The Consciousness of the Historical Jesus
/Reviewed by Jose Isidro Belleza, University of Cambridge.
Austin Stevenson. The Consciousness of the Historical Jesus: Historiography, Theology, & Metaphysics. London: T&T Clark, 2024. 264 pages.
Discussions among contemporary Thomists regarding the knowledge of Christ might be seen to involve two broad camps. The “maximalists,” who include Dominic Legge, Joshua Lim, and Urban Hannon, argue for the full perfection of Christ’s human mind, so as to attribute to that human mind, at least in principle, knowledge of all things. Meanwhile, those whom we might call “non-maximalists”—including Thomas Joseph White, Simon Gaine, and Thomas Rochas—emphasize in one way or another the limits of Christ’s human knowledge, whether acquired or infused, perhaps as a way of emphasizing the special nature of Christ’s beatific knowledge.
Austin Stevenson’s The Consciousness of the Historical Jesus is a stellar monograph contribution to these ongoing debates on the knowledge of Christ, greatly expanding the scope of the discussion beyond what Lonergan in his Gregorian lectures termed the “constitutio psychologica Christi,” and embracing questions on the more fundamental relationship between metaphysics, biblical exegesis, and historical method. This book, a reworking of Stevenson’s doctoral dissertation at the University of Cambridge, considers “classical Christology”—represented by Thomas Aquinas and his Patristic sources—as a coherent tradition which rivals “historical Jesus” scholarship in the mold of Albert Schweitzer and exegetes following him.
Against the presumption that a rigorously historical portrait of Jesus requires the sidelining of any claim that would “supernaturalize” the biblical datum, Stevenson astutely shows how such methodological reductions of the figure of Jesus to his humanity alone are not the results of “objective” or “scientific” knowledge. Rather, such depictions are predicated upon different metaphysical presuppositions and methodological biases which are themselves neither self-evident nor self-proved. Against this “naturalizing” tendency of historical Jesus scholars, which would see the supernatural and the natural as fundamentally opposed to each other, the tradition of classical Christology as expressed by Thomas Aquinas is taken to propose a noncompetitive or participative metaphysics, wherein the supernatural does not destroy but elevates nature. So far, this looks like a standard Thomistic account of Christology and metaphysics, which Stevenson presents ably, without entering too deeply into the mid-twentieth century debates over nature and grace. But where Stevenson’s work excels is its sustained critique of the historical Jesus scholarship, showing how metaphysical commitments cannot be sidestepped, since they remain deeply implicated in questions of historical method.
Take just one example of an eminent interlocutor to which the book returns again and again—the British exegete N.T. Wright. The Consciousness of the Historical Jesus incisively notes how Wright’s treatment of Chalcedonian Christology as (in Wright’s words) “a confidence trick, celebrating in Tertullian-like fashion the absurdity of what is believed”—which furthermore results in an unwarranted de-Judaizing of the Gospels and an ahistorical portrait of Christ—is in fact predicated upon a competitive or adversarial metaphysics which is alien to both Aquinas and the early Patristic sources. In support of the non-competitive account, the book also includes an excellent close reading of Mark 13:32 (on the Son’s ignorance of the “day or hour”) which accounts for pre-Chalcedonian writings and other Patristic texts, culminating in a development of Aquinas’s own exegesis of the pericope, showing the coherence of the Angelic Doctor’s judgment with the anterior tradition. The “ignorance” of the Son is here understood in terms of a distinction between acquired, infused, and prophetic knowledge. Christ as Eternal Word certainly possessed the principles of infused and prophetic knowledge required for knowledge of the day or hour. However, through his acquired human knowledge, he may have never received that specific information. Equally possible is the notion that, while he possessed the principles of the conclusion (the conclusion being knowledge of the day and hour), Christ may not have actively engaged in the process of ratiocination to deduce the day or hour from those principles. Stevenson illustrates it with the example of a mathematician who knows well the principles of his science, but who does not immediately know the answer to every particular problem set in his multivariable calculus textbook at any given moment. This nuanced construal does not evince a simple opposition between the divine and human natures, nor does it exalt Christ’s divinity at the expense of his humanity. Rather, it coheres with the synergic participation and perfection of the two natures, as proposed by classical Christology. By contrast, and pace Wright, only the unproved presumption of an inversely proportional relationship between humanity and divinity could make the doctrine of Chalcedon sound like an absurdity.
