IV.

Modern Criticism of Chalcedon

Orthodox Chalcedonian Christology has been assailed on various grounds. Modern theologians have noted its dependence on a precritical understanding of the Gospels. The christological pluralism of the New Testament is not recognized by the Chalcedonian formula, which is supported solely by the Gospel of John and the conception of the virgin birth expressed in Matthew and Luke. Another criticism, articulated by the German New Testament scholar and theologian Rudolf Bultmann, hinges on the fact that the Chalcedonian conception of Christ is based on antiquated mythologies (Jewish messianism and apocalypticism and perhaps Gnosticism) and on an obsolete metaphysics, in which the terms person, nature, and substance are understood in ways that are fundamentally different from the way these terms are understood today. The use of Chalcedonian christological definitions in interpreting the Gospel portraits of Jesus has tended to restrict the access of modern Christians to the man Jesus in his historical actuality. Thus, Bultmann has advocated “demythologizing” the New Testament and reinterpreting the mythological elements that lie behind early christological formulations, in order to make the proclamation (kerygma) and Christ's saving work meaningful to modern persons. Some theologians advocate using alternative christological models to explain the doctrines of preexistence and incarnation, preferring the New Testament metaphor of God's “sending” his Son to the later, entirely intellectualized Christology of the Council of Chalcedon. A few contemporary Roman Catholic theologians, such as Edward Schillebeeckx and Walter Kasper, have chosen to begin their christological inquiry “from below” rather than “from above”; they start with the fully human Jesus and then go on to discover and confess the saving presence of God in him.

See also Biblical Criticism; Jesus Christ; Theology.