In his “The Theandric Nature of Christ”, David Coffey sets out “to concentrate on the unity of Christ without thereby devaluing his humanity over against his divinity.” His study “transfers the focus of his unity from the divinity to the humanity, so that the former is clearly seen to be actualised in the latter.” Coffey argues that the theandric, or divine-human character “of Christ’s human nature emerges from a critical study of Karl Rahner’s Christology that deepens our understanding of human nature itself.” (1999,405) He notes that in a 1958 essay Rahner had argued that human nature has “when assumed by God as his reality, simply arrived at the point to which it strives by virtue of its essence.” (1999, 411-12)  This view proposes a deeper understanding of human nature - that human nature is essentially oriented towards its own divinisation, while Coffey maintains that Christ’s divinity is actualised within his human nature.

David Coffey also refers to the work of a group of three Dutch theologians, writing in the mid 1960’s, who “shared the insight of Pseudo-Dionysius that properly speaking the mystery of Christ was contained within the being and operation of the divine Word in the humanity, the human nature, of Jesus”. The contributions of these theologians is summarised by Robert North SJ in a paper on “Soul-Body Unity and God-Man Unity” (1969).

In this paper North finds Ansfried Hulsbosch, an Augustinian theologian, to be the most outspoken of the three Dutch theologians. North considers the reactions of the Dominican Schillebeecks and the Jesuit Schoonenberg to Hulsbosch’s original thesis. At the end of his paper, North summarises seventeen propositions that “are all contained within the three Dutch articles”. He indicates his approval of these conclusions as they “seem to be sound and acceptable as there contained.” (1969,59).   Of particular interest to an evolutionary Christology is conclusion No.16, that: “The unique person of Jesus the God-man is an unfolding of possibilities which were somehow latent within matter itself, and were precisely by their uniqueness distinct from the mode in which material creation reveals God, and man in His image.” (1969,60)

So from Hulsbosch, Schillebeecks, Schoonenberg and North we have agreement that latent possibilities, which are somehow contained within matter itself, evolve to reveal Jesus the God-man. From Rahner we have human nature striving towards divinisation by virtue of its essence. If human nature strives towards divinisation “by virtue of its essence” and if Jesus represents “an unfolding of possibilities which were somehow latent within matter itself”, we must try to understand those processes through which this occurs. We need to find how human nature strives towards its divinisation and how the possibilities that are latent in matter are realised. We have to ask:

(A)     How do the latent possibilities within matter come to be realised, and in particular, what form of evolutionary process might realise these possibilities?

(B)     Within an evolutionary process, how might humanity achieve the divinisation that it pursues by virtue of its essence? What evolutionary process could humanity utilise in its striving towards divinisation?

(C)     As Jesus has achieved the divinisation that humanity pursues by virtue of its essence, what is the nature of the process that produced Jesus?

The ultimate divinisation, or deification, of man is Christian teaching, but how this might happen has always been obscure. This problem is highlighted by E.L. Mascall, who says: “The vision of God, union with God, assimilation to God – in such terms Christianity, basing itself on the Bible itself, has consistently described man’s end and beatitude. Yet it is by no means easy to see how such a destiny is consistent with the radical distinction between God and the creature. To be a creature is to exist with a derived existence; to exist with an underived existence is to be God; there can be no half-way house. How then can a creature be deified? – for this is the term which Christian theology has dared to use.” (1949,184) He contrasts the rational conviction of the “absolute distinction between God and creatures” to the equally firm faith conviction “that we can literally become ‘partakers of the divine nature.’ (2 Pet. I,4)” (1949,185)

I argue that Mascall proposes a false dichotomy between a derived and an underived existence when he argues that there can be “no half-way house” between underived being and derived being.  Once evolution is understood as a process that involves both self-organisation and self-creation, we can postulate an intermediate position between a derived and an underived existence. This intermediate position, as the product of a process of self-creation, can be closer to the underived existence of God than to the derived existence of a creature. In my dissertation on “The Process of the Cosmos” I develop a Natural Theology, based on contemporary Cosmology, which identifies the role of human moral-cultural self-creation in the overall process of the Cosmos.

