[Oe List ...] The Significance of the Revelation of God inJesus Christ for Ecological Theology
Herman Greene
hfgreene at mindspring.com
Sat Apr 11 14:42:00 EDT 2009
Thanks to Randy, Janice, Jaime and David for your comments.
David is right, the .pdf format he sent out is the easiest to read.
Herman
_____
From: oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net [mailto:oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf
Of R Williams
Sent: Saturday, April 11, 2009 9:21 AM
To: Order Ecumenical Community
Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] The Significance of the Revelation of God inJesus
Christ for Ecological Theology
Herman,
Very informative. Thanks for sending it along. Glad to see so much work
being done in this area. It's about time.
Randy
--- On Fri, 4/10/09, Herman Greene <hfgreene at mindspring.com> wrote:
From: Herman Greene <hfgreene at mindspring.com>
Subject: [Oe List ...] The Significance of the Revelation of God in Jesus
Christ for Ecological Theology
To: "'Order Ecumenical Community'" <oe at wedgeblade.net>, "'Colleague
Dialogue'" <dialogue at wedgeblade.net>
Date: Friday, April 10, 2009, 7:10 AM
Thanks Randy, that’s a good article.
Here is the way I worked through Christ and ecology when I wrote the
dissertation for my D.Min in Spirituality and Sustainability in 2004 (let me
know if you want a coy with the foonoties):
The Revelation of God in Jesus Christ
And Ecological Theology
Christian ecological theology would only be Christian if it were grounded in
the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. What meaning does this revelation and
the doctrine of the trinity have for ecological theology? Let’s first look
at the revelation itself.
The Historical Revelation
Jesus was a Jewish man who was probably born in Nazareth , not Bethlehem ,
and was the child of two human biological parents, one male and one female.
We know Mary
was his mother and presumably Joseph was his biological father.
<http://us.mc593.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?&.rand=262116791&da=0#_ftn1> [1]
Jesus lived an extraordinary life and was a transmitter. When people
encountered him, they felt something come to them from him and their lives
were changed. He saw people as individuals whatever their social class,
position, or condition might be, and he loved them. He responded to people
who had diseases, mental or physical, and to those who were social outcasts.
In his presence, these people healed on the inside, and some also overcame
physical conditions. He announced the reign of God, a kingdom where God’s
will would be done. He championed the cause of the poor and the oppressed.
Scholars differ on whether Jesus primarily foretold a kingdom in this world
(as a social reformer) or a kingdom after the end of this world (as an
apocalyptic prophet).
<http://us.mc593.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?&.rand=262116791&da=0#_ftn2> [2]
All agree that in part he spoke of a kingdom that was “at hand,” available
then, and that in his presence people had an interior sense of this kingdom
and of the possibility of living a life of care and justice. They
experienced metanoia, a change of heart.
In encountering Jesus, some people had such an overwhelming
experience of freedom, wholeness, love and justice that Jesus, through the
community that came into being around him, changed the world. He did this
through speech, ideas, caring, personal presence and some kind of power that
came through him. Jesus has had as much of an effect on people and history
as any other person who has ever lived. He did this, not as a person of
political or military power or of wealth, but as an itinerant teacher,
healer and preacher.
The early Jesus movement was Jewish and they came to understand Jesus as the
Messiah (in Greek, the Christ) of whom the prophets of the Hebrew scriptures
spoke, especially as their teachings were preserved in the Book of Isaiah.
Early in the Jesus movement’s life, however, the meaning of Jesus was
extended beyond the Jewish community to all people. Thus, for these early
Christians, Jesus was the Messiah of all people, not just of the Hebrew
people.
One cannot know when Jesus became known to the early Jesus
movement as the Christ, the messiah who had been prophesied. The New
Testament story indicates that those around Jesus had premonitions or
awarenesses of this before Jesus died.
<http://us.mc593.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?&.rand=262116791&da=0#_ftn3> [3]
Scholars seem to agree, however, that this understanding was only generally
held by the Jesus movement after Jesus’ death and resurrection.
<http://us.mc593.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?&.rand=262116791&da=0#_ftn4> [4]
That Jesus died and a community arose around him that considered
him the Christ, are facts on which Christians and non-Christians agree. That
early members of the Jesus movement testified to Jesus’ resurrection and
that this “resurrection” became central to their faith, experience and
message is, also, something on which both Christians and non-Christians
agree. The meaning of the resurrection, however, is something on which
Christians and non-Christians will not agree. Even Christians have
differences in their interpretation of the resurrection, but to Christians
generally, the cross and the resurrection are both central to their faith.
