define 'anointed'. . .

What is christology?

This was the question posed to me by a friend the other night. It is also the topic of most of the theology books I am reading right now. I mean, it sounds simple enough right. -ology being the study of, would imply that christology is the study of Christ. This was the answer I loosely gave, "It's the study of Jesus and who he is." I said this because it seemed like such an obvious question, which when posed so bluntly, pointed out to me that I had no answer for it. I was stumped. This was quite sad to me as I am currently 500 pages into a book dedicated purely to the topic. So, let me begin this post by saying that my answer on the spot was ultimately wrong in just about every way.

The truth is that christology deals with Jesus only indirectly. Essentially christology is the study of the "christ-concept", which existed long before and continued long after Jesus.

Multiple hundreds of years before Jesus was born Judaism was formulating the concept of the Messiah, the Christ. Now the original words mean "annointed one", which brings to mind the image of the king of any country being annointed with oil. When I say any country, I do in fact mean that, as Cyrus of the Persians was referred to as a christ or messiah. So, therefore, the messiah was not a concept that even specifically referred to a Jewish king. But, to the Jews who lost their king on being exiled to Babylon the idea of a Jewish annointed one came to the fore. The idea of the messiah began a steady evolution over the course of time.

I have no intent to delineating the evolution of the idea of the 'messiah/christ', if you care to know, I can recommend a good book to you . . . only be ready to dedicate a few month to it. Instead, I wish to point out how the concept of the Christ did not descend once for all from heaven. It was an idea that began in certain historical circumstances, and that evolved as circumstances changed. The literature written between the Old and New Testaments, which we rarely hear of, gives evidence to the difference in messianic expectation between certain Greek rulers to Roman rulers and everything in between.

By the time we get to Jesus' era, the most striking thing is the wide variety of christ concepts available. We can see the Davidic Christ who was supposed to lead the people to drive out Roman oppressors and elevate Israel to a world power. We can also see the Priestly Christ in the line of Moses. There is the ontological Enoch-christ referred to as the 'son of man', who comes to judge the world. The list could go on. There is actually a staggering multiplicity of diverse ideas as to what the Christ would be, what he would look like.

The thing is that many of these christ-traditions that precede the birth of Jesus, or at least the writing of the New Testament, account for the various claims made of him. For instance one vein of thought claimed that the Christ was actually a final prophet of God who was united with the eternal Wisdom of God. In Greek this eternal Wisdom would be referred to as the Logos. Notice the Christ prophet is not eternal, but rather becomes the dwelling place, the residence of the eternally existing Wisdom/Logos of God. Or let's take the Moses-christ tradition. Many years before Jesus was born the idea was coming about that the christ would not be a military leader, but a religious/spiritual leader. Therefore the christ's purpose would not be to liberate the people for their oppressors, but to connect them more deeply to God. For Jews this would quite naturally happen via the Law, so the christ becomes the true interpreter of the Law. So, decades later when his followers set to record why they call him the Christ the adopt this strand of thought that existed long before their master was born, to describe who he is. They set down his teaching to reveal the ultimate interpretation of the Law in one particular sermon. They say this sermon occured on 'the Mount', which the vast majority of scholars will say is not fact but a round-about way of saying he fulfilled the mosaic-christ expectation of being the ultimate interpreter of the Law.

The problem this has led me to see, is that we are taught to say that 'Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God'. This is the core of faith so we are told. The problem with this pithy saying is that in its original context, people would have said, "Sure, but so was Enoch, Samuel, Judas Maccabees, and Bar Kochba, each in their own way." The core of our faith doesn't really reveal what was unique about Jesus. In his time there was a staggering variety of interpretation concerning the meaning of being 'the christ'. Since there was no uniform concept, there was no uniform understanding of what being the christ meant.

How funny then that we have built up this religion called "christ-ianity", and that we form an exclusive social grouping of "christ-ians". We unite around the idea that Jesus is God's Christ, annointed one. We act in every respect as though Jesus holds exclusive rights to this title, and ignore the fact that the title and the concepts it employs were borrowed from a culture that had many christs before and many christs after Jesus, and sometimes is still found to be holding out for the final Messiah. The truth is that in world history God has had a plethora of sons and christs. Many have claimed such titles with a sense of legitimacy within a particular, unique cultural understanding of the titles.

The significance of Jesus is not in the fact that he is called Christ, nor the Son of God. These are pre-existing titles borrowed by early followers to express what they exprience in the man. This is what christology reveals to us. The concept of 'christ' precedes Jesus, includes him, and extends beyond him to many others after he came. Jesus is not unique for being called Christ. Yet the use of the titles gives us windows to the significance of Jesus in the eyes of the earliest followers. Beyond the framework of language we can discern a man whose life revealed, and reveals God in an entirely unique and profound way. Essentially the significance of Jesus is God. It is not the position (title) which God places him in, nor his relationship to God, but that God himself is somehow perceived in Jesus. In Jesus, the man from Nazareth, we witness God clarifying himself.

I wonder how many see the christ religion which has been built up around a title, a mere word, and thus reject not only this religion but also the man who was much more than a concept, or more imporantly the God who actively revealed his heart in this Jesus. I lament that too often it seems that we have packaged Jesus of Nazareth and thus the God who reveals himself through Jesus, inside this christ concept. People reject the packaging and miss out on the treasure inside, and unfortuately I feel as though the packaging is largely unecessary. The good news is not that Jesus is the Christ or the Son of God, but that God revealed himself through Jesus. The gospel is not that Jesus is the divine Christ calling shots on God's behalf. The protagonist of the story is God, always and without fail. It is God who acts. Jesus is the perfect case study by which we come to understand God. All the titles and interpretations we confer on Christ should only serve us to perceive God more. The purpose of all faith is to unite us to this Ineffable Reality and Ultimate Unity that we call God. It is not the Divine Christ that does this, but the remembered man of Nazareth. In this way I see him as greater than all his titles.