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Jesus Christ: Fundamentals of Christology

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I first encountered this book at a Roman Catholic Seminary. All of us very much enjoyed it and it was commonly agreed it was one of the best books we had to buy. After several years out of seminary, it is one volume that comes in handy and also for spiritual reading.

If you are looking for a Christology text, this is the best one on the market.

Students of theology will recall Hans Urs von Balthasar's call for a generation of "kneeling theologians" to arise. These would be women and men who brought not only their erudition to the task of theology but also their faith. Fr. Roch A. Kereszty, O.Cist., a man of exquisitely detailed and vast learning, is one of the leading kneeling theologians of our time, in my opinion. The phrase "kneeling theologian" stirs up questions regarding objectivity versus subjectivity, historiography versus theology, or rationalism versus a more comprehensive engagement of the subject matter. These issues, some of them epistemological concerns, are raised by Fr. Keresty.

For the student of Christology what is most satisfying is Fr. Kereszty's steady-handed and theologically balanced tour through the history of Christian theology -- from the Apostles to the Fathers to the Schoolmen and on into the Reformation/Renaissance, Enlightenment, and modern period. His gifts of compression and clarity make this book a must: one walks away with an expert education in the landmarks of Christology. Expert level? Yes, for Fr. Kereszty's other gift is his ability to select from his own storehouse of learning exactly those things that the student must know if he or she is to advance on to the guild of theologians. Prudence and selectivity alone recommend this book.

Perhaps Fr. Kereszty's greatest gift, though, is the beauty of holiness evident in his faith. In thirty-five years of reading secondary literature on Christian topics, I can say that this text is densely set with shocks of illumination comparable to no other book I have read. I have given it to bishops, religious sisters, deacons, monks, priests, and other scholars. Many of them tell me they use it for reflective spiritual reading. Several of my grad students -- women and men who have ready many, many other theology books and articles -- have written me to say that this book was a life-changing experience for them. As the Eternal Word is the source and organizing principle for all life, I countenance this landmark work on Jesus Christ to be one of the most important books of our era.

It is used as the basic text for Christology in schools as theologically diverse as Andover Newton Seminary, Bethel University, Lourdes College, Pittsburgy Theological Seminary, Sacred Heart Seminary, St. Joseph's College of Maine, St. Mary's University, Seton Hall University, Trinity Western University, University of Dallas, and the University of Notre Dame.

Father Kereszty is one of the sought-after writers who publishes in the journal Communio.

I wish to add, as an afterword, that I do not know Fr. Kereszty, nor does he know me. Frankly, when I visited Amazon this morning to pick up another copy for a friend (a Franciscan religious sister serving in Haiti), I was surprised (and discouraged) to see how little appreciated this important work is.

A relatively concise, yet quite thorough, intoduction to the Christological bedrock of all truly-Christian traditions. Fr. Roch shows a mastery of the relevant material... a mastery which could only come from years of devotion. Further, the study questions at the end of each chapter are ideal curricula for the classroom.
It's only to be regretted that his work will, for the most part, go unoticed by those outside of Catholicism. They are voices like Kereszty's which we (speaking, as I am, from within the Reformed tradition) stand to gain from a greater ecumenical dialogue.

When you get down to it, this is the most dogmatic and inconsequential way of treating the most dogmatic and inconsequential issue in theology, the sacramants. Sure, there is no philosophical problem with Catholic sacramental theology. There isn't one with the existence of Santa Claus either, but we all gave that one up a long time ago. Please read about a relevant and interesting topic in theology, which simply isn't the sacraments. This book is the best of the poorest and most boring theologian I have ever encountered. His "Christology" rarely deliniates any broader issues than those of Catholic Sacramental Theology. This book, however, is useful to a conscientious Catholic as it carefully delineartes everything said ultra-hierarchical and consequently pedophile-ridden institution believes merely because it wants to. This book is fundamentally a kind of manefisto of Catholic belief. Theology because they (and he) merely say so primarily inspired The Catholic Church's indifference to The Third Reich's crimes, perpitrated in the name of the very same ratioinale. This book is "bean counting" a theological tradition at it's worst. A few simple layman's observations will illustrate the problem with this specific approach to Christology. Jesus' refusal to use supernatural power to prevent his persecution strongly suggests he needed to do something God's power could not much facilitate. This in turn suggests The passion primarilt or wholly concerns use and sanctification of a purely human or created capacity, the exercise of which is the crux of Jesus' ministry. The Arians argue against Christ's divinity here as omnipotence and necessarily perfect conscience would not be human or created capacities. If Jesus had a perfect, Divine conscience that necessarily would preclude Him from sin, He would be something fundamentally apart from creation, which as it is outside of God,is necessarily free and contingent upon free choices. Jesus' only logical behavior then would only be to use His omnipotence. His Divine conscience must then p[artly or fully separate mfrom His human conscience and consciousness. This leaves us with the conclusion that to the degree jesus is Divine, he is not human, and to the degree he is human, he cannot have any conscious contact with his Divine nature, regardless of whether his human nature is ultimately sanctified or not. This would be at best a split hair away from being something entirely else than Divine. If you were to say Jesus transferred his consciousness from his Divine nature to his human nature in incarnating, this would be impossible as The Divine is necessarily and certainly unchangeable. These difficulties, at least in part, all fundamentally arise because necessity and contingency, along with so much that distinguishes creation from The Divine, are dichotomous opposites with no in-between or middle case possible. Arianism prevails! Rigid traditionalists, such as this author,
(unintentionally) make it clearest there is a right approach to religious thought, a wrong approach, and the traditional approach. John Locke's Letter Concerning the Reasonableness of Christianity exposes this author's theological sleight-of-hand in a few dozen pages. A book on Christology? Not in any real sense. More like a book on Ambrosology. Isaac Newton, scientist extraordinare, shows how little evidence there is for "Catholic teaching authority" in Primitive Christianity revived. writing as William Whiston. This author avoids reasoned religious principles like a vampire avoids hallowed ground, and demonstrates just how much Catholic tradition follows suit. Finally, Elaine Pagels' email is epagels@princeton.edu. Let the canonical Christian who is so cock sure of his theology set her straight!

