MYSTERY OF JESUS CHRIST:
There have been many figures throughout human history who have exerted a profound influence on the world. No single figure has exerted more influence than the first century prophet from Nazareth called Jesus the Messiah, the Annointed One, the Christ. Even our calendar dating system (e.g. 2000 "Common Era") is based on Jesus' supposed birthdate at Bethlehem in Judea. Our task is to seek to unravel something of the mystery of this person in his own time and context and then to investigate the various ways in which Jesus has been understood from New Testament times until our own day.
To speak of the mystery of Jesus Christ is to acknowledge, first of all, that human life itself is mystery. Human beings are not just minds and bodies; they are also spirit. God is the supreme Mystery and, as St. Paul remarks, it is only 'in God that we move and live and have our being'. Mystery, then, invades every dimension of our lives including our knowledge of ourselves and our world. Mystery is at the heart of our relationships with others. If we ever get to the point where we say of someone that 'there is no mystery there', we can be sure that we are failing to appreciate the depth, the beauty, the pain, the reality of who that person is. We are effectively saying that 'God is not there'. This is why the more we come to know and appreciate another person, the more we become aware of the depth of mystery and the reality of God in that person.
The mystery of the person of Jesus is even more profound on account of the kinds of human faith-responses that he inspired in the disciples of his own day and in Christian believers throughout the centuries. Of course, people touched by the Jesus-story--then as now--respond in different ways and at different levels. However, it remains true that the story of Jesus continues to capture the imagination of people, to inspire new vision and hope. These people feel that Jesus somehow enables them to be more authentically human and to live their lives with greater openness to the divine mystery.
How is it, then, that this first century Jew from Palestine came to exert such influence on human beings and world history? Evidently, there is no simple answer to this question. In fact, the best answers are not expressed in words, but in the lives and deeds, the witness and testimony, of Jesus' followers. In other words, it is only by risking our own lives and entering into the mystery of the Jesus-story that we can begin to understand something of the profound meaning of his life, death and resurrection for us and our world.
Different approaches
to the mystery of Christ
How then do we enter into
the mystery of this Jesus-story? To begin, we need to situate
ourselves within the living tradition of the followers of Jesus.
For most, this means becoming part of an ecclesial community
or Christian Church which celebrates the memory of Jesus in Word
and Sacrament. In this way, the Jesus-story is brought to life
again as people experience his reality at the centre of their
lives and world. From earliest times, this was expressed by saying
that 'Jesus is the Christ' (Peter) or, even more profoundly,
Jesus is 'Lord and God' (Thomas).
The continuation of the Jesus-story throughout human history has been expressed in many ways: some have retreated to the desert, or at least to a monastery, to contemplate the mystery of Christ in solitude and prayer; others have chosen to live their Christianity in the market-place, inspired by Jesus' who heals the sick, defends the poor and upholds the rights of people against all forms of injustice. In these multiple testimonies to the power of Jesus Christ at work in the world, we can discern different ways of telling, embracing and interpreting the Jesus story.
From very early times in Christian history, it became evident that there are essentially two distinct approaches to the mystery and reality of Jesus Christ. One is called a christology 'from below' because the emphasis is on the events in the historical life of Jesus: the one who came among us as a great prophet to announce the kingdom of God and who, despite his untimely death, has been raised on high by God. The other approach is called a christology 'from above' because it begins by affirming the divine origins of Jesus who is 'God made man'.
These two approaches--sometimes called 'low ascending' and 'high descending' christologies--are meant to be complementary. However, throughout the centuries, it has been the 'high descending' christology that has held the most sway. More recently, the 'low ascending' christology has had a return to favour. Just as we can speak of trends in clothes or music, we might also speak of christological trends. The important thing is to realise that the mystery of Jesus Christ surpasses all our attempts to speak and understand. Moreover, it is only by entering the story in word and deed, that is by becoming followers of Jesus, that we can hope to understand who he is and what he means for us today.
