Theo 2 - CHRISTOLOGY (The Universality of Christ's Salvation)

1. The different models of salvation.
• There is a rich variety of biblical, liturgical and traditional language for salvation. The most significant keys to understand salvation are transforming love, victorious conflict and expiation.
Love
• This is the most promising key that sheds light on the other models.
• Pauline and Johannine theolgy converges in pronouncing the divine love to be the major key to redemption. God's initiative love clarifies the story of salvation. The central biblical versions of redemption such as reconciliation, adoption and covenant are to be understood in the context of love.
• The same applies to the biblical images of the human-divine relationship such as father/son, husband /wife, Teacher /disciples.
• Love is always transforming, redemptive and life-giving. Love wants to live and give life. Love conquers all amor vincit omnia That is why the Johannine proposition: God is love represents love as constituting God's being from which flows the economy of redemption.
• It is love that transformed humankind

Victorious Conflict
• Salvation is a victorious conflict with sin and death won by Christ.
• During the earthly ministry of Js, his excorcising activity was presented as a victorious conflict with Satanic power. His death and resurrection took place during the days when Jews celebrated their delivering from slavery to freedom (a victory over Pharoah and his oppressive power).
• Traditional language, especially liturgical languge in the post NT Church cherished the theme of Christ's redemptive victory with its paradoxical nature eg. the Exultet-- this is the night in which Christ, breaking the bonds of death, rose victorious from the tomb. Victime Paschale celebrated the "wonderful duel in which death and life fought".
• Yet, Christ's powerful dealing with sin occurs paradoxically through the "weakness" of the cross. He conquers sin through the powerful "weakness" of love. It is the death of the obedient Son on the cross that resulted in the victory of the resurrection.
• The self-giving love with which Christ accepted his passion prevails over the worst of human malice.

Expiation
• This is a rich biblical concept built around Christ as priest and victim who offers once and for all and as our representative the sacrifice which expiated sin and inaugurated the new Covenant. 1 Jn 2:2 confesses: "He is the expiation for our sins and the sins of the world."
• This model takes up the theme of reparation for / or a disturbed moral order.
• In the middle age, St. Anselm's theory of satisfaction explained how Christ's death restored the divine honour which sin offends. Now it has become conventional to dismiss this theory as legalistic and setting limits to divine love.
• Yet a correct understanding of the nature of sin may help us to appreciate this model. Sin is an offense against God, at the same time, it does harm to others and ourselves. At the human level, situations damaged by sin need to be set right even after sinners have repented and received pardon. Between human beings matters of injustice call for reparation.
• The belief that redemptive value of vicarious suffering (suffering endured on behalf of others could cleanse and renew moral order ) was alive in pre-Christian Judaism and Greco-Roman religious thought (also in other religions).
• Any idea that God needs reparation should be banished as if some kind of moral order is above God. See O'Donnell--God takes human freedom seriously.
• Christ expiates and makes reparation for sin in the sense of definitively dealing with sin and the sinful world for us. As victim of our wrongdoing, he provides us wrongdoers with the means of rising about our sins
• It is not the astrocious suffering Christ underwent that has value in and of itself. However, since it was loving and obedient self-giving that leads to his death, his total innocence and his divine identity gave unique value his self-sacrifice.
• Nor did God directly mandate the violent of Christ. Rather, the passion and crucifixion should be thought of as the inevitable consequences of Js' loving fidelity to his mission which he lived out for us in a cruel and sinful world. (Love is vulnerable).
• Christ represents us --"While we were still sinners Christ died for us (Rm 5:8) He acted on our behalf and to our advantage atone for our sins before we agree to this. Yet redemption entails participation. Expiation is no mere transaction between Father and Son which remains extrinsic to us. It is an event into which we should also ourselves be drawn.
• Apostles and Christians in general can suffer for others. When we accept suffering as an extension of Christ's passion, we can properly believe that this helps to purify and renew a contaminated world.
• All these models are complementary and no models can exhaust the rich meaning of salvation. Yet it is love that explains the reason of all these salvific actions

2. The Universality of the Mediation of Christ
• NT does not waver in acknowledging Christ as the one Saviour for all people, that his redemptive role is universal (w/out exception), unique (without //), complete (convey fullness of salvation) and definitive (cannot be surpassed).
• This redemptive role will also have its impact on the whole of creation.
• Biblical texts on the universal role of Christ : Acts 4:11-12 : There is no salvation in anyone else, for there is no other name in the world given to men by which we are to be saved.
• 1Tim 2:5-6 God is one. One also is the Mediator between God and men, the man JC, who gave Himself as a ransom for all.
• This indispensable and necessary role of Christ can be summarized by a new axiom: Extra Christus nulla salus.
• Claims about Js as the mediator of salvation for all people emerge from faith in him as the Risen Lord. His resurrection has inaugurated the general resurrection. At the end he will be the saving goal for all men and women --as the universl judge and he light of the heavenly Jerusalem.
• The teleological conviction that Christ is goal of humankind goes hand inn hand with a strong sense of his universal salvific role here and now. 5 considerations for such a claim:
 The universal presence of HS relates the whole history of humanity to Cx , it enacts the universal relevance of Christ's redemptive work. Since there is no zone outside grace and HS, there is no universal zone outside Cx.
 The Kingdom of God with its universal dimension is linked with the very person with Cx. Since he is the agent of a divine kingdom that is and will be all-inclusive, he is also the agent of universal salvation.
 Through his Incarnation, Cx is moved into historical solidarity with all human beings. As GS 22 points out: by his Incarnation, the Son of God has in a certain way united himself with every human being. Hence to experience and receive God's grace through other human beings is to experience and receive grace through the incarnate Cx.
 Cx is acknowledged the agent of creation: all things were created through him and for him ..in him all things hold together (Col 1:16-17). So wherever the created world and its inner and outer history mediate God's grace, those who receive this saving grace are in fact receiving it through Cx.
 As divine, Christ is universally present, actively influencing the mediation of redemption to all. In the Resurrection Js is present in a new way in the HS. If Christ is everywhere, he must also be present to everyone. Love constitutes the heart of redemptive Christology, active presence is its mode. Therefore He is also present outside of Christianity.
• It was Js' humanity that made his dying and rising possible, it was his divinity that gave that dying and rising a cosmic value.

