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1. The incoherence
1.1 The central Christian affirmation is that Jesus is God.
1.1.1 This is an identity statement, not a predication. Somehow Jesus is
numerically identical to God.
1.1.2 How do we understand this identity statement?
1.2 The second issue is the cosmological one.
1.2.1 If God is the creator, what would it mean for God Himself to become part
of that universe?
1.2.2 Isn’t it demeaning for the Creator to become part of the creation?
1.2.3 If there’s a good reason, a reason in consonance with the Creator and
creation, then it can be explained.
1.2.4 How is it an ontological possibility for the Creator to enter the creation? If
all of creation is ontologically dependent on the Creator to sustain it, then how
could God leave His supernatural perspective and enter what He is sustaining
and still keep it in existence? Can He do this as a creature?
1.2.5 The attributes of the Creator is such that they must be greater than His
creation. So if the Creator assumes the nature of what is made, doesn’t that
necessitate the Creator give up some of His attributes and no longer be the being
He was?
1.3 The epistemological issue
1.3.1 If “Jesus is fully man” is true, then on what basis can we know the doctrine
of incarnation is true? On what basis can we predicate deity of Him? It may be
true, but how do we know it’s true because what we encounter is a man.
1.3.2 There’s a major role for natural theology to play in this.
1.4 The Trinitarian question--If the Trinity is true, how do we understand that if the
second person of the Trinity becomes man?
3. Christology
3.1 Christological distinctions
3.1.1 Christology from above and Christology from below
3.1.1.1 From above is Alexandrian Christology
3.1.1.1.1 Alexandria was a center for Platonism and philosophical study,
so it tends to be more philosophical.
3.1.1.1.2 Starts from Jesus’ divinity and works to His humanity. It takes
for granted Jesus’ divinity and tries to work out His humanity. How can
God Himself (taken as a presupposition) can take on full humanity?
3.1.1.1.3 John’s Gospel is Christology from above.
3.1.1.2 From below is Antiochene
3.1.1.2.1 Antioch was a center for theology in the Greek world early on.
3.1.1.2.2 The epistemology is from Jesus’ humanity to His deity. How
can a human being be God incarnate?
3.1.1.2.3 This is the Christology of the synoptics.
3.1.1.3 You have to choose one of these starting points. Either starting point
can yield a fully orthodox Christology. This class is Christology from above,
which tends to be the approach of philosophical theology.
3.1.2 High vs. Low Christology
3.1.2.1 High Christology puts the emphasis on the divinity of Christ, but
doesn’t necessarily result in the exclusion of His humanity.
3.1.2.2 The danger is the docetic heresy, He appears to be a man but is not.
3.1.2.2.1 Jesus didn’t experience real temptation. If He couldn’t sin then
He couldn’t be tempted.
3.1.2.2.2 It seems undignified for God to live as a man.
3.1.2.3 Low Christology puts the emphasis on Jesus’ humanity to the virtual
exclusion of Jesus’ divinity.
3.1.2.3.1 Because of antisupernatural presuppositions, this has been the
recent trend in theology.
3.1.2.3.2 The danger is the Ebionite heresy, the beginning of the
adoptionistic idea. There is no ontological distinction between Jesus and
every other human being.
4. Functional Christology
4.1 Functional Christology defines Jesus in terms of function rather than ontology,
seeks to understand the person of Christ in terms of what He did, not in terms of
what He is.
4.1.1 The difficulty comes when a rigid form of Christology is worked out from
this starting point. Tends to declare certain aspects of orthodoxy to be without
merit or relevance.
4.1.2 “To know Christ means to know His benefits, and not to reflect upon His
natures and the modes of His incarnation.” (Philip Melancthon, Loci communes
theologici) This is a functional view of Jesus, but Melancthon meant it in a
different way. In order to benefit from the atonement, we don’t need to parse
out the philosophical and theological details of Christology. But that is not to say
that it’s not important to reflect on those issues.
4.2 Four claims
4.2.1 The Bible reveals the work of Christ and not His nature.
4.2.2 The Hebrew worldview of the biblical writers was relational, not
metaphysical. The Hebrews didn’t think in metaphysical terms; they had no
worked out philosophy.