The Gospels
as privileged sources
It is also true that if
we are to understand Jesus at all we need to locate him in the
first stories that were told about him. These stories are called
'Gospels' (a name meaning 'Good News'). They were written by
the early followers of Jesus in the decades after his earthly
life. We need to realise that the Gospels are faith-stories rather
than biographies. The Gospel-writers were not out to prove anything,
but to provide an account of the wonderful ways that God was
present to them in the life of Jesus the Nazarene. The Gospels,
then, are 'privileged sources' because they witness to the earliest
experiences of faith in Jesus the Christ, the special messenger
of God.
This does not mean that the Gospels are unhistorical. They tell us much about the Jesus of history and the events of his historical life. The Gospels are based on eye-witness accounts which, however, are first of all told in stories before they are committed to writing. In fact, it is some thirty to sixty years after Jesus' death that the Gospels are written in their final form. This means that we can identify three different layers of tradition underlying the Gospel stories: the original words and deeds of Jesus; the oral proclamation of the apostles; and the written words of the Gospel-writers. Consequently, we can say that the Gospels are a complex set of documents that combine history and theology, facts and faith, events and interpretation. Each of the Gospels does this in a unique way (in much the same way an artist depicts a scene according to his or her own 'way of seeing things').
If the Gospels are works of art rather than straight histories, this is not to reduce their truth-claims but to enhance them. Each of the Gospels is seeking to answer the same fundamental question that Jesus put to Simon Peter: 'Who do you say that I am?' Yet, each evangelist (Gospel-writer) is struck by a different aspect of the mystery of the person of Jesus. This means that the four Gospels present us with different portraits of the same Jesus.
The Gospels of Mark and Matthew are especially concerned to situate Jesus within the framework of Jewish faith and life. For Mark, Jesus is the suffering Messiah; for Matthew, he is the new Moses and teacher of the new law. In the Gospels of Luke and John, Jesus is seen as the Saviour of all people within and beyond the world of Israel. The Lukan Jesus is identified as the one in whom the Holy Spirit is specially present; the Johannine Jesus is the Word of God made flesh. These represent different approaches to the one mystery of Jesus the Christ:
The living Jesus
tradition
The Gospels, then, are
our privileged sources for understanding the mystery of Jesus
the Christ. However, without the ongoing history of interpretation--the
living Jesus tradition--, neither the Gospels nor Jesus would
still claim our attention today. This means that history or tradition
is another important source for our knowledge of Jesus Christ.
Moreover, this tradition of interpretation, enshrined in the
doctrines of the Church, witnesses to two thousand years of continuing
faith in the mystery of Christ. We are heirs to that tradition
as we seek to reinterpret our faith in Jesus Christ today.
To stand within this 'living Jesus tradition' means that we must attempt to reinterpret his meaning for us today. Our interpretation must be both faithful to the Gospels and the ongoing tradition of faith while also being creative in the way that we re-express our Christian faith today. It is, if you like, up to us to keep the Jesus-story alive through faithful yet enterprising discipleship and interpretation. It is not adequate to merely repeat the past--as if the tradition was dead--, but we must also reinterpret the mystery of Christ from within the faith-tradition that he has inspired. This is what it means to be part of a living tradition or an ongoing community of believers.
We face the mystery of Jesus Christ with our contemporary twenty-first century eyes. Accordingly, we will develop our christologies with reference to the issues and questions that are part of our world and experience. We could not do otherwise. Consequently, what we will be exploring in the following pages can be described very much in terms of a dialogue between our contemporary world-situation and the Jesus-movement as it began some two thousand years ago. We are exploring this reality because we believe that Jesus, a first-century Palestinian Jew, somehow holds the key to the meaning and significance of our lives and the world in which we live.
Jesus was a Palestinian Jew. He would have grown up with stories of conquest and oppression. These stories recounted the many waves of foreign invasion that sought to subjugate the Jewish people. The Roman occupation of Israel (63 BCE.) was the last in a long line of invasions beginning with the Babylonians (539 BCE), then the Persians and the Greeks. Jewish identity also rested on stories of the Patriarchs--Abraham, Isaac and Jacob--as well as the founding story of the Moses-led liberation from the Egyptians at the Exodus. There were yet other stories that recounted successful self-rule under the Hebrew kings Saul, David and Solomon. However, history records that the Jewish people were more often the victims than the victors in their fight for national sovereignty.
