Jesus Christ: Revealer of God and Man

This course seeks to give students an introduction to Christology that will help them to deepen their understanding of the Christocentric approach to anthropology that characterizes the Second Vatican Council and the pontificate of John Paul II. The course imparts familiarity with the development and significance of key ideas in Christology. The Course is divided into four parts. The first part ponders the relation between Christology and anthropology, the correct approach to Scripture, and how Christ makes himself known. The second part examines the question of Jesus’ identity as Son of God, from two different points of view: a) the question about Jesus’ divine self-consciousness and its importance to understand the real content of Jesus’ revelation and salvific mission and b) the way in which the tradition of the Church understood and explained the theandric identity of Jesus Christ. The third part, soteriological in nature, deals with the Paschal Mystery as a dynamic process through which Jesus Christ reveals, through the free gift of himself to the end, the mystery of God’s Triune love. The last part the course revisits the mutual illumination and inseparability of anthropology and Christology by reflecting on the well-known statement of Gaudium et spes, 22: “Only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light . . . . Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear.”