4.2.3 Ontological Christology is a product of importing Greek philosophical
categories in the post-biblical period.
4.2.4 A Christology that is relevant today must be functional, not ontological.
4.3 The Biblical worldview
4.3.1 It’s alleged that form/redaction criticism when applied to the New
Testament help us disentangle the creedal affirmations about Jesus, which are
reflective of a developed Christian community of the 2nd c., from the historical
Jesus. This approach reinforces the idea that the world view didn’t include
philosophical speculations. John was incapable of thinking in platonic terms
when describing the “logos.”
4.3.2 This view also places the synoptics over John because of their temporal
priority.
4.3.3 Jesus made no clear claim to be divine. The “I Am” are Johannine, not
synoptic. In the synoptics, Jesus used the title “Son of Man” as a reference to His
humanity, not a Messianic claim.
4.3.4 Jewish messiahship doesn’t yield a Christology of status in metaphysical
terms of “human” or “divine” origin at all. The Old Testament gives us a human
picture of the Messiah. Messianic terms were applied to some prophets, so to be
called Messiah doesn’t entail divinity.
4.3.5 Response
4.3.5.1 Function, not nature
4.3.5.1.1 Texts with clear ontological statements: Jn. 1:1, 18; Ph. 2:6-11;
Co. 1:15-20. The early dating of these texts is on solid scholarship.
4.3.5.1.2 Titles: “Son of Man,” “Son of God,” “Lord,” “Savior,” “God” are
all titles that have ontological implications.
5. Process Christology
5.1 Process philosophy and theology
5.1.1 God: principle of concretion
5.1.1.1 Everything in the world is part of interconnected events. There are no
individuals, just events. Every localized process can take different directions
with different potentials.
5.1.1.2 The principle of concretion (of becoming a real process) is what
determines which direction an event goes. Concrete vs. abstract: concrete if
it is a possible termination of a causal relation. Something is abstract because
it cannot be the termination of a causal relation (e.g., the number 8).
5.1.2 God is the principle effect in the world. This is not a personal conception of
God. God actualizes some eternal, ideal forms. The process contained in
something is its teleological form. God can actualize that telos, but not through
coercion, but persuasion. God lures (loves) the world towards the perfect
realization of its nature. God is the final cause, not the efficient cause.
5.1.3 God is not actualized yet. God and the world are mutually independent.
Things in the world are free and can choose which way they evolve, and in turn
will affect which way God changes. If God is the final goal and the world is free,
then as things in the world take different paths, God will change.
5.1.4 Panentheism: God is in all things, but not identical to them (not
pantheism).
5.1.5 God is developing with the world. Genuine freedom gives more value to
the things that are brought about by those choices. Aggregates can be coerced,
but things that are considered individuals have complete freedom and cannot be
coerced. The higher things evolve, the greater freedom they must have if their
actions are to have value. God therefore loves the world to the final effect.
5.1.6 God is the sum of two natures: primordial (what he has been; fixed) and
consequent (what he will be; open). No fixed and immutable nature.
5.1.7 Major names: Whitehead, Bergson, Hartshorne, Pittenger, Ogden, Cobb,
Griffin. Southern Methodist University was a major center of process theology
for a while.
5.2 Process Christology
5.2.1 It is said that process theology takes seriously the humanity of Christ. That
is questionable.
5.2.1.1 Person is an event—a complex aggregate of past history, present
relationships, and future influences and potentials. Persons are bundles.
They cannot take Jesus’ humanity seriously when they redefine what it is to
be a person.
5.2.1.2 The divinity of Christ is modified.
5.2.1.2.1 E.g., Cobb speaks of the Logos as God’s creative, transformative
power in culture.
6. Epistemological Approach
6.1 Methodist approach: first define the method to arrive at justification or
knowledge. How do we know what constitutes knowledge unless we develop a
criterion first?
6.2 Particularist approach: Identify cases of knowledge first, or at least justified
belief that counts as knowledge. Analyze these cases and synthesize what criteria
that gives us for identifying knowledge.
