rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_9af9e125-119a-5c9e-90ce-3ef17e726062">40. Marion, “‘They Recognized Him,’” 145, 150–51.
41. Moltmann, Crucified God, 173.
42. Moltmann, Way of Jesus Christ, 32–33.
43. Baum, “Reflections,” 13.
44. Marxsen, Resurrection; Spong, Resurrection.
45. Wright, Resurrection of the Son.
46. Johnson, She Who Is, 163.
47. Robinson, “Very Goddess and Very Man,” 119.
48. Catchpole, Resurrection People, 96, 134.
49. Tillich, Systematic Theology, 2:155–56.
50. Cone, God of the Oppressed, 114, 130–31.
51. Johnson, She Who Is, 161–162.
52. Käsemann, Commentary on Romans, 129.
53. Perkins, Resurrection, 318.
54. Ibid., 317.
55. Welker, “Resurrection and the Reign,” 8.
56. Schillebeeckx, Jesus, 395–96.
57. Kelly, Resurrection Effect, 15–16, 126–27.
58. Perkins, Resurrection, 318; see also Theissen and Merz, Historical Jesus, 508.
59. Tillich, Systematic Theology, 2:154.
60. Taylor, Executed God, 103.
61. Kelly, Resurrection Effect, 33, 59.
62. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 179.
63. Ruether, Faith and Fratricide, 246–51.
64. Baum, “Afterword,” 143.
65. Moltmann, Way of Jesus Christ, 32–33.
66. Collins, Birth of the New Testament, 55.
67. Becker, Jesus of Nazareth, 362.
68. Perkins, Resurrection, 318.
69. Dunn, “Towards the Spirit of Christ,” 13–14.
70. Dahl, Jesus the Christ, 180.
71. Schillebeeckx, Jesus, 391.
72. Johnson, “Resurrection and Reality,” 1.
73. Moltmann, Way of Jesus Christ, 258–59.
74. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 211.
75. Käsemann, New Testament Questions, 63.
3 From Risen Christ to
Second Person of the Trinity
The Transition of the Early Church from Being
a Sect Within Judaism to a Gentile Religion
In the centuries following Jesus’ public ministry and the rise of faith in his resurrection, the Christian church grew in numbers and spread throughout the Roman Empire. Though Christian faith was persecuted at times, it came to permeate Roman society. Constantine, who became sole ruler of the Roman Empire in 323 CE, was “in all practical respects” a Christian.1 He and Licinius granted Christianity legal equality with other religions of the empire in 313 CE. Christianity, originally a sect within Judaism, had become an influential and well established religion in the empire. The church was now a significant institution with its own internal politics. When it was rent by doctrinal debates, Constantine and emperors after him attempted to restore its unity, as disunity in the church undermined the unity of the empire.
There were cultural dimensions to this transition. Second Temple Judaism, from which Christianity emerged, had long been influenced by Hellenistic culture. This influence is evident in varying degrees throughout the New Testament. But as the church became a Gentile religion a deeper encounter occurred between the gospel and Hellenism. The cultural and religious background in terms of which Paul understood Jesus was Hellenistic Judaism. As the church grew in numbers, fewer and fewer members had this kind of background. More and more, the church came to be formed of Gentiles who tried to understand the gospel in relation to the values and practices of their predominantly Hellenistic ethos.
This brought a gradual shift in the questions occupying Christian intellectuals. From roughly 120 to 200 CE Christian theologians asserted that Jesus was both divine and human, but did not ponder at length how Jesus’ person was related to God, though the question was raised. As Christian theologians began to consider this, a fundamental axiom of their thinking deriving in part from their Hellenistic ethos was that the divine is absolute and impassible.2 This was both a presupposition of and a central problem for developments in Christology occurring in the first five centuries of church history and the ecumenical councils of Nicaea (325), Constantinople (381), Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451).
Appropriating Nicaea and Chalcedon Today
Of these four councils, the declarations of Nicaea concerning the triune nature of God and