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More broadly, Sobrino espouses an evolutionary view of Jesus' sonship. Instead of saying that Jesus is the Son of God, Sobrino writes that he "gradually fashioned himself into the Son of God, became the Son of God." As the Son, Jesus "reveals the way to the Father, not the Father himself," through his example of obedience to God's mission. Sobrino admits that Jesus' "becoming" God sounds like the old heresy of Adoptionism, but he still insists that his Christology "is in accord with the dogmatic formulas."
Traditionalists are divided on how to handle such new ideas. Father Jean Galot, a Christology expert at Rome's Pontifical Gregorian University, fears that the essence of the faith is being challenged. Says he: "The basic question is this: Does the Church have an authentic teaching on Christology? It does. Hence theologians who claim to be representative of this Church must teach the authentic teaching of the Church."
Under Pope Paul, however, Vatican policy has not been to force innovators into line, in the belief that false ideas are only dignified by the publicity and will die out eventually. Besides, adds a top-ranking prelate in the Curia, "I don't think the Catholic Church could stamp out these errors anyway." In 1972 the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued its most recent declaration on Christology. It defined as an error the theory that God was only "present in the highest degree in the human person Jesus," including the version in which Jesus is "God" in the sense that in "his human person God is supremely present." Though no names were mentioned, this was aimed primarily at Schoonenberg.
The most effective recent Catholic exponent of ancient dogma is Küng's colleague at Tübingen, the Rev. Walter Kasper. In his major 1974 work (English edition: Jesus the Christ; Paulist Press; 1976), Kasper rejected Küng's idea that the early councils distorted the Gospel with Greek concepts. Rather, he says, the councils did the opposite. They "dehellenized" the church, using the language of Greek philosophy to express beliefs that "shattered all of its perspectives."
A Christology developed solely "from below," Kasper contends, is "condemned to failure." The reason: the New Testament makes it clear that far from considering himself only a man, Jesus "understands himself 'from above' in his whole human existence." Though Kasper accepts many findings of 20th century Bible critics, he insists that the council dogmas are implicit in Jesus' teachings about himself. He also maintains that belief in Jesus' pre-existence was not a late development, but rather part of the earliest material in the New Testament.