human, he LVQRW God, but he mediates God. The two natures are re-
formulated as humanity, which is a medium for divinity. 52 The final point, however, does
not lie in the model of “Jesus as a symbol of God” (R. Haight, cf. below) but, moreover, in
the conclusion that this model is not valid only for Jesus exclusively: “[T]he incarnation
and the symbolic mutual indwelling of the divine and human nature is not limited to the
person of Jesus, but can be encountered whereever humans and humanity becomes a medi-
um of divine self-disclosure.”53 Like in the case of Hick, there is again the same position as
in liberal theology: Jesus in his humanity is “transparent for the presence of God”. Com-
pared to other people who are all to a certain extent open to the presence of the Logos, Je-
sus was fully transparent and fully open, i.e., gradually different to all, yet not qualitatively
different.54 Because the anthropological base is universal, the presence of Logos in humans
can be universal also. The extent of the intensity of the mediation of the Logos in different
people is different; the main proponents of great religions count all among the big human
mediators of God’s presence. They do not concur with each other but represent God in dif-
ferent contexts and cultures.55 In this sense, Schmidt-Leukel can write: “Jesus, in his func-
tion as the human and finite revealer is the ‘image of the unvisible God’, resp. the ‘Word
become flesh’.”56 But still, contrary to the fundamental notion of Christian faith and theol-
ogy, at least in its orthodox form, Jesus is not the self-revelation of God but the human
mediator of a self-revelation of God. His acting thus does not affect the Trinity, which
Schmidt-Leukel is able to hold, although in the form of a rather threefold structure (God –
Logos – Spirit); Jesus remains wholly in the sphere of human experience of God and of the
human answer to this experience. 57 The abyss between God and human religions, which
Hick opened, remains and not even God can cross it: God cannot reveal God-Self to hu-
mans really as God, as God-Self. In the end, Schmidt-Leukel cannot fulfill what he prom-
48
Ibid., 275. Schmidt-Leukel sees as an alternative mediator also Mary, “the Mother of
God”.
49
Ibid., 280–281.
50
Ibid., 287 and 289.
51
Ibid., 290.
52
Ibid. Schmidt-Leukel refers here to R. Haight (cf. below).
53
Ibid., 291.
54
Ibid., cf. e.g. the position of M.D. Krüger, above, Ch. 2.1.
55
Ibid., 296.
56
Ibid., 297.
57
Ibid., 298–301.
ised in the beginning: that his conception will be centered around the theology of revela-
tion as the self-revelation of God. This is the crucial point that pluralism obviously is not
able to think. Hereby, God is pushed too far; he remains only a far “transcendent horizon
of all reality”.58 At the same time, he is too weak because he cannot act and be present in
the world as God-Self but only in a fragmentary mediation.59
Another important contribution that can be considered a pluralist one, is made by 5RJHU
+DLJKW with his book -HVXV6\PERORI*RG (1999).60 As the title suggests, Haight, from his
explicitly postmodern point of view,61 presented a complete Christology, conceived decid-
edly and explicitly from below. He is convinced that with postmodern plurality, Christiani-
ty enters a new period where old answers are not sufficient anymore. The situation requires
a new approach and a new language, which would, however, integrate the old traditions
and the old traditional answers, but, at the same time, explain intelligibly and coherently
the universality of Jesus Christ within the context of other religions and their role in God’s
providence.62 In the centre of Christian faith stands Jesus as a symbol of God, mediating
“in both directions: it draws human consciousness toward God, and it mediates God’s
presence to the human spirit”.63 It is a conception that, in its principle, underlies the previ-
ously debated proposal of Schmidt-Leukel and in which Haight struggles with the pluralist
tendency that all religion should be theocentric (which would mean for Christianity, not
christocentric). He tries to interrelate both theocentricity and christocentricity, yet with a
clear asymmetry: Jesus is not God himself; Christology, in fact, transcends Jesus although
it does not leave him behind. He is the witness pointing to God, the mediator of the trans-
cendent reality – the symbol of God.64 Yet, a symbol is – according to Haight’s general
definition of symbol – that through which something other than itself is known.” 65 Then, if
Jesus is a symbol of God, although he reveals and makes God-Self present, he SHUGHILQL
WLRQHP cannot be God-Self. He is only an analogy to God, or, with Haight’s own words, a
theocentric “parable of God”.66 “Jesus is the human symbol who makes present that which
is other than himself, God.”67
What Hick called a religious metaphor, Haight calls – similarly to Tillich, to whom he
does not refer directly – symbols. That is the case of all christological language, i.e., of
resurrection, the empty tomb, Chalcedon, and also, e.g., Trinity.68 Nevertheless, the mis-
58
Ibid., 298.
59
The same is the problem of the theology of P. Tillich, cf. GALLUS, 'HU0HQVFK, 139–
149, and the final thesis ibid., 213: “God is transcendent where he should be immanent;
and, he is immanent where he should be transcendent.”
60
Cf. also R. HAIGHT, 7KH)XWXUHRI&KULVWRORJ\ (New York: Continuum, 2005); more
in detail to Haight’s proposal cf. JANDEJSEK, &KULVWRORJLH.
61
Cf. HAIGHT, -HVXV, 330–334.
62
Ibid., 47–51. Haight himself refers very often, throughout of whis whole book, to the
conception of Schillebeeckx.
63
Ibid., xiii. At the same time, this is Haight’s interpretation of the two-natures doctri-
ne. Like in Schmidt-Leukel, the asymmetry remains: Jesus is fully human, God is only re-
presented in him; Jesus LV the human nature and he PHGLDWHV the divine nature (which he is
not), cf. ibid., 205.
64
Cf. ibid., e.g. 45
65
Ibid., 8.
66
Ibid., 88.
67
Ibid., 297. More to Haight’s conception of religious symbols cf. ibid., 196–202.
68
Cf. ibid., 465 and 473.
take, which is often made in the church and theology according to Haight, remains the
same as in Hick: it is the historicizing and hypostatization of symbols.69 Against it, like
Hick, Haight appeals not to the level of theology but rather to the level of “deeper Chris-
tian experience”, which has a “deeper truth” and which was interpreted falsely in the old
theology – as if the theology would not be the expression of Christian experience as well. 70
Like Hick and Schmidt-Leukel, Haight also notices that the old church Christology
(with which Haight deals extensively) is based on the “Johanine framework”.71 In Nicea,
the Logos was mistakenly hypostatized and the original Christology from below became
Christology from above. 72 Haight, therefore, tries to elaborate his own symbolic interpreta-
tion of Nicea along the lines of his conception of religious symbol: Jesus is not the Logos,
he reveals Logos.73 Chalcedon, then, stressed the Johannine approach, abandoned the Jesus
of the synoptic Gospels, and portrayed him as a divine person. That is unacceptable for
Haight because his first hermeneutical rule that he uses to approach Chalcedon is that “Je-
sus was and is a human being”, meaning obviously ‘human being and nothing beyond it’. 74
Jesus is not God, but God is encountered in Jesus truly and in a paradigmatic way: “Jesus
Christ is exemplar.”75 He is an exemplar for a true human being and for a true symboliza-
tion of God. Like his theological contrahents, Haight pleads for the Antiochene type of
Christology, which should be “consistent with the demands of a christology from below”.
(However, the Antiochenes construed their Christology unanimously from above, dealing
with the humanity rather as something problematic more than as the starting point. Para-
doxically, it was Cyril who was able to ascribe humanity to the Logos much more, cf.
above, Ch. 3.2.1). In Haight’s view, Chalcedon is a “dialectical complement” to Nicea:
while Nicea stressed the divinity of Jesus, Chalcedon allegedly emphasized his humanity. 76
This reinterpretation, however, does not match the historical sources or the intention of
Chalcedon: the Creed tries to keep full symmetry between the natures, or inclines a bit
more to the Cyrilline asymmetry of incarnation of the divine Logos as the proper subject of
the person of Jesus Christ (which is fully developed in the neo-Chalcedonism). Haight tries
to interpret it against the backdrop of the opposite asymmetry where Jesus is a human who
only symbolizes and reveals God. This position, close rather to Schleiermacher and liberal
theology, cannot be found in the orthodox line of the old church at all. The stress on the
full humanity of Jesus comes again with the Enlightenment (cf. above, Ch. 3).77 Next to it,
Haight fully omits – from his perspective consistently, though not from the perspective of
Nicea, from which it is impossible – the trinitarian context of Christology.
69
Ibid., 123–126 and 473–480.
70
Ibid., 480. With this, Haight repeats the same criticized pattern as Hick: Christians
experience something what they are not themselves able to understand and express rightly;
they actually do not know what they are experiencing, it must be said to them.
71
Ibid., 278.
72
Ibid., 280.
73
Ibid., 284–285.
74
Ibid., 289 and 292.
75
Ibid., 294.
76
Ibid., 296.
77
Haight is right that the stress on the divinity of Jesus could overshadow his humanity,
as it was the case in Christology for long centuries (cf. ibid., 298, fn. 37). However, as I
wanted to show, divinity and humanity do no need to exclude or diminish one another. Any
interpretation of Chalcedon, which would go in this direction, must prove aporetic in the
effect.
Following his symbolical interpretation, Haight states that the resurrection – which is
for him the crucial point and basis for Christology! 78 – was not a historical or physical
event; rather, it is meta-empirical meta-history (which Haight considers to be a middle po-
sition between existentialist and historicist position). For Jesus, it means his assumption
into the life of God, i.e., exaltation and glorification within God’s reality. The reason for
this assertion is quite simple: “because God is the way Jesus revealed God to be, Jesus is
alive.” According to Haight, this held for the disciples who encountered Jesus directly, as
well as it still holds for other Christians who are convinced that Jesus’ message is true. 79
For believers, however, Haight reduces resurrection to a symbol of an “engaged com-
mitment” of faith and “opennes to all reality and to the future”, which brings new possibili-
ties into sight.80 Moreover, it was these new possibilities and this new “human experience
that generated the initial conviction that Jesus was alive with God”. 81 For the hope – or
“faith-hope”, as Haight puts it – is a general anthropolgical element with transcendental
roots. The symbol of resurrection, then, is “the confirmation and the fulfillment of this
hope”.82 In any case, the religious symbols are symbols of an already constituted faith.
Haight thus construes this line: earthly Jesus – faith arising with the help of the Spirit from
the memory of his acting – Christian religious symbols, which express transcendental hope
and openness to the future.83
The symbol of resurrection, then, should shape salvation, which lies in the line with the
new opened possibilities. Salvation is grounded in Jesus and his revealing of God. Haight
works hard to prove the assertion that “Jesus is salvation”.84 However, in this conception,
Jesus can only point the way and direction of salvation, because he is “an exemplar of hu-
man existence”.85 He is himself an exemplar of salvation but not its cause and guarantee. In
a more detailed view, Haight defines salvation only presently and quite vaguely: “[T]hat
people participate in life more fully precisely in being more fully aware of their own reali-
ty.”86 Salvation is the full and intense participation in life, which becomes an “eternal
depth and breadth and height”; obviously, eternity is conceived indentical with fulfilled
time. “Salvation must be something that can also be experienced now.” 87 What is missing
here is salvation as the rescue from the miseries of life. Haight only declares that the faith-
hope “relativizes suffering and death by an infinite cosmic context of love and eternal life”
78
Ibid., 207–209.
79
Ibid., 150, cf. 209.
80
Ibid., 125–126.
81
Ibid., 129. Historically, regarding the emergence of faith in the disciples, the resur-
rection message is rooted in the acting of the earthly Jesus, in which Jesus symbolized God
and the disciples’ memory of it, cf. ibid., 143. Their “corporate experience” at the begin-
ning of the Jesus movement symbolizes the “pouring out of the Spirit” (ibid., 144).
82
Ibid., 141. Here, Haight follows the conceptions, which conceive humans as an onto-
logical and existential question asking for God (Rahner, Tillich, today e.g. Pröpper). Then,
everyone – knowingly or unknowingly – seeks God. And God is WKH answer to human ex-
istence (cf. ibid., 192–195).
83
Ibid., 146, cf. 150.
84
Ibid., 357.
85
Ibid., 358.
86
Ibid., 147.
87
Ibid., 355.
because “[r]esurrection transforms human existence” – meaning “the experience of life”.88

This solution, however, raises a series of questions: Is it enough only to transform the ex-
perience and not the ontical state? Can suffering and death really be relativized that simp-
ly? Should not suffering and death, on the contrary, be taken very seriously instead of rela-
tivizing them?
Obviously, the pluralist concept forces some shifts of traditional emphases: First, sote-
riology is focused strongly on the present life and his quality and intesity. Second, Chris-
tology in the strict sense shifts toward pneumatology: what is salvific and important, in the
end, is not the person of the human Jesus as such but Jesus as the mediator of God, i.e., as
the bearer of the Spirit (or, in Hick and Schmidt-Leukel, of the Logos). The historical Jesus
is only the medium, the carrier, the instrument for divinity to act in the particular environ-
ment.
However, what Haight stresses much more than Hick or Schmidt-Leukel, is his Chris-
tian perspective, which firmly holds the centrality of Jesus: “[F]or Christianity, Jesus is the
central mediation of God in history” and thus “the center of faith”.89 Yet because religions
aim to the same God in the end, the central position of Jesus in Christianity “can be en-
riched with other religious truths”. 90 This fact should strenghten the Christian experience
of God – the universal love of God is manifested also in other religions.91 Haight knows
that Christians will judge other religions always from their own position where Jesus
Christ is the norm. His pluralist conception is thus explicitly rooted in the Christian experi-
ence, from which the judgement about other religions is derived. 92 However, Haight refus-
es to step over to the position of inclusivism: for him, the central position of Jesus is valid
only in Christianity. Other religions have other normative or fundamental manifestations of
God, which do not even need to be a person.93 And these manifestations and their particu-
lar forms are to be distinguished from the truth they mediate.
This however, similarly and again as in Hick, relativizes all these particular manifesta-
tions in a problematic way. Despite of all proclaimed normativity of Jesus for Christianity,
it is valid, in the end, that “[n]either Jesus nor Christianity mediates any complete pos-
ession of God.”94 In the end, Jesus does not mediate God but only – as other religions do as
well – “God’s salvation”.95 Yet, it was the claim of Christianity from the beginning that in
Jesus Christ, Christians have – not a complete posession but certainly a complete
knowledge of God because Jesus Christ is the self-revelation of God. This split between
God and particular religions in the pluralist conceptions pushes God into unreachable dis-
tance: God remains a mystery. 96 And the only thing we know for sure within the particular
religions is that whatever they worship and consider for God, it is not God-Self but only
his particular and incomplete manifestation. Again: in the end, this God proves to be una-
ble to reveal God-Self as God to his creation and thus remains captured in his unattainable
88
Ibid., 148, cf. 350: “By representing God’s action for salvation, Jesus makes con-
scious and explicit to human beings something that would not have been revealed, known,
or conscious in the same way without him.”
89
Ibid., 7 and 150.
90
Ibid., 410.
91
Ibid., 413.
92
Ibid., 414.
93
Ibid., 415–416.
94
Ibid., 417.
95
Cf. e.g. 485.
96
Cf. ibid. and 465.
divinity. When Haight pleads for interreligious dialogue and parallel universal claims of
particular religions, which do not need to exclude each other, it could be, therefore, only a
dialogue of false claims and religions because none of them has to do really with God-
Self.97 It is, therefore, only understandable that in the final point of his Christology, Haight
makes a side step towards Spirit Christology: away from the particular person of Jesus and
toward Spirit or Logos as the effective divine principle, which is the proper cause of salva-
tion.98
The PDMRUSUREOHPVRIWKHSOXUDOLVWDSSURDFK are well known today, I have

