A Book Review for Books At a Glance
by Peter van Brussel
What does it mean to be human? The church has been trying to answer this question over the centuries and it has not been too successful, only able to come up with “body-soul” and “physicalist” distinctives finding itself at a “stalemate.” How does the church move forward with an answer to the all-important question about human identity? That is what this book hopes to accomplish by giving a “new model for anthropology.”
The author of this book is Michael A. Wilkinson. He received his PhD from Southern Seminary. He has served as a Pastor of a church in Texas, a Harvard Law School campus ministry director, and as an adjunct professor of theology. He currently lives in Bozeman, Montana where he practices law.
This book is the author’s published dissertation wherein his basic argument is that God created humans in His image to represent Him on the earth. This image became corrupted at the Fall and instead of recreating human beings God sent His Son to show us what it looks like to be truly human.
This happens to be a basic theme within the story line of the Bible and understanding what it means to be human by looking to Jesus “aids the church’s consideration of who we are in Christ, and how we should live in Christ.”
In the fourth and fifth centuries, the church defined what it means that Christ is fully God and fully man in the Chalcedonian creed. Since the creed defines Christ’s humanity in comparison to His divinity, the author argues that to truly understand what it means to be human the church must find the answer to that question in consideration of the definition of the Chalcedonian creed.
The book is structured in three main parts with a conclusion, followed by a bibliography and an index. The first part consists of two chapters and lays the groundwork for a “biblical warrant for defining human being in Christ” in chapter one, as well as an “epistemological warrant for defining human being in Christ” in the second chapter.
In part two the author turns to Chalcedonian Christology as a “warrant for defining human being in Christ.” This part consists of three chapters. In chapter three the author “examines the divine ontology of the eternal son” and in chapter four he “examines the incarnate ontology of the son.” He then moves on to “discuss “how the early church clarified this person-nature being of Christ.”
Part three is where the author makes “theological conclusions regarding ontology in anthropology.” This last part consists of three chapters and a conclusion. In chapter six the author “takes up the work of Christological analysis.” Chapter seven “proposes a Chalcedonian anthropology grounded in the previous Christological analysis.” In chapter eight, which is the last chapter, the author deals with “the two most immediate and significant objections to a Chalcedonian anthropology.” In the conclusion the author discusses the “place and promise of a Chalcedonian anthropology.”
In this book the author’s argument is that while the traditional orthodox ontology of the church is mainly concerned with person-nature as a definition for Jesus, and Christian anthropology is concerned with soul-body as a definition, he contends that when moving from Christology to anthropology the church needs to “maintain the categories of orthodox ontology when we move from Christology to anthropology.” In the introduction to this book he writes,
At Chalcedon, the early church made this extension when its theological formulations moved from the Trinity to Christ. Using the person-nature distinction, Chalcedonian Christology gives us a definition by which we can confess that the divine Son became a fully (but not merely) human being. By taking a particular human nature (body and soul) into his own person, the Son became the man Jesus Christ. And if this man is the paradigm for all mankind, we need a consistently Chalcedonian definition by which we can confess that human being itself is made in the image of Christ. We need to use the same categories of person and nature in our definitions of the man and mere man.
The author posits three presuppositions that guide his proposal. First, Jesus is our example of what it means to be truly human. Second, the Chalcedonian creed gives us our “understanding of the divine Son’s incarnation as a man.” And third, the Reformed tradition is the most “helpful articulation of orthodox ontology.”
The importance of a proper understanding of what it means to be truly human is summed up by the author when he writes, it “would go a long way to protecting unborn human beings, identifying gender in human beings, and raising the dignity of all human beings.”
It is my position that having a proper understanding of what it means to be human would eliminate many of the problems that we have in the world, i.e., violence, starvation, crime, and many more. Think of Hagar in Genesis. It is significant that her story is early in the biblical story and that she names God as the God who sees her. It informs us that God sees the plight of the weak and vulnerable and that one day He will make things right. It is important that we understand what it truly means to be human so that we can correctly display the image of God—the image we were created in. So far we have done poorly in this vocation.
I applaud the author for taking up this kind of study. It is most definitely a conversation that must be had. As he said in the conclusion of his introduction, “Answering the what question of anthropology by defining human being in Christ should inform our understanding of who we are in Christ and how we should live in Christ.”
In full transparency, this is exactly what I try to get across to the inmates who I teach, and preach to, in my occupation as a prison chaplain. Our relationships with those around us will never be what they are supposed to be until we understand “who we are in Christ and how we should live in Christ.”
The book concludes with six theses and brief explanations of those theses. This is then followed up with the author’s theological conclusions. The author certainly did his research. It was an excellent read that was informative albeit somewhat drawn out. I recommend it to anyone who has an interest in Christology and anthropology.
Peter van Brussel