HeyJ XLIX (2008), pp.

240–253

JESUS THE CHRIST: THE

CHRISTOLOGY OF WALTER KASPER
RANDY L. STICE
University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary

‘The question is: Who is Jesus Christ? Who is Jesus Christ for us today?’1
In Jesus the Christ,2 Walter Kasper contends that this is the fundamental
question facing the Church, a question with urgent ecclesiological
implications. Reflecting on the decade following the Second Vatican
Council, Kasper notes that ‘the question of the Church, its nature, its
unity and its structures, and the problem of the relation of the Church to
present-day society, have been at the forefront of interest’.3 The Church,
he argues, must balance concern for its identity with its desire to be
relevant. The failure to do so has produced the ‘impasse and the related
polarizations in the Church’’ that highlight the need for a more profound
reflection ‘‘on the real basis and meaning of the Church and its task in the
modern world’.4 These issues, however, are in Kasper’s judgment
ultimately Christological in nature, because ‘the basis and meaning of
the Church is a person’, and it is only from this center point that ‘the
churches can solve the problems that beset them’.5 This ecclesial
situation, rooted in Christology, informs his Christological project:
What then is needed is an unrelentingly profound and systematic reflection on
the principal themes of tradition and of novel contemporary approaches; a
study and investigation of those themes; and an attempt at a new, systematic
treatment which responsibly confronts modern thought with the riches of
tradition and the results of ongoing debate.6

Kasper’s approach to Christology reflects the developments and

concerns of Catholic theology over the past century. During the first
two-thirds of the 20th century Catholic Christology concentrated on ‘the
content and implications of the doctrine of the early ecumenical
councils’.7 In response, ‘many prominent Catholic theologians urged
increased emphasis on the humanity of Christ as a means of overcoming
excessive stress on Christ’s divinity and of presenting Christ as a model
for Christian life’.8 Of particular importance in this regard was the work
of Karl Adam, who in 1939 warned ‘of ‘‘the danger of divinizing Jesus’
human nature’’ ’.9 In his Foreword Kasper acknowledges his methodo-
logical indebtedness to Karl Adam and Joseph Rupert Geiselmann, citing
their emphasis ‘on a study of the origins of Christianity in Jesus Christ’,

r The author 2007. Journal compilation r Trustees for Roman Catholic Purposes Registered 2007. Published by
Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
 THE CHRISTOLOGY OF WALTER KASPER 241

an origin, moreover, that ‘was accessible only through biblical and

ecclesiastical tradition.10 Kasper calls this ‘the first wave of modern
Christological thought’ and contends that ‘Karl Rahner’s article on
Chalcedon as end or beginning set the tone’.11
In his article ‘Current Problems in Christology’, Rahner argued that all
formulae ‘must constantly be rethought, not because they are false, but
because they are true’.12 Theology has a duty to return ‘to the modest,
sober clarity of the Chalcedonian formula’ in order to ‘understand it with
mind and heart, so that through it we might draw near to the ineffable,
unapproachable, nameless God, whose will it was that we should find him
in Jesus Christ and through Christ seek him’.13 The concern of Rahner
and Bernhard Welte14 was ‘the hidden monophysitism of much Catholic
theology and piety – orthodox in its verbal affirmation of the
Chalcedonian dogma of Christ’s two complete natures, yet nonetheless
inclined to abbreviate the full reality of his humanity’.15 This concentra-
tion on the Chalcedonian dogma of Christ’s two natures characterized
Catholic Christology until about 1970.16
Despite these concerns, Kasper argues that a number of theologians,
including Rahner, Welte, Malmberg, Schillebeeckx and Schoonenberg,
offered ‘significant new interpretations of the dogma of Chalcedon’.17
For Kasper, the underlying question ‘was how a unique man could also
be God and consequently lay a claim to universal, absolute and
henceforth insurpassable significance. That can be demonstrated in
various ways. There are at present three major Christological ap-
proaches’.18 He characterizes these as the cosmological perspective,
exemplified by Teilhard de Chardin, the anthropological perspective,
typified by Karl Rahner, and the perspective of universal history,
represented by Wolfhart Pannenberg and Jurgen Moltmann. He
concludes, however, by citing Balthasar’s critique of all three, ‘that in
them Jesus Christ is set in a predetermined scheme of reference, and that
the eventual result of the consequent cosmological, anthropological or
world historical diminution of faith is a mere philosophy or ideology’.19
The 1950’s and 1960’s witnessed intense work ‘on the scope of Christ’s
human knowledge’.20 As noted above, Catholic theologians continued to
take the language and dogma of Chalcedon as the starting point for
‘further reflections on Christological topics’.21 They did, however, urge
that increased attention be given to ‘the relationship of Christ’s humanity
to his divinity and renewed dogmatic attention to the mysteries of Christ’s
life’.22 However, the early 1970’s saw a dramatic shift of interest to the
historical Jesus among a number of important theologians.23 Despite
important differences, ‘in each case the earlier emphasis on Christ’s
human nature (in the conceptual pairing divinity/humanity) has yielded
to a new focus on the historical Jesus (in the conceptual pairing historical
Jesus/Christ of faith)’.24 This does not signal a rejection of Chalcedon,
only that ‘the Chalcedonian terminology no longer establishes the
242 RANDY L. STICE

