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This book presents a Christology developed in a Canadian/North Atlantic context. A Christology is an understanding of Jesus Christ; who he was and is, what his saving significance is, and how he relates to the church, other religions, and other forms of knowledge and experience. Christologies are usually developed by interpreting the biblical witness to Jesus Christ in relation to one’s context, the time and place in which one lives. This involves (a) interpreting present experience, (b) interpreting Scripture, and (c) a way of bringing the two together. The criteria of a Christology are the adequacy of its interpretations of Scripture and the present, its systematic coherence, and its performance, how well it illuminates the reality of Jesus Christ in its context. At present there are various ways of doing (a), (b), and (c) that have a relative validity and integrity, but there is no one way that is adequate in every respect and superior to all others.1

Ultimately it is difficult to disentangle a reading of Scripture from a reading of one’s context, to say which came first or where one should begin. The two always mutually influence and interpenetrate each other. Both are also always influenced to some degree by preceding traditions of christological reflection. A Christology is always contextual, related to its time and place. Yet in seeking to understand Jesus Christ no one begins from scratch. If every speaker is “a respondent to a greater or lesser degree,”2 this is particularly true of those who write Christologies. Every Christology is a response to others that have preceded it as well as to one’s context. Ultimately, each is a response to what God has said and done through Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit.

Scripture

This Christology interprets Scripture by drawing upon it on three levels. First, it works from what can be known about Jesus and the movement that gathered about him through the quest for the historical Jesus. In doing so it recognizes that there is more to Jesus as the crucified and risen Christ than what the quest for the historical Jesus can discern. Drawing upon what can be known about Jesus historically, without being limited to this, is intended to keep this Christology grounded in history and historically concrete in its references to Jesus. Recognizing that there is more to the risen Christ than can be known by the quest for the historical Jesus, this Christology also draws upon various Christologies found in the New Testament, primarily in the Synoptic Gospels and in the writings of Paul. Finally, the metaphysical framework of this Christology is drawn from the Johannine understanding of Jesus as the Word of God. A word is always addressed to someone. Jesus as the incarnate Word communicates the radical transcendence of God’s love and the aseity of God’s being, yet is not complete without an audience who receives this love and then seeks to further communicate it in their own lives.3

The Canadian/North Atlantic Context

This Christology is written from a Canadian context characterized by a diffuseness or lack of concentration in the issues it presents that a Christology must take up. For a white, middle-class, heterosexual, anglophone male like myself, there is no one issue or crisis in this context that predominates over all others. To be such in this context is to have a complicated moral identity. One is at least implicated in oppressions, yet also threatened by issues like the environmental crisis. To relate efficaciously to this kind of complicated identity, Christ must have more than one saving significance.

Theologians interested in the world have noted the diffuse nature of issues in this context for some time. Gregory Baum argued in 1975 that the North American context was characterized by “a complex intermeshing of technocratic depersonalization and immobility, economic domination and exploitation, racial exclusion and inferiorization, and other forms including the subjugation of women.”4 To this list one should add today the threat of the environmental crisis, the struggles of First Nations peoples for liberation and of Quebec and francophones in Canada for recognition. Baum argued that as a result of this diffuseness, “the analysis of social sin in North American will inevitably be complex,” and that in this context “the commitment to justice and human emancipation, to which Christians are summoned, cannot be expressed by identification with a single movement.”5

This diffuseness of issues remains, but is now joined by a new development, the rise of empire. Empire designates “massive concentrations of power that permeate all aspects or life and that cannot be controlled by any one actor alone.”6 An empire not only exerts control through its massive power, but also uses this “to extend its control as far as possible”7 in every conceivable domain. In the early 1980s a new economic, cultural, political constellation of empire began to emerge “that protects the interests of the developed nations, regulates the flow of money all over the world, controls oil and other natural resources,” and pacifies “the unruly by military force.”8 This “contemporary empire is a more dispersed reality”9 than previous imperial regimes. It “is embodied in various dependencies maintained through less visible ties.”10 But its power and presence are no less real. It is centered in the boardrooms and political offices of developed North Atlantic nations. Canada is one of the developed nations whose economic interests this empire protects. Therefore it seems more accurate to describe the Canadian standpoint of this book as located within a North Atlantic rather than a North American context. This North Atlantic context at present is characterized by both a diffuseness of issues and the presence of empire.