already mentioned some of them in connection with the conception of Hick: 99
Pluralism seems to be, in the end, not pluralistic at all: all differences of
religious traditions are only particular manifestations of the one and only dei-
ty. Religions are different human responses to this one deity, all fragmentary
in the same way, so that the differences are equalized and are not the proper
object of this approach. The proper object is the divine itself, which, howe v-
er, remains mystery. In the end, it is a huge monist conception, where differ-
ences and particular traditions lose their importance because they are all inte-
grated into RQHXQLYHUVDOPHWDSDWWHUQ. From this point of view, the specifics
of the particular religions lose their importance, the particular religions seem
to be simply interchangeable because they are not the subject of the ultimate
importance (which is the divinity). 100
The point of view, from which pluralism construes its theory, is a point
from nowhere, an impossible and QHXWUDOPHWDSHUVSHFWLYHDERYHHYHU\WKLQJ,
even above God-Self. On one hand, this gives to the pluralists a great strength
of conviction and to their view a strong persuasiveness, on the other hand,
however, it evokes an intense impression of superiority that presumes to
simply know better.
And yet, the roots of the pluralist conception are quite visible: it is the tr a-
dition of Enlightenment with its critique of traditional church doctrine and,
also, with its terms, as it is the case in the term of religion, shaped obviously
by the modern European tradition. This results into an inner contradiction
where pluralism proposes an allegedly neutral view of religions based on a
very particular conception and criteria.
One of these unreflected presuppositions is the DSULRUL-presupposed essen-
tialist conception of religion: there is a SURSHUHVVHQFHRIUHOLJLRQKLGGHQ be-
hind the phenomena and particular traditions. However, pluralists propose
97
Ibid., 417–423.
98
Ibid., 465–466.
99
I loosely follow HOŠEK, 1DFHVWČNGLDORJX, 100–105.
100
Cf. U.H.J. KÖRTNER, “Synkretismus und Differenzwahrnehmung als Problem einer
Theologie der Religionen”, in 7KHRORJLH GHU 5HOLJLRQHQ, ed. CH. DANZ and U.H.J.
KÖRTNER (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2005), 63; J. B. COBB, JR., “Beyond ‘Plural-
ism’”, in &KULVWLDQ8QLTXHQHVV5HFRQVLGHUHG7KH0\WKRID3OXUDOLVWLF7KHRORJ\RI5HOL
JLRQV, ed. G. D’COSTA (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1990), 81–95.
this thesis without dealing with particular traditions or only by relativizing

them in order to maintain their theory. Therefore, they relativize the partic u-
lar doctrinal statements in favor of some allegedly deeper truths of pre-
reflexive and pre-verbal religious experience. With this, pluralists say again
that they understand the religious experiences of the others better than they
understand themselves. Concerning Christianity, the doctrine and theology
tends to be understood as a deformation of the original experience of faith.
This means that within the particular religions, any realistic or ontological
conception of God and his relation to the world are heavily criticized. The
language of religious traditions is relativized only to V\PEROV RU PHWDSKRUV,
which actually express something else than the particular believers believe
and think. The external pluralist perspective contradicts heavily with the in-
ternal perspective of particular religions.
It is a certain paradox that it is almost exclusivly only Christian theologi-
ans who share the pluralist approach. One can guess that somewhere deep, the
motivation and shape of pluralism come from hidden and exclusivist Chris-
tian presuppositions that it is the one God who reveals himself to people.
Hence, the pluralist approach seems to be in contradiction with itself and
with its own presuppositions as well as with the particular traditions who feel
to be rather violated than understood. Christology is a good example of this.
,QFOXVLYLVP
A middle way – keeping the Christian specifics but remaining open to other
religious traditions, at least where they converge with Christianity – try to go
the LQFOXVLYLVW FRQFHSWLRQV.101 Together with pluralism, they are convinced
that God’s salvation is universal, but, contrary to pluralism, it is the Christian
tradition, which is universally normative and has priority, although not eve-
ryone must necessarily become a Christian in order to be saved.
J. Dupuis, in his book 7RZDUGD&KULVWLDQ7KHRORJ\RI5HOLJLRXV3OXUDOLVP (1997), goes –
at least in the first steps – in the same direction as the pluralist theologians, with whom he
is in constant dialogue. He tries to work with the Christian specifics in a way, which would
allow an open path to integrate other religious traditions. However, contrary to the plural-
ists, he does not relativize Christianity as such, but seeks multiple ways within it.102 He is
led by the conviction that the plurality of religions is a part of the plan of God – of the
Christian trinitarian God. Contrary to Hick, Dupuis clearly states that God as the ultimate
101
Cf. D’COSTA, &KULVWLDQLW\, 19–25, discussing Rahner’s approach; HOŠEK, 1DFHVWČ
NGLDORJX, 75–91, with the example of P. Tillich; KNITTER, ,QWURGXFLQJ, 63–108, mentio-
ning Rahner, the Second Vatican Council, D’Costa, Dupuis and others.
102
He searches also intensively unanimity with the official documents of the catholic
church, which was much more tolerant towards him than e.g. to Haight (cf. the official no-
tifications by the Congregation for the doctrine of faith enclosed to both works; and also
JANDEJSEK, &KULVWRORJLH, 153–202).
reality is the triune God. 103 And, also, the different religious traditions, in his view, are not
primarily different answers to the one mystery of divine Reality but rather different ways
of God-Self how to invite people to participate in the divine life. 104 The task of Christian
theology, then, is to search “for the possibility of mutual convergence of the various tradi-
tions in full respect of their differences, and for their mutual enrichment and cross -
fertilization”.105 Analogously to the Roman catholic ecclesiological pattern, Dupuis pre-
supposes that Jesus Christ is the definitive fullnes of divine revelation. The church has the
fullness of sacramentality, however, this sacramentality exists also partly in other tradi-
tions.106 In this way, Dupuis tries to interconnect the paradigms of christocentric inclusiv-
ism and theocentric pluralism.107 As the best tool to achieve this goal seems to him to be
the “Trinitarian Christology”.108 Within this approach, Dupuis stresses not the unity of God
but rather the differences between the divine persons. He does it, however, in a quite non-
trinitarian way, differentiating God from Jesus, which suggests a pluralist inclination wit h-
in his inclusivist pattern: “God, and God alone, is the absolute mystery and as such is at the
source, at the heart and at the centre, of all reality. While it is true that Jesus the man is
uniquely the Son of God, it is equally true that God stands beyond Jesus.” 109 Dupuis needs
to weaken the concentration only on Jesus Christ, which he calls “Christomonism” (i.e.,
the traditional Christian stress on VROXV&KULVWXV) and adds, therefore, also the differentia-
tion of Jesus and the Spirit pleading for a Spirit-Christology, which would allow him to go
beyond resurrection to “the universal presence and action of the Spirit in human history
and in the world”.110 The relation of God to the world is inevitably trinitarian, with clearly
differentiated functions and “relationship of order” of the Son and of the Spirit, and thus
plural in itself.111 In Dupuis, this structured Trinity is the base for an appropriate theologi-
cal pluralism. However, it is paradoxical enough that this conception of Dupuis – although
called “7ULQLWDULDQ Christology” – has, analogically to the presented ‘trinitarian’ structure,
actually only WZR main emphases: the superiority of God (the Father) and the broad and
universal actualization of the Christ-event in the Spirit, while the Christ-event itself is con-
103
DUPUIS, 7RZDUG D &KULVWLDQ 7KHRORJ\, 262–268. Hick refers to Dupuis only twice
and refuses his approach (cf. HICK, 7KH 0HWDSKRU, 148, fn. 1). The same approach as
Dupuis shares also H.-M. BARTH, 'RJPDWLN (YDQJHOLVFKHU *ODXEH LP .RQWH[W GHU :HO
WUHOLJLRQHQ (LQ /HKUEXFK (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2001), 7–8. In Christolo-
gy, Barth tends to the concept of representation where Jesus represents God in front of hu-
mans and humans in front of God (ibid., 409).
104
DUPUIS, 7RZDUGD&KULVWLDQ7KHRORJ\, 305, cf. 387: “Religious pluralism in princi-
ple rests on the immensity of a God who is love.”
105
Ibid., 11.
106
Cf. HOŠEK, 1D FHVWČNGLDORJX, 86, who speaks about a shift toward the inclusivist
paradigm in the catholic church after the Second Vatican Council (cf. the constitution /X
PHQ *HQWLXP, and from the last decades the decree 'RPLQXV ,HVXV). Like the catholic
church, Dupuis also struggles with the old thesis “Extra ecclesiam nulla salus”, cf. DUPUIS,
7RZDUGD&KULVWLDQ7KHRORJ\, 94–202.
107
DUPUIS, 7RZDUGD&KULVWLDQ7KHRORJ\, 204.
108
Ibid., 205, originally italicized.
109
Ibid., 206.
110
Ibid. Cf. above, the point of Haight’s conception.
111
Ibid., 207.
ceived only as punctual.112 With this, Dupuis opens the space necessary for a pluralist con-
ception within the Christian framework. It is firmly anchored in God’s definitive revelation
in Jesus Christ, yet this event is not an isolated and absolute one: “The expansiveness of
God’s inner life overflowing outside the Godhead is, in the last analysis, the root-cause for
the existence in human history of convergent paths, leading to a unique common goal: the
absolute mystery of the Godhead, which draws all paths to itself.” 113 In principle, every
revelation of God has this trinitarian structure. The work of the Spirit, which is omnipres-
ent, enables many subsequent paths to God. The Christ-event, preestablished by God from
eternity, is the Omega-point for all of them. 114 With a great optimism in the end, according
to Dupuis, everything and all religious traditions aim to a “marvelous convergence” in the
“eschatological fullness of the Reign of God”. 115
This means for Dupuis, at the same time, that the decisive and definitive revelation in
Jesus Christ must not be posited as absolute and exclusive. The ultimate “intensity” and
fullness of the revelation in Christ does not hinder from, e.g., the revelation through Mu-
hammad. There only cannot be any greater or equal revelation as the revelation in Jesus
Christ.116 “The decisive word does not preclude other words: on the contrary, it supposes
them.”117 And because divine revelation can happen through prophets or sacred texts,
Dupuis makes the same differentiation as the pluralist critique of religion: “The divine
identity must be clearly distinguished from the apprehension which human beings may
have of it.”118 So that the final focus lies, in accord with the pluralist approach, not in
Christ but in God-Self: “not Jesus Christ but God is at the center of the new paradigm,
even as he is the goal of the different religious ways.”119 Regarding other religions, howev-
er, Christianity – or more precisely: the person of Jesus Christ – remains superior to them:
“They are incomplete ‘faces’ of the Divine Mystery experienced in various ways.” 120 “This
means that the religious practices and sacramental rites of the other religions are not on the
same footing as the Christian sacraments instituted by Jesus Christ; but it also means that
we must ascribe to them a certain mediation of grace.” 121 They are not competing with
Christianity and Christianity is not the sum and surpassing form of them all. Rather,
“[m]ore divine truth and grace are found operative in the entire history of God’s dealings
with humankind than are available simply in the Christian tradition.” Yet still – Dupuis
obviously oscillates there and back – “Jesus Christ gives to Christianity its specific and
singular character”.122
112
Ibid., cf. 321. The talk about a “Christ-event” criticized heavily Hick for its un-
specifity, cf. HICK, 7KH0HWDSKRU, 33–36.
113
Ibid., 209, originally partly italicized.
114
Ibid., 221.
115
Ibid., 290. Therefore, Dupuis speaks about “regnocentrism” or “Kingdom-centered
model” as one of the fundamental hermeneutical tools for theology, cf. ibid., 385.
116
Ibid., 249–250.
117
Ibid., 250.
118
Ibid., 255.
119
Ibid., 257.
120
Ibid., 279. Dupuis speaks about the uniqueness of Jesus Christ, not of Chris tianity,
cf. ibid., 282.
121
Ibid., 319.
122
Ibid., 388.
The uniqueness of Christ is conceived by Dupuis neither as relative nor as absolute but
rather as “constitutive”.123 Neither Christ in his human existence nor Christianity are abso-
lute. Absolute is only the Ultimate Reality. 124 Dupuis wants to see Jesus Christ as univer-
sally constitutive for salvation, he should be the “‘cause’ of salvation”. However, he weak-
ens this claim in the next step by also saying that there are more and many “saving figures
in whom God is hiddenly present and operative”, yet Jesus Christ is “the one ‘human face’
in whom God, while remaining unseen, is fully disclosed and revealed.” 125 “The ultimate
source of both revelation and salvation” remains God-Self.126 Dupuis obviously oscillates
between consistent trinitarian theology and the pluralist conception of Jesus Christ as one
of many mediations or symbolizations of God (as e.g. Haight conceived it). However, he
cannot have both, Jesus cannot be the trinitarian God-Son and one of many mediators at
the same time. It seems that Dupuis, in the end, weakens the divinity of Jesus, who is not
as absolute as the ultimate reality of God, in favor of his mediating role only: Jesus is “a
privileged channel through which the Divine Mystery is truthfully disclosed to us”. 127 This,
however, is a break with the trinitarian conception. It is rather a conception of incarnation
in the Hickian sense: incarnation is a metaphor of intense mediation. Divine is, what Jesus
mediates, not himself. The person of Jesus Christ is, again, understood massively along the
pattern of a radical Antiochene duality.128 Moreover, Dupuis abandones the Nicene KRPR
RXVLRV here and comes into a contradiction (resp. he uses the multifaceted term ‘Son of
God’ on a place where trinitarian theology would require ‘God the Son’, cf. above, Ch.
4.2.2): “The personal identity of Jesus as Son of God in his human existence notwithstand-
ing, a distance continues to exist between God (the Father), the ultimate source, and he
who is God’s human icon. Jesus is no substitute for God.” 129 Obviously, Jesus Christ has
ontologically a different status than the Father, it is another divinity, if a divinity at all. The
full divinity of Jesus would, in Dupuis’ eyes, put Jesus Christ as potentially rivaling or
competing with God, which he needs to prevent. Yet still, at least from the perspective of
trinitarian theology, the assertion about Jesus being no substitute for God is tricky. What
else is Jesus Christ, at least following the Nicene Creed, than the same God who became
flesh? It is, however, obvious that Dupuis needs to turn down the uniqueness of Christ to
open other routes to salvation where Christ is not needed. 130 He comes to a “‘complemen-
tary uniqueness’ of the mystery of Christ in relation to the religious traditions” where “his-
123
Ibid., 283, cf. 387–388.
124
Ibid., 282.
125
Ibid., 283.
126
Ibid., 298.
127
Ibid., 286, cf. 298: “the channel, the efficacious sign or sacrament”.
128
Cf. ibid., 299: “Admittedly, in the mystery of Jesus-the-Christ, the Word cannot be
separated from the flesh it had assumed. But, inseparable as the divine Word and Jesus’
human existence may be, they nevertheless remain distinct. While, then, the human action,
it does not exhaust the action of the Logos. A distinct action of the Logos DVDUNRV en-
dures.” Dupuis goes here in the same direction as Hick following the old Enlightenment
critique of religion, which, in the end, distinguished Jesus from the Logos, which is the
proper power and cause of salvation. Cf. ibid., 321: “The enlightening and saving power of
the Logos is not circumscribed by the particularity of the historical event. It transcends all
boundaries of time and space.”
129
Ibid., 298.
130
Ibid., 299.
torical particularity coincides with universal significance”. 131 This, however, sounds more
like an unsolved paradox than a solution.
60+HLP, following a philosophical concept of N. Rescher, proposed a conception of
“orientational pluralism” in his book 6DOYDWLRQV (1995).132 Heim focuses on the interreli-
gious debate on soteriology and the possible outcomes of different religions and faiths and
comes to a – at the first sight clearly pluralistic – conclusion that every religion seeks its
own soteriological aim and that the term ‘salvation’ has in every religion a different mean-
ing. Accordingly, Heim speaks about “salvations” in the plural.133 Different religions have
different soteriological endings. However, his conception turns out to have a Christian-
inclusivist frame: all these different salvations are framed with the Christian term of Trini-
ty, which not only can allow and bear differences but which rather enforces differences. 134
(In this, he meets other theologians who ground the theory of religions in the Christian
concept of Trinity, like e.g. R. Panikkar, J. Dupuis or H.-M. Barth.135) Different salvations
are different salvations within the Christian God who is the hidden unifying point of a ll
religious traditions. The “finality of Christ” is, then, one model of salvation among many
others, where the others lead through other persons of the Trinity. The christologically
grounded salvation is the only way of salvation only for Christians. For other faiths, there
are other ways.136 With this rather pluralistic move, Heim weakens the role of Christ and
stresses the threeness of the Trinity. It seems, however, that he forgets to emphasize the
unity of God in the same way so that the Trinity threatens to fall apart in an ununified
threeness.137
The FULWLTXHRILQFOXVLYLVP partly overlaps with pluralism: the inclusivist con-