Hebrew identity was maintained--as it is with most oppressed peoples--through a deep spiritual conviction. This conviction was expressed in terms of a Covenant theology: the belief that Yahweh had chosen them to play a unique role in the history of the world. In particular, the Jewish people had come to expect a Messiah who, they believed, would enable them to fulfill this divine mission. There were differing understandings of the mission and role of the Messiah ranging from the establishment of a Jewish political kingdom here on earth to the eschatological notion of a heavenly kingdom at the end of the world (which many Jewish people considered to be immanent). It goes without saying that religion and politics were deeply intertwined in Hebrew faith and self-understanding.
By the time of Jesus' birth, the Romans had established a two-tiered system of government consisting of Roman overseers and Jewish leaders who exercised control in the name of Rome. This was the system of power in which the family of Herod the Great grew to prominence. Although half-Jews, the Herodian family was detested by the Jewish people for its tyrannical rule and also because of its key role in selling out the Jewish heritage to a foreign power. One of Herod's sons, Archelaus, was so brutal in his exercise of power in Jerusalem, that Rome replaced him with one of its own governors, Pontius Pilate, who was to play a significant role in the crucifixion of Jesus. Another of the sons, Herod Antipas, was responsible for the beheading of John the Baptist. It was the same Antipas who is accredited with the mocking of Jesus at his pre-crucifixion trial.
Life in Galilee
Jesus was a Nazarene. He
lived most of his life in the town of Nazareth within the province
of Galilee. Although a small village, Nazareth was close to the
metropolitan centres of Tiberias and Sepphoris. Unlike those
predominantly Gentile (non-Jewish) cities, Nazareth was a Jewish
enclave. It was also relatively poor and overpopulated; there
was a scarcity of natural resources such as water and fertile
soil. In such a situation, there tended to be a fair amount of
sickness and disease. Nonetheless, Nazareth could not be called
destitute. Jesus came from a family of craftsmen or carpenters
which suggests a reasonable socio-economic standard of living.
Education was a priority for Jewish people. Jesus would have learnt the Bible at the village school (until the age of twelve) and at the local synagogue. This accounts for Jesus' knowledge of Hebrew (the language of the Bible) and Aramaic (the language in which religious discussion was held). It was also the custom of the time for young adults to attach themselves to a local teacher or sage. Although we know little of Jesus' young adult life, we do know that he eventually chose to be a disciple of John the Baptist. Certainly, by the time of his 'public ministry', Jesus was well versed in the Scriptures and the Jewish tradition. This suggests that he spent many years learning and discussing his Jewish faith and heritage.
Jerusalem
Jerusalem was the centre
of the Jewish world. Male Jews were supposed to make a pilgrimage
to the Jerusalem temple for the three major Jewish feasts of
Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles. However, since Nazareth
was a three or four day journey from Jerusalem (about a hundred
miles), it is unlikely that Jesus made the trip often. The Gospels
tell us that he went with his family at the age of twelve. He
also visited Jerusalem during his public life (once or three
times depending on the Gospel). On one visit to the temple, Jesus
is recorded as reacting violently to those who were using the
temple for commercial purposes. It is highly probable that this
action of Jesus is related to his trial and eventual execution.
Of further historical interest is the fact that the temple was
destroyed by the Romas in 70 CE.
Society and
politics
Judaism at the time of
Jesus was a complex mixture of divergent social, political and
religious ideologies. In general terms, we can speak of four
distinct movements, ideologies or life-options. It is helpful
to situate Jesus in terms of these social groups of his day in
order that we can come to appreciate the distinctiveness of his
own life and mission.
The Zealot movement took the revolutionary option. It advocated outward violence, even armed rebellion, to rid Israel of Roman oppression. Nothing else, they figured, would bring final liberation to the Jewish people. Depending on the point of view, Zealots were looked upon as freedom-fighters or terrorists. One thinks of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka or activities of the Irish Republican Army during the 'troubles' in Northern Ireland. Certainly Jesus had zealots among his followers, for example 'Simon the Zealot'. Moreover, Jesus came into conflict with both the Jewish temple and the Roman state. Finally, he was executed as a zealot revolutionary. However, few would argue that Jesus was a violent revolutionary. Like other non-violent figures in history, such as Mahatma Gandhi, Jesus posed a more radical threat to the established order than any armed person might do.
