Crucified and Resurrected: Restructuring the Grammar of Christology

by Ingolf U. Dalferth

This major work, now available in English, is considered by many to be one of the finest and most significant contributions to modern Christology. Preeminent scholar and theologian Ingolf Dalferth argues for a radical reorientation of Christology for historical, hermeneutical, and theological reasons. He defends an orthodox vision of Christology in the context of a dialogue with modernity, showing why the resurrection, not the incarnation, ought to be the central idea of Christological thinking. His proposal is both pneumatological and Trinitarian, and addresses themes such as soteriology, the doctrine of atonement, and preaching.

Genres: Theology

352 pages, Hardcover

First published November 3, 2015

About the author

Ingolf U. Dalferth (DrTheol, University of Tübingen), the author of twenty books, is Danforth Professor of Philosophy of Religion at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California. He is also professor emeritus in the faculty of theology at the University of Zurich.

Reviews

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dalferth, a prominent German theologian, offers a sophisticated exploration of Christology. While I don't agree with all of his conclusions or arguments, his book is worth reading for anyone interested in an advanced, complex look at Christology that is engaged with modern concerns.

[David Goetz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as good as I'd hoped, but still helpfully provocative and definitely worthwhile.

This is a difficult book to review because of the vast terrain it attempts to cover. Consider the table of contents:

1. Incarnation: The Myth of God Incarnate
2. Cross and Resurrection: The Word of the Cross
3. Jesus Christ: Fundamental Problems in Constructing a Christology
4. Trinity: The Theological Relevance of the Cross for the Idea of God
5. Atoning Sacrifice: The Salvific Significance of the Death of Jesus

Dalferth argues that the conditions of God's knowability must themselves be part of our doctrine of God. As the eye has the capacity to see but cannot in fact see unless light comes to it, so we have the capacity to know God (because of the imago Dei) but cannot in fact know God unless God himself comes to us to actualize his self-knowledge within us by his Spirit. In a different but related context, Dalferth says, "the modal possibility of Godlikeness is not the same as a natural capability for Godlikeness" (43). By incorporating the conditions of God's knowability into our doctrine of God, we steer clear of the idolatry of self-effort in the knowledge of God.

But all of God's activity, even and especially his incorporation of us into his self-knowledge, is essentially trinitarian. The Father sends the Son and, in the cross and resurrection, works to "redefine and identify himself, and reshape our understanding of him" (157). And the Father sends the Spirit through the Son to draw us through the Son to the Father. There is an "unavoidable Christocentrism [in] all Christian discussion and thought concerning God" (204). The three persons are clearly differentiated, and Dalferth expresses this self-differentiation in various ways--e.g., by calling Father, Son, and Spirit the ground of reality, truth, and assurance, respectively. As you may have guessed, this book on christology is about the need to situate christology within trinitarian theology. God is being-in-relation, and all his action is interaction, so "God's activity ... constitutes the context and the cognitive horizon within which the fundamental christological problems should be thought through theologically" (155). I appreciated Dalferth's emphasis on the Trinity as the grammar of the Christian faith: language fails to be Christian as it moves away from trinitarianism.

Against those who attempt to construct an incarnational christology, Dalferth argues for a christology based on the resurrection. The line of thought seems to progress as follows: incarnational christology in itself assumes we have a reasonably clear idea of God, but incarnational christology historically has drawn the content of its idea of God from substance ontology and Hellenistic philosophy; instead, we should ground our understanding of Jesus in the act of God, the one whom he called "Father," whereby he raised him from the dead. Additionally, Dalferth argues adamantly that we cannot see our christological terminology as fundamentally descriptive; rather, we need to see that all our language with respect to Christ is fundamentally heuristic. We use "elucidating images" and to work towards understanding of Jesus. He rejects "realistic semantics" (142), at least in this case, precisely because the incarnation of God "is not an instance of something already familiar but rather the disclosure of something that is at yet unknown [or] only inadequately known [and which] cannot be conclusively grasped" (295). Abstract discussion will not help us to understand what or who we mean when we speak of "Christ"; only the clarifying action of God in the resurrection can do that.

