Brian Hamilton-Vise

The Perfection of Christ

‘The perfection of Christ,’ for Michael Sattler, is first and foremost a Christological description–about who Christ is, perfect God and perfect man, about the manner of his obedience and union with the Father, and about the finality of his actions–but it is simultaneously an ecclesiological claim: being made members of Christ in baptism, the church uniquely dwells within the perfection of Christ, and Christ’s perfection is made our own. It is this conception of the church that provides the proper theological framework for the absolutely necessary, traditional Anabaptist insistence on separation with the world. Those made one in and with Christ through his baptism have been made part of his perfection which, without entirely negating the order God gave to a fallen world, unapologetically announces the world’s true end-—not haughtily, lest it announce a false end, but in a determined meekness and prayerful peaceableness that recalls the Christ who is the form of the world’s true end.

28 August 2007 | Comments (0)
Tags: Christology, Michael Sattler