The Sadduccees were the great pragmatists of the day. As wealthy lay-nobles, priests and aristocrats, they sought to conserve their wealth and power through comprosmise with Rome. Politically speaking, this was the most realistic option. Most of the members of the Sanhedrin were from the Sadduccee group. In many ways, the Sadduccees could be described as the least religious group as is evidenced by their non-belief in the resurrection from the dead. However, it would be wrong to see them as agnostics or atheists as some have argued. They were committed to the Jewish faith on the basis of the earlier books of the bible. Moreover, as the people at the top of the pecking order in the Jewish society of their time, they were much more concerned with present-day affairs than speculation on the life-to-come. In the Gospels, it is evidently the Sadduccees who are the main opponents of Jesus at the time of his trial and death. They rightly saw that Jesus' radical brand of religion threatened their power and status.
The Pharisees were in many ways the idealists of Jewish society. Most of the Scribes (the 'theologians' of the day) were Pharisees. In general, despite their 'bad press' in the Gospels, the Pharisees sought to live a life of spiritual purity by a meticulous following of the torah (Jewish law). They did not believe in compromise with the Romans (as did the Sadduccees) nor in revolutionary activity (as did the Zealots). No doubt their emphasis on the law could result in legalism which may, in turn, become a pretext for hypocrisy. Nonetheless, many Pharisees were highly committed and deeply spiritual people. They believed in the resurrection of the dead. From their perspective, Jesus seemed to relativize the law which explains their anger towards him.
Finally, there were the Essenes who solved the problem of Jewish identity in a Roman-occupied Israel by withdrawing to a monastic-like setting. They were, if you like, the hippies of the day insofar as they completely opted out of mainstream Jewish society. The most notable group in Jesus' time was the Qumran community who lived an ascetic life and were waiting for God's apocalyptic intervention in human history. It is unlikely that Jesus had any contact with this particular group. Still, he was introduced to the ascetical option through his contact with the disciples of John the Baptist who represented a quasi-Essenic withdrawal from maintstream society. Jesus' public ministry demonstrates his decision to engage directly with the wider members of his society.
Consequently, while Jesus had dealings with the various socio-political groups and religious ideologies of his his time, he took his own unique life-option. It was a position that had certain parallels with the likes of his mentor, John the Baptist, though there are significant differences in their teachings and ministry. Some scholars compare Jesus to a near-contemporary of his, a teacher named Hillel. Both Jesus and Hillel had profound respect for the Jewish torah, but they were also renowned for preaching compassion, forgiveness and love. Their ministries were profoundly people-oriented. However, Jesus was more than a teacher. He was also experienced as prophet, miracle-worker, healer, defender of the poor and oppressed. Nonetheless, Jesus' distinctiveness needs to be appreciated in the context of his Jewish life and times. This was a context in which religion and politics were intertwined in a much more complex way than we think of them today.
Faith and history
We have already seen that
the Christian Scriptures do not present us with a straight biography
of Jesus. Nonetheless, they do present us with valuable historical
information on the life of Jesus that can be discerned with the
aid of historical research, biblical scholarship and sound common-sense.
This enables us to construct a portrait of Jesus of Nazareth
with which historians, scripture scholars and believers alike
can reasonably agree.
This historical approach does not bypass Christian faith; nor is it solely dependant on faith. In this sense, it is meaningful to make a distinction between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith. We are speaking about the same Jesus, but we do not assume that the Jesus who is portrayed in the gospels as Lord and Saviour was experienced precisely this way by his disciples during their time with him in Palestine. The developed New Testament christologies are post-resurrection accounts which witness to post-resurrection belief in Jesus as the Christ, the Annointed One of God.
Literalist or fundamentalist readings fail to take into account the ways in which resurrection-belief transformed the disciples' understanding of who Jesus was. They assume, for example, that throughout his earthly existence, Jesus was always fully aware of his own divine status and, therefore, knew everything there was to know including the future events of his own earthly life and death. Such a fundamentalist reading of the Scriptures denies Jesus' full humanity; it also fails to appreciate that the gospels are complex faith-documents rather than simple biographies or straightforward histories.