ceptions relativize non-Christian religions and their expressions (including
their binding, normativity, and truth claim) in a similar way, knowing better,
what is their aim and frame and what happens in them (which God acts within
131
Ibid., 303–301.
132
HEIM, 6DOYDWLRQV, 133–142.
133
Cf. ibid., 129, 146–147.
134
Cf. ibid., 158–184, and KNITTER, ,QWURGXFLQJ, 195. Against this approach, as repre-
sented e.g. also in H.-M. BARTH, 'RJPDWLN, states KÖRTNER, “Synkretismus”, 72: “Non-
Christian revelations and interpretations of revelation can in no way be integrated in every
case into a Christian-trinitarian concept of revelation as history.”
135
To Panikkar’s conception cf. e.g. R. WILLIAMS, “Trinity and Pluralism”, in &KULV
WLDQ 8QLTXHQHVV 5HFRQVLGHUHG 7KH 0\WK RI D 3OXUDOLVWLF 7KHRORJ\ RI 5HOLJLRQV, ed. G.
D’COSTA (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1990), 3–15.
136
HEIM, 6DOYDWLRQV, 3.
137
Cf. S.M. HEIM, 6DOYDWLRQV, 226; cf. IDEM, 7KH 'HSWK RI WKH 5LFKHV $ 7ULQLWDULDQ
7KHRORJ\RI5HOLJLRXV(QGV (Grand Rapids: Wm.B. Eerdmans, 2001), 134, 269; KNITTER,
,QWURGXFLQJ, 201–202, 231.
them and how). 138 The Christian God is the only God of all, even though oth-
er religions would not agree. 139
In the same way, paradoxically, LQFOXVLYLVPUHODWLYL]HV&KULVWRORJ\ as well
because it needs many ways leading to God, i.e., also those, which could go
around Christ, be it in the model of Christ and Spirit as two equal tools or
hands of God, or in the model of distinguishing the human Jesus from the
eternal Logos, which is effective also beyond Jesus’ life and death.
On the other hand, for many critics, inclusivism is only a hidden, milder,
more diplomatic, not christocentric but rather theocenric or regno-centric, yet
also much more crafty form of exclusivism (and therefore much more prob-
lematic because as such not transparent) – they speak about “conquest by em-
brace” or about a kind of ideological collonization, where the other has no
space to be different and self-defined.140
([FOXVLYLVP
The exclusivist position has been the traditional and usual position of Christi-
anity and Christian theology for long centuries (typically represented by offi-
cial catholic documents rooted in the old thesis “extra ecclesiam nulla salus”).
In the end, it is the only logical internal stance claiming that my tradition (my
religion, or – more specifically – my church or my community of faith) has
the truth and is therefore the best, resp. the only true and correct faith.141 Oth-
er religious traditions are not needed at all so that there is no reason to get in-
to a contact with them because it is clear that they are false. 142 Paradoxically,
the result of the effort of a dialogue of religions, which wanted to defeat and
overcome the exclusivist paradigm, turns, in the end, to the exclusivist posi-
138
Cf. HOŠEK, 1D FHVWČ NGLDORJX, 78. An example of this approach can be Rahner’s
“anonymous Christians”, or – in V. Boublik’s correction – “anonymous catechumens”, cf.
ibid., 86. KÖRTNER, “Synkretismus”, 71, pleads, therefore, for a “metacritical” or “enlight-
ed inclusivism”, which knows that it speaks from an internal perspective of a particular
religion.
139
Although the plurality of religions, as a result of God’s hiddenness (GHXVDEVFRQGL
WXV), is disturbing for the Christian faith, it nevertheless believes that God, as revealed in
Jesus Christ, proves in the end to be the God of all. This is the solution of KÖRTNER,
“Synkretismus”, 76.
140
Cf. HOŠEK, 1DFHVWČNGLDORJX, 90–91.
141
Paradigmatic for this position is the claim of K. Barth that Christianity, compared to
other traditions, is not a religion but true faith (although Christianity also often falls into
being religion), cf. K. BARTH, &KXUFK'RJPDWLFVI/2, § 17, 280–361.
142
Cf. HOŠEK, 1DFHVWČ NGLDORJX, 75. This attitude stressing the own uniqueness – as
the legitimate critique says – led often to the dark sides of our history: to “racism, imperi-
alism, sexism and Eurocentrism”, cf. D’COSTA, &KULVWLDQLW\, 25, who, however, tries to
correct this statement: “Exclusivist theologies do not logically and necessarily lead to rac-
ist or imperialist attitudes toward non-Christians, although, contingently, they may on oc-
casion.”
tion again: inclusivism is only a hidden exclusivism, and pluralism is excl u-

sivism of a higher order.143 Overall, it is exclusivism again where everybody
lands in the end because it is present everywhere, at least as a dimension –
and always a quite powerful dimension – of all other schemes and para-
digms. 144
The exclusivist approach from a catholic point of view defends today e.g. * '¶&RVWD in
his book &KULVWLDQLW\DQG :RUOG5HOLJLRQV (2009) – he calls his own conception “univer-
sal-access exclusivism”.145 (This is, however, a remarkable shift in his position – which, on
the other hand, nicely maintains my view of the development of the interreligious dialogue
toward factual exclusivism [cf. below]. Before, D’Costa held, with many others, the posi-
tion of a christocentrically anchored trinitarian inclusivism with its characteristic tension
between the unique importance of Christ for Christians and the universality of the Spir-
it.146) The basis for his approach are two classical Christian theses VROXV&KULVWXV and ILGHV
H[DXGLWX in their mediation through church sacraments. D’Costa applies them both primar-
ily in the soteriological focus, i.e., in the question of whom and how will they be saved.
According to this approach, only those will be saved, who, together with the church and in
the church, explicitly confess the faith in Jesus Christ as one of the Trinity – this, however,
does not need to happen in the course of life in a postmodern shape but there will be an
opportunity also in the point of death or even in the SRVWPRUWHP state.147 Therefore,
D’Costa discusses the traditional catholic topics of Christ’s descent into hell, purgatory,
and inferno.148 The question of the relation of Christianity to other religions is, for him,
obviously solved with the answer to the question of the final destiny of non-Christians.149
He tries thus to show that despite their otherness, the believers of other religions can be
saved in the Christian way as well. He admits different ends of other religious traditions,
however, this difference is held within the sphere of the so-called SUHSDUDWLR HYDQJHOLFD,
which God uses as preparational steps and orientation toward the salvation in Christ. They
may have their place in history, the Spirit may work in them as well, but they cannot claim
any salvific mediation.150
Excluvisim matches the internal claims of particular religious traditions. Yet,

SHUGHILQLWLRQHP, exclusive can be always only one. This leads inevitably to a
clash of different exclusivist claims as to the final form where, sooner or lat-
143
Cf. HEIM, 6DOYDWLRQV, 143: “Thus pluralism repeats the dynamic of the strong exclu-
sivism it opposes: those who disagree are not rational or not worthy or both.”
144
Cf. HOŠEK, 1D FHVWČ N GLDORJX, 65–75; KNITTER, ,QWURGXFLQJ, 19–62. I think that
this notion is the core of the statement of Heim, 6DOYDWLRQV, 137–138, as well as of
KNITTER, ,QWURGXFLQJ, 198 and 218–219, that we all are, in the end, willy-nilly inclusiv-
ists. The inclusivist openness is founded, in the end, in our exclusivist conviction.
145
Cf. D’COSTA, &KULVWLDQLW\, 29–33.
146
Cf. G. D’COSTA, “Christ, the Trinity and Religious Plurality”, in &KULVWLDQ8QLTXH
QHVV5HFRQVLGHUHG7KH0\WKRID3OXUDOLVWLF7KHRORJ\RI 5HOLJLRQV, ed. IDEM (Maryknoll:
Orbis Books, 1990), 16–29.
147
Ibid., 29 and 161.
148
Ibid., 160–211.
149
Cf. ibid., 186–187.
150
Ibid., 210–211.
er, any encounter of different religions ends.151 However, the clash of exclu-
sive claims makes dialogue rather impossible. Is there another way? 152
7KH3DUWLFXODULW\DQG8QLYHUVDOLW\RIWKH&KULVWLDQ&ODLP
The other option, which I favor, follows what I proposed at the end of Chap-
ter 1. The aim is the same as in the previous subchapter: to avoid a clash of
exclusive claims, or even a self-centered closure into an own bubble while
breaking all communication with the others; and, at the same time, to respect
the plurality of perspectives and their particularity. However, the way of solu-
tion I want to propose is different: not to turn down the specifics of the pa r-
ticular traditions to make the particular traditions even more particular so that
they can be integrated into the same pattern (be it from above as in the case of
pluralism, or into one of the perspectives as in the case of inclusivism) but to
stress the particularity of one’s own perspective and take this particularity se-
riously when focusing on other traditions, perspectives, and approaches and
their differences. What postmodernity has brought is exactly this: the insight
into the SDUWLFXODULW\RIHYHU\SHUVSHFWLYH, including my own; and the insight
into the RWKHUQHVV RI WKH RWKHU, which cannot be simply converted to one’s
own terms and structures. This does not allow for any perspective to posit it-
self definitely above other perspectives and claim its exclusivity without do-
ing some violence to the others; this would render any subsequent dialogue
uneven or, in the end, impossible.
On the other hand, this cannot make it wholly impossible to raise the inter-
nal claim of a particular position, to conceal the truth when facing others with
their claims and truths. Here, the differentiation between an DEVROXWHDQGXQL
151
Cf. J. MILBANK, “The End of Dialogue”, in &KULVWLDQ8QLTXHQHVV5HFRQVLGHUHG7KH
0\WK RI D 3OXUDOLVWLF 7KHRORJ\ RI 5HOLJLRQV, ed. G. D’COSTA (Maryknoll: Orbis Books,
1990), 174–191.
152
Cf. CH. DANZ and U.H.J. KÖRTNER, “Zur Einführung. Evangelische Positionen und
Perspektiven einer Theologie der Religionen”, in 7KHRORJLH GHU 5HOLJLRQHQ, ed. EIDEM
(Neukrichen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2005), 7: “However, all three named streams of the
theology of religions are confronted with one fundamental problem, which is the mediation
of the validity of one’s own religious identity with a positive recognition of other religions.
It might not be wrong to estimate that this problem has not been solved in the discussion so
far and that it requires further treatment.” SCHWÖBEL, “Particularity”, 33 (and similarly
ibid., 42–43), points to another danger, which could be the case when the dialogue would
try to put aside the religious truth claims: “[A] dialogue which suspends religious truth
claims cannot even develop into a dialogue of religions, but turns into a dialogue of cultur-
al traditions based on principles such as universal tolerance and respect, whose foundation
is very often not to be seen in the religions themselves but in a humanist critique of all r e-
ligions. A dialogue which is perceived along these lines can all too easily turn into a new
guise of Western imperialism where subscribing to the principles of the Enlightenment be-
comes a precondition for participation in dialogue.”
YHUVDOFODLP is crucial. From a particular perspective, it is possible to raise a

universal claim. Universal claims can and do exist parallelly with each other;
universal claims can be plural. Raising a universal claim does not necessarily
mean to oppose other universal claims – as long as one does not put one’s po-
sition as absolute with an absolute claim.
This is the solution I propose: to be fully aware of the own particular per-
spective, which allows us to raise the Christian claim of truth with all its spe-
cifics as a universal one but exactly as a universal claim from a particular po-
sition.153 Knowing about one’s own particularity brings a certain and neces-
sary humility in the approach to others. Raising a universal claim in one’s
own terms, yet from a position, which is declared as particular, opens space
for the others to do the same (of course, without any insurance that they will
respect the same rules and paradigms). This is at least the consequence of the
postmodern paradigm; and if one sees this paradigm as appropriate and the
only one possible, it is fair to stay within its limits regardless of the attitude
of the others.
Again, I am convinced that this approach provides all space necessary for
developing one’s own specifics, without being pushed to turn down the
points, which could potentially bring serious critique or irritation. It makes it
possible to develop one’s own position with everything, which belongs to it,
without any necessity to hide or hold out, what could be problematic. 154 This
all, however, under the condition, that this developed position is explicitly
declared as particular, without any imposing of one’s own perspective, terms,
questions or solutions to the others.
Expressed in christological terms: If there is an “essence of Christianity”
(Harnack), it is the notion and confession that “God was in Christ” as it was
specified and developed in the early Christian doctrine beginning already in
the New Testament scriptures – it is the confession of the divinity of Jesus on
the backdrop of God as Trinity (against Harnack) and its impact on the whole
of creation. Hick would oppose that when Jesus is incarnated God, then
Christianity must have superiority over other religions because it is the only
religion where God-Self intervened this direct way and it is, therefore, neces-
sary to turn down Christology, which grounds the absoluteness of Christiani-
ty. However, to turn down Christology would mean to turn down Christianity,
exactly along with the famous saying of M. Luther: “Tolle assertiones et
153
HOŠEK, 1DFHVWČNGLDORJX, 165, speaks about “particularly based claims for univer-
sality”. Cf. also SCHWÖBEL, “Particularity”, 34–40.
154
Cf. J.B. COBB, 7UDQVIRUPLQJ&KULVWLDQLW\DQGWKH:RUOG$:D\EH\RQG$EVROXWLY
LVPDQG 5HODWLYLVP (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1999), 32–33: “Christians who seek under-
standing across the lines of religious traditions do themselves a disservice if they minimize
the distinctive character of their own faith. […] we must bring into the encounter the full
richness of our heritage.”
Christianismum tullisti!” 155 The solution, therefore, is not to make blunt the
Christian specifics but to turn down the claim of Christianity, which cannot
be absolute, although it remains universal. Speaking for itself, Christianity
and Christian theology (if it wants to remain Christian) can do no other than
keep up trinitarian Christology. This belongs to a fundamental Christian
frankness and honesty. But it can do it exactly when speaking for itself and
for itself only, without judging other religions.156
For, in the end, one more differentiation is fundamental, as J. Fischer pre-
cisely notices: “The Christian claim for truth is not the self-claim of the
Christian faith that the faith is true but it is rather the claim that Jesus Christ
is the truth that we have to listen to […].” 157
2. Dialogue of Particular Perspectives?