Writing in 1990 in the shadow of this emerging empire and responding to the diffuseness of the issues facing Christologies here, Mark Lewis Taylor identified a postmodern trilemma of three demands that Christian theologies must simultaneously respect: “to acknowledge some sense of tradition, to celebrate plurality, and to resist domination.”11 His analysis remains accurate.

The first trait of this trilemma, the need “to acknowledge one’s tradition,”12 runs two ways. First, one needs to acknowledge the reality and importance of tradition for human life, how it can authorize and guide one by articulating transcendent moral sources that identify the good, critique evil, and empower and sustain resistance to evil. Second though, one needs to acknowledge the limits of one’s tradition, the evils and injustices it has been involved in, and the privilege it may be accorded and the power it may have in contemporary society. Part of acknowledging one’s tradition is owning up “to where you are, whoever you are and however complex your located self and group identities may be.”13 For Christians it is the moral values articulated in the confession of Jesus Christ that demand this acknowledgement and openness to critique.

The second trait is the need to celebrate and embrace plurality. This needs to happen in three ways. First there needs to be a recognition of the religious and cultural pluralism of the present; that it is not going away, and that Christian theology must be able to live within this as a force for peace and justice for all. Second, there needs to be a recognition of the functional value of pluralism. Dialogue with the other can lead to insights about one’s self and one’s context that cannot be had in any other way. Finally, there needs to be a recognition that traditions and cultural heritages other than Christianity are a good in and of themselves, and hence worthy of respect. The celebration and embrace of pluralism requires an openness to the other.

The third trait is the need to resist domination. Again, this needs to happen in a number of ways. Domination can be exercised along lines such as race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and class. It also comes in different forms. It may be the domination of hegemony which suppresses ideas and voices so that only those of a certain group are heard or deemed legitimate. It may be domination by violence and military force. It may be economic or cultural domination. Resistance to domination requires different kinds of power. The one Christ empowers people to resist different forms of domination in several different ways.

What makes these three traits a trilemma is the necessity and difficulty of addressing all three at once. Taylor argues the necessity of this as follows:

First, a program of resisting domination, without the other two postmodern emphases, easily fails to actualize its own envisioned strategies for achieving justice and freedom from oppression. Without developing a sense of plurality, the struggle to be free from domination can founder on the divisiveness that springs up among agents for change who work with different visions of “the just” and from different experiences of oppression. Moreover, without a sense of tradition (some tradition of myth and ritual, at least, not necessarily the established Traditions), the struggle is impoverished, lacking the resources of communal memory and symbolic heritage that often provide some minimal dialogical consensus for marshalling critique and action.14

Second, it is difficult to do all three at once. Acknowledging tradition has frequently been seen as denying an embrace of pluralism. Resisting domination for many has meant a critique of tradition(s). Celebrating pluralism sometimes leaves one without a substantive basis for resistance to evil. Still, difficulty does not equal impossibility. This trilemma can present a possibility. The complexity of the present and its diffuseness of issues can be an opportunity to discover the complexity of the New Testament witness to Jesus Christ, the many different saving significances it attributes to him, and the ways in which they can be appropriated in the present.

The Structure and Argument of This Book

This book is structured according to my own interpretation of Taylor’s trilemma. The need to acknowledge tradition issues in part I, which focuses on the person of Jesus Christ. The need to resist domination issues in part II, which looks at Jesus’ saving significance. The need to embrace and celebrate plurality issues in part III, which looks at some relationships of Jesus Christ, to those within the church and to others. This division into parts is a matter of focus, not an airtight compartmentalization. The three demands of acknowledging tradition, celebrating plurality, and resisting domination are present to some degree in each section. The acknowledgment of tradition in part I provides a metaphysical framework that informs how domination should be resisted and plurality celebrated, and is also present in other ways in parts II and III. Conversely, the needs to celebrate plurality and resist domination inform the way tradition is acknowledged in part I.

