Christology: Spiritual Self-Help, Pluralist, and Social Justice Activist

TK LCFB 1312020 Mark that’s quite the history. Thank you for sharing. I’d love to know how you’ve developed your Christology with this background? Are you still universalist?

Me-... That´s an intriguing question for me to answer actually, thank you. I guess I can classify it simply as a mix of critical-historical, liberation theological, Transpersonal-quantum experiential, and free will constructivist. I look at Jesus´ crucifixion and Resurrection and their cause-effect relation to the meaning of spiritual seeking and virtue historically. Jesus´ pivotal baseline role psychosocially confirms his significance as Savior, as does the pluralism that emerges in Jesus´ legacy the University, with philosophical inclusionary understanding. Science, a christianized Greek Philosophy, makes Jesus´ teachings about personal spiritual "seeking the Kingdom of Heaven" as fundamental, and sustainability science/activism as clarifying the meaning of prophecies of doom in their cause-effect implications and call to personal-spiritual-social responsibility. Christianity in its "secular ship" has lead to corporate-profiteering dominated mix of "Westernizing" globalization and the mix of the UN. It needs spiritual seeker activist Good Samaritan-Prodigal Sons/Daughters, not so much to be welcomed back, but to clear things up and get things, and people on track. I began using the term spiritual modernization when I read Karen Armstrong´s book on fundamentalism in response to modernization, by comparison. I am "universalist" with Gandhi as my go-to icon: He got a law degree, inspired to Hinduism from secularism by modern Theosophy, then to activism by studying Jesus and Christians dissenting from hypocritical authorities- Thoreau, etc. Jesus´ legacy has triumphed materialistically in globalization, while subordinated to its monster, corporate profiteering that wields Fundamentalism. That has laid the groundwork for pluralistic spiritual modernization, and UUism is an excellent example that doesn´t quite fully get its basis in Jesus and connect all the dots. I like Process Theology a lot, like C Hartshorne and JB Cobb. The thing is to not lose sight of Jesus´ and his legacy´s empirical role in historical psychosociology and distinctive Jewish prophetic identity as Savior. ***

My Christology can be summed up further, it occurs to me, as critical-historical, Spiritual, Self-Help, Social Entrepreneurial, Pluralist, and Social Justice Activist, since any other doctrinal approach to Salvation ignores Christianity´s multi-layered status, condition, complicity, culpability, and responsibility, along with the social control, superstition (non-modernized from a spiritual viewpoint), and other hypocritical and worse aspects. Jesus´ crucifixion and Resurrection wasn´t substitutionary atonement. It was catalytic and potentiating atonement, not absolute and deterministic, for constructivist spiritual activism. ***

Stricken by God? Nonviolent Identification and the Victory of Christ - edited by Brad Jersak and Michael Hardin "We considered him stricken by God. But..."

Did God pour out his wrath on his own Son to satisfy his own need for justice? Or did God-in-Christ forgive the world even as it unleashed its wrath on him? Was Christ's sacrifice the ultimate fulfilment of God's demand for redemptive bloodshed? Or was the cross God's great "No" to that whole system? The church is asking these questions afresh. And from every stream of Christianity, answers are coming.

Stricken by God combines twenty essays (over 500 pages) from such authors as N.T. Wright, Rowan Williams, Richard Rohr, Miroslav Volf and Marcus Borg. Other contributers include Tony Bartlett, J. Denny Weaver, Sharon Baker, James Alison and Mark Baker. Anglican, Catholic, Anabaptist, Evangelical and Orthodox writers come together to revisit the question of the atonement. Together, they share and develop perspectives of the cross with implications for restorative justice, nonviolence and redemptive suffering. The following is an excerpt from Brad Jersak's chapter, "Nonviolent Identification and the Victory of Christ":

I. Why gather? Across virtually every stream of Christian faith, the doctrinal ground is shifting under our theology of the Cross and the atonement. Tectonic plates of understanding are sliding and grinding—long-standing assumptions concerning sin, wrath, judgement, salvation and the very nature of God are triggering theological tremors in every quarter. Some perceive a dreadful crisis surrounding “the faith once delivered.” Others feel a deep resonance to a fresh revelation of our first truths. Such core issues as why Christ died and how Christ saves are begging new questions. The current theological earthquake did not arise from mere boredom in seminary ivory towers. Experts and lay people alike are digging deep to such bedrock queries as, “Who is God?” and “What is the Gospel?” Very few givens remain. We might wonder, “Is nothing sacred?” That is exactly the question.

More specifically, a recent surge of literature, conferences and debates has re-opened the question of the meaning of Christ’s death at varying depths of strata. What do these shifts say about God? About God’s love? About God’s justice? What is the “good news” and how do we proclaim it? What is the preaching of the Cross? In fact, what is the Cross? What is “the blood”? One might wonder whether this buckling, holy ground will once again yawn and swallow those who dare trespass.