For this author, the resurrection does not equal resuscitation, nor does
Christianity rise or fall on whether Jesus was physically resuscitated.
<http://us.mc593.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?&.rand=262116791&da=0#_ftn5> [5]
What is important about the resurrection is that after Jesus died, he became
the living savior of the Jesus movement. His presence was palpable, of what
kind we cannot know.
<http://us.mc593.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?&.rand=262116791&da=0#_ftn6> [6]
Yet Christians throughout the ages have said they too have known the risen
Lord. They have said and sang “He lives.”
He lives! He Lives!
Christ Jesus lives today.
He walks with me and talks with me,
Along life’s narrow way.
He lives! He lives!
Salvation to impart.
You ask me how I know he lives.
He lives within my heart.
This is the meaning of the resurrection. Jesus followers encountered the
living Christ. This has happened to Christians across the ages. In their
hearts, they have come to know, “He lives!”
<http://us.mc593.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?&.rand=262116791&da=0#_ftn7> [7]
The Significance of the Revelation of God in
Jesus Christ for Ecological Theology
The Biblical Witness
In the author’s view, the revelation of God in Jesus Christ does have
significance for ecological theology, so much so that one can speak of
“Christian” ecological theology with integrity. This is not to say that
ecological theology must be Christian, but to say that Christianity in its
origins and in the foundational doctrine of the Trinity provides a starting
point for an ecological theology.
For clarity, it is important to note at the beginning that Jesus was not a
modern day ecologist, nor did he, by the reports in the New Testament, have
the sense of fellow-feeling for non-human animals that St. Francis did. Nor
did he speak with the sensitivity of the medieval mystics quoted earlier in
this paper about God as mother of all or about God being in all things. We
do not even find in his teaching admonitions to follow Jewish laws regarding
care for the land.
If one looks for an ecological message from Jesus along the foregoing lines,
one will not find it. In the witness to Jesus in the synoptic gospels
(Matthew, Mark and Luke), where one will find the ecological significance of
Jesus’ teaching is in his parables, in his call to care for the oppressed,
and in the hope of his resurrection. One will also find a New Testament
basis for ecological theology in the interpretation given to Christ as logos
in John, to Christ as cosmic healer in Paul, and in the hope for a New
Jerusalem in Revelation.
With respect to the synoptic gospels, Larry Welborn of United Theological
Seminary has advocated an understanding of the parabolic teaching of Jesus
that is hugely significant for ecological theology. He says that we
shouldn’t understand Jesus’ use of nature in the parables as metaphor, but
rather as something “thrown alongside” God’s activity to show God’s way with
us as humans. The Greek words from which parable are derived are ballein,
which means “to throw” and para, which means “beside” or “alongside.” For
example, Jesus teaches that the Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. This
tiny seed is put in the grown and grows into a strong bush. So, in Dr.
Wellborn’s view, this is exactly the way God will nurture our tiny faith.
<http://us.mc593.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?&.rand=262116791&da=0#_ftn8> [8]
Welborn says Jesus teaches that it is the same God who works in nature, the
one who moves the stars and makes mustard seeds grow, as the God who works
in us and brings about God’s reign.
<http://us.mc593.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?&.rand=262116791&da=0#_ftn9> [9]
The witness in the synoptic gospels to Jesus care for the oppressed is also
important. The oppressed differ in every age. Today, nonhuman animals are
oppressed, and, further, human disturbance of natural systems is oppressive
to human poor and non-human animals and plants alike. It may also be
considered oppressive to inanimate beings if one holds to the view that all
of nature seeks beauty and complex order and harmony. When one responds in
faith to this oppression of other-than-human nature, it is reasonable to
believe that one is supported by Jesus’ teaching on care for the poor.
The witness to the resurrection of Jesus in the synoptic Gospels carries
over into those parts of the New Testament other than the synoptic gospels
that are important to ecological theology. Christ’s death and resurrection
is fundamental to the dynamics of the existence of all of nature. We die, we
live, . . .we die, we are reborn, . . . death is not the final word. This is
our hope and it is our hope for a dying nature and for a viable human
presence in nature.
