Christology in Contemporary Christianity - Essay Example

Running Head: Christology Christology s Christology Introduction In the light of Christian faith, practice, and worship, that branch of theology called Christology reflects systematically on the person, being, and doing of Jesus of Nazareth (c. 5 BC--c. AD 30). In seeking to clarify the essential truths about him, it investigates his person and being (who and what he was/is) and work (what he did/does). Was/is he both human and divine If so, how is that possible and not a contradiction in terms as being simultaneously finite and infinite seems to be Should we envisage his revealing and redeeming 'work' as having a impact not only on all men and women of all times and places, but also on the whole created cosmos In any case, can we describe or even minimally explain that salvific 'work' In contemporary scholarship a number of different approaches have been taken to the question of why Christology developed and, more specifically, why the Fourth Gospel presents a Christology that is so distinctive. Although all attempts to categorize the views of others risk oversimplification, it is nonetheless necessary to distinguish between and categorize different approaches if we are to evaluate them briefly and effectively. What does this say about Christian mission I do not mean to suggest that evangelization is incompatible with respectful dialogue -- quite the opposite. Although evangelizing calls at times for clarity about the faith that informs Christian action, evangelizing is not the same thing as proselytizing. To evangelize is to witness to the Gospel, and very often the witness that is required is decency, cooperation in pursuit of the common good, and willingness to profess one's own faith truthfully (Haight, 2000, 103-112). In the context of interfaith dialogue, witness to the Gospel should lie precisely in refusing to take advantage of the situation to make converts. But this is the nub of the problem, since it is precisely the content of the Gospel as it relates to dialogue that is in question. (Sobrino, 2002, 42-48) Christology in Contemporary Christianity The refusal to proselytize can only be a witness to the Gospel if the Gospel itself warrants such a refusal. Christians have always understood the Good News as something which demands to be shared with everybody because the salvation it proclaims is addressed to everybody (Hill, 2004, 93-100). If there are times and situations when going out of one's way to make converts is to be avoided for the sake of the Gospel itself, this can only be because the Gospel vision places a high value on respectful dialogue, even on a dialogue that is prepared to continue interminably with no agreement in view. Thinking along these lines, we might say that in Christ the presence of the alien is welcomed and the fact of difference is embraced-this is the Good News that is proclaimed by Christians when they not only live peaceably with nonbelievers but seek fellowship and common cause with followers of any tradition that honors the stranger and says yes to difference. But if significance (or even the mere assumption of religious superiority) is the natural fruit of Christian faith, then the Gospel I have just described cannot be the Christian Gospel. (Snyder, 1988, 54-62) We can also turn this around and say that if philosophical significance does not belong to the essence of Christianity, what we are left with is a Christian Gospel that demands that the church forswear all claims to spiritual privilege, and rejoice as it does so. So, where does the Christian Gospel really stand with respect to philosophical significance As I have suggested, the New Testament itself is unable to decide the question, since it can be read both ways. This collection of mid-to-late first-century texts with widely varying and at times contradictory theological agendas is unified by its persistent claim that Jesus is the Messiah (Snyder, 1988, 54-62). Some would add that it is also unified by the importance implied in this claim about Jesus. They argue that proclaiming Jesus as Messiah calls Judaism's understanding of its own scriptures into question, and in so doing casts doubt not only on Israel's credentials as an interpreter of her own covenant with God, but also on the existence or continuing validity of that covenant. (McFague, 1987, 70-77) This point was made forcefully over twenty-five years ago by Rosemary Radford Ruether, whose Faith and Fratricide, a seminal expose of decisiveness, continues to set the terms for this debate. Ruether observes that faith in a crucified Messiah requires a reading of the Hebrew Scriptures that is completely at cross-purposes with ancient and later Jewish exegesis. It was therefore inevitable that Christians should arrive at the conclusion that the Jews are blind to the meaning of their own scriptures. Once this conclusion is reached, argues Ruether, the Gentile church's claim to have replaced Israel cannot be far behind. (McFague, 1987, 70-77) Not everyone agrees with Ruether. A number of scholars have questioned her assumption that Christianity's christological reading of the Hebrew Scriptures leads inevitably to philosophical significance. For instance, John Koenig (responding, in part, to Ruether) has argued that New Testament reinterpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures goes hand in hand with implicit (and sometimes explicit) respect for Judaism. No matter how bitter the anti-Jewish polemic so deeply inscribed in the New Testament texts, it is for the most part a polemic aimed by Jews at Jews. As long as the upbraiding of the nonbelieving Jews is cast in the form of a demand that they be true to their covenant with God- even if, as in John, they are accused of habitually not living up to it- they are still being addressed as the people of God.