How are Christian understandings of the person of Christ related to understandings of the work of Christ?

The close connection between the identity (or person) of Christ and the work (or function) of Christ is undeniable for Christianity (p 346). Christian theology has always assumed that somehow this organic nexus between ontological Christology - who Jesus Christ is - and his functional Christology as soteriology - what Jesus Christ did - is normative in any Christological system. It is the weighing or stress within the larger Christology that varies. Two positions serve as illustrative of the variation in stress across the spectrum of function and identity. The first position of mutuality, understood usually as 'classical', is that in the identity and function of Christ, something new and constitutive has occurred. Furthermore, this event is directly related to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. The identity of Jesus - who He is - is related directly to what He did in his function as mediator (p 370), and that what was uniquely done has introduced something new or possible for humanity. The second position of mutuality, usually associated with post-Enlightenment liberal Protestantism, is that in the identity and function of Christ, something illustrative or intrinsic to all humans is made manifest. In this understanding, the identity of Christ is in his functioning as a revelation of a common true reality accessible to all but hitherto hidden or obscured. The position is usually associated with either a symbolic or degree Christological understanding (pp 369 and 426).

Intrinsic to both positions is the concept of salvation. Both positions assume that in the identity and function of Jesus Christ salvation is demonstrated or achieved. However, dispute or differing stress on what is salvation occurs, even within one position. The illustrative position adopts the stance that what salvation is, that which Jesus Christ demonstrated, is a knowledge or understanding of humanity's participation in a higher reality or destiny associated with God, the kingdom of God, and fellow human beings. Jesus Christ, at some level, discloses this higher truth, authentic being or higher calling serving as the example, symbol or founder of a society emulating that greater conviction. Imitation is the leitmotif of the position. The constitutive position adopts the stance that what salvation is, that which is ontologically in Jesus Christ won or achieved, is a new possibility for fallen humans to live in communion with God and consequently fellow humanity. Jesus Christ, in the language of the magisterial reformers, is our substitute, granting to us what could not be won through human work or achievement. Surprisingly, this position in its soteriology can be adapted to the illustrative position.

The issue of how Christ providse a model in the constitutive position demonstrates how inter-related the two positions are. Many Christian traditions, notably the Protestant and Catholic mystical and puritanical traditions, have stressed that it is the imitatio Christi, won by Christ, but achieved through human conformity to piety that demonstrates faith. Like the illustrative position, the stress is on conformity with the example of Christ, although the core mechanism - substitutionary atonement - differs. The magisterial reformers, especially Luther, provide a different stress with the understanding that the Christian life is being shaped or conformed to Christ but that this process is not easily won and occurs totally without the person (forensic justification). Instead of imitation, for Luther a work in itself, the stress is on 'letting go' of striving for holiness allowing Christ to transform through faith. Luther's 'sin boldly in order to know grace' seems counter-intuitive or antinominian; but his stress that all human striving is idolatry represents a strong biblical and traditional theme. This is not to say that the imitatio Christi model is Pelagian by definition, rather it is to demonstrate that even within the constitutive position there remains an element of soteriology as illustrative. Additional Christian understandings of justification, sanctification and even eschatology are needed to flesh out the soteriological foundation.

Assess the importance of one of the following approaches to the meaning of the cross: victory over sin and death; forgiveness of sin; a demonstration of the love of God towards humanity.

It has been popular for theologians, especially following a 'history of dogma' understanding of doctrine, to break the meaning of the cross into themes or images. These are often given a chronological emphasis, indicating progressive development or a reactive genesis to a wider culture and its needs or norms. This separation, however, is widely thought by historians and theologians to be 'cartoons' of the multi-faceted understanding of the reality of the cross for every generation. While certain themes may be a dominant voice, they are not the exclusive voice, and care must be taken to understand, as in the above question on function and identity, that the stresses are part of a complex nexus of Christian revelation.

