New Adam/Last Adam:
When Paul uses Jesus as the last Adam (New Adam), he is expressly referring to the resurrected and exalted Christ. As Adam represents fallen man, so Christ represents man who rose from the dead. Adam denotes life that leads to death; Christ means life from the dead (1 Corinthians 15:21f). Paul carefully contrasts Adam and Christ in (1 Corinthians 15.45). The first man, Adam, became a spirit (1 Cor 15:45). This means that Adam represents all men, every man, man with the breath of life within him, man as opposed to the animals. Whereas the last Adam became the life-giving Spirit - that is, at his resurrection and glorification, when he became the 'source' of the Holy Spirit for all who believe. The contrast is between the old creation and the new, between two levels of life—the life of this earth and this world, the living soul man and the life of the world to come, the life after death. Or rather, the difference is the difference between the two animals representing the two creations - the "earth man" who returns to the land where he was created, whose image all men bear, and the "man of heaven," that is, not Christ , who is thought of as an already existing, but resurrected Christ, into whose image believers will be transformed when he returns from heaven (15:47-9). the breath of life that makes him a living being and Christ the life-giver of the age to come, the life of the Spirit—a role that became Christ's alone with the resurrection and glorification. As the first Adam came into being at creation, the beginning of the age, so the last Adam came into existence at the resurrection, the beginning of the age to come. The same point is implicit in Romans 8:29, where Christ's Adamic role as the eldest brother in the new human family begins with his birth from the dead (cf. Col. 1:18),'*' and Phil. 3.21, where, with the hare in lost Adamic glory, the transformation of our lowly body to be like the resurrection body of Christ is finally achieved." In short, Christ's role as the second man, as the last Adam, begins neither in some pre-existing condition nor in the incarnation, but at his resurrection. For Paul, the resurrection means the beginning of the representative humanity of the last Adam."
In any case, then, the point is that Jesus
shares the fall of sinful man, Adam, so that his death becomes the means for
the creation of a new man, a new humanity. In other words, before he became the
last Adam, Jesus shared the whole lot of the first Adam. Behind all this is
Christology, which consists in the fact that the solution to man's predicament
is not provided by eliminating the previous model and starting again with a new
humanity completely independent of the old, but precisely by Christ following
Adam's difficult situation to the end . (death) and thus become the new Adam v
resurrection after death. The way Jesus becomes
the last Adam is to follow the path taken by the first Adam. Christ begins his
saving work by being one with Adam in his fall before becoming what Adam was
meant to be. He follows in Adam's footsteps, and the moment Adam ends in death,
he takes over and becomes what Adam did not become and could no longer become.
He unites with man in his falling need, to raise man to the glory of God
through death and resurrection. He unites himself with man in his sinfulness,
so that by the power of his life-giving Spirit he can transform man into God's
righteousness. He becomes what Adam by his disobedience fell to, that Adam
might become what Christ was exalted to by his obedience.
Kenotic Christology:
During the nineteenth century, a radical, new school of Christology emerged known as Kenotic Christology, taken from the Greek word kenōsis, meaning "self-emptying". The characterization of Christ's incarnation as "emptying out" was based on the famous hymn of Christ's praise found in Philippians 2:5-8, which reads "...Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be used, but he emptied himself, took the form of a slave, and was born in human form. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself and obeyed death, even dying on the cross. "
Søren Kierkegaard was one of the first proponents of kenotic Christology. Other representatives of Kenoticism are Thomasius, Delitzeh, David W. Forrest, Crosby, Charles Gore, W. F. Gess, Ebrard and Martensen.
Kenoticism can be defined as that "Christological view which holds that in the incarnation Christ ceased to have certain attributes of divinity in order to become truly human."[1] This view raises several questions regarding the scope of kenosis, the relationship between the Logos and the man Jesus, and the state of divine attributes. A. B. Bruce identifies four major schools of kenotic Christology that emerged in response to these questions, each represented by a prominent exponent: Thomasius, Gess, Ebrard, and Martensen.
Thomasius argued that unless the Son of God truly limited himself, there could be no incarnation; only the divine Logos would hover above the human Jesus. Thus the Son of God must enter into human finitude and submit to the limits of space, time, and human development. This is self-restraint and the essence of divinity is not destroyed nor are the two natures confused. The Son of God becomes the divine-human ego and continues to be himself. But he is also a man, because he has a rational soul as well as a body; his ego has a human consciousness as well as a divine one. He only removed those attributes (relative attributes) which are not essential to the deity – omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence. These are only the relational attributes of the Creator to the world. Basic attributes such as absolute truth, holiness and love are preserved.