(n4) Yet this objection, although extremely important and, I think, well-founded, does not go far enough in addressing the heart of the problem as Ruether has posed it. (McFague, 1987, 70-77) The question remains whether, in the end, faith in Jesus must lead to a rejection of Israel's claim to be the elect people of God. If the answer is yes, then little is gained by pointing out that the supersessionist implications of their faith had not yet occurred to the authors of the New Testament texts. On this view, if Christianity wants to free itself of philosophical decisions, it must free itself of its christologies -- that is, of all the varied ways in which Christians have conceptualized the Christhood of Jesus (Hill, 2004, 93-100). The recent revival of the quest for the historical Jesus has been in large part an attempt to rise to this challenge, as New Testament scholars once again debate whether or not Jesus regarded himself as the Messiah, and whether or not the Messiahship of Jesus was important to the earliest Christians. (Snyder, 1988, 54-62) If, as Marcus Borg has argued, the church began as an attempt to revitalize Judaism rather than as a "Jesus movement," can we not now recover this beginning for ourselves, and explore the possibilities of a Christian faith that does not claim Jesus as Lord or Christ Certainly, this is one way forward. But it is hard to see how such a solution to the problem of philosophical significance does not amount to abandoning Christian faith altogether. One powerful counter-solution has been proposed by the late Paul Van Buren (Hill, 2004, 93-100). Van Buren affirms the continuing election and spiritual vitality of Israel; at the same time he explores the possibility that Jesus is the Christ of the Gentiles. What emerges is a vision of Judaism and Christianity as two authentic and parallel paths, neither of which calls the validity of the other into question. My problem with this very attractive argument is that it does not seem to square with scripture. (Sobrino, 2002, 42-48) There is nothing in the New Testament that suggests two parallel paths for Jews and Gentiles. On the contrary, the New Testament texts insist that the Lordship of Jesus extends to Jew and Gentile alike. So the question remains whether a Christianity that makes absolute claims about the Lordship of Jesus can wholeheartedly turn its back on philosophical arguments (Haight, 2000, 103-112). As I suggested earlier, the answer to this question can be yes if and only if it is precisely faith in Jesus that precludes all claims to any election that cancels out the election of the Jews (Hill, 2004, 93-100). How might this be Faith in Jesus might avoid argumentation if life in Christ were viewed as release from the need to overcome difference (that is, the need to turn the one who is different into us or to get rid of her entirely). A faith of this sort would not only make it possible for followers of Jesus to go out of their way to embrace fellowship with Jewish and Gentile nonbelievers -- it would demand it. Readiness for such fellowship would, in turn, entail the renunciation of all spiritual privilege or status, and the willingness to be an outsider among outsiders. Is such a vision discernible in the New Testament (Snyder, 1988, 54-62) Certainly the texts of the New Testament offer many windows onto a life of discipleship that demands profound engagement with the stranger-engagement which may play out in this life as exposure to suffering and the loss of all status, but which, even in the midst of loss, is the foretaste of a resurrection life lived forever in an outside that has been reclaimed. I would like briefly to sketch three of these windows: Paul on baptism, the gospels on mission, and Hebrews on the church as a people called "outside the camp." (McFague, 1987, 70-77) Paul's understanding of baptism as a dying with Christ in order to be raised with him points less to inclusion than to exposure. This is most certainly so if we read Paul's numerous allusions to his ministry as an apostle as glosses on his theology of baptism. I think there can be little question that for Paul the indignities of apostleship are nothing more than the Christian life writ large. So the death that occurs in baptism involves the loss of all status- taking on the nonstatus of the criminal, becoming the "off-scouring of the world." (Haight, 2000, 103-112) What, then, does it mean to be raised with Christ We might be tempted to view this as a reversal of the refugee status into which baptism first thrusts us. But it is clear that Paul regards the new life gained in Christ as an ever-deepening unfolding of the mystery of this nonstatus: "in Christ, there is no Jew or Gentile, no male and female, no free or slave." In Colossians and Ephesians- later texts of the Pauline school -- this destruction of all criteria related to status becomes the keystone of the gospel. To be "in Christ" is to be outside all structures of domination or prestige. (Hill, 2004, 93-100) These brief sketches show how easily New Testament texts can be read as the product of an early church that identified itself as a community called permanently