In the midst of our wondering, we run into the relatively recent(1) dogmatization of penal substitution as the evangelical atonement creed. No longer content to call it a theory, many preach it as the required content of belief in order to be “saved.” Yet in these days, penal substitution is being reconsidered. Some are carefully cleansing it of misrepresentative accretions and defending its central position. Others feel it should be nuanced and relativized as one among a cluster of metaphors. Still others feel it needs to be renounced and bid good riddance. In the latter case, what alternatives do the dissenting voices propose? Are common themes rising to the surface that are truly rooted in the Scriptures and church tradition? That is the major question this book seeks to answer.

II. Who is at this table? Included in this discussion are representatives of Anglican, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Anabaptist and Evangelical traditions. They range from bishops to prison chaplains to novelists, all of whom have given significant thought to the meaning of the Cross of Christ. While the members of these many traditions offer alternative readings of the atonement—even disagreeing sharply on a number of points—they have gathered around this table with a number of shared convictions.

A. They recognize that a shift in our understanding of the atonement is both necessary and well under way. A sense of urgency and inspiration is developing around our proclamation of the Cross. B. Each author presents an alternative to the dominant theory of the atonement known as penal substitution. Most do not believe that the Cross saves us through the satisfaction of God’s wrath by the punishment of Jesus Christ. C. While these authors bring a variety of approaches to “Cross-talk,” three common themes serve as an umbrella under which we might all gather: 1. God’s nonviolence in Christ at the cross. I.e. While the Cross was a violent episode, we are not witnessing God’s violence; the atonement is non-penal. Good Friday was not the outpouring of God’s violence upon Christ to assuage his own wrath. That day was God’s “No!” to wrath and “Yes!” to love and forgiveness in the face of our violence and wrath. 2. Christ’s total identification with humanity in his incarnation and his call for us to identify with him in his life, death, resurrection and glorification. His solidarity with us draws us into the new humanity he is creating. 3. The victory of Christ over Satan, sin and death as he confronts and defeats them through his resistance, obedience, and resurrection.

III. Speaking of the Atonement Historically, the question to which theories of the atonement addressed themselves was, “How does the Cross save us?” This question assumes that it is specifically the Cross (i.e. the death of Christ) that saves—a fair assumption based on Paul’s commitment to preaching nothing but “Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). He referred to the gospel as “the message of the Cross” (1 Corinthians 1:18) or “preaching salvation through the Cross” (Galatians 5:11). We’re said to be “saved by his blood” or “by his death” (Romans 5). Indeed, the Cross seems to be the focus of Christ’s mission and the central symbol of his incarnation. The significance of the Cross raises further questions. Our authors will investigate the following: • Why did Jesus die? (Both historically and theologically speaking. From the Jews’ and Romans’ perspective? From the apostles’ perspective? From God’s point of view? And specifically, from Jesus of Nazareth’s point of view?) • Did Christ have to die? (I.e. Did he have to be killed? Was it inevitable? Was it necessary?) • Did he intend to die? (Or did he simply intend to obey, even unto death? In either case, why? What was he attempting to do? How did Christ understand his path to the Cross?)

Yet we mustn’t collapse the whole Gospel narrative nor our entire soteriology into Good Friday. 1 Corinthians 15 tells us that apart from the resurrection, we would be of all people most pitied. Further, we ought not to divorce the events of Passion Week and Easter weekend from the life and ministry of Christ. The incarnation of Christ—the sending of God’s Son in toto—is what makes our salvation possible. Chris Hoke, a member of the Tierra Nueva (an international faith and justice community), put it to me this way: The key to my own thesis is that atonement precedes the Cross. The Cross is not the key event that saves us, but the portrait par excellence of the God we believe in. The Cross is God’s climax—the living out of his type of power and love. For a careful theology of atonement, we might more precisely ask, How does Christ save us? From who or what does he save us? And what does “save” mean? Secondarily, “What part did his death play in that salvation?” From there, we ask in what sense Jesus’ death was (i.) necessary, (ii.) inevitable, and (iii.) intentional.

According to the apostolic tradition, Jesus knew that he would die,(2) and that it was necessary(3) in that it was the inevitable result of ultimate obedience to his Father and the wickedness of mankind. Anselm rightly identifies the atonement question as, “Why did God become man?” One reason the Word became flesh was in order to die.(4) In becoming fully human, Christ gained access to death so that he could confront death on our behalf and defeat the tyranny of death through his own death and resurrection. In the physical realm, his death proves inevitable as he confronts imperial and religious systems with the nonviolent message of God. In the spiritual realm, his death is intentional in that he confronts the forces of death and hades and defeats them through his resurrection..... For the rest of this essay, see https://clarionjournal.typepad.com/clarion_journal_of_spirit/2007/07/stricken-by-god.html