# Person of Christ (Berkouwer)



## RamistThomist (Jan 2, 2015)

The first part of the book is simply a review of conciliar statements on Christology. While occasionally hinting at new developments, Berkouwer's treatment is little different from what you would find in any historical theology manual.

When he deals with specific aspects like the humanity of Christ and the sinlessness of Christ, he breaks new ground. He notes that traditions like Rome and EO who hold to a strong communicatio of the divine nature to the human really can't make sense of passages that say Jesus grew in knowledge, or hoped, or feared. Such statements would imply a "Lack" on Jesus' part, and given that the human nature is fully suffused with divinity, would be quite problematic. He doesn't fully solve all of the conundrums on Jesus' sinlessness, but he does make a neat suggestion: Jesus is fully free as he is sinless, thus Berkouwer cuts loose from all libertarian models of freedom. 

It was the genius of Reformed writers not to be hampered by these questions and to focus on the 3 Offices of Christ. Only Calvin and his students could really rejoice in the statement that Jesus was truly forsaken by the Father. If you aren't being accused of Nestorianism on this point, then you simply aren't preaching the text. 

Criticisms:

He points to some tensions in Chalcedon but doesn't develop the reasons behind them. I don't think all of modern liberal theology rejected Chalcedon simply because it said Jesus was God and enlightened moderns don't believe that. No doubt some did. I wonder, however, if a number of them saw that Chalcedon presupposed a single-subject Christology and later moves in conciliar Christology--say, Dyotheletism--leaned heavily towards a fully activating human nature and self-consciousness, something Cyril wouldn't have said. 

With that said and assumed, Berkouwer does make the interesting suggestion (p. 69) that if you use Chalcedon as the starting point of exegesis, you really won't be able to maintain the dual-natures unity. Of course, one should maintain the values expressed by Chalcedon, but by using them as a compass. Berkouwer is right on this point.

Conclusion:

It's worth reading and it is fairly readable. He doesn't cover as much new ground as he does in his other works.


----------