In the last chapter, Dalferth argues against sacrifice as appropriate in discussion of soteriology. If we pay attention to the way language of cultic sacrifice is used in the NT, we see that "the category of sacrifice itself is used to express the fact that sacrifice as a way of enacting and thinking about salvation has been made obsolete once and for all through God's eschatological saving activity in Jesus Christ" (298). This was a fascinating section and perhaps the clearest chapter in the entire book.

A few comments by way of criticism.

First: although Dalferth briefly discusses the NT's continuity and discontinuity with the OT, he comes down heavy on the discontinuity side--so heavy, in fact, that he seems to minimize the OT's witness to God. Much of his christology makes it sound as though the OT and the experience of Israel merely serve as conceptual background for the advent of Christ. I would dispute his claim that Christ is the redefinition of God. It's better, I think, to say that Christ clarifies the doctrine of God communicated under the old covenant. Minimizing the OT in the way Dalferth does leads, I fear, to something very near tri-theism. This concern also plays into his discussion of sacrifice in the final chapter. He seems not to think of the OT sacrificial system as one instituted by God. In order to maintain his understanding of the saving value of Christ's death, he ends up needing to denigrate the OT or to argue for an alternative understanding of the nature of OT sacrifices, which he doesn't really do.

Second: there's quite a bit that smacks of relational onto-theology. Dalferth regularly identifies God's essence as "inexhaustible creative love," but this only serves to replace the substance ontology that he dislikes. A sample sentence or two will do just fine: "precisely herein lies the essential significance, for the idea of God, of the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ--that God refuses to define himself directly apart from us and, of his own free will, bases the freedom and power of his divine selfhood on our free acceptance of his deity. God exposes his selfhood to the risk of our free acceptance because he is wholly love and is trusting and hoping that his love will be requited, even though he neither wants nor is able to compel this in any way" (160). Later in that same paragraph, he says explicitly that God is "dependent on his creation," though only because he determines himself to be so. Of course, you could say to me that I only object to this language because I'm a Hellenist, but the larger problem for me is that Dalferth's language here seems incongruent with the biblical witness. An additional and related problem is an apparent inconsistency between this language of God "trusting and hoping" that his creatures will accept his love freely and his emphasis elsewhere that only the Spirit of God can enable knowledge of him. Does everyone receive the Spirit? Do only some receive him? Can those who receive him reject his inner witness to the resurrection of the crucified Son of the Father? These are questions Dalferth makes no effort to answer.

Third: he has a weird, vaguely Barthian, understanding of election. All human beings are incorporated into God's community through Christ and are then invited by God, and by those who already have begun to live coram Deo, to recognize and live in God's inexhaustible creative love. Incorporation takes place on the cross, and faith is "the response ... to this being in Christ" (302), which is radically different from the usual understanding of faith. It sounds similar, in a way, to Douglas Campbell's apocalyptic understanding of Paul. Dalferth does leave room for judgment within this scheme, though. All are in Christ because of the cross, and all therefore are in the presence of God: "if in faith, then for our salvation, and if in unbelief, then for our judgment" (305). But this doesn't seem consonant with the biblical witness that union with Christ, or incorporation into Christ, simply is our salvation. One of my questions throughout the book was, Why did Christ die? Dalferth never addresses this question directly, but the answer seems to be because Christ needed to experience death as the lowest or darkest point of human experience. Basically, the unexperienced is the unincorporated. And in the resurrection we see that God is present with Jesus even in death, and this constitutes a promise to us that God will remain with us even in our own death.

Other concerns could be mentioned, but I'll stop there so as not to exhaust anyone who happens to have read this far.

In sum, this book is definitely not boring. In some places, Dalferth gets certain aspects of the gospel gloriously right, but in other places he leaves me scratching my head. But this head-scratching is a large part of why I liked the book. As I said up front, it's helpfully provocative. Recommended for graduate students in theology, for theologians, for ambitious pastors, and that's probably it.