The Gospel of John ends with an acclamation that should serve as a warning to anyone who wishes to offer a contribution to the field of Christology: “There are many other things that Jesus did and, if each one were written, I suppose that even the world could not hold the books written.” John’s point, which applies immediately but not exclusively to Christ’s instruction and magnalia, was reinforced by the eventual rejection of Tatian’s Diatesseron, which sought to harmonize—and thereby reduce—the story of Jesus into a single perspective. No human expression¹ can of itself represent the Person and...

Held with an equal steadfastness, all of the elements of Christological and Trinitarian dogma keep the mind of the theologian in a tension that is at once crucifying and extraordinarily fecund. By disallowing every narrowing and constriction, all reduction of Mystery, this tension opens the way to a deepening of understanding.¹

The vantage point of soteriology, as I have just mentioned, has constantly provided insight into Christological questions. The Cappadocians provide a vivid example of profiting from this perspective in the fourth century, but theirs is by no means unique in the history of Christian theology. Informed by this historical...

Even those who would be sympathetic to Maurice Blondel’s high Christology would find it incomplete and unsatisfactory.¹ He cannot be faulted, however, for having left certain aspects of his thought here open-ended and unclarified. Not least in weight of the reasons for exculpating Blondel for his vagueness in describing Christ, the nearly invisible yet guiding endpoint of his thought,² is the fact that he never intended to be a theologian.³ His Christological achievement is all the more impressive for this fact.

Blondel’s Christology is decidedly and unapologetically “descending.”⁴ Blondel does not dim the splendor and totalizing character of the Word...

The effect of Hegel’s philosophy on theology, either in the elaboration of theological statements or in the wholesale rejection of the theological endeavor, can scarcely be overestimated. As the Hegelian dialectic was the driving force behind Feuerbach’s and Marx’s denials of God, so has Hegel’s thought inspired twentieth-century theologians as different as Karl Rahner and Wolfhart Pannenberg. While some theological effort has been made toward an appropriation of the Hegelian understanding of the infinite in articulating the idea of God, the relation of Hegel’s infinity to Christology and the virtues that unite persons to God is undeveloped. In this chapter...

In the preceding chapter, we looked at the way in which Christ unites the finite and the mutable with the infinite and the stable by his voluntary acts. This discussion was naturally preceded by a look at Christ’s knowledge of the reality that he would redeem. The union of the finite and the Infinite that is the concrete form of redemption is realized through the passivity of human knowing and the activity of choosing. At this point it seems appropriate to press the question of whether the Infinite and the finite are united in Christ in any other way. Scholastic...

At the end of the last chapter, I suggested that an account of Jesus’ emotional life is essential in picturing his full humanity. Love in human life is accompanied by feelings and sentiments. Our concern with the Lord’s affective life, however, involves much more than acknowledging his integral humanity, as if arguing—wisely, no doubt—in the following way: human beings have emotions, Jesus was a human being, therefore Jesus had emotions. Rather, we can see Christ’s emotions in a soteriological context.

Of Christ’s emotions, perhaps the most unlikely possibility for a part in redemption is his anger. When we...

Biblical theologians often remind us that the name “Jesus” means something approximating “God saves.” What does it mean to say that a man’s name, his very identity in the biblical mind-set, is identified with an action? In describing this action itself, I have not been precise. I have said little about how this action is accomplished; it suffices for present purposes to have argued that the mission in question here is indissociable from the Person who accomplishes it. This has meant specifying the identity of the agent and, since this agent exists and acts in two natures, indicating something of...