“Who Do Men Say That I Am?” — Modern Scholarship on Gospel Christology

Abstract

I trust that my choice of the topic of christology for an address to a national convention of the College Theology Society needs no explanation. Christology was, is, and, I suspect, always will be the single most important question in Christian theology. Of the three religions of the book, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, we Christians are the only ones who have accepted identification in terms of our stance about a person of history, Jesus of Nazareth. Although Judaism revers Moses as the lawgiver, the designation “Judaism” suggests that primary identity is not in terms of an attitude toward Moses but in terms of relationship to the tribe of Judah and the people of Israel. Westerners persist in calling Muslims “Mohammedans,” but that is by false analogy with the title “Christians.” While Mohammed is the prophet, a Muslim is one who has accepted Islam, that is, submission to the will of Allah, as preached by Mohammed. Christians, however, are those who profess that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, the Christ. The question “Who do men say that I am?” stands in a central place in the tradition of the Synoptic Gospels, symptomatic of where it stands in our faith; and we Christians are those who think that, whether he understood it fully or not, Peter gave the correct answer to that question.