Apologia for

CHAPTER 5

Apologia for the Christie Center

The Mission and Identity of Jesus Christ

I have been contending that theologica l method should be centered and fo unded not in creati on or experi ence as such, nor in life or liberati on, nor even in God, abstractl y considered, but concretely in the liberating, life-giving Jesus, the Chri st. As Chri stians, we are centered in Goel through Jesus. We need to cl ar-ify more substantiall y, then, just why Jesus is foundation al fo r Christi an worship, life, faith , and theology. What justifies thi s centering upon a human being? Just what was it, what is it still , that accounts fo r this ex travagant pra ise and thanks-giving to Jesus, thi s fo llowing, thi s hoping in Jesus? To answer thi s we must enter, however brie fl y, in to the content of chri stology. As we have seen already in our di scuss ion of revelati on and fa ith , we cannot think clearl y about method in theology without delving substantiall y into its substance. Method and content in any di sc ipline of thought are mutuall y dependent and circular, first in that the obj ect of inquiry prescribes the way in which it can be known ; that is, content always determines the way of knowing, while at the same time appropriate meth-ods of inquiry illuminate and di sc ipline the articul ati on of content. That is why, in thi s book on the Chri sti e center, we cannot avoid substantial chri stological refl ection.

Moreover, since Chri st-centered theology operates out of a trinitarian theol-ogy of Jesus Chist as di vine and human, we have to consider whether such a chri stology can be both liberati ve and defensible in ra ti onal terms. We have seen that the Christie center has been ca lled into question in a number of influential theologies. A kind of apologeti c is appropriate here: If we are committed to jus-ti ce and peace, equality and eco logica l sustainability, and if we are rati onal peo-ple, alert to what is going on in the world around us, can we still hold to a trinitari an christology and the Chri sti e center for our worship , our life of di sc i-pleship, and our theo logy? What fo ll ows in this chapter, however, is not a ful-

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some christo logy but a parti cul ar methodological slant on chri stology ; that is, we are asking spec ifica ll y what it is about .J esus Chri st that makes him foundation and center in theo logica l method.

Another dialecti c perta ins in that within christologica l re fl ecti on questions of Jesus' identity and miss ion, or person and work , are also mutuall y dependent and circular. Jesus is fo undati onal fo r us both because of who he is, and because of what he does. We know who he is on the bas is of what he does- hi s saving, liberating work or mi ss ion. On the other hand , hi s mi ss ion can be made intelli-gible only in terms of who he is. 1 I propose that the appro priate starting poin t fo r any understanding of the sav ing significa nce of .J esus and of his foundati onal place in theology can be nothing else but hi s resurrecti on.

I. The cruc~/ied Jesus is raisedfrom the dead and so established as the Christ, who brings God '.~ reign

o/justice and peace.

Jesus is fo undati onal for us and acknowledged as the Messiah or Chri st, because he was rai sed from the dead. Though crucifi ed, dead, and buri ed, he is no longer among the dead bu t among the li ving. As the just victor over the power of death he is Messiah, the sure sign of the victory of God's reign of righteous-ness and truth. Because just ice, peace, and power come together in him, he is indeed li fe -giving and liberating.

The resurrection of Jesus himself is sine qua non. Everything is at stake for Christi an fa ith in the resurrection of Jesus. If he had not been rai sed up from death , he would not be fo undati onal fo r us. If he was not rai sed, we would have no good news and no final ground of hope fo r ourse lves or fo r the world. He would not be Mess iah, but at the most would be another admirable prophet and marty r, crushed fo r the cause of righteousness . If we had heard of him at all , he would not be the Chri st but would perhaps be a great teacher and moral hero. Because he is rai sed up fro m dea th he is /..yrios , both of the dead and of the liv-ing, and given "a name that is above every name, that every knee should bend" (Phil 2: I 0). Scripture attests this fo undational characte r of the resurrection in the words of Paul:

If Christ has not been rai sed, then our proclamation has been in va in . We are even fo und to be mi srepresenting God, because we testified of God that he ra ised Christ .... If Christ has not been rai sed, your fa ith is futil e and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have peri shed. If for thi s Ii fe onl y we have hoped in Chri st, we are of all people most to be pitied. ( I Cor 15: 14-1 8)

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We must begin by recognizing that the event of Jesus' resurrec tion was pro-foundly mysterious, since we do not know exac tl y what resurrecti on mea ns. The event is utterly without analogies and so deeply hidden and beyond description that the Gospel accounts maintain a respectful sil ence and do not attempt to depict the event of ri sing ise lf. An event of a ri sing from the dead is in itself so stra nge and improbable that it is understandabl e that alternati ve accounts should ari se. At the sa me time, it is easy to point out di screpancies in the stori es and to th row doubt on their authenticity.

Yet I contend that the resurrecti on should not fo r these reasons be regarded as a myth . Rudolf Bultmann was famous in the mid-twentieth century fo r hi s argument that verti ca l divine in terventi ons ca n no longer be credited by modern sc ientifi c people and that mythologica l narrati ves, such as that of the resurrec-tion, should be demythologized. The stori es are important and meaningful , he thought , but they speak to us not of an actual literal ra ising of Jesus from death , but of the " ri se or fa ith" in th e disc ipl es, who came to see the redempti ve signif-icance of his death. 2 The resurrection, then, according to Bultmann, was not rea ll y about something that happened to Jesus bu t something that happened to hi s fo ll owers after his dea th- a new awareness, a new, more authenti c qua lity of li fe. There are vari ous versions of thi s approach to the resurrection. Those who would decenter the Chri st, whether plura li st or cosmocentric theo logians, usuall y pre-suppose some such reduced theology of resurrection. By no means, however, has most of the Chri sti an world accepted thi s interpretation. Fa ith in the actual rai s-ing up of Jesus him se lf has remained strong within the ecumenica l church, even among we ll-ed ucated and discerning persons fo r whom a closed, modern scien-ti fic worldvie;v of what is and is not poss ibl e is too limi ted.3

The question of the nature of the resurrection tex ts is crucial. Are they, in fact, mythi cal in character? Mircea Eli ade, the great scholar of mythi cal religion, tell s us that myths of dying and ris ing gods were common in the ancient world . These di vi ni ties, often "sons of gods," had a close connection with the cycles of vegetati on, of the return of the seasons, and so their deaths and resurrections were repeated every yea r and celebrated ritually. 4 Eli ade believes that the ancient Hebrews broke through to a different, noncyclical or linear concept of time wherein events of hi story are seen as unique and meaningful. The story of the event of the resurrection of Jesus is not told mythica ll y; rather, it is "played out once, once fo r all , in a concrete and irreplaceable time, which is that of history and li fe ."5 Thi s does not prove that the event of the resurrection actuall y hap-pened. It means that the narrators intended the story in a fac tual, hi storical sense. Hans Frei, a theologian who utili zes the work of spec iali zed li terary analysts for the interpretation of sc ripture,6 also insists that the resurrection narratives cannot be regarded as mythi ca l. Jesus is a unique, unsubstitutable hi stori ca l individual, at a very particular time and pl ace in hi story, who cannot be regarded as a sym-bolic fi gure:

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The story of Jesus' resurrection ... does not fu nct ion I ike a myth in the gospel narra ti ves . Unsubs ti tutable identi ty ga ined in unsubst itutabl e ci r-cumsta nces is si mply not the stuff of mythologica l tales . . . . Myths are stori es in which character and action are not irreducibly themse lves . 1 nstead, they are rep resentatives of broader and not direct ly repre-sentab le psychi c or cosmic states- states transcendi ng the scene of fi nite and particul ar events subject to causa l explanati on .... Myths are true or convincing by virtue or their embod imen t or echoing of uni ver-sa l ex peri ence. 7

Frei argues that the I itera ry character of the Gospel narratives is more I ike that of the fic ti onal nove l or " rea li sti c narra ti ve"; that is, they are not symbolic, but hi s-tory- like, depictin g a common public world , and, unli ke myths and allegories, "they litera ll y mean what they say."8 These do not, like myth ical tex ts, render a symbolic accoun t of the human condi tion or convey genera l tru ths about Goel and the wo rld; they do not belong to that genre of mythical narrati ves that sees rea li ty in cyc li ca l terms. Jesus is obviously not a dying and risi ng god linked to the seasons of the weather and vegetati on. In fact these tex ts cannot be demythol-ogized, in the sense of draw ing abstract truths out of them. "We cannot have what the story is about ... without the stori es themselves."9

Aga in , Frei is not say ing th at this proves the fac tuality of the resurrection event. Nor does he insist that all the detail s of the story must be accurate. It is obvious that the fo ur Gospels contradict one another in many detail s. We need not deny that there are legendary or even mythical elements in the story, as, fo r example, the earthquake, the curtain of the temple torn in two, and the tombs of the sa ints opening so that "many bod ies of the sa ints who had fa llen as leep were ra ised. After his resurrect ion they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many" (Mt 27 :5 1-53). These are indeed symbo lic tales, presum-ably the product of the devout imagi nation in the earl y days of the church. We recogni ze too that the resurrection stori es expand with more and more detail in each successive Gospel. None of this, however, changes the bas ic message, with-out which these accretions would never have appeared: Jesus is ri sen and ali ve. Frei is right that we cannot have the meaning without the centra l event itse lf. The resurrection of Jesus was the sign and promi se of the resurrection of the martyred saints. It meant the tearing down of the curta in of alienation between God and humanity. It was eaiihshaki ng indeed. The resurrection is proc laimed in the New Testament as the vindicati on and victory of Jesus himself, not merely a new insight or new awareness in the minds of the disciples. 10 If Jesus himse lf is not ra ised, however, there has been, in fact , no victory over sin , oppress ion, and death. Tf Jesus himself is not ra ised, the murderers have remained victorious over their innocent victims, and there is no hope of justi ce fo r the dead. All the fa ith-ful martyrs, not only of ancient times but of the struggles of our own time, are


merely lost and defeated, if Christ himself is not ra ised. Nor are we assured of God 's inex haust ible grace and pardon if Chri st is not ra ised (or, as Paul says, "we are st ill in our s ins") . lfwe are to continue to proclaim good news, then, the res-urrection cannot be reduced to a concept, an idea, a myth , or a symbol. We may, of course, doubt that it happened at all . Though it is not a myth , it cou ld be sim-ply a delusion or a li e, a fi ction. But if it did not happen, it can have no signifi -cance. If Jesus himself is not ri sen and ali ve, then, as Paul says, Christi ans have misrepresented God and the story of his resurrection is fa lse and can sym boli ze noth ing. The resurrection of Jesus himse lf is sine qua non.

Moreover, we need to understand the resurrection of Jesus as a bod il y event. Aga in , we do not know exactl y what thi s means. We do not know just what it is that Paul struggles to express when he spea ks of a "spiritual body" ( I Cor 15) or what it meant to touch Jesus or not to touch him , as he appeared to Thomas or to Mary (Jn 20: 17, 27). To encounter the risen Jesus was, fo r Paul , like a vision of blinding light11 (Acts 9:3). And yet, strangely, he could be among hi s disciples incognito, unrecogni zed (Lk 24: 16). The narra ti ves no doubt inc lude legendary elements, and all the confl icti ng detail s of the Gospel accounts cannot be taken as factua l; but the New Testament authors loudly and clea rl y insist that it was the whole Jesus who was ra ised up. It was not merely hi s soul. He was not a "ghost," Luke insists (Lk 24:39), and ce rtainly his resurrection was not merely the power of hi s ideas or hi s influence. If there was any resurrection at all , it was the per-sonal obj ecti vi ty of Jesus himself, transformed, not " in the fl esh" in the ordinary sense but nevertheless, stra ngely, in bodily form. Eli zabeth Johnson brings out the significance o f hi s risen body: "Fa ith in the resurrect ion affirms that God has the last word fo r thi s executed victi m of state injustice and that word , blessedly, is li fe. Jesus in all hi s phys ica l and spiritual hi stori city is ra ised in to glory by the power of the Spirit." 12 To assert Jesus' bodily resurrection affirm s the importance of bodies and of matter. Of thi s Johnson dec lares:

There can be no dichotomy between matter and spirit or priz ing of one over the other, but matte r itse lf is a treasure related to God. Resurrec-tion announces that thi s will always be so, for the body itse lf is glorifi ed in the power of Wi sdom's spi rit, not di scarded. Furthermore it is the tor-tured and executed body of Jesus that is rai sed. This grounds Christi an hope fo r a fu tu re fo r all the dead and explicitly fo r all those who are raped, tortured, and unj ustl y destroyed in the continuing torment ofhi s-tory.13

Without the resurrect ion, then, there is no fi nal hope either fo r the dead or fo r the li ving. But, because he is ri sen in his body, we expec t also (incomprehensibly) our own resurrection to eternal life. Not only that. In the bodily resurrection of the crucified Jesus, the whole fl eshl y materi al world is li fted up , blessed, and dig-

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n i lied. 14 The world of matter, of nesh , of earth , of animals and fish , and of soi I, sk ies , and seas cannot be discarded or ca ll ously desecrated as unimporant in the eternal scheme of things, for bodi es and all creation have an eternal future!

The event ol Easler was a hidden, noncoercive event that can be known only in the relationship a/faith andj(>llowing. We may ask : Is the resurrection of Jesus so fou ndat ional for us because we worship power and success? Why could we not worship the purity of hi s love and suffering on the cross without resurrec-tion? The worship of success has ce rtainly entered into our Chri st ian hi story, in that the resurrection has indeed been used in a triumphalistic way, setting up Chri st as the king of an imperi al Chri stendom. But thi s has been an absurd di s-tortion , readily visible in our post-Chri stendom culture. In fac t, from the point of view of the world , we worship a fa ilure, a crucified kin g, someone who ended up on a cross. His ra isi ng was an event that cannot be proved, a victory that can-not be demonstrated or veri fi ed .15 This event can onl y be beli eved in the vu l-nerab ility of fait h.16 Jesus did not appear to Pil ate, Ca iaphas, Herod, or Caesar to frighten them into submi ssion. He appeared first to women , whose testimony could not even be credited in a court of law. He appeared then in quietness and gentleness to his male di sc iples , who were overwrought with grief. Even then, "some of them doubted" (Mt 28: 16). Ce lsus, critic of the church in the third cen-tury, made plain the vulnerability of the resurrection message: The ri sen Jesus had appeared, allegedl y, only to a "hysterical woman and a deluded di sciple," whil e he "ought to have appeared to the very men who treated him despitefully and to the man who condemned him , and to everyone everywhere." 17 The dis-ciples were left to proc laim a ri sen Lord who had gone away and could not be produced as evidence! The resurrection of Jesus, then, was not simply a rever-sa l of the crucifi xion, and it is not ava ilabl e as the basis fo r Chri sti an tri-umphali sm. Because the event is noncoercive, it can be known onl y in the costly relationship of faith and fo ll ow ing.18 Goel does not offer us overbearing evi-dence, will not force us, even by fac ts or logic , to believe and to fo llow. Nor can we, then, impose thi s on others, even by the power of argument. Believing it, we dare to trust the witnesses.

Indeed the credibility of the witnesses- their transformation, their dedica-tion , and their commitment- may carry some persuas ive, apo loget ic value. Crit-ical scholar E. P. Sanders asks: "Without the resurrection , would his disciples have endured longer than did .John the Baptist's? We can only guess, but I would guess not." 19 N. T. Wri ght also argues learnedly that in the case of the deaths of a host of other visionary or glori ous leaders of the ancient world , not once did their fo llowers claim that their leader was alive aga in in any sense.20 Rational people may decide, with good reason, to trust the witnesses. Other reasonable people may, understandably, di smiss the who le story as a delusion. No one can say, definitivel y, which of these approaches are right.