Modern Christologies have often been divided into two parts, studying Jesus Christ in terms of (1) his person and (2) his work. In one sense this is a false distinction. If one follows the guidelines of the Chalcedonian Definition, Jesus’ person as the Christ is also his work as such. Jesus saves by being the Christ. Yet the modern distinction between person and work in Christology remains a useful heuristic for focusing discussion. The structure of this book maintains this division for this reason but extends it by adding a third category, that of relationships. This third category has been developing in recent decades as a result of the emphasis of feminist and process theologies on relationality and the increased recognition of religious pluralism.

The argument of this book is that Jesus Christ can be understood from a Trinitarian perspective as the incarnation of the Word of God. This incarnation happens to further communicate the goodness and beauty of God in time and space. As this occurs it brings a relative but still real increase to the being of God in the “person” of the Holy Spirit. Here the Johannine notion of Jesus as the Word is taken up into a Trinitarian perspective derived from the thought of Jonathan Edwards as interpreted by Sang Hyun Lee.15 Part I develops this understanding by following what Karl Rahner called an ascending and then a descending Christology.16

Part II turns from the person of Jesus Christ to his work. The saving significances of Jesus,17 as articulated in various atonement theories, are here understood as what Charles Taylor calls “moral sources.”18 They are articulations of the saving significance of Jesus that move people to communicate in their own lives the goodness and beauty of God that Jesus incarnated in his, and that sustain them in doing so in spite of opposition to this and their own failures. This understanding of Jesus’ saving significance reflects the influence of modern liberalism, which is concerned with life in history as opposed to eternity,19 and a development within the past several generations of Christologies that has ancient roots that sees Jesus as a source of salvation for all.20 In light of this, that Jesus “saves” people in eternity is taken as a given. The question then becomes, what is his saving significance for people within history?

Part III focuses on some relationships of Jesus Christ to others. As the Word of God, Jesus Christ exists in history dialogically, giving shape and orientation to Christians’ lives, yet also being shaped by their needs and concerns, faithfulness, and creativity. As the Word, Jesus provides a center for Christians in history, but a center that exists in dialectical relationships to other religions and social movements, as a result of values that Jesus incarnates. Finally, part of Jesus’ saving significance is the influence he can have on a person through prayer.

This study of Jesus’ person, work, and relationships does not claim to be exhaustive. As John 21:25 indicates, no Christology can be. What it does claim is that understanding Jesus as the Word of God, grounded in what can be known historically of Jesus and informed by subsequent reflection upon him, can give Christians an identity characterized by what Serene Jones calls “bounded openness.”21 This is an identity bounded by what is revealed of God in Christ, yet open to the world. This Christology seeks to acknowledge Christian traditions so that they empower Christians to seek justice and resist evil, in a way that is open to critique and reformulation. At the same time it claims to find in Christ reasons for openness to others.

1. Schweitzer, Contemporary Christologies, 133–34.

2. Bakhtin, Speech Genres, 69.

3. Brown, Epistles of John, 555.

4. Baum, Religion and Alienation, 218–19.

5. Ibid., 219.

6. Rieger, Christ and Empire, 2.

7. Ibid.

8. Baum, Religion and Alienation, 2nd ed,, 225.

9. Rieger, Christ and Empire, 3.

10. Ibid.

11. Taylor, Remembering Esperanza, 23.

12. Ibid., 31.

13. Ibid., 31–32.

14. Ibid., 41.

15. Lee, Jonathan Edwards.

16. Rahner, Foundations of the Christian Faith, 177.

17. The book works with a total of six saving significances or atonement theories: Gustav Aulén’s three; the Christus Victor, substitutionary, and moral influence theories, as well as a notion of Christ as revealing the nature of God (part I), Christ as working to reconcile humanity to God through his teaching (chapter 5), and Christ as the center of history (chapter 10).

18. Taylor, Sources of the Self, 91–93.

19. The modern liberal concern for life within history itself arose partly through the influence of the Reformation’s “affirmation of ordinary life as more than profane, as itself hallowed and in no way second class.” Ibid., 218.

20. Moltmann, Coming of God, 235–55.

21. Jones, Feminist Theory, 170.