An Author Interview from Books At a Glance
Greetings, I’m Fred Zaspel, and welcome to another Author Interview here at Books At a Glance.
“Who is Jesus?” is certainly one of the most important questions anyone can entertain – our salvation hinges on it. In 2016 Crossway published Dr. Stephen Wellum’s in depth work, The Son of God Incarnate, which we recognized then as an outstanding contemporary achievement. Dr. Wellum now has released a much smaller work on the topic, entitled The Person of Christ: An Introduction, and he’s with us today to talk about his new book.
Steve, welcome, and congratulations again on a brief but really excellent book.
Wellum:
Thank you, Fred,! Great to be with you again.
Zaspel:
Let’s start with just a broad overview of your book. You have divided your work in three main divisions – sketch them out for us just in just in broad strokes.
Wellum:
It follows in some sense the larger work, but it is trying to reach a different audience, a much shorter version. The first part is working through issues of methodology in terms of the importance of the question. How we approach the subject of the scripture and doing theology and Christology and the person of Christ in this case. I work through the biblical data in that entire section. I give some sense of it in the whole Bible and then specific key Christological passages that tell us who Jesus is as God the Son incarnate. Then I go through the historical development. From biblical material we see how the church has thought to put all the data together in being faithful to scripture and then I finish with an overall theological summary to wrap up key statements. What we are saying when we are confessing that the Lord Jesus is God, the Son incarnate, one person, and fully God, fully human.
Zaspel:
In chapter one, you argue that our Christology must be “from above” and not “from below.” Explain what you mean by this and why it is so important in today’s theological context.
Wellum:
Those terms “from above” or “from below” get used by people in different ways. I am using them very specifically. Authors have the right to define terms in a specific way. I think they are more accurate in terms of what is going on in biblical scholarship and in theology, as we seek to look at scripture and draw theological conclusions regarding Christ. So “from above” is seeking to understand who Jesus is from divine revelation. We start “from above” beginning from God’s self-revelation in the entire canon of scripture. Sometimes “from above” refers to starting with the deity of Christ and then below humanity. But I do not think that is exactly right. “From above” is starting from revelation. We could start within that revelation, the humanity, and deity of Christ, but it’s the scripture that is giving us who Jesus is.
“From below” is really what happens in the historical-critical reconstruction of scripture. This really takes off in the 1700s, in the enlightenment, the modern world, the rise of historical criticism, and the quest for the historical Jesus. Everyone refers to the bible in these movements but it’s a reconstructed Bible. They are not starting with scripture as God’s own interpretation of His mighty actions. “From below” is from a historical-critical perspective or from the fabric of human experience. That will always lead us away from the Bible, which is the Jesus of the Bible, or from the posture of divine revelation.
Zaspel:
Sketch out for us the theological context that is necessary for a right understanding of the person of Christ.
Wellum:
I am trying to argue here if you are starting from divine revelation you are starting from all of scripture. You are not starting with just the New Testament. The New Testament makes no sense without the Old Testament. It is a unified canon. Scripture is God’s word written; it unfolds God’s eternal plan across time through the covenant fulfilled now in the coming of Christ. The coming of Christ in the New Testament, the Son of God becoming incarnate, builds on the plan of God that is revealed to us in the Old Testament. We start with first the creator, creature distinction. If you don’t start, there you don’t have the Christian view of the world. God as creator and makes us creatures. That is going to be crucial as the Lord Jesus comes, who is eternally the son. So, He is God, now takes on humanity and the even later understanding of two natures of Christ builds off creator, creature distinction. If you have a different worldview structure such as pantheism you are never going to get the Bible’s view of Jesus. Christ is understood in terms of the storyline of God as creator. This is the very rationale of why we need a human. The last Adam is built off the early chapters of Genesis, human depravity, and sin. As we work through the Old Testament, we are anticipating a human who will come and who will obey. Yet He is not merely a human, He is also the Lord. Of course, that establishes Father and Son relationships, the humanity of Christ, the Son of God language from the New Testament built on the Old Testament structures. Built of the Old Testament and moving right into the New Testament. Who is this Jesus? He is the eternal Son who has become human, taken on humanity as the last Adam, who has fulfilled the promises of the Old Testament, the great Davidic king, the seed of Abraham, the true Israel. He comes to do a work for us. Tied to His humanity but also His deity. He is also the eternal Son who satisfies His own righteous requirement. All of that is necessary to make sense of who Jesus is biblically.