Victory over sin and death:
The older 'history of dogma' movement typically equated this understanding of the cross as being the original understanding of the first Christians. The victory of the resurrection is the defeat of three enemies in sin, death and Satan, each of which stands in the way of enjoying eternal life. However, in the triplex, the two most important are death and Satan as these directly barred eternal life (remember the apocalyptic stress in Jesus' teaching) and made living 'hell'. By the second century, historians noted that 'sin' had assumed a more central position in connection with a concept of ransom. Jesus, in Origen and Gregory the Great, was a 'ransom' paid to the devil so that humanity could be released from its self-imposed enthrallment. Jesus' perfect humanity is offered to the devil on the cross as a 'trap', exchanging our souls for his, after which his divinity breaks the hold of the devil. The hell constructed by the devil for mere humans could not hold the God-man. Hell is 'harrowed', Jesus breaking open the prison and setting the captives free. Two important concepts are implied in the construct. First is the anthropological conception that human beings are fallen sinners, usually attached to hereditary guilt and sin (original sin). Second is the Christological conception of sacrifice that stresses not only the divinity but also the humanity of Jesus as a co-agent or co-factor in the entire drama of redemption. The import of the cross is not only vertical in regard to God but also horizontal extending to humanity. This understanding of Christus victor remained popular throughout the medieval period and in Christian literature.

The major blow to the position is its literalism on two fronts. First is its presentation of Satan and human fallen reality as that of demonic overlord and enslaved serfs. Post-Enlightenment presentations of the world repudiate the notion of Satan as a personal being and, more importantly, the notion that the human will is bound by original sin. Luther, for example, thought the human will to be passive, it was ridden by either God or the devil. The human will is not free. This denial of one of human autonomy seems alien to the modern mind. The second reason for its loss of centrality is that it seems to challenge some very basic theological questions on the nature of the Trinity, Christological identity and human identity. The work of Gustaf Aulén serves to illustrate some of the issues.

Aulén argued that the classic Christus victor approach was supplanted in the late medieval period by two other forms of soteriology advocated by Abelard and Anselm. Abelard's soteriology stressed (but not exclusively) the importance of the example of Christ on the cross as the manifestation of God's love towards us as a location for subjective reflection on human destiny and identity in response to that love (pp 425-426). Anselm, on the other hand, stressed the 'legal' objective in his soteriology with his emphasis that the cross is the location of the 'satisfaction' of God's wrath towards sinful humanity (p 420). God's wrath is changed towards humanity because on the cross Christ satisfies God's punishment, enabling God to be gracious to humanity once more. Anselm's major objections to the Christus victor paradigm were a failure to see how God's power is limited by the devil and how God through deception accomplishes what is rightly found only in God's righteousness or holiness. Aulén's premise centers on the contention that the Christus victor paradigm is essentially a way of dealing with present evil and human bondage of the will now lost in the modern worldview. Others would add the doctrine of original sin and the doctrine of imputation to this list of unpopular Christian reflections left behind and which the Christus victor model assumes. While Aulén tends to overstate his case, he does serve to show how overstress can destabilize doctrines. Aulén's work raises the following questions in regard to the Abelard and Anselm positions.

First, it has an anthropological implication. Are human beings essentially free or unfree in their willing of good or evil? Does victory merely impart some new knowledge or does it create or open up new avenues of human existence? Abelard can be read as emphasizing the former, carried with particular vigour in liberal Protestantism. Second, dealing with Christology itself, does an Anselmian position treat Christ's humanity as merely a means through which sin is paid or is a change in God effected? The Anselmian position is preoccupied with the vertical relationship of Father and Son; the horizontal human component is of lesser importance. Later theologians, expanding concepts of representation (Christ's humanity as a representation of ours), participation (we are participants in Christ's humanity by faith), and substitution (His humanity is allowed to stand in place of ours), have tried to mitigate the egress of the Anselmian postulate that Christ's humanity is merely a means to an end within God without import to humanity in general (pp 421-422). Aulén's claim is that the Christus victor model treats of the human situation and the humanity of Christ, especially in the 'three-fold office of Christ' (p 412), more closely than either Abelard or Anselm can. What Aulén serves to illustrate is the mutuality in descriptions of soteriology.

