God and history: a Christological dilemma – The reconfiguration of the image of God and Jesus Christ by seven twentieth century Dutch theologians This dissertation will make a contribution to the research on the history of theological ideas in the Netherlands in the twentieth century. The works of seven important Dutch theologians have been examined from the perspective of the reconfiguration of the classical Christological dogmas. It concerns the oeuvre of the Protestants O. Noordmans, A.A. van Ruler, H. Berkhof, A. van de Beek and of the Roman Catholic theologians G.P. Kreling, P. Schoonenberg and E. Schillebeeckx. The introduction (1.0) specifies the field of research, describes the state of scholarship with regard to the history of theology in the twentieth century in the Netherlands and explains the method and the structure of the study. Chapter two elaborates on the problem of the role of God in human history as a Christological dilemma. 2.1 sketches the controversy between a ‘Logos-sarx-christology’ and a ‘Logos-antropos-christology’ within the Early Church. The Council of Chalcedon (451) finally defines the person of Jesus Christ as ‘Vere Deus et vere homo’. In the seventh century however, the relation between the divine and human nature of Jesus Christ is interpreted in such a way that the human nature does not have a hypostasis in itself. From the perspective of the doctrine of the anhypostasia, it seems difficult to safeguard Jesus’ true and full humanity. Since the Enlightenment these teachings have been challenged. The three pillars of church authority – the authority of Scripture, creeds and ecclesiastical magisterium, based on apostolic succession – began to stagger. 2.2 outlines the first quest of the historical Jesus in the nineteenth century. An antithesis arose between the ‘historical Jesus of biblical scholarship’ and the ‘Christ of Christian faith’. The Dutch Reformed Church did not know how to deal with the huge scientific and cultural developments of the century and suffered from inner ...