From Logos to Christos: Essays on Christology in Honour of Joanne McWilliam

6 Logos Christology Today

6 Logos Christology Today    ROGER HAIGHT, SJ JOANNE MCWILLIAM spent a good deal of her academic career studying various aspects of Patristic Logos Christology and trinitarian theology. Few conceptual symbols in Christian theology rival the importance of Logos in Christian theology. Like all classical symbols, Logos, or more familiarly “the Word of God,” continues to be reinterpreted in new cultures and thus retain its significance. I offer this essay as one to which she would have responded with spontaneity and not without criticism. Because Logos is a classical symbol with ancient Hebrew and Greek resonances, it has had to defend its relevance within a growing sense of historicity . An appreciation of historical change in modernity led to formulae for understanding the development of doctrine beyond Nicaea and Chalcedon , and the more radical sensibilities for difference and particularity that mark postmodernity have often challenged the relevance of the universal , comprehensive character of Logos. The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate by example that Logos is under considerable pressure in systematic theology today and to suggest ways in which its meaning may yet again be modified and reappropriated in new theological frameworks of interpretation. The argument unfolds in three logical phases across five parts. In the first, I list several problems that surround uses of Logos language today. The second phase contains three parts. It turns to three systematic theologians— Friedrich Schleiermacher, Paul Tillich, and Edward Schillebeeckx—who 91 engage Logos language and reinterpret the classical usage in significantly different ways. In the third and concluding phase, I offer some constructive reflections in the light of the contributions of these theologians that are meant to contribute to the ongoing discussion of Logos. Problems Entailed in Logos Christology There have always been problems connected with Logos Christology; indeed, this theological construct was conceived in controversy. Even though it remains a norm against which all Christologies should be compared, it will never be free from debate, even among those who defend some version of it. In this part I briefly lay out some of these problems as they are felt today. This does not mean they are new. And those who accept a Logos Christology as their own usually profess it in a way they believe absorbs or responds to these problems. But an increasing number of others believe these problems require a different language when it comes to expressing their belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ and the nature of God. Mythological Construals of Logos Christology The most obvious problem with Logos Christology lies in the tendency to read it in the literal terms of a myth. The point of this observation is not to make “myth” a negative category but to note the tendency for the idea of God as Logos becoming a human being to become a kind of “comic book” narrative. This entails thinking of the three persons of the trinity as individuals , constituting a numerical three, one of whom became incarnate in Jesus.1 The objectification of language and the role of the imagination in all knowing spontaneously lend support to this misunderstanding. When preachers refer to the doctrine of the trinity and the doctrine of Incarnation entailed in the constitution of the person of Jesus Christ as mysteries, the referent often appears in mathematical terms: How can one be three, or the one person, Jesus, really be both a human being and God? On the one hand, preachers frequently blame these mysteries on theologians; on the other, theologians do not usually attend to such elementary and obvious mistakes. But this does not mean that they go away. What exactly does “Logos” refer to? Logos Christology Is Abstract This complaint about Logos Christology is perhaps the oldest, and its most common neuralgic point. It can be brought to bear from two points of view. The first refers to the abstract and metaphysical language of the doctrine 92 CHRISTOLOGY AND TRADITION and the consequent level of discussion it involves. Jesus of Nazareth is presupposed in this discussion, but in order to express Jesus’ relation to God and ultimately his divinity, it is said that the Word of God is incarnate within him. John’s Gospel contains the clearest affirmation that “the Word was with God” and that “the Word became flesh” in this world in Jesus. Once this datum is in place, the conversation shifts to an abstract and deeper metaphysical level of the identity of...