Steven J. Duby - Jesus and the God of Classical Theism: Biblical Christology in Light of the Doctrine of God

In 2008 Richard Bauckham published a collection of essays under the title Jesus and the God of Israel , offering a description of the person of Jesus Christ in relation to the identity of the God revealed in the Old Testament. Other biblical scholars also have taken up the challenge of exploring the interface of Christology and theology proper in the Bible and early Christianity.

I should also mention that the phrase classical theism is an imprecise one. I use it here only because it has been used by many as an expedient designation for an account of the triune God holding that he is simple, immutable, impassible, and eternal (words to be defined later on). I have no particular interest in defending the phrase classical theism or employing it for constructive ends, which is why it ends up appearing infrequently in this study and typically in quotation marks. The aim of this volume is not to quibble about the fecundity of a single phrase but rather to deal with substantive issues in Christology and trinitarian doctrine. Given the nature of this book, it should be clear that I am not implying that classical theological commitments should be exempt from all analysis. Nor am I implying that there is complete uniformity to be found across the Christian tradition in authors like Athanasius, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and others. Nevertheless, I will maintain that, at a general level at least, such authors do present a broadly cohesive set of exegetical and theological resources that will prove fruitful in contemporary Christology.

I also want to recognize here that words and phrases like traditional, more traditional, and catholic tradition appear in various places throughout this volume. The use of such words and phrases is not intended to discourage or replace actual exegetical and theological reasoning. The goal is not to try to conserve what is older simply because it is olderas if that might be an end in itselfbut rather to set forth the christological teaching of Holy Scripture and to explore the extent to which certain theological resources that do happen to be older can help us to interpret Scripture well. When speaking about accounts of Christ or the Trinity that are traditional or part of the catholic tradition, I have in mind a body of Christian teaching on central topics about which there is a broad agreement, expressed in statements from the ecumenical councils of the patristic period, in biblical commentaries and topical treatments of theological questions in the medieval period, and in early modern Protestant confessions of faith. My sense is that even in the midst of their diverse ways of handling certain matters, one can find this kind of broad agreement in figures such as Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, Cyril of Alexandria, John of Damascus, Peter Lombard, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, and Protestant orthodox theologians.