Forgiveness of Sin and Demonstration of Love:
The theme of forgiveness for sin is dominant across the various themes of soteriology but the stress in its application varies across the models. We have seen that the Anselmian position stresses the application of Christ's work towards God; it is God that is appeased by the sacrifice of Christ. In the Christus victor model, humanity is brought into the enjoyment of Christ's victory and becomes the primary recipient of any benefits therein. Both positions share the notion that sin is an obstacle that stands between God and humanity and humanity and God overcome by Christ's work on the cross. Various theologians such as Aquinas mediate the two positions (p 421) and Protestant theologians have found it useful to employ representation, participation and substitution as expressions of the relation between the vertical and horizontal aspect of the forgiveness of sins. There have always been some challenges, such as in Kant, to the notion of a vicarious satisfaction, on the grounds that it promotes moral laxity and that it is unethical for one to suffer another's punishment. Nonetheless, the most serious challenge to the concept of the forgiveness of sins came from the post-Enlightenment denial of original sin and original guilt (p 423). It is almost a universal feature of contemporary theology, with the exception of some evangelical and fundamentalist traditions, that original sin and original guilt must be recast.

The work of the cross is reshaped from a demonstration of forgiveness of sins to a demonstration of God's love. Any impact from the cross is not its transcendental reference (representation, substitution or participation) but merely its value as an expression of self-giving love acting as inspiration. In early rationalist and deist circles this was understood in terms of moral example (pp 413-414, 427). F Schleiermacher took the exemplarist vision of the cross in a non-rational direction with his understanding that the cross demonstrates the intrinsic religiosity or piety of human God-consciousness that is stimulated by the exceptional vision and example of Jesus Christ's own unhampered God-consciousness (pp 427-428). Sin in the rationalist position is merely poor thinking; sin for Schleiermacher is the impingement of the world, a form of being placed in the company of sinners, and its desires on the more original and truly human God-consciousness. Guilt, in both systems, is dependent on becoming aware of failure and tied intrinsically to the manifestation of Christ on the cross. It is therefore neither original nor hereditary, needing not forgiveness but recognition of its sway on the person. The remedy to sin and guilt is an awareness of God's love extended through the cross of Christ.

The dominant challenge to this position came from Barth. Barth creatively reintroduced the wider theme of 'atonement' into any discussion of reconciliation or soteriology. Barth's 'the Judge judged in our place' ties together God's judgment on sin and the fact that God in Christ takes the judgment on the divine self. The cross, then, is God's proclamation of God's judgment on sinful humanity (thereby being universal but not necessarily original being something we find ourselves in the midst of) but also takes that judgment up into the divine life so that what was 'against us' becomes 'for us'. The cross is the locus of judgment against us (the vertical) but also, and more importantly, the demonstration of God's forgiveness and love towards us (the horizontal). Barth is able to straddle the supposed legal-demonstrative polarities of Anselm-Abelard without making original sin a necessary precursor.

From what are we saved?

Missiologists have found it helpful to speak of the abstract notion of 'salvation' in terms of its contextualization within a culture or towards a group. What this attempts to present is that salvation in Christian tradition is a multiplex of ideas related, at some level, to the needs of those to whom the gospel is addressed. The 'good news' of Jesus Christ is meant to mean something to its hearers (receptor-orientation). This, however, does not necessarily mean that the gospel is shaped by its the audience; rather it is an acknowledgement that the totality of the gospel's inclusive aspect is such as to envelop the whole range of human activity and situation. McGrath gives five stresses that have been understood as indicators of what salvation means. Each, in turn, is not exclusive but should be read as differing notes in a salvific symphony.

The first image of salvation is one of the oldest, found in Eastern orthodoxy although there have been Western analogues particularly in the Augustinian and medieval concept of participation. Deification is the broad category of salvation which stresses that in Christ humans are lifted into the divine life of God, leaving sinful flesh or nature behind. Distinction between 'becoming God' (theosis or theopoesis) and 'being like God' (homoiosis theoi) with consequential stress on entrance into a higher life or merely an ethical life of holiness are often flagged as marks of this understanding of salvation. Second, the magisterial Protestants emphasize salvation as forensic justification. Salvation is the forgiveness of sins which enables the sinner to become righteous on Christ's behalf. Salvation is righteousness or the escape from God's wrath.