6.3 Two ways of identifying knowledge
6.3.1 Coherentism: Each item of knowledge receives its justification from other
beliefs; a web of beliefs support and lend justification to a belief.
6.3.1.1 No belief is justified apart from its relation to other beliefs; each belief
has doxastic justification from other beliefs.
6.3.1.2 This doesn’t guarantee truth because many systems of belief may be
justified but not fit the world.
6.3.2 Foundationalism: Trace beliefs back to the foundations of belief, which
have a certainty to them given the best theory of reality.
6.3.2.1 Kinds of beliefs that fit in the foundation: perceptions, synthetic a
priori intuitions, introspective awareness, memory beliefs, testimonial beliefs
6.3.2.2 These are non-doxastic evidence that meet certain conditions
(properly basic evidence): e is a basic source of evidence iff the beliefs
formed on the basic of that evidence are mostly true in a cognitively ideal
setting.
6.3.2.3 Certainly these could be false. Defeasible foundationalism allows for
problems in the causal chain that may produce false beliefs.
6.3.2.4 There are beliefs that support beliefs that are mostly true. What are
the kinds of evidence that count as basic sorts of evidence? They are the
kinds of evidence that mediate to our mind evidence of universals in the
world.
6.4 How do we incorporate Scripture into our epistemology?
6.4.1 Expert testimony has a higher standard to meet than ordinary testimony:
competence and sincerity. These are the kinds of criteria that critics tend to test.
6.4.1.1 Coady Testimony examines the epistemology of testimony.
6.4.1.2 The Bible, and any work of history, is expert testimony. Conclusion:
Expert testimony is a basic sort of belief iff any belief formed under ideal
circumstances formed on the basis of expert testimony is mostly true.
9. Christology of the First Four Ecumenical Councils (lecture by Dr. Fred Sanders)
9.1 How does God relate to the world? The Christian answer is Jesus Christ.
9.1.1 Incarnation: “Among the heretics, you always search in vain for this one
sentence: The Word of God has become flesh.” Iranaeus of Lyons (ca. 180)
9.1.2 Who is Jesus Christ? has implications for everything you do theologically.
Systematic connections:
9.1.2.1 Who is God?
9.1.2.2 How is God revealed?
9.1.2.3 What is the image of God?
9.1.2.4 What is sin?
9.1.2.5 What does it mean to be human?
9.1.2.6 How are we saved?
9.1.2.7 What is the goal of my life?
9.1.2.8 What is the church?
9.2 Ecumenical Councils: gathering of bishops from the entire Christian church
across the inhabited world (oikomene).
9.2.1 Seven church councils. Jerusalem Council in Acts isn’t considered one of
these because it is unique to itself because of the Apostolic authority inherent in
the participants.
9.2.2 Tradition and its claims on us: The claim of the ecumenical council is that
not only can’t you be faithful to who Jesus Christ is without the New Testament,
you also can’t be faithful without the normative interpretation as determined by
the ecumenical councils.
9.2.2.1 Nicea and Chalcedon are widely agreed upon. How many councils
do we have to confirm in order to be orthodox?
9.2.2.2 Protestantism sets the ecumenical councils at seven; the Roman
Catholic church continues to have ecumenical councils.
9.2.3 The seven ecumenical councils and their key teachings on Christ:
9.2.3.1 Nicaea I (325) )—truly God
9.3.2.2 Constantinople I (381)—truly human
9.3.2.3 Ephesus (431)—one person
9.3.2.4 Chalcedon (451)—two natures
9.3.2.5 Constantinople II (553)—Christ’s God-centered humanity
9.3.2.6 Constantinople III (681)—two wills
10. Christology of the Last Three Ecumenical Councils (lecture by Dr. Fred Sanders)
10.1 Constantinople II
12. Medieval Christology (approx. A.D. 787 after the seventh ecumenical council)
12.1 Scholastic philosophical theology
12.1.2 Scripture is authoritative but the interpretation by the Councils was
authoritative. Within the scope of the Councils, the Bible is to be interpreted.
12.1.3 Commentary, not innovation. There was strict church discipline for new
ideas, including death. Detailed, abstract distinctions were made, which
accounts for the reputation of scholastic theology as opaque and picyune.
