On the Incarnation, Athanasius - summarized sections

On the Incarnation, Athanasius, SVS Press, 1998

Chapter I - Creation and the Fall
§1 - Athanasius begins his treatise with the creation of the World, arguing that the Word made flesh is also the Word at creation, through whom creation was made. To fully address the Word who “assumed a body,” he must first address what occurred at Creation. In this way, Athanasius sets up a continuity between Creation and Salvation. The Word was made manifest in body, assumed a body, for the purpose of salvation.

§2 - Athanasius uses reason and Scripture to argue against the Epicureans, Plato, and the Gnostics that a) the preexistent God created the world and everything in it, and that b) this God is the same one who is the Father of Christ. He continues the argument for continuity between creation and salvation.

§3 - God made humans like God, with reason and the ability to “express the Mind of God” - what Athanasius calls a grace - as long as they obey God in paradise. Failing that, they will be cast out of paradise and face “death and corruption.” Obviously, humans failed and now face death, as evidenced by the fact that all nature dies.

§4 - Humans were created which, as they turn from God, leads to death. However, “preserving” the Likeness of God bestowed on us would keep us from death (corruption, non-being, non-xistence) by overcoming our nature. Because humans can’t do that, we are the cause of the Word taking on human form.

§5 - Athanasius attempts to explain why that which is created by God should end up needing to be saved. He attempts to understand how evil and death make their way into creation (through humans.) He exposes the tension between God having created the world and humans through sin making it non-existent: how is God to preserve Creation?

Chapter II - The Divine Dilemma and Its Solution in the Incarnation
§6 - Athanasius lays out the dilemma that God established death for disobedience, but also established life in Creation, which then disobeys. Since God cannot contravene what God has established, yet cannot allow humankind to cease to exist (which would deny God’s goodness), there is a dilemma.

§7 - He attempts to resolve the dilemma by proposing that only someone who was at Creation - the Word - can restore incorruption and accomplish the proper recreation (through suffering).

§8 - Athanasius explains how the Word planned to accomplish the above restoration: by becoming/taking on a human body which dies, though this particular body was born from someone virgin. Athanasius emphasizes that the chief characteristic of a human body is that it dies. He implies that because this human body is that of the Word, its death will overcome the death of all and abolish it.

§9 - Athanasius now explains how the death of the body of the Word overturns the death of all: by exchange - the Word’s body = all bodies, and through solidarity with all human bodies, the resurrection of the Word’s body = (leads to) the resurrection of all. He also explains that the body of the Word accomplished both exchange and resurrection because it is the body of the incorruptible Word. [It would seem, then, that for Athanasius, the particulars of the Word’s body (ie. that it was Jewish) are irrelevant. The only important things are that a) it was sinless and thus not corruptible and b) the body died.]

§10 - Athanasius cites Scripture to prove that only the Word could accomplish both the “ending” of the law that requires death for transgression and the recreation of new life. [Athanasius jumps from Creation to the Incarnation with no mention of anything in between. On the one hand, he erases the OT from his Christology. On the other hand, his interpretation of the law leading to death is taken entirely from the Creation story and not from Leviticus. To this extent, he cannot be considered anti-Jewish in his understanding of the Law.]

Chapter III - The Divine Dilemma and Its Solution in the Incarnation - continued
§11 - Athanasius continues his explanation of why the Word needed to become incarnate, laying out the dilemma between people needing to know who God is, being shown, but rejecting that display. He frames it epistemologically, but does show some temporal confusion: people needed knowledge, God sent the Word, people rejected the knowledge, God sent Jesus. [Note that Athanasius starts with the subject - the Word is incarnated because of the people, not because of God.]

§12 - Athanasius clarifies that God attempted several times to show people who God is so they might turn from wickedness (which was a further act of grace). He is still attempting to explain how God’s creatures nevertheless turn away from God.

§13 - Athanasius reiterates that humans, made in the image of God, turn away from God, resulting in punishment: subsequent corruption (death, decay, etc.) God resolves to re-create humans (without destroying them) and sends Jesus Christ, the Word of God, God’s own image to do away with corruption, in order to recreate humans in the image of God.

§14 - The role of the Incarnate Word is to teach humankind about God by becoming a body, modeling the image of God that humans should be.

§15 - Athanasius states that the purpose of the Incarnation (born, died, and rose [the agent is Christ, who rose - active, not passive verb]) is to prove Christ’s unique superiority over all, thereby recalling humans from wrong ways and pointing them to the Father. There is an emphasis on the two-fold action of gathering in from error and sending out in the right direction (deconstruction and reconstruction).

§16 - Athanasius gives a two-fold goal to the Incarnation: 1) to destroy death and remake humans and 2) to become sensorily concrete so people can know God in the Word.

§17 - Athanasius explains the nature of the Incarnation, arguing that becoming embodied did not lessen the transcendence of the Word outside of materiality. The Incarnation is a one-way transformation, the Word becomes human, transforming humankind, but the act is not reciprocal, transforming the Word. In this way, Athanasius avoids the implication that the Word would become corrupt by taking on human nature, and also avoids any strict division between the Word and the Father. He also establishes a distinction, but not a separation, between the body of the Word and the Word itself.

§18 - Athanasius points to the different behaviours of the incarnate Word to prove that humanity and divinity are present. He also supports his claim that the Word is also the Creator by presenting Jesus’ conception in the virgin’s womb as one of self- creation.

Chapter IV - The Death of Christ
§19 - Having considered what the life of the Word entailed, Athanasius now turns to consideration of the cross and Christ’s death. He also states that “Christ is revealed as God and Son of God” and that “Christ on the cross was God.”