outside. We should note, however, that in many of these texts going outside has to do with evangelism. If evangelism simply means making insiders out of outsiders, then none of these texts exemplifies a genuine "theology of the outside." (Haight, 2000, 103-112) But if evangelism is to be understood as a witness to a Christ who redeems us for fellowship with the stranger, then the fact that the New Testament church associates its going outside with its vocation to proclaim the lordship of Christ need not call the genuineness of its exodus into question. It all depends on whether these texts are innocent of philosophy, or not. But it remains extremely difficult to determine this conclusively. Even Romans 9-11, the only passage in the New Testament that rejects importance to philosophy explicitly, does so on the grounds of God's irrevocable promises, without raising the question whether supersessionist claims are consonant with Christian discipleship. (Sobrino, 2002, 42-48) It appears that the New Testament texts either assume that significance or importance is not an option, or take it for granted that it is already a fait accompli. If it turns out that the New Testament is supersessionist after all, then what I have taken as indications of an ecclesiology of the outside will need to be read some other way. For instance, we might interpret Luke's movement from Jerusalem outward as a triumphalist account of the spiritual obsolescence of Jerusalem in the face of the Gentile church, and Hebrews' exhortation to go outside the camp as an invitation to Christians to claim their identity as the people that have replaced the Jews as God's own. In that case, the New Testament theme of the outside really points to the emergence of a new inside -- an inside comprising those Gentiles who claim a common allegiance to Christ. (Snyder, 1988, 54-62) We might even argue that this emerging inside only presents itself as an outside, that is, as a place of exposure, because it depends on the breaking-down of barriers separating Gentile from Gentile. An emphasis on this spiritual challenge might well mask the fact that the entire process also depends on dispossessing the Jews of their claim to uniqueness. Several early supersessionist texts lend credence to such a reading when they point to the reconciliation of differing Gentile nations within the church as a proof of Jesus' Messiah-hood. Yet to read New Testament talk of the outside in this way seems to fly in the face of the plain meaning of the texts. To stay with those already mentioned: the Gospels do not envision the Gentiles' glorifying themselves at the expense of the Jews, and Paul expressly forbids it. (McFague, 1987, 70-77) The middle Platonism of Hebrews is often adduced as proof that the letter is supersessionist, but the letter's claim that the Temple worship is the sign of a hidden reality that transcends it does not warrant such a conclusion. The great Jewish Platonist, Philo of Alexandria, would have recognized his own method of interpretation here. The New Testament is saturated with anti-Jewish polemic, but it is not obvious that this polemic is supersessionist (Snyder, 1988, 54-62). Indignation, bitterness, disappointment are discernible here, but these do not necessarily go hand in hand with a claim to replace Israel or even a desire to do so. If we are not assuming or looking for importance in these texts, we will not find it. (Haight, 2000, 103-112) So why not leave well enough alone If we ourselves want to go "outside the camp," and the New Testament is, on the face of it, able to nourish and strengthen us for such a task, why not appropriate it for this use The problem here is our presumption that we ourselves no longer bear decisiveness in our hearts, and therefore are in the position to declare the New Testament to be nonsupersessionist simply because we find it amenable to such a reading. (Sobrino, 2002, 42-48) What is the theology of Jesus and of his church which now begins to appear The lynch-pin of this theology is a christology that takes seriously Jesus' relation to us as neighbor, where neighbor means one who is different from me and yet has a claim on me. The salient features of this "neighbor christology," as they have emerged in the course of the discussion so far, are as follows. Difference marks humanity, not sameness. Nevertheless, our capacity for differentiation (individual and cultural) relates us and indeed draws us to one another. Thus it is in our experiences of each other as strangers that we are most likely to notice our kinship to one another, not as blood relatives, or as compatriots, or as members of the same racial or ethnic group, but simply as human beings. (Hill, 2004, 93-100) If the purpose of any distinction between persons or groups is to deny or diminish the connection between them, it is a false distinction. The more we are different, the more our connection as human beings is revealed. The event in which we encounter our kinship with the stranger, or recognize the stranger in the familiar kinsperson, is the event of nearness, in which we discover the other as someone who is near to me and has a claim on me (Haight, 2000, 103-112). Human sinfulness involves both the denial and the exploitation of nearness, and human suffering is the result of such denial and exploitation. The Jesus of the New Testament refuses all false distinctions, assumes his connection with everyone he meets, and embraces nearness even and especially from the cross. The