The Person of Christ: An Introduction
By Stephen J. Wellum
Crossway, 2021
180 pages (paperback), $18.99
The two great mysteries of the Christian faith are the doctrines of the Trinity and the incarnation. In his writing on the latter, De Incarnatione Filii Dei, the late sixteenth-century Reformed theologian Jerome Zanchi noted that out of Paul’s “briefest of descriptions” of Christ in Philippians 2:6–7 had arisen a long commentary tradition on both mysteries of the faith. Nearly all interpreters, Greek and Latin he says, longed to search out three wonders. First, what Jesus was prior to becoming flesh; second, what he is in the flesh, as evidently both true God and true man; and third, for what purpose he became man. In our contemplations of these questions, we do not pretend to ascend the heights or plumb the depths of the great mystery of God made flesh but, as Peter Lombard said centuries before Zanchi, so that “we may be able to utter some little thing on these ineffable matters.” This is not to say that such contemplations are vain pursuits. John Owen, writing a half century after Zanchi, spoke wisely on this point: “But, alas! after our utmost and most diligent inquiries, we must say, How little a portion is it of him that we can understand!” And yet, he continues,
This [mystery] deserves the severest of our thoughts, the best of our meditations, and our utmost diligence in them. For if our future blessedness shall consist in being where he is, and beholding his glory, what better preparation can there be for it than in constant previous contemplation of that glory in the revelation of it made in the Gospel.
With The Person of Christ, Stephen Wellum speaks similarly:
My goal in writing this book is to call the church back to what is central: the glory of Christ. My hope is that this volume will help equip the church to know better the basic scriptural data regarding Christ and the church’s theological confession of him. (179)
His rhetoric on this point seems at times slightly hyperbolic, as when he says, “Christological formulation is not easy, yet it’s our highest calling as Christians. There is nothing greater than to think rightly about our Lord Jesus Christ” (144). One should exercise caution in how one understands Wellum’s attempted emphasis here. The goal of the Christian life is not, of course, simply theological formulation—whether of God, Christ, or any other Christian doctrine. So, I’m not sure that christological formulation ought to be called our “highest calling.” Though the completion of human nature is the vision of God—or, in its more Reformed inflection, the vision of God in Christ—this vision is more than simply “thinking rightly.” But it is not less than thinking rightly. With that qualification, I am grateful that Wellum has set this emphasis as the goal of his book.
This book is part of the Crossway Short Studies in Systematic Theology series, which “aims to present short studies in theology that are attuned to both the Christian tradition and contemporary theology in order to equip the church to faithfully understand, love, teach, and apply what God has revealed in Scripture about a variety of topics.”
Taking on the deep topic of the person of Christ, Wellum follows that great tradition of the East and West, addressing all three of Zanchi’s questions. Readers are first treated to an overview of the biblical instruction on who Christ is, first in the Old Testament (ch. 2), then by Christ’s self-identification in the Gospel accounts (ch. 3), and finally in the teaching of the apostles (ch. 4). The import from this overview: “From beginning to end, Scripture unveils from shadow to reality that Jesus is God the Son incarnate” (85). These are not, however, treated as so many proof-texts of Jesus’ divinity. Wellum insists that they are not the end of christological reflection. Rather for the church they are, and have always functioned as, an invitation to further christological reflection.
He takes up this invitation in part 2. As he writes, “To think rightly about the Incarnation, we must also reflect on the Son’s relation to the Father and the Spirit. God as Triune grounds Christology” (153). Over the course of the book, there are several sections in which the classical (and Thomistically accented) doctrine of the Trinity is expounded, along with several chapters devoted to the long historical development of that classical doctrine. These discussions are a welcome counter to much evangelical theological malaise on just this point. (That is, with one exception, where Wellum, wrongly by my estimation, endorses Donald Macleod’s contention that even though God is omniscient, his knowledge “falls short of personal experience,” and therefore the incarnation brings about a new possibility for God [105]. On the classical view, this statement as it is made cannot be affirmed.)
The discussion of the Son “prior to” or “apart from” the incarnation enables Wellum, as he puts it, “to theologize further about the incarnation” (153). The majority of the second half of the book is taken up with the incarnation, and provides explorations of the two remaining topics Zanchi said all theologians long to search out: What was Christ in the flesh and why did he become flesh? In all, then, Wellum attempts to demonstrate in these pages that “the kind of Redeemer we need must be fully God and fully human” (141) This is reminiscent of an Anselmian line of argumentation, though it must be said that as formulated, it is somewhat clumsier than Anselm. Thus, while in the flesh, the Son incarnate is truly God and truly man. According to Wellum, this need be for the accomplishing of the purpose of his incarnation. In its Old Testament idiom, Wellum argues that the Scriptures teach that only “the obedient-image-son-priest-king—a greater Adam—who is also identified with Yahweh” is able to accomplish God’s purpose of saving the sinful fallen human race (148). In its more New Testament idiom, it may be put: “What we need is a Savior who can render human obedience and satisfy God’s righteous demands against us. Jesus, as God the Son incarnate, is such a Mediator” (116). Thus “our Savior and Redeemer is unique in both who he is and in what he does. Because sin makes our plight so desperate, the only Person who can save us is God’s own dear Son” (174).
In this reviewer’s estimation, The Person of Christ not only admirably meets the goal of Crossway’s Short Studies series but also Wellum’s own goal. Readers of this book will be led to contemplate the glory, the wonder, of that most marvelous mystery: God incarnate for us and for our salvation.
Joshua Schendel is the executive editor of Modern Reformation.