§20 - Athanasius lays out the mechanics of how Christ’s death overcame the death of humanity by explaining that the voluntary death of the un-die-able body of the Word was (more than) sufficient payment for the death owed by the transgressions of humankind. However, Athanasius does not explain exactly how the death of the body of the Word is enough to abolish death.

§21 - Athanasius presents the divinity of Christ in opposition to human nature, through a via negativa, as a way of evaluating the divinity of Christ. He does this in order to argue that although Christ died, it was not like our death because Christ’s body was not corrupted.

§22 - Answering the implicit question of why the Lord’s body died if it is a divine body, Athanasius says that christ died in order to bring an end to the corruptibility-which-leads-to-death of the human body (through the resurrection). Thus, it is appropriate that Christ’s body died in a publicly humiliating manner.

§23 - Athanasius emphasizes two points: 1) That the Saviour really did die and that 2) it was public so that witnesses might attest to it.

§24 - He reiterates that Christ’s submission to death, regardless of how humiliating, is proof that He is the Lord of all life.

§25 - Athanasius now answers the concerns of Christians who ask why Christ had to die on a cross by exploring Bible, imagery, and folktale to show that in death, Christ gathered in all people, and countered the devil on his own turf (the air).

Chapter V - The Resurrection
§26 - Athanasius turns to the nature of the resurrection, explaining that it took three days so that people understood His body was really dead. He also implies that Christ is the agent of his own resurrection.

§27 - Athanasius proves the destruction of death by the resurrection by lifting up the child/men/women followers of Christ who are fearless of death, a sign that death has lost its power.

§28 - Martyrs, who are fearless of death, are important witnesses to Christ’s power over death.

§29 - Athanasius repeats that those who believe in Christ and follow him unflinchingly to death are proof of His power over death.

§30 - Athanasius offers a separate proof for the Saviour’s resurrection: His ongoing action in the lives of people today (converting them, vanquishing evil, etc.), which only the living can do (act in time/reality.)

§31 - Athanasius builds on his argument that ongoing activity is a sign of life and proves Christ’s (resurrected) life by citing that things asked or demanded in Christ’s name happen. He elaborates on Christ’s death, arguing that because His body is the Body of the Word, it could not stay dead, but came to life again, which is described as “resurrection.”

§32 - Athanasius reiterates that proof of Christ’s ongoing activity (ie. life) is seen in the casting out of demons in Christ’s name. [What does it mean that Name=presence? How does Athanasius connect the power of Christ’s name as representative of his presence? What is the power of a name?]

Chapter VI - The Refutation of the Jews
§33 - Using a retrospective view of the Old Testament prophets, Athanasius argues that they demonstrate the coming of Jesus Christ, thereby “refuting” the disbelief of the Jews in the Messiah.

§34 - Athanasius quotes more Scripture to prove they predicted the death of the Lord and “the plotting of the Jews.”

§35 - Athanasius cites more Scripture to prove that they prophesied death on the cross, the (unique) virgin birth, and the public proclamation of Christ’s birth, all of which the Jews (except for Moses) continue to disbelieve.

§36 - Athanasius argues that the prophecies could not have been referring to any of the Israelite kings because none of them conquered their enemies, let alone from their birth. He also argues that no one else died on a cross, or defeated the idol worship of other countries.

§37 - Athanasius argues that Scripture could not have been referring to any of the OT greats and then segues into an argument about the superiority of Life itself (ie. Christ). This Life itself share our human nature, but has no lineage. [Is Athanasius ignoring or ignorant of Matthew?] He makes his first reference to his contemporary surroundings/audience: Egyptian Christians.

§38 - Athanasius quotes more prophets to prove that Christ was the one prophecied, based on his miracles of healing the sick and raising the dead, in order to prove that the Jews are wrong to disbelieve. [Is this an in-house document? Does A expect the witness of the Gospels to be read or known by the Jews? He seems to conflate his contemporary Jews with the Jews of Jesus’ time. Riots in 115-116 CE that resulted in the deaths of many Jews and Jewish Christians may have driven a wedge between Jews and Christians in Alexandria.]

§39 - Athanasius dismisses (his version) of the Jews’ argument that they are waiting for the real Messiah by pointing out that Christ is the Holy One of Holies. He also reads Daniel 9:24, 25 (Septuagint) as predicting that the destruction of Jerusalem would occur after that coming of the Messiah and that, after that, God would no longer send visions or prophecies to Israel.

§40 - The section ends with Athanasius proving the Jews wrong about their disbelief by arguing that their central signifiers (Temple, Jerusalem, prophets and prophecies, Kingdom of Israel) pointed to Christ and that their destruction proves that Christ has fulfilled them. Their “refusal” to believe “dishonours” God and proves they are “demented.”

Chapter VIII - Refutation of the Gentiles
§41 - Athanasius uses the arguments of the Gentiles, via the Greek philosophers, to support the appropriateness of the Word entering a human body by arguing that the human body is a part of the universe and the Greeks argue that there is nothing inappropriate in the Word entering the universe.

§42 - Athanasius continues to press his previous point by extending the analogy of the human body to argue that as the mind of man is in each and every part of the body, including the toe, so is the Word in each and every part of the universe, including humanity.

§43 - He lays out a few more reasons why the Word took on a human body: 1) to use his body (as a human) to help others, 2) to constrain his Divine presence within a human body so that other humans could recognize the Divine and not be overwhelmed by it.

§44 - Athanasius explains in two steps how the Word becoming incarnate in the body defeats death and brings new life. 1) Since it is human bodies that are corrupted, it is only the taking on of that body that will address corruption. 2) Death is integral to the human body (through corruption) and can only be overcome by being replaced with life. Having taken on a human body, Life itself (ie. Christ) now replaces death in the body with new life, therefore casting out death and corruption whenever that new life is put on.

