Christ

...21 November 1980: 667...

...To counter that Schillebeeckx is drawing attention to the experience of the first Christians when Jesus was proclaimed to them by the preachers and to how they expressed that experience...

...And even for those who do read the two volumes, the thrust of what Schillebeeckx is saying is dissipated by the length of time they take...

...Such a reaction, which embarrasses me, reflects the basic problem in the Schillebeeckx christological enterprise...

...The present volume, being more descriptive, may come under less fire...

...Fragmentary promises of the last times take various forms in the present world, often non-religious, but the ultimate salvation involves the overcoming of suffering and the bringing about of peace...

...Most theologians agree the New Testament explains Jesus in terms no longer valid for our world of experience, yet the ultimate test of newer forms of christological experience will be whether they preserve the basis of New Testament experience...

...If I have drawn attention to the length of the volumes, it is because I suspect that this will work against the enduring impact of Schillebeeckx's monumental effort...

...The author fears, however, that today Jesus may be becoming a nebulous figure and a symbolic point of reference for what is really experienced from other sources than the New Testament...

...Many of us will wonder whether it was really wise for Schillebeeckx to have attempted by himself such an almost totally biblical approach...

...The two English titles, Jesus and Christ, for those who have ears to hear, are meant to catch the difference between the two volumes...

...I write this as a fellow-sinner who is responsible for long biblical commentaries...

...Comparison with the present volume has caused a wag to remark that if there is a third volume, it will be entitled Jesus Christ, run 1200 pages, and cost $34.50...

...As a teacher I wonder would not a student emerge with a more cohesive idea of a New Testament christology from select chapters of some 200 pages in J. D. G. Dunn's Unity and Diversity in the New Testament...

...He distances I-II Timothy and Titus even further from Paul by treating them with Jude and II Peter...

...Jesus required the author to do detective work, going behind the New Testament books and beneath their faith-colored portrayal of Christ to reconstruct the historical Jesus and his challenge to people...

...Having studied the books individually, Schillebeeckx does some overall New Testament studies on grace...

...but readers consult commentaries for information on a particular passage, and no piecemeal approach to Schillebeeckx is possible...

...Christ digests and analyzes the New Testament portrayals themselves and concentrates on the way in which Jesus was experienced as Christ and Lord by those who believed in him...

...After Paul, other New Testament works are studied under the same rubric, especially Hebrews and the Johannine Literature (including the Apocalypse...

...The opening of the volume insists correctly that the believer's experience is an intrinsic part of New Testament revelation and an ongoing part of the interpretation of that revelation: "The account of the life of Christians in the world in which they live is a fifth gospel...

...But Schillebeeckx understands that he is still in the area of a prolegomenon in treating the New Testament: "Perhaps it will be possible to make a beginning on what is called 'christology' after the second volume...

...English readers will get a chance to appreciate the quality of the European critique when the short volume that Schillebeeckx wrote in 1978 as an answer to his critics is translated into English (Interim Report on the Books Jesus and Christ, Crossroad Books, 1981...

...The number of people who are willing to plough their way through 1700 close-printed pages on christology are few, especially if it is realized that these two volumes represent chiefly the New Testament area, and equal time would have to be given to patristic and scholastic reflection...

...In a short review I cannot possibly enter into debate* with the thousand specific biblical positions taken by Schillebeeckx in this volume...

...The last two hundred pages move out of the New Testament to study the experience of suffering and God's salvation in other religions and in the human condition...

...Schillebeeckx studies the different christologies in the Pauline letters as they are related to the grace received by those who believed in Jesus...

...His range of reading is enormous, and in general he exercises good critical judgment upon that reading...

...He has learned and appropriated more modem biblical thought than almost any systematic theologian I know...

...A short epilogue contains prayers and confessions by Schillebeeckx embodying his conviction that the experience of, God should express itself in praise...

...While it was necessary for him to understand thoroughly what biblical scholars are about, would he then not have been wiser to work in collaboration with such a scholar and to have given more attention himself to the non-biblical sources...

...I can only repeat what I said elsewhere about his first volume: he has done the work represented here better than any other single person whom I know could, but was this the best use of his talents in the christological enterprise...

...yet in the somewhat snobbish judgment of most biblical scholars Schillebeeckx's many pages on the N*w Testament will be looked on as a brilliant but not totally successful attempt by an outsider to digest their thoughts...

...I find too sweeping and simple some of his descriptions of Old Testament thought, and I wince when I see his enthusiasm for a recent article that I disagreed with...

...A price of almost $55 for the two volumes will force many students to library usage...

...While there might be some hesitation among biblical scholars about whether the lines can be drawn so surely, Schillebeeckx is a refreshing change from those Catholic systematic theologians who admit in a footnote that scholarship makes some distinctions about Pauline authorship but then go on to treat the Pauline corpus as a whole...

...Raymond E. Brown THE FIRST volume of Schillebeeckx's christology was entitled Jesus, ran 767 pages, and cost $24.50...

...Much of the scholarly critique of the first volume, while mixed with admiration for Schillebeeckx's endeavor, questioned the methodology and accuracy of the reconstruction, especially as regards the resurrection event...

...it also belongs at the heart of christology...

...Moving to the Christian record, Schillebeeckx starts with the oldest section of the New Testament, the collected letters of Paul, among which he distinguishes authentic Pauline letters, a transitional Pauline piece (Philippians), and Pauline Commonweal: 666 works "outside the authentic letters" (Colossians, Ephesians, II Thessalonians...

...He is a systematic theologian with skills that biblical scholars do not possess...

...In discussing that experience and its expressions Schillebeeckx wisely begins with Old Testament and early Jewish thought about the "mercy" of God, since the first Christians saw a continuity with the past (as well as novelty) in the divine grace they encountered in Jesus...