Abstract
The aim of this volume of essays, which have their origins in a conference held at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in 2007, is to bring into dialogue theological thinking about the significance of Christ and consideration of Christian moral action. The book therefore makes an important riposte to any construction that would suppose theological ethics is an exercise separable from treatment of ‘the dynamics of redemption’ (p. 3).
Brent Waters launches the book by sketching some of the ways in which the death, resurrection and exaltation of Jesus Christ inform the Christian moral life. The emphasis here is less on the life of Jesus and more on the events that mark the end of his life. It would have been good if the criticisms of such an approach, that there is something riskily docetic about not engaging with the concrete particulars of Jesus’ life, had been engaged with. As it is, Waters maps the crucifixion, resurrection and exaltation of Jesus alongside the ‘moods’ of suffering, vindication and joy, all three being intertwined. More substantively, these three characteristics are used to drive Waters’s discussion of the three virtues of charity, hope and obedience that correspond to the three moments of Jesus’ incarnate ministry. Worship is given considerable attention.
With clarity, John Webster explores how Christian ethical action is necessarily informed by Christology via an attention to Colossians. This concentration on Scripture is itself a reminder that Christian ethical thought is a bound activity, bound, that is, to what God has done in Christ for us. Who we are and what we are to do as moral agents is an activity responsive to our status as creatures who have died and risen with Christ. Jesus Christ, here, determines our moral being and moral knowing. It is certainly possible to see that some may charge Webster with overloading Colossians with a ready-formed set of theological comments. The response to such criticisms of theological exegesis is to post the reminder that where our theological thought begins and our biblical thought begins is not something that can be properly disentangled with ease. Webster’s attention to biblical texts is to be welcomed.
In a powerful essay Kathryn Tanner carefully unpicks the argument that human relationships and communities can be modelled or based on the Trinity. If we are to view human relations through Christian lenses Christology will offer a more hopeful starting point than the Trinity. Ranging herself against those (like Miroslav Volf) who view an appeal to the Trinitarian nature of God as a response to the claim that monotheism is inherently violent, Tanner demonstrates that it is not at all clear that trinitarianism is politically innocent. It is, Tanner charges, the implicit hierarchy within the triune fellowship that can be used to justify a hierarchy in which people are equal while having access to different roles. Nor can one neatly map the way that the divine persons live in relationship with one another onto the complex ways that humans live in relationship with one another. In the triune fellowship each of the persons have no existence prior to their mutual fellowship, whereas with humans we exist prior to the whole array of relationships which forms our character. That we exist in relationship with an array of changing individuals over the course of our life, and in different settings, is a reminder of another variation between human relationships and the triune relationships. Not only are certain appeals to the Trinity as a political programme blind to its dangers, they can also be politically vapid, a form of encouraging people to just get along.
The better line to take, Tanner proposes, is not to see the Trinity as something we can imitate, but to see the life of Jesus as opening the Trinity up in our world, in order to draw humans into the divine life. This is a theology of mediation: ‘in Christ we are shown what the Trinity looks like when it includes the human and what humanity looks like when it is included in the Trinity’s own movements’ (p. 70). The difference between the two—humanity and divinity—is not here denied, but instead brought into a radical relationship. One can say, precisely in this differentiation is the gospel. Jesus’ engagement with the world is the Trinity at work, a life in which humans are called to participate. Human community is grounded in Christ, who beckons us to participate in the triune life.
Bernd Wannenwetsch mines Bonhoeffer’s thought to counter treatments of Christology and ethics that collapse into simplistic imitation or application. Bonhoeffer’s use of three christological formulae (Christus totus, Christus praesens and Christus pro me) reveal how attention to classical resources can counter modern heterodox ways of thinking about Christology and ethics. Famously asking ‘Who is Jesus Christ for us today?’ is an indication that for Bonhoeffer what is key is Jesus’ present identity, his indestructible presence, and his concreteness. Bonhoeffer’s emphasis is both christological and ecclesial—christological because conformation with Christ is more decisive than imitation, ecclesial because the identity question can only be answered in the church. Christian moral action is action with Jesus who is present in the congregation, not looking to Jesus as moral exemplar.
In an essay which follows the volume’s pattern of specifying the context of Christian moral discourse Lois Malcolm considers the relationship between Christ and forgiveness. Basing her argument on Paul, Malcolm argues that when Christians speak of forgiveness this cannot be separated from the new age that has come into this world through Christ’s death and resurrection. Adapting Gustafson’s categories in Christ and the Moral Life Malcolm looks to Christ as the source of the self’s moral action, in that Christ is the source of the new creation in which Christian acts of forgiveness are to be situated. Secular accounts of forgiveness in the thought of Julia Kristeva and Hannah Arendt are discussed. Although both alight upon the creativity of forgiveness neither situate forgiveness in the eschatological setting which gives it its appropriate theodramatic setting. A more theological account is offered in Paul Ricoeur’s The Symbolism of Evil. In her synthesis Malcolm does well to enrich secular accounts of forgiveness with a rich theological account of the space in which forgiveness acquires its energy. Future work could profitably expand upon the overlapping of the Christian space of forgiveness with other spaces.
Jan-Olav Henriksen offers an arresting reading of Matthew 25, rescuing it from an interpretation that confines it within a works-based economy. What is being judged in Matthew 25 is the ability of human beings to respond to the world in which they are placed. Humans are called to be the image of God in the world and to see this image of God in one another. The true human is revealed in Jesus who in the New Testament is consistently addressed as the ‘image of God’, thus he is the one who first fulfils the calling directed to all creatures. The behaviour ‘rewarded’ in Matthew 25 is not behaviour that was calculated towards what would be given in return, but rather behaviour that is an act of recognition of Christ in the other. It is precisely those who can see works only as leading to reward who are rebuffed—those who are called into God’s company are those who see ‘God’s gifts as something to be shared by all’ (p. 147).
In the penultimate essay J. Wentzel van Huyssteen relates questions surrounding ethics and evolution to Christology. The premise of this essay is that if Jesus is fully human then we must be able to assume that he participated in our moral evolution. The thought of Schleiermacher is used as a bridge between evolutionary ethics and Christology. Finally, F. LeRon Shults charts the turn to difference and the Other in modern philosophy, before turning to the impact of this shift on theology and Christology. The responsibility to turn to alterity can be traced in theology’s modern tendencies to differentiate God and humanity, to differentiate the persons within the triune life, and to emphasise the distinction between Eternity and time. The essay ends with some pointers for theological ethics provided by this turn to ‘differentiated integration’ (p. 210).
The reader will gain much from this collection of essays. Across the essays there is a commendable level of engagement with a range of resources—biblical texts, politics, philosophy, science, as well as of course the Christian moral and theological tradition. There is a limit, however, to the book’s inter-disciplinary conversations: no theologically inclined biblical scholar is included. This omission may well be linked to an understandable, although too swift, dismissal by the editors of those theologies based upon imitating ‘Jesus’ life and teaching’ (p. 212). I have sympathy with the motivations presumably behind this move—Christian ethics is not simply doing what Jesus did. Nevertheless, no theological reflection can be carried out apart from attention to the historical significance of Jesus’ life and teaching. Unless the hard work of engaging with the life and teaching of Jesus is seen to be done one is always open to the suspicion that the theology presented is an elaborate exercise in avoiding the sheer difficulty of the Gospel. Equally, we must be wary of suggesting that historical work is something separate from theological work. This seems to me a basic Chalcedonian critique of the impulses of an otherwise enjoyable and rich volume.