pseudo-Christologies

Yesterday afternoon, I facilitated a Christology class on behalf of the teacher who was stuck in the USA because of Iceland’s volcanic ashes preventing in-coming and out-going flights to most of Europe. The one and half hour meeting composed mainly of student-led presentations/discussions on three Christological perspectives: John Hick, Post-modern, and Latin American (Liberation). As I anticipated, the various perspectives elicited important questions from the students, particularly on their implications on theology and praxis.

I appointed out, at the end of the class, that the primary issue behind different Christological perspectives, no matter what they are and what they advocate, is their hermeneutical keys. In a word, there are different Christologies because there are many starting points emerging from diverse agenda (which can be cultural, social, political, moral, etc.). While this is “valid” in a tolerant post-modern world, it could not but raise the question of the relationship between orthodoxy and ecumenism. Should Christian unity in the twenty-first century be based on intellectual toleration? But then again, even the concept and reality of toleration could be called into question. It seems that none of these perspectives are actually tolerant of another. Instead, in these various theologies are embedded a sense of exclusivism—an exclusivism evidenced and achieved in two ways: (1) subjective self-assertion and vindication, and its concomitant (2) putting down other perspectives by launching staunch criticisms.

Since reading T. F. Torrance, particularly his profound stress on scientific theology, I have become convinced that the only theological way to theologizing is doing it scientifically, i.e., the same method of investigation employed in natural sciences. This means that theology should be done only according to the nature of the object of investigation. In Christology, for example, Jesus Christ should be seen according to who he is in the gospels. The logical fallacy that different Christologies do not recognize is their illogical imposition of culturally-socially-politically-polluted presentation of Jesus. Hick’s Christology, for instance, is conditioned by his pluralism. Jesus is crafted into a Jesus that is acceptable in the pluralist’s mind. The consequence of this is a hideous theological pruning, where aspects that do not fit the agenda are outrightly rejected. The resulting Jesus is not Jesus as he revealed himself, but the Jesus who Hick crafted.

A scientific theology, on the other hand, approaches Jesus as who he is. It is a repentant, submissive approach, because the objectivity and reality of the person Jesus is made the controlling reference of knowledge. We can illustrate this scientific approach through an analogy. Jacob wants to know a woman called Janice. Now if Jacob is to know the true Janice, he should abandon all presuppositions or criteria that he has in mind. He should not say “the true Janice has blue eyes,” then look at Janice’s eyes. On the contrary, he should look at Janice’s eyes then allow the reality to impose itself to him. And whether he likes the reality or not, the objective reality could not be changed just because he disagrees with it. To go back to Christology, we do not come to Jesus with a cultural or political agenda which we impose upon him. Rather, we come to Jesus and allow him to impose his own objective reality upon us. Theology is primary reception and discovery. We do not do away things revealed about Jesus in the Gospel because they do not fit our hermeneutic, nor do we construct a Jesus apart from the Jesus of the Gospel. Instead, we allow the biblical Jesus to impose his self-authenticating Truth to us.