2. Dialogue of Particular Perspectives?
The postmodern paradigm shows that a common meta-level, meta-
perspective, or meta-narrative, which would connect everyone and every-
thing, is not possible. There is no point from where such unity could be con-
strued or achieved because every point of view is a particular and thus al-
ready always a positioned one. As Foucault showed, a pretended meta-claim
is thus always a violation of others from an unconceded particular point of
view, it is always a construction from within a particular system. In the post-
modern view, unity is also a plural term: there are more unities and there are
more unities possible. These, however, do not exist by themselves so that
they could be simply presupposed as given. Unity needs to be created and the
ways toward unity need to be searched at first. The starting position, howev-
er, as the postmodern paradigm shows in a very concrete and tangible way of
our every day experience, is not the unity of all but rather a diversity and dif-
ference: The other is just other, different from me; the other cannot be simply
155
M. LUTHER, “De servo arbitrio”, in :$ 18, 603, 28–29.
156
SCHWÖBEL, “Pluralism”, 39–40, therefore proposes for the Christian theology not to
talk about relvelations of God in other religions at all: “The theological reservation to talk
about revelations of God in other religions is, however, not grounded in an attitude of su-
periority, but respects the inaccesibility of the deities and ways of salvations of other rel i-
gions by refusing to reinterpret them to fit a Christian understanding of revelation or to
reduce them to match a particular general theory of religions.”
157
J. FISCHER, “Christlicher Wahrheitsanspruch und die Religionen”, in 7KHRORJLHGHU
5HOLJLRQHQ, ed. CH. DANZ and U.H.J. KÖRTNER (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2005),
190. Fischer warns against any judging of other religions as KXEULV, no matter within which
paradigm, and repeats at the end again: “The Christian claim for truth – if we can speak
about something like this at all – is a claim of the IDLWK for the truth, which the faith knows
itself to be carried by, and not a claim for WKH WUXWK RI WKH &KULVWLDQ IDLWK contrary to all
other types of faith.”
'LDORJXHRI3DUWLFXODU3HUVSHFWLYHV" 419
pressed into my terms and “domestificated” in this way.158 The other cannot
be pressed into the terms of the same (which would be always P\ same, it
would be always the terms of P\ sameness). Exactly this is the danger, which
neither pluralism nor inclusivism could withstand, only the terms of the
sameness were searched on different levels.
The only possibility of a fair encounter between religions seems to be the
GLDORJXHRIHTXDOSDUWLFXODUSHUVSHFWLYHV. Therefore, if there should be some-
thing like interfaith theology or theology of religions (if possible at all), then
only working within this paradigm. Everyone can speak only from his or her
own perspective, from his or her point of view. Then, however, one needs to
know what is his or her perspective, what is his or her point of view. When
everyone can speak only for oneself, then to know, what is the perspective o f
the other, means to let him or her speak. And, at the same time, everyone is
made to elaborate his or her own position, with all that belongs to it, not
withholding anything, so that the final picture of one’s identity can be as
complete as possible. When the other asks, what am I, then, he or she wants
to know my full identity, not a PR image, which hides the potentially prob-
lematic sides.159
In a certain weariness after the pluralist debate, there is a noticeable return
to the stress on particularity and the tendency to explicate all claims from
one’s particular position. While for some, this could mean a welcome return
to exclusivism, the Czech theologian 3+RãHN, following the current debate,
proposes a more restrained and very sympathetic way toward a dialogue,
which he calls “dialogical postpluralism”.160 This approach fits into the post-
modern paradigm as I sketched it above. It tries to overcome the problems of
the three classical models of interreligious relations and aims to be more par-
ticular than particularism and more pluralistic than pluralism at the same
time.161 It resigns, in the first place, from any “epistemological violence”, i.e.,
from any attempts to convert or translate the others to one’s own terms and
structures.162 And then, as well, from any soteriological violence, i.e., from
all proposed solutions of how the others will be saved. Instead of it, Hošek
pleads for a responsible and humble epistemological modesty and soteriolog-
158
HOŠEK, 1D FHVWČ NGLDORJX, 161. Ibid., 113, he speaks about the impossibility of
translation or conversion of one tradition into another because every tradition has an “idi-
omatic character”. KNITTER, ,QWURGXFLQJ, 176, calls the particular traditions “incommen-
surable”.
159
Cf. KNITTER, ,QWURGXFLQJ, 211, who refers to J.L. Fredericks and his request that in a
dialogue, one must present the whole tradition without covering what could be problematic
or offensive for the others because e.g. a Christian needs to be recognizable for the others
DV&KULVWLDQ.
160
Ibid., 182. To this paradigm cf. also KNITTER, ,QWURGXFLQJ, 173–237.
161
HOŠEK, 1DFHVWČNGLDORJX, 105–118, 182.
162
Cf. ibid., 4.
ical agnosticism, which avoids the “monologicity, aprioricity, and totalitarian

tendency” of all three previous models.163 Regarding the Christian universal
claim, this means:
“What is the relation of this Christian universal claim to similar claims of other traditions
should (at least temporarily) remain an open question. To relativize own fundaments (i.e.,
the idiomatic specificity or ‘salinity’ of Christian fundamental assertions) would be a mis-
take as fatal as continuing with the totalitizing projects of assimilation of the other to the
same.”164
Yet, the question is: What is it, what remains here, in the end? There is, on
one hand, the readiness to explain one’s own view and faith with all internal
claims: “Christians cannot enter the dialogue with nothing else than the Gos-
pel”.165 On the other hand, the humility and restraint in any judgment toward
the other while respecting his or her otherness results in a factual agnosti-
cism: “[I]n reality, we do not know (at least not yet) what exactly are non-
Christian religions.”166 Are these, actually, fundaments, which would lead and
tend toward a dialogue?
3. Accommodating Practice

3. Accommodating Practice
Dialogue is certainly the welcome end of all thoughts about other religions,
their differences, and possible common aims. On the Christian side, the
strong tendency toward the dialogue-paradigm is often oriented on the model
of Trinity, which is often conceived often as a divine internal dialogue: the
Trinity in itself is a dialogue of different and equal persons; therefore, the i n-
terreligious encounter should have the same structure.167
However, for a dialogue, at least two partners are necessary – moreover,
both motivated to a mutual encounter.168 If the situation developed so far that,
after a period of pluralism and after an intensive calling up for dialogue, the
stress today lies rather on elaborating one’s own specifics and on knowing
that the other is really an other, not fitting into my schemes and categories –
163
Ibid., 117. Here, fn. 537 and 538, Hošek refers to suggestions of some representants
of the postpluralist approach to declare a “temporary moratorium” for all theories of non-
Christian religions and a “patient deferral of issues of truth”, which he shares (ibid., 184).
This perspective maintains also FISCHER, “Christlicher Wahrheitsanspruch”, 202–203. It is
the position of so-called Comparative theology in the first place, which declares a morato-
rium on any theologies of religion, cf. KNITTER, ,QWURGXFLQJ, 202–214, who refers to the
positions of F.X Clooney and J.L. Fredericks.
164
Ibid., 165.
165
Ibid.
166
Ibid., 184.
167
Cf. ibid., 181: “The Trinity can be understood as one grandiose Dialogue.”
168
Cf. KNITTER, ,QWURGXFLQJ, 230.
$FFRPPRGDWLQJ3UDFWLFH 421
what would be the motivation for a mutual dialogue? It seems to me that to-
day, at least in the Christian theology and Christianity, there is a certain wea-
riness of the appeals for dialogue, which maintains again rather monological
ways of reassuring of one’s faith, be it the stress on proclamation, or the
stress on theological elaboration of one’s specific profile. 169 This develop-
ment mirrors, in the end, also Hošek’s own conclusion when he conceives the
interreligious dialogue at first as the “presupposition of proclamation” and as
a “form of proclamation”, but then he loosens the term of dialogue itself
when he sees it as the engaged co-operation in the practical respect with the
important dimension of “self-knowledge”. The line ends with “dialogue as a
modus of existence” where ‘dialogue’ marks rather an existential setting and
attitude toward others. The dialogue, which “does not need to contain primar-
ily the exchange of doctrinal, spiritual, ethical-practical, or other contents”,
ends in a sole “dialogical existence” as one’s readiness for an encounter with
the different other.170
When this holds: “Of course that everyone does QRW believe in the same
*RG; and definitely not in the numerically RQH God.”171 When the factual sit-
uation, in which we live, cannot be portrayed – with the famous and often-
used metaphors – as touching one and the same elephant from many different
sides or walking different paths up on one and the same mountain because
there are rather different animals we touch (not only many elephants but ra-
ther wholly different animals) and wholly different mountains we climb up,
what can we do?172 What can we do to get into a dialogue at all?
I am convinced that in the situation of postpluralism and postmodernity,
which requires a quite large portion of humility, there is no other way than to
elaborate and substantiate one’s own position and be prepared to answer to
anyone who may ask (1Pt 3:15). Concerning others, on the contrary, the only
thing one can do, is ask them and provide them all freedom for an answer on
their terms, without pushing them to express what is radically different in the
terms of my sameness. For myself, I can ask. And then I have to wait whether
and until somebody asks me. Only then I can give my (prepared) answer but
only for myself again.
The risk, which hangs here – I admit, sharpened by my Czech perspective
and by experiences from an anti-church country as the Czech Republic – is
169
Cf. HOŠEK, 1DFHVWČNGLDORJX, 187–188.
170
Ibid., 173–181. He confirms with this, in fact, his previous thesis that postpluralism
means, in a certain sense, “the rehabilitation of particularism and, also, of the legitimity of
proclamation, which cannot be replaced by dialogue. On the contrary, proclamation has an
unsubstitutable place in the dialogue.”
171
U. TWORUSCHKA, “Glauben alle an denselben Gott”, in 7KHRORJLH GHU 5HOLJLRQHQ
3RVLWLRQHQXQG3HUVSHNWLYHQHYDQJHOLVFKHU7KHRORJLH, ed. CH. DANZ and U.H.J. KÖRNTER
(Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2005), 28.
172
Cf. HOŠEK, 1DFHVWČNGLDORJX, 115.
that no one will ask. The only thing, therefore, which I can do, is – without
any pressure or violence – to SUHVHQWP\RZQSRVLWLRQDQGDFWFRUUHVSRQGLQJ
O\. When there is a way to evoke questions, then it is the acting, the practice.
Therefore, I like the proposal of P. Knitter, which is twofold. He calls for
an intra-Christian dialogue about the Christian approach to other religions
and, at the same time, for mutual co-operation and acting of concrete people
of different religions in particular projects, cases, and challenges of today’s
world.173 A better start for a potential dialogue than to permanently call to di-
alogue is practical co-operation, while the doctrine – the questions, answers,
and information, or even a common religious practice like worship and prayer
– can follow. It is highly probable – or even already proven – that there are
many and deep differences, which cannot be overcome easily. We do not
agree with each other on many things. Yet, we can start to GR something to-
gether, be it something small and at the lowest level of co-operation.
For there is one point, which is common to all people and there is no plu-
ralism or postmodern differences: we live all in RQH DQG PXWXDOO\ VKDUHG
ZRUOG. This is the only unifying base, which can be reasonably presupposed
as universally valid. And, for a start, it could be a base, which is strong
enough. There is only one shared world, although seen in a broad variety of
interpretations. Therefore, although every single person has only his or her
particular stance and perspective, the one world makes us act together and
speak together – although it is not sure that we will agree with each other in
the end.
Co-operation is the only possible start. Today, when the calls for a dia-
logue remain only calls and real dialogue rather fades because it cannot avoid
pushing the others into the patterns of sameness, the cooperative acting is al-
most the only thing that remains if we do not just tacitly sit by.174
However, at least for the Christian part, I would like to propose a new
model, which could lead one step further. Traditionally, as I mentioned at the
beginning of this subchapter, the leading model for interreligious dialogue
from the Christian perspective was the Trinity as an internal dialogue. When
asking what we can do in the actual situation of postmodernity, I would like
to keep up the orientation on the model of Trinity. However, the central idea
of my christological conception was the idea of *RG¶V DFFRPPRGDWLRQ as
God’s fundamental character: God can adapt to the other without losing his
own identity (cf. above, Ch. 5). I am convinced that this model can be applied
173
KNITTER, ,QWURGXFLQJ, 238–246. It is, therefore, certainly not by chance that also the
big interfaith projects recently focus e.g. on questions of peace, sustainable development,
suffering, or social questions in particular regions. Cf., ibid., 134–139 and 232.
174
Cf. KNITTER, ,QWURGXFLQJ, 244 and 139: “[T]alking after acting makes for better
talking.” And ibid., 248: “Religious dialogue will grow out of ethical action.” I would add
– maybe. Religious dialogue will PD\EH grow out of the mutual ethical action. It is not
necessary. But it would be nice.
$FFRPPRGDWLQJ3UDFWLFH 423
to the interreligous dialogue as well, at least from the Christian side. I pro-
pose an DFFRPPRGDWLQJ SUDFWLFH. It would mean that in an encounter with
other religions and faiths, be it practically or theoretically, Christians should
primarily search for ways how to accommodate to the other, i.e., adapt to the
other, yet without losing their own identity and profile. In Jesus Christ, Chris-
tians have a great example of how this can be done. It is not an easy path that
opens here in front of us. However, it should be possible to do more than it
appears at the first sight. The model of accommodation promises an alterna-
tive to a sheer stating of differences and a mere exchange of information con-
cerning the other. It opens the possibility of identifying particular points
where Christianity could follow other religions and faiths, accommodate and
go with the other not only one mile but two (Mt 5:41).
As Hošek rightly points out, this is nothing new in Christianity, which adopted and adapted
many views that seemed wholly opposite at first. The Christian tradition adopted many
particular insights from the Antique, in particular from (Neo-)Platonism or Aristotelism –
“today, we could not express the trinitarian or christological creeds without it”. 175 Through
these adaptations, Christianity became richer, even stronger, and more precise in formulat-
ing its own identity.
However, it must be accommodation without any assimilation (as I pointed

out above, Ch. 5.5, about the conception of J. Piaget). The aim is not to go
with the other, gain his or her trust and then turn him or her back. Such an
encounter aims to become more deeply Christian in accommodation to the
other, allowing him or her, at the same time, to be more deeply him- or her-
self.
With this, at least from the Christian perspective, the proper purpose of
humanity would be fulfilled, as presented in the true humanity of Jesus
Christ. Here, based on the preceding accommodation of God to humans, hu-
mans can become what they should be: true humans letting others be true
humans as well. In this accommodative providing of the necessary space for
the freedom of others, humans can become true images of God – places of
God’s presence for others.
175
HOŠEK, 1DFHVWČNGLDORJX, 164–165.
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Index of Names
Abramowski, Luise 107 Baur, Jörg 116, 123, 125–126, 296

Adam, Jens 355 Bayer, Oswald 90, 97, 119, 123, 125,
Ahlbrecht, Ansgar 257 390
Allison, Dale C. 24, 43, 56, 58, 338, Becker, Jürgen 339, 350
340, 342, 345–348, 350, 354–356, Bendemann, Reinhard von 260, 358
361–362 Berges, Ulrich 271, 427
Althaus, Paul 118–121, 123, 127–128, Berkouwer, Cornelis Gerrit 326
138, 141, 257 Beyschlag, Karlmann 65, 67–69, 71, 73,
Altizer, Thomas J.J. 286 76–78, 80–82, 85, 89–95, 97, 100–
Anatolios, Khaled 65, 70, 73, 76, 89, 102, 104, 106, 109–111, 118, 189
92, 95, 105, 274 Biel, Gabriel 97
Anderson, Deland S. 278 Bieler, Martin 312
Anselm of Canterbury 26, 116, 118, Bietenhard, Hans 23
134, 136–137, 187, 296–297, 304, Boethius 84, 220, 374, 393
306–310, 314, 334 Boff, Leonardo 104, 160, 168, 225, 241,
Apollinaris of Laodicea 68, 73, 75, 78– 242, 244–245
79, 81–82, 86, 90, 94, 99, 104, 106, Bonhoeffer, Dietrich 31, 299–300, 323,
140–141, 160, 255 325, 334
Athanasius 68, 73, 79, 82, 95, 117, 273, Bonsiepen, Wolfgang 277
308 Bovon, François 59
Augustinus Aurelius 84, 102, 117, 186, Braaten, Carl E. 38, 365
210, 234–235, 255, 294, 300, 310, Brandt, Sigrid 299
325, 336, 373–379, 382–383, 387 Breidert, Martin 135–136, 138–141
Brom, Luco J. van den 378–383, 388
Baasland, Ernst 57 Brown, Colin 37
Balserak, Jon 204 Brown, David 138
Balthasar, Hans Urs von 108, 155, 188 Brümmer, Vincent 210
Barker, Margaret 317 Brunner, Emil 236
Barth, Hans-Martin 410, 413 Brüntrup, Godehard 260
Barth, Karl 8–11, 13, 16, 26, 27, 152– Buchheim, Thomas 260, 264
156, 161, 162, 166–168, 176, 181, Bultmann, Rudolf 33, 41–42, 54, 60, 62,
190, 206, 209, 217, 222, 262, 300, 170–171, 173, 246, 304, 342, 346–
326, 328, 347, 351, 355, 361, 366, 347, 352–353
377–378, 387, 389, 414 Buntfuß, Markus V, 45, 142
Barth, Roderich 52, 260
Barth, Ulrich 15, 41, 46, 158, 204, 395 Calvin, Johannes 173, 204, 300
Basilius Magnus 86 Camelot, Pierre-Thomas 67, 71, 89,
Bauman, Zygmunt 20 100, 110
Baur, Ferdinand Christian 16
454 ,QGH[RI1DPHV
Campenhausen, Hans Freiherr von 343, Dörrie, Heinrich 107

