Finding a christological balance

[H]ow can we be faithful in our theological statements to the nature of the eternal being of the Son who became man and who yet remains God, and at the same time be faithful to the nature and person of the historical Jesus Christ?

That has been the constant problem of theology. We see it already in the early church, in the contrasting emphases between Antioch and Alexandria, in the tendency of the logos christology even before that to depreciate the historical Jesus. Then, after the battle with Arianism, we see a tendency of post-Nicene christology while affirming the true humanity of Christ, to fail to give adequate account of the saving significance of the historical humanity of Christ, content apparently to give the historical Jesus a place only in the liturgical year, and not in the actual doctrine of Christ. By contrast the modern tendency, especially in the west has been to give an account of Christ solely in terms of what he did for man, rather than in terms of his person and being as the Son of God become man, with the result that the doctrine of Christ tended to be displaced by historicism on the one hand, or religious experience and spiritual values on the other hand.—T. F. Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ, 182