Emphatica lly, lam not suggesting that the resurrection shou ld be believed as

Apolog ia for the Chris tie Center 14 3

probable. To one who does not respond in fa ith , the resurrect ion stori es remain "absurd ," as Kierkegaa rd would say. Kierkegaard 's ironic wit helps us to see the unviability of belief by probability:

Suppose a man wishes lo acquire fa ith ; let the comedy begin . He wishes to have fa ith , but he wishes also to sa feguard himse lf by means of an objecti ve inquiry and its approx imation-process. What happens? . . . it becomes probabl e, it becomes increas ingly proba bl e, it becomes ex tremely and emphati ca ll y probabl e. Now he is ready to believe it, and he ventures to claim for himse lf that he does not believe as shoemakers and ta ilors and simpl e fo lk believe, but onl y after long deliberation. Now he is ready to be li eve it ; and lo, now it has become precisely impossible to believe it. Anything that is almost probabl e, or probable, or ex tremely and emphati ca ll y pro babl e, is something he can almost know, or as good as know, or ex tremely and emphatically almost know- but it is imposs ible to believe. For the absurd is the obj ect of fa ith , and the onl y object that can be beli eved.

In the last analys is, believ ing il, we go out on a limb . As Kierkegaard would say, we rush to beli eve in the ri sen Jesus with pass ion and joy. To believe in it and to Ii ve in the I ight of it are more than hav ing an opinion about a stra nge event in the past; it is a commitment to the ri sky, joyful life of fo ll owing Jesus.

The message and practice of.Jesus of Nazareth was centered on the reign of God, which was/or him a revolutionwy alternative social vision. In the event ojEaster we see the vindication of righteous marty rs and of all the victims of history. Jesus was undoubtedl y a prophet of the reign of God.2 1 Critica l scholars of the hi stor-ical Jesus in every phase of that scholarl y movement seem to have agreed at least about th is : that the basileia (the reign, rule, or kingdom) of God was the primary concern of Jesus of Nazareth himself,22 and this is evident also to any primafacie reading of the Synoptic Gospels. According to Mark , Jesus initi ated hi s preach-ing mini stry with this announcement: "The time is fulfill ed and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and be! ieve in the good news" (Mark I: 15 ). " I must proclai m the good news of the kingdom of God in the other cities also," he says, "for I was sent fo r thi s purpose" (Lk 4:43). He sends out hi s di sciples to "pro-cla im the kingdom of God and to heal" (Lk 9:2) . Hi s preaching and parables are full of God's basileia, God 's rul e of peace and justi ce, love and wholeness. The reign of God is precious and ardently to be sought after, like a treasure hid in a fi eld (Mt 13:44) or a pearl of great price (Mt 13:45) . We are to seek God's reign above a ll other things (Mt 6:33) and pray for God's reign and fo r God's will to be done on earth (Mt 6: I 0). In thi s way Jesus' di sciples are call ed to be stewards of God's reign, contributing to its growth in the world (Mt 25 : 14-3 1) . We are to sow seeds of God's reign (Mt 3:3-23), and the reign will grow in the world fro m

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something tiny like a mustard seed to something great li ke a tree (Mt 13:3 1-32), fro m something small and hidden into something powerful , like the yeast leav-ening in flour (Mt 13:33) .

Jesus' healing works are seen Lo be the work of the Spirit in him overcom-ing ev il forces and a sign Lhal the reign of God "has come to you" (Mt 12:28; Lk 11 :20). But his hea lings are not without their social and poli tica l significance. Possession of unclean spirits, often taking the fo rm of se lf-destruct ive and mad behav iour, was part of the genera l soc ial/spiritual condi tion of being under the contro l of Roman imperial forces bul was understood in terms of superhuman demoni c fo rces. Richard Horsley suggests:

On the widely accepted assumpti on that Jesus did indeed perfo rm hea l-ings of va rious kinds, we must imagine dozens of indi vidual healings and hea ling stori es . .. . The stori es that survived the winnow ing process ofrepeated ora l perfo rmances would have been ones that "spoke to" the genera l malaise of the peop le who heard them. Thus not onl y was the orig inal hea ling (to which we have no di rect access) both a hea ling of a particular person and embedded in social relati onships, but each hea ling story was both a hea ling of a parti cular person and a continui ng "hea l-ing" of the soci al "body" of subequent communiti es of hearers.23

The reign was already breaking in , then, in Jesus' own li fe and mini stry. When asked whether he is the one to come, he answers, according to Luke: "the blind receive their sight, the lame wa lk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are ra ised, the poor have good news bro ught to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me" (Lk 7:22-23). According to Mark 9: I, Jesus promised that before the dea th of some of his contemporari es, the kingdom of God would have come "with power." There is debate among scholars as to whether or not Jesus was an apoca lyptic pro phet, expecting a sudden, imminent inbreaking of God's fin al kingdom24- a debate we cannot reso lve here. But certainl y the earl y church expected Jesus' own imminent return in the power of the kingdom, which was still to be consummated (see, e.g ., Mt 24:29-3 1; I Thess 4: 16; I Cor 15 :24; etc.). They saw his whole life, and most especiall y hi s resurrection, as the sign of the inbreaking of God's reign, and they expected more to come.

It is sometimes argued that Jesus of Nazareth , the pre-Easter Jesus, was theo-centric, or God-centered. Obviously he was not Christ-centered as Chris-ti ans were after the resurrection. But it would seem more accurate to say that Jesus was centered in God's reign. It is the most certai n histori ca l datum we have about Jesus of Naza reth , deri ved from all the sources: Hi s work and hi s pass ion were not simply to serve God, but specifically to serve God's reign. Jesus preached the kingdom of God and not himself; that is, he himself is not the focus of hi s own message .25 Thi s reign of God is not merely a personal inward thing (though this is not excluded) but has to do with the transformati on of this world ,

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of it s structures and relationships. It has to do, above all , wi th the li bera tion of peopl e from all injusti ce and broke nness. Thi s is ev ident in the announcement at Nazareth: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proc laim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free , to proc laim the yea r of the Lord 's favo ur" (Lk 4: 18-1 9). To say that the Spirit of God is upon him is to identi fy him as the ex pected messia ni c one upon whom (as in prophetic hope) the Spirit would rest. The reign of God that the anointed one brings into the world is precisely "good news fo r the poor," which means not something merely inward and spiritual, nor merely heavenl y, but something thi s-worldl y, so111ething economic and politica l. The reign of Goel is about God's will being done in thi s world : ''Thy Kingdom come, th y will be cl one on earth" (Mt 6: I 0). Hi s actual personal so lidarity with all the poor, the di sabled, the sick, and the sociall y rejected was the way in whi ch he I ived out hi s own preaching and teach-ing. So also he ca ll s hi s fo ll owers to love unflinchingly, to love God and to love their neighbours as themse lves (Mk 12:3 1: Mt 22:39; Lk I 0:27) and even to love their enemies (Mt 5:43), whi ch is dra111 at ized most notably in the parabl e of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10). In this way they will parti c ipate already in God's reign of love. Matthew proc laim s Jesus as the Serva nt in whom God's Spirit is at work : ''he will proc laim justi ce to the Gentiles .. . until he brings j usti ce to victory" (Mt 12:1 8-20, referring to Is 42: 1-4).

Studi es of the hi stori ca l Jesus, reading the Gospels wi th cogniza nce of hi s soc ial and politica l milieu, offer even more persuas ive ev idence that Jes us did indeed present an alternati ve socia l vision to hi s nation. John Domini c Crossan, fo r example, describes the deeply cruel and corrupt patro nage system of Roman-dominated soc iety, its steeply hi erarchica l system of honor and shame. An exam-ple of Jesus' res istance to thi s was hi s "open commensa lity"- eating together with those who were sociall y despi sed, shamed, and dishonored. Crossan writes: "Open commensality was . . . a strategy fo r building or rebuilding peasant com-munity on radi ca ll y different principles from those of honor and shame patro n-age and cli entage. It was based on ega litari an sharing of spiritual and material power at the most grassroots level. "26

Hi s unflinching service of God's reign through the servi ce of the poor and the affli cted, his denunciation and res istance to the pri vileged and powerful who oppress the low ly and serve the anti -reign, led to his death , and his willingness to di e must al so be seen as Jesus' willingness to serve God's reign to the end.

The reign of God, so central fo r Jesus, must also be central fo r hi s follow-ers, first in te rms of pract ical acti on, but also primary fo r any theology of liber-ation and particularl y for any christology.27 Other chri stologica l concepts or categori es will be di storted if they are abstracted from Jesus' central service to the reign. Belief in Jesus as Messiah will be misunderstood and abused, turned into a kind of Christi an arrogance, if di ssoc iated from Jesus' pass ion fo r God 's reign of justi ce and love. The reign of God can rea ll y onl y be understood rightly,

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and fo r that matter can rea ll y onl y be be li eved in , properl y speaking, fro m w ithin our own activ ity of practi ca l se rvice. Thus Sobrino speaks of the " hermeneuti c va lue of prax is- prax is as a means of grasping the nature of the Re ign of God, in such wise that, conve rse ly, wi thout prax is an understa nding of the Re ign of God would be crippled and d imini shed. "28

That is why the re ign of God must be in te rpreted th ro ugh the " option fo r the poor."29 If our fo llow ing of Jesus is not "good news for the poor" (Lk 4 : 16), then it is not true service to God 's re ign and does not trul y express fa ith in Jesus or love of God. So a lso resurrecti on, if interpreted separate ly fro m Jesus ' commit-ment to God 's reign, "can and does feed an indi vidua lism w ithout a peo ple, a hope w ithout a praxis, an enthusiasm without a fo llow ing o f Jesus- in sum, a transcendence w ithout a hi sto ry."30 The resurrection of Jesus must be understood in terms o f the re ign of God to which Jesus was devoted. His res urrecti on was not hi s victory a lone, but the victo ry of the re ign.

The victory of that practi ca l, worldl y- yes , economic, po li tica l- re ign of God becomes a rea lity and a hope, however, onl y th ro ugh that resurrecti on. The ri sen Jesus constitutes fo r us a pro leps is, a " presentness of the future"31 of God 's fin a l re ign. In it we are g iven a g limpse ahead of time of the victory of li fe over death , of liberty over ens lavement and oppress ion. 32 In li ght of the res urrecti on, we look fo r victory not onl y over ev il in some abstract sense, but the victory over concrete ev il s- hunger, poverty , war, impri sonment, illness , and even death . The mess ianic hope of the Hebrew prophets was for one who would come fro m God in the power of God 's Spirit to bring the re ign of peace and justice (e.g., Is 11 ; 6 1). Although Jesus ' li fe , deeds, and comportment may have indicated to hi s di s-ciples that he was the ex pected anointed one, or Mess iah (e .g., Mt 16 :1 6), hi s death wo uld have been more than enough to das h these hopes . " We had hoped," they sa id on the Emmaus road, " that he was the one to redeem Israe l" (Lk 24 :2 l ). It is unimag inable that, w ithout the resurrection, the dead Jesus would have been acknow ledged by the earli est church as the Mess iah, the Christ. 33

Iro nica ll y and trag ica ll y, thi s ve ry recogniti on of the mess ianic victory over oppress ion and injusti ce , shamefull y di storted by Chri sti ans, has led to great mis-ery, espec iall y for Jesus ' own people , the Jews . In the twenti eth century, Chri s-ti ans became intense ly awa re of the danger implic it in the concept of Jesus the Mess iah. The long hi story of the persecution of the Jewish people, culminating in the Holocaust of the Jews in Nazi Germany, cannot be d issoc iated fro m Chri s-ti an concepts of Jesus as Mess iah. Because of a bad theo logy of Mess iah and acco mpanying Chri sti an triumpha li sm, Juda ism was thought to be entirely super-seded, and the Jews were depicted as a stubborn , perve rse people who had kill ed the ir di vine messenger.34 Jesus as Mess iah was di ssociated fro m the reign of jus-ti ce to which he was devoted, and the kingdom of God became an otherworldl y "kingdom of Heaven." Chri sti ans were seen as the priv il eged ones who , having accepted the Mess iah, would benefit fro m his heavenl y sal vation. Not that C hris-tianity itse lf was directl y, unambiguously responsible fo r the Holocaust; it was


the ghastl y technologica l achievement of the modern world and of certain cur-rents in modern thought. Yet Christi an anti-Semitism, the long centuries of pogroms, of the scapegoating and vi ctimi zing of .J ews in Christendom, bears some responsibility for this catastrophe. The Western world had been well trained in anti-Semiti sm by old Christendom.

Following upon Jew ish- Chri sti an di alogue, a num ber of post-H olocaust Chri stian theo logians have emphas ized the unfini shed character of the redemp-tion offered in Jesus. 35 While the sa lvati on accomplished in the life and death and resurrection of Chri st is decisive and irrevocabl e fo r the whole world , it is at the same time anticipatory, as ev il and death continue to be rampant in God's cre-ation. One of the great ev il s has been Chri sti an (and other) religious imperiali sm, most dramati ca lly aga inst the Jews. The praxis outcome of an exclusivist Chris-ti anity is theologicall y unacceptabl e and drives us to the scriptures fo r a more faithful reading of Chri st's messiani c person. Jlirgen Moltmann is among those who have written help fully about this, insisting that

all "fulfilment" enthusiasm must be bani shed from the christology of the church as it ex ists in the world of hi story. Jesus of Naza reth , the messiah who has come, is the suffe ring Servant of God, who hea ls th rough hi s wounds -and is victori ous through his suffe rings. He is not yet the Chri st of the parousia, who comes in the glory of God and redeems the world , so that it becomes the kingdom .. .. What has already come into the world through the Christ who has come and is present, is the justification of the godless and the reconciliation of enemies . What has not yet come is the redemption of the world , the overcoming of all enmity, the resurrecti on of the dead, and the new cre-ation .... But just because men and women "now already" have peace with God through Christ, they are "no longer" prepared to make te rms with this peace- less world . Because they are reconciled with God, they suffer from this "unredeemed world" and "sigh" with the whole enslaved creati on (Rom 8) for the coming glory of God.36

The similar post-Auschwitz thought of Gregory Baum moves him to declare that "room remains in world history fo r many religions, fo r other ways of grace, and in particular fo r the other biblical fai th , fo r Juda isrn ."37 In God 's providence, and in the freedom of God 's Spirit, the Jews and indeed many other religions remain . This means that Christianity, while holding fast to the inbeaking of God's reign in Christ, must deabsolutize itse lf and recogni ze that others, too, parti cularl y the Jews, have truth and wisdom. We must recognize that the Jews remai n God 's special covenant people, and we must stand together with them , looking still for the fulfillment of the promises of God.

We should note that the resurrection of Jesus, the ra ising up of a righteous martyr, was an eschatological sign (a sign of the decisive inbreaking of God 's


reign) for the first Jew ish Chri sti ans. Hope fo r resurrection had arisen among the Jews rather late, on ly at the time of Daniel (second century 13. C.E.) , a time of for-eign oppression and dreadful suffering, including the deaths of many of Israe l's most ri ghteous and faithful people (Dan 12 : 1-4). 38 The resurrection of the dead wou ld come at an end-time (an apocalypse, a reve lation) , the time of the victory of God's rul e. Wi thout resu rrection, there could never be justice for these vic-tims. Thus, the first Chri sti ans saw the victory of Jesus' raising as an inbreaking and inaugurat ion of God 's rule of justice, when righteous martyrs wou ld be vin-dicated. The prophetic ex pecta ti on was not, however, fo r the raising of just one person. The ri sen martyr Jesus was seen by Paul , for example, as "the first fruits from the dead" ( I Cor 15:20). In keeping with the Danielic ex pectation , Jesus was also given the ti li e Son of Man, signifying that .Jesus' coming is the coming of God's re ign and the beginning of the end of the rul e of ev il and death .

