Limitations
Without discounting the advantages of such an approach to Jesus, it must
be admitted that it also labors under several liabilities. No one model can
ever offer a response to all questions. Nor can one approach fulfil the needs
of all peoples of all times.
In the first place, in spite of efforts to prove the country, the model has
only a meager basis in scripture. Certainly the gospels present Jesus as the
son of God, but not as the all-knowing beatified Christ of later theology.
While all the New Testament does speak of God as Father and Son and Spirit, it
does not become philosophical in trying to distinguish persons and nature. The
Jesus in the gospels appears more like a man of his own times and very unlike
the Jesus of this model. The New Testament gives a foundation for the approach in
its teaching on the special relationship to God as Father that Jesus experienced,
but the differences in the various New Testament christologies are often lost
in the effort to spin out the theories of the relationship between humanity and
divinity.
Second, the model tends to eclipse the meaning of the humanity of Jesus.
No longer do we have an individual with human feelings, with hopes,
expectations and needs, but the embodiment of the eternal Word. The “person”
who is acting, the second person of God, is important rather than what is said
or done. The notion of instrument can create the illusion that the Logos used
the humanity of Jesus much as an artist would use a paint brush or a piano to
create a picture of music. With the tendency always to go to the divine source
of all in Jesus, the reality of the human life of Jesus falls into shadows.
Functional christology becomes lost in ontological christology. Who Jesus is in
the relationship to God overshadows what Jesus actually accomplished for
humanity.
Third, such an approach often stifles theology. For some, theology
becomes an effort to give support to the statements of the official church
teaching rather than an attempt to explore new avenues. A heavily metaphysical
construct in christology tends to impose its conclusions on other areas of theology
as well. If the answers are already known in christology, and these conclusions
control other areas of theology, how can a theologian possibly break new
ground? This christology gives a foundation for attitudes within the church
which are not in keeping with the entire biblical tradition nor with the
understandings that have developed since the Second Vatican Council.
Theologians must be free to think, and this model limits that freedom. The
model also limits the development of theology through new situations and circumstances.
The model pre-supposes that Jesus has already revealed all that is in any way necessary
for the church and the individual believer. It does not take into account the
development of the behavorial sciences and their effects on theology. Rather,
it tends to close doors on areas of discussion instead of facilitating the
efforts of theologians to grow in the understanding of faith and thus fulfill
their responsibility in the church.
Fourth, this model is sometimes detrimental to Christian piety, since it
can easily create a situation in which the ordinary believer cannot identify
with Jesus, when always faced with the immediate claim that he functioned as
the second person of the Blessed Trinity. If Jesus is the model for other fallible
human beings to emulate, the model cannot be so separated from ordinary human
experience that leaves no hope for imitation. Jesus, even as a man, is elevated
into the realm of the transcendent God, with little or no effect on the lives
of believers other than to make them conscious of their sins. (John F. O’Grady,
Models of Jesus Revisited [New York: Paulist Press, 1994], 103-5)