Paul announces that hope in his teachings on the cosmic Christ. Christ’s
salvation is for the whole creation.
18 I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth
comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation
waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; 20 for
the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will
of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set
free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of
the children of God. 22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning in
labor pains until now; 23 and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who
have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for
adoption, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in hope we were saved. Now
hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? 25 But if we
hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
<http://us.mc593.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?&.rand=262116791&da=0#_ftn10>
[10]
Dr. Welborn’s teaching about the meaning of Jesus parables, that the God who
moves us is the God of nature is consistent with the teaching of St. John
that Christ, as logos brought all things into being.
<http://us.mc593.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?&.rand=262116791&da=0#_ftn11>
[11] Paul’s teaching about how all of creation has its hope in the cosmic
Christ is consistent with the Revelation to John that in Christ there will
be a new heaven and a new Earth.
<http://us.mc593.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?&.rand=262116791&da=0#_ftn12>
[12] This millennial expectation of perfection can be problematic to
ecological theology when it gives license to unwarranted efforts by humans
to control nature and the conditions of existence.
<http://us.mc593.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?&.rand=262116791&da=0#_ftn13>
[13]
Church Doctrine: The Trinity
Now we come to the Trinity, that most frustrating, enduring and, possibly,
important doctrine of orthodox Christianity. From the standpoint of
ecological theology, it is the doctrine of the Trinity, in the author’s
view, that gives the revelation in Jesus Christ its greatest potential
significance.
The questions in the early church
<http://us.mc593.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?&.rand=262116791&da=0#_ftn14>
[14] that gave rise to the doctrine of the trinity, must have been something
like this: God is eternal, Jesus the man was temporal, how can this be? God
is in heaven, Jesus was on Earth, how can this be? Jesus is now in heaven,
we still experience God and Jesus on Earth, how can this be? If Jesus was,
or is, God on Earth, how does that relate to the physical/human existence of
Jesus? The solution the church came to was quite elegant. The church said
that God was one, but there were three persons in the one—God the Father,
God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. God the Father created the world and
reigns in heaven and Earth. God the Son lived in the beginning with God, the
Son came to Earth and was fully human and fully God (there was no attempt to
explain what this meant), and now the Son reigns in glory with God forever
and ever. God’s/Christ’s Holy Spirit is with us now.
The truth of this doctrine of the Trinity cannot be explained rationally.
How does one person (Christ) live “with” another person (the Father), when
there is no other, because in reality there is only one? Or one might ask,
when Jesus prayed, to whom was he praying? In the end, the doctrine of the
Trinity is about the mystery of faith and what gives faith its power is not
rationality or factual truth, but a greater truth that is beyond
explanation.
The treatment of Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, as being of
the same substance as God by the Council at Nicaea in 325, and also as being
“true God and true man” by the Council at Chalcedon in 451, has great
meaning. This is not, however, found in the traditional metaphysical claims
that the church has made about this.
<http://us.mc593.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?&.rand=262116791&da=0#_ftn15>
[15] This author agrees with Schubert Ogden “that the metaphysical
conceptuality and symbolism in terms of which the doctrine of the
incarnation has traditionally been formulated are now outmoded and in
important respects inadequate.”
<http://us.mc593.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?&.rand=262116791&da=0#_ftn16>
[16] This author, also, agrees with Ogden that given this formulation our
task now is to understand its meaning apart from its mythological
formulation. This means “to interpret it . . . to recognize it for the kind
of thinking and speaking it really is [and that the truth it expresses] is
very different from a strictly empirical kind of truth.”
<http://us.mc593.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?&.rand=262116791&da=0#_ftn17>
[17]
The church in the first four centuries through the Council of Chalcedon is
the extraordinary efforts that were made to maintain (i) the unity of God,
(ii) the union of God and man in Christ, and (iii) the distinctions and
equality of the persons in the Trinity. For example, the Council of Nicaea
was a rejection of Arianism. Arius saw “the coming forth of the divine Word
as a service to the inferior created order. He reasoned that the Lord who
was born of Mary, grew in wisdom, [and] suffered dereliction and death, must
be less than the unbegotten, impassible, deathless Father.”
<http://us.mc593.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?&.rand=262116791&da=0#_ftn18>
[18] The church also rejected Sabellianism, which said that there is no
heavenly Trinity existing for all time, but Jesus was only an appearance of
God that existed from the time of Jesus’ birth to his ascension, and since
that time, “the countenance of the Spirit appears as the life-giver.”
