Traditional Christology Research Articles

Dogmatic aspects of the Christologies of Kant and St Innocent (Borisov)

In his momentous writing Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, Kant attempted to conduct a complete rational-idealistic interpretation of traditional dogmatic Christology. The Son of God was represented by Kant as an idea of the good principle mystically existing in the human soul, and the Incarnation of the Son of God as a descent of the good principle into evil human nature. Therefore the Lord Jesus Christ, according to Kant’s representation, should be merely a simple man (an example for human beings) who realised the good principle in his life, becoming a model for us to copy and a proof that we also can realise this principle – having Christ as an example, though on our own, independently, i.e. without having any special ontological relation with Him, and without any other external factors having impact on us. St Innocent (Borisov) was the first thinker in the whole tradition of Russian theology who seriously dealt with the theological opinions of Kant, especially with his rational Christology. St Innocent did not neglect the meaning of Kant’s Christological views, but attempted, firstly, to incorporate their positive roots into traditional Christology and, secondly, to respond to Kant’s “challenge”, i.e. his notion that the doctrine of Christ’s native holiness is not compatible with the view of Him as an example and ideal. The Russian theologian stated that Christ is the Ideal and God Himself. To respond to Kant, he formulated the conception of the gradual manifestation of divinity in Christ.

HAVE WE MISCONSTRUED CHRIST’S PRIESTLY AND KINGLY WORK? A Discussion on Analytic and Exegetical Christology

Within the framework of traditional Christology, the most common interpretation of Christ’s three-fold office is that Christ’s work as our High Priest culminated on the cross as He suffered divine wrath and judgment, while His kingly rule began at His resurrection and ascension. However, with respect to the priestly role, David Moffitt challenges this common understanding and argues that, based on a careful reading of the Epistle to the Hebrews, Christ’s atoning sacrifice ultimately took place during His ascension. Complementing Moffitt’s account, I argue that Christ’s kingly work climaxed in His death on the cross. Using the tools of analytic method, I shall analyze 2 Chronicles 33:1-20 and offer an interpretation to support my argument. If Moffitt’s and my account is Scripturally tenable, it is safe to conclude that traditional Christology has mistakenly reversed Christ’s priestly and kingly role.

ENERGIES AND PERSONHOOD: A CHRISTOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE ON HUMAN IDENTITY

AbstractThe assertion that Christ is truly and fully human supports using Christology as a starting point to frame discussions surrounding humanity. This article focuses on the Christological distinction between personhood and nature that is made in the Chalcedonian Definition and argues that it could reframe current discussions in the science–theology discourse on humanity identity. As discussions of human identity often center around issues such as personhood, consciousness, and the soul, taking this Christological perspective into account means that scholars must consider whether scientific contributions are engaging with characteristics of human nature or personhood, and recognize the theological distinction. To address some of the troubling implications of this reframing, this article proposes a vision of humanity as natural energies expressing an unrepeatable personhood, based largely on the work of the Eastern Orthodox theologian Christos Yannaras. This proposal takes traditional Christology seriously in its relevance to discussions on human identity, while possibly enabling even more productive engagement with scientific knowledge.

로즈마리 래드퍼드 류터의 해방신학적, 여성신학적, 생태신학적 그리스도론

In this article, I will examine the three-stage development of Rosemary Radford Ruether’s Christology. At first Reuther developed her Christology from the perspective of liberation theology by analyzing contemporary studies of the historical Jesus and incorporating insights of liberation Christology. Afterwards, taking seriously feminist critiques of traditional Christology, she argued for an prophetic-iconoclastic Christology from the perspective of feminist theology. More recently, Ruether turned her attention to the cosmic Christology and developed an ecological perspective. While analyzing excerpts from her works, this study explores both the continuity and discontinuity in the development of Ruether’s Christology. In the process it is made clear that her Christology shows a greater continuity throughout her entire career than it first appears and that it becomes even more holistic in her later Christology. In the final analysis, despite Ruether’s significant contribution to contemporary Christological discourse, the author points out some limitations and then suggests urgent tasks of Christology for this century.

