Eastern Orthodox Christology

Christological discourse within Orthodox, or Eastern, theology (i.e., the theology of the Eastern Orthodox churches) has been shaped since the 5th century by the doctrine of Chalcedon, which the Eastern churches accepted. Eastern theology interpreted the union of the divine and the human in Jesus as glorifying humanity and as preparing humanity for its deification—its exaltation to the divine life and its restoration to the dignity established for it at creation. Understandably, that entailed an emphasis on the divine nature of Jesus.

A decisive difference between the Christologies of Eastern Orthodoxy and Western Christianity, as they would subsequently develop, lies in the importance of icons of Jesus. The Eastern practice of venerating icons was challenged in the Iconoclastic Controversy of the 8th and 9th centuries. After the acceptance of the practice by the second Council of Nicaea (787) and a second wave of iconoclasm, veneration was formally restored in 843 by Theodora, the widow of the last Iconoclastic emperor, Theophilos. Tellingly, the Eastern churches celebrate the date (February 19) as the Feast of Orthodoxy. Eastern Orthodoxy maintains the divinity of the icon of Christ; there is no essential distinction between the icon of Christ and Christ himself. Behind the icon of Christ—indeed, behind all icons—is the essence of the person. Quite in accord with a fundamental premise of Orthodox theologizing, which holds that the task of theology is to interpret the thought of the ecumenical councils of the early church, no major Christological developments are to be recorded for Eastern Orthodoxy.

Oriental Orthodox Christology

The other main branch of Orthodoxy is constituted by the six national churches of the Oriental Orthodox communion: the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, the Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East, the Malankara (Indian) Syrian Orthodox Church, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, and the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church. With the exception of the Eritrean church, which was granted autocephaly (ecclesiastical independence) in 1998, those churches were largely out of contact with the other main branches of Christianity from the time of the Council of Chalcedon, which resulted in their being branded monophysites—and hence heretics—by the Roman and Greek churches. Those churches claimed that they were instead miaphysites (from the Greek mia-, or “single,” and physis, or “nature”) and that they held that through the mystery of the Incarnation both the human and divine natures of Christ were present in a single nature.

Beginning in the mid-20th century, when the Armenian and Coptic churches helped to form the World Council of Churches, the Oriental Orthodox communion—also called non-Chalcedonian churches because of their rejection of the Council of Chalcedon—engaged in ecumenical dialogue with the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox churches in hopes of resolving the ancient disputes. Increasingly frequent talks eventually resulted in historic joint declarations by the three branches of Christianity stating that the schism emerging after Chalcedon was largely based on a grave misunderstanding, that many of the points of dispute had been resolved, and that the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches now regarded the Oriental churches as confessing Christians in full standing. Oriental Orthodox Christianity displays rich variation not only in practice but in Christology. Like the Eastern Orthodox churches, the Oriental Orthodox churches uphold the Nicene Creed without the Filioque.

The Middle Ages

Because the dogmatic pronouncements of Nicaea and Chalcedon had set the parameters of orthodoxy and heresy for Christology in the West, the contributions of medieval theologians essentially amounted to a series of footnotes, amplifications, and minor deviations from the Classical affirmations. St. Augustine’s conception of Jesus’ humanity as a true incarnation influenced a resurgence of adoptionist theology in Spain near the end of the 8th century. Promptly denounced as Nestorianism, the movement was condemned at no less than two councils—Frankfurt in 794 and Rome (under papal leadership) in 798.

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Christianity: The Christological controversies

Medieval theology, particularly before the 11th century, generally emphasized Jesus’ divinity over his humanity. Medieval ecclesiastics conceived of him as the “other”—as a stern judge manifesting the righteousness of God. Interest in Jesus’ humanity was professed chiefly by mystics and visual artists. The former—beginning with Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) and continuing with Francis of Assisi (1181/82–1226), Meister Eckhart (c. 1260–1327/28?), and Thomas à Kempis (1379/80–1471)—sought to bring about a mystical union between Jesus and the believer. Bernard was inspired by the erotic language of the Song of Songs (Song of Solomon), because he saw in its description of the intimacy of bride and bridegroom a paradigm of mystical union; that theme was echoed in the 18th century by the Pietist reformer Nikolaus von Zinzendorf. Women mystics, such as Catherine of Siena (c. 1347–1380) and Julian of Norwich (c. 1342–after 1416), had visions in which Christ’s body had the form of a staircase or a ladder or in which Christ appeared as a mother.

Thomas à Kempis’s devotional work The Imitation of Christ set Christian perfection as the goal of the spiritual life, challenging the believer to “imitate the form and the life of Jesus.” Thomas called upon Christians to appropriate the will of Jesus and thereby to be as spiritual as Jesus was. Only by conforming to the human Jesus, he insisted, is it possible to rise to conformity to the divine Jesus. That had also been the conviction of Francis of Assisi, whose attempt to imitate the life of Jesus was rewarded with the stigmata. In Thomas’s time, the devotio moderna movement also emphasized meditation on and imitation of the life of Jesus.

The major medieval contribution to Christology, however, lay in reflection on the purpose of Jesus’ Incarnation. The traditional view of the Atonement maintained that, because humans had sinned, they were subject to the Devil, and a debt was owed to him; Christ paid that debt by dying for the sake of humanity. The sacrifice of Christ was seen as a ransom paid to release humans from the Devil’s grip. It was also held that God had deceived the Devil by becoming human and that the Devil did not recognize the divinity beneath the human form. By subjecting him to death, the Devil had abused his authority and thus lost his power over humankind. In his epochal work Cur Deus homo (“Why God Became Man”), however, St. Anselm of Canterbury (1033/34–1109) formulated the most-trenchant theory of the Atonement of Christ. Anselm held that Jesus’ death on the cross was absolutely necessary because there was no other rationally intelligible way in which sinful humankind could have been reconciled with God. If God in his mercy had simply forgiven humans for their sin, God’s moral order would have been repudiated. God’s righteousness, offended by human sin, demanded satisfaction; that satisfaction could be rendered only by someone who was both God—because God could overcome sin by sinlessness—and human—because humans were those who were guilty of sin. Anselm’s theory was also significant for presenting a comprehensive system that focused on the interrelationship between God, Jesus, and humankind; Satan and the notion of Jesus dying a substitutionary death for humankind had been avoided.

The French theologian Peter Abelard (1079–1142) advanced another theory of the Atonement in his commentary on Romans: God sent his son to be a teacher and role model and thereby to reveal God’s love for humankind. Abelard noted further that Jesus awakens in sinners a love of God that is at once the ground for the divine forgiveness of sins and for reconciliation with God. Christ’s intercessory prayer for humans augments the merits that humans can offer God.