<http://us.mc593.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?&.rand=262116791&da=0#_ftn19>
[19] Thus, according to Sabellius, the trinity was a sequentially historical
reality, not an eternal reality. The church also rejected Gnosticism with
its dualism of matter and spirit and mind and body. To the Gnostics, the
created world was evil, and God existed in the good world of spirit. The
Savior, Jesus, descended to Earth and took on human flesh and finally
ascended to heaven. “In the teaching of the Gnostics, it was self-evident
that the divine power [could] not suffer. So he [took] on either a strange
body, or a body which only [seemed] to be a body, but he [did] not become
flesh.”
<http://us.mc593.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?&.rand=262116791&da=0#_ftn20>
[20]
To trace the history of the debates and politics that led to the formulation
of the Trinity is mind-bending. To make matters worse, no final consensus
was ever achieved and the debates ultimately led to a separation of the
Eastern Orthodox Church from the Roman Catholic Church as well to other
divisions. In addition, every “heresy” rejected by the church has reappeared
officially or in practice in some corner (or even a large banquet hall) of
Christian faith.
<http://us.mc593.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?&.rand=262116791&da=0#_ftn21>
[21] Yet, after re-tracing this history this author finds himself again an
admirer of orthodoxy through the Council of Chalcedon and even to what seems
to me to be the equally valid positions taken by East and West when they
divided on the issue of “filolioque,” whether the Spirit proceeded from just
the Father (East) or from both the Father and the Son (West).
<http://us.mc593.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?&.rand=262116791&da=0#_ftn22>
[22]
The orthodox formulation is important, not because it is sufficient in
itself, but because it provides a non-contradictory foundation for what we
might understand the Trinity to be for us today. This is
<http://us.mc593.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?&.rand=262116791&da=0#_ftn23>
[23]an understanding that is important for us as Christians and as
ecological Christians.
The Trinitarian understanding makes clear that in Christ, God was present in
the flesh in a way in which neither the divine nor the human was diminished.
This was not God’s round-trip journey from the divine world, to the lower,
earthly world and back to the divine world, but of the presence on Earth of
a Logos that had been with God from the beginning. The Logos was involved in
the coming to be of all that is in this world.
<http://us.mc593.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?&.rand=262116791&da=0#_ftn24>
[24] God loved this world and came into the world, not to condemn the world,
but to save it.
<http://us.mc593.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?&.rand=262116791&da=0#_ftn25>
[25] According to doctrine, God in mystery and Spirit is of the same
substance as God in the flesh, in this world. God incarnate was not a
temporary state of God during the life of Jesus, but is one of the
everlasting aspects of God, the second person of the Trinity. Through God
and Christ, the Holy Spirit abides with us now.
The Trinity presents an incarnational and social view of God, a view that is
radical and important in its implications. In the Trinity, God is not
separate from this world, but is intimately and non-dichotomously involved
in it. God’s transcendent and immanent aspects are united. If we take the
creation tradition of the Bible seriously, including John. 1:1-4
<http://us.mc593.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?&.rand=262116791&da=0#_ftn26>
[26] and Paul’s cosmic Christ passages, such as in Ephesians 1:8b-10,
<http://us.mc593.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?&.rand=262116791&da=0#_ftn27>
[27] then we can come to an understanding that Christ is in all things, and
also following Acts 17:28
<http://us.mc593.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?&.rand=262116791&da=0#_ftn28>
[28] that all things are in Christ. Christ can never properly be understood
as simply spirit. Christ is the one who is fully present in the flesh and is
not defiled by it, rather his body, just as his divinity, makes him Christ,
the one in whom Heaven and Earth in the fullness of time will be united.
Because the Trinity makes clear that the Logos was not a temporary earthly
existence of Jesus, but an everlasting part of the triune God, the Trinity
supports an incarnational view of the cosmos. This view is that there is a
psychic-spiritual dimension of all of the universe and that this is
inseparably intertwined with the material existence of the universe, neither
displacing the other and at the same time being non-dichotomously one.