One of the three Dutch theologians, Ansfried Hulsbosch, specialised in Teilhard de Chardin’s thought.  Hulsbosch applied Teilhard’s understanding of evolution to Jesus himself, arguing that Jesus is “The unfolding of possibilities lying latent in matter itself”. Teilhard saw the process of evolution as the progressive unfolding of possibilities, all of which were contained in primal matter. However he did not apply this concept to the person of Jesus.

Hulsbosch argues that the divinity of Christ consists in the perfection and elevation of his humanity. Schillebeecks agrees with these “true and valid conclusions”, but he objects to Hulsbosch linking his conclusions to “an ephemeral evolutionism”, on the grounds that there was no consensus among philosophers and theologians as to whether evolution is really a process of “unfolding” of what is already present. (North, 1969, 27-28) This unfolding of the latent has always been Teilhard’s understanding of evolution. I maintain that it is only when evolution is seen to be other than a deterministic unfolding of what is already present, that the process of Jesus’ divinisation can be understood.

Hulsbosch states: “The divinity of Christ is seen to consist in the perfection or elevation of His humanity”. He faces the fact that Jesus may be a “mere man” and asks whether Jesus’ prerogatives should not “be called ‘divine’ in the sense of godlike”? He maintains that: “As long as we are really serious about insisting on the personal unity of the man Jesus, we must say that here we have an unfolding of the capabilities which lay latent within matter.” (1969, 27-33)

While Schillebeecks approves the thesis that the unique person of Jesus is an unfolding of possibilities that were somehow latent in all men and even somehow latent in matter itself (conclusion No. 16), he rejects the “ephemeral evolutionism” that proposes an inevitable unfolding of latent capabilities. The difference appears fine, but it relates to whether the process of evolution is, or is not, pre-determined.

Hulsbosch states that: “The history of Christianity is at bottom a search for the unity of this person who became known as man and confessed as the Son of God. The Church in her confession has always held fast to the unity of these so diverse components, but in speaking of “two natures” she has called forth a tension that has persisted until today and in fact is felt today more keenly than ever. What is inevitably conjured up is the image of a Christ divided into two layers.” Hulsbosch then argues that “(the view of Christ as a mere man) cannot effectively be refuted by merely repeating traditional Church formulas. . . . . we (need to consider) the place of Christ in evolution. We can divide into three phases the evolution of our earth from its obscure beginnings up to today. First there was matter without life, then there was plant and animal life, and thirdly there was man. Since Teilhard de Chardin has involved Christ too in evolution, we are somewhat oriented to the thought that the coexistence of the human race in the person of Christ can be called a fourth phase of evolution.” (1969,30-1)

North comments that here Hulsbosch is espousing Teilhard’s “continuity through discontinuity”, through critical thresholds. He refers to an earlier article in which Hulsbosch says “It is matter itself which is appearing in ever new forms; it becomes ever different, raises itself to ever higher levels…The living being is not matter plus life, but living matter. Man is not matter plus spirit, but. . . . animated matter capable of those activities we call spiritual.” Hulsbosch “faces frankly the fact that we seem headed toward the conclusion that Jesus was a mere man.” He argues that “since Scripture insists firmly that He is a man taken from among us, must we not then abandon the notion that his special prerogatives differentiating Him from other men are to be reduced to a separate divine principle distinct from his human nature? . . . . Must we not here also say that matter itself includes among its potencies that of being bearer of the activities that characterise Jesus? In that case the prerogatives, which set Jesus apart from other men, should be called ‘divine’ in the sense of godlike. As long as we are really serious about insisting on the personal unity of the man Jesus, we must say that here too we have an unfolding of the capabilities which lay latent within matter.” North comments that this reasoning regards Christ as “the primordial man, the exemplar for whom the whole of creation exists, and in whom chiefly it is the image of God.” In Jesus “manhood had crossed a higher threshold.” While this “would doubtless give full expression to the unity of Christ. . . . the price really seems too high. He would no longer be seen as the Son, one with the Father in his divine nature. He would just be the human vehicle of an unusual grace.” (1969, 31-34)

North then comments that “the basic problem of the combining of human and divine in one person has not vanished.” (1969, 35) so that “There lies before us only the  possibility of a thoroughgoing reappraisal of the whole problem.” (1969, 39)