Gess understood kenosis as the loss of eternal
self-consciousness on the part of Jesus to be gradually regained, and as the
cessation of the flow of life from the Father to the Son, so that the Son was
no longer himself. sufficient. The Logos is metamorphosed into the human soul.
He did not receive a human soul; rather he became a human soul. The only
difference between the human soul and the Logos is that the one became a
kenosis, while the other is the result of a creative act. Consequently, he was
able to sin; lost his eternal holiness. If asked how God could be so completely
extinguished, Gess would say simply because he is God - he would not be
omnipotent if he had no power over himself. This theory includes four
implications for the Trinity: (1)
Only the Father has aseita, and the Son does not experience its "overflow" during the kenosis, (2) during the kenosis, the Spirit cannot emanate from the Son, (3) during the kenosis, the Son no longer holds the universe, and (4) at the glorification, man is taken into the Trinity.
Ebrard agrees with Gess that he puts the Logos in place of the human soul. But this is not a loss of divinity; rather it is a disguise. Kenosis consisted in exchanging the eternal mode of being for a temporary one. Omniscience, omnipotence, and so on are not surrendered, but can now only be expressed in a way that is consistent with space and time, i.e., with respect to concrete objects. For example, omnipotence remained in applied form in Christ's ability to perform miracles. Ebrard accepted the doctrine of two natures, but only as abstract ways of viewing the one divine-human person. The divine person has become subordinate to the world of space-time, and his attributes, in applied form, are manifested in the powers of his humanity, not in conflict with them. Yet he believed that Christ could indeed sin. He also seemed to believe that this kenosis was a decision to permanently renounce an eternal way of being.
Martensen held to a real but relative kenosis.
The pre-existing Logos did not cease to be the sustainer and foundation of the
universe when He reduced Himself to becoming man. In Jesus we see God revealed
in humanity in the form of human consciousness. The Logos thus lives a double
life: He simultaneously sustains the universe and enters into our finitude. But
Martensen never attempts to explain the relationship between these roles of the
Logos, or how such a duality is possible.
The above interpretation leads us to the
following conclusion: That Christ gave up the independent exercise of some of
his relative attributes, but retained the absolute or immanent attributes
because he was perfectly holy, just, merciful, and true (absolute attribute).
In other words, Jesus, the Son of God, divested himself of glory and laid aside
certain attributes of his divinity when he became man, although he was fully
divine and fully human.
Criticism
Kenotic Christology represents a distinctly non-Chalcedian approach to Christology because it holds that the Logos changed in essence through the incarnation. This fact raises the question whether kenoticism does not in fact mean the denial of the divinity of the incarnate Christ. D.M. Baillie in God was in Christ's demands,
So does Christianity teach that God became man? . . . At some point, God. . . turned into a human for about thirty years? It need hardly be said that the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation means nothing of the sort. . . . It would be grotesque to say that
Avatar is associated with transformation in
Ancient Pagan Myths. . . . The divinity and humanity of Christ are not merely
successive phases. . . as if he were first God, then man, and after the days of
His flesh were past, God again, manhood left behind. (82 dmb)
Incarnation is the teaching that Jesus is both
God and man. Baillie, however, argues that while the kenotics maintain that the
Son of God retains his personal identity when he becomes the subject of the human
attributes he takes on, they nonetheless assert that he divested himself of
characteristically divine attributes, so that when he became human he ceased to
be divine . If Jesus is in every sense human, then the kenotic theologian is in
a position to say that God became a human being, which seems absurd. The
question raised by kenotic Christology is the content of the divine nature,
that is, which properties are essential to divinity. Bailey believes that every
change in God is a big change in God. But it is precisely at this point that
kenotics challenge the traditional doctrine, as they argue that many of God's
most significant attributes are actually only contingent attributes of God, and
therefore He can give up these nonessential attributes and still remain God. .
It may be argued that not every change in God is a
substantial change, that God can change in
certain accidental ways while remaining unchanged in his essence or nature. The
crucial question, then, will be whether such a profound change as the kenotics
imagine is merely an accidental change compatible with God's nature.
[1] William Lane Craig, J.P. Moreland, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (Illinois: IVP
Academics, 2003), 604.
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