§45 - Athanasius concludes this section with the reminder that the Word being in a body gives everyone the opportunity to know Him, and through Him the Father.

Chapter VIII - Refutation of the Gentiles continued
§46 - The fact that the Greeks now worship only the Lord and no longer their idols proves that Christ’s reach extends universally to the whole world, and not just to the Jews.

§47 - Christ’s power is demonstrated in the multicultural appeal of the Word, as opposed to the narrow base of each pagan religion.

§48 - Athanasius compares the power of Christ to the fraudulence of the Greek idols, arguing that the power of Christ to destroy demons/death is universal. He also describes Christ’s power as “superhuman.”

§49 - Athanasius argues for Christ’s superiority over the Greek gods by pointing out the ways He surpasses them, in both acts and death, as well as the quick spread and acceptance of the following of and worship of Christ.

§50 - The rapid and wide spread of the conversion of Greeks and others is proof of Christ’s power, as well as the moral strength given to previously immoral “barbarians and heathen folk.” He also references the uniqueness of Christ’s bodily resurrection.

§51 - Because Christ’s appeal has been universal and his emphasis has been on peace, Christians put aside ethnic hostilities and now act with peace towards one another. Plus, they’re virgins.

§52 - Athanasius reiterates once again that proof of Christ’s Godhead comes from the peace of the pagans-turned-Christian who follow Christ. This peace was unattainable when they followed their pagan gods. Instead, they join forces together to fight the devil, getting their strength and endurance from Christ.

§53 - Athanasius argues that the ascendancy of Christ’s power is the cause of the fracturing and dissolving of the worship of Greek gods, thus proving the divine nature of Christ’s power.

§54 - Athanasius, having argued that Christ is not mere man, presents the reason why Christ was incarnated: to show people the Mind of God, and to heal the suffering by the shameful death of His body. He notes that the Word was not hurt by dying, since He is “impassible and incorruptible.”

§55 - “Now this is proof that Christ is God, the Word and the Power of God. For whereas human things case and the fact of Christ remains, it is clear to all that the things which cease are temporary, but that He Who remains is God and very Son of God, the sole-begotten Word.”

Chapter IX - Conclusion
§56 - Athanasius moves to looking at the Second Coming of Christ, having now established for Macarius the incarnation and Godhead of Christ.

§57 - Athanasius concludes by advocating that a "pure" mind is necessary to understand the truth of the Incarnation, which will save that person from judgment.

Appendix - Letter to Marcellinus on the Interpretation of the Psalms

• Christ died not because his body gave up and died, but because he took on the penalty of sin for us, which was death.
• Athanasius introduces a new argument for the Incarnation: that Christ’s bodily living might inspire us/model for us that living that God commands in the Psalms. Thus, Christ is the embodiment of the Scriptures (the written Word becomes the living Word.)

Proposal - First Draft

Introduction
Beginning in the second half of the 20th century, Christians have become more aware of the unique and intimate relationship Christianity has had and continues to have with Judaism. The two religions share much of the same history and some of the same sacred texts in ways that are not common to other religions. Theologies about covenant, creation, justice and community, to name only a few, that inform the writings of the New Testament and that shape the formation of the early church have their roots in Second Temple Judaism (and beyond1), and Christianity’s raison d’être, Christ Jesus, was incarnated in that milieu. For that reason, any aspect of contemporary Christian theology that does not take into consideration Christianity’s bond with Judaism sacrifices its own history, as well as its theological integrity.

This realization has not, however, led to any significant reformulation of Christian doctrines, which were dogmatized during centuries when Christianity’s relationship with Judaism was supersessionist at best and murderous at worst. That is not to say that efforts have not been made. The task of rewriting Christian theology has been attempted by several post-Holocaust theologians, yet with only minimal success. Most famously, Rosemary Radford Ruether has argued that Christology is irredeemably tainted with anti-Judaism and that there is no way forward.2 Abandoning Christology is not, however, an option for most Christians. Most theologians invested in Jewish-Christian relations thus seek to redevelop Christology: Paul van Buren, Clark Williamson, Kendall Soulen and John Pawlikowski have all attempted new Christologies that incorporate non-supersessionist understandings of Jesus’ Jewishness. Yet, for various reasons, none of these reformulations are entirely satisfactory.3

Nevertheless, a Christian theology that takes seriously its relationship with Judaism, what we might call a Christian theology of Judaism, cannot set aside Christology: "The most difficult outstanding issues between Judaism and Christianity are the divinity of Jesus, the Incarnation, the Trinity, three terms which are not quite synonymous but all of which assert that Jesus was not only a human being but also God.”4 Michael Wyschogrod argues that the Incarnation, and its different interpretations in Judaism and Christianity, is the sticking point for Jewish-Christian relations, and, one might extrapolate, for a Christian theology of Judaism. So a theology of Judaism that takes seriously the concerns of Judaism regarding Christianity must address Christianity’s theology of incarnation. Nevertheless, it must do this without sacrificing its own history, tradition, or history. Too low of a Christology, in which there is no divinity present in Jesus (or in which the divinity present is identical to that present in every other human), such as van Buren proposes, may logically fit with a Jewish understanding of incarnation, but isn't identifiable (or acceptable by most Christian denominations) as falling within the boundaries of Christian doctrine.5

My set of Special Comprehensive Exams will thus include an examination of the history of Christology, specifically in its understanding of the incarnation of Christ Jesus. This exam will review developments in the early Church and will go on to explore how, in the 19th century, incarnation was framed as a debate between the universality and the particularity of Christ, sometimes understood as the difference between the kerygmatic Christ and the historical Jesus. While not explicitly stated as an issue of incarnation, the question of the degree to which Christ was a historical figure is a restatement of the old argument of the degree to which he was human. In emphasizing the ahistoricity of Christ as the contemporary Christ of proclamation, the divinity and universality of Christ is elevated. The correlative sacrifice is the historical Jesus, as a particularly embedded Jew of Palestine. Thus, the connections here to the development of an anti-Jewish theology will be examined: the more universal /divine Jesus Christ becomes, the less human/particular/Jewish he becomes.