355 Dunn, James D.G. 44–45, 49, 55–57,
Carnley, Peter F. 347 79, 170–171, 338, 341, 348, 350,
Charlesworth, James H. 339, 341, 347, 354, 361–362
363 Dupuis, Jacques, SJ 242, 325, 409–413
Chilton, Bruce D. 39, 343, 347–348,
356, 362 Ebeling, Gerhard 11, 119, 230
Clayton, Philip 34 Eckstein, Hans-Joachim 169, 352, 354–
Coakley, Sarah 20–21, 78, 80, 98 355, 425, 430
Cobb, John B., Jr. 197–200, 408, 417 Eco, Umberto 19, 24, 29, 44
Cross, Richard 90, 92, 97, 102, 107– Eisenstadt, Shmuel Noah 20
108, 111–115 Engel, George L. 259
Crossan, John Dominic 43 Epperly, Bruce G. 188, 197, 199, 381
Crouzel, Henri 235 Essen, Georg 18, 46, 54, 57, 73, 82–84,
Cullmann, Oscar 251, 259–260, 265– 101–102, 104, 110, 117, 159–160,
267 193, 217–219, 246, 345, 352
Cyril of Alexandria 65, 68–74, 78–82, Evers, Dirk 7, 9, 13–14, 18, 40, 46, 52,
85, 87–97, 99, 101, 103–105, 107– 301, 372, 389, 393
110, 161, 189, 194–195, 220, 273–
276, 293, 308, 405 Farrington, Peter 79
Fichte, Johann Georg 13, 52
D’Costa, Gavin 10, 394, 396, 408–409, Fiorenza, Francis S. 9, 342, 351, 361
413–416 Fischer, Georg 235, 237
Dahlke, Benjamin 15, 46, 53, 60, 143, Fischer, Hermann 9
160 Fischer, Johannes 53, 312, 322, 334,
Daley, Brian E., SJ 65, 67–68, 71, 77, 418, 420, 429
81, 89, 97, 99, 102–103, 108, 111, Foerster, Werner 169
116, 165 Freud, Sigmund 53
Dalferth, Ingolf Ulrich VI, 3, 10–13, Frey, Jörg 37, 299, 301, 305, 315
18–21, 24–25, 27, 29, 31, 33, 35, Funda, Otakar Antoň 172
52–53, 61, 63–64, 66, 77–78, 84, 88,
98, 116, 131, 133, 153, 160–162, Gabriel, Markus 29–30
167–172, 174–177, 192, 200, 202– Gaddis, Michael 65, 70, 79
203, 210, 217, 220, 227–230, 237, Gallus, Petr 3, 6, 11, 13, 19, 22–29, 35,
240, 249, 270–272, 300–302, 304, 47, 67, 88, 106, 117, 153–154, 176,
318–319, 321–322, 329, 333–334, 228, 297, 323, 326, 332–333, 354,
336–337, 341, 345–347, 352–354, 365, 369, 372, 404
356–360, 362, 365, 371–377, 381– Gasser, Georg 257, 260, 425
382, 384, 390, 392, 395, 397 Gerdes, Hayo 143
Danneberg, Lutz 204 Gese, Hartmut 304
Danz, Christian 5, 10, 15, 17–18, 33, Gess, Wolfgang Friedrich 139–141
36–37, 40–44, 46, 50–52, 54–55, 57, Gestrich, Christof 305, 308, 310–312,
59, 123, 152, 158–160, 172, 395, 322, 324
408, 416, 418, 421 Gilkey, Langdon 197
Davis, Stephen T. 78, 339–340, 342, Gleede, Benjamin 90, 96–97, 101, 103–
347, 349–350, 362 104, 107, 109–111, 113, 123
Deines, Roland 301 Gräb-Schmidt, Elisabeth 17, 41, 61,
Derrett, John Duncan Martin 346 122, 338
Dorner, Isaak August 138
,QGH[RI1DPHV 455
Gray, Patrick T.R. 69–70, 74, 101, 110, Hick, John V, 32–33, 44, 51, 78, 81, 92,
116–117 105, 158, 266, 310, 330, 347–349,
Gregersen, Niels Henrik 158 396–405, 407–412, 417
Gregorios Thaumaturgos 187 Hirsch, Emanuel 143
Gregory of Nyssa 86, 100, 104, 107, Hodgson, Peter C. 32, 257, 281
208, 273 Hošek, Pavel 394, 396, 400, 408–410,
Greshake, Gisbert 81–82, 84–85, 93–94, 414–415, 417, 419–421, 423
177, 186, 192, 252–255, 258, 264, Huizing, Klaas 158
266 Hüttenberger, Till 308, 310–312, 322
Griffin, David Ray 197–200
Grillmeier, Alois 14, 65, 67–68, 70–74, Irenaeus of Lyon 235, 273
76, 81–85, 87, 89–91, 93, 97, 99–
101, 103–104, 106–109, 115, 164, Jandejsek, Petr 242, 404, 409
221, 225, 255, 275–276 Janowski, Bernd 237, 301, 315
Grosshans, Hans-Peter 3, 20, 29, 232, Jeanrond, Werner G. 210
323 Joest, Wilfried 389
Grube, Dirk-Martin 44, 52, 59 John of Damascus 86, 90, 92, 97, 101,
Gunton, Colin 78, 212 106, 108, 111–116, 125, 133, 147,
Gwynn, David M. 65 165, 180, 208, 269, 349
Johnson, Luke Timothy 43, 55
Habermas, Jürgen 23, 25, 28, 236, 401 Jüngel, Eberhard 11, 53, 57, 62, 66, 84,
Hahn, Ferdinand 169–170 104, 106, 161, 168, 190, 207, 210–
Haight, Roger 20, 158, 242, 274, 394, 212, 227–229, 236, 239–240, 260–
403–410, 412 263, 265–267, 274, 276–279, 282,
Hainthaler, Theresia 14, 79 284, 286–290, 295, 297–298, 302–
Halleux, André de 67, 70, 74 305, 333, 342, 371, 373–374, 377–
Hampel, Volker 271, 299, 301, 305, 379, 383, 387, 389, 393
309, 312, 322, 327 Justinus Martyr 273
Härle, Wilfried 261
Harnack, Adolf von 13–14, 32, 37, 44, Kähler, Martin 38–40, 44, 47, 54, 62
47, 49, 54, 61, 71, 158, 170–171, Kant, Immanuel 15, 31, 39–40, 52, 61–
395, 407 62, 142, 155–156, 159, 217, 236,
Hebblethwaite, Brian 33, 396 311–312, 332, 379, 395, 401
Heckel, Ulrich 317 Karfíková, Lenka VI. 373, 387
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 10–11, Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti 34
15, 17–18, 31, 62, 92, 138, 177, 220, Käsemann, Ernst 42, 271, 272, 300,
257, 264, 277–286, 288–289, 297, 322–323, 327–329
325 Kasper, Walter 64, 73, 138, 141, 167,
Heim, S. Mark 400, 413, 415 192, 204, 223–224, 353
Helmer, Siegfried 101 Kaufmann, Gordon 348
Hengel, Martin 54, 181 Kessler, Hans 339, 47, 352–353, 355–
Henning, Rudolf Christian 257–258, 356, 358–359, 361
264, 267, 368 Keupp, Heiner 231
Heppe, Heinrich 136, 179, 388 Kierkegaard, Søren 210, 236
Herder, Johann Gottfried 164 Knitter, Paul F. 6, 21, 32–33, 394, 396,
Hermisson, Hans-Jürgen 271 409, 413, 415, 419–420, 422
Herrmann, Wilhelm 10, 40–41, 49, 62, Koch, Anton Friedrich 28, 30
158 Kolář, Ondřej 252–253, 257, 261, 267–
268
456 ,QGH[RI1DPHV
Körtner, Ulrich H.J. 204, 408, 413–414, Macek, Petr 11, 198
416, 418 MacGregor, Neil 6
Koselleck, Reinhard 44 Macquarrie, John 13, 31
Kripke, Saul A. 232–233 Madigan, Kevin J. 339, 362
Krüger, Malte Dominik VI, 13, 29–30, Mahlmann, Theodor 128, 130, 256
41, 48, 53, 57, 60, 158, 172, 180, Machovec, Milan 52
208, 260, 273–274, 323, 339, 349– Mariña, Jacqueline 8, 143
350, 387, 395, 403 Markschies, Christoph 14, 118, 235–236
Kuitert, Harry M. 158 Marxsen, Willi 347
Küng, Hans 186, 192, 194, 277–278, McCord Adams, Marylin 28, 33
287, 355 McCormack, Bruce 138–140, 142, 191
McFague, Sallie 347
Lampe, Peter 260, 358 McGuckin, John A. 68, 70, 73–74, 94–
Landa, Ivan 6, 92, 277–278 96, 99, 274
Landmesser, Christof 23, 37–38, 42–43, Melanchthon, Philipp 119
45, 50, 56–57, 60, 64 Mellor, David Hugh 387
Lauster, Jörg 6 Menke, Karl-Heinz 159–160, 309, 312,
Lebon, Joseph 101 314
Leo I, Pope 67–72, 74, 76–77, 79, 81, Merz, Annette 37–39, 42–43, 55, 59,
84–85, 89–94, 97, 99–100, 109, 112– 170, 270, 338, 356, 361–362
113, 117–118, 129, 132, 134, 148, Mesch, Walter 373–376
156, 160, 188, 195, 220, 274, 293, Meyendorff, John 67, 70, 101
310 Milbank, John 111, 416
Leonhardt, Rochus 14 Moltmann, Jürgen 13, 31, 61, 65, 158,
Leontius of Byzantium 97, 100–101, 161–162, 168, 170, 176, 236, 244,
103–104, 106–107, 115, 165 264, 270–271, 274, 290–296, 352,
Leontius of Jerusalem 99–105, 107, 358, 375, 377, 379, 392
114–115, 131, 222, 360 Moxter, Michael 28–29, 41, 172, 237
Lerch, Magnus 159 Mrázek, Jiří 233
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 10, 37, 40, Mühlen, Heribert 186, 192
45, 318 Mühlenberg, Ekkehard 71, 89
Levenson, Jon D. 339, 362 Murrmann-Kahl, Michael 15, 17–18,
Lienhard, Marc 119–125, 127–129 44, 50, 55
Lindbeck, George A. 6, 19–20, 22–23,
28, 32, 63–64, 78, 160 Narcisse, Gilbert 27
Link, Christian 264 Neidhart, Ludwig 373, 379
Lohfink, Gerhard 252, 258, 266 Nellas, Panayotis 105
Lohse, Bernhard 66, 70, 118–119, 121, Niebuhr, Richard R. 8
123, 125–126 Nietzsche, Friedrich 210, 286, 287
Loofs, Friedrich 70, 79, 81, 93, 98, 103, Nitsche, Bernhard 159
108 Norris Jr., Richard 70, 78
Louth, Andrew 79, 101, 109, 111 Nüssel, Friederike 215, 309–312, 317,
Lüdemann, Gerd 36, 172, 348, 356 320–322, 327
Luther, Martin 10, 50, 90, 96–98, 106,
116–139, 161, 163, 168, 189, 192, O’Collins, Gerald, SJ 162, 167, 342,
239, 276–277, 282, 288, 296–298, 349, 351
300, 310, 312, 320, 390, 417–418 O’Donnell, Matthew Brook 341, 360
Lyotard, Jean-François 20, 22, 29, 31 Oort, Johannes van 67, 71–72, 79
Origen 97, 107, 187, 308, 346
,QGH[RI1DPHV 457
Osthövener, Claus-Dieter 15, 204 Quell, Gottfried 169

Özen, Alf 36, 348, 356
Rahner, Karl 5, 89, 94, 98, 102, 141,
Pailin, David A. 197–198 155, 164, 179–180, 187–190, 192–
Pannenberg, Wolfhart 5–6, 10, 12–13, 194, 197, 200, 204, 211, 217–218,
19, 66, 78, 88, 90–91, 105, 107–108, 236, 248, 253, 262–263, 287, 292,
116, 131, 135, 137, 140–142, 154, 294, 406, 409, 414
160–164, 167, 185, 191, 193, 203– Ratzinger, Joseph 55, 160, 193, 251–
206, 208, 210, 217–219, 228, 233– 257, 259–260, 267
234, 240–241, 246–247, 252, 256, Redeker, Martin 8
261–263, 290, 304, 307–313, 318, Reimarus, Herrmann Samuel 10, 16,
320, 322, 324, 326, 328, 335, 341– 37–39, 44, 53–54, 57, 59, 168, 172,
343, 345–346, 348, 351,352, 355, 345–346
361, 370 374, 376–380, 383, 396, Ricoeur, Paul 370
433 Ringleben, Joachim 266–267, 296, 339,
Paul (the apostle) 14, 41, 54, 57–58, 60, 358, 377
148, 170, 180, 185, 196, 260, 292, Ritter, Adolf Martin 68, 70, 93, 111,
300, 305, 307, 313, 315–316, 320, 159
322, 327–329, 343, 349, 355, 358, Robinson, James McConkey 49
363, 369, 397 Roldanus, Johannes 67, 71–72, 79
Paulus, Heinrich Eberhard Gottlob 346 Ruhstorfer, Karlheinz 143, 160, 181
Pearson, Lori 150 Rüsen, Jörn 23, 43–44
Peirce, Charles Sanders 19, 25, 401 Russell, Norman 72, 75, 105
Pelikan, Jaroslav 70, 94–95, 99, 273
Pesch, Otto Hermann 270 Sauter, Gerhard 23, 26
Pesch, Rudolf 342, 347 Segal, Alan F. 362
Peters, Albrecht 246 Sellars, John 107–108
Peters, Ted 260, 351, 354, 387 Schaede, Stephan 306–309, 311–313,
Piaget, Jean 213–214, 423 318–323, 332, 334
Pieper, Josef 210, 252–254, 257 Scheliha, Arnulf von 5, 46, 50, 54–55,
Pittenger, Norman 13, 200–202 168
Pius XII. 141, 155 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph
Plato 77, 106–108, 111–112, 118, 124, 138, 177, 225, 387
133, 177, 186–187, 96, 200, 222, Schillebeeckx, Edward 84, 86, 155, 168,
235, 239, 250–254, 373–374, 377, 195, 342, 347, 349, 404
423 Schleiermacher, Friedrich Daniel Ernst
Plotinos 186, 373–374, 377, 379 7–9, 15, 40–41, 49–50, 61, 64, 80,
Pokorný, Petr 51, 54–55, 57–60, 167, 83, 104, 142–153, 155, 158, 160–
169–174, 271, 316–317, 338, 341, 161, 188–189, 201, 204, 216–217,
343–345, 347, 352, 355, 361, 363 221–222, 224, 240, 307, 312, 314,
Porter, Stanley E. 37, 43, 57, 317, 339, 325, 334, 395, 397, 405
341 Schmid, Heinrich 84, 130–135
Pospíšil, Ctirad Václav 10, 27, 30, 80, Schmidt-Leukel, Perry 10, 154, 330,
96, 155, 161, 179, 221, 259, 342 355, 396, 398, 400, 402–405, 407
Price, Richard 65, 67, 69–70, 77, 79, 95 Schönborn, Christoph 88, 154, 161, 164,
Pröpper, Thomas 5, 160, 217, 236, 406 310
Prudký, Martin 235, 237 Schoonenberg, Piet 110, 166, 181, 193,
Putnam, Hilary 28–29, 401 217, 221–225
Schopenhauer, Arthur 250
458 ,QGH[RI1DPHV
Schreiber, Stefan 181 Urbina, Ignacio Ortiz de 67, 75, 76

