Full and Emptied: Interpreting Christ's Divinity for Theologies of Religion

The concept that “fullness” is to be found in Jesus Christ has been invoked to support the uniqueness of Jesus, including in the context of world religions. Yet the metaphorical sense of fullness is amenable to a variety of interpretations. Is this uniqueness the logical consequence of Christian faith, or an over-reliance on what amounts to a spatial metaphor? Are the uniqueness and primacy of Jesus meant only as praise, or does this also constitute a proposition about Jesus, vulnerable to the logic of non-contradiction? Is a lack or any partial lack of “fullness” to be found in any setting, if all things are created through, by, and for Jesus? This paper explores the concept of the “fullness of truth” in its biblical context, as a doctrinal claim, and in contemporary interpretations in order to offer an analysis of “fullness” in Christ in light of the identity and call of the Church, the sacrament of God's salvific life. Treating fullness as an abstracted premise or proposition leads quickly to an ontotheological interpretation of Jesus' divinity. Instead, we would do well to learn the meaning of the metaphor by attending to its expressions in the life of the Church, a central one of which is the self-emptying love, the communion with which, we are promised, leads into all truth. There exists a tension in Christian faith between the universality of God’s love and the uniqueness of Christ. Christian theologies have grappled in various ways with the question: how do we reconcile God’s will to save all people (see 1 Tim 2:4, 4:10; Ti 2; etc.) with the distinctiveness of Jesus Christ as the unique and absolute savior (Acts 4:12; Jn 3:16-19)? The documents of Vatican II explore this tension using a particular tone and vocabulary. The Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum (1965), calls Jesus Christ “both the mediator and the fullness of all revelation.” Meanwhile, The Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, Nostra Aetate (1965), states that the Church “rejects nothing that is true and holy in these [other, non-Christian] religions,” implying that they may “contain” 1 Paul VI, Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum), November 18, 1965, §2. Liam Walsh, OP, in the Flannery edition of the Documents of Vatican II, translates it as “both the mediator and the sum total of revelation.” The scriptural references cited there are: Mt 11:27, Jn 1:14 and 17, 14:6, 17:1-3, 2 Cor 3:16 and 4:6, and Eph 1:3-14. 2 Paul VI, Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions (Nostra Aetate), October 28, 1965, §2.