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LECTURE 3
“Christology ‘From Below'”
Macquarrie continues with a description of christology that is “anabatic,” which can be said to be theology about Jesus that is “from below” and “goes up” to the divine nature of Jesus. It is in this approach, Macquarrie argues, that Christ’s humanity comes into its best and most accessible light. The question in this approach is, “How can a man bring to expression the life of God?” This means we place our focus on Christ, the man, and Christ, the event — the individual Jesus as well as the social relationships in which he was embedded. In short, historical analysis gives way to systematic theology. And in anabatic christology, Macquarrie sees the very method found in the experience of the first disciples and the beginnings of the Christian Church. For example, the Transfiguration of Jesus can be interpreted as a definitive moment when the humanity of Jesus was seen in its divine depth, and the preaching of Saint Peter at Pentecost articulates anabatic christology: “God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2.36).
Is this form of christology merely primitive, or is it an approach that must be continually proclaimed by the Church? Macquarrie argues for the latter, else the true humanity of Jesus can be obscured, as it has throughout Christian history. The key is the recognition that within the human condition is a principle of transcendence, of absolute being, and the possibility of transcending the human reality in favor of the reality of God. Macquarrie demonstrates that this very notion is present even in the secular, dechristianized and atheistic writings of existentialist philosophers as well as Holy Scripture. He considers Patristic theology from the likes of saints Augustine and Irenaeus, and agrees that the notion of “ready-made” humanity, whether in Adam and Eve, or in us, must be rejected. Ultimately, what we see is the importance of christology both anabatic (“from below”) and katabatic (or “from above”). They are complementary approaches to a single truth about God in Jesus Christ. The former stresses that Jesus was taken up; the latter stresses that God became incarnate. According to either approach, God came among us as a servant to declare Mercy and bring to birth the children of God, and as far as we know, the human being is the locus for the divine self-communication of God’s own presence. In the words of Celtic theologian Eriugena, “Man is both the recipient of theopanies and is himself a theophany.”
keywords: anabatic vs katabatic christology, modern historical presuppositions, Wolfhart Pannenberg, John Knox, Bishop John Robinson, Karl Rahner, Vatican II, Donald Baillie, Edward Schillebeeckx, Rudolph Bultmann, Karl Barth, Transfiguration, Acts of the Apostles, Adoptionism, Docetism, Gnosticism, homoousios, Spirit in the World, Thomas Aquinas, transcendental Thomism, absolute being, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Bernard Lonergan, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger, Marxism, Neo-Marxism, Herbert Marcuse, mysticism, process philosophy, Charles Hartshorne, transcendent anthropology, Augustine, Irenaeus, Theophilus of Antioch, Deification (Theosis), Pelagianism, Incarnation, Enlightenment Deism, William James, Søren Kierkegaard, Holy Trinity, Dionysius the Areopagite, Mercy, monarachial model of God, neo-Platonist, Celtic theology, Johannes Scotus Eriugena, Chalcedonian Definition, 1979 Book of Common Prayer
“THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST”
John Macquarrie
October 1984 to the House of Bishops of The Episcopal Church
Table of Contents
Introduction.
Lecture 1.
Lecture 2.
Lecture 3.
Lecture 4.
Lecture 5.