E. OTHER THEMES
1) The personal pre-existence of Christ. According to J.D.G. Dunn (Christology in the Making, 2ed., 1989) such a pre-existence of Christ is found for the first time in the prologue of Jn. However 1Cor 8:6; 2Cor 8:9; Gal 4:4; Phil 2:6-8! The necessary help of the philosophers; sees the philosophical lack of K. - J. Kuschel, Geboren vor aller Zeit (1990; vers. ingl., ital.).
 1 Cor 8:6 yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.
 2 Cor 8:9 For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.
 Gal 4:4 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law,
 Phil 2:6-11
◘ Paul is more interested in the post-existence than the pre-existence of Christ
◘ Yet pre-existence is important for the Incarnation
2) The incarnation. Is the incarnation unique or universal according to Hegel? The modern objections:: Jesus doesn't teach about his incarnation; his apostles developed it slowly; a false passage from the poetry of the NT (eg Col 1, Phil 2, Hb 1, Jn 1) to the metaphysical prose of the Council of Nicea etc. The attempt to use a functional language only. Jesus embodied varied values revealing God and the divine plan for us. A person with two natures = a contradiction in terms? How to understand not only two wills (Constantinopoli III) but also the two minds of Christ?
 Jesus never talked about his hypostatic union, but his self-knowledge and his acts had this implications
God (Jn)

man
 Paul recognizes the divine nature of JS: “Lord, Kyrios” ; 1 Cor 8:6
 Hegel: it is a wrong passage from the poems of NT to the metaphysical prose of the Councils
 The use of functional language eg. Ousia, hypostatic are philosophy but not contradictory to the Bible
 Some prefer not to use philosophical terms, but other terms like Js reveals God, Js is truth, grace...etc but a person functions this way only he is ontologically so
Function Ontology
 2 natures: fields of references, cannot demonstrate positively the possibility of Incarnation
 2 wills of Jesus
3) The virginal conception: A revealed truth or biological fact (Schillebeeckx, Küng, Moltmann)?
 In Mt, Lk, as historical truth
 Informative but also brings forth some revealed truth.
4) The Pre-Paschal history of Jesus. “The apostles... who by their oral preaching, by example and by observances handed on what they had received from the lips of Christ, from living with him and from what he did, or what they had learned through the prompting of the Holy Spirit.” (DV, 7). The importance of the Synoptic Gospels (= the importance of the pre-Paschal history of Jesus) for Christology (eg that of the liberation) and the soteriologia; his pretexts and intentions. The attempts to introduce it like a cynical philosopher (Nietzsche).
 DV does not limit Revelation to the life of JC only.
 What is the self-knowledge of Js when he says, “no one know the Father except the Son?”
 His preaching on the Kingdom of God
 Js is a cynical philosopher (Nietzsche)?
◘ There is not really a cynical school in the time of Js
◘ Moreover, one has to take note that Js has an eschatological thrust in his preaching (May your Kingdom Come!)
5) Jesus faced with his death (Hengel, Léon-Dufour, Pesch, Schürmann etc).
 Action can go beyond one’s intention
6) The resurrection. What does the Paschal affirmation want to say primarily? How to reflect on the resurrection for a theology of liberation? In the key of liturgy? Are the Risen Lord and the Holy Spirit identified (2Cor 3:17—“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”)? Can Pneumatology absorb Christology? But “we have” the Spirit; “we are” children and daughters in the Son. The “mission” is an analogical term.
 According to Marxsen, the cause of Js continues
 Resurrection first of all is for Js personally, secondarily, it has many consequences for us, for our justification. Injustice does not have the last word.
 The key of Liturgy: The core of the Liturgy is the Paschal Mystery
 Jesus identified with the Spirit? 2 Cor 3:17
◘ There is close collaboration between Js and HS in the mission
◘ Paul never says that HS is born of the virgin Mary, or crucified or raised from the dead.
◘ There is no clear  doctrine but there is already clear distinction between the persons.∴ no absorption of Christology by Pneumatology
 The “mission” is an analogical term—The Spirit is in the Son, the Spirit is poured into our hearts (Rm). The mission is not identical.

7) Jesus as the only Savior for all. John Hick et others are opposed to the principle “extra Christums nulla salus.” See K. Rahner, J. Dupuis and G. D’costa. The recovery of a Christology and soteriology elaborated in the light of feminism, of the wisdom of cultures and religions, (Fides et Ratio, 31) and of the ecological crisis?
 John Hick : opposed to “extra Christus nulla salus” ∵ there are many saviours for him
 Js reveals Himself as the only Saviour in the future glory (already and not yet)
 Rahner uses the tern Absolute Saviour
 Js as Wisdom: FR 3