Potential meanings of such a view are given in Teilhard de Chardin’s, The
Human Phenomenon, where he states that there is an inner (spiritual) and an
outer (material) aspect of everything and all things are drawn to ultimate
fulfillment in Christ,
<http://us.mc593.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?&.rand=262116791&da=0#_ftn29>
[29] and in Alfred North Whitehead’s work and the process theologians and
philosophers who follow him who speak of a physical and mental dimensions of
all actuality, each involved in a process of becoming in response to divine
guidance.
This extension of the incarnational understanding of the second person of
the Trinity to all of existence would not be supported by many traditional
theologians and it would not be supported by reductionistic natural
scientists. The extension this author believes can, however, be supported by
the Christian Trinitarian doctrine and the teachings of the Bible if we free
them from their original metaphysical meanings and ask what is the truth
expressed in these doctrines for us. The extension also can be the basis of
nonreductionistic (holistic) scientific thought as it is in Whitehead’s
work.
<http://us.mc593.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?&.rand=262116791&da=0#_ftn30>
[30] This extension is the basis for process philosophy which is offered
here as an adequate philosophical basis for under girding and renewing
Christian theology for our time. This extension is also the basis of the
realist position, advocated above, the refutation of the two-worlds approach
of post-Kantian philosophy.
Finally, this extension is important if ecology is to be understood as a
basis for Christian theology, rather than as only an ethical demand.. It
would allow us to understand theology as Meister Eckhart did when he said,
Apprehend God in all things,
for God is in all things.
Every single creature is full of God
and is a book about God.
Every creature is a word of God.
If I spent enough time with the tiniest creature—
even a caterpillar—
I would never have to prepare a sermon. So full of God
is every creature.
<http://us.mc593.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?&.rand=262116791&da=0#_ftn31>
[31]
It is this kind of love, awareness and intimacy that comes to us through
Jesus. The Trinity was not meant to describe only a relationship of God to
humans. Nor was it meant to assign the second person to the 33-year life of
Jesus. It was meant to describe the dynamics of how everything came to be,
is sustained in being and may be continuously and creatively transformed. It
is time that we open our minds and hearts to Christ who fills the universe
and is its hope, Christ in all things.
_____
From: oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net [mailto:oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf
Of R Williams
Sent: Thursday, April 09, 2009 3:53 PM
To: Colleague Dialogue; Order Ecumenical Community
Subject: [Oe List ...] An Earthy Christology
Friends and colleagues,
Here's the link to an excellent theological statement relating the
resurrection of Christ to care for the whole earth, reminiscent of Teilhard
de Chardin, and very appropriate for the Christian Holy week.
<http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article..cfm?article_id=11566>
http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=11566
Blessings to all at Eastertide,
Randy
_____
<http://us.mc593.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?&.rand=262116791&da=0#_ftnref1>
[1]See John Dominic Crossan, Jesus, A Revolutionary Biography (San
Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994), chapter on “A Tale of Two Gods.”
As Crossan points out this does not mean Jesus was not, in the truth that
myth conveys, “born of a virgin.” The virgin birth was an account intended
to convey the meaning of Jesus using the metaphors of the time of the
Biblical writers. In addition, the story of Jesus was told as a fulfillment
of the prophecies in the Hebrew Scriptures of the coming messiah. The
writers of Matthew and Luke relied on the Septuagint, the Greek translation
of the Hebrew Scriptures, which translated the original Hebrew word almah in
Isa. 7:14 (concerning the mother of the messiah), which meant “a young woman
of marriageable age”, with the Greek word parthenos, which meant a virgin.
Crossan, 16-18; and Good News Study Bible, notes to Isa. 7:14 . See
generally The Myth of God Incarnate, ed. John Hick (London, England: SCM
Press, 1977).
<http://us.mc593.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?&.rand=262116791&da=0#_ftnref2>
[2]Crossan, Jesus, 55-58, Robert W. Funk, Honest to Jesus (San Francisco,
CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), 254-55. Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the
Historical Jesus (New York: MacMillan, 1968), chapter on “The Eschatological
Question,” 223-241.
<http://us.mc593.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?&.rand=262116791&da=0#_ftnref3>
[3]See the Gospel stories of the transfiguration of Jesus in which it
reportedly was revealed to Peter, James and John that Jesus was the God’s
son, the chosen one. Mk. 9:2-10; Mt. 17:1-9; Lk. 9:28-36.
<http://us.mc593.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?&.rand=262116791&da=0#_ftnref4>
[4]See Marcus J. Borg, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time (San
Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995), 15-16; Ogden, The Point of
Christology, 120.