On the other extreme are the rationalists who assume there is a total rupture between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith. For them, Jesus of history is depicted as an ethical teacher, a moral reformer or even as a deluded fanatic who mistakenly preached that the world was coming to an end. In one rationalist account, the whole post-Easter Christ tradition is purported to have been made up by the apostles who were able to get away with the resurrection story by stealing Jesus' body. In another account, Jesus survived the crucifixion and married Mary Magdalene with whom he lived many years in Rome prior to dying a natural death. These approaches are not able to account for the transformation in the lives of Jesus' disciples nor in the fact that these first believers, who had known Jesus during his earthly life, now acclaimed this same Jesus to be Christ, Lord and Saviour.
Our approach is to adopt the centrist position which recognizes both continuity and development in the gospel accounts of Jesus of Nazareth. This is a matter of affirming that the gospels are based on real memories of what Jesus said and did. Accordingly, the stylized gospel accounts are grounded in the historical events of Jesus' earthly life now seen through the eyes of resurrection-faith. Without this continuity between faith and history, Christianity would not be based on historical reality but in a groundless myth.
The historical reality is that the person of Jesus impacted so profoundly on his followers that the encounter itself became integral to the interpretation of his identity. This is not dissimilar to our knowledge of living persons: we come to know others in depth to the extent that we encounter them in a living relationship. It becomes important, therefore, to keep the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith together as the full expression of the saving encounter with the mystery of Jesus' unique personhood. One writer expressses it this way:
Teacher and
prophet
The most common term applied
to Jesus is that of 'teacher' or 'rabbi' (thirty times in the
gospels). Most likely, Jesus began his public teaching ministry
as a disciple of John the Baptist. Like John, Jesus teaches the
importance of faith and repentance; like Hillel, he teaches compassion
and love; like other Jewish teachers, he is inspired by profound
respect for the Scriptures. However, as we have indicated, Jesus
developed his own specific style of ministry that differed from
John and other teachers of his day. This is evident in the way
that he teaches fidelity to the Scriptures while being opposed
to strict interpretations on fasting, ritual purity and the Sabbath.
Jesus teaches a radical form of Judaism, but he does not see himself as starting a new religion. It is also important to recognize that Jesus was neither a professional teacher nor an ordained scribe. Like them, he does teach in the synagogues; unlike them, he also teaches by the lakeside and in the open fields. Especially distinctive is the way that Jesus directs his teachings to all--including women, children, sinners, the sick--and not just to the educated class or to a particular religious group. His message is not secretive or esoteric but is directed towards anybody 'who has ears to hear'. Moreover, Jesus differs from conventional teachers or rabbis by choosing his own disciples and drawing them into a relationship of friendship and mutuality.
In many ways, Jesus combines the offices of teacher and prophet. Prophets tend to arise in situations of cultural or religious crisis; they appeal first and foremost to alienated groups within a society; they are deemed to possess special gifts of insight into the nature of the present reality; and they are unusually gifted with rhetorical powers of speech. The ethical prophet is also noted for critiquing the unjust sufferings of marginal groups and for playing a significant role in redefining the tradition. Evidently, Jesus fulfills each of these criteria in his teaching ministry.
Nonetheless, there is a uniqueness to Jesus' ministry which defies all attempts to define him according to any particular set of categories. There is this unmistakable 'otherness' about him in his manner of proclaiming the reign of God, his miracle-performances, his addressing Yahweh as 'Abba-Father', his freedom in ministering to social outcasts, and his consistent claim to forgive sins. In all these actions, Jesus emerges as one who speaks and acts with great personal authority, an authority that seems to surpass the traditional role of the ethical Israelite prophet. Whereas these other prophets take upon themselves the task of speaking in God's name ('Thus the Lord says'), Jesus is recorded as speaking on his own authority ('I say to you').
Something of the uniqueness of Jesus' teaching and prophetic ministry is captured in the following quotation:
The reign of
God
The notion of the reign of God is the central and recurring motif in Jesus' public
ministry. It arises from the unique and incomparable religious
experience of intimate union with God whom he dares to address
with the familial title 'Abba'. The accounts of Jesus'
baptism and transformation, all be they stylised post-resurrection
accounts, witness to Jesus' acceptance by God as a special envoy
or messenger. In both stories, the relationship between God and
Jesus is marked by a surprising tenderness and loving personal
concern. Moreover, Jesus is designated Son of God and spokesperson
for God: 'This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased--listen
to him' (Mt 3:17; 17:25).