vocabulary and context for Christological investigation and reflection;

interest in the historical Jesus is not limited to exegetical circles, but has
found a prominent place in systematic theology as well’.25 One can
understand why Galvin calls this ‘a paradigm shift necessitated by
engagement with a new set of issues and distinctions’.26
Kasper describes this move to the historical Jesus as ‘the second wave
in the modern rethinking of Christology’.27 In his judgment, a
Christology completely divorced for the historical Jesus would reduce
belief in Christ to an ideology: ‘a general world-view without any
historical basis’.28 But Kasper also rejects an exclusive concentration of
the historical Jesus. Instead, he asserts the necessity of giving equal weight
to both:
the right way of re-establishing Christology can only be to take both elements
of Christian faith with equal seriousness, and to ask how, why and with what
justice the proclaimed and believed-in Christ developed from the Jesus who
proclaimed; and how that historically unique Jesus of Nazareth relates to the
universal claim of belief in Christ.29

What Kasper seeks is a Christology constructed ‘from the correlation of

the historical Jesus and the proclaimed Christ’.30
Kasper also argues that Christology must address the malaise of
modern man. Thomas Clarke praises Kasper for ‘his greater sensitivity to
the nihilism rampant in contemporary society’.31 Kasper concurs with
Hegel’s assertion that ‘the dichotomy between faith and life is only a form
of the alienation characteristic of the whole modern era’.32 This
dichotomy is similarly manifested in the contemporary Church. ‘The
Church’s crisis of identity has as its background the entire crisis of
meaning of modern society’.33 Modernity’s turn to the subject resulted in
the reification of the external world, which became ‘increasingly
demythologized and desacralized’.34 As a result, religion retreated into
the individual, with devastating results. ‘The outer world turns neutral
and banal; the inner world of the individual becomes hollow and empty.
A meaningless nothingness arises from both aspects’.35 This, writes
Kasper, is the background for the Church’s crisis of identity. The solution
is to be found in Christology, for the Incarnation fundamentally is about
the reconciliation of the world to God. Christ realizes both the autonomy
of man and his oneness with God, so that ‘reconciliation occurs in Jesus
as liberation, and liberation as reconciliation – at one and the same time.
Here God is . . . the condition and basis of human freedom’.36 For this
reason, Kasper asserts that ‘Christology . . . is the task of theology
today’.37
In an article describing recurring themes in Catholic Christology,
Brian McDermott, S.J. asserts that ‘Christology is at the center of Roman
Catholic scholarly attention’.38 He goes on to note ‘two major
components of contemporary reflection on the meaning of Jesus Christ
 THE CHRISTOLOGY OF WALTER KASPER 243

for faith and world [are] the theological significance of the earthly Jesus
and the meaning of the Chalcedonian formula for late-twentieth-century
Roman Catholic Christology’.39 These twin influences reflect both ‘the
fruit of the decades-long renewal of Catholic biblical scholarship’’ and the
fact that ‘‘such fresh attention to the earthly career of Jesus necessarily
reflects on the theologians’ understanding of the symbol of faith
bequeathed to us by Chalcedon’.40 These are important themes in
Kasper’s Christology. At the conclusion of his review of the quest for the
historical Jesus, he writes, ‘The approach of the classical two-natures and
two-states Christology is ready for a new synthesis’.41 His reappraisal of
the two-states Christology in light of the quest for the historical Jesus will
be considered first, followed by his reinterpretation of the formula of
Chalcedon.
In assessing the relationship between the Jesus of history and the
exalted Christ of faith, Kasper identifies three ‘theological emphases
proper’.42 First, ‘the Christ-event . . . is not a free-floating myth; it
possesses the unrepeatable character of history’.43 ‘This historical
contingency’, he says, ‘reflects the freedom of divine action. It also
grounds the new kairos, the great turning-point, the new historical
possibility of our decision’.44 Second, the assertion of the concrete reality
of his life ‘is a question of the rejection of Docetism and of the conviction
that the Revelation occurs ‘‘in the flesh’’ ’.45 This means that ‘everything
focuses on the identity of the exalted Lord with the earthly Jesus’.46 What
must be maintained is ‘the reality of the Incarnation and . . . the salvific
meaning of the true humanity of Jesus’.47 Finally, reference to the
historical Jesus provides a standard for judging ‘the authenticity of
enthusiastic movements that claim Jesus as their inspiration, as well as all
manner of fads and ‘‘updates’’ of Jesus in the name of current causes’.48
‘It is a question’, he concludes, ‘of the primacy of Christ before and over
the Church’.49
Central to what Kasper calls the new quest for the historical Jesus is
the question: ‘What happens to the Resurrection? Is it only the
legitimation of the earthly Jesus . . . or is it something wholly new and
never-before-present, which not only confirms the earthly Jesus, but
simultaneously continues his ‘cause’ in a new way?’50 The Resurrection is
‘a redemptive event with its own ‘‘content’’ ’, which means that ‘the
kerygma too, in addition to the proclamation and cause of the earthly
Jesus, must have a ‘‘more’’ and a ‘‘new’’ aspect’.51 The necessary
conclusion is that ‘the content and primary criterion of Christology is the
earthly Jesus and the risen, exalted Christ’.52 Kasper delineates
revelational and soteriological aspects of the Resurrection. ‘Revelation-
ally, the Resurrection is God’s definitive self-disclosure which gathers up
the earthly Jesus and establishes him in a radically new mode of being and
activity. Soteriologically, the kingdom Jesus preached he has now become
in person thanks to God’s decisive act’.53 Kasper calls this a Christology
244 RANDY L. STICE