What Is Not Saved Is Not Assumed: Thomas Weinandy, Julian of Eclanum, and Augustine of Hippo on Whether Salvation Requires Christ's Temptations to Sin

What Is Not Saved Is Not Assumed:Thomas Weinandy, Julian of Eclanum, and Augustine of Hippo on Whether Salvation Requires Christ's Temptations to Sin Joshua Evans Toward the end of the last book he ever wrote, Augustine of Hippo asks a crucial question that should resonate in today's Christological debates: "Did … that assumption of a human nature which made God and man one person contribute nothing to that man toward the excellence of the righteousness which you say he had from voluntary action?"1 While the question was originally put to Julian of Eclanum, Augustine's Pelagian archenemy, the question continues to be relevant, in large part because a number of theologians today adopt the same Christological principle advanced by Julian: "A different nature could not furnish an example. … Remove the basis of the example, and the basis of the price which he became for us will also be removed."2 That is, according to both Julian and a number of theologians today, if Jesus had a human nature that was importantly different from our nature, then he was not truly human and we are not truly saved. Recently, some theologians have framed the issue in a quasi-Augustinian manner by arguing that Jesus possessed fallen human nature. While there [End Page 563] are certainly a number of concerns motivating this trend in Christology, the primary concern is soteriological. The guiding star here is Gregory Nazianzen's principle, "what is not assumed is not saved."3 As Gregory argues, "if only half Adam fell, then that which Christ assumes and saves may be half also; but if the whole of his nature fell, it must be united to the whole nature of Him that was begotten, and so be saved as a whole."4 Those who say Jesus had a fallen human nature are concerned above all to establish that Jesus truly took on our human nature. According to this viewpoint, if Christ did not assume our fallen human nature, then we who inhabit that nature are not saved. One of today's most notable advocates of the claim that Jesus possessed fallen human nature is Father Thomas Weinandy, who advances the following thesis: "Our salvation is unconditionally dependent upon the Son's assuming a humanity disfigured by sin and freely acting as a son of Adam."5 One of the major soteriological concerns of thinkers like Weinandy has to do with Jesus's role as moral exemplar for the rest of us. Traditional Christology, which suggests Jesus had an importantly different kind of human nature from ours, leads to the following troubling questions: "How could one possibly follow an example set by God? Surely God is able to do what God does because he has powers that far exceed our own. How then could what God does as a precondition to becoming incarnate possibly be imitated by human beings?"6 The advocates of Christ's fallen human nature seek to avoid the apparent moral divisions between Jesus and us that are built into traditional Christology. According to these advocates, if we [End Page 564] attribute Christ's perfect life to his divinely human personhood, then he would not be truly human and we would not be truly saved. These thinkers rightly recognize that Christology and soteriology stand or fall together. Unlike the ancient Christological debates, there is essentially unanimous agreement today that Christ assumed many elements of what we call fallen human nature: Christ clearly had the ability to undergo hunger, pain, suffering, and death, though he never committed any actual sins. What is in dispute, however, is how we account for Christ's avoidance of personal, actual sins. Was the human nature of Jesus just like ours, so that Jesus had to actively work to avoid sins just like we do? Or, was the human nature of Jesus importantly different from ours, so that Jesus had the kind of human nature that was unable to sin? The issue of what accounts for Jesus's ability to avoid sins is a major source of division today in debates over the character of Christ's human nature. Oliver Crisp has helpfully identified two rival sides in the...

