'The Making of Modern German Christology' is a reliable and readable introduction to the central themes and personalities of modern German Christology. Germany and northern Switzerland have been the source of a fertile theological tradition since the beginning of the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century. Moreover, the Enlightenment seems to have had its deepest theological impact in Germany and on one area of theology in particular: the person and work of Christ. Now that chapter in church history seems to be coming to a close with a shift in theological emphasis away from the Continent to North America. This book, revised and updated from an earlier British edition, is therefore a survey of that major chapter in modern theology for students and informed laypeople.
Since its first appearance in 1821/22, The Christian Faith has had a fractious history of reception. It implements decisive departures for theology, founding the possibility to speak about God on human freedom. It recognises the role of historical consciousness, and the need to relate to advances in the natural sciences. The study investigates the early critiques of Schleiermacher’s analysis of the feeling of utter dependence, of his conception of Christ as the archetype of the God-consciousness, and of his doctrine of God in terms of absolute causality. It reconstructs the revisions carried out in the second edition of 1830/31 as a break-through to a transcendental argumentation. Does Schleiermacher’s elaboration of the anthropological turn in theology leave it defenseless against the dissolution of faith in a saving God in Feuerbach’s projection thesis? Does it offer a naturalising account of religion? And where does the interconnectedness of nature established by God leave what was prized by the Romantics, human individuality? Ongoing objections and new constellations of questions are examined in their relevance for a modern theology that spells out faith in God as a practical self-understanding. “Maureen Junker-Kenny’s book is an outstanding presentation of Schleiermacher’s theology. She attends not only to the development of his method from the first to the second edition of The Christian Faith, but also to his concrete interpretation of Creation, Christology, Redemption, Theological Anthropology, especially human freedom, and his understanding of God. The book has an exceptional value in the way she relates Schleiermacher not only to his contemporaries, but also contemporary concerns. Schleiermacher’s theology is shown in its relation to the modernity of his age, but also the ongoing modernity of today. The book has a depth and breath that make it indispensable not only for historical theology, but also contemporary constructive theology.” – Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, Harvard Divinity School “In Self, Christ and God in Schleiermacher’s Dogmatics. A Theology Reconceived for Modernity, Maureen Junker-Kenny proves herself to be not only a distinguished interpreter of Schleiermacher’s work, but a creative practitioner in her own right of his dialogical method. Elegantly conceived and beautifully written, the book shows how Schleiermacher connected the different aspects of his thought—form/content, structure/doctrine, piety/critical rigor—into a coherent system. Self, Christ and God in Schleiermacher’s Dogmatics is now the only guide to Schleiermacher’s magnum opus, Christian Faith, anyone needs.” – Christine Helmer, Northwestern University, Chicago
How does Christianity relate to other religions? Beginning with a consideration of the biblical perspective, Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen offers a detailed and comprehensive survey of the diverse explanations proposed by teachers of the church down through the ages. This indispensable guide is for anyone seeking to grasp Christianity?s relationship to world religions.
Given the perpetual problem of the historical Jesus, there remains an ongoing posing of the question to and a continuous seeking of the meaningfulness of Christology. From the earliest reckoning with the relationship between Jesus of Nazareth and the Christ of faith, what it means to do Christology today remains at the methodological center of the task and scope of every systematic theology. Whether giving an account of Albert Schweitzer's bringing an end to the quest for the historical Jesus in 1906, or attending to Rudolf Bultmann's period of no quest culminating with his demythologization project in the 1940s, how we still think of Christology as a matter of questions and concerns with meaning speaks to an unavoidable philosophizing of Christology. In this way, The Philosophy of Christology offers both a particular history of Christology in conjunction with a particular philosophy of Christology, which assesses the theological contributions by a group of Bultmannians following Bultmann in the 1950s and 1960s up to what can be reimagined by repurposing Jacques Derrida's philosophical question into the meaning of love in 2002.
Nothing is more important than what a person believes about Jesus Christ. To understand Christ correctly is to understand the very heart of God, Scripture, and the gospel. To get to the core of this belief, this latest volume in the Foundations of Evangelical Theology series lays out a systematic summary of Christology from philosophical, biblical, and historical perspectives—concluding that Jesus Christ is God the Son incarnate, both fully divine and fully human. Readers will learn to better know, love, trust, and obey Christ—unashamed to proclaim him as the only Lord and Savior. Part of the Foundations of Evangelical Theology series.
This work is a critical analysis of Karl Barth's unique adoption of the concepts anhypostasis and enhypostasis to explain Christ's human nature in union with the Logos, which becomes the ontological foundation that Barth uses to explain Jesus Christ as very God and very man. The significance of these concepts in Barth's Christology first emerges in the Gottingen Dogmatics and is then more fully developed throughout the Church Dogmatics. Barth's unique coupling together of anhypostasis and enhypostasis provides the ontological grounding, flexibility, and precision that so uniquely characterizes his Christology. As such, Barth expresses the Word became flesh as the revelation of God that flows out of the coalescence of Christ's human nature with his divine nature as the mediation of reconciliation. This ontological dynamic provides the impetus for Barth's critique of Chalcedon's static definition of the union of divine and human natures in Christ from which Barth transitions to an active definition of these two natures. Not only does anhypostasis and enhypostasis explain the dynamic union between the divine and human natures in Christ, but also the dynamic union between Jesus Christ and his Church, which reaches its apex in the reconciliation of humanity with God, in Christ. The ontological foundation of anhypostasis and enhypostasis in Christ's union with his Church explains the importance of the royal man in understanding genuine human nature, the exaltation of human nature, and the sanctification of human nature.
