Someone once said that all problems in Christian doctrine
are an extension of the Christological question.
Jesus Christ is revealed to us through his ministry, his
acts and teachings. However, the objective reality of the person of Jesus
Christ is as mysterious to us as the Person of God.
All we have is our subjective perceptions of that reality,
the latter being most certainly more diverse than our limited sensory
perception can reveal to us. There are various concepts of that transcendent
reality that have evolved over hundreds and thousands of years. There are
certain concepts of the natural phenomena of what we consider as the outer
world around us, as well as the concepts of what we refer to as the inner world
of our thoughts and feelings, and emotions. There are various concepts of God,
too.
The concepts have the tendency to evolve and change with
time. Until recent relatively rapid development of natural sciences over the
past several centuries, human thought had evolved for thousands of years,
primarily as a philosophical discourse, culminating in the complex
philosophical systems of the Late Antiquity, personified by many thinkers,
including Plato, Plutarch and Plotinus.
Middle Platonism (Plutarch), and later Neo-Platonism
(Plotinus and Porphyry), as an evolving philosophical approach, synthesizing
Platonism with Egyptian and Jewish theology, has eventually become the most
advanced and sophisticated philosophical conception, describing the universe,
fundamentally characterized by its unity, as one system. Such worldview had
been the most advanced, so to speak scientific, vision of the universal reality
at the time when Jesus began his ministry.
The philosophical categories of the Middle Platonism and later
Neo-Platonism became native to the most prominent philosophical thinkers during
the early Christian years. As a generally metaphysical and epistemological
philosophy, Neo-Platonism included elements of theistic monism. Its universal
system had as its integral parts the invisible world and the phenomenal world.
Neo-Platonism proposed, in a syncretic way, that there is one God, who has many
manifestations in the diverse religious traditions. The effect of Middle
Platonic and Neo-Platonic philosophical systems must have been truly
revolutionary back then, perhaps comparable only to the explosive power of the
scientific revolution of the recent centuries.
Various heresies of the early Christian years, including
Gnosticism and Arianism, and later debates between the Arianism and Trinitarianism,
after the legalization of the Church in the fourth century, made an organized
comprehensive explanation of Jesus and his ministry essential. Although the
officially adopted Trinitarian version of Christianity as the state church of
the Roman Empire had evolved for several centuries before it received a
coherent systematic description, eventually it was formulated in line with the
most advanced comprehensive and the most scientific epistemological beliefs of
the time.
At the forefront of the contemporary thought at that time
were the Middle Platonic and Neo-Platonic ideas as the most advanced and
systematic view on the world, which included not only phenomenological reality
but also the invisible reality of the transcendent One. Cyril of Alexandria
himself had acknowledged the fact that Middle Platonist writers influenced the
second and third century Christian views on Jesus and his ministry.
Cyril of Alexandria (c. 376 – 444), who was the Patriarch of
Alexandria from 412 to 444, was enthroned when the city was at the height of
its influence and power within the Roman Empire. He is among the Church Fathers
and the Doctors of the Church, and his reputation has resulted in his titles
Pillar of Faith and Seal of all the Fathers. According to Cyril, he discerned a
Christian view of God not only in some of Plato, but also in Plotinus (AD 205-
270), the founder of the Neo-Platonist philosophy, and in his disciple Porphyry
(AD 234–c. 305).
The traits of impact of Greek philosophy on Cyril’s
Christology surface especially in his handling of the doctrine of the Trinity
and the issues of divine immutability and impassability. Neo-Platonism, that
paradigm of the most sophisticated systematic knowledge of that time, the wide
range of philosophical categories, which lie at the heart of the most
comprehensive logically verifiable worldview, were the natural milieu of the
rational discourse at the time. The theistic monism of the Neo-Platonist ideas
had provided fundamental elements to the development of the Christian doctrine,
including the Trinitarian formulation.
The philosophical schools of the early Christian centuries
were eclectic, so Christian thinkers did not import entire systems of thought
from any particular philosopher or school. They did, however, think within and
operate prevailing tools, language and conceptuality in their desire to
communicate as clearly and meaningfully as they could what was on their minds
concerning Jesus, his teachings, and his works. For much of the time it was a
case of speaking a native language, born of a native conceptuality.