Fred:
Its fascinating to see the two tracks in Old Testament. One is that God will come and bring in His day and establish His kingdom. And then the other track says David’s son will come and He will establish the kingdom, once in a while the Old Testament, even those two merge and of course it all comes together at the incarnation.
Wellum:
The Old Testament provides all the background in setting you up for what the New Testament is teaching. Tied to creator, creature distinction obviously God as creator and Lord and then tied to redemption God must save. God is the lord. There is no salvation apart from God taking the initiative to save, yet He will do so given humans creation in God’s image. Given the role of Adam, given the demand for obedience from us as fully devoted creatures to the God who has made us. The human role that is vital that eventually gets fulfilled in Christ who is fully God, fully human. Truly God, truly man. That is so crucial to understand the kingdom work of Christ and identity as Jesus as the eternal son who has become the human son. Both of those streams are very important.
Zaspel:
It would be impossible to believe in the deity of Christ if Christ himself showed no awareness of it, and in chapter 3 you survey this idea of Jesus’ own self-assessment as we see it in the Gospels. This is very important. Give us just some highlights of what you provide here.
Wellum:
As we come to the Gospels it is crucial to set it in the context of the Old Testament. If you do not do that some of these points don’t stand out and have the significance that they do. For instance, when Jesus announces that He is inaugurating the kingdom shown in all of the Synoptics; Matthew, Mark, Luke, and also in John, in terms of the bringing of eternal life. That inauguration of the kingdom is no minor thing. It brings God’s rule and reign to this world. The prophets anticipate God through the king doing that. The very fact Jesus says I’m the one who is inaugurating the kingdom is another way of saying he is bringing the very rule of God to this world which is an act of God. So, it speaks uniquely of who He knows He is in relationship to the Father, who brings the kingdom in as the Son. And then other passages that speak of His own understanding of Him as the eternal Son, Son of the Father. Matthew 11 is moving more than just simply a human king of sonship.
He is the one who knows the Father perfectly. Full knowledge of God, who does He think He is? Tie this to the I am statements. Particularly the statements that are just simply “I am”, John 58, “before Abraham was I am.” And then He sees Himself as bringing the very works of God. Tied to the kingdom, the forgiveness of sins, the pouring out of the Spirit. All of those in the Old Testament are acts of God so that in bringing the kingdom, the forgiveness of sins, the ushering in of the Spirit, and seeing His identity as the Son to the Father, in the most unique relationship imaginable that goes far beyond any human relationship, all of these are crucial. Jesus is identifying himself as the eternal son.
Zaspel:
How is the virgin birth important for Christology, and what would we lose without it?
Wellum:
The virgin birth is crucial. It is the explanation of how it is that God the Son, adds to Himself a human nature, how the word became flesh. This is the virgin conception. Built off Old Testament expectation from Isa. 7:14 and so on. So here is the supernatural means. What would be lost without it is the explanation of how true incarnation takes place. It reveals the supernatural work from beginning to end. Christ is not just merely a human, but the eternal Son entered this world by adding a human nature to Himself. The agency of the Father sends the Son, and the Son adds himself a human nature by the Spirit.
So, it’s pretty hard to fathom when you start thinking of ways of how this would have been possible if there was no virgin birth or conception. Basically, Joseph and Mary would have functioned as the parents of the individual Jesus, but that is not what the incarnation is saying. It is the eternal Son who gives to the human nature its person. That would not make sense. You would also have in some sense Joseph as a father would be a father in a true sense, but it is very clear that the Son of God only has one Father from eternity, so he does not have a double fatherhood. This is very crucial.
Something here to explain how it is that you have a new start Jesus is presented in the New Testament as the first man of the new creation. Adam is the first man of the old creation. But with the virgin conception we have a way of explaining how it is that Christ is not in Adam like we are. He is human, he came from Mary and by the sanctifying work of the Spirit and what she contributes is made holy, yet we cannot say Christ is in Adam like we are. He is the first man of the new creation, no imputation of guilt or pollution. He is sanctified and cleansed by the Spirit. So, it explains better how it is that the Son of God is not in Adam, guilt is not imputed to him. He is the first man who we are now brought into faith union. In salvation we are taken out of Adam and placed into Christ and he is placed into new creation. All of that is bound up in the conception and virgin birth and without all of that you don’t have the Jesus of the Bible.
Zaspel:
In chapter 4 you survey the contribution of the major Christological passages in the New Testament. We can’t get into those here in any kind of depth, but maybe you can just identify those primary passages with a brief, crisp statement of their respective contributions.