Christ the Heart of Creation by Rowan Williams

Reviewed by: Christ the Heart of Creation by Rowan Williams Joseph Wawrykow Christ the Heart of Creation. By Rowan Williams. London: Bloomsbury Continuum, 2018. Pp. xvi + 279. $35.00 (cloth). ISBN: 978-1-47294554-9. Dense and occasionally opaque, this challenging book by the prolific former Archbishop of Canterbury is rich in insight and learning, and is surely worth the read. Offering a sustained meditation on Jesus Christ, Williams's theological acumen is on full display. The book might fairly be termed a celebration: of Christ, of the traditional Christology that is incarnational and that insists on full divinity and full humanity while seeing the two in their proper accord. As presented by Williams, this Christ does stand at the heart of the faith, and holds together and informs all that Christians believe (about God, creation, God's grace, Church) and practice. Williams is methodical in the unfolding of this Christology. It is, and crucially so, a single-subject Christology. "Single subject" speaks to unity. The second nature is united to the first in the person of the Word or Son of God. "Single subject" also speaks to identity. It is the second divine person who becomes incarnate. As divine, the Word is absolutely free, unconditioned in agency, the fully effective agent who in full intelligence and love is not limited in causing in and through what God creates. And the Word who is one God with the Father and the Holy Spirit, same in divinity, is a distinct divine person, standing in intimate relation to the Father. The Son eternally receives from the Father, and in eternally proper relation to the Father eternally offers to the Father. In becoming incarnate, the personal property of the second person is inscribed in the humanity taken up, instantiated, by the Word. And so Jesus, the Word incarnate, is in correct relation to the Father and in his human actions—nicely [End Page 333] summarized in terms of love—gives to the Father appropriately, unconditionally. Other humans are made in the image of God, but have fallen from God, distorted the image, by sin. As the Word who is incarnate, Jesus can meet the problem of their sin, can reconcile others to God; and as related to Jesus by their faith and love, and in imitation of the Word, and of the Word as incarnate, they will live in correct relation to God, giving to God what is God's, and offering themselves, as did Jesus, for others. In sum, this Christology is of immense significance for a theological anthropology, and for an account of ethics and the true flourishing of humans as humans (made by God, for God, and able to live out of themselves by Christ). The unfolding of this Christology is at once metaphysical and grammatical. Williams is constantly alert to the difference between God and creation, between what can be said of God and what said of the creature. There is a logic of divinity and a logic of createdness, the one not to be confused with the other. The creature and God cannot be two things alongside each other, as if falling into the same category, as if they are subject to the same conditions. Rather, they bespeak different planes of existence, different operations. Hence, what holds of creatures does not hold of God; creaturely limitations, restriction, are to be denied of God (and so there is an appropriate apophaticism in the discourse about God). God is transcendent. Yet, creation and God do stand in relation, and Williams rightly plays this up as well. The creature receives all that it has from God: its nature and being, and even its acting. Creatureliness speaks to dependence. God moves creatures to their act. But this is not at the expense of the intrinsic capacity of a creature. Rather, God as agent respects the nature of the creature, applying the creature to act in accordance with its God-given nature. When it comes to creatures endowed with will, they are so applied to act that they too act; they will and they do in accordance with their own willing—as made possible, actualized, by God. Creaturely particularity and causality...

White Jesus and Antisemitism: Toward an Antiracist and Decolonial Christology

AbstractThis article argues that traditional Christology is intimately bound up with a triumphalist agenda that denies Jesus’ Jewishness and is structurally antisemitic. Taking an antiracist stance, the article argues that systemic rethinking of Christianity’s theological resources is needed, which must be anti‐antisemitic and antiracist. This involves reconfiguring how we take on board Jesus’ Jewishness in a post‐Holocaust context and recognizing Jesus as a Jewish prophet. From this, it is tentatively suggested that rethinking the role of the Messiah involves understanding a Levinasian Messiah who does not come, but rather calls upon us to act in a Messianic role before the Other as an ethical imperative.

Christ Our Ritual Sage? A Chinese Articulation of Christ's Priesthood

Christ Our Ritual Sage?A Chinese Articulation of Christ's Priesthood Joshua Brown This article concerns developing an account of Christ's priesthood utilizing concepts and terms from Chinese philosophy. The primary problem I address is methodological: how can an intercultural reading of Christological doctrine be simultaneously culturally relevant and orthodox? In answer to this question, I seek to negotiate intellectual complications that arise in attempting to articulate a doctrine concerning Christ's historical and cultural embodied person while drawing on a cultural and ritual milieu vastly different from those of the Christian Scriptures or doctrinal tradition. Focusing on the question of Christ's priesthood, I demonstrate here that a reading that is at once both culturally relevant and orthodox is possible through cultivating a reading of two concrete programs and then using these perspectives to analyze and resolve issues in articulating Christ's priesthood in a Chinese key. Thus, I base this work here on an analysis of ritual and ritual agency in the philosophical writings of the early Confucian Xúnzǐ (310–210 BC) and St. Thomas Aquinas's account of Christ's priesthood in question 22 of Summa theologiae [ST] III.1 The framework in which I pose this reading of Christ's priesthood is, [End Page 15] then, the relationship between human culture and Christian doctrine. In the modern West, the difficulties of articulating Christian teaching in a Western idiom have been by and large negotiated for a long time, and thus many Western Christians do not have any trouble understanding Christian doctrine in their native intellectual categories. However, especially in the wake of postmodernism and postcolonialism, this is not true in many parts of the world. In recent decades, a number of Asian and Asian American theologians have articulated some variety of the claim that traditional Christian doctrinal categories, especially Christological doctrines, are products of and are only relevant to the dominant intellectual culture of the West and that, hence, a culturally relevant and responsive theology for Asian peoples must find a different foundation to be really "Asian."2 Modern theology therefore faces a considerable dilemma. On the one hand, many Asian theologians are suspicious of the possibility of a truly Asian theology being founded on traditional Christian categories and discourse. On the other hand, sociologically speaking, it seems that Christianity itself is fading in the West and that the dominant Christian culture will be Chinese within a matter of decades.3 We face, then, a very imaginable situation in which the majority of Christians might be led to believe that the doctrinal content of traditional Christology is not culturally relevant to them, and thus can be replaced. What is to become of these categories, then, and the doctrines they communicate? What is to become of the theological sciences that today seek to better understand and articulate these doctrines and their categories? Will they fall away and, indeed, [End Page 16] become irrelevant, or will they find ways to speak to a changing context? In this article, I seek to show that being responsive to the changing global context enables Christianity to accommodate the concerns for both cultural relevance and traditional Christian doctrinal categories. Yet doing so requires a difficult process of understanding how traditional Christian proclamation can inform and be relevant to the intellectual devices of historically non-Christian cultures, such as that of China. And so, instead of making an argument for method, I demonstrate what this work could look like. In this demonstration, I focus on the challenge of articulating Christ's priesthood in a Chinese idiom, mediated by Xúnzǐ. Ultimately, the prospects for this articulation will rest heavily on the ability to consider Christ's priesthood within the category of the ritual sage, the shèngrén , as it functions in Xúnzǐ's philosophy. But, in order to appreciate why this move is necessary, we first require a presentation of Xúnzǐ's broader understanding of rituals and their role in moral cultivation. Then, we must understand Christ's priesthood in traditional doctrinal categories so that we may explore the relationship between this doctrine and Xúnzǐ's thought. Hence, in the second section of the present article, I...