of complementarity and reciprocity – ‘of the earthly Jesus and the risen
and exalted Christ’.54 This Christology of complementarity imposes a
necessary limitation on the quest for the earthly Jesus:

it is impossible to make the historical Jesus the entire and only valid content of
faith in Christ. For Revelation occurs not only in the earthly Jesus, but just as
much, more indeed, in the Resurrection and the imparting of the Spirit.55

In this formulation he promises ‘a new synthesis’ of both Chalcedon and

two-stage Christology.56
In his article on the Resurrection in Catholic systematics, John Galvin
notes that ‘Kasper makes the Resurrection the focal point of his
Christology’.57 ‘The center and content of a Christology which claims to
be an interpretation of the confession of faith that ‘‘Jesus is the Christ’’ ’,
writes Kasper, ‘is the cross and Resurrection of Jesus. This is where the
transition takes place from the Jesus of history to the exalted Christ of
faith’.58 It is here that one encounters ‘something totally new – a
novum’.59 But it also requires a reinterpretation of a Christology oriented
to the Incarnation. A Christ definitively constituted through the
Incarnation deprives the cross and Resurrection of any constitutive
meaning. The Resurrection would then only serve to confirm Christ’s
divine nature, which ‘would mean a diminution of the whole biblical
testimony’.60 Rather, the cross and Resurrection stand as a midpoint,
extending forward to the Parousia and backward to the Pre-existence and
Incarnation.61 This transforms the meaning of Christ’s life, for it says that
God assumed a human history as well as a human nature, ‘and in that
way introduced the fulfillment of history as a whole’.62
Kasper emphasizes the ‘‘more’’ and the ‘‘new’’ in his statements about
the Resurrection.

Resurrection and Exaltation mean: Jesus lives wholly and for ever in God
(Rom 6.9f). Raising up to the right hand of God does not therefore imply being
spirited away to another-worldly empyrean, but Jesus’ being with God, his
being in the dimension of God, of his power and glory. It does not mean
distance from the world, but a new way of being with us; Jesus is now with us
from God and in God’s way.63

From this statement one sees why Kasper calls the Resurrection ‘the inner
unity of an historical and an eschatological and theological event’.64 In
this regard, the corporeality of the Resurrection is essential. ‘The
corporeality of the Resurrection, which must be asserted to avoid
docetism, is to be understood biblically as the totality of the person and as
continued contact with the world, though in a totally new, divine
manner’.65 In Kasper’s words, ‘Corporeality of the Resurrection means
then nothing other than that Jesus is permanently with God with all his
person and comes from God and is with us in a new way’.66
 THE CHRISTOLOGY OF WALTER KASPER 245

Having established the corporeality of the Resurrection, Kasper

further understands it in both pneumatic and universal terms. Of the
pneumatic dimension he writes:

Thus we can finally say what the pneumatic body of the Resurrected is: the
totality of the person (not just the soul) that is finally in the dimension of God,
that has entered entirely into the Kingdom of God. Corporeality of the
Resurrection means then: The whole person of the Lord is finally with God.
The Resurrection corporeality means something else too, however: that the
Risen Lord is still in contact with the world and with us and indeed as the one
who is now with God; he is therefore with us in a divine way and that means in a
totally new way.67