It is in this context of Jesus' religious experience--his 'Abba-experience' and his sense of being chosen by God for a special mission to the world--that Jesus embodies and proclaims a new message for all people. It is a message of justice, love and peace which is, in Jesus' own language, expressed in the metaphor of God's kingdom or reign.
We have already stated that Jesus' religious experience of a personal and loving God needs to be understood in the context of his Jewish faith. It is equally true that his experience and understanding of the kingdom of God draws from the best insights of the Jewish tradition which understood God as king (Isaiah 52:17). However, by the time of Jesus, the understanding of kingdom had been largely distorted through people's experiences of various forms of tyranny and misuse of power. Jesus brings a fresh approach to the notion of kingdom by linking it to his own experience of a deeply loving and caring God whose only concern is to liberate people from the forces of evil and to empower them with a new life-vision.
In contrast to the more popular interpretations of his day, Jesus does not identify the coming of the kingdom with apocalyptic destruction, scribal legalism, secterian withdrawal from society, nor revolutionary uprising. Rather, through his words and actions, Jesus preaches a message of God's coming reign which is to be marked by personal, social and even cosmic transformation. However, for Jesus, the kingdom is not just a future reality. It is also 'at hand' in the here-and-now because God's compassion and mercy are available to all people at all times. This is the message in many of Jesus' parables and is proclaimed in his radical sayings and healing ministry. This coming/already-present reign of God is especially symbolized in the table-fellowship that Jesus establishes with all types of people including the marginalized and outcasts of society.
Jesus' preaching the reign of God is also linked to his call to conversion and the invitation to experience the wonderful closeness of God. In this way, the reign of God in Jesus' ministry emanates from his own religious experience. He emphasises that it is only God's reign or God's doing that is able to overturn evil and negativity in human life and history. Yet he also stresses that human beings must respond to God's invitation and so be converted to a new way of living if the reign of God is to become real. Moreover, Jesus directly challenges social and religious attitudes that act to keep the marginalized in their places of oppression. His actions in the temple, his friendships with women, and his advocacy for the poor, make it clear that his programme included a deep and fearless challenging of the prejudices and injustices of his day.
There is no single meaning that we can equate with this notion of God's reign as it occurs in the ministry of Jesus. It stems from the Jewish notion that God (Yahweh) is Lord and King: all creation is subject to its Creator (creation theology); and God's kingship is evident in the life-events of Israel's history (salvation theology). This provided Israel with a sense of expectation and hope that, just as God's reign manifested itself in past events such as in the Exodus experience, so it would be manifested in the future. Jesus radicalizes this message of the kingdom of God by indicating that its future fulfillment is already happening now (Lk.11:20) and is, in some way, associated with his own ministry and person (Mt.11:2ff.).
Consequently, the reign of God is not restricted to individual experience. It overflows into social and political action--but only, and always, on the understanding that God alone can enable the kingdom to happen. The kingdom of God is God's doing and God's gift. This is why Jesus not only ministers in the name of the kingdom; he also prays for it: "may your kingdom come!" The reign of God is the central focus and controlling horizon of Jesus' entire life and mission. In personal terms, it is a call to a complete metanoia or change-of-heart. In social terms it calls for the establishment of an alternative community based on the values of the Sermon on the Mount. In cosmic terms, it recognizes that God will bring the entire world and all creation to fulfillment. The reign of God is a mystical or religious category with profound political and cosmic overtones.
Jesus the parabler
One of the most distinctive
features of Jesus' teaching and prophetic ministry is the manner
in which he used ordinary stories to entertain and challenge
listeners to a new way of experiencing God in their lives. These
stories or parables are remarkable for their down-to-earth character
and their ability to tap into people's everyday experiences.
