Christ’s Faith

R. Michael Allen’s The Christ’s Faith: A Dogmatic Account (T&T Clark Studies in Systematic Theology) fill out the notion of the faith and trust exercised by Jesus Christ in relation to His Father.  He doesn’t deal with the exegetical issues, but instead sets out to show the dogmatic coherence of the newer interpretation of pistis tou Christo u.  Allen thus challenges both “unimaginative traditionalism” that refuses to recognize the reality of Jesus’ faith, and also the “iconoclasm” of many who have seen the subjective genitive reading of “the faith of Christ” as part of a post-protestant, post-metaphysical theology.

Allen, who teaches at Wheaton, argues that “the Christ’s faith coheres with and is, in fact, a necessary implication of orthodox Christology and the soteriology of the magisterial Reformation.”  Somewhat more fully, “the faithful one exercises that very faith ‘for us and for our salvation’ precisely because this Jesus came to redeem and perfect humanity.  ’Without faith it is impossible to please God,’ . . . yet the Christ came to bring redemption to those who are unable to please God because incapable of sustaining perfect faith.  Thus, the flawless life of the incarnate Son is itself constitutive of Christian salvation.  That is, the fulfillment of the human vocation before God – ‘pleasing God’ – is a necessary, though not sufficient, aspect of the work of Christ.  Though various dogmatic traditions have affirmed this in different ways, the present book highlights the centrality of the Christ’s faith in sustaining the broader claim that Jesus’ human life matters . . . . a theology of the humanity of Christ must attend to the nature and role of his faith.”