Crucified and Resurrected: Restructuring the Grammar of Christology by Ingolf U. Dalferth

Abstract

Reviewed by: Crucified and Resurrected: Restructuring the Grammar of Christology by Ingolf U. Dalferth Mark Mattes Crucified and Resurrected: Restructuring the Grammar of Christology. By Ingolf U. Dalferth. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011. xix + 325 pp. Originally published in German in 1994, this book, a foray into Christology by an internationally recognized scholar, merits widespread attention. Dalferth shares many affinities with the rich theological thinking of the Tübingen systematician, Eberhard Jüngel, with whom he had studied and whose own complex theology interweaves a Barthian approach to God, where God is self-revealing as the triune life, a Bultmannian approach to anthropology, where human authenticity is established through a decision for or against God in the face of existential awareness, and a Lutheran highlighting of cross and resurrection as the primary paradigm for understanding Christian existence. The major shift in Dalferth’s Christology [End Page 243] in contrast to traditional two-nature Chalcedonian Christology is to center Christology in Jesus’ resurrection and not the incarnation. For Dalferth, this stance is more faithful both to Scripture and a contemporary outlook as opposed to the substance metaphysics assumed in the Chalcedonian creedal formation. The book begins with the critique of the incarnation postulated by the 1970’s “Myth of God Incarnate” theologians, such as John Hick, and then moves to the motif of “cross and resurrection” as the proper basis for outlining Christology, the trinity, and the nature of Christ’s atoning sacrifice. Dalferth appreciates Hick’s conviction that belief in the saving efficacy of Jesus Christ is not reducible to belief in the incarnation (3), but he discredits Hick’s overall approach to Christ because it is “Pelagianizing” (21). In contrast to “substance metaphysics,” Jesus is best understood in his role of disclosing the “nearness of God”; God’s “imminent advent” is the field on which to recognize the meaning of Jesus (25). Jesus’ entire ministry was for the sake of this mission and for it he sacrificed his life. Even so, his resurrection shows that God’s love is stronger than death. God, not death, has the last word in Jesus’ story (26). Indeed, because Jesus has been raised to eternal life, the compassionate reign of God has dawned (26). The saving significance of Jesus for believers is that faith in Jesus as the “mediator of God’s life-giving presence” will allow them “to participate in Jesus’ resurrection to continuous fellowship with God” (28). Theologically, Jesus’ resurrection discloses God’s nature to be “inexhaustible creative love” (33). In the cross the “Son of God” makes himself like us mortals and in so doing makes us mortals like him (42). Hence, God’s divinity is disclosed not as “omnipotent self-preservation” (as the normative Christian tradition would have us believe) but as gratuitous self-abasement (46) for humanity’s welfare. Jesus’ behavior in his earthly ministry, such as his placing himself above God’s law, his exercising eschatological functions, his controlling demons, and his forgiving sinners, exercises rights that belong to God alone (103). Jesus is not only human but divine in that in all he says and does he defines the “reign of God” (126). Dalferth finds the substance ontology and the realist semantics of traditional two-natures Christology problematic for the modern world (142). As an alternative, he posits God as in a process of “self-definition” [End Page 244] (as love for the world) (158) in which the cross itself is most definitive of God’s life because it indicates the “risk” which God will take to reach out to rebellious, self-deifying humans (160). Dalferth is wary of “penal substitution” language as the way to describe Jesus’ atoning death. He notes that we must be careful not to confuse four models of atonement (which grow out of different and not always commensurable contexts): (1) cultic, centered on the language of sacrifice, (2) juristic, centered on covenant, (3) political, centered on freedom from captivity, and (4) personal, centered on fellowship. In a word, Jesus’ death enacts our own unavoidable death (275). Jesus death is “for us” in that his entire life was one of “surrender” on behalf of sinners (252). Those for whom Christology must come...