Not only does revelation occur in the earthly Jesus, ‘but just as much,
more indeed, in the Resurrection and in the imparting of the Spirit’.68
Even heaven is interpreted pneumatically: ‘Heaven is the pneumatic
resurrected body of Christ’.69 In sum, ‘the life, light, and creative power
released in the world by the Resurrection, Ascension, and outpouring of
the Spirit are the surplus of being and life of the Risen One shared with
the universe which groans for redemption’.70 It also establishes a new
universal perspective. ‘It is an event which is open to the future; one
indeed which opens the world to the future. It implies the eschatological
fulfillment of man in his wholeness; it implies a new humanity and a new
world’.71 For Kasper, the pneumatic and the universal dimensions are
integrally connected: ‘A pneumatologically defined Christology can in
fact best convey the uniqueness of Jesus Christ and his universal
significance. Pneumatology once more shows the universal horizons on
which Christology opens’.72
A Christology like Kasper’s that gives significant weight to the
historical Jesus and to pneumatology ‘will not let the Chalcedonian
model go uninterpreted for very long’.73 In assessing the meaning and
importance of the Chalcedonian definition, Kasper notes two points: (1)
in formulating its definition, the Council built on the older Christology of
Nicea, thus adhering ‘to the principle of living tradition’ and defining ‘the
traditional church doctrine in new terms appropriate to the changed state
of the question’;74 and (2) in safeguarding the unity and duality of Christ
the Church was de-hellenizing its doctrine against Monophysitism. In
effect, it was marking ‘the limits of the faith against errors to right and
left’.75 As a result, Kasper maintains that it must ‘be regarded as a valid
and permanently binding interpretation of Scripture’.76 However,
compared to the Scriptural witness to Christ, ‘it represents a contraction’
concerned exclusively ‘with the inner constitution of the divine and
human subject’, thereby separating ‘this question from the total context
of Jesus’ history and fate’ so that ‘we miss the total eschatological
perspective of biblical theology’.77 Consequently, it needs ‘to be
integrated into the total biblical testimony and interpreted in its light’.78
246 RANDY L. STICE

‘Kasper’, as McDermott notes, ‘refuses to play off Chalcedon against

Jesus’ own history’.79
According to McDermott, ‘Kasper uses the two-state Christology of
the early NT to reinterpret the two-nature model of Chalcedon. The
obedience of Jesus to the Father is the historical form of existence of the
ontological divine Sonship’.80 The pre-existence statements in the New
Testament express the eschatological perspective ‘in a new and more
profound way’ that Kasper says was lost in Chalcedon’s contraction.81
Because God ‘has definitively, unreservedly and unsurpassably revealed
and communicated himself’ in Christ, ‘Jesus is part of the definition of
God’s eternal nature’.82 As a result, it is possible to say that ‘Jesus is Son
of God from eternity and God from eternity is the ‘‘Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ’’ ’.83 In this way,
Kasper enlarges Chalcedon’s perspective by placing the Father-Jesus relation-
ship in the forefront, with the result that the question of the inner constitution
of Christ is secondary, requiring illumination from Jesus’ relation to the Father,
the Spirit, and his fellow men and women.84

Kasper grounds this assertion in John’s statement that God is love (1 Jn

4.8, 16). He reads the hypostatic union as ‘a conceptual, ontological
expression of the biblical statement that God has manifested himself in
Jesus Christ as love (cf 1 Jn 4.8, 16)’.85 This love, however, ‘can never be
exhausted as between Father, Son and Spirit, but . . . in the excess of his
love for the Son he always has scope for . . . the world and for man. In the
Son God from eternity in freedom knows the sons’.86 This is ‘the
profound meaning of the idea of the pre-existence of the Son . . . it means
that God as the God of Jesus Christ is a God of men who exists as
eternally devoted to man’.87 This highlights the connection ‘between the
hypostatic union and Jesus’ human freedom’.88 Jesus’ free will was
neither eliminated nor suppressed; rather, he decided unconditionally ‘for
God and men in conflict with the powers of evil in the world’.89
It is at this point that Kasper introduces the concept of representation.
‘Jesus’ unique yet universal position in history is founded in representa-
tion as the decisive center of his existence’.90 Reconciliation by
representation means that Christ exists as the man for others. Kasper
maintains that intrinsic to Jesus’ humanity ‘is the fact that he does not
find his nature in being hypostasis, self-subsistence . . . instead, it is his
nature to exist for others; it is self-surrender, self-abandonment’.91 Christ,
then, with respect to God ‘is wholly existence in receptivity (obedience)’,
yet with respect to us ‘he is wholly existence in devotion and
representation. In this dual transcendence he is mediator between God
and man’.92
As this quote indicates, the central term of Kasper’s answer to the
question of God’s relation to man is mediation. ‘Personal being is
essentially mediation . . . placed on both horizontal and vertical planes’.93
 THE CHRISTOLOGY OF WALTER KASPER 247