Schröder, Markus 9, 143–144 Uthemann, Karl-Heinz 67, 69–74, 81,
Schröter, Jens 3, 17, 23, 28, 37, 43–47, 83–85, 90, 92–93, 100–108, 110,
51, 53–59, 170, 299, 301, 305, 315, 115, 117, 222, 360
322–323, 328–329 Volf, Miroslav 370
Schuele, Andreas 230, 352
Schulte, Raphael 378, 389, 391 Wagner, Falk 13, 15–17, 36, 52
Schüßler, Ingeborg 186 Waldenfels, Bernhard 204
Schwarz, Reinhard 117, 121, 125–126 Wawrykow, Joseph 104
Schwöbel, Christoph 10, 61, 66, 77, 84, Weber, Otto 152, 187, 204
178, 205, 212, 217, 263, 373, 377, Weinandy, Thomas G., OFM Cap. 27,
395, 416–418 70, 72, 88, 116, 138, 140, 154–155,
Slenczka, Notger 17–18, 52, 119, 122– 186, 188, 194–195, 197, 200, 289
123, 158, 395 Welker, Michael 56, 162, 167, 169, 292,
Slenczka, Reinhard 8, 40–41, 49, 143– 301, 351–352, 355
144, 151–152 Welz, Claudia 235
Sobrino, Jon, SJ 160, 168, 175, 241–245 Wendebourg, Dorothea 79, 89
Sölle, Dorothee 286, 299, 314 Wenz, Gunther 45, 57, 60–61, 162, 167,
Souček, Josef B. 316 174, 335
Spaemann, Robert 84, 239 Werbick, Jürgen 98, 110, 159, 195–197
Stamatović, Slobodan 208 Wessel, Claus 111
Steiger, Johann Anselm 125–126 Weth, Rudolf 271, 299, 301, 305, 309,
Stock, Eberhard 268 312, 322, 327
Strauss, David Friedrich 15–16, 18, 32, White, Thomas Joseph 116, 155–157,
38, 40, 42, 47, 59, 61, 135–136, 158, 194, 273, 360
345–348, 397 Whitehead, Alfred North 197–199, 381
Swinburne, Richard 340, 342, 358 Wiedenroth, Ulrich 135
Wigand, Johannes 128
Taylor, Charles 262 Wilckens, Ulrich 312
Tertullian 84, 91, 108, 117, 220, 273 Williams, Rowan 413
Thiede, Werner 158 Winter, Dagmar 21, 45
Thielicke, Helmut 204, 286–287 Wittekind, Folkart 17–18, 50–52
Theissen, Gerd 21, 37–39, 42–43, 45, Wolter, Michael 271, 301, 315, 322,
51, 55, 59, 170, 172, 270, 338, 348, 329, 338, 345, 349, 358
350, 354, 356, 361–362 Woźniak, Robert J. 18, 62
Theodoret of Cyrus 68, 85, 92, 100, Wrede, William 37–38
107–108, 185 Wright, Nicolas Thomas 169, 339–340,
Thomas of Aquin 52, 88, 96–97, 104, 342, 351, 354–355, 398
116, 155, 157, 177, 187, 194, 208, Wyrwa, Dietmar 71, 89
252, 256, 270, 380, 383
Thomas, Günter 352, 354–355, 358– Yarbro-Collins, Adela 355–356
359, 361, 387, 393 Yerkes, James 277–278, 285
Thomasius, Gottfried 135, 139–140, 142
Tietz, Christiane 52 Zarnow, Christopher 229
Tillich, Paul 5, 11, 13, 41, 47–48, 119, Zizioulas, John D. 77, 84–87, 162, 167,
158, 201, 209, 264, 273, 374, 380, 179–181, 221
395, 404, 406, 409
Tracy, David 20, 22, 53 Žižek, Slavoj 111
Tworuschka, Udo 421
Index of Subjects
abduction 24, 353–354 – Scripture 5, 40, 42–43, 47–49, 57,

accommodation see God 77, 91, 119, 134, 140, 148, 150, 153,
DFKRULVWRV 74, 115, 123 213, 396, 417
DGLDLUHWRV 74 biblical V, 5, 36, 38–42, 46–48, 54–58,
Alexandria 67–68, 72, 89, 91, 94, 99, 62, 64, 86, 88, 91–f93, 119, 134,
101, 106, 121, 148, 218, 220 142, 148, 159, 162, 168, 170, 174,
DQK\SRVWDVLV see nature 180, 192, 206, 210, 212, 215–216,
Antioch 67–72, 75, 85, 89–93, 99–101, 222, 224, 233, 235–237, 241, 251–
106, 109, 112, 121, 201, 218, 220, 252, 260, 270, 297, 299– 300, 304,
273, 275, 412 315–316, 320–322, 328, 335, 339,
apathy see God 341, 343, 345, 348–349, 351–352,
apostles 37, 40, 130, 150 354–356, 358, 360, 362, 370, 381,
appearance 151, 173–174, 261, 280, 384, 389, 396–397
285, 340, 343–346, 350–352, 354–
359, 361–364, 390 Chalcedon 3, 16, 27, 36, 65–165, 167,
Arianism 77, 94–95, 161, 181, 191 178–192, 194–195, 206–207, 212,
assimilation see God 216–217, 220, 222–223, 226, 247–
DV\QFK\WRVV\QFK\VLV 74, 106–108, 164, 248, 275–276, 282, 287, 294, 296,
248 305, 333, 384, 387, 396, 398, 403–
atonement 18, 118, 152, 167, 206, 301– 405
305, 309–310, 315, 318, 320–322, – neo-Chalcedonism 70, 74, 83, 89, 93,
326, 329, 335, 342, 369–370, 398 101, 106, 109–110, 112, 118, 158,
DWUHSWRV 74–76, 140, 192, 203, 206 195, 217, 220, 223, 226, 275, 305,
405
body 62, 81–82, 90, 106–107, 115, 123– Christology passim
125, 129, 131–132, 134, 137, 151, – from above 167, 194, 224, 405
158, 236, 251–261, 263–266, 269, – from below 118, 141, 155, 159, 167–
283, 289, 303, 323, 339–341, 347, 168, 195–196, 222, 224, 242, 349,
354–359, 361–362, 370, 398 384, 404–405
Bible 6, 48, 155, 204, 321 – implicit Christology 59
– New Testament 33, 37–40, 42, 46, church 4–5, 1114, 16, 20, 26, 33–36, 38,
48, 51, 54, 56, 60, 153–156, 162, 47, 49–51, 54, 59–60, 62, 68, 71–72,
166, 170–171, 173, 180–181, 201, 77, 79, 82, 86–90, 97, 99–100, 105,
208, 213, 235, 246, 252, 289, 302, 109–111, 118–120, 131, 138–139,
304–305, 315–317, 321–322, 329, 142, 144, 147, 150, 152–155, 157,
338, 341–344, 347, 349, 359–360, 159, 166, 172–174, 179, 181, 186–
398, 417 187, 197, 200–201, 203, 206, 209,
– Old Testament 180–181, 192, 233, 217–218, 222, 246, 251–252, 255,
235, 246, 270, 304, 341 272–274, 287, 295, 300, 303–304,
460 ,QGH[RI6XEMHFWV
306, 309, 322–323, 325328, 339, 383, 385–389, 391–393, 401, 407,
341, 344–345, 347–349, 351–352, 417
355, 361, 377–378, 387, 389, 397– cross see Jesus Christ
399, 405, 408–410, 414–415, 421
claim 6, 10, 19–29, 50–51, 66, 71, 76– death 47, 51, 54, 64, 80, 93–96, 114–
79, 94, 96, 98–99, 121, 123, 134, 115, 123–124, 127–131, 134, 143,
138, 144, 154–157, 163, 177, 228, 150, 157, 162–163, 166, 168–173,
241, 290, 308, 316, 330, 339–340, 175–176, 188, 196, 206, 210–211,
351, 386, 394–396, 399–400, 407– 214, 233–234, 243–245, 247, 250–
408, 412–420 302, 304, 306–309, 312–318, 321–
– absolute 31–32, 157, 386, 411, 416– 332, 335, 337, 340, 342–343, 346,
418 348–349, 351, 359–360, 362–364,
– universal 31–34, 364, 386, 408, 417– 366–371, 384, 390–391, 396, 398,
418, 420 403, 406–407, 414–415
FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP see Jesus – relocation of death 269, 297, 330–
Christ 331, 368
communication 10, 19–22, 25, 29–30, – total-death theory 252, 256, 259–269
35, 62–63, 76, 90, 93, 96–98, 108– diagnostic rationality 19, 22–24, 27–28,
109, 122, 130, 133, 135, 149, 163, 287, 316, 340, 383, 386, 401
189, 196, 214, 225, 332–333, 335, dialogue 6, 155, 178, 185, 217, 386,
366, 402, 416 394, 400, 408–409, 414–416, 418–
community 15–16, 26, 34, 38, 49, 55, 423
106, 150, 173, 209, 213, 232, 277, divinity see Jesus Christ
280, 285, 302, 320, 323, 325, 334, dogma 10, 14–15, 17, 23, 36, 38–42, 45,
344, 349, 354, 366, 399, 414 50, 53, 68, 70–72, 77–80, 88–89, 93,
consciousness 7, 9, 15–16, 18, 20, 41, 98, 100, 109–111, 128, 130, 142–
46, 51, 53, 64, 139, 143–146, 148, 152, 154–155, 159, 168, 177, 187,
150–151, 155–156, 161, 201, 217– 193, 217, 242, 261, 396, 398–399,
219, 228, 241, 245–246, 248, 264, 403
273, 277–283, 285–286, 311, 325, dynamic 167, 180, 185–186, 188, 190–
348, 395, 401, 404 203, 207–210, 214, 221, 239, 295–
Constantinople I 65, 68 296, 337, 365, 377, 380, 382–383,
Constantinople II 70–71, 75, 78–79, 85, 386–387, 389, 415
89, 95, 105, 108–110, 126, 134, 188,
194–195, 275–277 Easter 34, 37–39, 42, 48, 51, 54–61, 63–
Constantinople III 71, 98, 112, 139, 64, 118, 141, 162, 166, 169–174,
147, 155–156, 196, 217 177–178, 190, 195, 265, 270, 290,
construction 20, 23, 42–44, 50, 54, 59, 313, 316, 326, 329, 336, 339, 343–
102, 119, 143, 159, 174, 259, 268, 345, 347–354, 359–360, 362–364,
278, 307, 418 390
creation 4–5, 13, 32, 62, 86, 105–106, HNK\SRVWDVLV see nature
110, 157, 164–165, 167, 180, 185, encounter 21, 33, 47–49, 60, 62–63,
195–202, 207–209, 211, 214–215, 218, 251, 265, 288, 316, 344, 355,
218, 224–225, 227, 236–237, 239– 358, 363, 389, 394–395, 405–406,
241, 247 252, 254, 256, 259, 263, 416–417, 419–421, 423
266–268, 297, 304, 309, 329–330, HQK\SRVWDVLVsee nature
352, 359–360, 363, 365–367, 369, enhypostatical inversion 222, 224, 226,
371, 373, 375, 377–378, 380, 382– 228, 240
,QGH[RI6XEMHFWV 461
Enlightenment 5, 15, 17–18, 20–21, 33, fiction 38, 44, 77, 103, 168, 348, 356,
36, 46, 51–52, 59, 66, 84, 104, 107, 361
111, 116–117, 139, 142, 172, 188– ILQLWXPFDSD[QRQFDSD[LQILQLWL 6,
189, 220, 228, 236, 304, 307, 309, 136, 140–141, 196, 402
311, 395, 405, 408, 412, 416 fire 95, 106–107, 129, 132, 269
Ephesus 27, 65, 37–71, 76, 89, 94, 100, formula of interchange 100, 121, 306,
110, 154–155 310, 324
eschatology 19, 29, 31–32, 64, 143, 154, future 31, 44, 53, 65, 143, 157, 167,
162, 167, 174, 176, 223, 230–231, 198, 200, 228, 245, 256, 260–261,
245, 251–257, 259–261, 264, 267, 269, 301, 311, 313, 316–317, 325,
292, 316–317, 320, 329–332, 334, 327–328, 330, 332
342, 344, 347–348, 351–354, 360,
362–367, 369, 372, 389–382, 385, God passim
387, 389, 391, 398, 401, 411 – accommodation 103, 128, 164, 185–
eternity 88, 124, 126, 167, 176, 178, 217, 219, 221, 225, 234, 246 –247,
185, 188, 196, 203, 208, 263–264, 295–296, 333, 386, 390, 422–423,
277, 293, 297, 328, 361, 363, 367, 426
371–393, 406, 411 – apathy 93–95, 124, 126, 133–134,
ethics 210, 304, 373, 395 156, 178–179, 185–187, 190, 244,
eucharist 63, 86, 119, 123, 128, 303, 276, 296, 376, 381, 386
334 – assimilation 23, 157, 213–214, 420,
exclusivism 394, 402, 409, 414–415, 423
419 – GHXV 14, 33, 61, 72, 87, 118, 140,
142, 152, 161, 177, 187, 189, 208,
fact 8–9, 16, 22–24, 27, 30, 32, 34, 39, 256, 262, 282, 291, 297, 304, 308–
42–45, 47, 49, 51, 53–58, 60, 78, 309, 314, 326, 334, 384, 414
80–83, 92, 115, 153, 161–162, 166, – condescendence 118, 154–155, 157,
170–171, 195, 216, 222, 224, 232, 204, 206
243, 245, 257–258, 265, 268, 270– – grace 144, 156–157, 208–209, 212,
271, 299, 304, 326, 329, 341, 346, 235, 245, 252, 254, 257–259, 267–
348, 350–353, 355, 361, 364, 366– 268, 317
367, 385, 402 – immutability 75–76, 95, 98, 101,
faith V, 3–5, 7–12, 15, 17–19, 26–27, 107, 130, 133–134, 139–141, 152,
30–36, 38–42, 46–53, 55–67, 79–80, 156, 178, 185–195, 197–198, 203–
83, 94, 98–99, 102, 104, 111, 113, 204, 206–208, 211, 214, 225, 248,
122, 126, 130, 141–144, 147, 149– 269, 273, 276, 287, 294–296, 374,
151, 154–159, 162, 166–178, 180, 376, 382, 286
182, 185, 187–188, 190, 196, 200, – NHQRVLV 76, 128, 135–142, 149, 154–
204, 206, 210, 214–216, 221–222, 155, 160, 163–164, 188–189, 191,
224, 229–231, 240, 242–243, 245, 195–196, 205–207, 210, 219, 225,
253, 257, 273, 278, 280, 282, 285– 279, 294, 386–387, 399
287, 290, 299–301, 311–312, 314– – SOHURVLV 164, 205, 208, 219, 279, 386
317, 326–329, 334–340, 343–351, – revelation 5–6, 9–13, 16–17, 20, 40,
354–356, 358–359, 362–366, 376– 47–48, 61–62, 120, 154–157, 162,
377, 384–385, 390–391, 394–397, 172, 177, 179, 185, 195, 202, 219,
399–400, 402–404, 406–407, 409, 223–224, 243, 266, 270, 282, 285,
413–415, 417–423 333, 350, 358, 397, 400, 402–404,
Father see Trinity 407, 410–413, 418
462 ,QGH[RI6XEMHFWV
Gospel 13–14, 37–40, 42–47, 49–51, immutability see God