Modern theologies we have noted shy away from understanding salvation as related to sinfulness, and particularly the notion of original sin. One re-interpretation, the third stress, is that salvation is finding authentic human existence. Again, what exactly is this 'authentic' existence and its relation to Christ varies, but the intent that salvation is a deepening of human self-relation and experiences remains at its core. Liberation theologies, the fourth stress, think of original sin in terms of unjust political or economic structures that realize inhuman (or better inhumane) practices and relationship. Salvation, for them, is the radical inversion of those power structures as seen in God's salvation history in and relationship to Israel and Jesus Christ. Salvation is socio-political liberation. Finally, salvation, as understood in the Christus victor paradigm, is also salvation from the demonic sway of this present fallen world. This historically has been understood in terms of real personal objective agents that are anti-Christ but finds modern articulation in terms of civil or moral structures that trap human existence in subjective inauthenticity or falsity.

What is found in all the themes is the common assertion that salvation speaks into all situations in which people find themselves, bringing with it a higher life of freedom before and in God, unencumbered by the necessity of 'fallenness' however defined.

Is a human response to salvation necessary?

This question is two different questions. For much of the Christian West the question centers on whether profession of faith is needed as either a co-agent or as an affirmation of previous divine action towards the sinner. However, and to be treated in a later chapter on world religions (chapter 17), it is a question regarding the character or nature of faith itself as it is assumed that at some implied level there is an affirmation of or orientation to God amongst all those saved which constitutes the ground for salvation in Christ outside of Christianity. What is important to note is the fundamental distinction of issues between the two questions. In the first, the question regards what humanity contributes (or hinder) to the entire process of salvation. In the second, the question concerns the nature of already-manifest faith commitments across other religions. In this instance, the consideration is whether faith in other world religious systems can be thought of as salvific in the Christian sense. Our present question deals with the first question only.

The Christian tradition is clear that God desires to save humanity and that this is only possible in Christ. However, the scope of salvation is left ambiguous. Most of the Christian tradition in the West held that an act of faith, a sign of acceptance of God's gracious activity, on the part of the believer was a necessary condition or co-agent in salvation. In this it is fair to say that only 'believers' will be saved. However, this begs the question as we have seen frequently of what constitutes a 'believer' and which paradigm of salvation is the normative or prescriptive one? In addition, it raises the question as to whether human disavowal can moot divine salvation. What is common, however, is that at some point the Christian must render (and continue) an acknowledgement of their salvation. In differing denominations this acknowledgement is public and ecclesiological through sacramental participation and church membership and in others more private and personal through lifestyle and piety.

Strict Calvinism holds a variant view, enjoying a particular renaissance today, on the question of who is saved with its particular or elect atonement (p 468). The stress in this theological conversation is whether the will of God to save is effective (and thereby perfect) given that some may deny the gift of grace. To avoid the logical contradiction that God's will is perfect yet some can thwart God, the postulate that God saves only the elect, usually invoking a theorem of divine foreknowledge, is made paradigmatic. Those known by God to reject grace were not covered in the work of Christ on the cross. It follows then that 'signs' of election, since profession or church membership alone cannot guarantee salvific status, become the evidence of prior election.

How are the cross and resurrection related in Christian understanding of salvation?

The resurrection (and ascension) is central to an understanding of the cross for several reasons across all the soteriologies encountered above. The resurrection is given as proof by God that in this one - Jesus Christ - rested divine pleasure, identification or vocation. Once more the spectrum of interpretation varies, from the strong ontological emphasis that in the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ God reveals divine co-identity and subsequent partnership with humanity to the more symbolic identification of divine will in the sacrifice of Christ reinterpreted (and given meaning) as an immortal memory by the disciples. The cross is not enough, other men died on a cross, perhaps even for similar reasons to Jesus of Nazareth. The resurrection-ascension, whether understood as miracle, as merely symbol or somewhere in between, is the authenticating of some mode of divine manifestation, pleasure or vocation within that act of self-giving love. One could not have, in any sense, a Christianity that did not address the meaning of the cross from the perspective of the resurrection-ascension.