North turns to Cyril of Alexandria (d.444 AD) and his dictum that “the human is the measure in which the divine appears”. North argues that “Because the man Christ remains a true creature revealing God by His whole human personality, creation as a whole is thereby also a manifestation of God, though in lesser and varying degrees.” (1969, 40)  This view is supported by Schillebeeckx, who says: “ The deepest sense of revelation is that God reveals Himself in humanity. We cannot seek farther, above or  beneath the man Jesus, his being God. The divinity must be perceptible in His humanity itself: ‘he who sees me, sees the Father.’ The human form of Jesus is the revelation of God. . . .the mystery lies . . . in His being man itself. . . The man-Jesus is the presence of God. . . If Christ is God, we know this only out of His mode of being man. . .He must be man in a different and absolutely unique way”. (1969, 40-41)  He  adds: “We can say that Jesus is the human way of being God, but we cannot say that Jesus is the divine way of being man.” (1969,56)

On the question of pre-existence, Hulsbosch says that “When Jesus says ‘He who sees me, sees the Father’, this implies that He, as a distinct person, is revelation of the Father. But such ‘distinctness of person’ is to be sought in the human subjectivity of Jesus, rather than in a pre-existent divine person.”(1969,46) The ascription of pre-existence to Jesus is to be understood as “a kind of retrojection, much as when we say ‘The Chief Justice was born in 1908’: the person as we know him now is rightly named as subject of those activities which preceded.  The divine dimension of Jesus is truly divine, and therefore from eternity. Since the revelatory divinity of Christ does not exclude that of the whole creation, the pre-existence of Christ is paralleled by that of (personified) Wisdom in the fashioning of the world.” (1969,47) Hulsbosch objects to “making the personal subjectivity of Christ a pre-existent divine reality distinct from anything human.”(1969, 48)      

Schoonenberg  notes that Justin  describes the Logos as communicated partially to all men, but totally to Christ. He also reviews what Scripture says of the Son’s pre-existence, and concludes that its real basis is to be found in the divine wisdom present with God from or before the moment of creation. He notes that none of the texts “really describes a previous existence of Christ”. (1969, 51-2)

Hulsbosch’s reasoning leads him to the problem of how true divine sonship can be retained “if the divinizingly revelatory function is shared in gradual degree with all the other creatures? Our dogma is that creatures are sons by adoption and Christ is the Son by nature; and this tolerates no mere gradation. But dogma also insists that Christ is true man and therefore true creature, thus only in degree distinct from other creatures”. (1969, 47) In my view, the resolution of this problem is to be found in the understanding of the evolutionary process as one involving distinct stages of both self-organisation and self-creation.

The Ontology of Christ

Christology stood at the very centre of Teilhard de Chardin’s concerns. As Donald. P. Gray makes clear; “from the time of the first unmistakably Teilhardian essays, written during the First World War, right up until the year of his death, he was preoccupied with the possibilities of a Christology commensurate with the possibilities of the evolutionary perspective.” Despite this preoccupation, Gray finds that Teilhard; “(was not) particularly concerned about updating the ontological Christology stemming from Chalcedon.” (1975,32)

The ontological status of Christ has been identified by Baechler as one of the “structurally insurmountable ambiguities” of present day Christianity. (1975, 90) Teilhard’s failure to address this problem highlights an internal inconsistency in his perspective. Teilhard sought to reconcile evolution and the traditional expression of Christianity, while retaining Christianity’s traditional static expression.  A reconciliation of the static and the dynamic is ultimately impossible.

Evolution is based on a dynamic process view of the world, while Christianity found its expression within a static world-view. A complete reconciliation of two such essentially disparate world-views is never a possibility. Teilhard did not seek to apply his process perspective to the Christ-event. Instead, he attempted to make the process of evolution compatible with the static expression of Christian dogma. Hulsbosch is more consistent in including Jesus in the Teilhardian evolutionary scheme, with its inevitable unfolding of what is already contained in matter. It is this Teilhardian perspective on evolution that Schillebeecks rejects.

As we have seen, Schillebeecks approves the thesis that human evolution involves an unfolding of possibilities that are somehow latent in all men and even somehow latent in matter itself (conclusion No. 16), but he rejects Holsbusch’s “ephemeral evolutionism” that propose an inevitable unfolding of latent capabilities. As noted earlier, this difference relates to whether the process of evolution is pre-determined or is in some way a free process. It raises the question of the nature of the evolutionary process.