Abstract
This book is the English translation of Dalferth’s important study, Der auferweckte Gekreuzigte (Tübingen: Mohr, 1994). At its heart is an insistence that the discussion of Christology should be reoriented towards the identification of Jesus as the one who was crucified and resurrected, rather than being discussed principally in terms of incarnation. This is not a rejection of incarnation as a concept, but rather an assertion of the need to locate the concept rightly in relation to the task(s) of identifying Jesus Christ, speaking of God, and speaking of salvation.
The book takes as its departure point the problems inherent in the supposed rejection of incarnation by John Hick et al., and in some of the responses to this, particularly those within Anglican theology, that reaffirmed the Incarnation essentially as a fundamental doctrine, rather than as one itself contingent on various prior identifications. From this, the author develops his own Christological account, in which the confession of the resurrection is not an assertion merely of the event, but of the identity of the one resurrected: Jesus, whom God raised from the dead. Rightly understood in relation to God and the world, this identification is essentially both theological (in the strict sense) and soteriological, bringing with it the true and liberating knowledge of God.
The book represents an impressive and strikingly pastoral engagement with contemporary Christological discussion, drawing the reader through the significant Christological debates of the last century towards Dalferth’s own resolutions, in a way that is always attentive to the implications of theological method and of the dogmatic task’s architectural dimensions: issues must be aligned and proportioned rightly, if they are to be understood properly.
Two particular weaknesses are worth noting, however. The first is that, while Dalferth draws richly on the Bible, he tends to rely on a particular stream of New Testament scholarship, that represented by Ernst Käsemann and others who place a certain emphasis on the concept of the ‘apocalyptic’, arguably in a way that treats the Judaism of Jesus’ time too simplistically. The second is the general omission of the Ascension from Dalferth’s grammar of Christology. This is most obviously problematic in the discussion of atonement in relation to sacrifice. There, the limitation of the concept of sacrifice to the death of the victim, rather than allowing for the subsequent application of the victim’s blood to its cultic objects, generates unnecessary problems.