Man is at the center, but a center ‘that is dynamically drawn out beyond
itself . . . [yet] never comes to rest’.94 If this reflects Pascal’s judgment on
human existence as ‘a mixture of greatness and wretchedness, it also
suggests that the answer to the question of the final meaning of human life
does not lie within itself’.95 This is why Kasper concludes that a
Christology from below is doomed to failure: ‘Jesus himself understands
himself ‘‘from above’’ in his whole human existence’.96 Thus, Christ’s
mediation is the deepest fulfillment of man’s nature. In himself man is ‘the
indeterminate mediation between God and man’.97 This indeterminacy ‘is
determined definitively by the unity of the person with the Logos, so that
in Jesus through his unity of person with the Logos, the human
personality comes to its absolutely unique and underivable fulfillment’.98
This is why Kasper can assert as a ‘fundamental maxim: the greater the
union with God, the greater the intrinsic reality of the man’.99
It is at this point that the fullness of Kasper’s Spirit Christology
becomes evident, for ultimately the mediation between God and man in
Christ ‘can only be understood in the light of Trinitarian theology’, ‘only
as an event in the Holy Spirit’.100 Indeed, McDermott correctly observes
‘that the Spirit’s anointing of Jesus is the presupposition of the hypostatic
union’.101 ‘The Spirit’, says Kasper, ‘is thus in person God’s love
as freedom, and the creative principle which sanctifies the man Jesus
in such a way as to enable him, by free obedience and dedication, to be
the incarnate response to God’s self-communication’.102 Because
the Spirit is the personal expression of the love between the Father and
the Son, he

is the medium into which the Father freely and out of pure grace sends the
Son, and in which he finds in Jesus the human partner in whom and
through whom the Son obediently answers the Father’s mission in an historical
way.103

A Christology which so understands the Spirit as the personal expression

of free and gracious self-communication ‘can solve the problem of
mediation without thereby making the Incarnation either a logical
necessity or an almost arbitrary fact to be taken as such positivisti-
cally’.104 This pneumatic aspect is essential to Kasper’s understanding of
the salvific meaning of Christ’s mediation, summarized in his exposition
of the confession ‘‘Jesus is the Christ.’’ This means, first, that Jesus in his
own person is salvation. Second, this public and universal claim excludes
private and interior notions of salvation.105 Third, it explains the ‘‘how’’
of salvation: Jesus ‘is filled with the Holy Spirit and we share in this
plenitude in the Spirit’.106 In short, ‘Salvation is participation in the life of
God in the Holy Spirit through the mediation of Jesus Christ’.107
The universality of this salvation is mediated pneumatically through
the Church.
248 RANDY L. STICE

In Christ the Spirit has, as it were, finally attained his goal, the new creation.
His further task now consists in integrating all other reality into that of Jesus
Christ, or in other words, to universalize the reality of Jesus Christ.108

The Church’s function in this dynamic new reality is not to root itself in
the world’s ‘power structures, ‘‘according to the flesh’’, but to penetrate it
spiritually. Only ‘‘in the Spirit’’ will it succeed in determining the difficult
mean between being ‘‘in the world’’ and not ‘‘of the world’’ (Jn 17.11,
14)’.109 Christ is now known to us only in the Spirit. ‘Thus the Spirit is the
medium and the force in which Jesus Christ as the new Lord of the world
is accessible to us, and where we can know him’.110 Kasper sums up his
pneumatic, trinitarian Christology thus:
the Spirit is freedom in person, the superabundance of God’s love, through
whom God introduces his inexhaustible possibilities into history. His function
is, therefore, not merely to render Jesus Christ present, but to make him present
as filled by the Spirit. The universalization of Christ’s work thus takes place in a
way that is spiritual, historical, determined freely and lovingly.111

The Spirit sent forth by Christ to make his person and work present
effects salvation, not by enslaving men and women, but by setting them
free, releasing them ‘into the air of freedom’.112
Kasper’s emphasis on the Holy Spirit is one of the strengths of his
Christology. Clarke, for example, notes that ‘he stresses the need that
Christology be oriented to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, who is the
necessary mediation between Father and Son and also the mediation of
God into history’.113 In I Believe in the Holy Spirit, Yves Congar cites
Kasper as one of the theologians who has made a beginning ‘in
formulating a Christology based on the intervention of the Holy Spirit in
the mystery of Christ’.114 In the chapter entitled ‘‘Towards a Pneuma-
tological Christology’’, Congar insists that a Spirit Christology ‘in no
sense contradicts the classical Christology that has been developed since
Chalcedon’.115 Rather, it develops aspects of the New Testament and
Patristic witness that classical Christology oriented to the incarnation has
neglected. There are, Congar says, two preconditions for a pneumato-
logical Christology: no separation between Christology and soteriology,
and an affirmation of the historicity of the Christ-event. ‘God’s work . . .
is achieved in a series of events situated in time, which, once they have
happened, contribute something new and bring about changes . . . .There
are successive events in which the Spirit descended on Jesus as Christ the
Savior’.116 Both are important aspects of Kasper’s endeavor. He faults
medieval scholasticism for separating Christology and soteriology,
arguing that the Christological formulations of the early Church reflected
soteriological motives:
The actual meaning of a profession of faith in Jesus Christ and of Christological
teaching is only apparent if we inquire into the liberating and redemptive
 THE CHRISTOLOGY OF WALTER KASPER 249