For example, they deal with meals and journeys, sheep and goats,
coins and pearls, wheat and darnel, cloth and oil lamps, trees
and birds. However, what is evident in the telling of the parables
is the way in which they take an unexpected turn: the
familiar becomes strange; ordinary values are turned on their
head; listeners are forced to make a decision between two possible
worlds or sets of values.
Take, for example, the parables of the Pharisee and the Publican (Lk.18:9-14) and the Good Samaritan (Lk.10:29-37). Good Jewish people in Jesus' day had fairly clear ideas about prayer and virtue: the prayer of good-living people (pharisees) would be heard by God, whereas the prayer of sinners (publicans) could not be successful; certain types of people (priests and levites) were good and virtuous, whereas low-class foreigners (Samaritans) were not capable of virtue. What we find, however, is that Jesus reverses the plots: it is the sinner's prayer that is heard by God; it is the foreigner who acts with virtue. More shocking still are the imputations that the prayer of the religious pharisee is unsuccessful and the actions of the holy priest and levite are sinful. Evidently, the initial hearers of these parables are led to a point of decision with regard to their own value-systems, religious judgments and moral actions.
We can recognize in these parables a three-stage pattern of advent (what people expect), reversal of expectations (what Jesus says) and the call to new vision and action (how people must change). This same pattern applies to the reception of Jesus himself in his mode of relating with women, the poor, foreigners and sinners. 1) Advent: good Jewish people associated with other virtuous people. 2) Reversal: Jesus associates and shares table-fellowship with the wrong mob. 3) New Vision/Action: my presumed religious virtues may be human prejudices. At the very least, one is forced to make a decision with regard to Jesus and oneself. In this sense, we can say that Jesus is himself a parabler: he proclaims the reign of God through words and deeds which shatter people's accepted world making them vulnerable to a new understanding of what it means to be human and a new experience of God.
The reign of
God in parables
The parables of the Hidden Treasure and the Pearl of Great Price (Mt.13:44ff.) illustrate the relationship between
the coming reign of God and its present realization. There is
an urgency about things requiring a new way of seeing and acting.
These stories challenge listeners to a change of heart or reversal
of priorities if the kingdom--here symbolized as a hidden treasure
or an expensive stone--is to be recognized and received.
This new and urgent vision of the kingdom, powerfully summed up in the Sermon on the Mount, is primarily a call to personal and social transformation in the name of the reigning God. The social dimension is evident in the parables of the Talents and the Final Judgment (Mt.25:14ff.). It is also at the heart of Jesus' own liberating praxis which is a further manifestation or symbol of the reign of God--a reign of justice, peace, forgiveness and love.
The intimate connection between present liberation and future salvation is also conveyed in the parables of the Mustard Seed (Mk.4:30) and the Leaven and the Dough (Mt.13:33). The God of Israel in Jesus' parables is not a God of the status quo or the unknown future, but a God who induces change in the here-and-now.
It is also helpful to read the radical sayings of Jesus as small but poignant parables of the kingdom. As reported in the Gospels, Jesus makes the following kinds of seemingly unreasonable demands on his followers:
In these radical sayings of Jesus, the three-fold pattern of advent, shock, new vision/praxis defies a merely rational or logical explanation. It is much more like the raw experience we have when somebody we love challenges our attitudes and behaviour. Initially we feel hurt and betrayed; we had not expected this to come from you of all people! Our life is thrown into turmoil. Then, we may just come to see that what the person has said to us and about us is true. We see that we need to change our ways, alter our very being, in order to be true to ourselves. To take another example on a social level, Australians are beginning to see and understand that, despite often best intentions, 'white' Australia has exhibited racist attitudes, or sexist ones, that need to be overturned. This is a hard truth to confront. Yet, only when that truth is most deeply acknowledge, can there be forgiveness, growth and reconciliation.
In like manner, the parables and radical sayings of Jesus draw his hearers to a moment of crisis and decision regarding their attitudes and behaviours. They are also drawn to examine their assumptions about God, the kingdom and Jesus himself. Either Jesus will be dismissed as another religious crackpot or everything changes!
Miracle-worker
It is often with embarrassment
or at least dim understanding that people today approach the
issue of Jesus the miracle-worker. Evidently, our scientific
understanding of the world finds it difficult to locate the miraculous.