Wellum:
What I try to do there is work through those passages to then say here is the rudimentary building blocks to what the church will eventually confess as the Chalcedonian creed. John 1:1-18, I take that whole section, the important point there that John is emphasizing, is that you can’t understand who Jesus is apart from being the Son of God or eternal word of God. Automatically we have to think of Christ in terms of trinitarian relationship of Father Son and Spirit. “The word is with God” speaks a distinction yet “The Word is God” has an emphasis on the trinitarian. John 1:14 says “the Word became flesh,” It is not talking of divine nature but the person. The second person of the godhead who adds to Himself the human nature, God and the Spirit didn’t add the human nature, but it was The Word. So, we have the rudiments of what later in theology becomes the person nature distinction. John 1 is crucial and then you have all other kinds of glorious fulfillments of theophany from Old Testament and mosaic glory. Then as we move to Colossians 1:15-20, “the great Christological hymn.” Fully the deity of the Son but again it’s trinitarian.
Also, in vv. 16-17, you have the Son as the sustainer. It is put in perfect tense; it reminds us these are the cosmic function. The son is the agent of creation. The one who through the Father and Son sustains the universe. Continues to sustain even as the incarnate Son. It is very important in affirming the two natures, the action of the Son in terms of divine action outside of His human nature. Philippians 2, a very crucial text, speaks of the eternal Son, who is in the very nature or form of God. Humbling is by addition, so the incarnation is not subtraction of deity but the addition of humanity. Also, the subject of the verbs is the son. Here we again see trinitarian agency, the Father sends the Son. The Son takes to Himself a human nature and then in the virgin birth passages, by the Spirit, so that we have famously inseparable operations, Father through Son by Spirit. But the Son adds to Himself that human nature and then the work of the Father in the Sons work and glorifying and exalting Him.
Tied to the human work of the Son in terms of His obedience even to death on a cross. Hebrews 1 picks up, “he is the last of all of the revelation, of past God spoke, in these last days he has spoken in the Son who is heir of all things.” Tied to His unique work but He is the creator sustainer, the radiance, the exact correspondence of God’s being. Which speaks of His full deity and it picks up His humanity in terms of sitting down and being our great high priest. Hebrews 2 is a rationale for incarnation. Why did the Son of God become human? In order to redeem us. Our confessions pick that up, for us and our salvation, he became the last Adam, in humanity, obeyed, went to the cross, Philippians 2, becomes the great high priest. Passages together give us trinitarian relations. Full deity of the eternal son. Full humanity, it speaks about the person adding human nature to himself. Of inseparable operation, his work that he does for us. Those are crucial texts that give us the rudiments and the building blocks and the churches confession of Christ.
Zaspel:
Summarize for us how the church has historically stated a biblical christology. And with this discuss the distinctions between “nature” and “person.” Just how is Christ to be understood as one person with two natures?
Wellum:
Dealing with areas that are crucial in the church. From Scripture the church is contesting Christ as the eternal Son who has become flesh and as they think of the Son to the Father, they first think in terms of the trinitarian relations. It is not accidental that in the proclamation of Christ and the Gospel and who He is you have to speak also about Father, Son and Spirit. We have Nicea which lays down the trinitarian confession building on Constantinople. But what’s driving it is the Christological formulation as well. Here is the eternal Son in relation to the Father and Spirit. Out of that comes what is really crucial, to think through in terms of the doctrine of the Trinity, the person-nature distinction. These are inseparable notions, yet they are different ontological categories. The oneness of the one God who is the true and living God, who is then spoken of in terms of the nature.
We think of the nature in terms of God and His attributes and perfection, so we speak of the unity of the divine nature, the simplicity, aseity, independent, self-sufficiency, eternality, power and so on. God is one yet within one being or one nature of God, three persons. You can’t have the nature without the persons, or persons without the nature, yet they are different in their understanding, yet the persons are now seen as subsisting relations. The father has paternity, He is distinguished from the Son in terms of His subsisting relation and fatherhood. The Son who is everything we see in scripture is from the Father. They all, Father and Son share the exact same identical undivided divine nature. They have everything in terms of deity. God is one and uniquely one. The Father, Son, and Spirit share the same divine nature but are distinguished by their personal properties.
Then from that, the church will affirm that in terms of John 1:1 and 1:14 it’s the Son, the Eternal Son, who now adds to Himself a second nature and that second nature is a human nature that consists of what we know of a human nature of something physical. A body-soul duality that the Son adds to Himself. And person would be the best way of understanding the subject of the nature. The person acts through the nature. So, the son acts through the nature, so the son has from eternity acted inseparable with the Father and Sprit through divine nature through a second human nature. Acting through both natures, remained unchanged as to who He is in terms of deity and relation of Father and Spirit and He is able to also act through human nature. The church affirmed creator-creature distinction even in the incarnation so what the Son is as Creator and Lord with the Father and Spirit remains unchanged. There is no blend of the human nature. So, the natures remain two, distinct and not confused. Yet they are united in the one person of the Son who is the subject of both natures and in those natures, He doesn’t change the natures. The human nature retains all that is human. He doesn’t make the human nature all-powerful, eternal, all present.