David Coffey: Reshaping Traditional Theology

The article seeks to locate the genealogy of David Coffey’s systematic theology in his original search for a unified account of grace. This led to the recovery of early but forgotten ways of thinking about the central doctrines of the Trinity and Christology related especially to the role of the Holy Spirit in the Incarnation. Coffey’s Spirit Christology, based on the Synoptic Gospels and patristic reflection, complements the traditional Christology of Chalcedon in ways that throw light on Christ’s humanity and the redemptive character of his death and resurrection. It also grounds a theology of grace, Christian anthropology, death and resurrection, the Church, and the salvation of unbelievers. Coffey is a prominent Australian theologian and the discussion of his thought is set within a brief account of the development of theological studies in the Australian context.

Freedom and the incarnation

AbstractIn this paper, we explore how free will should be understood within the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation, particularly on the assumption of traditional Christology. We focus on two issues: (i) reconciling Christ's free will with the claim that Christ's human will was subjected to the divine will in the Incarnation; and (ii) reconciling the claims that Christ was fully human and free with the belief that Christ, since God, could not sin.

Conciliar Christology and the Problem of Incompatible Predications

In this article I canvas the options available to a proponent of the traditional doctrine of the incarnation against a charge of incoherence. In particular, I consider the charge of incoherence due to incompatible predications both being true of the same one person, the God-man Jesus Christ. For instance, one might think that anything divine has to have certain attributes – perhaps omnipotence, or impassibility. But, the charge continues, nothing human can be omnipotent or impassible. And so nothing can be divine and human. So Christ is not both God and man, contrary to the traditional doctrine of the incarnation. To do so, first, in Section II, I will present the problem as a deductively valid argument. I then, in that section, go on to show that the proponent of traditional Christology should grant all but one premise of the argument. In the remaining sections I will canvas possible solutions to the problem. In Section III I discuss three ways to deny Premise 3 of the forthcoming argument. These ways include a Kenotic response, qua-modification (in four versions), and finally a response that accepts the compatibility of the allegedly incompatible predicates.

The Personalist Shift in Christology

The article deals with the issue of the personalistic placement of contemporary Christology. The character of this approach is described by a direct, existential attitude toward the personal phenomenon of Jesus Christ. The analysis in question stems from the reading of the integral and complete humanity of Christ (verus et perfectus Homo) thanks to the use of personalistic language. This take releases the traditional Christology from the burden of concepts that hinder the access to the personal mystery of the Saviour. Thus, the personalistic shiftin Christology means that the “reality” under scrutiny is seen as an irreducible “point” of the existence of the God-Man who sets a radically new horizon of the acquisition of the truth that cannot be reduced to any concepts or formulae. This process is reflected by the principle of co-seemlines that is the modus of the personal covenant of the humanum and divinum that was literally and most fully realised in Christ, thereby giving an unparalleled perspective of speaking of God and of man. The profile of Christology directed existentially (the personalistic Christology) does not lose its scientific and methodological character or conceptual coherence, but it rather broadens the significance of these elements and puts them a radically new interpretative perspective.