Oddly, the turn to the subject in the 20th century, and the emphases on a Christology from below and on the historical existence of Christ did not focus on Jesus’ Jewish context until the horrors of the Holocaust were fully felt (and even then not completely). However, moving into the 21st century, Christological exploration that seeks to recontextualize Jesus sometimes acknowledges his Jewishness, while simultaneously replacing that Jewishness with something else: Jesus as Asian, Jesus as Black, Jesus as Oppressed Minority.6 While all of these Christologies rightfully challenge the previous twenty centuries' worth of images of Jesus as a reflection of the dominant, majority Christian (ie. male, and usually white), their relocation of Jesus dehistoricizes him and risks dispensing with his Jewishness once again.7

So how can a Christology hold onto a contextual Jesus, who is universal and divine in his relation to all human situations, while at the same time recognizing his particular uniqueness as a human Jew? This is where my third exam will turn to ideas of interstitiality, multiplicity, hybridity (although not a dualistic hybridity that sets itself up in opposition to "purity"), and diversity, where unity is not cast aside, but neither does it uphold uniformity. In these new attempts to deconstruct and reconstruct the incarnation (although they do not describe themselves as such), it might be possible to understand how Jesus can be both/and: divine/human, universal /particular, Jewish/Asian/African/Indigenous, male/female/transexual, etc.

The third exam, then, will be the development of a methodology that allows for difference and differences in incarnation theology (and differences as radically variant as those contained within Christianity and between Christianity and Judaism). Although identity politics is not the goal of this exam, the ways in which theology uses the methods of identity formation, through hybridity, interstitiality, the language of mestizaje, etc. offer a structure for understanding how it is that several different (or even opposing) ideas can be held together. It is true that this can also be seen in the doctrinal developments on the two natures of Christ, but those developments deal with only two differences: divine and human, and tend to be restricted to only binary considerations. Although current hybridity theology still tends to be limited to a hybrid of only two, I do not believe that this is a methodological necessity. While theologies of difference tend to rely a lot on the theologies of the Other, which results in a binary juxtaposition of Self/Other, one of the goals of this third exam would be to demonstrate how that dualism can be overcome and brought together (although not in the sense of a Hegelian aufhebung).8 For example, the relationship of Christianity to Judaism is similar to that which Rita Nakashima Brock describes in her article on Interstitial Integrity regarding the relationship between Asian Pacific Americans to both America and Asia.9 Following her model, I might describe Christianity as similar to the immigrant trying to find a home, realizing that it has left the land of Judaism, but now trying to find a way to honor its roots. It is no longer Jewish, but it can never leave Judaism behind. Nevertheless, when it tries to return to Judaism to start a conversation, it discovers that the community it finds now is not the same as the community it left. Immigrants who leave their "home country" and return later discover that it, and they, have changed, and not in the same ways. They have problems integrating into their left-behind culture, sometimes in painful ways. But the interstitial nature of their relationship with their home community accounts for both the past incarnation (as it were) of the community that they left, along with its current incarnation. This kind of understanding can allow Christianity to take account of previous, historical formations of Judaism, as well as contemporary Judaism.10 The attempt to develop a methodology based on hybridity and interstitiality returns me to the exam on Christology. The ways in which the Church has negotiated the boundaries between divine and human in the one person of Christ can serve as a model for the ways in which the Church can negotiate the boundaries between the universal / particular tensions in the peoples of God.

Developing a new approach to Christology that takes seriously the critiques of post-Holocaust theologians requires bringing fresh perspectives to the conversation. Thus, the major figure whose work will comprise the content for the second exam will be David Tracy. There are several reasons that his work offers promise for a new way of looking at a Christian theology of Judaism. To begin with, Tracy has worked on theologies of religious pluralism (of which a theology of Judaism is an important but often overlooked component). Further, his acknowledgments that language is problematic, divisive rather than unifying because of the plurality of meanings within words, and that history is ambiguous, always interpreted (with bias) by those in the present, offer a way to question the doctrinal certainties of the earlier Christological controversies. Once we break apart the hegemony of orthodox descriptions of the Incarnation, we can reconstruct a proposal from the pieces that is, hopefully, still recognizable and yet separated from anti-Jewish tendencies. His emphasis on the hermeneutical task of all theologians, and their subservience to the religious classic is appropriate for framing the dialogue between Jews and Christians who do, indeed, share a classic, with wildly differing hermeneutical procedures and goals. And lastly, his idea of similarity-in-difference, where things may be similar but are never identical, may offer a tool for a theology of difference that still attempts to hold things together. His use of analogy relies on difference, as well as the possibility of what may be possible, and may offer insight.

