The purpose of this essay is to comprehend the Christology of Schleiermacher in relationship with Chalcedonian Christology, compared with Maximus', which attests to Christology's relationship with spirituality. Schleiermacher's Christology has not dev...
The purpose of this essay is to comprehend the Christology of Schleiermacher in relationship with Chalcedonian Christology, compared with Maximus', which attests to Christology's relationship with spirituality. Schleiermacher's Christology has not deviated from the orthodox tradition, Chalcedonian Christology, but rather reconfigures its combination of apparently disjunct Christological traditions in a new and creative way. Hypostatic union, two natures―humanity and divinity―are united in one hypostasis, is the nucleus of Chalcedonian Christology. Schleiermacher, however, in and through the spirit of Romanticism, revises that Jesus Christ is in the union between God-consciousness and self-consciousness in which human being's self-consciousness can be emptied and filled with God-consciousness. In this sense, the concept of grace and sin, as the content of soteriology and Christology, is understood through the hypostatic union of God-consciousness with self-consciousness. It is not a familiar understanding of the hypostatic union. However, this evolution of the hypostatic union with consciousness is similar to Maximus' developing way of the hypostatic union with energy and will. Christ has two energies in one hypostasis that is extended to two wills in a person. Will is one of the crucial factors to understand who a human being is, but which has to be understood with self-determination. The self-determination cannot be ordered toward God, but the natural will, created as God's image, can be united by the Divine will in Christ. The two natures went over to two wills, for Maximus, which might be valued as an unconventional approach to hypostatic union. Spiritual theology with Maximus' new comprehending of the hypostatic union is interpreted as Christian piety by Schleiermacher. For this reason, illustrating the Christology of Schleiermacher and Maximus and their relationship is crucial to be connected to the Chalcedonian Christology. This study reveals Christology and spirituality, or Christian piety, as the foundation of doctrine, asserted by Schleiermacher, is in a strong relationship.