Some comments on some comments on Christology

From my amigo Nick Norelli:

http://rdtwot.wordpress.com/2012/04/13/some-comments-on-christology/

Two comments:

 

Lutherans accuse Calvinists of being Nestorians as well, so the Orthodox are in Protestant company on that one.

True. However, Lutherans and Orthodox anathematize each other for their respective “heresies,” so I can sit back and let mutual annihilation do the rest.

But more to the point, patristic and conciliar Christology’s primary concern was with biblical (OT & NT) Christology. The debates that took place in the 3rd to 5th centuries were exegetical debates.

Several issues:

i) There’s a difference between treating patristic/conciliar interpretations as inherently authoritative, and valuing or evaluating patristic/conciliar conclusions based on the quality of the exegesis.

Frankly, Catholics and Orthodox don’t care what was said, but who said it. They treat patristic/conciliar interpretations as ipso facto authoritative because that emanates from authority-figures, rather than treating the bishops or fathers as authority-figures insofar as the quality of their exegesis merits special deference. It’s a case of ascribed status rather than achieved status.

ii) Even denominations that venerate the church fathers don’t automatically endorse every interpretation of every church father.

iii) In historical theology there are theological refinements that go beyond the exegetical data. And it’s often the refinements that are dogma.

iv) The art of exegesis has made major strides since the patristic era. Although there are things we can learn from the church fathers, there are things the church fathers can learn from us. Patristic exegesis can go seriously awry. And that’s not just my Protestant prejudice. You can see that tension in contemporary Catholic Bible scholarship, where lip-service is paid to the church fathers, but modern scholars often break with patristic tradition.

Church fathers and church doctors (e.g. Aquinas) were frequently quite ignorant regarding the sitz-em-leben of Scripture. They filtered the text through their own period, and not the period of the text. Likewise, many didn’t know one or both Biblical languages.