2 . .Jesus is Emmanuel, the presence of the vulnerable God with us, truly God and trnly human.

Jesus is foundational fo r us also because he is one with Cod, and God is one with us in Jesus' humanity. It is ev ident that, if this is so, Jesus himse lf cannot be relativized or decentered in Christian life, worship , or thought.

That Jesus is "Cod with us " is an assessment based not on his moral character but on his saving and liberating work. For believers in one God, whether Jews, Ch ri sti ans, or Mus lims in the fami ly of Abraham , onl y God gives life and liberty. Only God is "Sav iour. " Jesus, then, if he is our Saviour, is "God with us." But Jesus is li fe -giving and liberating also because he is one with us as human, demonstrating God's amazing grace and love toward us from within our own vulnerable humani ty. 39

If Jesus were not "Goel with us," truly God and Sav iour, he would not be central and founda tional for Chri sti an worsh ip and life. We would not praise and thank him , fo ll ow and obey him , trust and hope in him, ifhe were not truly God. Christ ian worship at Chri stmas time is most espec ially premised on this doctrine of the incarnation , as we pray it, preach it, sing it: "God of God , light of light ... , very God, begotten not created, 0 come let us adore him ." To be so centered on a prophet, a moral example, a messenger or representative from God would be impossi bl e. Such adoration of a mere human being wou ld be the most shocking idolatry if it were not true that he is Emmanuel , God with us. So also, ultimately it is only God who can be obeyed or fo llowed. If Jesus were not true God, he could not be addressed as kyrios (Lord . or Sovereign), for he wou ld have no final authority for us.

At the same time, if Jesus were not fully human and one of us, he wou ld not be central and fo undat ional fo r us. We love and follow him because in him God


has identified with us completely in our finite humani ty. We are devoted to him because in him God has suffe red as we suffer and knows intimately our human joys, human temptations, our weakness, our misery, and our death . Moreover, it is in hi s humanity that he is ra ised up , li ni ng up the humanity of us all to a share in the eternal li fe of God.

That Jesus was a person of great love and courage is ce rtainly true and essential to his un ity with God. That it was this man, who ex hibited so lidarity with the poor and outcast, with women, with the disabl ed, the blind, and the lep-ers, that it was this one who was ra ised up from death is of utmost importance. The manner of his life, hi s tenderness toward sinners, and at the same ti me his res istance to oppressors and anger with the se lf-ri ghteous are indispensabl e to hi s di sc losure o f the God who is love. Yet it is not hi s personal mora l character as such, or by itse lf, that leads to the ex travagant conclusion that he is "God with us." Mere enthusiasm and hero worship about a wonderful person cannot, in themse lves , j ustify the eleva tion of a human being to the status of deity.

The doctrine of the divinity, or incarnation of God in Jesus, arose out of the relationship of the first Christi ans to him as ri sen Lord. Lex orandi, lex credendi: The law of praye r is the law of beli ef. They fo und themse lves in a relationship of pra ise and thanksgiving wi th him . But also, lex sequendi, lex credendi: They fo und themselves in a relat ionship with him of fo llow ing and obedience. He had turned their li ves around, and had overcome the power of dea th . Hi s life and min-istry prior to hi s death had to be seen and understood in light of the eschatolog-ica l event (that is, the inbreaking of God's reign) in hi s resurrect ion. His coming was the coming of God, and so the immedia te presence of the eternal. His over-coming of death was Cod '.\' overcoming of death . His compassionate healing of the sick and di sabled was therefore Cod '.y own compass ion to all who suffer, and a sign of God's final overcoming of all suffe ring and mi sery. His fo rgiveness of sins was Cod~· own fo rgiveness and the sign of God's reconci li ation ofa broken, sinful world . His authority to forg ive and to command was God's own authority, and a sign of God's ultimate and effecti ve rule.

The true divinity of' the human Jesus is a prof'ound mystery, incomprehensible but not unintelligible. Those who ques ti on the centrality of Jesus genera ll y di scount be li ef in the unique divini ty of Jesus as something unworthy of a rational mod-ern mind. The idea is thought to be not onl y incomprehensible, and probably myth ica l, but simply unintell igible. However, if we take what seems to be the obvious step and demythologize the incarnat ion, treating it as a metaphor or sym-bol, there is no good reason to continue to be fo unded and centered in Jesus; the general truth that he symbolizes would re lati vize him personall y.

But can the incarnati on be taken seriously as a rea lity? Those who knew Jesus in the fl esh knew that he was really human like us, and it is obvious to us today that Jesus was flesh. with all the limitations and vulnerabili ty o f.flesh. Can a human being rea ll y be God? Is this not a nonsensica l statement, a sheer impos-

15 0 The Christologica/ Criterion

sibility? Ca n such an asserti on make sense, let alone be demonstrated?40 It is not, o f course, demonstrable in the sense that one could prove it to every questioner with coercive logic or ev idence, nor is it comprehensible, in the sense that we can ever fully grasp it or mas ter it inte llec tually. An inte lli gent person, obviously, can doubt this, and it has been quest ioned since the time of the Ebionites in the early church. Christ ians, however, beli eve it because they are confronted with the mys-tery of a human being who is Saviour. Theology 's task is not so much to defend it as to elucidate it. An apologia here can onl y be a clarification. The point is not to prove or even ex pl ai n the inca rnation, but to elucidate what it does and does not mean. One ca n only encounter him , "behold hi s glory,'' and respond. Yet, for both believers and fo r others, the question persists: ls talk about Jesus as divine and human intelli gible at all ? Do we know what we are say ing when we say it? Or is it si mply double-talk , "bagglegab," nonsense?

The possibility li es not, of course, in the capacity of a human being to be God, but in the poss ibility of God being human. If we begin our refl ections on the divinity and humanity of.Jesus wi th a preconceived notion of God, especially a philosophical concept of God as immutable and impass ible (unchangeable and incapable of suffering), the suggestion that God has become human may well appear to be nonsense. According to this conceptuality, God cannot "become," fo r God is already perfect. And God, as in-finite, cannot become finite without ceas ing to be God. This was the difficulty that the Alexandri an theologian Arius had in the early fo urth century, when he insisted that the logos which became fl esh in Jesus could not be fully Goel, coeternal with the Father, for Goel the eter-nal Creator could not become so enmeshed with a creature while maintaining deity. The logos incarnate in Jesus, then, according to Arius, must have been an intermediate bei ng, homoi-ousios (of like substance) but not the same substance as the Father. But in li ght of the biblical story, and especially in light of Jesus, this philosophical concept of God is ra ther limited. This God is unable to suffer, unable to be deeply engaged wi th creation, and therefore unable to love. 41 But if God is unable to suffer and to love, God is less than us and unworthy of our wor-ship. Gregory ofNyssa in the late fourth century already made this point: God's power is displayed not so much in the vastness of the heavens and the orderly arrangement of the world as in the divine freedom to share in the weakness of our human nature. 42

If we set as ide preconce ived notions of God, if we allow our concept of Goel to be shaped instead by the mystery of Jesus and by the experience of sa l-vation ex perienced in Jesus, that whole concept must change. Perhaps God is free to be God in more than one way. Perhaps God as Spiri t, Ruah, like the wind or breath , the God known to the Hebrew people in exodus and ex ile, is not bound to any one place or space, or even to one mode of being. We are told that the Goel of Israel went into ex il e with the people, sharing their misery and humiliation.43 Isa iah tell s us that " in their afflictions, [G od] was afflicted" (Is 63:9). God, who is so unimaginably great that a ll the heavens and earth cannot

Apologia for the Christie Center 15 1

conta in him , neverthe less dwe lt among them, they be li eved, in parti cul ar places , such as the temple ( I Kgs 8:27). As Spirit, as free, unpredi ctable, and uncon-tained as a mighty Wind , she could be beyond and above the world and ye t a lso a li ve within the wo rld and w ithin human be ings, eve n pa rticul ar human be ings (e.g. , Ezek 36:27). If God were a fini te be ing, limi ted in time and space, con-fin ed to one place and one mode o f be ing, we could not beg in to say inte lli-gentl y that God became human in Jesus. T hi s would be rather like say ing "Sam became an oak tree." T hi s wo uld be sheer nonsense. But the Hebrew ex perience of the sav ing God among them and w ithin them, and the C hristian expe ri ence of "God w ith us" in Jesus, and within us by the Spirit, demanded a revo luti on in the concept o f God.44 Thi s revo lution began long ago w ith the Hebrews w hen God, as " the God of Abra ham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jaco b" addressed Moses (Exod 3:6), that is, the God present in hi story. The concept of God underwe nt profound trans fo rmati on aga in , but in the same directi on, when C hri stians began to see that "God was in Chri st, reconc iling the wo rld" (2 Cor 5: 19). It a ll became ve ry ex pli c it when, under the leadership of Athanas ius, the Counc il o f N icaea (325 C. E.) proc la imed that Jesus Chri st, the eterna l Son and logos of God, was indeed homo-ousios (of one substance) w ith the Father. T hi s God, who is deeply engaged wi th human be ings in the ir hi sto ry and even li ves in intimate unity w ith a particul ar human be ing- thi s is a ve ry di ffe rent so rt of God. That Jesus was human, and full y human (homoousios a lso w ith our humanity), need not compromi se hi s true di v inity. God as Spirit is free and capabl e o f "self-e mptying" (kenosis) (Phil 2:7), free to be both present and beyond ,45 free to be human, free to be serva nt as we ll as Lord , free to be low ly and obedient as we ll as majes ti c and commanding, free to suffe r, free to enter into the morta lity of a creature, while yet remaining God.46

As we have seen, the fat hers of N icaea stated the mystery of Jesus in terms of the Greek concept of ousia, "being," which was translated into Latin as sub-stantia, "substance." These concepts, though not biblica l, he lped to contextua l-ize Chri stian fa ith in He ll eni sti c culture. They were rather stat ic metaphys ica l concepts that served we ll in the ir time, but today, w ith our awareness of the fluid , process ive, re lati ona l, and interactive character of a ll realiti es, these concepts are less useful. If we try to th ink of the poss ibility o f di v ine substance and human substance coming together, it is di fficult not to imag ine a mi xture- something like that of sa lt and water, or water and o il. With the first, we would have ne ither true, undiluted water nor pure unadul terated sa lt, but sa lty water. With the other, we would have a separa ti on, oi l fl oating on top, with no rea l un ity of the two . These are the altern ati ves that the Counc il o f Chalcedon (in 45 1 C.E.) admirabl y rejected mere ly by doggedl y asserting the inex plicab le mystery. T hey insisted on the enigma that con fronted them: a human being who is Saviour, who com-mands, fo rg ives, overcomes death , revea ls God, and reconc il es us to God! There-fo re, the counc il declared, Jesus is one person in two natures, trul y God and trul y human, w ithout change or confusion, w ithout di vision or separati on.47 By thi s

15 2 The Christologica/ Criterion

they meant to say that .J esus' humani ty was rea l humanity, identi ca l wi th ours, uncompromised by hi s unity with God, and that hi s divinity was also real , undi-minished by his unity with humanity. We cannot comprehend such a rea lity. We can onl y respond with asto ni shment.

Strangely enough, ancient bi bli ca l categori es seem more relevant and intel-ligibl e to us today than ancient Greek philosophica l ones. I refer, for example, to the concept of " indwelling." As we have seen, the God of the Hebrews was free to be above and beyond the world yet also within it, and to be particularly pre-sent in spec ific places and to li ve within people, and particular people. The author of the Gospel of John , refl ecting on the mystery of the saving God in Jesus, and or Jesus in God, thought of their unity not in substanti al but in rela-tional te rms, especiall y as mutual indwelling:

The Father and I are one. (Jn I 0:30) The Father is in me and I am in the Father. (Jn 10:38) As you, Father, are in me, and I in you, may they al so be in us. (Jn 17:2 1)

We need not think, necessaril y, that these are the words of the hi storical Jesus himself. Although Jesus of Naza reth may have ex peri enced an intimate unity with hi s Abba (and these words may express truly something of what he ex peri-enced), we need not suppose that he had thought through what we now ca ll "chri stology. " These words do express the early Christi ans' encounter with God in Jesus and God's unity with Jesus.

There is something not onl y mysterious, but mystical about the unity of Jesus with God. When we speak of God in Jesus and Jesus in God, the prepos i-tion "i n" becomes a kind of metaphor; God is not " in" Jesus the way that tea is in a teapot. The word " in" expresses intimate unity. Other, less perfect instances of mysti ca l, mutual indwelling may help us to apprehend what is meant by thi s unity. If we can grasp (but not comprehend) what it means to speak of the Spirit of God dwelling in us, and we in God, we have a glimpse (but only a glimpse) of what it means fo r God to be in Jesus, and Jesus in God.48 So also, if we can speak meaningfull y of the uni ty of Chri st and the church (which the Letter to the Ephesians [5: 31-32] compares to the unity of husband and wife) and of members of the church as " members one of another" (Rom 12 :5), then we have a glimmer of what incarnation may mean. 1 suggest that mutual indwelling, and relational-ity as such, is conceptuall y more useful and intelligible to us than "being" or "substance ." If we can speak experi entially of the mystery of the oneness of hus-band and wi fe , or of lovers, in the intimate unity of "one fl esh" (Gen 2:24; Mt 19:5), we again have a glimpse (but only a glimpse) of what the unity of Jesus with God may be. It is poss ib le fo r people to live " in and th rough" each other, so that, while they remain two, they are deeply one. We may say that we are who we are in and through our relationships. Jesus is Mary 's son, the brother of


James, friend of hi s disciples , and so on. Most significantly, he is who he is in hi s unique relation with his Abba.

When we ask , concerning the identity of a person, Who is he, or she? what are we ask ing? Catherine LaCugna (utili zing the phil osophy of John Macmurray) suggests that a person cannot be understood as an iso lated entity, but only as a "bei ng- in-relation-to-another." "Mutuality," she writes, " is the hallmark of per-sonal identity . . .. ' I' am cons tituted as a person only in relat ion to ' You. "'49 Eli z-abeth Johnson speaks simil arly when she says that Jesus ' person , as one with the di vine Wisdom (Soph ia) and one with humanity, is "constituted by these two fun-damental relations."50 Theologians a few centuri es after Chalcedon (such as John or Damascus [c. 655-750]) developed a concept of perichoresis (c ircling round , or mutual indwelling)5 1 to arti cul ate espec ially the doctrine of the Trinity, con-cerning the oneness, di stinction, mutual interaction , and inseparability of the per-sons of the Trinity. The concept is helpful also for understanding (g limpsi ng, but never comprehending) the mystery of the divinity of Jesus. Gregory of Nazianzus suggested , even before the Council ofChalcedon, that the divinity and humanity of Jesus shou ld be thought of as a perichoresis. 52 This dynamic unity in differentiation, this "peri choretic" presence of God in Jesus, and of God's sav-ing work in and through Jesus is so compelling that God 's presence in him has to be seen as utter identification, a total, inseparable oneness. This is so much so that we can say that in Jesus, God li ved a human life l And, more astounding still , a human being shared in the ete rnal life of God! From within our humanity- the human ity of Jesus Emmanuel- God reached out to us as one of us. Thi s, we believe, was more than empathy. We can say, in a sp irit of wonder and adoration, that God knows intimately, firsthand , the joy and mi sery of human living and human dying.

That Jesus was truly divine did not compromise his true humanity . The mystery that confronts us in Jesus is that of a real human being like ourselves, who inau-gurates God's reign , overcomes the power of evil and death, and saves or liber-ates us for our own true humanity. We know his divinity through hi s sav ing work. And yet hi s real humanity is beyond doubt. It is true that in the ancient church some believers were so convi nced of hi s divinity that they doubted whether he was really human at all. They were commonl y called "doceti sts" (from the Greek dokeo, "to appear") in that they thought Jesus only appeared to be human. That group of people prominent in the second and third centuries known as "gnostics" (people supposedly of special gnosis, or "knowl edge") were doceti c, doubting whether Jesus was rea ll y a human being of flesh, questi on ing whether he rea ll y suffered and died . Today no one, as fa r as I know, defends this kind of doceti sm, though the idea still lingers in the minds of many devout people.