authority of Jesus to claim attention and companionship is none other than the authority of everyone to claim these things from her or his fellow human beings. (Snyder, 1988, 54-62) It is with this same authority -- that is, as a neighbor among neighbors -- which Jesus will come again in judgment. But this judgment is no different from the judgment Jesus exercises in his earthly ministry, since every invitation to attention and companionship is an occasion for nearness to be embraced or fled. Followers of Jesus are those who refuse all false distinctions, and the institutions and affiliations that preserve and make them (Haight, 2000, 103-112). Therefore the church is a community that sojourns, as Hebrews puts it, "outside the camp." For this reason, the question of election and status before God should, for Christians, be a nonquestion. This is a rough sketch of the "neighbor christology" which I believe informs the New Testament, and which predates the emergence of decisiveness in the second century C.E. It may be useful at this point to review the ground covered so far. The argument began by isolating the two key building-blocks of decisiveness. These are (a) the definition of love of neighbor as love of Gentiles and (b) the identification of the victim Jesus with the Gentiles. Since there is no explicit or implicit instance of these building-blocks anywhere in the New Testament, I concluded that this is sufficient proof that the New Testament is not supersessionist. But it is one thing to be innocent of philosophical arguments; it is another to possess of a moral vision that is constitutionally opposed to it. (Sobrino, 2002, 42-48) One might argue, for instance, that while liberal European culture in the first half of this century was not inclined toward anti-Semitism, it did not attend sufficiently to the arguments of the anti-Semites to be able to withstand anti-Semitism's bid for power. Was this because of a failure of will, or was it simply a failure of intellect We know that Christianity gave way to philosophical arguments, as Germany did to the Nazis, because of a failure of will (Hill, 2004, 93-100). But it remains an open question whether this failure revealed that the Enlightenment, as an intellectual movement, was less committed to respect for every human being than it claimed. There can be no question that Christianity exhibited a failure of the will very early on with regard to wisdom. Is this failure traceable to a theology that was not proof against thoughtfulness If the answer is yes, then Christians who take Christian (let alone Enlightenment) acquiescence in the Holocaust seriously must consider whether or not the New Testament is able intellectual (that is, theological) ballast for the fight against wisdom and related evils. (Snyder, 1988, 54-62) Conclusion I have tried to show that it is. But I want to be very clear about my method. Assuming that the building-blocks of wisdom and thoughts represent departures from New Testament teaching, I have made the further assumption that they do not come out of nowhere, but constitute distortions of earlier teachings that inform the New Testament, even if they are not systematically laid out there (Haight, 2000, 103-112). To say that these distortions do not come out of nowhere is to admit that wisdom and decisiveness has its origins within the Christian community- it is not the result of contamination from some other source. At the same time, to insist that the basic elements of wisdom are distortions of earlier teaching is to claim that New Testament teaching cannot be harnessed to the supersessionist agenda without being wrenched into a different shape. Assuming such a "wrenching," I have attempted to work back from the building-blocks of wisdom to the original teaching. Neighbor-christology is the result. (Hill, 2004, 93-100) Where have we come Our analysis of supersessionist ideology, as it is articulated in the four earliest Christian supersessionist texts, yields evidence of a more original Christian teaching which is nonsupersessionist and quite clearly does not invite wisdom. Since this teaching, which I have called "neighbor-christology," appears not to be at odds with the New Testament, we may hope that a reassessment of the New Testament texts in the light of neighbor-christology will uncover more resources for the construction of a nonsupersessionist Christian theology (Snyder, 1988, 54-62). Such a theology involves reimagining the church as a community always located "outside the gate," at home with other outsiders, distrustful of any impulse to set itself apart yet faithful in proclaiming the unique but paradoxical Lordship of Jesus. This would truly be a political theology, if by that term we mean the affirmation and exploration of the theological significance of the polis- that true city which, as the space where encounter with the stranger is both embraced and sustained, is always an outside. (Sobrino, 2002, 42-48) References Haight, Roger. (2000). Jesus Symbol of God. Orbis Books. Pp: 103-112. Hill, Brennan R. (2004). Jesus, the Christ: Contemporary Perspectives. Twenty-Third Publications; New edition. Pp: 93-100. McFague, Sallie. 1987. Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age. Augsburg Fortress Publishers. Pp: 70-77. Snyder, Mary Hembrow. (1988). Christology of Rosemary Radford Ruether: A Critical Introduction. Twenty-Third Publications. Pp: 54-62. Sobrino, Jon. (2002).Christology at Crossroads. Wipf & Stock Publishers. Pp: 42-48. Read More