12.1.4 Preoccupation with metaphysics
12.1.4.1 Theistic rationalism in epistemology—somewhat fideistic by means
of the authority of the church.
18. Persons
18.1 What is it to be a person?
18.1.1 Substance—a soul
18.1.2 Mind—a collection of capacities that deliberates, intuits, reasons, etc.
18.1.2.1 Rationality
18.1.2.2 Intentionality
18.1.2.2.1 Mental states are always directed at an object
18.1.2.2.2 Beliefs are directed at propositions
18.1.2.2.3 Desires are directed at mental states, states of affairs
18.1.2.2.4 Thoughts
18.1.2.2.5 Consciousness and self-consciousness
18.1.2.3 Affect
18.1.2.3.1 Emotions (feelings) about propositions (as opposed to a free
floating emotion without an object, e.g., anxiety, seasickness). This is the
source of intuition. There are states of affairs that the emotion is directed
at, and these states of affairs can be uncovered with careful analysis and
contain the objective facts that are subject to judgment.
18.1.2.3.2 All of these mental states play a causal role in dispositions and
action, and become a source of evidence for making judgments.
18.1.2.4 Volition
18.1.2.5 Perception—The capacity to acquire information from objectively
existing reality
18.1.2.6 Relational capacities are the functioning of more than one of the
mind capacities together.
18.1.2.7 Morality
18.1.3 All of these faculties can be broken down and further analyzed as
subordinate capacities.
18.1.3.1 There are thousands of capacities in the human soul depending on
how carefully we do the analysis.
18.1.3.2 There probably is not one way to break them down.
18.2 Are these faculties necessary and sufficient to be a person? This is in the sense
of a priori necessary, not a posteriori necessary.
18.3 Could these personhood capacities be instantiated in other forms besides
human?
18.3.1 Could it be instantiated in granite? No. It’s logically possible, but not
metaphysically possible because it doesn’t have the material capability of
developing the capacities.
18.3.2 Could it be instantiated in an orchid? No.
18.3.3 It must be instantiated in an organism that has the organic capacity to
express these capacities.
18.4 Person cannot exist without being instantiated with a nature.
25. Metaquestion
25.1 What has been the method?
25.1.1 An analytic approach to theology, as opposed to a descriptive or
systematic approach. The primary and controlling data of the Bible is analyzed
with philosophic formulations. It integrates data from other disciplines.
Philosophy is the best discipline to do the integration because it engages in meta-
questions.
25.1.2 Investigate the philosophic soundness of systematic conclusions. If a
synthesis cannot be arrived at between theology and philosophy, then it suggests
a reevaluation of the systematic conclusions. This doesn’t mean that philosophy
is primary, but it is a check.
25.1.3 Systematic theology provides the boundaries, but further questions can be
investigated with philosophic tools. Philosophy can answer some questions that
systematic theology cannot answer. Philosophy is an assistance to systematics.
25.1.3.1 Systematic theology engages the world of thought using the
categories of the time.
25.1.3.2 Systematic theology needs to reengage modern thought.
Confessions and doctrinal statement might need updating to engage current
challenges.
25.1.3.3 Part of that bridge to engage culture is the work of philosophic
theology.
25.2 Benefits of philosophic theology
25.2.1 More apologetic in nature. It can address specific challenges to Christian
theology.
25.2.2 It demonstrates the rationality of Christian theology. It can build a
plausibility structure that is better able to persuade someone of the grounding
for Christian belief. It affirms Biblical revelation and can be recommended to
non-believers with strong justification.
25.2.3 Integration of different fields of knowledge is best done by philosophy to
ensure the system is a coherent and unified whole. It’s not ad hoc and has great
persuasive power.
25.2.4 It demonstrates that Christianity can compete in philosophic discourse
and is intellectually respectable. It has incredible resources to bring to other
disciplines of philosophy.
25.3 Other thoughts
Texts
The Logic of God Incarnate, Thomas V. Morris
The Word Became Flesh, Millard Erickson
Suggested Reading:
The Christian God, Richard Swinburne