That Jesus was rea lly fl esh (Jn I: 14) implies that he ex peri enced all the lim-itations, joys, and vulnerability of creaturely fl esh. He li ved and died at a partic-ular time and place, belonged to a parti cu lar people, spoke a particular language


(or languages) and possessed a parti cular gender. He was a sexual being. He knew the creaturely needs as wel I as sati sfac ti ons and pl easures that accompany our bodily ex istence. He enjoyed ea ting and drinking, had personal fri ends, and apparently loved partying with hi s fri ends (Mt 11 : 19). Even if he had special insight or knowledge of God, his know ledge was nevertheless limi ted; he knew nothing of the English language, nothing about nuclear physics or the solar sys-tems and ga lax ies.

The Council o f' Chalcedon, as we mentioned above, insisted that the one per-son of Jesus Christ existed in " two natures ," full y divine and full y human. The di vinity and humani ty were "without separation or di vision, wi thout confusion or change. "53 This fo rmul a of words did not by any means expla in the mystery of the unity of the human Jesus with Goel ; to explain would be to di sso lve away the mys tery. Jesus was not partly di vine and partly human (as a centaur is half man , half horse ' ). Despi te his kenosis (se lf-emptying) , God in the lowliness of Jesus remains God. Nor did Jesus' di vinity subsume or ca ncel out hi s humanity. As we have seen, the substance language of the ancient world renders thi s a lmost unin-telli gible. The more nuid , in terpersonal language of scripture, however, can still make sense to us in our time. If God dwe ll s in us, by the Holy Spirit, we are not fo r that reason less , but more full y human. So also, by dwe lling in us, God does not become less than God. If we as human beings dwell in one another (peri-choresis) in relationships of deep love and uni ty, our di stinct identi ties are not diminished but enhanced. So also, God's utter unity with the human Jesus and his utter unity with God cl o not compromi se either hi s divinity or hi s humanity.

That God in Christ is united to our whole human nature, body, mind, and spirit, is important fo r the theo logy of salvation. Gregory of Naz ianzus, in the late fo urth century, had argued: " that which [God] has not assumed he has not hea led. "s4 That is, if God was not incarnate in the whole of Jesus, body, mind, and spirit, then our whole humanity has not been redeemed and given a share in God 's eternity.

An important point to remember about thi s in our time is that the human ity of Jesus was the humanity of us all , male and fe male. As both men and women, both girl s and boys, are created in God's image, so also God has blessed, digni -fi ed, and li fted up the humanity of all , of both genders and of all races, ages, and conditi ons. The New Testament- and fo r that matter also the earl y church coun-cil s and creeds- never emphasizes the maleness of Jesus. Though it is obvious that Jesus had to be one sex or the other, and was indeed male- this was part of his limited, finite humanity- we are never told that God has become male. In the Latin translation of the Nicene Creed we do not read vir factus est, but that God has become human- homo f actus est. His maleness is incidental to his salvific significance.ss Although the maleness of Jesus is a pro blem for some fe minist Chri sti ans,56 it is not a problem for all of them. Elizabeth Johnson, a Roman Catholic feminist, fo r example, deplores "a certain leakage of Jesus' human maleness into the divine nature," but insists that "gender is not constituti ve of the


Chri stian doctrine of the Incarnatio n. " To make it so, as the Roman Catholic Church does in its doctrine of pri esthood (refusing ordination to women because they do not resem ble Jesus in his maleness) , is heresy and blasphemous, she wri tes. 57 Nor does Rosemary Radford Ruether have di fficulty with the maleness of Jesus . Hi s solidari ty with the marginali zed, including women, and hi s foot-washing sta nce as humble servant consis t in a "kenosis [se lf-empty ing] of patri-archy," so that hi s renunciation of hiera rchy would have been less signifi cant or remarkabl e had Jesus been a woman. 58 His tender giving of se lf offers us a vision of what humani ty, even male humanity, can be.

The true humani ty of Jesus is li berating for us in that we can identi fy with him as one of us. Thi s is espec iall y so in the case of oppressed and poor people. God, by becomi ng human in Jesus, became, specifica ll y, a poor person- born in a stable, we are to ld , the child of obscure, pushed-around little peopl e in a con-quered, occupied coun try. In his death he was one, specifica lly, with the con-demned and the rejec ted, those wrongfu 1 ly accused and executed, the innocent victims of history. That God is incarnate in such a person is good news fo r the poor and the conquered everywhere. Thi s was prec ious to black slaves in Amer-ica , who in their prayers and songs identi fied .Jesus with God and took Jesus as their true master in circumstances of unimag inable brutality.59

We are to ld , too, that he was tempted to sin (Mt 4: 1- 11 ; Lk 4: l -1 3), yet also that he was "without sin" (Heb 4: 15) . What it means to be without sin is indeed strange to us. It is not something that could poss ibly have been observed by those who knew him ; though they may have known him as incomparably lov ing and compass ionate, courageous and truth ful , they cou ld not have known a ll of his deeds or inner thoughts. The doctrine of hi s sinlessness is a corollary of hi s di vin-ity or oneness with God . It also impli es that sin is not, proper ly speaking, part of our true hu mani ty as God intends it to be, but a distortion or spoiling of our humanity. This means that, if Jesus is "without si n," he is not less, but more gen-uinely human than we are . He did not, however, possess merely an idea l, unfa llen humanity, utterly unlike our own. A number of biblica l texts imply a certain qual-ification to Jesus' sinlessness . Paul speaks of Jesus as "born of a woman, born under the law" (Gal 4:4) and sent " in the likeness of sin fu l fl esh" (Rom 8:3). Pre-sumably the si nlessness of Jesus does not mean a life of complete mora l fl aw-lessness ,60 without the need fo r mora l or spiritua l growth, which would certainly compro mise his genuine humanity. He "grew in wisdom and in stature and in di vine and human favo ur" (Lk 2:52) and " learned obedience thro ugh what he suffe red" (Heb 5:8). We should not try to imagine Jesus as a perfect little boy, devoid of mischief or quarre ls, or as a teenager with no fo nd glances in the di rec-tion of the oppos ite sex. Moreover, however fa ith ful to God he was, he li ved within a corrupt and oppress ive society and, like the rest of us, was inevitably implicated in its structures and systems. What we can say is that his humani ty was as whole as it could be within the conditions of a fa ll en world . He was a human being with and fo r God, and wi th and for others. He was a human person

15 6 The Christological Criterion

" led by the Spirit" (Mt 4: I) and so empowered fo r the wh oleness of hi s human-ity. He is li fe -giving and liberating in that he gives us a vi sion of what true life can be, Ii berating us from fal se I ife, tri viality, and meaninglessness.

The ri sen Jesus too remains trul y human. He has not ceased to be who he is, tra nsformed and glori fl ed beyond the limitations of space and ti me as we know it. He "ascended into heaven," as we are told in legendary fas hi on in Acts I :9 (and as the Apostl es' Creed att ests). Thus .J esus gives us a glimpse of what God intends for our humanity beyond death. Part of the good news is that a human bei ng like us is, speaking metaphorica ll y, "seated at the right hand of the Father," and so we too may hope to share, with him, in God 's eternal li fe.

3. Jesus, as Saviour, meets us in our sin and guilt, offering forgiveness am/ reconciliation, undermining

our se(frighteou.wress, and inspiring a l(fe of gratitude.

Jesus is fo undational fo r us because he meets us in our deepest need, which is our alienation from Goel , fro m one another, and from the created order around us. If Jesus were not pert inent to our human brokenness, he would offer us no hope, could not be fo undational fo r us, or central to our worship , life, and thought . Because God, in Jesus, reaches out to us as sinners, we have hope fo r ourse lves and our world . Yet that "Jesus died for us" is a difficult concept today. Many find it imposs ible to affirm the centrality of Jesus Chri st because talk of atonement through his death is simply meaningless, even reprehensible. In what sense can we appropri ate this message today?

The New Testament testimony that "Jesus died.for us" reflects the Hebrew aware-ness of the depth of human sin and the costliness of reconciliation with God. lf we were willing simply to accommodate our fa ith and theology to the contemporary mood, we might we ll neglect this whole theme. The language of sin is very unpopular in our time. Secul ar fo lk , and even some church members, tend to smile at the word sin as at something quaint. When I worked as a pastoral minister, church members complained from time to time about hav ing to say prayers of confess ion, fee ling that, while they may have had a few faults, they were hardly sinners' The good news that we are fo rgiven and accepted by an unconditional grac ious love is not often received with enthusiasm by people who feel no great need for any such grace. It is true, as Paul Tillich sa id half a centu ry ago, that mod-ern people have little anxiety of guil t, but suffe r rather fro m an anxiety of empti-ness, meaninglessness, and despair. 61 Or is that awareness of brokenness and alienation often repressed in our time? In fact, while some have li tt le awareness of being in the wrong, others carry an overwhelming weight of guilt, either about their personal sins or about the systemic inequities in which they are implicated. The anxiety of guilt, or of repressed guilt, is surely a dimension of the anxiety of meaninglessness and despair. Our estrangement from God, and therefore from any


sense of ultimate meaning, may render us cynical or hopeless about ourselves. However, the gospel message that "Jesus died for our sins," which should free us from these anxieties, is a message that few people today are able to appropriate as life-giving, I iberating grace. An exploration of the roots of a Christian doctrine of sin in the faith of our Hebrew forebears may help us to grapple with what has become a widespread crisis in the theology of sin and grace.

The ancient Hebrews knew that the holy One who led them out of slavery in Egypt called them to be a holy people, living in justice under God's command-ments. The prophets were painfully aware of the idolatry and unfaithfulness of their own people, worshiping false gods and oppressing one another. From the golden calf in the time of Moses (Exod 32) to the human-made idols in the time of the prophets (Jer I 0) they bowed down and worshiped deities of fertility or of prosperity, rather than the holy liberating Lord of the exodus. In this they failed to know God and were unable to trust or love God. The prophets saw that the worship of false gods led to cruelty toward one another: " they sell the righteous for si Iver, and the needy for a pair of sandal s ... , trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth , and push the am icted out of the way" (Amos 3 :6-7). The mythical tale of the disobedience of Adam and Eve, symbolic of all humankind, reflects an awareness that humanity as a whole, and not only the covenant people, is deeply alienated from the Creator, seeking to be "as God" knowing good and evil for themselves (Gen 3:5). In the story of the tower of Babel, proud humanity seeks to invent itself, rather than to receive its life from the Creator, striving arrogantly to build "a tower with its top in the heavens" (Gen 11 :4). This mythical wisdom is strangely relevant in our time in that ambi-tious technological humanity brings destruction upon itself. The sin of humanity, as the Christian theological tradition has long said, is most fundamentally pride, the desire to be ourselves absolute, to define ourselves according to our own free decision , setting aside all restraint and limitations that come from beyond us. The author of Genesis depicts the resulting estrangement of the man and the woman, and of both from the creatures around them (Gen 3: 12-19) as the man and woman both refuse to take responsibility, accusing one another and then the serpent. According to the Genesis saga, violence and murder follow in the next genera-tion, when Cain murders his brother Abel. Today we are painfully aware of the triviality, the banality, and the pettiness and meanness that so often characterize human relationships , even when they do not spiral into anything as dramatic as murder. We realize that sin is often omission , or sloth, rather than proud or vio-lent commission. Moreover, we who live at the opening of the twenty-first cen-tury are perhaps more poignantly aware than ever of the macro level of human corruption. From the time of World War l, through economic depression, fascist and communist regimes of terror and oppression, the Second World War, the nuclear arms race, the increasing poverty of the third world , the ecological cri-sis , and so on, humanity has learned that greed and hatred have not diminished through the spread of Enlightenment reason, science, or education. Rather, new

158 The Chris tolog ica/ Criterion

sc ientific know ledge and technologica l power have enabl ed vast ly greater, more subtle, and more ghastl y atroc ities than ever before.

Consciousness of the broken, corrupted state of humani ty was bas ic to ancient reli gions. The sacrifi cial system in Israel (not unlike many systems of sacri fice in many reli gions, including anc ient European and African) is an indi -ca tion of human ity 's awa reness that sin cannot be shrugged away, that fo rgive-ness and reconci I iat ion are costly.62 In the book of Lev iticus, the ritual of the Day of Atonement lay the sins of the people symboli ca ll y on the head ofa goat, which was dri ven in to the wilderness bearing the sins of the people (Lev 16:20-22). Blood sac ri fices of oxen , lambs, or goats were presented as propitiation or ex pi-ati on- appeasement or cleansing away ofs ins,63 fo r " the life of the fl esh is in the blood ; and I have given it to you fo r mak ing atonement" (Lev 17: 11 ). One sacri-fices the li fe of li ving creatures for the sake of reconcil ed li fe with Goel . Yet they knew that they themselves could not effect their reconcili ation, fo r, as in the story of Abraham and Isaac, God prov ides the sacrifice (Gen 22: 14 ).

Beyond the sacrifi cial system itse lf, the be li ef that innocent human suffe ring and death could bring reconciliat ion is re fl ected in the words of the Servant Song of Isa iah 52-53 . The prophet speaks of a ri ghteous one who "was wounded for our transgress ions, bruised fo r our iniqui ties" (Is 53: 12). The idea that reconcil i-ation is cos tl y and demands a price was expressed aga in centuries later in 4 Mac-cabees, a Jew ish writing approx imately contemporary wi th Jesus and the apostl e Paul (first century C. E.) M An example of thi s is the noble prayer ofa dyi ng mar-tyr: "Be merciful to your people and let our punishment be a sati sfact ion on their behalf, make my blood their purificat ion and take my I ife as a ransom fo r theirs" (4 Mace 6:28). 65

A grasp of thi s Hebra ic/Jew ish background in sacrifice and vicarous suffer-ing is help ful fo r an understanding of the New Tes tament teaching that "Jesus died fo r us." Chri sti ans be li eved that Jesus had di ed "once and for a ll" and had canceled the need fo r any further sacr ifices. Perhaps fo r thi s reason, many cen-turies after the aboli tion of animal and human sacrifice in our culture, the men-tality of sac ri fice now seems to us strange and remote, merely primitive. However, the insight and wisdom that lay behind centuries , even millenni a, of sacri fice in many re ligions were the seriousness of sin and the costliness of rec-onciliation. Modern people who, because of their Chri sti an history, no longer offer sacrifi ces but also do not be li eve in the sac ri fice of Chri st may tend to win k away human gui It.

Modern Chri stians may often ra ther casuall y assume that God easily for-gives anything. The attitude is hu morously ex pressed by a charac ter of W. H. Auden: " I like committing crimes. God li kes fo rgiving them. Really the world is admi rably arranged."66 It is what Dietri ch Bonhoeffer ca lled "cheap grace." But th is fa il s to take sin and guilt seri ously; the wrath and love of God are tri viali zed or sentimentali zed, and therefore "grace" offers no profound response to the human need fo r reconciliation.


