An Augustinian Christology

Book excerpt: In An Augustinian Christology: Completing Christ, Joseph Walker-Lenow advances a striking christological thesis: Jesus Christ, true God and true human, only becomes who he is through his relations to the world around him. To understand both his person and work, it is necessary to see him as receptive to and determined by the people he meets, the environments he inhabits, even those people who come to worship him. Christ and the redemption he brings cannot be understood apart from these factors, for it is through the existence and agency of the created world that he redeems. To pursue these claims, Walker-Lenow draws on an underappreciated resource in the history of Christian thought: St. Augustine of Hippo's theology of the 'whole Christ.' Presenting Augustine's christology across the full range of his writings, Joseph Walker-Lenow recovers a christocentric Augustine with the potential to transform our understandings of the Church and its mission in our world.