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Colin Gunton on Christology

In Christology , Colin Gunton , Karl Barth , Karl Rahner , Wolfhart Pannenberg on December 12, 2009 at 8:41 am

I’ve been rereading Colin Gunton these days. I looked at Yesterday and Today again this monthand was struck by the significance of his critiques of “Christology from below,” especiallyPannenberg.

Gunton’s care to distinguish between the “content” of the Christian faith and particular historical“forms” is helpful. Whenever we attempt to introduce a modern theological formulation, wemust always judge whether or not the form actually changes the content. If it does, the we should

be critical, lest we reintroduce old problems in new clothing.

When Gunton comes at the Christology of Pannenberg, he finds reason to be concerned thatPannenberg is unable to recapitulate the content of classical Christology and instead creates asort of degree Christology that repeats problems of historical forms of docetism.

Gunton invests time in explaining the difference between “Christology from above” and“Christology from below.” Below is a brief explanation of his study of the two different methodsand his preference for a Christology that begins confessionally from above yet holds some senseof double movement. Enjoy:

Yesterday and Today: A Study of Continuities in Christology (London: SPCK, 1997)

The dichotomy of Christology from below/from above is something that Gunton gets fromPannenberg (51). Pannenberg intends to characterize ancient Christological formulations as

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“from above,” meaning that they are an a priori philosophical presupposition imposed upon thecontent of the biblical witness to Jesus Christ. Classical theology worked from the transcendentto the historical. The traditional Christological formulations failed to take seriously the humanityof Christ as the starting point for knowing his divinity. The modern world no longer uses thesame philosophical language. Immanence replaces transcendence as worldview. Therefore, a

new method for Christology is necessary – one which recovers the historical record of Jesus’slife and uses modern language to reformulate Christology in an a posteriori fashion.

Gunton looks at Christology from below in two contemporary manifestations: the works of KarlRahner and Wolfhart Pannenberg. Rahner’s Christology from below is intended to be a changein method alone. His goal is to deploy contemporary language and a modern anthropologicalapproach in order to arrive at the same content that traditional Christology intended to espouse.This is important for Gunton because it is an attempt to make a methodological shift that doesnot require a change in the content of the faith. Ultimately, Gunton does not think that Rahner’smovement from below succeeds on its own in arriving at Christ’s divinity. Rahner comes to a

point in his anthropology where he must account for Christ’s divinity without resorting to

docetism or adoptionism. At this crucial point in his work, he reintroduces the traditional conceptof the hypostatic union “from above.” This amounts to a double movement, both from below andfrom above. Thus, in order for Rahner to come to the same content of traditional Christologicalformulations, he must appeal to some of the same language and concepts as ancient Christology.Rahner’s Christology from below, while an adequate orthodox formulation of Christology, is nottruly “from below” as per Pannenberg’s classification (11-18).

Pannenberg represents an example of a contemporary theologian who is not concerned withdemonstrating continuity in the content of the Christian faith. For him, Christology cannot beginwith confession (as in Barth). Instead, theology must use the same method as other academicdisciplines, starting with the historical accounts of the life of Jesus and drawing conclusions from

the evidence available. In this way, one may properly construct a series of statements (called“Christology”) about Jesus’ divinity in light of the single historical event in which thetranscendent and the immanent are collocated: the resurrection. Pannenberg does not resort to thesort of double movement that we see in Rahner. He demonstrates little concern for the content of traditional Christology by rejecting Chalcedon. While truly “from below,” Gunton does not seePannenberg’s Christology from below as a successful project. In essence, Pannenberg’stheological move attempts to correct theological mistakes from the past by adopting a moremodern method; however, as Gunton notes, the problems of the past do not simply disappear.Instead, Pannenberg is susceptible to make the same mistakes in a different way. For example,Gunton demonstrates that you can begin with the human Jesus and construct a degreeChristology of sorts that still isolates Christ’s humanity from the rest of humanity in a way thatessentially creates the same problems of docetism. It appears that even with a move from theimmanent to the transcendent, one can repeat the mistakes of those who move from thetranscendent to the immanent (19-29).

For Pannenberg, Christology from below is the counter-thesis to more traditional Christologyfrom above. Gunton makes a distinction between different types of christologies from above.Origen and Hegel typify what Gunton calls Type A; Karl Barth represents Type B. The moderncritique of Christology from above is that it allows a priori philosophical commitments to

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dominate theological method. Gunton uses Origen to demonstrate how this is a somewhataccurate critique of some classical formulations of Christology. In Origen, he sees an extremeexample that over-emphasizes the eternal Logos yet somehow does not historically end up on theside of heresy, as did Arius and the Gnostics. Perhaps this is because there is a sense in whichOrigen’s Christology is both from above and below. Even though the transcendental eternal

Logos dominates his discussion of Christ’s divinity, Origen maintains that the believer must begin epistemologically with the humanity of Christ and ascend towards a greater understandingof Christ as Logos. Thus, we have another example of a Christological “double movement” (35-38).

Hegel represents a modern example of Type A Christology from above. Gunton’s choice to useHegel must be explained. Although Hegel’s philosophy is a philosophy of immanence, Guntonclearly demonstrates that Hegel’s method is “from above.” For Hegel, there is something aboutChristianity as revealed religion that allows one to trace the immanence of the Spirit. It is onlywith that movement from above in the incarnation that bread and wine become the mystery thatis flesh and blood. Nevertheless, like Origen before him, the way one comes to receive revelation

is immanent, within the mental development of the individual human. Again, there is a doublemovement that confuses the categorization of “from above” or “from below” (39-43).

Karl Barth’s Christology is what Gunton calls Type B Christology from above. It is differentfrom Type A in the sense that it does not begin with a philosophical presupposition per se, but

begins with belief. There is in Barth, yet again, a double movement. His Christologicalformulations are rooted in the revelation of faith from above yet the revelation occurs in thisworld and we come to understand it in history. Barth’s Christology is superior to Type A becauseit is not an instance of an a priori philosophical commitment imposing “from above” formulaicconstraints on the “from below” content. Instead, it is the case that we receive the contents of thefaith in scripture as from below due to the fact that the writers of the text first believed that

Christ was God. It is their confession that constrains the contents of the text from above. This isdogmatics as Barth defines it.

The attempt to distinguish Christology from above and Christology from below in the way thatPannenberg suggests seems to be unhelpful thus far. Rahner’s approach from below as well asOrigen and Hegel’s approaches from above rely on aspects of both. Even Barth, who remainsPannenberg’s most significant theological opponent in this regard, appears to hold to some senseof double movement. Only Pannenberg comes consistently from below and in so far as he doesso, Gunton is not convinced that he ever really gets around to demonstrating how he moves

beyond Christ’s humanity to his divinity. For Gunton, Pannenberg’s Christological dichotomydoes not accurately describe the way Christology was done or should be done.

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