meaning of Jesus. For that reason the scholastic separation between

Christology and soteriology has to be cancelled.117

He is also emphatic on the importance of the historical Jesus.

Christology, he says, ‘has to narrate a real and actual story – history –
and to bear witness to it’.118
It is also necessary to evaluate Kasper’s work in terms of his own
criteria. At the beginning of Jesus the Christ he identifies three tasks for
Christology today. Has he met them? The first task he identifies is a
historically determined Christology. This, as noted above, is clearly an
essential aspect of his Christology, an aspect whose parameters he
delineates through his Christology of complementarity/reciprocity. His
second task is for a universally responsible Christology. The challenge
here is to develop ‘a Christologically determined historical and personal
ontology’,119 a task he accomplishes by reframing and integrating two-
natures and two-states christologies. This task also means that
Christology is ‘concerned with the Christian understanding of reality in
the broadest sense of the word’.120 Kasper accomplishes this primarily
through a pneumatic understanding of the Chalcedonian formula. ‘The
sanctification of Jesus by the Spirit and his gifts is, therefore . . . not
merely an adventitious consequence of the sanctification by the Logos
through the hypostatic union, but its presupposition’.121 In Christ the
Spirit integrates ‘all other reality into that of Jesus Christ’ and so
universalizes ‘the reality of Jesus Christ’.122 Kasper’s third task for
Christology is that it be a soteriologically determined Christology. He
combines ‘this third viewpoint with the two others in a higher unity’.123
One cannot separate the meaning of Jesus from his person and history,
nor can one separate his person and history from their universal
significance. In his appropriation of Chalcedon, Kasper clearly rejects an
ontological-functional dichotomy by understanding the hypostatic union
as the definitive expression of the definition that God is love (1 Jn 4.16)
and understanding ‘ontology in personal terms and the person in
ontological terms’.124
Assessments of Kasper’s work vary. McDermott attributes its wide-
spread use to ‘its contemporaneity, responsibility to the tradition, and
attention to exegetical and historical data’.125 Clarke suggests that
Kasper, along with Rahner, represents the center position among
Catholic Christologists. He considers Jesus the Christ

as probably the best introduction to Christology or review of Christology

available in English. While not being unventuresome126 or failing to suggest
lines of further investigation, its primary service is to crystallize, with the
author’s own creative insights, the best of the long Christological tradition and
of recent speculation.127
250 RANDY L. STICE

Roch Kereszty praises Kasper’s integration of ‘modern biblical scholar-

ship and philosophy into the classic christological tradition’.128 He does,
however, recommend reading it in conjunction with ‘Kasper’s most
mature theological synthesis, The God of Jesus Christ’ in order to place his
Christology in a Trinitarian context.129 Galvin is more critical, arguing
that Kasper has adopted an eclectic approach ‘without having adverted
sufficiently to the problems involved in a synthesis of different
conceptions’.130
In Jesus the Christ Kasper has answered the question that concluded
his opening section, ‘‘The Problematics of Contemporary Christology’’:
‘Where and how do we meet Jesus Christ today?’131 He has formulated
his answer by pursuing a fresh synthesis of the classical two-natures and
two-states Christology. The former meant a reappraisal of the formula of
Chalcedon while the latter meant coming to terms with the quest for the
historical Jesus. Kasper has enriched both by laying the foundation for a
Spirit Christology understood within an ecclesial context whose horizon
is universal. Where and how do we meet Jesus Christ today? In the
proclamation, liturgy and parish practice of the Church, for ‘the
community of the Church is the proper location of the Jesus tradition
and encounter with Christ’.132