<http://us.mc593.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?&.rand=262116791&da=0#_ftnref5>
[5]The Apostle Paul, the central figure in the spread of the early Christian
church put it this way in I Cor. 15:3-20 (NRSV): “For I handed on to you as
of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our
sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he
was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures . . . . Now if
Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there
is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead,
then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our
proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. We are even
found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised
Christ—whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For
if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has
not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then
those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we
have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact
Christ has been raised from the dead . . . .” Many Christians take this as
meaning that if Jesus was not resuscitated, then the Christian faith is in
vain. We cannot know what Paul meant. The senses of how to write history and
how to tell a story were different for Paul than under modern conventions
that require facts to be clearly identified.
Rudolph Bultmann among others believes that Paul did not mean resuscitation
in the quoted passage from I Cor. Bultmann argues that for Paul, “Christ’
death and resurrection [are] cosmic occurrences, not incidents that took
place once upon a time in the past.” Rudolph Bultmann, section on “Christ’s
Death and Resurrection as Salvation Occurrence,” in Theology of the New
Testament (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1951), vol. 1, 299. He also
says that there is “[n]othing preceding [faith in] the risen Christ [that]
can give insight into the reality of Christ’s resurrection. The person who
hears the Word of Christ as a demand upon his or her life as a call to die
to one’s old life and rise in Christ’s new life believes in the risen
Christ.” Ibid., 306.
<http://us.mc593.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?&.rand=262116791&da=0#_ftnref6>
[6]Reports in the New Testament state that the followers of Jesus had very
real experiences of Jesus’ presence after his death, but it was not a
physical presence in the ordinary sense. Jesus walked with his disciples on
the Road to Emmaus, but they didn’t recognize him. Lk. 24:16. When they did
recognize him, he vanished. Lk. 24:31. He appeared to his close friend Mary
Magdalene, but she did not recognize him. Jn. 20:14. The resurrected Jesus
could pass through locked doors. Jn. 20:19. The hands and side of the
resurrected Jesus were pierced. Jn. 20:20.. To this author, these reports
are of encounters with the living Christ. In this encounter Jesus followers
knew that what Jesus was about had not died, it had survived his death in
triumph over those who would have killed the good news proclaimed and
embodied in Jesus.
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[7]The best treatment this author has read on how Jesus became the Christ
and of Jesus’ resurrection is found in Hans Küng, On Being a Christian (New
York: An Image Book published by Doubleday, 1984), chapter on “The New
Life,” 343-410. With regard to whether the Biblical story involves corporeal
resurrection, Küng says, “Yes and no, if I may recall a personal
conversation with Rudolf Bultmann. No, if ‘body’ simply means the
physiologically identical body. Yes, if ‘body’ means in the sense of the New
Testament soma the identical personal reality, the same self with its whole
history. [Jesus does not live] because he is proclaimed, he is proclaimed
because he lives.” Ibid., 351-52.
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[8]“He said therefore, ‘What is the kingdom of God like? And to what should
I compare it? 19 It is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in
the garden; it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests
in its branches.’” Lk. 13:18-19.
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[9]Dr. Lawrence Welborn, “Jesus Parabolic Teaching,” lecture given at United
Theological Seminary, Dayton, OH, August 13, 2003.
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[10] Rom. 8:18-25
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[11]“1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into
being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. 4 What has
come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.”
Jn. 1:1-4
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[12]Rev. 21:1
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[13]“Although this new vision [of ultimate fulfillment within the historical
order] was first set forth in the prophetic writings and the apocalyptic
visions of Daniel, it found its most effective presentation in the
Revelation of John the Divine, especially in its reference to the
“millennium,” the thousand years at the end of the historical process when
the great dragon would be chained up, when peace and justice would appear,
and when the human condition would be decisively surmounted. This millennial
vision is the source of what may be the most powerful psychic energies ever
released on the earth, psychic energies that have eventually taken extensive
control over the physical functioning of the planet and are now entering
into control of its biological systems.” Thomas Berry, Dream of the Earth,
28.
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[14]“Early church” as used here means the church of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th
centuries, the church after the members of the original Jesus movement had
passed away.
