Assessment

Seminar attendance, participation and reflection papers: 40%. Final 5000 word essay: 60%

Module Aims

This seminar invites students to participate in an exploration of critical issues in Christology, issues which are rooted in the relationship between the human and the divine in the hypostatic union but which also concern the relationship between the human and the spiritual in the existential experience of people today.

Indicative Syllabus

• Liberation Christology
• Point of departure for Christology: a dialectical paradigm or a Rahnerian paradigm?
• The status of history in Pannenberg’s theology of the Resurrection
• Is a life of Jesus still possible? The three quests for the historical Jesus
• The question of the two natures. The Chalcedonian debate: Chalcedon: End or Beginning?
• Christology and anthropology
• Christology in an age of religious pluralism: An alternative to the theology of religious pluralism
• Christological parallels in other religions
• The emerging Christology of Henri de Lubac
• A Trinitarian Christology
• Creation and Christology in Karl Barth
• Love as inter-Trinitarian kenosis
• Anthropology and grace
• Redemption and Theosis
• The relationship between Redemption and Revelation
• Satisfaction theology and the primacy of Christ: from Anselm to Duns Scotus
• From ontology to soteriology – and back
• The freedom and sinlessness of Christ
• The knowledge and self-consciousness of Christ

Bibliography

• — Aquinas, St Thomas. Summa Theologiae IIIa pars, questiones 1-59: Summa of Theology, Third Part, questions 1-59.
• — Denzinger, Heinrich, Companion of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010 (DzH).
• — Grillmeier, Aloys. Christ in Christian Tradition II. English translation by Pauline Allen and John Cawte. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1987.
• — Kasper, Walter. Jesus the Christ. London: Burns & Oates, 1976. New edition: London: T&T Clark, 2011.
• — Kasper, Walter. The God of Jesus Christ. London: T&T Clark, 2012.
• — Kelly, J.N.D. Early Christian Doctrines. London and New York: Continuum, 1958, 1977.
• — Kereszty, Roch A. Jesus Christ: Fundamentals of Christology. New York: Alba House, 1991.
• — Lohfink, Gerhard. Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was. Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2012.
• — Meier, John P. A Marginal Jew. 1-5. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1991-2016.
• — Moloney, Raymond. The Knowledge of Christ. London and New York: Continuum, 1999.
• — O’Sullivan, Noel, “An Emerging Christology,” in Jordan Hillebert. The T&T Clark Companion to Henri de Lubac. London: Bloomsbury, 2017, 327-348.
• — Pannenberg, Wolfhart. Jesus – God and Man. London: SCM Press, 1968.
• — Rahner, Karl. “Chalkedon – Ende oder Anfang?” Das Konzil von Chalkedon. Würzburg: Verlag, 1954. English translation by Cornelius Ernst: “Current Problems in Christology.” Theological Investigations Vol 1. Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1964, 149-200.
• — Rahner, Karl, ‘Christology within an Evolutionary View of the World’, in Theological Investigations 5, translation by Karl-H. Kruger, Baltimore: Helicon, 1966, pp 157–192.