This is only one of many perceptive points brought up in Stevenson’s text. The wider problems of historical Jesus scholarship, an overview of Patristic Christology, the metaphysics of participation, Aquinas’s theory of cognition, and the matter of beatific knowledge are all treated in short, dense chapters that all serve to underscore the robust position of classical Christology, especially as articulated by Thomas, as a serious alternative to the overly historicizing tendencies of many contemporary exegetes. Each chapter is full of outstanding insights which engage with historical, scriptural, and philosophical scholarship on Christ’s knowledge and Christology in general, and one particularly impressive example is found in Stevenson’s third chapter on the Incarnation.
Having surveyed historical Jesus scholarship in Chapter One, Stevenson brings to bear Aquinas’s discussion on the union of the two natures in Christ as given in ST III, q. 2, a. 6. After noting that Nestorianism is an error because it posits an accidental union between Christ’s humanity and divinity, the Angelic Doctor goes on to list five different types of accidental union. Here I cite Stevenson’s summary of Aquinas: “(1) unity by indwelling, such that the Word dwells within the man as in a temple; (2) unity of intention, such that the will of the man was united with the will of God; (3) unity by operation, such that the man was an instrument of the Word; (4) unity by greatness of honor, such that the honor due to God was equally shown to the man; (5) unity by equivocation, or the communication of names.” While this could suffice as a presentation of Aquinas’s historical critique of Nestorianism, Stevenson astutely and immediately recognizes its contemporary significance: “This list of accidental modes is striking for its resemblance to contemporary Christology.”
The first mode of accidental (unity by indwelling) is found to be typified by the Jesuit theologian Roger Haight, whose principal metaphor for the Incarnation is that of “empowerment.” The second mode (unity by intention) is represented by Friederich Schleiermacher’s notion of an awareness of radical dependence on God. The third mode (unity of operation) can be seen in N.T. Wright’s radically human (Stevenson would say “Ebionite”) Christ, who, although acknowledging his divine mission for the sake of the nation of Israel, pursued his task “with the knowledge that he could be making a terrible, lunatic mistake.” The fourth mode (unity by greatness of honor) corresponds to Rudolf Bultmann’s concern for demythologization, such that (in Stevenson’s words) “what matters is that the honor due to God is shown to Jesus in the preaching of kerygma,” without necessarily adopting the “mythology of Scripture.” Finally, the fifth mode (unity by equivocation) is seen in the works of Bart Ehrmann, who posit the rather late development of high Christology as analogous to the post-mortem divinization of pagan figures in the ancient era.
Stevenson’s mapping of the five modes of accidental union onto five prominent streams of contemporary Christology highlights the differences between the tradition of historical Jesus scholarship, on the one hand, and the tradition of classical Christology with its essential-participative model of the hypostatic union, on the other hand. He thus demonstrates the clear mutual implication of metaphysics and historical studies, further showing how the tendency of major historical Jesus scholars to question Chalcedonian Christology is not a purely objective and historically cogent technique, but as a method itself marked by its own metaphysical and historiographical biases. The defense of Chalcedon, presented with the aid of Thomas Aquinas, also is a welcome addition to historical theology that helps to recontextualize the doctrinal developments of the Patristic age as themselves historically grounded and in continuity with the biblical data as understood within the Church. The final chapter on Christ’s beatific knowledge, which I cannot summarize here, places Stevenson in the company of Gaine, Hannon, Legge, Lim, and White as a vital contributor to Christological scholarship within the Thomistic tradition. Both the maximalists and non-maximalists will have much to consider in light of The Historical Consciousness of Jesus.