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[15]These metaphysical assertions are to the following effect: God in heaven
came to Earth and impregnated Mary, lived in his existence as the Son (yet
the Son had been also God’s existence for all time) as embodied in Jesus
Christ, and eventually took Jesus, body and all, back to heaven to live with
him though they were really one after all.
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[16]Ogden, Christology, 9.
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[17]Ibid., 11.
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[18]Henry Chadwick, “The Early Christian Community,” The Oxford Illustrated
History of Christianity, ed. John McManners (New York: Oxford Press, 1990),
56.
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[19]Tillich, Christian Thought, 67.
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[20]This differs from the statement, “And the Word became flesh and lived
among us,” in John 1:14 . The belief that Christ was not truly human but a
kind of spiritual being is also referred to as “Docetism,” “an opinion
especially associated with the Gnostics that Jesus had no human body and
only appeared to have died on the cross.” American Heritage Dictionary.
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[21]In fact there were significant groups of Christians that never accepted
the Chalcedon formula and have continued with their own tradition through
the present time.. One such group, the monophysites, followed the teaching
of Cyril of Alexandria that Christ was of “from two natures” but after the
union in Christ became “one nature, wholly divine, that assumes and
dominates the flesh of Jesus Christ.” HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion,
s.v. “Monophysitism.” This differed from the Chalcedon formula that Christ
was “in two natures” and the properties of each “concur in one person.”
Henry Mayr-Harting, “The West: The Age of Conversion (700-1050),” History of
Christianity, ed.. McManners, 140. The monophysites gave rise to five
churches, the Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt, the Ethiopian Orthodox
Church, the Syrian Orthodox church (often termed “Jacobite”), the Syrian
Orthodox Church of the Malabar, in South India (known as the “St Thomas
Christians”), and the Church of Armenia. Ibid., 142. Another prominent group
was the Nestorians who believed that Christ was of two natures, one human
and one divine, but these were not united in the one person of Jesus Christ,
as in the Chalcedonian tradition. For Nestorians Jesus’ suffering affected
his human nature but not his divine nature. The Nestorians formed what was
known as the “Church of the East,” which was predominantly Syriac in
language and culture. This church was “once of vast extent, with missionary
work extending in the thirteenth century across Asia as far China , [but was
later] virtually annihilated by persecution.” Ibid., 140.
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[22]See the discussion of this issue in Thomas and Wondra, Introduction to
Theology, 78-79. Also see Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding, 169-70.
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[23]There is a question whether “the Spirit” has theological significance.
One way of viewing the issue is that we have God of all time and Jesus of
history and the question is only of “binity,” the question being, “Was the
God of all time revealed in Jesus and present in Jesus so that we may call
Jesus, the Christ, and does this involve an incarnational reality such that
we may say Christ reigns with God (God is eternally both transcendent and
immanent)?” When one says God’s Spirit is present, does one say anything
other than God is present? If not, there is no need for the third person.
This author favors the doctrine of the Trinity as a way of speaking of the
social aspect of divinity. The divine reality does not exist in solitary
isolation, but in exists and acts in dynamic relationship as transcendent
wisdom, as enfleshed, incarnate reality, and as abiding immanent presence.
Speaking of Spirit is a way of speaking God’s immanence that is independent
of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ, and this admits of awareness of divine
reality outside of Christianity and also in nature.
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[24]Jn. 1:3
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[25]Jn. 3:16-17
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[26]“In the beginning was the [Logos], and the [Logos] was with God and the
[Logos] was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into
being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.” Jn.
1:1-3.
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[27]“With all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his
will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ as a plan
for the fullness of all time, to gather up all things in him, things in
heaven and things on earth.” Eph. 1-8b-10.
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[28]“For ‘in him we live and move and have our being,’ as some of your own
poets have said.” Acts 17:28 (Paul speaking to Epicurean and Stoic
philosophers in Athens ).
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[29]Teilhard de Chardin, The Human Phenomenon (Portland, OR: Sussex Academic
Press, 1999), a new edition and translation of Le Phénomène Humain by Sarah
Appleton-Weber.
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[30]See for example, Menas Kafatos and Robert Nadeau, The Conscious Universe
( New York : Springer-Verlag, 1990, Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers,
Order Out of Chaos ( New York : Bantam Books, 1984), and David Ray Griffin,
ed., The Reenchantment of Science ( Albany , NY : SUNY Press, 1988).
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[31]Fox, Meditations with Meister Eckhart,14.
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