Christology in the Seventeenth Century

The strange absence of Christology of this period from treatments of historical theology is noted. Its being situated adjacent to issues of Trinity and soteriology leads to a discussion of a Reformed ‘functional’ theology which foregrounds the offices of Christ. There follows a treatment of the contemporaneous Lutheran emphasis on ontology, one which would shift, partly under Reformed influence, to a Christology based on history of salvation in the Incarnation. The applied side of Christology was also a strong feature of Catholic theology which centred the divine–human union and the resultant vision of Christ as crucial for Christology. The human dimension is not yet a critical one, but it did pave the way for such an approach to Christology in the following century in its spotlighting the mediatorial, rational humanity of Jesus which made some sense of his own mysterious hinterland