Pre-existence of Christ

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The pre-existence of Christ in Christian dogmatics is the teaching that Jesus Christ existed before his earthly life. It belongs to the core of all main directions of Christian faith as part of the doctrine about the Incarnation of God and the Trinity or about the "Incarnation of the Word" for Christians who reject the Trinity as unbiblical .

Biblical sources

For most commentators, the idea of ​​the pre-existence of Christ is found very early in Christian thought and runs through the entire New Testament . The idea is an introductory and determining topic in the Gospel of John , but not only the Gospel of John presupposes the pre-existence of Christ: The idea behind it is that Jesus Christ already "existed" before his earthly life and as such also participated in the creation of the world . This idea can be found biblically next to Joh 1,1-5  EU from 1 Cor 8,6  EU ; Heb 1,2  EU ; Col 1.15-20  EU ; Wed 5.1 + 3  EU (cf. Mt 2.5–6  EU ); Joh 8.58  EU ; Prov. 8.22–25  EU and others.

References to the pre-existence of Jesus in the Old Testament

In Mi 5,1–4  EU the coming of the Savior and Messiah or the ruler over Israel is announced. It is said that “his coming forth ” (plural, that is, multiple coming forth ) has been from eternity .

Representation of the pre-existence of Jesus in the New Testament

In Jn 1.18  EU it is emphasized that God was never seen by anyone and that only the Son, that is Jesus Christ, gave information about him. In 1 Tim 6,16  EU the apostle Paul emphasizes that God lives in an "inaccessible light" and that no one has ever seen him. Phil 2: 5–11 explains that Jesus Christ was in the form of God before his incarnation, that is, was just as spirit as his father ( John 4:24  EU ) and was there completely congruent with God. The Greek word isos used here says this (term for the isosceles triangle). In John 17.5  EU Jesus Christ himself speaks about the glory that he had before the world was, and in John 8.58  EU he says: “Before Abraham was, I am”. In John 1,1–2  EU it is stated that “the word” = a title of Jesus Christ - see also Rev 19,13  EU - was with God in the beginning.

Theological positions on this in the early church

Origen

The church father Origen advocated a doctrine of pre-existence for all human souls, and this formed the basis for his doctrine of the pre-existence of Christ. Like all souls, the soul of Jesus was created by God at the beginning of creation, but was already united with the divine Logos , the "Word of God" as it stands in the Gospel of John , before his incarnation . This is how Origen explained the human and divine attributes of Jesus.

Arianism

At the beginning of the Arian dispute from around the year 318, the presbyter Arius formulated that God the Father and God the Son are neither in essence nor in essence, in contrast to the equality of essence (with equality of father and son) between God and his son. Arius went on to argue that the son was a creature by the will and not of the nature of the father and that there was a time when the son did not yet exist.

This theological view was given the anathema at the First Nicene Council in 325 . The profession of Nicaea made at this council stated that "Christ was begotten, not created, of one being with the Father" and that he "came down and became flesh". In the appendix after this confession those theological views that were forbidden were explicitly mentioned. This was u. a. the theological position that Christ has always existed and not only after a certain point in time has been declared a binding dogma for the Roman Church.

Ebionitism

Since the Ebionites rejected the virgin birth , they accordingly rejected any concept of personal pre-existence.

In modern times

Socinianism / Unitarianism

The rejection of any personal pre-existence of Christ is also an essential point of Unitarian and Socinianist Christology, as it is emphasized in the Rakow Catechism of the Polish Brothers . The influence of the Polish and Dutch Socinians also led to a similar rejection of the personal pre-existence of Christ among the early English Unitarians and rationalists . An important difference from the ancient Arians is that the Socinians and Unitarians accepted the virgin birth. In the 18th century, parts of Unitarianism took another step towards a rationalist positioning. Today the most visible representatives of this christology are the brothers in Christ or Christadelphians .

More thoughts

Some modern theologians, for example Adolf von Harnack , are skeptical of the pre-existence of Christ. Paul Althaus explained the problem of the pre-existence conception for dogmatics as follows: “Since the pre-existence is a common statement in the pre- and non-Christian world of religion, the question must be asked whether and to what extent the content of faith in Jesus is necessary to accommodate the pre-existence conception and whether it is an appropriate and binding expression or a time-bound, for us outdated mythological sentence. "

Footnotes

  1. ^ Gerhard Krause, Gerhard Müller: Theologische Realenzyklopädie. Volume 17, 1988, p. 56.
  2. ↑ Christian Dietzfelbinger: The farewell to the coming. An interpretation of the Johannine farewell speeches 1997, p. 276.
  3. ↑ Jan Rohls : God, Trinity and Spirit (History of Ideas of Christianity, Volume III / 1). Mohr Siebeck , Tübingen 2014, p. 121.
  4. ↑ Franz Dünzl : Brief history of the Trinitarian dogma in the old church. Herder Verlag, Freiburg (Breisgau) et al. 2006, p. 57. ISBN 3-451-28946-6 .
  5. ↑ Martin Schmeisser (ed.): Socinian confessional writings: The Rakow catechism of Valentin Schmalz (1608) and the so-called Soner catechism . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-05-005200-7 , p. 127/128 .
  6. ↑ Priestley, J., 1791c [1783], A General View of the Arguments for the Unity of God; and against the Divinity and Pre-Existence of Christ; from Reason, from the Scriptures, and from History, in Tracts. Printed and Published by the Unitarian Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge and the Practice of Virtue. Vol. 1, London: The Unitarian Society, pp. 179-214. [Reprint: in Three Tracts by Joseph Priestley, Morrisville, North Carolina: Lulu.com, 2007.]
  7. ↑ Hayward, A. Did Jesus really come down from heaven? , Birmingham 1976
  8. ↑ Supplements of the Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte , 19–22, 1953, p. 48.
  9. ↑ Ulrich Wilckens, Paul Althaus: Preexistence Christi. In: RGG 491-493
  10. ↑ G. Schneider G .: Jesus tradition and Christology. P. 334
  11. ^ JDG Dunn: Christology in the making.
  12. ↑ K.-J. Kuschel: Born before All Time? The Dispute Over Christ's Origin. Crossroad, New York 1992