The Semantics of 'Jesus Christ'

Oftentimes we miss the things that are most obvious.  This is true in all areas of life, and in theology especially.  What is obvious, but not often enough clearly thought through, is the way in which the meaning of 'Jesus Christ' has changed in the past couple of centuries.  There are vast differences in the way Bultmann and Irenaeus understand 'Jesus Christ', differences so vast that Irenaeus and Bultmann could best be said to understand 'Jesus Christ' in radically different ways.  Unfortunately, theology has often failed to realize this and to address the fact and nature of the difference.   In order to see this all more clearly, let us reflect upon an example from baseball. 

A pitcher in a baseball game is someone who throws the ball past the batter.   He would not be a pitcher if he were not to do this.   The implicit rule is something like this, "If x is a baseball pitcher, then ceteris paribus x will occupy a position y feet from home plate, and x will attempt to throw the ball over home plate such that the batter will either not hit the ball on three hitable pitches,  or hit the ball in the air such that it can be caught, or on the ground such that a throw can be made to first base prior to the batter reaching first base after hitting the ball."

Now I don't for a moment think this is a very accurate stating of the rule in question, but it should at least show what it is that I am thinking when I say that within the game of baseball, there are clear rules governing the role of pitcher.   If I am talking about the rules governing actual pitchers and batters and actual games, I could be said to be speaking of the rules in the material mode.   However, if I am talking about the way that the term 'pitcher' relates to other terms like 'hitter', 'catcher', 'innings', I could be said to be speaking of the rules in the formal mode.

One of the great advances of twentieth century philosophy was to see that much language we take to be in the material mode can be more deeply studied, and its nature clarified, if we interpret such language to be in the formal mode.   The shift from talk in the material mode of objects and properties to the formal mode of terms and predicates is sometimes termed "semantic ascent."  (For instance, we might cease talking about whether unicorns exist and began talking about whether the word 'unicorn' has any useful role to play in our theory.)  While undertaking a semantic ascent in baseball may have negligible ontological significance, doing so with respect to pi mesons certainly does. How so?

If we are operating in the material mode and say that a pi meson is a hadron with bayron number of 0, we are declaring (probably) that for all x, x is a pi meson just in case x is a hadron with the bayron number of 0, and there is some such x.  In the formal mode, and after taking proper semantic ascent, we claim merely that in our background meta-language the term 'pi meson' can be substituted salve veritate with the locution 'a hadron with the bayron number of 0' and that the term 'pi meson' has a useful role to play in our assumed fundamental particle theory.

I like to talk about simple semantic matters in the philosophy of science as a way into discussion within theology generally.   Take the classic definition of Chalcedon on the two natures of Christ:

"We also teach that we apprehend this one and only Christ-Son, Lord, only-begotten — in two natures; and we do this without confusing the two natures, without transmuting one nature into the other, without dividing them into two separate categories, without contrasting them according to area or function. The distinctiveness of each nature is not nullified by the union. Instead, the "properties" of each nature are conserved and both natures concur in one "person" and in one reality [hypostasis]. They are not divided or cut into two persons, but are together the one and only and only-begotten Word [Logos], God, the Lord Jesus Christ."

Now one could regard this to be a class of statements in the object language making a batch of ontological statements about the person of Christ.   According to this interpretation, we must hold that there are such things as 'natures' comprised of classes of properties that append to the person (hypostasis) of Christ.   These natures are distinctive classes of properties that are famously neither confused, transmuted or divided, contrasted, but nonetheless somehow "united" in the one person.  It has be notoriously difficult to try to clarify the ontological situation here.

But one could perform a semantic ascent and place such discourse into the formal mode.   Now the Definition gets read as a specification of the rules by which one will use a particular language.  It is permitted that the term 'human' and term 'divine' both be predicated of the name 'Jesus Christ' even though the term 'human nature' has a set of entailments normally not in the set of entailments from 'divine nature'.   (One could perform this semantic ascent in myriad and sundry ways, so please excuse my clumsiness here.)