Human Souls as Consubstantial Sons of God: The Heterodox Anthropology of Leontius of Jerusalem

In his treatise Contra Nestorianos Leontius of Jerusalem refers to the human soul as “divine inbreathing”, which he understands as a consubstantial emanation from God. This paper argues that Leontius was confronted with the Nestorian claim that a composition between an uncreated and a created entity is impossible and that he refuted this claim by arguing that the soul is divine and that the composition of a human soul with a human body is therefore a strict parallel for the incarnation. One of Leontius’ starting points was the traditional view that Adam’s soul was endowed with the Holy Spirit and not merely with a derivative grace. This model had the advantage that it located “God” in the human being but the disadvantage that this presence remained extrinsic to the human compound. To make it function as a precedent for the Incarnation Leontius substituted the Son for the Spirit and reduced the human nature to the body thereby indicating that the soul must be equated with the divine Son. In order to distinguish the case of Christ from that of Adam and other human beings he employed the Biblical motif of the “pledge”, which was traditionally used to contrast the partial spiritual endowment of the believers in this world with their complete spiritual endowment in the world to come but which he now applied to Adam and Christ. This permitted him to claim that in Adam the Son was only partially present while in Christ he was present completely. Thus he conceptualised the Incarnation not as the composition of the divine Word with a human nature consisting of body and soul but as a composition of the divine Word as soul and a human body. Consequently the divine component of traditional Christology could no longer be given a satisfactory role in the salvation of humankind. One reason for this shift, it is argued in this paper, was a too great dependence on the conceptual framework of his Nestorian opponent whose focus had been on the endowment of the human being Jesus with the Holy Spirit, who thus assumed a crucial role in the incarnation. Leontius accepted this framework as well as the Nestorian custom to see the difference between the Spirit in Jesus and the Spirit in other human beings in quantitative terms, and merely modified it by identifying the Holy Spirit with the Son on the one hand and with the soul on the other. However, it is suggested in this paper, Leontius may have believed in the divinity and timelessness of the soul independently of his Nestorian opponent. His interpretation of Philippians 2:6-7 suggests that he was a latter-day Origenist who could express his ideas more freely than his forebears because the political circumstances of the early seventh century made enforcement of orthodoxy impossible in the Eastern provinces.

The Humanity of Christ: Jacques Dupuis' Christology and Religious Pluralism

ABSTRACTThe question of Christianity's relationship to the religious traditions of the world lies at the center of Jacques Dupuis' theological work. This essay contends that Dupuis' Christology provides the ground for his pursuit of this larger question. An exploration of Dupuis' positive assertions about who Jesus Christ is reveals both a new Christological view and an implicit critique of conventional notions of what it means to be human. By challenging traditional Christology and creatively restructuring the relationship of our humanity to Christ's humanity, Dupuis invigorates the purpose of humanity's role in salvation history. This shift in emphasis, toward Christ's and our shared humanity, allows Dupuis to recognize the theological significance in all mainstream religious traditions.

What Has Chalcedon to Do with Lhasa?: John Keenan’s and Lai Pai-chiu’s Reflections on Classical Christology and the Possible Shape of a Tibetan Theology of Incarnation

The starting point of this paper is a critique of John Keenan's so-called in The Meaning of Christ, in light of Lai Pai-chiu's response to Keenan's position. My argument is that Lai correctly construes the Chalcedonian definition as a critique of Hellenist ontology, but fails to critique Keenan's crucial contention that this same definition ratifies the subjugation of lived spiritual experience to abstract philosophical speculation. I also claim that Lai does not engage Keenan's flawed use, in his constructive Christology, of the teaching of the Buddhabodies, which in my opinion could provide an apposite template for the development of a Tibetan contextual Christology. My paper has a twofold purpose: on one hand, I sketch the contours of a possible Tibetan theology of incarnation; on the other hand, I offer a few methodological reflections on the role of classical doctrinal definitions in the development of new contextual theologies. The burden of this paper is to offer a few suggestions toward the formulation of a culturally contextual theology of incarnation, which uses the resources of Mahayana speculation on the embodiment of the Buddha. My starting point is Lai's critique of Keenan's well-known 1989 volume The Meaning of Christ, in which Keenan sets out to critique traditional Hellenist Chalcedonian Christology and argues for an alternative articulation of the hypostatic union based on the Mahayana teaching of the Buddha-bodies.' Lai's article revisits Keenan's critique and argues that the Chalcedonian definition, far from canonizing the uncritical appropriation of a school of thought, evidences the profound limitations of philosophical discourse. Keenan's underlying contention that traditional Christology subjects the Christian message to the strictures of alien categories is thus deconstructed, although Lai goes on to offer yet one more Christological synthesis based on the Chinese understanding of Buddha nature. In my paper I concur with Lai's reading of Chalcedonian categories, which I regard

