A paper presented at The Salvation Army’s 4th International Theology and Ethics Symposium, Sunbury Court, 8-12 October 2014.
The IDC is grateful to each presenter for the content of this paper. The papers should be recognised as discussion papers and what is written is not necessarily the official view of The Salvation Army.
Introduction
In an old railway poster promoting my home town the artist portrayed a family dressed in 1930s bathing costumes enjoying a day in what was reputedly the world’s largest tidal public swimming pool. The sun was blazing, the sea was deep blue and the tide was well in. The ebb and flow of the tide was always a problem for pool users, and you never took a leap from the diving boards until you were certain of the state of the tide.
Theology has its own ebbs and flows. The juxtaposition of the first two lectures in this symposium, The Jesus of History and The Christ of Theology, mirrors the ebb and flow of Christology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Martin Luther used the terms ‘from above’ and ‘from below’ to distinguish the two main approaches to the study of the incarnation of Jesus Christ...