54–56, 58, 61, 64, 99, 156, 160, impulse 51, 95, 173–175, 198, 214, 225,
168–171, 224, 240–241, 253, 270, 272, 341, 344, 348–349, 356, 359,
273, 286, 326, 333–334, 338–339, 364, 394
343, 346, 350, 354–355, 361, 363, incarnation see Jesus Christ
396–397, 405, 420 inclusivism 402, 409–415, 419
individuality 25, 83, 203, 227, 234, 238,
hermeneutics 20, 30, 60–61, 64, 110, 261, 277, 319, 324, 368, 369–370
116, 122, 155–156, 169, 171, 174, intercession 381
177, 204, 210, 315, 338–343, 353, interchange see formula of interchange
360, 364, 405, 411 internal realism 19, 23, 28–29, 176, 185,
history 4–6, 14, 16, 18, 22, 24, 28–29, 364, 385, 401
36, 38, 40–41, 43–47, 49–51, 54, 57, iron 94, 106–107, 129, 132
60, 66–38, 70, 79, 87–89, 98, 118,
139, 144, 149, 160, 163, 167, 174, Jesus Christ passim
176, 179, 185, 188–189, 191, 197, – Christus praesens 60–63, 144, 316
200, 210, 216, 223, 228, 232, 234– – FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP 76, 80, 89–
235, 242–245, 247, 261, 268–269, 99, 108, 112–114, 122–130, 132–
272, 276, 280, 282, 285, 291, 296, 133, 135–137, 141–142, 149, 160,
312–314, 316–319, 325, 329–332, 163–164, 189, 194–196, 212, 247,
335–336, 339, 346, 348, 350–354, 274, 276, 310
360–362, 366–367, 369–370, 372– – cross 33, 47–48, 54, 81, 91, 93, 115,
373, 377, 381, 384–385, 387–390, 118, 120–121, 123, 125, 134, 137,
392, 401, 406–407, 410–411, 413– 162, 168–169, 172–173, 175, 177,
415, 425 181–182, 190, 196, 204, 209–211,
humanity see Jesus Christ 213, 243–245, 258–259, 269–273,
humankind 150–151, 164, 178, 186, 275, 277, 288, 290–294, 299–337,
188, 273, 307, 314, 320, 345, 388, 339, 342, 346–347, 353–354, 365,
391, 397, 411 369–370, 381, 390–392
K\SRVWDVLV 72–76, 80–87, 90–91, 94, 97, – crucifixion 265, 270, 343, 346, 351,
100–110, 112–114, 147–148, 160, 353, 356, 358, 360, 365–366
180–181, 193–195, 198, 220–224, – divinity 3–4, 12, 14–15, 33, 41, 51,
228, 245, 275, 305 63, 65–68, 72, 75–76, 80–81, 85–86,
88, 91–96, 98–101, 105–107, 109–
identity 64, 79–80, 122, 127, 141, 146, 110, 112–128, 131, 133–134, 136–
178–179, 186, 190, 195–196, 200, 143, 145–153, 156–157, 160–164,
202–203, 206, 208–209, 214, 216, 167–168, 177, 179–181, 185–196,
226, 228–234, 237, 239, 241, 244, 200–201, 203–208, 210–226, 237–
246, 251–253, 256–258, 261, 263– 238, 240, 242, 247–249, 255–256,
267, 271, 277, 279, 281, 289–290, 265, 268–269, 273–276, 279, 283–
294–296, 307, 318, 319, 330, 334, 284, 289, 292, 294–296, 306, 309,
353, 357–358, 360, 362–363, 366– 378, 384–385, 394, 397, 402, 405,
371, 388, 391, 411–412, 416, 419, 407–408, 412, 417
422–423 – earthly Jesus 7–8, 45–46, 54–55, 57–
LPDJR'HL 164, 212, 216, 235–239, 61, 128, 135, 142–143, 148, 150,
346–247, 386, 389 161–163, 166–167, 170, 175, 190,
immortality 94, 99, 124, 131, 134, 137, 216, 219, 223, 246–247, 348, 356,
145, 224, 233–234, 236–237, 251– 358, 360, 367, 372, 384, 389, 391,
269, 275, 294, 330, 358 406
,QGH[RI6XEMHFWV 463
– exclusive vicarious representation – resurrection 4, 33, 36, 48, 51, 58–60,

305–337 64, 66, 80, 128, 134, 150, 157, 162–
– JHQXV 87, 124, 128–130, 132–134, 163, 166–176, 185, 190, 204, 209–
136, 138, 149, 160, 311 210, 213, 216, 225, 230, 234, 244–
– KHQRVLV 106–107 245, 247, 251–256, 258–261, 263–
– historical Jesus 21, 23–24, 36–60, 267, 269–272, 283, 285–286, 289–
138, 143–144, 148, 152, 156, 168, 291, 293, 296–298, 316–317, 319,
170, 172, 175, 241–242, 270, 338, 324, 328–333, 335, 337–371, 381,
354, 356, 361–362, 407 384–385, 387, 390–393, 398, 403–
– KRPR 72, 76, 87, 97, 105, 116, 118, 404, 406, 410
121, 127, 140, 142, 152, 161, 187, – VWDWXV 128, 134–135, 137, 139, 141,
189–190, 221, 226–249, 256, 273, 152–153, 334
282, 284, 197, 304, 308– 309, 314, – tomb 339–340, 343, 346, 351, 354–
334, 384 359, 361–364, 404
– KRPRRXVLRV 82, 140, 161, 191, 412 – vicarious representation 270, 299–
– humanity 3–4, 47–48, 61–63, 65–68, 337, 391
72, 75–76, 80–82, 85–88, 91–93, 95–
96, 99–100, 103–107, 109–110, 112– NHQRVLV see God
118, 120–121, 123–131, 133–143,
145–153, 156–157, 159–165, 167– Last Judgement 230, 250, 258, 266–267,
168, 177, 179–181, 188–191, 193– 332, 335–336, 363, 367, 369–371
197, 200–203, 207, 211–214, 216– liberal theology 4–7, 10, 13, 15, 18, 22,
229, 234–236, 238–243, 246–249, 25, 27, 32–33, 36, 38–42, 44, 46–52,
255, 268, 273–274, 276, 281–287, 55–56, 58–59, 61–62, 66, 71, 106,
289, 294, 296–297, 306, 309–310, 111, 119, 122–123, 126, 141, 144,
313–314, 324, 335, 366–367, 378, 146, 150, 152, 155, 159, 168, 172,
385–386, 389–391, 394, 403, 405, 188, 229, 242, 247, 273, 301, 315,
423 326, 349–350, 395–397, 403, 405
– hypostatic union 76, 92, 106, 110, liberation theology 105, 117, 160, 168,
117, 123, 136, 143, 148, 221–222, 241–245, 250
247–248, 274, 310 life 3–4, 6, 8–9, 13, 15, 22, 24, 26, 28,
– incarnation 13, 16, 33, 36, 51, 59, 30, 32, 36–41, 46–49, 53, 58–61, 64,
63–66, 74, 76, 78–79, 81, 83, 86–88, 106, 114–116, 118–120, 135, 140,
94–96, 101–103, 105, 113–115, 117– 143, 147, 150–153, 156, 161–163,
118, 120–121, 125, 128–131, 134– 166–172, 175–176, 185, 190–193,
137, 139–141, 148, 150, 152–153, 195–196, 199, 201–202, 206–211,
155, 157–159, 162–163, 167, 175– 215–216, 219, 223, 226, 228–229,
177, 179, 181, 185–189, 191–194, 231, 233–234, 236–237, 239, 241–
196–197, 200–201, 203–204, 206, 243, 245, 247, 250–251, 255–256,
209–212, 214, 216–249, 258, 266, 258–272, 278, 280–283, 289–290,
273, 275, 277–280, 286–287, 295, 292, 295–299, 306–307, 311–312,
300, 305, 308, 310, 312, 324, 333, 317–320, 328, 330–337, 342, 346,
336, 340, 342, 347, 360, 366, 377– 349, 353–354, 357–358, 360–362,
378, 388, 392, 395–400, 403, 405, 364–371, 374, 377–380, 382, 384–
412, 417 393, 395–401, 403, 406–407, 410–
– inclusive vicarious representation 411, 414–415
305–337
– preexistence 167, 175–176, 185, 189 memory 24, 56, 70, 256, 263–264, 267,
– quests for the historical Jesus 37–53 370, 375, 406
464 ,QGH[RI6XEMHFWV
miaphysitism 79, 90 – two-natures doctrine 16–17, 36, 77,

modernity 20, 24, 159, 262 89, 109, 121, 130, 138, 141, 145,
monophysitism 68, 73–75, 79, 82, 88, 147, 153, 217, 193
90, 93–94, 98–99, 101, 106, 109, neo-Chalcedonism see Chalcedon
112, 127, 189, 218, 275 Nicea 65–66, 71, 77, 154, 178, 384,
moral 22, 30, 41, 47, 49, 67, 158, 256, 396, 405
248, 272, 291, 311, 395
ontology 180, 185, 203, 205, 208–209,
name 31, 33, 79, 113, 134, 156, 167, 212, 215, 217–218, 221, 227–228,
186, 192, 198, 203, 231–234, 246, 233–235, 245, 248, 250, 254, 258,
254, 269, 273, 279, 291, 296, 303, 269, 278, 288, 296, 304, 318, 320,
307, 310, 313, 360, 367–368, 390– 324, 328, 331, 333, 335, 337, 353,
391 360, 362, 364, 366–369, 372, 374,
– proper 186, 231–234, 269, 360, 367– 376, 383, 385–387, 390–391, 397,
368, 390–391 409, 412
nature 6, 16–17, 19–20, 22–23, 28–29, organism 145–146, 148, 150–151, 213
32, 36, 42, 48, 63–64, 68–69, 72–85,
88–100, 102–110, 112–117, 120– particularity 10, 19–21, 30–33, 61, 88,
122, 124–142, 145–150, 153–154, 196, 231, 277, 279, 314, 324, 340,
156–157, 160, 162–164, 167, 186, 371–372, 395, 412–413, 416–417,
189, 191, 194–195, 197–201, 214, 419
217, 220–225, 235, 243–244, 248, past 31, 43–44, 50, 56, 79, 96, 228, 256,
253–255, 261, 273–277, 279, 282– 267, 286, 316, 325, 328, 330, 354,
283, 285–287, 291–295, 300, 305– 358, 362, 365, 370, 373–375, 377–
307, 309–310, 323–325, 352, 355, 378, 380, 387
357, 360, 366, 369, 373, 382–383, patripassianism 76, 95, 293
399–400, 403–405 SHULFKRUHVLV see Trinity
– accidents 97, 102–104, 156 SHUVRQD 74, 84–85, 90, 97, 119, 129,
– DQK\SRVWDVLV103, 131, 139, 149, 142, 253, 303, 401
220, 223, 305 personality 39–40, 46–47, 49, 82–84,
– HNK\SRVWDVLV 193–219, 221–222 104–105, 139, 144–145, 147–149,
– HQK\SRVWDVLV 73, 76, 89, 93, 99–110, 151–152, 171, 220–223, 226–231,
112, 114, 116–117, 123, 130–135, 233–234, 237, 239–241, 245–246,
143, 148, 153, 159–160, 163–164, 314, 332, 334, 366, 370
193–195, 211–212, 217–226, 240, perspective 3–7, 9–11, 16, 18–35, 37–
246, 296, 300, 305, 309–310, 314 39, 42–44, 46, 51–6, 70–73, 78, 80,
– NUDVLV 107–108, 112 82, 85, 88–89, 97, 101, 105, 109–
– PLDSK\VLV formula 69, 73, 75, 78, 110, 116–118, 123, 129, 137, 153–
81, 89, 94, 99, 109, 274–275 157, 161–163, 165–178, 185, 189–
– mixture / PL[LV 68, 94, 107–108, 190, 200, 204, 210, 216–217, 221,
113, 127, 129, 134, 139, 163, 206, 228, 230–231, 235, 237–238, 244–
240 245, 262, 270–272, 278, 290, 296,
– SDUDWKHVLV 107 313, 329, 331, 333–336, 338–341,
– SK\VLV 73, 75, 80–83, 85, 87, 103, 343, 348–349, 354, 362–365, 368,
110, 147, 198, 314–315, 324 372, 375, 380, 383–386, 388, 390–
– properties 91–92, 96–97, 102, 107– 392, 394, 400–402, 405, 407–409,
108, 112–114, 122, 125, 128–130, 412, 414, 416–423
132–133, 232 perspectivity 28–30, 35, 62, 340, 365,
400
,QGH[RI6XEMHFWV 465
SK\VLV see nature reality 3, 6, 13, 19–20, 23, 25, 29–31,

picture V, 13, 17, 20, 30, 39–41, 44–53, 51, 53, 57, 60, 64, 66, 71, 80–82, 95,
56, 60, 62, 67, 70, 92, 109–110, 113, 102 ,105, 121–122, 135, 143, 156–
117–118, 134, 143–144, 151, 157– 157, 166–167, 170, 179, 189, 195,
158, 173–174, 187, 189, 195, 221, 197–199, 201–202, 206, 209, 224,
225–226, 242–243, 247, 269, 280, 228, 238, 241–245, 248, 257, 262,
295, 308–309, 315, 349, 369, 374, 271, 277–278, 287, 326–327, 329–
380–381, 401, 119 330, 334–336, 338–339, 342–352,
pluralism 10, 27, 30, 32–33, 78, 154, 354, 358, 360–362, 364–365, 367,
325, 347, 394–396, 399–404, 407– 372, 375, 379, 381–388, 396–397,
422 399–402, 404, 406, 410, 412, 420
plurality 10, 19–23, 25, 27, 30–32, 34, reconciliation 31, 34, 270, 280–281,
39, 43, 45–46, 52, 57–60, 63, 156, 283–285, 326, 335–336, 370
176, 332, 372, 385, 388, 394–397, religion 5–6, 8–12, 14, 17–18, 20, 22–
404, 409, 414–416 24, 28, 32–34, 36–37, 40–41, 44,
pneumatology 18, 207, 280, 286, 325– 48–49, 51–53, 78, 123, 141, 143,
326, 333, 417 158, 172, 179, 197, 204, 223, 229,
postmodernity 20, 22, 24, 416, 421–422 236, 247, 257, 271–272, 277–281,
prayer 115, 310, 422 286, 305, 311, 332, 373, 394–397,
presence 15, 39, 62–63, 68, 86, 120, 400–404, 407–423
135, 146, 151, 157, 163–165, 173, religiosity 6, 13, 18, 52
187, 196, 201, 204, 208, 214, 224, representation (exclusive and inclusive)
237–239, 242–243, 247, 249, 267, see Jesus Christ
282, 303, 319, 348, 353, 360, 363– resurrection see Jesus Christ
364, 366, 374, 378, 380, 386, 389, revelation see God
392, 397–401, 403–404, 410, 423
present time 228, 231, 301, 316, 327, sacrifice 47, 96, 244, 251, 259, 270,
366, 373–375, 377–379, 387–389 273, 286, 299–304, 306–308, 310,
principle 7, 9, 15, 18–19, 23, 27, 36, 40, 312, 315, 318, 321–322, 324, 326–
44, 61, 82, 85, 100, 106–107, 109– 327, 329–331, 342, 369
110, 118–119, 121, 131, 145–148, salvation 4, 18, 32, 53, 76, 88, 100,
151–152, 157–158, 168, 180, 199, 105–106, 109, 116–117, 121, 132,
201, 216, 221, 225, 243, 266, 373, 134, 136, 150, 157, 159, 162, 179,
376, 408, 416 190, 196, 223, 235, 238, 243–244,
process theism / theology 168, 188, 250–251, 258, 265, 269–271, 299–
197–203, 214, 227, 381–383, 388 300, 308–309, 311, 316, 319–321,
proclamation 37, 39, 60, 62–63, 144, 323–328, 331–333, 335–337, 362,
147, 170–171, 173–174, 215, 291, 368–370, 376, 380, 388, 391, 395–
306–307, 316, 326, 343–346, 348, 396, 398, 400, 402–403, 406–409,
351–352, 363–364, 366, 384, 390, 412–413, 415, 418
421 VDU[ 86, 103, 106, 148, 150, 222, 297
projection 18, 39, 52–53, 59, 172, 231, satisfaction 116, 118, 120, 134, 136–
286, 347, 395 137, 178, 304, 306–312, 314, 323,
SURVRSRQ 72, 80–85, 87, 106, 147, 220, 327, 330, 342
222, 228 Scripture see Bible
self-consciousness 7, 15–16, 18, 46, 51,
quests for the historical Jesus see Jesus 139, 143–144, 146, 151, 155–156,
Christ 161, 217–219, 228, 241246, 248,
273, 277–280, 284–285
466 ,QGH[RI6XEMHFWV
semiotics 19, 24–28 Thomism 116, 155–157, 194, 252, 297