1 See Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. Also Adam H. Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed, eds, The Ways that Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007.
2 Rosemary Radford Ruether, Faith and Fratricide: the Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism, New York: Seabury Press, 1974.
3 See Paul van Buren, A Theology of the Jewish-Christian Reality, Volumes 1-3, San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1980, 1987. Clark M. Williamson, A Guest in the House of Israel: Post-Holocaust Church Theology, Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993. Kendall Soulen, The God of Israel and Christian Theology, Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1996. John T. Pawlikowski, Christ in the Light of the Christian-Jewish Dialogue, New York: Paulist Press, 1982.
4 Michael Wyschogrod, Abraham's Promise: Judaism and Jewish-Christian Relations, edited by R. Kendall Soulen, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004. P166.
5 Part of the difficulty with a Christian theology of Judaism is recognizing that there is no one Christianity - the Christian denominations exist in ecumenical relationships, and jeopardizing those relationships for the sake of "the Jewish-Christian relationship" is problematic.
6 See Asian Faces of Jesus, edited by R. S. Sugirtharajah, Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1993. James H. Cone, God of the Oppressed, New York: Seabury Press, 1975. Kwok Pui-lan, “Engendering Christ” in Postcolonial Imagination & Feminist Theology, Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005.
7 Kwok’s conclusion to the aforementioned chapter briefly raises concerns about anti-Judaism in such reconstructions, but from the perspective of Jesus pitted against Judaism rather than of his dehistoricization.
8 The theology of the Trinity is an attempt to break out of binarism, and Peter Hodgson and Kendall Soulen have begun exploring this avenue, but at the heart of the Trinity is a doctrine of Incarnation, so working with the Trinity would be joining the race after it had already started. See Peter C. Hodgson, “The Spirit and Religious Pluralism” in Horizons, 31(1), Spring 2004, 22-39 and Kendall Soulen, “YHWH: The Triune God” in Modern Theology, 15(1), January 1999, 25-54.
9 Rita Nakashima Brock, “Interstitial Integrity: Reflections Toward an Asian American Woman’s Theology” in Introduction to Christian Theology: Contemporary North American Perspectives, edited by Roger A. Badham, Louisville: Westminister/John Knox Press, 1998. Pp 183-196.
10 The danger is that this type of immigrant understanding of Christianity's roots can too easily support a "ways that parted" model. But this isn't a necessity - it doesn't have to look that way.


Bibliographies

Exam 1: 8-hr Open book Exam - Christology-Incarnation
Early Church
Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation, translated by anonymous. Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir’s Press, 1998.
Cyril of Alexandria, On the Unity of Christ, translated by John Anthony McGuckin. Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir’s Press, 1995.
Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, Book III
Origen, De Principiis
Maximus the Confessor, Difficulty 10

Medieval
Anselm of Canterbury, Cur Deus Homo? (Why God Became Man)
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Part III
Bernard of Clairvaux ?

Reformation
Martin Luther, Disputation On The Divinity and Humanity of Christ (1540). “Disputation On the Divinity and Humanity of Christ” Project Wittenberg. http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/luther-divinity.txt Last accessed May 07 2010.
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, II (12-14)

18th-19th Century
Martin Buber, Der Jude und sein Judentum, (205) and
, Two Types of Faith
Gotthold Lessing, The Jews,
Nathan the Wise,
On the Proof of Spirit and of Power
Hegel, G. W. F. Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. Edited by Peter C. Hodgson. Translated by R. F. Brown, P. C. Hodgson, and J. M. Stewart. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.
Schleiermacher, Friedrich. The Christian Faith. Edited by H. R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart. 1999. Reprint, New York: T&T Clark, 2008.
. Christmas Eve: Dialogue on Incarnation. Richmond: John Knox Press, 1967.


Secondary Sources
Grillmeier, A. Christ in Christian Tradition. Vol I-II. Atlanta: John Knox, 1987.
Haight, Roger. Jesus, the Symbol of God. Maryknoll: Orbis, 1999.
Kereszty, Roch, ed. Jesus Christ: Fundamentals of Christology. Staten Island, N.Y.: St. Paul’s, 2002. Part II.
Meyendorff, J. Christ in Eastern Christian Thought. Washington: Corpus Publications, 1969.
Pelikan, Jaroslav. The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Volumes 1-5 .
Neusner, Jacob. The Incarnation of God: The Character of Divinity in Formative Judaism. Binghamton University: Global Publications, 2001.
Davis, Stephen T., Daniel Kendall and Gerald O’Collins, ed. The Incarnation: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Incarnation of the Son of God, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Parts 1 and 2 (“Biblical Witness” and “Patristic and Medieval Witness”)

Exam 2: 25-40 page paper - David Tracy
Primary Sources
Blessed Rage for Order: the New Pluralism in Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975. (With Preface from 1996).
The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism. New York: Crossroad, 1981.
Talking About God: Doing Theology in the Context of Modern Pluralism with John B. Cobb. New York: Seabury Press, 1983. Also at: http://www.religion-online.org/showbook.asp?title=1626
Plurality and Ambiguity: Hermeneutics, Religion, Hope. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Dialogue with the Other: the Inter-Religious Dialogue. Michigan: Eerdmans, 1991.
On Naming the Present: Reflections on God, Hermeneutics, and Church. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1994.
“The Hidden God: the Divine Other of Liberation.” Cross Currents, 46 (1), Spring96, 5-17.
“Theological Method” in Christian Theology: An Introduction to Its Traditions and Tasks. Edited by Peter C. Hodgson and Robert H. King. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994.

Secondary Sources
Downey, John K. Beginning at the Beginning: Wittgenstein and Theological Conversation. Lanham, Md: University Press of America, 1986.
Jeanrond, Werner G. And Jennifer L. Rike. Radical Pluralism and truth: David Tracy and the Hermeneutics of Religion. New York: Crossroad, 1991.
Gadamer, Truth and Method.
. Dialogue and Dialectic.
Ray, Alan S. The Modern Soul: Michel Foucault and the Theological Discourse of Gordon Kaufman and David Tracy. Harvard Dissertations in Religion, no. 21. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987.