I suggest that, despite its strangeness to us, we need to open our minds to the alien wisdom conta ined in the proclamation that "Jesus died fo r us," which is so constantly taught in the New Testament. How did the first Chri sti ans reach thi s conclusion about Jesus' dea th? Out of the Easte r ex peri ence of Jesus ri sen, the first Chri stians re fl ected back on hi s dea th in the li ght of hi s resurrecti on. The resurrecti on opened thei r eyes to see that hi s death must have had redempti ve sig-ni licance. But it was to their own Hebrew scriptures that they turned fo r the con-ceptual equipment by which hi s dea th could be understood. According to Paul , he "died fo r us' ' and "for our sins" (Rom 5:8; I Cor 15:3). God, like Abraham, "did not withhold his Son, but gave him up fo r us all" (Rom 8:32). For Mark , Jesus is the (Danieli c) Son of Man who (like the Suffe ring Servant of Isa iah, or the mart yr of Maccabees) came to "give his life a ransom fo r many" (Mk I 0:45). For .J ohn he is the sacri li cial " lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" (Jn I :29). The sac ri fi ca l theme is most thoroughly developed in the Letter to the Hebrews, where .J esus is " the merci rut hi gh pries t in the service of God who made atonement fo r our sin s" (Heb 2: 17). As the blood of sacrifi ces offered li fe for the sake of li fe reconcil ed to God, now the blood of Jesus, the willing vi ctim, affo rds li fe to all . Just as .J esus, seen from the perspect ive of the resurrection, was interpreted as Messiah out of the Hebrew tradi tion of hope, so also he was inter-preted as priest and sacrificial victim.

No Chri sti an doctrine of atonement has ever been offic iall y promulgated by an ecumeni ca l council , but doctrines of substituti onary atonement have been pre-dominant through most of Chri sti an hi story. Nevertheless, the idea that the God of the Hebrews requires bl ood sacrifi ce and death fo r the forg iveness of sin and reconciliation is questioned within the Hebrew canon itse lf, in histori ca l Chris-ti an theo logy, and especiall y in contemporary theo logy. Can a doctrine of sac ri -fi c ial , substitutionary atonement still be vi able fo r us today?

The Cod of grace whom we encounter in Jesus Christ does not demand to be paid in blood and suffering fo r the.forgiveness of sins. To suggest that God demands to be paid in blood fo r our sins is unimaginable and meaningless to most con-temporary peopl e; it also totall y negates the gospel of grace and constitutes a block to genu ine love fo r God. The Hebrew prophets already declared, many centuries before Jesus, that God does not demand sacrifice. The prophet Hosea proclaimed the "Word of the Lord" (Hos 4: I; 6:6): " I des ire steadfas t love and not sacrifi ce, the know ledge of God ra ther than burnt offerings." Jeremiah also dec lared on God's behalf: " in the day that I brought your ancestors out of the land of Egypt , I did not speak to them or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices" (Jer 7:22). Isa iah too spoke for God: "What to me is the mul titude of your sacri fices? says the Lord ; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not deli ght in the blood of bull s, or of lambs, or of goats" (Is I: 11 ). 67 The prophets ca ll ed ra ther fo r justi ce and mercy toward the poor. It is debated whether the prophets se riously demanded the abolition of the


sacrificial system or whether their intenti on was to ethicize sacrificial practices.68

Whatever the case may have been so many centuries ago, we may we ll hear these texts today as encouragement to quest ion whether we should think of God as hav ing required pro piti atory sacrifice, and therefore as good reason also to ques-tion whether God req uired the sac ri li cial death of Jesus. We note first our chris-tological grounds fo r thi s view.

Jesus hirnsel f, as he is dep icted in the Gospels, never claims that Goel com-mands ritual sacrifi ce. In Matthew Jesus refers favo ura bl y to the prophetic denunciation of sacrifice : "Go and lea rn what this means: I desi re mercy, not sac-ri li ce" (M t 9: 13 ). The most fa mous of his parables depi cts God as a lov ing fa ther who wa its eagerl y fo r the return of hi s son, fa ll s upon him with embraces even before his words of repentance, and rece ives him home with overwhel ming gen-erosity. This is how Jesus thinks of hi s Abba God. Moreover, Jesus himself enacts radi ca ll y gracious acceptance of sinners without reference to any required sacrifi cial payment. He announces in the same text: " I have come to ca ll not the ri ghteous but sinners." We see him reaching out in fr iendship to " tax co llectors and sinners" and even eating and drinking with them (Lk 5:30; 7:34)- what Crossan ca ll s "commensa lity"- in Jesus' time an act of ex trao rdinary solidarity with marginalized and di sreputable people.69 He befriends the corrupt tax co l-lector Zacchaeus and turns hi s li fe around (Lk 19), rescues the woman caught in adultery (Jn 8), and defends the "sin ful woman" who anoints his feet in the home of a Phari see (Lk 7). Repentance and change of life are ca lled fo r, but forgi ve-ness and acceptance precede any such repentance and are entirely free and can-not be paid fo r, rituall y or in any other way. All of thi s leads us to the conclusion that the God about whom Jesus teaches us requires no payment of any kind fo r the forg iveness of sin s.

That God the Father required, or willed, the torture and death of Jesus hi s Son as the pri ce for forgiveness is a dangerous and destructi ve doctrine that has trag ica ll y damaged the fa ith of countless soul s. Can we seri ously love and wor-ship such an almi ghty tyrant? How could such a monstrous deity seriously inspire us to free , gracious, and fo rgiving love toward one another, if Goel , Gocl-se lf, requires such a brutal payment? Yet something like this has been the regu-lar teaching of the church fo r centuries. For example, the class ic teaching of Anselm of Canterbury ( I 033- 11 09) held that Goel was like the greatest of all feu-dal lords. When a lord is disobeyed, restoration of his honour was required in a way sati sfactory to himself. The lord must be sati sfi ed by sui table payment or punishment. The greater the lord and the greater the offence, the greater the required payment. Since God's lordship is infinitely high, any offence against his honour could be paid onl y by an in fi nite being. Thus "only a Goel-man can make the sati sfaction by which man is savecl."70 This, according to Anselm, was why Goel became human (Cur Deus homo). Goel has shown love toward humanity in that God the Son "di ed vo lun taril y" fo r us.71 Since we no longer li ve in a feudal system, thi s theology of atonement is very unconvincing to us today. Moreover,

Apolog ia for the Christie Center 16 1

it see 111s to di vide God into an angry Father and a co111pass ionate Son, negat ing not onl y the love but the unity of Goel .

Very soon a fterwa rcls, Peter Abelard (I 079- 1 142) of Pari s, Anse lm 's younger conte111porary, obj ected strenuously to Anselm 's "satisfaction" theology of atone111ent:

How cruel and wicked it seems that anyone should demand the blood of an innocent person as the pri ce o r anything, or that it should in any way please hi111 that an innocent ma n should be sla in . Still less that Goel should consider the dea th of his Son so agreeable that by it he should be reconciled to the whole world' 72

Nevertheless, sacrificial, substitutionary atonement has been preached and taught right up to our own century. Femini st theo logians especia ll y have pressed home powerfully a point similar to that of Abelard. Eli zabeth Johnson says it elo-quentl y:

Femini st theo logy repudiates an interpretation of the dea th of Jesus as required by God in repay 111ent fo r sin . Such a view today is virtually inseparabl e from an underl ying image of Goel as an angry, bl oodthirsty, violent and sadi sti c fa ther, re fl ec ting the ve ry worst kind of male behav ior. 73

Dorothee Soelle also points out the cl anger of sado-masochi sti c pathology in a doctrine that glorifies suffe ring, so encourag ing women and other people to put up with abuse.74

These considerations- bib li ca l, traditi onal, and contemporary- lead us to abandon the language of "sacrifice to Goel" as it relates to christology. The God of Jesus does not demand retribution or payment of any kind , neither ritual sac-rifice nor a brutal spilling of bl ood in exchange for the forgiveness of sins. It is unworthy to think of God sulking until sufficient torture and misery have occurred to "sati sfy" hi s honour. 75 We need, then, to understand differently what it can mean to say that "Jesus di ed fo r us. "

Jesus died a political death as a result o.f his .faithfulness to God and his politi-cal solidarity with the poor and sinners. Jn this death, God, in Jesus, suffers the j udgment and bears the cost of reconciliation. It is important that the single death of Jesus be seen in these two dimensions. Our New Testament sources show us that it was the politi ca l martyrdom of a prophetic fi gure who was aligned with the oppressed and poor, but also an event of God 's compass ionate so lidarity and grace toward sinners. In a truly li fe-giving theo logy, these two dimensions must be understood together, as of a piece with each other.


The I iberation theo logies of the latter part of the twentieth century have pressed upon us an obvious truth that most of hi stori ca l theo logy has overlooked: that the dea th of .J esus was indeed a poli tica l death. Jesus died because of the way he li ved. He was "condemned as a politi ca l ag itator," Jon Sobrino tell s us.76 Hi s fr iendship and ea ting with al I the outcas ts of his day, hi s quest ioning of the ri gid lega li sm and hypocri sy of those who held power in hi s nation, made him an affront and a cha llenge to their authority. Hi s "a lternative to the Roman imperi al order," both spoken and acted out, made him dangerous indeed. Ri chard Hors-ley, out o f hi s knowl edge of Jesus' soc ial/politi ca l contex t, pain ts a persuas ive and poignant pi cture o f .J esus working in village communi ties, where he " launched a miss ion not onl y to hea l the debili tating effects of Roman military violence and economic exploitati on, but also to revi ta li ze and rebuild the peo-pl e's cultu ra l spirit and communal vitali ty."77 Drawing on the ri ch resources of the covenantal tradition of Israel, Jesus called the peopl e to solidarity and mutual ass istance, asking them to se t as ide mutual blaming and to opt instead fo r radi-cal fo rgiveness, love of neighbours, and the practi ce of radica l generosity. Hors-ley writes :

The renewed covenantal community that .J esus advocated and enacted also fo rms a striking contrast with frequent modern interpretati on of his teachings. In the context of covenant renewal, " love" refers not to a fee ling or an att itude, bu t to concrete economic practi ces in village com-munity, such as canceling debts and generous mutual sharing of resources. In Jesus' program, and the underl ying Mosaic covenantal tra-dition, there is fa r less ofa sense ofor emphas is on pri vate pro perty and fa r more of a sense of commonali ty in cla im s on and uses of economic resources than in modern capital isl society. 78

To the religious ruling classes of hi s own peopl e he appeared to ca ll into ques-tion the law of Moses, the very lavv of God, on the bas is of which they claimed their own soc ial power and control. At the same time he fea rl ess ly defended poor and disreputable women and kept the company of lepers (who were considered sinners and cursed by God) and the despised tax collectors, collaborators with Rome. He was not himse lf in co llusion with the Romans, though he was capable of befriending and see ing good in them (Mt 8: I 0; Lk 7:9). The Sadducees, the wea lthy priestly class, ruled the temple and held sway in cooperation with and with the permiss ion of the occupying Roman forces . His attack on the temple trade as a "den of robbers" (Lk 19:46) was directl y an attack on the influential Sadducees and , indirect ly, upon their sponsors, the Romans. It was done in defence of God's honour and o f the little people who were being chea ted there and was perhaps the decisive public event that bro ught down upon him the wrath both of hi s powerful countrymen and the imperi al power. The Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, had the reputati on of be ing a bru ta l tyrant; he had crucifi ed great


numbers o f people and wo uld do anything necessa ry to keep order and control hi s province. C rossa n makes a strong case fo r lay ing responsibility fo r the death of Jesus ma inly at the fee t o f the Romans, and he charges the church with anti-Semiti sm in its accusati on o f the Jews. 7'1 At any rate, acco rding to New Testa-ment accounts, it was fin a ll y the Roman governor who condemned Jesus to di e on a Roman cross. He di ed, then, as the enemy of both re lig ious and po liti ca l authoriti es, in a s ituati on where po liti cs and re lig ion were not c lea rl y di stin-g ui shed. He di ed as a prophet and a po liti ca l martyr, not unl ike the ri ghteous martyrs w ho were tortured to dea th at the hands o f a fo re ign power in the time o f the Maccabees . The charge aga inst Jesus, posted on the cross over hi s head, was a po liti ca l one, even if it was deri s ive in intention: "Jesus o f Nazareth, Kin g of the Jews" (Jn 19: 19) . It places Jesus together with many people o f our own time who have " di sappeared" and di ed mi se rably in the strugg le fo r justice in Latin America, and many who were ma imed, tortured, and murdered ignomin-iously in the South A fri ca n struggle aga inst aparthe id . Hi s execution is entire ly understandable and hi stori ca ll y common at the po liti ca l leve l. None of thi s, how-ever, j ustifi es our centering on h im in wo rship , in li fe , or in thought. A po litica l death as such does not constitute him our Savio ur. T hat he di ed .for us is another leve l of re fl ect ion entire ly.

The question about what Jesus unde rstood about hi s death , whether he went to the cross with the in tenti on of o ffe ring himself as a sacrifi ce fo r s in (as the Maccabean martyrs did ) is diffi cult indeed. We are a lways on tenuous g rounds when we imagine we can get inside the mind of the hi stori ca l Jesus on the basis o f the New Testament testimonies about him , which are postresurrection test i-monies of the be li ev ing commun ity. The debate between M arcus Borg and N . T. Wright is a good example of how two learned scholars can d isagree on thi s mat-te r. 80 Whereas Borg is convinced that the interpretati on of Jesus ' death as sa lv ific is entire ly a postresurrect ion understanding of the earl y church, Wright thinks that Jesus, knowing we ll the Maccabean as we ll as the Suffe ring Servant texts, would have had no diffi culty imag ining hi s death as hav ing redemptive mean-ing.81 Certa inly such meaning is fo und on Jesus' lips in a number of Gos pe l texts (e .g. , Mk 10:45 ; Mt 26:28), yet Borg may be ri ght that these are proj ecti ons back upon Jesus, reflecting the fa ith of the fi rst Chri stians. While the biblica l testi-monies g ive us good reason to be li eve that Jesus went to hi s death willing ly, specul ation about how he understood it is perhaps not he lpful. It was sure ly onl y after the resurrecti on that a sa lvifi c s ignifi cance of the death could come c lear to the first Chri stians.

In li ght of hi s resurrection, Jesus ' death took on new redempti ve meaning, s ince from hindsight, in view of the resurrecti on, the dea th itse lf was seen as a vi ctory. Through the Spirit, Hebrews te ll s us, he was empowered to offer himse lf "without blemish" (H eb 9:14). As John sees it , hi s death in utter fa ithfulness, hi s refu sa l to bow to the powers o f evil , was hi s true v ictory. According to John , as Jesus di ed on the cross he cri ed out, " It is fini shed" or " It is accompli shed" (Jn

164 The Christolog ical Criterion

19:3 1 ). 82 John sees Jesus' '' lifting up" on the cross as hi s true glory, whi ch will draw all people to him (.In 12:32-33).

But if we leave behind the notion that .Jesus died as a sacrifi cial payment to Goel for the fo rgiveness of sin s, how are we to understand the meaning of hi s dea th fo r us? It is impossible, if we take the scriptural witness seri ously, to con-clude that the cross had noth ing at all to do with God's grace and pardon. It would be an impoveri shment of the church to strip away the euchari sti c words: "My body broken for you . .. , my bl ood shed fo r you." There is something pre-cious here, not to be lost.

The key to any understanding of Jesus' dea th as an event fo r us must be the con fess ion that he is "God with us," truly God and truly human. If we read the tex ts about Jesus' death fo r us in li ght of God's incarnation in him , we begin to see Jesus' suffering and death as Cod\· own suffering and death , or as "death in God. "83 "God was in Chri st reconci I ing the world ," says Paul (2 Cor 5: 19), that is, both pardoning and se tting the world right. Chri st cannot be separated from God, who is utterl y one with him in hi s vulnerabl e humanity. The sacrificial " lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" (Jn I :29) is not, then, some poor creature whom God singles out fo r victimi zati on, bu t the very Word of God who, according to the same chapter of .J ohn , was with God and was God and was in the beginning with God (J n I: 1-2) and who became fl esh in Jesus ( I: 14). Thus, God's giving of the "onl y Son" out of great love fo r the world (Jn 3: 16) was noth-ing else but God 's own agapeic se/fgiving. To say that Jesus is Sav iour implies that Jesus is the embodiment of the liberating God of exodus, the enfleshment of God 's own creating and sav ing Wi sdom. We have seen that the theology of God's incarnat ion in Jesus fl ows fro m the ex perience of sa lvation th rough him. So also, in circular fas hion, the theology of sa lvation by God 's grace in Christ has to be understood in terms of incarnat ion.

