Christology is one of the most important doctrines in all of theology, and also one of the most difficult. The standards of proof here are high, because the claims –that this man is God, one of the Trinity, the eternal Son– are so outrageous. It is incumbent on all Christians, I think, to be able to make a clear declaration of who Jesus Christ is directly from Scripture. No matter what the great theologians may have said, no matter how early the early church may have made a clear confession that Christ is God, a serious Christian faith requires a direct view of Christ’s deity and eternal sonhood in the Bible itself. That, of coure, is what all those great theologians and church fathers were insisting on anyway.

But there’s a lot of theological heavy lifting to do in the doctrine of christology, and I for one am grateful for any help I can get from the great tradition. Sure, every generation has to see the truth for itself, but life is too short to spend it re-inventing the christological wheel.
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