My greatest objection to this book is that it does not consider anything but dogmatic perspectives. His section on extraterrestrials would only make sense if they were Catholic to begin with. His work on the divinity of Christ does not address any relevant objection. The cold, stubborn problem with the "apologetic" enterprise is always that it may be employed in the aid of something as trivial and childish as the existence of Santa Claus. Propriety issues arising from using a hand-crafted whip on bird salesmen in a house of worship aside, do most "Christologists," this author and likeminded really believe there is something as wonderful as a sanctified body somewhere amidst creation? If so, they should start buying up swamps in Arizona and work their way up. It is always the most extremist-conservative writers, such as this author, that at bottom base all their thinking on purely arbitrary beleifs and preferences. Socrates was a stonecutter, Jesus a carpenter. This book strongly indicates reasons the laity have always been the most revolutionary. If someone were to think Jesus' Bible statements were the most inspiring he's ever heard, but the rest of The Bible less so, and Aquinas the greatest of philosophers, and Anselm and much of Agustine quite good, but the rest of Catholicism less so, this book could easily be a rubbish heap of useless details. This author merely cracks the theological whip demarcated by "St." Ambrose, and in the ruthless and unsparing manner thereof. This approach is so typical of people who were educated at the Catholic theology schools at Rome. The narrow focus of this author reflects "Romes'" common, sheltered pretensions of being first rate academic institutions. Nothing remains untouched by the achievements of the American engendered new regieme and it's Ivy League intellectual vanguard like they and The University of Dallas. New sheepskins for new wine as well. This "scholarly" book ignores the political circumstances of The Council of Nicea of course and on principle. This author's unreserved devotion to institutional theology and theological authoritarianism, developoed as one might build a complex machine are reminiscent of some kind of unreasoning, Germanic nationalism. Since nearly everything this book says hinges on the declarations of The Councils of Nicea and Constantinople, a layperson of The Socratic/Christian model might well start on these subjects by reading authors teaching and writing for institutions considered top by a very broad consensus. Charles Freeman, Peter Brown, Elaine Pagels, Wayne Meeks, Timothy Barnes and Edgar J. Goodspeed, although by no means perfect, would be first steps along such lines. (Goodspeed was a seminal influence on "great books" education, while anethema at the supposedly "great books" University of Dallas.) Must The Trinity be at the heart of even a pseudoscience about a man who said nothing of the kind? This book epitomizes Christianity's metamorphisis from a vehemently anti-State Religion sect(particularly Imperial State Religons) to The Imperial State Religion it and Judaism so abhorred. This is The Catholic Chruch as formed by the de facto "Trinity" of Theodosius, Justinian and Clovis I, even retaining their oh so autocratic governance. This book, more than any other, confines itself to parroting the Trinitarianism of "St." Aethanasius, an intolerant and possibly corrupt Trinitarian. (Even the Councils of Nicea and Constantinople had much broader adherence than "St." Aethenasius' Trinitarianism) No "winner" of any large scale conflict has ever "written the books" with the ruthlessness and dedication of "St." Aethenasius his de facto trinity of Trinitarian kings. (Even The Catholic Church voices reservations about the greatest legislators of "Niceanism" and Papism, refraining from calling two of them "The Great.") This "tradition" is offensive to nearly any thinking person, liberal, moderate or conservative. This author is blameless only in that Trinitarians' treatment of non-Trinitarians is morally unjustifiable in the first place. It's philosophical shortcomings aside, Trinitarianism is suspicious from it's inability to inspire the intellectual virtue of tolerance or the moral one of gentleness. Then of course this vein of thinking so often has to capstone by claiming it and it alone has the power to change unleavened bread and wine (alone?) into the sanctified body and blood (a sanctified has a circulatory system now?)of Christ. Jesus walking around with nail and spearholes is really so far from any theological concept of a sanctified body that the only tradition it makes sense in terms of is that of Satan's undead. Shut up already! Damn! This book is a kind of negation of Funk and Crossan's Jesus Seminar, explicating views about Jesus that have little or no justification, and rest on institutional pressures for their credibility. Finbally, along with Elaine Pagels, Peter R. L. Brown's email is prbrown@princeton.edu. He is the expert on post-Trinitarian ancient Christianity to Pagels' pre. "Let the Orthodox Christian who is so cocksure of his faith straighten him out" too. For the sake of a God that in turn is very real and necessary, be careful with Kereszty's kind!