# God was in Christ (Baillie)



## RamistThomist (Dec 29, 2017)

Baillie begins by noting that docetism is impossible in modern theology. The emphasis, rightly or wrongly, is now on the humanity of Christ. Of course, he wrote this in the middle of the century, so some things might have changed. In this book we see push back against Karl Barth that is neither exactly from a liberal perspective nor from an overtly Reformed one.

In the first few chapters Baillie surveys the “Jesus of History/Christ of Faith” debates. One gets the impression he is annoyed (and rightly so) with the focus of them. He says by way of conclusion, “The Jesus of History….means simply and precisely: ‘Jesus as He really was in his Life on earth’” (Baillie 47).

_Paradox of the Incarnation_

One of the things that separates the Christian idea of God is not simply that God rewards those who obey him, but more that he gave the ability to obey him (121). He gives all that he demands.

_True God and True Man_

The language of “self-consciousness” of Jesus. Baillie says it has an unfortunate sound, as the NT was more concerned with God-consciousness than self-consciousness (125).

Aquinas’s language of the two-fold grace given to Christ (grace of habit, common to all men, and grace of union, common to Christ) is artificial. In any case, the NT speaks more of the grace of Christ given to us (128).

_Positives_

*Baillie attacks Karl Barth’s fear of saying historical things about Jesus (52-53). He says this leads to Barth’s having a theology of the Word of God (Logotheism) but not a theology of the Incarnation of the Son of God.

*Great analysis of Kenoticism. If Kenosis means God the Son emptied himself of all his divine properties, then the following seem to entail:

~1. What was the Logos doing in the universe outside of Palestine for those 30 years?

~2. We have a Theophany, not an Incarnation. God changed into a man.

~3. If he got rid of all his distinctively divine properties, then he has nothing left to identify himself as divine. 

~4. The theory presupposes that divinity and humanity cannot coexist in the same person. Yet kenoticists also want to believe that Jesus in his Ascension and session at God’s right hand has both divine and human properties, so why does it obtain there and not on earth?

Negatives

*While Baillie does a good job in showing the limits of Form, Source Criticism, he never brings himself to blast it out of the water.
*Baillie never escapes the "tug" of liberal thought, in that he can't give a full-orbed deconstruction (demythologizing?) of Bultmann.

Conclusion

This book has a warm, reverent spirit. It contains several crucial insights and its discussion of kenotic theology is quite good. But in much of its understanding it is quite dated in light of recent New Testament studies. Further, current works in Christology, such as Thomas V. Morris's "two-minds" account in _The Logic of God Incarnate, _solve many problems that Baillie does not.

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