Exam 3: 25-40 page paper - Interstitiality, Hybridity and Multiplicity: A Theology of Difference
Aviv, Caryn and David Shneer, ed. New Jews: The End of the Jewish Diaspora. New York: New York University Press, 2005.
Boyarin, Daniel. Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.
Brock, Rita Nakashima. “Interstitial Integrity: Reflections toward an Asian American Woman’s Theology” in Introduction to Christian Theology: Contemporary North American Perspectives. Edited by Roger A. Badham. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998. 183-196.
Fletcher, Jeannine Hill. Monopoly On Salvation: A Feminist Approach to Religious Pluralism. New York: Continuum, 2005.
Heschel, Susannah. “Jesus as Theological Transvestite.” In
Joh, Wonhee Anne. Heart of the Cross: A Postcolonial Christology. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006.
Kamitsuka, Margaret D. Feminist Theology and the Challenge of Difference. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Keller, Catherine, Michael Nausner and Mayra Rivera, editors. Postcolonial Theologies: Divinity and Empire. St. Louis, Missouri: Chalice Press, 2004. Especially “Who is Americana/o?” Michelle A. Gonzalez and “Who /What is Asian?” Namsoon Kang.
Kim, Nami. “The ‘Indigestible’ Asian: The Unifying Term ‘Asian’ in Theological Discourse” in Off the Menu: Asian and North American Asian Women’s Religion and Theology. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007. 23-43.
Kwok, Pui-lan. Postcolonial Imagination and Feminist Theology. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005.
. “Fishing the Asia Pacific: Transnationalism and Feminist Theology” in Off the Menu: Asian and North American Asian Women’s Religion and Theology. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007. 3-21.
Lowe, Walter. Theology and Difference: The Wound of Reason. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1993.
Rivera, Mayra. The Touch of Transcendence: A Postcolonial Theology of God. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007.
Rodriguez, Ruben Rosario. Racism and God-Talk: A Latino /a Perspective. New York: New York University Press, 2008.
Schneider, Laurel C. Beyond Monotheism: A Theology of Multiplicity. New York: Routledge, 2008.
Slabodsky, Santiago E. “De-colonial Jewish Thought and the Americas.” In Postcolonial Philosophy of Religion, edited by Purushottama Bilimoria and Andrew B. Irvine. Springer, 2009.

March 26, 2010

Some questions that are on my mind as I try and create a more cohesive third exam:

• If we take seriously the claims by the more orthodox religious groups (both Jewish and Christian), how can the same God have mutually exclusive relationships with both the people of Israel and the followers of Christ?
• How can we understand the unity of the Christian Church when there are so many theological differences within it? The same question also applies to the one people of Israel?
• How can Christianity relate to Judaism when we can't even necessarily claim one Christianity or one Judaism?
• How can a Christian theology of Judaism account for the differences within each religion?
• How can it account for the differences between the two religions?
• If there is nothing but difference between Christianity and Judaism, how can there be any conversation? (Presuming, of course, that conversation is based on some shared set of values. The desire to converse, for one.)
• If every single person and every group is different, how can we talk about one humankind (about whom God is presumably concerned)?
• How do we talk about differences and similarities between groups without falling into essentialisms? How can we do it without imposing our own characteristics as the dominant ones, against which the other must be compared? Can we? Should we? (Okay, that last one was more rhetorical.)

I am very intrigued by the conversations about hybridity and interstitiality coming out of particularly Asian/American feminist theology, but also Latina theology, partly for personal reasons (Japanese-German, Canadian-American, Jewish-Lutheran) but also because I appreciate the way they challenge the dominance of purity. There really is no such thing as "pure" in isolation; it is often only used in order to set something against "impure" or "mixed." One of the things that bothers me about the phrase, a "Christian theology of Judaism," is that it seems as if purity is being dragged into the issue, as if Christianity and Judaism are two completely separate, isolated religions. This certainly isn't true when they were formed, and I question how true it is today. The phrase implies that Christianity is in one place, looking over at Judaism in another place. It doesn't seem to give consideration to any overlap between the two or any transformative presence that they might have to each other. While it accounts for the differences between the two, it doesn't account for any similarites. (Oddly enough, the opposite happened in the older models of interreligious dialogue, where similarities were compared at the expense of differences.) So, how can a middle road be discerned between too much emphasis on similiarity and too much emphasis on difference? And how can it be done without subscribing to the now-problematic "Judeo-Christian" model, which obliterates differences under one pseudo-unity?
Here are some of the authors whose work is very interesting to me:

• Daniel Boyarin
• Rita Nakashima Brock
• Jeannine Hill Fletcher
• Wonhee Anne Joh
• Margaret Kamitsuka
• Michelle Gonzalez
• Namsoon Kang
• Nami Kim
• Kwok Pui-lan
• Mayra Rivera
• Ruben Rosario Rodriguez

So what do they have to do with a Christian theology of Judaism? Or with how the God of both the Jews and the Christians can be the same and have different relationships? (Of course, yes, God can do whatever God wants, but if God is a model for our behaviour, we need to know how God does it, so we can do it, too, without having different selves in different relationships, but being the same integral, whole person in all of our multiple relationships.) Or with how Christianity can understand its theological relationship to Judaism?