The Greek concepts of the world and God were not some
arbitrarily chosen philosophies to emphasize God’s characteristics at the
background of the Church Fathers’ theology. Those categories and notions were
part of their rational thinking and most naturally happened to be the pinnacle
of the human thought at that moment.
The contemporary concepts of God had determined the
Christology of the early Fathers. Their Christology eventually would become a dogmatic
view on Jesus and his ministry and, eventually, a foundation and source of many
problems in Christian doctrine. The immutability of the Christian doctrine
stems from the early Christian thinking patterns. But, as the thinking patterns
and concepts of God and the world continued to evolve and developed, the
original Christology of the Fathers remained the same, an unchanged and
unmodified reflection of the Neo-Platonic worldview and its characteristic
paradigm of thought and respective set of philosophical categories of that
time.
However, the person of Jesus Christ, once perceived and
portrayed within the context of the worldview, greatly influenced by the
Neo-Platonist thinkers, has now become mostly a mystery to us. Mostly because
we are trying to comprehend and explain Jesus from our contemporary worldview
using our present-day, scientific concepts of the universe while trying, at the
same time, to consider the Neo-Platonist ideas as also fully relevant. Perhaps,
it is time to acknowledge the Neo-Platonism-based Christology is no longer
fully relevant and because of that, no longer valid the way it used to be two
thousand years ago.
Our current scientific concepts have formed over the past
several centuries, which is approximately the same period of time it took for
the Middle-Platonic and Neo-Platonic views to dominate the philosophical
systems of the Late Antiquity. Natural-scientific concepts have dramatically
evolved and eventually lead to drastic changes in our view of the world and
human being. Perhaps, the effect of the scientific revolution on our worldview
is comparable in its magnitude to the effect produced by the works of the
Middle Platonic writers. Back then, it helped create a unique spiritual
environment, which proved essential for the development of modern day
Christology. Today, we have been suffering a dramatic shift in our mentality
with regard to our concepts of the universe, humanity, culture, religion,
spirituality, consciousness, and God. The old days’ Christology is lagging behind
our modern day concepts and results in our finding it increasingly difficult to
relate the teaching and the works of Jesus Christ to our everyday lives.
Our contemporary concepts run into the traditional
Christological formulae and prevent us from seeing the person of Jesus and from
understanding his words and deeds in such a way that it would connect with our
contemporary understanding of the nature of the universe and the human being.
So far, our notion and the vision of the nature and person
of Jesus Christ have gradually evolved, but mostly through various dramatic
Protestant movements and localized modifications to Christian tradition in both
the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic Churches. Thanks to those alterations and
general simplification of the religious ways throughout the Christian world,
the person of Jesus remains accessible albeit increasingly difficult to relate
to in our everyday lives. Mostly because the Protestant tradition has lost its
momentum and the Orthodox is being generally neglected or abused.
There is an urgent need to meet Jesus as if for the first
time, so much the old perceptions of the events, concerning the life and death,
and resurrection of Jesus Christ, have become generally irrelevant to our
contemporary worldviews. The old time Christology does not seem to correspond
to the spiritual needs of today’s world, which has outgrown the Neo-Platonic
concepts and has new concepts now, verified and organized, and ready to be
fully applied to construe the canonical Gospels and the epistles of the
undeniable New Testament.
There is a need to revisit the Scriptures and look at Jesus
Christ anew. The modern day concepts have given us novel prevailing tools,
language and conceptuality of systematic scientific worldview. In our today’s
desire to communicate as clearly and meaningfully as we can what is on our
minds concerning Jesus, his teachings, and his works, we need to operate these
tools, language and conceptuality fully.
Through consistently operating the scientific concepts we
will be able to discern and communicate the message of Christ in the most
relevant way with regard to our modern day problems and formulate a new
Christology, which is a novel perception of that reality, we call Jesus Christ.
Without new Christology, there will be no Christ.
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