simultaneousness 344, 373, 375, 380, time 14, 19–20, 27, 31, 38, 40–44, 50,
388–389, 392 66, 142, 176, 178, 185, 193, 196,
sin 88, 117–118, 120, 130–131, 136, 203, 227, 233, 251, 261, 264, 297,
145, 156, 168, 213–215, 222, 224, 306, 316, 318, 320, 351, 361–363,
228, 231, 243, 250, 258, 262, 268, 365–367, 372–393, 395, 412
269–270, 283, 296–297, 300–304, Trinity 14–15, 17, 12, 14, 20, 63, 65–
308–318, 324–325, 327–332, 334, 66, 74, 77, 80–87, 91, 93–95, 100–
354, 365, 369–370, 385, 388–390, 101, 106, 114, 118, 141–143, 146–
400, 403 148, 151, 154, 160–161, 164, 167,
sociality 25, 227, 234, 237–238, 260, 175, 177–182, 185, 187–188, 190,
311, 368–370 200–203, 205, 208, 210–212, 214,
Son see Trinity 217–223, 225, 228, 240, 242, 244,
soteriology 4, 8, 63, 88, 92, 105, 117, 246, 270, 274–276, 278, 281, 285,
119, 125–126, 129, 134, 137, 152, 288–289, 291–296, 300, 305, 308,
164, 167, 176, 215, 222, 243–244, 321, 325, 328, 331–333, 336–337,
250, 255–256, 265, 267–268, 297, 354, 360, 365–366, 376–379, 381,
299–301, 304–308, 310, 316–317, 383–392, 399–400, 403–405, 409–
319–321, 323–324, 327, 331–332, 413, 415, 417–418, 420, 422–423
336, 338, 342, 357, 367, 407, 413 – economic Trinity 136, 142, 156,
soul 49, 81, 104, 106–107, 124–125, 178–179, 191, 202, 211, 294, 296,
129, 131–132, 134, 140, 146, 148, 377
150, 230, 236–237, 251–269, 277, – Father 13, 49, 65, 82, 85–87, 94,
283, 289, 295, 342, 358–359, 362, 115, 118, 120, 140–141, 144, 157,
376 180–181, 191, 193, 202, 208–210,
sources 15, 39, 43–44, 46–47, 53–56, 218, 225, 240–241, 245–246, 248,
58, 81, 118, 188, 220, 229, 241, 270, 259, 266, 273, 289, 291–294, 296,
299, 343, 356, 362, 405 303, 312–313, 325, 360, 366–367,
space 18, 22, 30, 41, 49, 63, 67–68, 70, 378–389, 391–392, 140, 412
7485, 87, 105, 138, 140, 144, 167, – immanent Trinity 62, 136, 142, 156,
187, 189–192, 198, 206, 208, 212, 178–179, 191, 199, 202, 211, 294,
220–223, 233, 238–239, 241, 246– 296, 377, 386, 404
247, 266, 269, 292, 297, 310, 320, – RLNRQRPLD 83, 95
324–325, 331, 333, 335, 351, 361– – patrocentrism 85–86, 180, 208, 225
362, 367–368, 373, 377, 379, 385, – SHULFKRUHVLV 90, 92, 95, 102, 107–
388–389, 392, 411–412, 414, 417, 108, 111–115, 202, 208–209, 366,
423 386, 388, 392
Spirit see Trinity – Son 7, 13–15, 33, 36, 37, 51, 51, 58–
subjectivity 15, 18, 33, 41, 110, 122, 59, 64, 73, 78, 83, 86–87, 91, 93–95,
158, 178, 195, 117–118, 236, 277– 99–100, 102, 104, 106, 113, 118,
278, 280, 307, 349–350, 372 123, 125–126, 130, 136, 140–142,
sweet exchange / DGPLUDELOHFRPPHUFL 153–154, 163, 168–170, 175, 181–
XP 96, 125–126, 306, 310, 318, 320 182, 185–186, 187, 189–191, 196,
202, 204, 206, 209–211, 217–219,
theopaschitism 93–96, 118, 275, 288, 221–222, 225, 235, 240–243, 246,
292 274, 281–282, 289–294, 296, 305,
WKHRVLV 76, 86, 100, 105–108, 110, 112, 317, 325–326, 339, 342, 360, 366,
115, 123, 137, 163–164, 189, 207, 376–378, 387–389, 391–392, 397–
221, 225, 239, 300, 310 399, 410, 412
,QGH[RI6XEMHFWV 467
– Spirit 5, 11, 15, 34, 39–40, 46, 62– 100, 102, 105–107, 109–110, 112–
63, 74, 81, 86–87, 104, 115, 117, 117, 120–132, 134–136, 139–143,
124, 131, 136, 145, 151, 159, 161, 145–151, 153–154, 159, 161–164,
165, 173, 181, 187, 191–192, 196, 166–167, 173, 180–181, 185, 188–
202, 208–210, 213–215, 223–225, 189, 191, 194–196, 201–203, 207–
236, 241–242, 249, 253, 255–256, 209, 211–213, 216–218, 220–222,
259–260, 263–264, 277–286, 291– 225–226, 228, 231–232, 234, 239–
292, 294, 303–304, 312, 325, 331, 241, 247–248, 252–256, 259, 264,
333, 335, 346, 348, 354, 358–360, 274–282, 284–286, 289, 291, 293,
362–364, 366, 373, 375, 378, 381, 295, 302, 317, 320, 323, 325, 331–
388–389, 391–393, 396–400, 403– 332, 334, 336–337, 344, 349, 354,
404, 406–408, 410–411, 414–415, 366, 378, 385, 387, 390–392, 399,
421 410, 413–415, 418
– WKHRORJLD 83, 95, 133 universality 10, 32, 88, 159, 277, 280–
tomb see Jesus Christ 281, 285–286, 314, 319–320, 337,
truth 6, 10–11, 19, 21–23, 25, 27–30, 372, 404, 415–417
32, 42–43, 55, 71, 77, 94, 117, 140,
154–157, 186, 189, 229, 232, 243, vicarious representation see Jesus Christ
280–282, 285, 287, 292, 319, 326, vision 157, 172–174, 197, 343–345,
342, 351–354, 366, 376, 396, 399, 347–351, 355, 358, 362–363
401, 405, 407, 409, 411–414, 416–
418, 420 water 106–108, 116
wine 106–108, 217, 226, 303
unity 4, 15–16, 19, 21, 26, 31, 34, 38, worship 61, 74, 90, 213, 220, 402, 407,
46, 49, 62, 67–68, 72–81, 85, 87– 422

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Religion in Philosophy and Theology

Helen De Cruz (St. Louis, MO) · Asle Eikrem (Oslo)

ISBN 978-3-16-160109-5 / eISBN 978-3-16-160110-1

© 2021 by Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, Germany. www.mohrsiebeck.com

In 1993, John Hick stated that there is an “intense flurry” of christological

Prague, in March 2021 Petr Gallus

Chapter 1: Christology as the Centre of Theology .......................... 3

Chapter 2: The Object of Christology .............................................. 36

Chapter 3: The Field of Christology:

 :KDWWR'R:LWK&KDOFHGRQ7RGD\" ...................................................... 154

Chapter 4: The Perspective of Christology:

 7ULQLW\DVWKH1HFHVVDU\%DFNJURXQG ..................................................... 177

Chapter 5: Divine Preexistence: The Accommodation .............. 185

 7KH,PPXWDEOH*RGRIWKH7KHRORJLFDO7UDGLWLRQ ................................... 186

 7KH&KULVWRORJLFDO&RPSOLFDWLRQ ........................................................... 188

 7KH'\QDPLF6SDFHZLWKLQWKH'LYLQH,PPXWDELOLW\ ............................... 192

Chapter 6: The Incarnation ................................................................ 216

 9HUHKRPR .............................................................................................. 226

 7KH,GHQWLW\RI-HVXV&KULVW .................................................................... 239

Chapter 7: The Death of Jesus Christ ............................................. 250

 'HDWKRI-HVXV&KULVW±'HDWKRI*RG .................................................... 269

 'HDWKRI-HVXV&KULVWDV'HDWKLQ*RG ................................................... 294

Chapter 8: Salvation: The Cross as Vicarious

 9LFDULRXV5HSUHVHQWDWLRQ ....................................................................... 305

 7ULQLWDULDQ7UDQVIRUPDWLRQRIWKH7UDGLWLRQDO&KULVWRPRQLVP ............... 321

Chapter 9: The Resurrection ............................................................. 338

 7KH+HUPHQHXWLFVRI5HVXUUHFWLRQ ......................................................... 338

 7KH+LVWRULFLW\RI5HVXUUHFWLRQ .............................................................. 345

 %RGLO\5HVXUUHFWLRQ7KH(PSW\7RPE ................................................... 354

 :KDW:DVWKH5HVXUUHFWLRQRI-HVXV&KULVW" .......................................... 360

 &RPPRQ5HVXUUHFWLRQDQGWKH/DVW-XGJHPHQW ...................................... 368

Chapter 10: God, Time, and Eternity.............................................. 372

 7ULQLW\7KH2QWRORJ\RIWKH(WHUQLW\7LPH5HODWLRQ .............................. 383

Chapter 11: Christology in Postmodern Plurality ........................ 394

 2QWKH:D\WRZDUG3RVWSOXUDOLVW+XPLOLW\ ............................................. 394

Bibliography ............................................................................................. 425

Index of Names ......................................................................................... 453

Index of Subjects ....................................................................................... 459

AAS Acta apostolicae sedis

VChS Vigiliae Christianae Supplementa (Leiden: Brill)

Christology as the Centre of Theology

1. Christology as the Base for the Twofold Focus of Theology

in the centre of theology. Therefore, some clarifications of my fundamental

Nevertheless, the discussion and the self-reflection within theology go on.

trinitarian theology and liberal theology, could be conceived complementary,

more distant relationship to be demonstrated in a special way.” In his program, Schleier-

And indeed, in the Second Letter to Lücke, Schleiermacher considers very

It is obvious, anyway, that Schleiermacher knew about the centrality of Chris-

ferent perspective. Revelation opens a new dimension of reality and with it a

It brings a new understanding of reality and with it a clarifying differentiation

Therefore, according to semiotic distinctions, the central sentence should be

der Mensch?”, in -DKUH5HIRUPDWLRQLQGHU6ORZDNHL, ed. M. NICÁK and M. TAMCKE

Cf. programmatically also W. PANNENBERG, “Christologie und Theologie”, in IDEM,

two-natures Christology as a meta-theory in abstract theoretical terms of self-consci-

In these conceptions, Jesus Christ is only an image or an expression and projection of

Christology, or a principal theological decision, whether positive or negative

2. The Methodological Backgrounds

an outcome of certain interpretations or perspectives – it considers the rele-

interpretations of signs. Human is an DQLPDO VHPHLRWLFRQ. We perceive the

Therefore, there is no neutral position above all perspectives or an absolute

of faith and of the external perspective of philosophical reason, which are,

No neutral objectivity is therefore possible, or rather: a kind of intersubjec-

other way than always in plural perspectives of individual understanding. :H

In this respect, there is one important differentiation, which has to be made

:KDWWR'R:LWK&KDOFHGRQ7RGD\" ...................................................... 154

7ULQLW\DVWKH1HFHVVDU\%DFNJURXQG ..................................................... 177

7KH,PPXWDEOH*RGRIWKH7KHRORJLFDO7UDGLWLRQ ................................... 186

7KH&KULVWRORJLFDO&RPSOLFDWLRQ ........................................................... 188

7KH'\QDPLF6SDFHZLWKLQWKH'LYLQH,PPXWDELOLW\ ............................... 192

9HUHKRPR .............................................................................................. 226

7KH,GHQWLW\RI-HVXV&KULVW .................................................................... 239

'HDWKRI-HVXV&KULVW±'HDWKRI*RG .................................................... 269

'HDWKRI-HVXV&KULVWDV'HDWKLQ*RG ................................................... 294

9LFDULRXV5HSUHVHQWDWLRQ ....................................................................... 305

7ULQLWDULDQ7UDQVIRUPDWLRQRIWKH7UDGLWLRQDO&KULVWRPRQLVP ............... 321

7KH+HUPHQHXWLFVRI5HVXUUHFWLRQ ......................................................... 338

7KH+LVWRULFLW\RI5HVXUUHFWLRQ .............................................................. 345

%RGLO\5HVXUUHFWLRQ7KH(PSW\7RPE ................................................... 354

:KDW:DVWKH5HVXUUHFWLRQRI-HVXV&KULVW" .......................................... 360

&RPPRQ5HVXUUHFWLRQDQGWKH/DVW-XGJHPHQW ...................................... 368

7ULQLW\7KH2QWRORJ\RIWKH(WHUQLW\7LPH5HODWLRQ .............................. 383

2QWKH:D\WRZDUG3RVWSOXUDOLVW+XPLOLW\ ............................................. 394

der Mensch?”, in -DKUH5HIRUPDWLRQLQGHU6ORZDNHL, ed. M. NICÁK and M. TAMCKE

the PLDSK\VLVIRUPXOD by Apollinaris and later and primarily by Cyril of Al-

Kirche“, in &UHDWRUHVW&UHDWXUD/XWKHUV &KULVWRORJLHDOV/HKUHYRQGHU,GLRPHQNRPPX

(This indicates already the aporetic nature of the figure of FRPPXQLFDWLRLGL

MCGUCKIN, 6W&\ULORI$OH[DQGULD, 263). Based on such sentences, it is not easy to under-

of Christ, Strauss criticizes the FRPPXQLFDWLRLGLRPDWXP and the missing JHQXVWDSHLQRWL

Thomasius: 'LYLVLV RSHULEXV GLYLGLWXU SHUVRQD If we split works, then the

1. :LWK &KDOFHGRQ In the first step, we need to go with Chalcedon, be-