The Origin of Christology by C. F. D. Moule (review)

BOOK REVIEWS The Origin of Ohristology. By C. F. D. MouLE. Cambridge University Press, 1977. £7.50. In this book Professor Moule develops a thesis which will be of con. siderable interest to specialists in New Testament studies and which might well have important implications for christological discussion in general. A fashionable explanation of the way various beliefs about Christ originated is that, as the Christian movement spread beyond Palestine, ideas emerged which were derived from the religious beliefs of the various environments in which the new faith progressively took root. Professor Moule terms this theory 'evolution': the new ideas are comparable, by analogy, with the evolution of new species in biological evolution. In contrast, he himself expounds a theory of ' development.' Beliefs about Christ in the New Testament are better accounted for ' as insights, of varying depth, into what was there in Jesus, than as the result of increasing distance from him.' He begins with a discussion of the application to Jesus of the terms Son of Man, Son of God, and Christ. He argues that Jesus took the phrase Son of Man from Dan. 7 and used it to symbolise his own vocation which he called his followers to share: it stood for God's martyr people who would ultimately be vindicated, and whose 'centre and growing.point' Jesus himself was to be. The term is thus corporate or collective, as T. W. Mason claimed. At this point, however, one wonders whether sufficient justice has been done to the case against a corporate interpretation of Son of Man. Most occurrences more readily suggest an individual reference, and Jesus's actual allusions to Dan. 7: 18 tend to suggest that he had 'individualised ' the corporate Danielic symbol. In Mk. 18: 26·27 the Son of Man will gather together his elect, and so is distinguished from them, and in Mk. 14:62 Jesus has just spoken of himself in the first person singular. Be that as it may, Professor Moule further argues that the Danielic Son of Man can also be regarded as the messianic Son of God, since the bestowal of dominion upon him could be interpreted in terms of Ps. 2, and that Jesus accepted the title of Christ, but understood it as signifying a destiny of suffering and service. Next there is an extensive discussion of the title Lord. This is especially valuable, as it presents us with a clear and succinct account of the latest linguistic findings in this area and draws out their implications. The argu. ment is directed against the theory that, when the Christian faith spread to the hellenistic world, the linguistic shift from Aramaic to Greek brought 148 BOOK REVIEWS 149 with it a major theological change from the invocation of Jesus as Master to the acclamation of him as the divine Lord who is the object of worship. Investigation of the use of the Aramaic mare and the Hebrew adon shows the presence of a linguistic bridge, rather than a linguistic gulf, between these words and the Greek kurios, since all three could be applied to God as well as to man. In terms of quality, they are not far apart, and the invocation of Jesus was not far from his acclamation. It is also argued that belief in the cosmic lordship of Christ may have arisen from the discovery of ' his absolute aliveness beyond death.' This last point, unfortunately , is left rather vague, since we are not told what this experience was really like. In the second major section of the book, the author deals with the phenomenon of belief in ' the corporate Christ,' found primarily in the Pauline literature. An illuminating discussion of the phrase ' in Christ ' (and ' in the Lord ') shows that in at least some passages it has a locative sense, and that the locative sense is significant because it indicates ' a more than individualistic conception of the person of Christ.' The experience of Christ as ' an inclusive, all-embracing presence ' means that he is ' beginning to be described in terms appropriate to nothing less than God himself.' There is also an interesting treatment of Paul's use of soma when applied to the church. Rather...