Journal Article

What Makes a Christology into a Christian Theology?

Braine, David

1996

Overview

What makes a “Christology” count as a “Christian” Christology? Evidently, there is some distinction to be made. Presumably the reverent accounts of Jesus’ person and role offered by Islam, by notable non-Christian Jews of modem times, by Jewish writers such as Vermes, or by Gandhi and others in the Hindu tradition, do not count as “Christian” Christologies — and clearly a respectful account of his person and role offered by an agnostic or atheist could not count as a “Christian” Christology. Whether we situate the sentimental nineteenth century Renan, or modem theologians such as Maurice Wiles’ and John Hick, on the “Christian” or “non-Christian” side of the divide in respect of their Christologies, waits upon some clarification of what it is that makes a Christology a “Christian” one. The term “Christology” does not mean a “Messianology” which would have to do with the role of a Messiah the question of whose identity lies open. Rather it means what would have better been called a “Jesuology”, that is an account of the person and role in human existence and the universe of the historically identified person, Jesus of Nazareth.

• Publisher: Blackwell Publishing Ltd,English Dominicans,Blackfriar Press, etc
• Subject: Apostles / Christian history / Christianity / Christology / Divinity / Faith / Intellect / New Testament / Sacred texts / Theology