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Two Dogmas Revisited: Edward Irving's Christology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

Colin Gunton
Colin Gunton*
Affiliation:
Kings College, Christian Doctrine and History, Strand, London WC2R 2LS
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Extract

Two dogmas continue to die hard, despite attempts to destroy them, and it may be that they have good reason for refusing to go away. The first is that what has come to be known as ‘christology from above’ tends to produce a docetic conception of the person of Christ, or at least one in which the humanity of Jesus receives so little emphasis that it becomes little better than a cipher. If an eternal being or hypostasis – to put the matter in the almost tritheistic language that is sometimes used – takes to himself a body, can the resulting being be truly human? Does not the eternal origin inevitably call the tune, undermining the genuineness of the human actions?

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 41 , Issue 3 , August 1988 , pp. 359 - 376
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1988

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References

page 359 note 1 Athanasius, de Incarnatione 42; cf. 17.

page 359 note 2 Sellars, R. V., Two Ancient Christologies. London: SPCK, 1954, p. 44.Google Scholar

page 359 note 3 Athanasius, ib. 8.

page 359 note 4 Meijering, E. P., God, Being, History. Amsterdam and Oxford: North Holland, 1974, p. 126.Google Scholar

page 360 note 5 See, for example, his Second Letter to Nestorius.

page 360 note 6 The one exception commonly quoted is his apparent anticipation of a Nestorian direction in Adv. Haer. III. 19.3, where he speaks of the word being ‘quiescent’ during the incarnate life.

page 360 note 7 Gunton, C. E., Yesterday and Today. London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1983, pp. 54ff.Google Scholar

page 360 note 8 Schleiermacher, F. D. E., The Christian Faith. E. T. by Mackintosh, H. R. and Stewart, J. S., Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1928, pp. 62 and 115 Google Scholar: ‘the Old Testament appears simply a superfluous authority for Dogmatics’.

page 361 note 9 Schleiermacher p. 382: ‘His development must be thought of as wholly free from everything which we have to conceive as conflict’; for the implications for the reality of the temptations, cf. p. 414.

page 362 note 10 Cyril of Alexandria, c. Nest 63C, cited by Prestige, G. L., Fathers and Heretics. London: SPCK, 1940, p. 165.Google Scholar

page 362 note 11 Athanasius, ib. 8.

page 363 note 12 Carlyle, G., ed., The Collected Writings of Edward Irving in Five Volumes, Vol. V, London: Alexander Strachan, 1865, p. 10. Subsequent page numbers in parentheses in the text are to this volume.Google Scholar

page 364 note 13 Compare here Cyril's similarly anti-docetic christology: ‘Moreover we do not distribute the Words of our Saviour in the Gospels to two several subsistences or Persons.… To one Person, therefore, must be attributed all the expressions used in the Gospels, the one incarnate hypostasis of the Word, for the Lord Jesus Christ is one according to the Scriptures.’ (Third Letter to Nestorius VIII.)

page 365 note 14 Not, it would appear, altogether unsuccessfully in the long term: Barth makes favourable reference to Irving's doctrine in Church Dogmatics I/2 p. 154.

page 368 note 15 The Last Days, London: R. B. Seeley and W. Burnside, 1828, pp. 510f.Google Scholar

page 369 note 16 Bishop Kallistos of Diocletia, The Humanity of Christ. The Fourth Constantinople Lecture. Anglican and Eastern Churches Association, 1985.

page 370 note 17 Augustine, , On the Trinity, XV. 26. 46.Google Scholar

page 371 note 18 This point is of great importance in view of the difference between Eastern and Western churches over the filioque, because the failure of the West to give due weight to the part played by the Spirit in the economy of salvation has much to do with the structure of its trinitarian thinking. Although Irving does teach a version of the filioque, there is little doubt that the whole trend of his theology is against it.

page 373 note 19 Lampe, G. W. H., God as Spirit. London: SCM Press, 1977.Google Scholar

page 375 note 20 Owen, John, A Discourse Concerning the Holy Spirit. London, 1674. In Works Vol. III, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1862,, p. 160f.Google Scholar: ‘The only singular and immediate act of the person of the Son on the human nature was the assumption of it into subsistence with himself.’ ‘The Holy Ghost … is the immediate, peculiar, efficient cause of all external divine operations. …’

page 375 note 21 See McGrath, Alister, Justitia Dei, Cambridge University Press, 1986, Vol. II, pp. 125ff.Google Scholar, for Newman's unscholarly misrepresentation of Luther. ‘It seems to us that Newman did not read Luther at first hand. If this conclusion can be shown to be false, then, reluctantly, we are forced to draw the more serious conclusion that Newman deliberately misrepresents Luther’ (p. 127).