March 23, 2010

A model of Christian-Jewish relationship that has sometimes been put forward is that of a child-parent relationship, where Christianity has emerged from Judaism as its child. This has come to be rejected as first being historically inaccurate - Judaism today is not what Judaism post-Temple was, nor did Christianity emerge from it. Rather, there was parallel development of two religions that are now contemporary Christianity and contemporary Judaism, from a common proto-Judaism (ie. Second Temple Judaism). This model has also been criticized as leading to supersessionism, where the grown child now replaces the adult who has died, Christianity taking up the crown that Judaism has let fall.
However, this understanding of the child-adult relationship seems laden with partriarchal interpretation; it seems to resemble most a son-father relationship, where the son is meant to replace the father in his dotage. But if the relationship of child-adult is construed in a more feminist light, as one of daughter-mother, maybe this image can be retrieved. Daughters have never been construed as replacing their mothers, rather they live in a mutually beneficial relationship. Additionally, the daughter-mother relationship allows for a dynamism and growth, both in the relationship, which changes over time, but also in their individuality. Daughter changs as she grows from child to adult to mother herself, and Mother changes as she grows from young mother to mother of an adult child to grandmother. (Okay, so grandmother might not work in this analogy). But regardless, it implies that each person in the relationship continues to grow. Finally, when you consider Anne Joh's model of Christology and maternality, where there is a jeong stickiness in the relationship, such that the Self and the Other are intimately connected but not overrunning or replacing one another, perhaps this model might work for Christianity and Judaism.
Would it be too radical to suggest that Christianity has emerged out of Judaism, albeit in such a way that both Christianity and Judaism continue(d) to develop over time? That Christianity owes its birth (but not its current existence) to Judaism, and as such is forever in debt not only to what Judaism once was but to what it has also become? Can we see the relationship as one where both Judaism and Christianity continue to maintain a relationship without sacrificing what makes each unique? The relationship is one of mutuality, and more than voluntary mutuality, but less than necessary mutuality. That is, they could (and do) exist apart from one another, just as mothers and daughters live separate lives, sometimes estranged ones at that, but never completely separate, because simply the fact of the daughter's birth from the mother means that they will always be somehow connected.
I don't think that this model would necessarily contradict the historical testimony that Christianity and contemporary Judaism developed in parallel rather than in sequence. Mothers continue to develop even after the birth of their children, and even think of themselves as different people from who they were when they gave birth. Certainly it would allow for the historical continuity of Judaism from Second Temple (and prior) to today, a continuity that still poses theological problems for Christian theologies of Judaism.
(But I'm not entirely sure what this has to do with my special comps, unless it can somehow be incorporated into a theology of difference.)

March 22, 2010 - Second Thought for the Day

The topic of the unity of Christ in the larger field of Christology was a preoccupation for the early Church Fathers. They were trying to understand the nature of Christ, bringing together (or separating out) the human factor and the divine factor. Doctrinally, this came to a head in the councils of Nicea and Chalcedon, but as the centuries passed, this focus on the mechanism of incarnation dispersed. It did not reappear with any real force until the discussions beginning in the 19th century of the historicity of Jesus Christ. Then, it was framed as an issue of the universality and the particularity of Christ, and as the kerygmatic (proclaimed) Christ versus the historical Jesus. While not explicitly stated as an issue of incarnation, the question of the degree to which Christ was a historical figure was a restatement of the old argument of the degree to which he was human. In emphasizing the ahistoricity of Christ, the contemporary Christ of proclamation, the divinity and universality of Christ was elevated. The correlative sacrifice was the historical Jesus, as the particularly embedded Jew of Palestine. The connections here to the development of an anti-Jewish theology are obvious: the more universal/divine Jesus Christ becomes, the less human/particular/Jewish he becomes.
Oddly, the turn to the subject in the 20th century, and the emphasis on a Christology from below and the historical existence of Christ did not emphasize his Jewish context until after the Holocaust (and even then not completely). However, moving into the 21st century, Christological exploration that seeks to recontextualize Jesus sometimes acknowledges his Jewishness, while simultaneously replacing that Jewishness with something else: Jesus as Asian, Jesus as Oppressed Minority, Jesus as Woman, Jesus as Transvestite. While all of these Christologies rightfully challenge the previous 20 centuries' worth of images of Jesus as a reflection of the dominant, majority Christian (ie. male, and usually white), their relocation of Jesus dehistoricizes him and risks dispensing with his Jewishness. Again.
So how can a Christology hold onto a contextual Jesus, who is universal and divine in his relation to all human situations, while at the same time recognizing his particular uniqueness as a human Jew? This is where we turn to ideas of interstiality, multiplicity, hybridity (although not a dualistic hybridity that sets itself up in opposition to "purity"), and diversity, where unity is not cast aside, but neither does it uphold uniformity. In these new attempts to deconstruct and reconstruct the incarnation (although they do not describe themselves as such), it might be possible to understand how Jesus can be both/and: divine/human, universal/particular, Jewish/Asian/African/Indigenous, male/female/transexual, etc.
So who might be the central figure around which to set these two now-related parts? Jurgen Moltmann has been suggested, and he is certainly a post-Holocaust theologian, attempting to incorporate the horrors of the Jewish genocide into his theology. His famous passage equates the crucifixion with the death camps, borrowing Elie Wiesel's story of God hanging on the gallows to draw a new image of the suffering God dying on the cross. But some have accused Moltmann of appropriating, rather than borrowing, Wiesel's material and using the Holocaust as a contextual tool for structuring his own theology, rather than allowing it to really influence his understanding of Christ. He has also been criticized by feminists for creating a theology of suffering that can be used to glorify suffering.
I wonder if going in a different direction might be useful here. I am thinking more of someone like David Tracy. To begin with, his acknowledgement that language is problematic, divisive rather than unifying because of the plurality of meanings within words, and that history is ambiguous, always interpreted (with bias) by those in the present, offer a way to question the doctrinal certainties of the earlier Christological controversies. Second, his emphasis on the hermeneutical task of all theologians, and their subservience to the religious classic is appropriate for framing the dialogue between Jews and Christians who do, indeed, share a classic, with wildly differing hermeneutical procedures and goals. And thirdly, his idea of similarity-in-difference, where things may be similar but are never identical, may offer a tool for a theology of difference that still attempts to hold things together. His use of analogy relies on difference, as well as the possibility of what may be possible, and could work here. As far as I know, he doesn't address issues of incarnation, but he could. Plus, this born-Protestant could use a Catholic.