Ancient, Postmodern, and Prophetic: How Haight's Symbol Theory (Almost) Does It All

ABSTRACTThe achievements of Roger Haight's provocative book Jesus Symbol of God rise and fall according to the strengths—and weaknesses—of Haight's symbol theory as applied to his christological project. While this essay expresses a largely positive view of Haight's overall project, it focuses on two key shortcomings pertaining to Haight's symbol theory as it shapes his Christology: first, that his notion of symbol is too low to serve traditional Christology; second, that Haight strips religious symbols of their prophetic power by conceding too much to his audience. Drawing on the symbol theories of Karl Rahner and Paul Ricoeur, to whom Haight is deeply indebted for his understanding of symbol, a path is indicated by which Haight's model could more adequately wed symbol theory and Christology in yielding a more fruitful understanding of Jesus as symbol of God.

Traditional Christology for Our Time: A Response to Edward Jeremy Miller

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Rule 4? Gender Difference and the Nature of Doctrine

Any attempt to talk about God today must accept the challenge of feminist theology. This article examines some aspects of the feminist critique of traditional christology and suggests a possible response in terms of “rule 4”. That is, reflecting on George lindbeck's claim that there are three regulative principles at work in the shaping of the classic doctrines of the incarnation and the trinity, the author suggests that feminist theology has brought to light a fourth rule: only those things may be claimed as theologically essential in the interpretation of Christ as could equally well be claimed for an imaginative Christa.

A Christian Response to "Jesus the Bodhisattva"

Nevertheless, I would like to make few critical observations here. First, I wonder what would have happened had Keel compared the Christian doctrine of the Trinity with the Buddhist theory of trikaya, that is, the Dharmakaya, the Sambhogakaya, and the Nirmanakaya. In view of the fact that the doctrine of the Trinity forms the basis of the traditional Christology, this approach would have been more fruitful and significant. Second, I wonder whether Keel has not exaggerated when he points out that Christianity is also religion of enlightenment. The prophetic tradition of Christianity as religion of revelation should, in my view, not be underestimated. I also believe it to be very natural that the truth, the Logos, can be manifested in different ways, namely, in the form of enlightenment as well as revelation or that of the path of wisdom as well as the path of faith. Third, while I fully sympathize with the view that regards as a bodhisattva who identifies himself with the suffering sentient beings, I find it difficult to follow Keel when he seems to suggest that there are levels among bodhisattvas. Such expressions as Jesus is the greatest bodhisattva that has ever appeared in human history or [Jesus] is the one who embodies most concretely and decisively the power that makes bodhisattvas create the impression that is bodhisattva superior to all others. From the Buddhist perspective, however, all bodhisattvas-Avalokitesvara, Manjusri, Ksitigarbha, Samantabhadra, etc.-are manifestations of the truth, each appearing in response to the diverse needs and capacities of sentient beings in different times and places. It may be the case that, for the person in need, certain bodhisattva can be seen as the foremost among various bodhisattvas; but there cannot be any essential difference in levels among them. To regard as anything but one among many is still not to be free of the discriminating mind.

Two Consciousnesses: The Modern Version of Chalcedon

This article was sparked off by reading Gerald O'Collins' admirable book Interpreting Jesus (Chapman, London 1983), in which he sets out for the benefit of Roman Catholics an account of Jesus which should both measure up to what traditional christology says about him and take account of modern biblical criticism. Towards the end, following the lead of Karl Rahner, he opts for a doctrine of two consciousnesses in the incarnate Word, a divine and a human: ‘his real human consciousness (which he had individually as a man) was neither replaced nor interfered with by his divine consciousness (which as Logos he shared/shares with the Father). Since consciousness is on the side of nature and not of person, Chalcedon's doctrine supports this kind of distinction between Christ's human and divine consciousness’ (p. 190). A little later on the same page he adds: ‘through the incarnation the eternal Son became humanly conscious of himself in his relationship to his Father. He now perceived his divine “I” or self in a human way. Thus in this unique case a human consciousness was able to “seize” a divine Self, albeit in a human way.’