The document discusses how Christology still matters today and outlines several key points. It examines the Council of Nicaea and the debates between Arius and Athanasius over the nature of Christ. It then addresses why right Christology is important for concepts like salvation, God-talk, and preventing injustice. The document argues that Christology should shape how we live and act in the world. It poses questions about who Jesus is for us today and how we can make a difference through living like Christ in areas like social justice, creation care, helping the poor, and bringing hope.

1. Who is Jesus Christ for us today?

2. 1. ‘New ways to say an old thing’
Nicaea: an old argument re-visited

3. Christology matters!
South Africa: the townships, 1985
The Kairos Document

4. ‘The time has come. The moment of truth has
arrived. South Africa has been plunged into a
crisis that is shaking the foundations and there is
every indication that the crisis has only just
begun and that it will deepen and become even
more threatening in the months to come. It is
the KAIROS or moment of truth not only for
apartheid but also for the Church.

5. A crisis is a judgment that brings out the best in
some people and the worst in others. A crisis is a
moment of truth that shows us up for what we
really are. There will be no place to hide and no
way of pretending to be what we are not in fact.
At this moment in South Africa the Church is
about to be shown up for what it really is and no
cover-up will be possible.

6. What the present crisis shows up, although
many of us have known it all along, is that the
Church is divided. More and more people are
now saying that there are in fact two Churches
in South Africa - a White Church and a Black
Church. Even within the same denomination
there are in fact two Churches.

7. In the life and death conflict between different
social forces that has come to a head in South
Africa today, there are Christians (or at least
people who profess to be Christians) on both
sides of the conflict - and some who are trying
to sit on the fence!

8. Does this prove that Christian faith has no real
meaning or relevance for our times? Does it
show that the Bible can be used for any purpose
at all? Such problems would be critical enough
for the Church in any circumstances but when
we also come to see that the conflict in South
Africa is between the oppressor and the
oppressed, the crisis for the Church as an
institution becomes much more acute.

9. Both oppressor and oppressed claim loyalty to
the same Church. They are both baptized in the
same baptism and participate together in the
breaking of the same bread, the same body and
blood of Christ. There we sit in the same Church
while outside Christian policemen and soldiers
are beating up and killing Christian children or
torturing Christian prisoners to death while yet
other Christians stand by and weakly plead for
peace.’

10. The key question:
Is there anything about ‘right belief’
that connects us to the character Jesus
and prevents us from doing/being blind
to great evil done in his name?

11. Council of Nicaea
Bithynia, Turkey, 325

14. Substance abuse: all about an ‘i’
• Homoousion – Athanasius
(of one substance)
• Homoiousion – Arius
(of a similar substance)

15. Arius’ theology
• God is absolutely one, the source and origin of all
that exists
• God’s ousia therefore absolutely incommunicable
• Son was created by divine fiat in order to create
the world
• ‘There was when he (the Word) was not’
• Son has no real knowledge of the Father
• Not authentic but adoptive Son of God

16. Nicene Creed
1. ‘Eternally begotten of the Father’ (vs created ex
nihilo)
2. ‘True God from true God’ (vs ‘God in name only,
not substance’)
3. ‘Begotten, not made’ (vs a temporal gap ‘when
the Son was not’)
4. ‘Of one substance with the Father’ (vs ‘of a
similar substance’)

17. Why does it matter (1)?
• God: an absolute identity of nature, will and
action
• God is never without the Word; therefore Jesus
reveals God faithfully and eternally
• ‘God is as *God+ is in Jesus; therefore there is
hope!’ (Bishop David Jenkins)
• Participation in Jesus is participation in the Life of
God

18. Why does it matter (2)?
• Salvation: Theosis
• Christian distinctiveness: ‘new creation’;
transformation – an unforeseeable event
• Athanasius: God alone saves, without
mediation. Salvation is to share in the finality
of the divine Life
• Salvation history vs a divine ‘fiat’: a critical
rupture to achieve a decisive salvation

19. Why does it matter (3)?
• Our God-talk: ‘theology of repetition’ vs
something constructive & exploratory
• Athanasius: do justice to the requirements of
intellectual clarity + the wholeness of the
worshiping and reflecting life of the Church
• Arius: a conservative. Saw Christian identity
guaranteed by its relationship to the Empire
• Athanasius: Saw the Church to challenge both
politics and charismatic individualism

20. Good Christology & Christ-likeness
• Not enough to ‘name the name’
• Right belief is supposed to pattern our living and
acting in the world on Jesus
• Doctrine not in itself a guarantee of Christ-
likeness
• Church can be part of the Kingdom or part of that
from which the world needs saving
• Church/Christian faith as ‘Christopraxis’

21. 2. ‘Who is Jesus Christ for us
today?’
or: ‘Making a Jesus-shaped
difference’

22. Bonhoeffer’s question

23. Moltmann’s question

24. The Kingdom of God:
salvation for this world
• Global village: interconnectedness of humanity
and depth of brokenness
• Structural sin: ‘what makes the world go round’
• God’s mission: transformation of the world into
the Kingdom
• The Church & mission: on which ‘side’ is the
Church?

25. The Cosmic Christ:
a planet in the balance
• Jesus as the agent of creation (John’s gospel,
Colossians)
• Creation, divine intention & the Imago Dei
• Jesus, New Creation & Second Adam (Paul)
• Eschatology, stewardship & climate change

26. The priority of the poor:
a message for a consumerist society
• ‘The least first’ vs ‘the greatest good of the
greatest number’
• ‘Make poverty history’
• Salvation: from sin and the sins committed
against us
• Jesus: solidarity with the oppressed;
forgiveness for the oppressors (Moltmann)

27. Good Friday:
God & a world of suffering
• Scandal of suffering (cf Michael Buerke)
• Scandal of divine impassibility
• Jesus: God’s entry into suffering
• Gethsemane: Jesus is abandoned to suffering
• The cross: God abandons God’s self to
suffering
• ‘You are not alone’

28. Easter Sunday:
hope for the world
• The resurrection: recreatio ex nihilo
• The power of Life and the impotence of The
Powers
• The power of Love: ‘What can separate us
from the love of God in Christ?’
• Mustard seeds: the power of the small

29. The uniqueness of Jesus:
Christians with something to say
• Jesus ≠ Christianity
• Uniqueness of Jesus ≠ uniqueness of the Church
• Uniqueness of Jesus: what God has done in Jesus
at Easter
• Uniqueness of Jesus: how to live as a human
being
• Jesus: experiencing the Life of God through the
Spirit