Thinking Christ: Christology and Contemporary Critics
Overview
Jane Barter Moulaison’s remarkable book engages contemporary critical understandings of Jesus Christ—including the postcolonial, feminist, pluralist, ecological, and socialist—to argue that the core convictions of traditional Christology remain a viable, valuable, and even indispensable witness to the Gospel in an imperiled world.
Contemporary theology often makes a virtue of deconstructing traditional claims about the person and work of Christ. Claims about the central significance of Jesus Christ appear to be oppressive, intolerant, and even violent. Jane Barter Moulaison engages several contemporary Christological critiques of classical Christology and argues that such critical theologies are not undermined by the claim of Christ’s central significance but are rather radicalized by it. She ably rereads the tradition that seeks to interpret Christ’s saving activity in light of several contemporary theological and political concerns. In so doing, she suggests that there are extraordinary resources available to those who long for political and material transformation precisely through the abandonment of spiritualized answers to Jesus’ question: “Who do you say that I am?”
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- Engages several contemporary Christological critiques of classical Christology
- Explores contemporary critical understandings of Jesus Christ
- Discusses the core convictions of traditional Christology
- “We Believe in One Lord, Jesus Christ”: Proclaiming Christ’s Lordship in the Midst of Empire
- “Begotten of the Father before All Worlds”: Jesus Christ and Creation
- “By Whom All Things Were Made”: Use and Enjoyment of Theological Language
- “Very God of Very God”: Proclaiming Christ’s Divinity in a Pluralist Age
- “He Was Crucified for Us under Pontius Pilate”: Proclaiming the Cross in a Violent World
- “To Judge the Quick and the Dead”: Christ and the Redemption of Memory
Top Highlights
“One of the best remedies to the past’s ills is to understand our Christian past with greater nuance” (Page 2)
“The main question animating this book is, What difference does the word becoming flesh make to our thinking and to our acting (although I am reluctant to separate these two too strenuously)? In the early church, we might say that Christology or, better, the revelation of God in Jesus Christ signaled a veritable revolution in ordinary patterns of thinking about the world. Although much ink has been spilled in noting how the figures whom I am engaging were indebted to pagan philosophy, for me what is far more interesting is how the pagan philosophy—by which they were admittedly profoundly influenced—was transfigured by their faith in the word becoming flesh decisively and finally in Jesus Christ.” (Page 4)
“I use the term Nicene teachers not in the narrow sense of actual participants in the Councils of Nicaea or Constantinople,7 but as referring to those early teachers who affirmed and defended the principle of Christ’s full consubstantial unity with God the Father that was won at those councils. For the Nicene teachers, this christological principle was central to their thinking about all subsequent doctrines and practices.” (Page 5)
“The intellectual task of clarifying these teachings in midst of theological controversies that sought either to reduce or exaggerate Jesus’ identification with the Father was exacting and at the service of safeguarding the soteriological logic of the good news in situations that threatened to undermine such confession.” (Page 5)
Critically relating Nicene Christologies to postmodern theories and the urgent concerns of ecological, feminist and other praxis-oriented theologies, Moulaison illuminates current issues and uncovers empowering resources in the Christian tradition for addressing them. A thought-provoking and important work—not to be missed.
—Don Schweitzer, McDougald Professor of Theology, St. Andrew’s College, Saskatoon
In Thinking Christ, Jane Barter Moulaison argues that classical Christian doctrines about Jesus, far from implying a mindless affirmation of the status quo, are bursting with critical and creative potential. She embodies a kind of ‘radical Christian humanism’ in the tradition of Karl Barth, William Stringfellow, and Rowan Williams—and behind them the ancient doctors of the church, with their strange teaching about a crucified God. Beyond the ideological captivities of both the left and the right, Moulaison invites us to do our thinking at the foot of the cross. An intellectual adventure not to be missed.
—Joseph L. Mangina, professor of theology, Wycliffe College, Toronto School of Theology
Thinking Christ combines the best of modern critical theory with a thorough retrieval of Nicene Christology. Moulaison delves into the Nicene teachers in order to address the gap between our modern hermeneutics of suspicion and the root meaning of early church wrangling to understand the second person of the Trinity. She is not afraid to make ontological claims, and is unwilling to dumb down or lighten up the positions crafted by the pastors of late Antiquity as they struggled with the interface between Christian faith and Roman/Greek culture. It is written in flowing prose, asks engaging questions, and presents cogent arguments. A must read for anyone interested in “thinking Christ” today.
—Cynthia Crysdale, professor of Christian ethics and theology, School of Theology, University of the South
- Title: Thinking Christ: Christology and Contemporary Critics
- Author: Jane Barter Moulaison
- Publisher: Fortress Press
- Print Publication Date: 2012
- Logos Release Date: 2013
- Pages: 188
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subjects: Jesus Christ › History of doctrines--Early church, ca. 30-600; Jesus Christ › Person and offices; Nicene Creed
- Resource ID: LLS:THINKINGCHRIST
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-02-12T06:19:55Z