Notes

1 Kasper, Walter. Jesus the Christ (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1976), p. 15.
2 Brian O. McDermot, S.J. cautions that ‘the translation is marred by many errors and needs
to be used with care’. ‘Roman Catholic Christology: Two Recurring Themes’, Theological
Studies (June 1980), p. 339, n. 2.
3 Ibid., p. 15.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid., p. 10.
7 John P. Galvin, ‘From the Humanity of Christ to the Jesus of History: A Paradigm Shift in
Catholic Christology’, Theological Studies 55 (1994), p. 252.
8 Galvin, ‘Paradigm’, p. 252.
9 Ibid.
10 Kasper, p. 9.
11 Kasper, p. 17. Cf. Rahner’s article, ‘Current Problems in Christology’, in Theological
Investigations I, (Baltimore: Helicon, 1965), pp. 149–200.
12 Ibid.
13 Karl Rahner, ‘Current Problems in Christology’, in Theological Investigations I,
(Baltimore: Helicon, 1965), p. 150.
14 Bernhard Welte, ‘Zur Christologie von Chalkedon’, in Auf der Spur des Ewigen (Freiburg:
Herder, 1965) pp. 429–58.
15 Galvin, ‘Paradigm’, p. 253.
16 Galvin, ‘Paradigm’, p. 254.
17 Kasper, p. 17.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid., p. 18.
20 Galvin, ‘Paradigm’, p. 253.
21 Ibid., pp. 253–54.
22 Ibid., p. 253.
 THE CHRISTOLOGY OF WALTER KASPER 251
23 Galvin, ‘Paradigm’, cites Kasper’s Jesus the Christ, Hans Kung’s On Being a Christian,
Gerald O’Collins’ Interpreting Jesus, Rahner’s Foundations of Christian Faith, Edward
Schillebeeckx’s Jesus: An Experiment in Christology, Raymund Schwager’s Jesus im Heilsdrama,
and Brian McDermott’s Word Become Flesh.
24 Ibid., p. 255.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid., p. 256. To illustrate this point, Galvin quotes Pope John Paul II’s comment in
Redemptoris missio that ‘it is not permissible to separate Jesus from the Christ or to speak of the
‘‘historical Jesus’’ as if he were someone other than the ‘‘Christ of faith’’’, RM no. 6, quoted in
Galvin, p. 257.
27 Kasper, p. 18.
28 Ibid., p. 19.
29 Ibid. On this point note Rahner’s observation that ‘by maintaining the genuineness of
Christ’s humanity, room is left within his life for achievement, and the possibility of a real
Mediatorship and thus – if you will – of a real Messiahship is preserved’, p. 158.
30 Ibid.
31 Thomas E. Clarke, ‘Current Christologies’, Worship 53, no. 5 (Summer 1979), p. 446.
32 Kasper, p.16.
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid
37 Ibid., p. 17.
38 McDermott, p. 339.
39 Ibid.
40 Ibid.
41 Kasper, p. 36.
42 Ibid., p. 32.
43 McDermott, p. 340.
44 Kasper, p. 32.
45 Ibid., p. 33.
46 Ibid., pp. 33–34.
47 Ibid., p. 34.
48 McDermott, p. 340.
49 Kasper, p. 34. Note also Kasper’s understanding of the criteria of Christology: ‘The proper
content and the ultimate criterion of Christology is however, Jesus Christ himself: his life,
destiny, words and work. In this sense we can say too that Jesus Christ is the primary, and faith in
the Church the secondary, criterion of Christology. Neither of these two criteria can be pitted
against the other. The question is of course how the two criteria are to be joined together’, p. 28.
However, ‘the starting point of Christology, which Kasper distinguishes from the criterion, is the
phenomenology of the Church’s faith in Christ’. McDermott, p. 340. Cf. Kasper, p. 37.
50 Ibid., p. 35.
51 Ibid.
52 Ibid.
53 McDermott, p. 341.
54 Kasper, p. 35.
55 Ibid.
56 Ibid., p. 36.
57 Galvin, ‘Resurrection’, p. 131. Note also Balthasar’s criticism of Schleiermacher et al. for
‘removing the Resurrection of Christ from its position at the center of the Christian faith. On the
contrary: it is in the Resurrection that all ecclesial glory has its starting-point, the only one which
grants the earthly existence of Jesus, and of his Cross, their momentous consequences’,
Mysterium Paschale: The Mystery of Easter. Trans by Aidan Nichols, O.P. (San Francisco:
Ignatius, 1970), p. 191.
58 Kasper, p. 37.
59 Ibid.
60 Ibid.
61 Ibid.
62 Ibid.
63 Ibid., p. 149.
252 RANDY L. STICE