Finite, localized, the Son through that nature and its attributes is fully human. And so, we have the full affirmation of the full humanity of the Son of God, yet He is what He has always been. The eternal Son in and through subsisting in sharing the divine nature of the Father and Spirit. Dual agency, dual actions. One person, two natures. Truly god, truly man. Fully god. fully man. And the person is now able to live a full human life through that human nature and he continues what he has always been through Father and the Spirit. Those are the basics that eventually get summarized from Nicea, the trinitarian formulation all the way to Chalcedon 451, the great Christological definition of who Jesus is.
Zaspel:
Talk to us about the Greek term theotokos – was Mary the “mother of God”? Or does that translation overstate what was intended at Chalcedon?
Wellum:
The Chalcedonian definition picks up theotokos a lot of English translations will translate it “mother of God.” It’s probably best to translate it “God-bearer.” Mother of God is fine but its been in roman catholic theology, the veneration of Mary, etc. And Chalcedon is very clear that Mary is the God-bearer but it’s tied to His humanity. So, what’s at stake here in theotokos it’s a very crucial Christological point. It was a term that was tied to Chalcedon and tied to Cyril of Alexandria over against Nestorius. It taught that Jesus is two persons in two natures. There is a human person alongside a divine person and a larger unity. You then have real problems. You don’t have the word became flesh, the word the Son added to Himself a human individual, some form of adoptionism takes place.
Human nature that comes alongside the divine word. That is not what is in scripture about incarnation. The subject of the person of the human nature is not a human person. It is the divine Son. The word became flesh, the person of the Son adds to Himself a human nature so that the divine person is the subject of the human nature so that in Mary bearing, contributing that which brings about the human nature of Christ. Because it is united to the divine Son, she is the God-bearer. Not the bearer of God in the sense of divine nature or person, she bears the humanity of Christ, but humanity is united to the divine person, so she bears God. Part of this is what is known as the communication of properties, communicatio idiomatum. What’s true of the nature is true of the person. When she bears the human nature because that human nature is united to the person. She is bearing God the Son but it’s the humanity technically that she is bearing. Its a crucial point in that there is only one person. The person of the Lord Jesus is the divine Son. We have a divine Redeemer. We need God to save us and its God the Son who redeems us through His humanity. Now you have a divine redeemer that is human and able to save us. Precisely the kind of Redeemer that we need.
Zaspel:
How is this doctrine of the person of Christ important “for us and for our salvation”?
Wellum:
The bottom line is that without the Christology of Chalcedon which I think accurately reflects the teaching of scripture, so our confessional standards must be consistent with scripture itself and I think on this case it is consistent. True teaching. Without the Christ of Chalcedon, which is the Jesus of the Bible, you have no Savior and that is what is crucial and that’s why it’s for us and our salvation. And why that is the case is you think of the entire storyline of scripture. The entire plan of God. Each one of us as creatures and image-bearers, those who are called in Adam and by our very creation we are called to obey and serve god. A demand for perfect covenantal obedience and devotion to god.
We are creatures, God has made us for Himself. He is the kind of God who doesn’t just say do your best. We need one to obey for us and love God and neighbor fully. Only the Lord Jesus can do that for us in taking on our humanity and rendering covenantal obedience. We have sinned against God. He does not grade on the curve. God is the moral standard of the universe. He is just, holy, righteous. All His attributes and perfections. We need God to meet His own righteous demand because we have sinned against God. We need a divine redeemer who takes His own demand upon Himself as well as rendering human obedience. Doctrine of justification means we need the righteousness of the obedient Son of God in His covenantal obedience for us that is imputed to us. Sin paid for in full, penal substitution is what I am getting at. We sinned against God, he must satisfy His own wholly righteous demand against us and it’s only in Christ that you have a divine-human redeemer who is able to save us and save us completely.
Zaspel:
We’re talking to Dr. Stephen Wellum about his excellent new book, The Person of Christ: An Introduction. It’s brief, but it’s packed – an excellent introduction to his marvelous theme.
Steve, great to talk to you again – thanks so much.
Wellum:
Thank you, Fred!