March 22, 2010 - Thought for the Day

The relationship of Christianity to Judaism is similar to that which Rita Nakashima Brock describes in her article on Interstitial Integrity regarding the relationship between Asian Pacific Americans to both America and Asia. Christianity is like the immigrant trying to find a home, realizing that it has left the land of Judaism, but is now trying to find a way to honour its roots. It is no longer Jewish, but it can never leave Judaism behind. Nevertheless, when it tries to return to Judaism to start a conversation, it finds that the community it finds now is not the same as the community it left. Immigrants who leave their "home country" and return later, find that it, and they, have changed, and not in the same ways. They have problems integrating into their left-behind culture, sometimes in painful ways. But the interstitial nature of their relationship with their home community accounts for both the past incarnation (as it were) of the community that they left, along with its current incarnation. This kind of understanding can allow Christianity to take account of previous, historical formations of Judaism, as well as contemporary Judaism. (Of course, the danger is that this type of immigrant understanding of Christianity's roots can too easily support a "ways that parted" model. But this isn't a necessity - it doesn't have to look that way.)
Clearly, I need to develop this more clearly before it can form any part of an exam. But there is an idea here.

March 19, 2010

"The foundation of Jewish or Christian identity cannot derive from the enterprise of thought but must derive from the encounter with the alterity of God who speaks to believing Jews and Christian in Scripture."

"The most difficult oustanding issues between Judaism and Christianity are the dinivity of Jesus, the Incarnation, the Trinity, three terms which are not quite synonymous but all of which assert that Jesus was not only a human being but also God. ... A human being who is also God loses all Jewish legitimacy from the outset. No sharper break with Jewish theological sensibility can be imagined."

"My claim is the Christian teaching of the incarnation of God in Jesus is the intensification of the teaching of the indwelling of God in Israel by concentrating that dwelling in one Jew rather than leaving it diffused in the people of Jesus as a whole."

Michael Wyschogrod, Abraham's Promise: Judaism and Jewish-Christian Relations
Edited by R. Kendall Soulen, Eerdmans, pp. 165, 166, 178

Wyschogrod argues that the Incarnation, and its different interpretations in Judaism and Christianity, is the sticking point for Jewish-Christian dialogue, and, one might extrapolate, for a Christian theology of Judaism. So a theology of Judaism that takes seriously the concerns of Judaism regarding Christianity must address incarnation theology (Christology for the Christians.) Nevertheless, it must do this without wantonly sacrificing its own history, tradition, or history. Too low of a Christology, in which there is no divinity present in Jesus (or in which the divinity present is identical to that present in every other human), such as van Buren proposes, may logically fit with a Jewish understanding of incarnation, but isn't really idenitifiable (or acceptable by most Christian denominations) as Christology at all. Part of the difficulty with a Christian theology of Judaism is recognizing that there is no one Christianity - the Christian denominations exist in ecumenical relationships, and jeopardizing those relationships for the sake of "the Jewish-Christian relationship" is problematic. It is still my suspicion that previous approaches to the Incarnation are dead ends, and that investigations into Christology will ultimately prove that there is no talking point there for Christians and Jews. Nevertheless, it must be thoroughly examined. So, then, the first exam will have to do with the doctrine of Incarnation. And although I had earlier suggested that this exam should focus on methodology and not content, that doesn't quite work. The content should be examined, along with Jewish theologies of incarnation (Wyschogrod is helpful in this regard), while the third exam should contain the methodology point.

So, the third exam, then would be the development of a methodology that allows for differences in incarnation theology (and differences as radically different as those contained within Christianity and between Christianity and Judaism). Although identity politics is not the goal of this exam, the ways in which theology uses the methods of identity formation, through hybridity, interstiality, the language of mestizaje, etc. offer a structure for understanding how it is that several different (or even opposing) ideas can be held together. It is true that this can also be seen in the doctrinal developments on the two natures of Christ, but those developments deal with only two differences: divine and human, and tend to be restricted to only binary considerations. Although current hybridity theology still tends to be limited to a hybrid of only two, it is not my impression that this is a methodological imposition. Although theologies of difference tend to rely a lot on the theologies of the Other, which results in a binary juxtaposition of Self/Other, I think they could be expanded. (Of course, the theology of the Trinity is an attempt to break beyond binarism, and Peter Hodgson and Kendall Soulen seem to be exploring this avenue, but at the heart of the Trinity is a doctrine of Incarnation, so working with the Trinity would be joining the race after it had already started. Plus, noooooooooo!!!!!!!!!)

So who is to be the major figure in the second part of the exam? One option is to pick someone who is working on the questions in the first exam but is from the 20th century. Unfortunately, none of those people, van Buren, Pawlikowski, Soulen (to a degree, although he doesn't deal with Christology), don't have a large enough body of work to study, and even fewer secondary resources on their material. The second option is to pick someone from the third exam, or someone who could be used as a lens for the third exam. However, the same problem exists. A third option is to pick someone who doesn't fall into either of those two areas, but who has a large body of work from the 20th century that would ultimately fit into a dissertation - someone who could be critiqued and whose work it would be good to know in detail. But who? Who?