64 Ibid., pp. 149–150.

65 Galvin, ‘Resurrection’, p. 130.
66 Kasper, p. 151.
67 Ibid.
68 Ibid., p. 35. Note McDermott’s comment: ‘The age of the Spirit is the age of the resurrected
Christ, and the pre-Easter Jesus is a partial dimension of that age but not its full measure or
source. In sum, the Resurrection legitimates the earthly Servant of God but, even more, fills him
with the overflowing Spirit of God’, pp. 341–42.
69 Ibid., p. 152.
70 McDermott, p. 341.
71 Kasper, p. 154.
72 Ibid., p. 252.
73 McDermott, p. 342.
74 Kasper, p. 237.
75 Ibid., p. 238.
76 Ibid.
77 Ibid.
78 Ibid.
79 McDermott, p. 342.
80 Ibid.
81 Kasper, p. 175. Concerning the Philippians hymn Kasper writes, ‘The two-stage
Christology is found at its fullest development (with the addition of pre-existence) in the
Christ-hymn in Phil 2.5–11’, p. 36.
82 Ibid., p. 175.
83 Ibid.
84 McDermott, p. 342. I do not think that Kasper would agree that he makes Jesus’ inner
constitution secondary to his relationship to his Father. Note, for example, his contention that it
is not ‘possible to determine the essence of a personality on the basis of a general ontology, but,
conversely, ontology will have to be determined on the basis of the reality of the person; in other
words, we must think out ontology in personal terms and the person in ontological terms. With
that kind of idea of personality and reality in mind, it should then be possible to attain a deeper
understanding, with out present-day intellectual assumptions, of the Christological dogma of
one person in two natures’, p. 243.
85 Kasper, p. 249.
86 Ibid., p. 184.
87 Ibid.
88 Ibid., p. 249.
89 Ibid.
90 Ibid., p. 217.
91 Ibid. Note similar assertions by Ratzinger in Introduction to Christianity (San Francisco:
Ignatius, 1968). Commenting on Ex 3.14 he writes, ‘‘‘I am’’ is as much as to say ‘‘I am here’’, ‘‘I
am here for you’’ . . . his Being is expounded, not as Being itself, but as a Being-for’, p. 129. In the
Gospel of John, Jesus is presented as the man whose ‘existence is completely relative, nothing
other than ‘‘being from’’ and ‘‘being for’’, coinciding precisely in this total relativity with the
absolute’, p. 225.
92 Ibid.
93 Ibid., p. 246.
94 Ibid.
95 McDermott, p. 342.
96 Kasper, p. 247.
97 Ibid.
98 Ibid., p. 248. Cf. pp. 245–47 for a Kasper’s discussion of the concept of person.
99 Ibid.
100 Kasper, p. 249.
101 McDermott, p. 343. Cf. Kasper: ‘The sanctification of Jesus by the Spirit and his gifts is,
therefore . . . not merely an adventitious consequence of the sanctification by the Logos through
the hypostatic union, but its presupposition’, p. 251.
102 Kasper,p. 251.
103 Ibid., pp. 251–52.
104 Ibid., p. 252.
 THE CHRISTOLOGY OF WALTER KASPER 253
105 Kasper does not elaborate on what he means by ‘private and interior notions of
salvation’.
106 Ibid., p. 253.
107 Ibid.
108 Ibid., p. 256.
109 Ibid., p. 252.
110 Ibid., p. 256.
111 Ibid.
112 Ibid., p. 259.
113 Clarke, p. 447.
114 Yves Congar. I Believer in the Holy Spirit. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1979–1980), vol 1., p.
165. Cf. p. 171, n. 1, for the reference to Kasper and others contributing to a pneumatological
Christology.
115 Congar, p. 165.
116 Ibid., p. 166.
117 Kasper, p. 22.
118 Ibid., p. 20.
119 Kasper, p. 21.
120 Ibid., p. 21.
121 Ibid., p. 251.
122 Ibid., p. 256. Cf. n. 107 above.
123 Ibid., p. 22.
124 Ibid., p. 243.
125 McDermott, p. 339.
126 As examples of the venturesome aspects of Kasper’s work, Clarke cites his ‘starting point
in the faith of the contemporary Church’, ‘his insistence that the Church as well as Jesus is a
criterion, albeit a secondary one’, and ‘his refusal to disjoin the functional and the ontological’, p.
446.
127 Clarke, p. 447.
128 Roch A. Kereszty, O. Cist. Jesus Christ: Fundamentals of Christology. Rev. and updated
ed. (NY: Alba House, 2002), p. 487.
129 Ibid.
130 Galvin, ‘Resurrection’, p. 143. As an example, he cites Kasper’s use of both Rahner and
Pannenberg in his interpretation of the Resurrection. He contends that both Küng and Kasper
adopt ‘positions on the function of the Resurrection in Christology . . . reminiscent of Wolfhart
Pannenberg, while their descriptions of the connection of death and resurrection draw heavily
and explicitly on Karl Rahner. It would seem, however, that Rahner’s conception of the nature
of the Resurrection is incompatible with Pannenberg’s christological argumentation. At the very
least, more explicit discussion of this issue would help to dispel the appearance of inconsistencies
in the viewpoints of some authors’, p. 144.
131 Kasper, p. 20.
132 Ibid., p. 27.