But we still need to ask: Wherein li es the necessity for the suffering of Jesus? Even if his suffering was Goel 's own suffe ring, do we sti II say that it was God 's requirement, God 's will? Is thi s a sovereign divine decision, meeting a need within God for judgment and puni shment to be carried out'7 If so, are we not returning, willy-nill y, to a wrathful , vengeful God who is now not only sadistic but masochi stic as weir>

I suggest that this is where we need to keep together the two dimensions of Jesus' death- that it was a politica l death yet at the same time a reconciling and redemptive death , through which God brought the vi ctory of resurrection. This political death then became the in strument through which God reached out to humanity in love and grace. It seems unhelpful to become involved in old debates about whether God fo reordained or only foreknew the death of Jesus, whether the death of Jesus was " planned" by God. I suggest that it is an unwor-thy, overly anthropomorphic, and amoral concept of God that imagines God planning and willing the death of Jesus in such phys ical and spiritual agony. Thi s


would be incongruent with the compass ionate God whom we encounter in Jesus. Rather, we must see God's acti vity in rega rd to the cross in histori cal/politi cal terms, fo r the God of the Bible ac ts in freedom, taking ini tiati ve as we ll as responding to the contingencies of human acti vity. We may say, with hindsight, that the death of Jesus was inev itable or "necessary," given the rea lity of human fear and cruelty. Alienated humanity could not stand his strong freedom, hi s courageous chall enge to hypocri sy and injusti ce, his holy innocence. Like the "j ust man" o r Plato's Republic, it was inev itable and predictabl e that he would be crushed . This is why the first Chris ti ans understood Jesus' death as fo retold by the prophets, as an event "according to the scriptures" ( I Cor 15:3). We may say, if ra ther anth ropomorphi ca ll y, that the death of Jesus "did not take God by sur-prise." We may say that hi s death was, in this sense, both predictabl e and a "necess ity. " The New Tes tament tell s us that Jesus himself was not taken by sur-pri se, but predicted hi s dea th (e.g., Mt 16:2 1 ). Perhaps it was with hindsight that the di sc ipl es understood the necess ity of the cross: "Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffe r these things and then enter in to his glory?" (Lk 24:26). But it is not the "necess ity" of God 's will fo r punishment and sati sfaction (as in Anselm 's account), but a necess ity within the conti ngency of sin ful human hi s-tory. Jesus came ca lling the people to repen tance and to God's reign of peace and love; he dec lared hi s grac ious, forgiv ing Abba, offering free, unconditional love and pardon. The challenge was too great. Thi s grace was an overwhelming affront to human pride. Powerful fo rces or his own soc iety and of the imperi al power jo ined together to be ri d of him . He di ed asking hi s Abba to "forgive them, fo r they do not know what they are doing" (Lk 23:24). The response of sinful human beings to such a one was almost necessaril y murderous.

We may say, with Jon Sobrino, that " the cross is the outcome of an incarna-tion situated in a world of sin ."84 To say " incarnation" is to say "cross." But was it pleas ing, was it sati sfy ing to God that human cruelty and cowardice nailed Jesus to the cross? Was God pleased to accept this substi tute as a sacrifi ce fo r our sins? The suggestion is blasphemous. We need to stop preaching thi s destructive message, which destroys the love and worshi p of God. What was pleasing to God was Jesus' utter dedication and fidelity to God's reign, even unto death ,85 What was sati sfyi ng to Goel was a hu man being totally commi tted not onl y to his Abba, but to hi s sisters and brothers, espec iall y the most oppressed and poor among them. His death was the necessary and predictable outcome of thi s very fai thful -ness, which was, in itse lf, a true victory.

And what of the judgment of God? Was judgment carried out on the cross? If we affi rm th is, we must do so very carefull y. There is a great deal about judg-ment in the Bible, including the New Testament. Even the teaching of Jesus, as we have it in the New Testament, contains much of God's anger and judgment. Those who fa il to be good stewards of God's reign are judged harshly, with the warning of "weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Mt 25 : 14-30). God is depicted as


full of wrath toward human love lessness and un fa ithfulness . In the story of Lazarus and the ri ch man (Lk 16: 19-3 I), the latter finds himself a fter death in the agony of the fl ames o f he ll because he refused to care for the poor man at hi s gate . Those who do not ca re fo r those in need arc judged severe ly a lso in Jesus ' parable of the sheep and the goats:

" You that arc acc ursed , depart from me in to the ete rna l fire prepared fo r the dev il and hi s ange ls; fo r r was hungry and yo u gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stra nge r and you did not we lcome me, naked and you did not g ive me clothing, s ick and in pri son and you did not v is it me . ... Trul y I te ll you, just as yo u did not do it to one o f the least of these , you did not do it to me." A nd these w ill go away in to eterna l puni shment, but the ri ghteous into ete rna l li fe . (Mt 25:4 1-46)

T hese tex ts must be heard in a ll the ir stark demand and urgent warning. In our time we must sec it as a demand not o nl y fo r charitabl e deeds fo r the needy but fo r soc ia l-justi ce ac ti on fo r structu ra l and systemic change that addresses the causes o f pove rty- something much more diffi cult. Yet read by themse lves, they throw us all into despa ir, fo r who among us can ever say that we have done enough fo r the " least of these'"? We al I know very we! I that we have not. These and other texts of judgment, read by themselves , carry no message of grace or fo rg iveness for weak human be ings and actua lly imply that we must ea rn our way to God 's love and favo ur. If we are to hea r "good news" in re lati on to our s in and guilt , these texts must be read together with tex ts of g race, such as the parabl es of the lost sheep, the lost co in , and the lost son and forg iving father (Lk 15) . They must a lso be read in li ght of the cross and resurrecti on and in the li ght of the message of grace and fo rg ive ness that we find throughout the theology of the Synoptics, of Paul , of Hebrews, and of John . The texts of God 's free pardon-ing grace do not s imply negate the tex ts o f God 's w rath ; rather, they proc la im that God 's pain in the face of our s in and God 's wrath and judgment have fa ll en upon Jesus and , in him, upon God 's very se lf That Jesus is the " lamb o f God" and the " ransom fo r many" te ll s us that God has not shrugged off our s infulness. The consequences of s in- -condemnati on, death , and he ll- have fa ll en upon God, in Jesus: " For our sake [God] made him to be s in who knew no sin , so that in him we might become the ri ghteo usness o f God" (2 Cor 5 :2 1 ). Again, " Jesus was handed over to death fo r our trespasses and was ra ised fo r our justifi cation" (Rom 4 :25). For I Peter, " He himse lf bore our sins in hi s body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we mi ght li ve fo r righteousness ; by hi s wounds you have been healed" ( I Pet 2:24) .

Can we take these tex ts of judgment and grace seriously without fa lling back into an unacceptable theo logy of sati sfaction? 1 suggest that, whil e the texts grow


out of sacrificial language, they need to be understood in terms of God 's painful outreach fo r the sake of our reconcili ation. 86 God, in Chri st, comes near to us, offering love and pardon, calling us to repentance and reconciliati on. But recon-cili at ion is always costl y, as we know from our ordinary experi ence of human relationships. When grave offence and deep hurt have occurred among peop le, whether among indi viduals, races, nati ons, or classes , reconcili ation is never easy or cheap. The overcoming of alienati on usuall y in vo lves painful confronta-tion and honest communication, but the one who forg ives does not get " paid. " Rather, the one who fo rgives pays the price and bears the cost. We are to ld that "God was in Christ reconciling the world" (2 Cor 5: 19). The cos t of reconcili a-tion, then, fa ll s upon Goel , in Chri st. Through the human fa ithfulness of Jesus, with whom God is utterl y one, Cod bears the judgmenl, and " the Judge is judged in our place."87 William Placher states the matter nicely:

Christ stands with us in our pl ace of sin , and therefore it is no longer a place separated from God . ... We were running away fro m God look-ing fo r a place to hide, and we fo und that Goel was running bes ide us, sharing our fea r and shame. The sense that we had irreparab ly damaged our relation with Goel di sappears, and we can stop ru nning away. 88

That Christ, God with us, stands with us in the place of sin does not mean that God willed the atrocious event of his terrible death , fo r the grac ious Abba of Jesus does not will that human be ings should be vicious and hateful or that any-one should suffer the degradation and despair that Jesus endured on the cross. That Jesus cri ed out "My Goel , my God, why have you fo rsaken me?" shows Jesus' human experience of fo rsakenness and abandonment, the very pit of human desolat ion and despair. It does not mean that Goel demanded a sacrifice, but that God, at one with Jesus, shared that desolation and despair with us. 89 The event of God's se lf-giv ing in Jesus' li fe and death was the exact oppos ite, then, of payment or retribution. Retribution is entirely set as ide by the freedom of grace, and no one is punished as a substitu te for others. Yet the pain and cruelty of sin fa ll upon Jesus and, in him, upon Goel , with whom he is wholl y one.

It is all the more ev ident, then, why Jesus Chri st is centra l and fo undational fo r us: Crucified and ri sen, Jesus, Goel with us, reconci les us to God and so meets us in the deepest need of our brokenness and alienation.

There is so much more of the theo logy of sa lvation fo r which we have no space here: justificati on and sanctificati on, judgment and repentance. The grace di scovered in Jesus means, ex istentiall y, that the struggle to li ve in righteousness, to fo llow Jesus in a li fe of compass ion and courage, is not an onerous duty but a response of gratitude. It is li fe not under law but under grace . That we are loved fo r ourse lves and not for our good works is life-giving, liberating us fo r a li fe of gratitude. Suffi ce it to say here that the theology of the reconciliation of the

168 The Christolog ica/ Criterion

whole world with God through God 's sharing in our uni versal humani ty gives us hope that all God 's children wi ll ultimate ly say yes to God's outreaching grace, that none will finall y be lost, and that ' 'the ea rth will be full o f the know ledge of the Lord , as the wa ters cover the sea" (Is 11 :9).

4. Jesus reveals the triune Got!, the eternal communion ol love, ground ol our hope .

.J esus is fo undational fo r us because in him , and on ly in him , we know God as the eternal communi on of love. The distinct ive Chri stian doctrine of Goel as Tri nity and the peculi ar trinitari an characte r of Chri sti an worship and prayer to God- through Christ, in the Spirit- depend entirely on the revelation of Goel in Jesus Christ.

The doctrine of the Trinity is rooted in itially in the trinitarian pattern of the Gospel stOJ y, which reflects the identi(}1 of Jesus as the Son who reveals the Father in the power of the Spirit. We know Goel in the way that we do because in Jesus we encoun ter true God in his true humani ty. Yet Jesus is never apart fro m the Spiri t who fill s and empowers him and the Abba who sent him. In thi s way Jesus, in hi s twofo ld relation with the Spirit and the Father, is fo undat ional fo r our spec ifica ll y trinitari an know ledge of God.

To reiterate bri efl y our ea rli er di scuss ion of the concept of reve lati on, we said that revelati on implies something radica ll y given that we otherwise could not know. Reve lation di d not occur for the first time with Jesus of Nazareth, who must be understood in terms of the tradi tion of revelati on that preceded hi m. Revelation reached the people of Israe l thro ugh remarkable liberative, Ii fe-giving events, and through inspired, courageous, propheti c vo ices who spoke God 's Word . Goel al so acted into the world by the Sp irit. The Wind or Spirit of God is at work in the events of creat ion (Gen I :2 ; Ps I 04:30), exodus ( 15:2 1 ), mili tary struggle (e.g., throughout Judges, I Sam uel), propheti c inspira ti on (e.g., Ezek 2:2; Mic 3:8). The mess ianic hope of the prophets looked forward to one who would come in the power of the Spirit (e .g., Is 11 : I; 6 1: I). But the long history of God speaking and acting in the Hebrew tradi tion culminates, fo r Christi ans, in the self-disc losure of God's own Word made fl esh, Jesus the Christ, who comes in the Spirit's presence and power. The trini ta ri an pattern emerges in narrati ve fo rm fi rst in the event of Jesus' bapti sm. The Spirit is sa id to descend upon him, accompanied by the Father 's vo ice: "Thi s is my Son, the beloved, with whom I am we ll pleased" (M t 3: 17; Lk 3:22) . The Spirit is with Jesus to overcome the power of temptat ion (Mt 4: I; Lk 4: I) and is upon hi m to ful fi ll hi s ro le as Ser-vant and Messiah (Lk 4: 18; Mt 12: 18) and to do his work of healing (Mt 12 :28). So convinced are the early Christi ans that Jesus is the unique bearer of the Spirit, that Matthew and Luke proc laim that he was conceived by the Spiri t and born of a virg in (Mt I: 18; Lk I :35) .90

Apolog ia for the Chris tie Center 169

As we noted in our prev ious di scuss ion, there is something new here where revelation is concerned . .J esus is not one more inspi red propheti c leader and teacher, but the unique mess iani c bea rer of the Spirit. Because he is ra ised from the dead and brings God's reign dec isive ly into the world; because he li berates, saves, gives li fe by reconciling us to God, Jesus is perceived as more than a prophet. He does not merely speak God's Word ; he is God's Word . He does not only bring God's light, but is God's light. He does not simpl y proc lai m and inter-pret a sa lvific event ; he himself, in hi s life, death , and resurrect ion, is the saving event. The first Chri stians re lated to him as to Goel , prayed to him and th ro ugh him, praised and thanked him , obeyed and fo llowed him , as we still do today. The incarnation of God in Jesus Chri st, within the tr initari an pattern of the Gospel narrati ve, is, then, the root of the doctrine of the Trinity.

However, when we say th at Jesus as true God revea ls Goel , we do not say simply that Jesus is God. Such a si mple eq uation is too bald and mi sleading, as though the equati on could be turned arou nd to say "Goel is Jesus." Most emphat-ica ll y, Chri stians have never sa id that Goel is Jesus. Certainly Jesus of Nazareth does not exhaust the infinite, eternal rea lity of Goel , Creator of the uni ve rse ' Chri sti an fa ith has always avo ided a chri stomonism (Christ-only-ism), in which Christ supersedes or even eclipses the Spirit of Goel , or God the Father. It would be more than absurd , or cou rse, for the human Jesus to subordinate ei ther the Spirit who empowered him or hi s Abba, who sent hi m. We have to say, then, that of course Jesus is not more centra l or more fo undational than God! We are theo-centric by be ing christocentri c. When we speak of Jesus as central , we mean that he is epistemologically centra l. It is through him that we know God. If we wish to speak of the ontological center of all th ings, we must speak not of Jesus alone but of the triune Goel , fo r Jesus is truly God only in relation to the Abba and the Spirit.

Early, implicitly trinitari an tex ts di sclose that Trinity language was part of the scene at least as early as the 50s C.E., e.g., the benediction still used univer-sa ll y in the churches- 2 Corinthians 13: 13: "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you." In addition, perhaps two or three decades later, we have the almost uni versal bap-ti smal fo rmula of the churches fo und in Matthew 28: 19: "baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. " Aga in , we need not think that these are the ipsissima verba (the very words) of Jesus himself. Most commentators today would think it unli ke ly that Jesus himsel f had worked out a doctrine of the Trinity or spoke in an explicitly trini tari an manner. We may believe that he li ved a relat ionship of intimate un ity with his Abba and the Spi rit, but it is unlikely that even the risen Jesus spoke in tri ni tari an doctrinal language, as Chri sti ans did years later after a long struggle to understand . To insist that he did would amount to a kind of doceti sm- that he did not share the limitations of our human knowledge. What interests us here, though, is that Chri stians were express ing their faith in God in this trinitarian way from a very earl y el ate.

