Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 35:1 (Fall 1972)
Article: Jesus and the Church: A Critical Study of the Christology of John Knox
Author: Robert B. Strimple

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WTJ 35:1 (Fall 72) p. 36

Jesus and the Church: A Critical Study of the Christology of John Knox

Robert B. Strimple

[This title is the same as that of the dissertation submitted by Dr. Strimple to the faculty of the Toronto School of Theology in 1972 in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Theology. Included here are (I) an abstract of the dissertation and (II), with slight modifications, Chapter VI, “The Church’s Knowledge of Jesus as Risen Lord.”]

I. Abstract Of Dissertation

In 1966 John Knox retired from the chair of Baldwin Professor of Sacred Literature at Union Theological Seminary in New York. The fruit of his biblical and theological scholarship has reached full maturity and is therefore ripe for systematic exposition and evaluation.

Knox is first and foremost a New Testament specialist. This dissertation, however, is not concerned with his technical New Testament studies but with his contribution to systematic theology. Attention is focused upon his christology, not in order to limit the study to just one aspect of his theology, but rather because his theology must be studied as the organic whole that it is, and that theology finds its organizing center in its christology. Indeed, for Knox christology is, so to speak, not only the center of Christian theology; it is its circumference as well. Therefore focusing upon his doctrine of Christ allows one to come very close to a presentation of the whole of his thought.

Chapter I, “Christian Faith and History,” analyzes the central theological problem which Knox seeks to resolve in his christological studies, namely, the problem of how Christian faith can be a certain and assured faith and yet be a faith grounded in the reality

WTJ 35:1 (Fall 72) p. 37

of a historical event. While Knox’s conception of faith as involving certainty, and of Christian faith as involving absolute certainty regarding something that happened in history, is defended against his existentialist oriented critics, objection is raised to the presupposition evident in Knox’s insistence that historical facts are never sure but can possess at best a very high degree of probability. This historical skepticism is briefly traced to its roots in the Enlightenment, in the assertion of man’s epistemological autonomy, in the refusal to acknowledge the authority of the God who identifies the Scriptures as his inspired revelation, the authoritative witness to the person and work of his Christ.

Chapter II, “The Christ Event,” summarizes the solution which Knox proposes to the problem of Christian faith and history. That solution takes the form of a radically ecclesiocentric, or even ecclesiomonistic, understanding of the ...

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