In the formal mode, the ontological commitments of material mode interpretation are jettisoned, and the issue devolves to one of proper application of rules.   Can a coherent set of rules be specified which permits the correct Christological affirmations and disallows those termed heretical?   If such rules can be specified, then we are in a position - - with much of the tradition actually - - to talk about a specific theological grammar.   The issue has become one of syntax.   How are the words of theological theory used?

Now I want to introduce another topic that will connect with what I have just said.  Notice how differently one investigates the ontological and the soteriological?   While a causal analysis is not entailed in the first, it is in the second.   Take, for instance, a set of abstract (existing) objects and the relationships that hold between them.   The set of all triples does exist and, for all I know, it may be identical with the number '3'.   One can make ontological assertions about these objects and no causal connection between them - - or between them and me - - is presupposed.   But notice how different it is to speak about Jesus Christ.   Here the very logic of discourse about Christ presupposes a causal connection with humanity - - including me.  Christ could not be Christ without there being a saving causal relationship with respect to me.    (Or at least this was true up until quite recently in the theological tradition.  Clearly a Tillichian could hold that the symbol of the Christ existentially empowers without saying that the symbol has in itself causal power.   The symbol in itself could be causally inert, yet a particular subject could respond to it in a particular way.  This would make the symbol an abstract object.  This understanding of 'Christ' is, I would argue, quite different from that of the tradition.)

Now I wish to introduce a final topic.    Philosophers of science routinely distinguish realist from nonrealist interpretations of scientific theory.   A realist with respect to pi mesons would regard the material mode presentation of pi meson theory - - theory in the object language - - to be making ontological claims about the way that the world is apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language.   An irrealist interpretation would note the way that the object language of the theory behaves and understands that this behavior could have explanatory and predictive power - - in terms of the ways the rules work - - but would nonetheless not want to claim that in the nature of the case the world has such objects, properties and causal relationships specified by the theories.

Finally we come to the point.   The semantics of 'Jesus Christ' at the time of the Definition assumed a material mode reading which was thoroughly soteriological.   As the tradition developed and, in particular, was transformed by the Enlightenment, this original material mode ontological interpretation was increasingly transformed to a formal mode interpretation.   (This argument can be made, I think, though there are a great  many prima facie objections to this generalization that must be met.)  As we moved away from the nineteenth century and its penchant for various forms of reductionism in theology, we entered into a phase of twentieth century theology that would assume - - whether it said so or not - - a regnant  formal mode interpretation of theological language.   What was important was the regular ways in which theological language was employed and the use to which it was put, not the ontology associated with a classical understanding of that language.  (How else could metaphysics become disassociated from theology?)   Theological irrealism could be made completely consistent with the correct use of theological language.  As Wittgenstein trenchantly remarked, "What is important here is that the language-game is played."

The thing that is closest to Lutheran theology is the meaning of 'Jesus is the Christ'.   It is this meaning, I argue, that has been fundamentally changed over the past centuries.   Though the language-game continues to be played, and the rules can remain in principle specifiable, an unnoticed move to the formal mode has in reality happened.   That this has happened is evidenced by how ontology has become divorced from eschatology.   Eschatological/soteriological interpretations of theological language that are confidently assumed to not be ontological clearly evidence that the previous material mode interpretation of theological language has become in actuality a formal mode interpretation.   No longer even is it deemed theologically central that theological realism hold, a realism that would have seemed necessary to the tradition if one were to have any real soteriology.   

What has happened on our watch is that we have allowed the language of theology to remain formally correct while we have come to deem it relevant that it in fact refers!   But clearly in the theological tradition reference was central to the question of the semantics of  theological language.   Unlike irrealist interpretations of scientific theory, realism in theology becomes necessary to hold the semantics of theological language consistent with the theological tradition.