170 The Christolog ical Criterion

The doctrine of the Trini ty, of course, is a postresurrecti on ecc les ial under-standing. Critica l scholarship has helped us to see part icularl y that much of the "Father and Son" language or the New Testament is pos trcsurrecti on, ea rl y-church confess ional language. For exa mple, the use of "Father" to refer to God increases fro m the earli er to the later Gospels, appear ing fo ur times in Mark , fi f-teen in Luke, forty-nine in Matt hew, and I 09 in John . "Father" in the mouth of Jesus is even more interesti ng: Mark , I; Q (common source of Matthew and Luke) , I; spec ial in Matthew, I; special in Luke, 2; John 731 9 1 The much late r and very di fferent Gospel, John , usuall y thought to reflect a later period of Chris-tian re fl ect ion, makes much of the te rm "Father," and evidently places it on the lips of Jesus. Abba (the Aramaic "father" as distinct fro m the much more com-mon Greek pater) occ urs in the mouth of Jesus onl y once, Mark 14:36, where Jesus prays in the ga rden of Gethsemane prior to his dea th . It occurs also tw ice in the letters of Paul: Ga latians 4:6 is qui te an earl y trin itarian express ion: "God has sent the Spirit of hi s Son into our hearts, crying, 'A bba, Father!' " Th is seems to indi cate an ea rl y trinitari an usage of Abba among Ara maic-speaking Chri s-tians, who may be fo ll ow ing the Aramaic usage of Jesus himself. The other usage in Paul is in Romans 8: 15: "When we cry, 'Abba ' Father!' it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spir it that we are children of God." We sec developing here an ea rl y trini ta ri an traditi on (keeping in mind that the lette rs of Paul are ear-lier than the Gospels) in whi ch Chri st, the Spirit, and the Abba are mentioned together. This indicati on that Jesus may not have used the term "Father" over-whelmingly does not necessaril y impl y that he did not use it at all ; probably he did use it, and the tex ts re fl ect thi s. The prayer that Jesus taught beginning "our Fa ther'' (Mt 6:9; Lk 11 :2) may ve ry we ll re fl ect a vividl y remembered usage. In his parab le of the lov ing fa ther and the delinquent son, Jesus teaches us to thin k of God as a lov ing Father. It would seem to make "Father" an important metaphor that Jesus used in speak ing of God. The use of " Fa ther" should not be rejected, then, but an analys is of its New Testament usage does re lati vize its the-ologica l signi fica nce to some degree. Ev identl y, the name "Father" fo r God and its use in trin itari an theo logy were especially the usage of the postresurrection chu rch. Only after the resurrecti on, looking back on Jesus' li fe and death in light of it, could Chri sti ans begin to understand Jesus as "Son of the Father," and to begin to fo rmulate a concept of God as triune. Both memory of Jesus and post-resurrec tion fa ith in Jesus seem to be refl ected in Matthew 11 :27: "no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son. " So also John I 0:30: "The Father and I are one," and 14:8: "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. " These texts speak of a remembered int imacy of Jesus with God his Abba, about whose love he spoke so vividly.

Quite apart fro m words asc ribed to Jesus, we find nascently trinitari an con-cepts and ex press ions cropping up qui te ea rl y, espec iall y concerning the relation of Jesus to God: fo r example, I Corinthi ans 8:6: " fo r us there is one God, the Fa ther, fro m whom are all things and fo r whom we ex ist, and one Lord , Jesus

Apologia for the Christie Center I 7 1

Chri st, th rough whom are all things and th ro ugh whom we ex ist. " Paul speaks of Jesus as "our wisdom" ( I Cor I :30). These texts resonate with the wisdom liter-ature of late pre-Chri sti an Judaism in whi ch Hokmah!Sophia, the female, mater-nal di vine presence, is sa id to be the di vine agency th rough which Goel creates (e.g., Prov 8:22-3 1). In these Pauline texts the di vine Wi sdom, th ro ugh whom God created all th ings and through whom God is uni versa ll y at work in the world , is identified with Jesus- that is, Jesus is God's Wi sdom among us. A sim-ilar hi gh chri stol ogy, also suggesti ve of Wisdom and nascentl y trinitarian , appears in Coloss ians I: 16: " in him all things in heaven and on earth were cre-ated, things visible and invisible ... all things have been created through him and fo r him. " The prol ogue to John 's Gospel, probabl y much later, also sees Jesus as the Word who was with Goel and was Goel from the beginning, the one through whom all things were created. The Word , the source of life and light, comes to God's people but is rejec ted by them. Thi s loo resembl es the Hokmah/Sophia of Hebrew wisdom and Greek apocryphal li terature (see Prov 8; Wi s 7) .92 Given the feminine character or Wi sdom, these tex ts encourage us to consider whether exc lusive usage or the Father/Son language is stri ctl y necessary for trinitari an thought.

The 111asc11/i11e Father/Son language is no/ essential to trinitarian fa ith. A major problem has ari sen in the past few decades about the language of Father and Son. Christi an women have pointed out that a deity who is two-thirds masculine, Father and Son, will not do. In fac t the Spirit too has usuall y been referred to as "he," depicting a tota ll y male deity. Mary Daly put it starkl y: " If Goel is male, then the male is God."93 She and many others li ke her have simpl y left Chri s-ti anity behind as a hopeless ly androcentri c male religion, worshiping a mal e God, led by male pri ests and often espousing male va lues. Others have set aside or downpl ayed the Trini ty as a patriarchal doctrine. Virtuall y all fe mini st and pro- fe mini st theologians, male and female, including those who have remained steadfas tl y within the church, have added their vo ices to thi s protest against male imagery for Goel . Eli zabeth Johnson, for example, when she writes about the Trinity, speaks of " free ing the symbol from literalness." We recogni ze, as all c lass ica l theology has recognized, that all our language about God speaks ana-logica ll y or metaphorica ll y of the di vine mystery and fa ll s short of the true glory and majesty of God.94 Thus, we know that when we speak of God as Father we should not imagine that God is literall y a male progenitor. When Jesus speaks of his Father, he invites us to think of God as a strong and lov ing parent, but unl ess we seriously think of God as male, the exclusive use of the male paternal metaphor is both unnecessary and unhelpful. While Jesus apparentl y spoke of God as Father, he probabl y did not do so as exc lusive ly or overwhelmingly as the Gospel of John suggests. According to Luke, Jesus also likened Goel to a woman sweeping her house fo r a lost co in (Lk 15:8- 10); and , according to Matthew 23:27 , Jesus likened himse lf to a mother hen1 Jesus stands here in a long Hebrew

17 2 The Christological Criterion

tradition of using many va ri ed metaphors and images of the di vine rea lity, including fe male and especiall y maternal ones. Deuteronomy can spea k of God giving birth to Israel (32: 18); Hosea compares Goel to a mother bear defendin g her cubs ( 13:8); Isa iah speaks of Goel as " like a woman in labour" who will cry out and "gasp and pant" (chaps. 13-14); and Israe l is described as hav ing been born from God's "womb" (Is 46:3).

As many fe minist theo logians have pointed out, it is simply idol atrous to insist overwhelmingly on one metaphor of the di vine rea lity, such as Father, elevating thi s one limited human concept to absoluteness as the revealed name of Cod. 95 "Father" is obviously a term that pertains primaril y to human male progenitors. The outcome of such exclusive naming is the legitimization of male/paternal superi ori ty, s ince reli gious language powerfully shapes human relationships and social systems% It also ove rl ooks the ineffability of God and the cultu ra ll y conditi oned nature of biblica l test imony. Since Jesus probably addressed God as Fa ther and spoke of God as like a fa ther, it is certainly not a term to be banned, and it still ca rri es great value, providing for boys and men the image of a gentle, loving, and se lf-giving father, a model fo r true human male-ness and fatherhood.97 Yet it is ri ghtl y balanced by other names and metaphors. ln a time such as ours, when both women and men are aware o f the full y equal digni ty and capabili tes of female and male persons, we have become aware of the appropriateness of speaking of Goel al so as Mother. As Johnson has pointed out so we ll , we can also speak of the di vine rea lity in Jesus as other than "Son." Although "Son" seems to fit we ll with the male humanity of Jesus and is impor-tant in trinitari an di scourse, it is not the only way to speak of the divinity of Jesus. The term "Word" (logos) , also grammatically masculine in Greek, is a bib-li ca l alternati ve, but we can just as properly speak of Jesus as the incarnation of the div ine Wi sdom (sophia) , a feminine noun in Greek that ca ll s to mind the maternal image ry of the di vine presence fo und in Hebrew and Greek Jewish scripture.98

The Spirit, who is the Spirit of Christ and In dy Cod, reveals Jesus, who is the Christ of the Spirit. The relati on of Jesus to hi s Abba would seem to yield only a binity, and , true enough, it took longer fo r the church to be clear about the divin-ity of the Spirit as a di stinct "person" of the triune God. As we have seen, how-ever, Spirit language is al so present from the beginning, and the recognition of the unique identity of Jesus is seen to be dependent on the working of the Spirit.99

The Ruah (also a metaphor, Wind, Breath ) of the Hebrew scriptures , at work in the exodus and prophetic inspirati on, is the same Spirit who is now at work in the Ii fe, death , and resurrecti on of Jesus. Jesus, as we have seen, is said to be con-ceived by the Spirit, baptized by the Spirit, fill ed with the Spirit (Lk 4: I) . He is anointed by the Spirit fo r his libera ti ve work, performs works of power and authority by the Spirit, and , according to Hebrews, offers himself in death by the power of the eternal Spirit (Heb 9: I 4 ). According to Paul , through the Spirit the


crucifi ed Jesus is raised to new Ii fe (Rom 8: 11 ). The Spirit, then, is seen to be accompanying Jesus at every stage of hi s life, death , and resurrection. lf the Spirit is to be ca lled "S pirit of Chri st," then Jesus should be called " the Christ of the Spirit. " 100

At the same time, the Spirit of Goel , or Holy Spirit, is also seen to be the Spirit of Christ, or Spirit of the Son (Gal 4:6; Phil I : 19). Romans 8:9-11 shows how the language of Spirit is linked very early to the language of God and of Christ:

You are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwell s in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Chri st is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.

We note that the Spirit is the "Spirit of Goel" who indwells believers, and this same Spirit is identified also as ''Chri st in you" and " the Spirit of Christ." The unity of Jesus Chri st with the Spirit is stated even more sharply in I Corinthians 15:45, where Jesus is called a "life-giving Spirit." Again in 2 Corinthians 3: 17 we hear the conviction that the Holy Spirit, present with us here and now, is the continuing presence of the ri sen Christ: "Now the Lord [kyrios , i.e. , Jesus] is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. " All of these ways of speaking about the Spirit are used interchangeably in a way that moves Chris-tian God-talk in a trinitarian direction . God , Christ, and Spirit are one, yet dis-tinguishable. They live within us and within each other. This manner of speaking reflects the Christian experience that God is encountered in this threefold way. "God" and " Father" tend to be used more or less interchangeably in New Testa-ment literature, yet it is clear that the Son and Spirit are no less God, since they also, as one with the Father, also overcome the power of death , and bring us life and salvation. After much controversy about the question of the divinity of the Holy Spirit, the Council of Constantinople (381 C.E.) , under the influence espe-cially of the Cappadocian father Basil of Caesarea, affirmed the divinity of the Spirit, "who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son is wor-shiped and glorified , who spoke by the prophets." 10 1

Paul speaks of the Spirit in a strikingly epistemological way in his first let-ter to the Corinthians, where he writes about the "foolishness of God which is wiser than human wisdom , and God 's weakness which is stronger than human strength" (I Cor I :25). This is the scandalous, surprising character of revelation, as radically given- not a human hypothesis or theory, not something that wise human beings would find convincing. Revelation gives us something that "no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived" (I Cor 2:9). Paul

17 4 The Chris tolog ical Criterion

sees the gifi of the Spirit as a share in God's own self-know ledge : " no one com-prehends what is truly God's except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spiri t of the world , bu t the Spiri t that is fro m Goel" ( I Cor 2: 11 - 12). The astonishing claim here is that, thro ugh fai th in Christ, and by the gift of the Spirit, we know God "from the inside," as it were. God is known by participat ion in the di vi ne li fe , that is, by dwelling " in Christ" and " in the Spirit." This Paul ine state-ment coheres with the Johannine belief that those who beli eve and li ve in Jesus already have eternal life (Jn 3:36; 6:40, 47, 54). John states that Jesus asks the Father to send the Spirit of truth : "You know him because he ab ides in you" (Jn 14: 17- 18). Because Jesus li ves in hi s Father, and hi s di sc ipl es in him and he in them (.Jn 14 :20), they have a share in the relationship o f the Son to the Fa ther (Jn 17:2 1 ). We may see this as a kind of pneumati c/christomysti cism whi ch arose in the early church. God is known- in worship and prayer, fa ith and following- in relationship, which is possible onl y because Goel shares God's life, th rough Chri st and Spirit, with human beings'

The "economic Trin ity" reveals the "immanent Trin ity, " disclosing the Triune God as an eternal communion of love. We could not know anything of thi s, o f course, without our epi stemological fo undati on in Jesus Christ. In Jesus we encounter One who is truly God in relation to his Abba and in relation to the Spirit. As we have seen, in the earliest Christi an language of worship and testi -mony, the three are frequently spoken of together as one, and always in a rela-tion that may be spoken of as perichoresis, mutual indwelling. There are not, of course, two trinities. The "economic Trinity"- the three-in-oneness of God as we meet God through Chri st and Spiri t- reveals the " immanent Trinity"- God's eternal triuni ty. The point of the immanent Trinity is that God does not merely appear to us to be triune but is truly an eternal communion of love. The distinc-ti on is important. Presumably God could be God without creation and without relation to us, fo r the sovereign Creator, Lord of exodus and resurrection, does not depend on us fo r her own being and ex istence. Our confidence in God depends on God's aseity- God is ab so fa, from Godself alone, absolute. God's eternal rea lity as triune does not depend on us. Goel is not exhausted by, or defi ned in terms of her triune relati on to us. Yet, if God's revelation is authenti-cally se/f revelation, then it reveals Who God rea//y is. What God is in se lf-revelation, God is antecedentl y in Godse lf (Barth ). 102 Catherine LaCugna has stated the matter clearly: "The identity of the economic and immanent Trinity means that what God has revealed and given in Christ and Spirit is the rea lity of God as God from all eternity." 103 That is , if the way in which we know God as three-in-one does not reveal the triune way in which God actuall y is, then God has not revea led God's own self, and a hidden God remains unknown behind the revealed God. 104 This is inadmiss ible if God is to be trusted, loved, and wor-shiped.

