Christ and Culture Revisited
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 64, No. 2 – Spring 2022
Editor: David S. Dockery
By Stephen J. Wellum. Wheaton: Crossway, 2021, 206pp., $18.99
Stephen Wellum introduces this book with the shocking results of a 2018 poll conducted among evangelicals by Ligonier Ministries and LifeWay Research. When asked, 78 percent of polled evangelicals surprisingly agreed with the following statement: “Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God.” Similarly, 51 percent agreed with this statement: “God accepts the worship of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam” (p. 15). Appreciating the serious implications of misunderstanding who Jesus is for the evangelical community, Wellum states: “My goal is to equip the church to know the basic biblical teaching about who Jesus is and how the church has theologically confessed the identity of Jesus throughout the ages” (p. 16).
Knowing that a faithful biblical Christology can only be accomplished within the Christian worldview and the Bible’s clear teachings, Wellum finds his theological method not in a Christology from below but in a Christology from above whose interpretation and formulation stem from a “presuppositional nexus of philosophical and theological commitments” (pp. 23–24).
In chapters two and three, Wellum begins to unfold the identity of Christ from the Bible’s covenantal storyline. God as the Triune Creator and covenant Lord provides the interpretive framework for Scripture, which establishes Christ’s identity (p. 38). With the picture of the cooperating work of the Trinity presented in Scripture, the identity of Jesus, through both implicit and explicit witness, is revealed as God the Son. In particular, the well-known New Testament passages regarding Christ’s deity clearly point to his incarnational sonship (e.g., John 1:1–18; Matt 1:18–25; Col 1:15–20; Phil 2:6–11; and Heb 1:1–4; pp. 65–82).
Christological heresies played a significant part in church history, causing the church to clarify the orthodox teaching of who Jesus is. Those present at the Council of Nicaea (325) debated the issues related to Trinitarian and christological orthodoxy, preserving the full deity of the Son and the eternal personal distinction of the Son from the Father. The Council of Chalcedon (451) had to deal with further discussion regarding the nature of the incarnation (pp. 96-97). The kernel of the debate at Chalcedon had to do with the distinction between Christ’s person (hypostasis) and nature (ousia). With Christ’s full deity and full humanity defended, the Chalcedonian Creed clarified that in Jesus Christ “the two natures subsist in the one person who acts fully through both of them but not contrary to either nature” (p. 106).
Next, Wellum expands his work to present several post-Chalcedonian clarifications regarding Christ: (1) the hypostatic union; (2) the communicatio idiomatum; and (3) dyothelitism. Did the human person of the Son replace the divine person in the incarnation? The hypostatic union affirms that the Son did not assume “the full existing individual man, that is, a human person and nature,” rather he assumed the human nature and added it to his person (p. 110). Were these two natures intermingled or mixed in one person? Wellum helps readers understand they were not. The doctrine of the communicatio idiomatum (“the communication of attributes”) means that “the attributes of each nature are ‘communicated’ not to the natures but to the person of the Son” (p. 116). Thus, these two natures had two wills in the one person of Jesus the Son (i.e., dyothelitism). In relation to the soteriology, Wellum says that Jesus’ human will was critical to bring salvation to man, quoting the maxim of Gregory of Nazianzus, “What is not assumed is not healed” (p. 123). Finally, regarding the divine attributes of the Son in the incarnation, Wellum appeals to Colossians 1:17 and Hebrews 1:3 to show that the post-Chalcedonian development affirmed that Jesus had divine attributes, which continued to be exercised by the Trinitarian Son (p. 119).
An additional challenge to christological orthodoxy appeared in the name of Kenoticism, which argued that “the Son freely and temporarily gave up his accidental attributes” (p. 130). Against this view, however, Wellum contends that Christ retained all that is essential to deity. This challenge involves a wrong concept of “person,” which needs to be understood as “a subsistent relation, a subject who acts in and through a nature,” not as “a distinct center of knowledge, will, and action” (pp. 130, 137). Wellum concludes by giving a kind and well-organized summary regarding Jesus as God the Son incarnate.
I highly recommend this book because (1) it helps contemporary evangelicals get back to our christological senses; (2) it balances biblical and rich theological content; and (3) it clearly articulates the truth that Jesus is Lord!