Apologia for the Christie Center 17 5

Thi s was essenti all y the probl em with the suggesti on ofSabellius, who pro-posed in the third century a view of the Trinity that came to be known as Sabel-li anism or modali sm. He argued that God is a singular monarchical Being, who, however, mani fes ts himsel r in three ways, as Father, as Son, as Spirit- that is, as Creator, as Redeemer, as Life-give r. It is as if I, as a single human person, were at the same time husband , fa ther, and teacher. I have these three "modes" of oper-ation and relati onali ty, sometimes acting as husband, sometimes as fa ther, some-times as teacher, but I am singul ar in myse lf. But there is no good reason to stop at three, si nce in va rious relationships and tasks I also function as son, as brother, as fri end , as writer, as builder, as swimmer, as wood cutter, and so on. There is also no good reason, within a modalist view of the Trini ty, to stop at three. The singular Deity is not onl y Crea tor, Redeemer, Li fe-g iver, but also Ruler, Law-giver, Judge, and so on. According to the modali st scheme, Who God is, in God-se lf, is forever hidden behind God's appearances, the masks or modes of the one unitary Being. The concept is thus ca lled modali sm, in that it denies that there are three interrelati ng " Persons" within the unity of God bu t onl y modes or func-tions of operati on. Ex istent ia ll y, it would mean that when we relate to God as Chri st, as Abba, and as Spirit , we arc not directl y in fe llowship with God as God actuall y is. It would no longer make sense to speak of being " in God" by being " in Chri st" and " in the Spirit. " The other, related pro blem with modali sm is that it does not take into account the relationality of Chri st with hi s Father and the Spiri t. What we are confronted wi th in the Gospel story is not a singular monadi c Person relating to us in three ways, but something- Someone- much more pro-found and mysterious: God in relation to God' To di smi ss the immanent Trinity, or God's own eternal triuni ty, misses the relationality of God in Godself, which is part of the Gospel narra ti ve.

Karl Rahner offered an illuminating and now fa mous statement: "The eco-nomic Trinity is the immanent Trin ity, and the immanent Trinity is the economic Trinity, and vice-versa ." 105 Thus, the Trinity is not to be thought of as someone or something back behind God's se lf-revelati on. God in God's se lf-revelation is Godse lf. This is preci se ly the glorious thing that was insisted upon at Nicaea and Constantinopl e, in opposition to Ari ani sm. In Christ we arc in touch with God's very se lf. In the Spirit Goel herse lf dwell s within us and we in God . God does not merely touch us with a long pole or send messengers or delegates. If the eco-nomic Trinity is the immanent Trinity, and the immanent Trinity is the economic Trinity, then the Trinity is not a hidden Someone behind the se lf-revealing God , but the se lf-revea ling God herself' When we behold Jesus in relation to his Abba, empowered by the Spirit, thi s is the Trinity.

The rejection of modalism and the insistence on the eternal rea lity of the three within God always run the ri sk of tritheism. A multiplicity of gods is com-pletely contrary to the very heart of the Hebrew traditi on out of which Jesus came, and Jesus himself is cited by the Gospel of Mark as proc laiming the tradi-


tional Jew ish Shema: " Hear 0 Israel: the Lord our God , the Lord is one" (Mk 12:29). For the Jews, and fo r Chri sti ans too, there is no other God than the one who brought Israe l out of Egypt, and for Chri sti ans, it is the same holy One who ra ised Jesus from the dead. Moreover, a multiplicity o f gods would mean onto-logical chaos ' It is oft en pointed out that the doctrine of the Trinity was fo rmu-lated precisely to avo id tritheism. Since Christ, hi s Father, and the Spirit are each divine, they must be thought as one. We cannot ente r here in to the long complex debates of the ancient fa thers about the Fa ther and his " two hands"- Son and Spirit ( lrenaeus)- or the three persons of one substance or being (Tertullian, Ori-gen). The Chri sti an tradition has generally understood that God is one, in that the Son and Spirit proceed from the one Father. Vari ous church fa thers proposed that the one God is like the sun , whi ch shines fo rth multipl e rays of sunshine, whi ch are trul y the presence of the sun with us. 106 God as Spirit, as Light, is not con-tained in one pl ace or space , or even one Person. Yet, insisting on the oneness of God, the Cappadocian fa thers taught that the three Persons have no independent ex istence; they li ve entirely within one another and never act apart from one another. When God acts toward creation, it is the Father who acts in the Son, th ro ugh the Spirit. Augustine, fo llowing them, thought of the one God ex isting as three in a community of ete rnal love, but understood the oneness in terms of a psychological analogy, comparing the three persons to fac ulti es of one human person. 107 Of particul ar interest to us here is the later trinitari an theo logy of John of Damascus. Following a strain of thought already present in the Cappadoc ians, he spoke of an eternal perichoresis, or mutual indwelling, wherein the Father ex ists in the Son and the Son in the Father, and both of them in the Spirit, in such a way that the Spirit exi sts also in the Father and the Son. They dwell in one another within a dynamic circulation of life and love. While the three are di stinct fro m one another and are truly in relation, they are not three di ffe rent individu-als who first ex ist separately and then come together, but a perfect oneness whose very being consists in relati onality. 108 All thi s is rooted, of course, in the Synop-ti c Gospel story of the Spirit with Jesus and the Father, the Pauline and Johan-nine chri sto logies and pneumatologies, and confi rmed by the doctrinal decisions of the counc il s of Nicaea, Constantinople, and Chalcedon.

The theology of the immanent Trinity and the peri choreti c relations of the three Persons should not be taken to mean that the mystery of God's triunity is entirely known to us. God as Trinity remains mystery, both as immanent and as economic Trinity, though it is in the economic Trini ty that we are confronted with the mystery of God's triunity. We encounter un fa thomable mystery. When we speak of the Father begetting the Son, and of the Spirit proceeding from the Father, and of the three mutuall y indwelling one another, we speak biblically, or at least in a manner congruent wi th the Bible- but we do not know exactly what we say ! A hea lthy dose of "apophati cism," or via negativa, is required when we speak of God as Trini ty. We know our words fa ll short; they point to rea lities beyond our comprehension. Elizabeth Johnson states the matter humorously:


"Clear and distinct trinitari an terms give the impress ion that theo logy has Goel sighted through a hi gh-powered telescope, with descriptions of the interactions between three persons intended lo be taken in some literal sense." 109

We may ask, then, whether it is important lo speak of the mystery of the immanent Trinity at all. Have we moved beyond our ability to know? Further, does thi s have any practi ca l signifi cance fo r Chri st ian di scipleship? l have already suggested that it has signifi cance for ou r sense of trul y knowing Goel as Goel is, and it is therefore important fo r our love and worship of Goel . Though aware of the limitati ons of our know ledge, we are not agnostics about Goel. We beli eve we really do know Goel , not because we are naturall y capab le of it but because Goel has gifted us with a share in God's own self-k now ledge. This know ledge is basic to confident faith and hope, essenti al to confident preaching, to heartfe lt worship, and to committed fo llow ing.

But modern libera l thought genera ll y has tended to dismiss the Trinity as irrelevant to practica l life. Imm anuel Kant , fo r exa mple, argued that the Trinity has "no pract ica l relevance al a ll. . . . Whether we are to worship three or ten per-sons in the Divinity makes no cliffercnce." 11 0 For Kant the whole point of religion and Goel is to inspire good behaviour, promising rewards or punishments on moral grounds; and it is understandab le that he thought the Trinity irrelevant. But this merely pragmatic moral monothei sm seems impoverishing, leavi ng us noth-ing of wonder, offering us nothing profound for our contempl ation. 111 This mod-ern moral ism offers law, with much concern fo r knowl edge as power, but little of knowledge as awe and adoration , and less of grace. We cannot agree to reduce faith and worship to mora l pragmatism. On the other hand, it could well be that the way we think of God may in the long term carry great practi ca l significance fo r the way we li ve, as individuals and as communities of people. The feminists have pointed out the destructiveness of thinking about God as male. So also, to think of God as a monolithi c, so litary ego may also carry long-term negative con-sequences at a practica l and political leve l. The contemporary theo logians of the "Social Trinity" believe that se ri ous attention to the immanent Trinity is the best way to a vision of God that is life-giving and liberating.

Ji.irgen Moltmann was the major proponent and initiator in the late twentieth century of the theology of the Soc ial Trinity, and hi s approach and emphases have been picked up by a number of liberation and fe mini st theo logians, most notably Leonardo Bo ff and Eli zabeth Johnson. Their view also has much in com-mon with the Eastern Orthodox trinitarian thought of John Zizioulas .112

Monarchical monotheism, or moclali sm, Moltmann argued, has been more or less operati ve in western Chri stendom fo r most of its hi story. Though the immanent Trinity has been correctl y acknowledged, the effective operative the-ology as been essentiall y monotheisti c, by which he means, pejorative ly, a doc-trine of Goel that begins with and focuses on God's unity, with the Trinity added on. This stress on the one God went hand in hand with the "classica l theism" or "monotheism" of God as omnipotent, omniscient, immutable, and impass ible.

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The triune God, on the other hand , is the God of the cross, the vulnerable God. A God who cannot suffe r cannot love, says Moltmann . But the triune God, who in Christ enters into mi sery and dea th with and fo r human beings, who cries out "My God, my God, why have you fo rsaken me?" is the God who loves and who can be loved. This is because "God's being is in suffering and the suffering is in God's being i tse lf~ because God is love." 11 3 A theology of the cross needs to be a trin itari an theology in which the Son's suffe ring and death and the Father 's grief at the loss of the Son come together in the unity of the Spirit. The cross, then, is an event within the life of God: " What happened on the cross was an event between God and God." 11 4

Such renecti on, especiall y such an emphas is on God's suffe ring, has been mostl y absent from the older theo logica l traditi on. It would not have served the in te rests of a dominant Chri stendom as thi s began to take shape in the early Con-stantinian era, which had an ideo logica l interest in the singulari ty of an omnipo-tent rul ing deity. The emphas is on the unity of God and the neglect of the triune God's se lf-di ffe rentation had political implicati ons, Moltmann argues. The emperor Constantine saw va lue in Christi ani ty fo r cementing together hi s empire under one God; the end of polytheism would mean the end of a multipli city of nations and the uni versal reign of the pax Romana. Eusebius of Caesarea, closely associated with Constantine, arti culated the matter well: "The one God, the one heavenl y king and the one sovereign nomos [l aw] and logos [Word or rational-ity] corresponds to the one king on earth. " 11 5 Thus, Moltmann points out, "The idea of unity in God therefore provokes both the idea of the universal , uni fied church, and the idea of the universal, un ified state: one God- one emperor-one church- one empire. " 11 6 Monarchica l monotheism as a vision of God, then, tends to legitimize monarchy, domination, and inequality. But God as Trini ty must be the vulnerable God who enters in to human misery and death with us and for us. If the mutual indwelling, mutual love, and equality of the three are taken quite seriously, the Trinity "can be seen as a model fo r any just, ega li tarian . . . social organization. On the bas is of their fa ith in the triune God, Chri sti ans postulate a society that can be the image and likeness of the Trinity." 117 The social order that would bes t correspond to the peri choretic Trinity would be some form of genuine democracy and some kind of sociali sm. 11 8 "The Trinity is our social program," Bo ff declares. 11 9

Johnson , fro m her fe minist perspecti ve, sounds a simil ar note. For her, the triunity of God signifies that "relatedness" as love, rather than "solitary ego," is the essential thing to be sa id about God.

The ontological priority of relation in the idea of the triune God has a powerful affi nity with women's ownership of relationality as a way of being in the world . It furthermore challenges class ica l theism's typical concentration on singleness in God that has been so consistently reprised in a patriarchal sense. Since the persons are constituted by their

Apologia for the Christie Center

relationships to each other, each is unintelligib le except as connected with the others. Relation is the very principle of their being .... At the heart of holy mystery is not monarchy but community; not an abso lute rul er, but a threefo ld koinonia. 120

179

The theo logy of Soc ial Trini ty, in which Moltmann, Johnson, Boff, and others build on the Cappadoc ians and John of Damascus, arti culates the unity of God mainly in the doctrine of perichoresis, emphas izing the relationali ty of three who are ' 'other" to one another, yet one. This approach is controversial among trini -tari an theo logians. 121 Moltmann has been accused, by such authors as Walter Kasper and George Hunsi nger, of n irting dangerously with tritheism, fo r so emphas izing the relationali ty and the threeness of God.122 Yet it seems odd that they wish to affirm the immanent Trinity but have so much di ffi culty wi th the relationali ty and in terpersonal in tersubj ectivi ty of the three . Mol tmann 's argu-ment seems decisive:

If there is no "Thou" within the Trinity, then there is not rea ll y any mutual love between the Father and the Son within the Trini ty either. . .. But if, in order to avo id " the danger of tr itheism," we are not permitted to think of mutual love between the Father and the Son within the Trin-ity, then it is impossi ble to say, either, that the Holy Spirit proceeds fro m the love of the Father and the Son, and constitutes "the bond of love" between the Father and the Son. m

ft is not that we need a less relat ional view of the triune God as an eternal com-munion of love; rather, we need a less ind ividualistic and more re lati onal view of human personhood as intimate interdependence and mutuality. This is a more li fe -giving and liberating doctrine of God, more congenial to both fe minist and postmodern sensitivities , and, I suggest, closer to the biblical wi tness to Jesus, one wi th hi s Abba and the Spiri t.

This theology of the Social Trin ity, based as it is in the Gospel narrative of Jesus with the Spirit and the Abba, affords us a different perspecti ve on human relations and human societi es but also opens us up to a different vision of the cre-ated order as a whole. Two such diverse theo logians as the Greek Orthodox John Zizioulas and the Latin American liberationist Leonardo Boff make a major point of thi s. For Zizioulas, the whole creation exhibits signs of the communion of the triune God. The fundamental tru th about all of rea lity is communion. In view of the Trini ty, says Ziz ioulas, "Being means li fe , and being means communion" fo r "being is constituted as communion." "To be and to be in relation becomes iden-tica l. For something or someone to be, two things are simultaneously needed: be ing itself (hypostasis) and being in relation." 124 Zizioulas goes on to develop illum inating theologies of church, Euchari st, and ministry.

In a sim ilar vein , Bo ff, in his Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor, is part icu-


larl y el oquent concerning the ecologica l significance of the Trinity: " If God is communi on and relati onship ," he argues, " then the entire universe li ves in rela-ti onship , and all is in communi on with all at all poin ts and at all moments. " The Trinity, he believes, is perfec tl y in tune with contemporary cosmology, which cri-tiques all ideas of reality as c losed systems, emphas izing "open and process ive rea lity." m Boff writes:

the Trinity helps us to delve deeper into our understanding of our com-mon theme, pl anet Earth , the uni ve rse and its future, because we are all woven of the most intri cate and open re lationships, in the likeness of the Trinity. The Blessed Trinity constitutes the common sphere of all beings and entities : the theosphere. 126

It is through the ri sen, li ving Jesus, in the power of the Spirit, that we reach this life-giving vision of God, who as eternal communion of love, destines all of cre-ation to renect thi s love. Jesus is foundational fo r us, fo r our life and di sciple-ship, and fo r our vi sion o f the earth , because he revea ls the triune God.

We began this chapter by asking what it is about Jesus Christ that makes him central and fo undati onal for Chri sti an life and worship , fai th and theology. Jt was imposs ible to answer this questi on without substantial di scuss ion about Jesus Christ himse lf, about his mi ss ion and hi s identity. I have argued that it is what he does and who he is and our consequent relationship with him in worship and action that place him at the center of all our theological thought.

We have seen that it was soteriology that shaped chri stology and still shapes it. Jesus, in hi s life , death , and resurrection, brings God's reign dec isively, offer-ing God's unconditi onal grace, overcoming ev il powers , and finally vanquishing the power of dea th itse lf. Thus, the di sc iples find themselves in a relationship of praise, thanksgiving, obedience, and hope with the ri sen and living Chri st. We have seen the logic of lex orandi, lex credendi. In prayer and worship, Christi ans relate to the liberating Jesus as to God, and doctrine foll ows. Similarly, we have seen the logic of lex seque11di, lex credendi. Christi ans relate to the life-giving Jesus as to God in the practica l li fe of di sc ipleship , and doctrine follows. Theol-ogy is about the knowledge of God, and it is none other than Jesus, one with God in all hi s fl eshl y humanity, who revea ls God. For these reasons, I contend, Jesus the Chri st is indeed center and foundation, the norma normans 11011 normata for all of our life and worship, fa ith and theo logy.

The Chri stie center, however, is challenged, as we shall see in the nex t chap-ter, by the plurali st theologies.

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