On the one hand, we are confronted with the problem that some
of the miracle-stories seem a bit far-fetched. On the other hand,
there are those who want to take hold of the miracles of Jesus
as some kind of divine proof that he is God. Therefore, we need
to look at the question of the historicity of Jesus' miracles
and then to ask what it is that the miracles are meant to convey.
The miracles are post-resurrection accounts. That is, they have become somewhat stylized in their reporting. Again, we need to recall that the Gospels are first and foremost faith-accounts rather than straight histories. Moreover, there is evidence to suggest that some of the more far-fetched nature miracles have been borrowed from other traditions and attributed to Jesus as a sign of belief in his messiahship. However, the bulk of the miracles reported in the Gospels need to be seen as historically based: they are part of the earliest strata of the Jesus-tradition; they are certainly congruous with Jesus' overall mission of proclaiming God's reign in the world; and there is no evidence to suggest that the people of Jesus' time disputed the fact of such miracles (even if they disputed their interpretation).
It is helpful to compare the reports of Jesus' miracles with the reports of the magicians of his day. By contrast, Jesus' miracles are marked by moderation and constraint. They do not seek to be spectacular, to overpower the will of others, to be secretive, or to draw attention to himself. It must be remembered that in the Judaism of the day, magic was more often seen as a 'sign of the devil'. This means that the disciples and evangelists would have been inclined to ignore this dimension of Jesus' ministry unless they saw it as somehow central to his mission. For them, at least, Jesus' miracles were a sign, not of the devil, but of God.
Consequently, whatever the historical details of the miracle-stories, they were recognized by those who believed in Jesus as 'signs of God'. However, the miracles are not presented as proofs of Jesus' divine status. They were far too ambiguous for that. In this regard, it is interesting that Jesus is depicted on one occasion as 'refusing to give a sign'. It is also significant that neither Paul nor any other post-Gospel New Testament writer makes reference to the miracles.
As used by Jesus, the miracles need to be seen in context of his ministry of proclaiming the reign and power of God. They do not emphasize the notion of an 'extraordinary event' and, in one way or another, the performance of miracles is always related to the faith of the people and the wider community. Sometimes, Jesus' miracles are directed towards his desire to challenge traditional prejudices and attitudes such as the false notion that people's sickness is due to their sinfulness. Finally, it needs to be stated that the central miracle with regard to Jesus is his resurrection from the dead which is pre-eminently the act of God on and through Jesus to the world. All miracle-stories need to be seen in this light of the divine presence in the universe. Only with the eyes of faith, can miracle-stories be placed in this proper perspective of God's abiding presence in the cosmos.
Eschatological
prophet
The Jews of Jesus' time
were awaiting what they understood to be the final or
eschatological prophet who
would usher in the 'last days'. Images of this prophet varied.
For some, this final prophet would be a Moses-like figure or
even an actual reappearance of a former prophet (Elijah and Ezekiel
were popular choices). For others, this eschatological figure
was associated with the formation of a political kingdom (people
remembered the glory days of old when Solomon and King David
reigned). For others again, the prophet was associated with the
apocalyptic destruction of the present world.
By the time of John the Baptist and Jesus, Israel had been without a significant prophet for several generations. Moreover, under the yoke of Roman oppression, the sense of expectation had sharpened. It was inevitable that at first John, and then Jesus, were looked upon by many as this eschatological prophet for whom the Jewish people had been waiting. However, as inevitably occurs when people project their expectations onto others, there comes the time when hopes are dashed. Disappointment and frustration set in. Both the initial popularity of Jesus and the eventual animosity towards him are partly explained in terms of his identification with the eschatological prophet on whom Israel had pinned its hopes. When people's hopes are dashed, irrational and violent forces are often unleashed.
It is highly probable that Jesus understood himself as the eschatological prophet whose mission was to inaugurate the 'last days' of 'God's reign'. However, Jesus did not understand the reign of God in either narrow political terms (establishing a new political regime) or in traditional apocalyptic ways (the literal destruction of the universe). As we have seen, for Jesus the reign of God was linked to a new experience of the divine presence, something to be experienced in the here and now and yet whose final fulfillment was yet to occur. On the basis of the gospel portraits of Jesus, we can say that his understanding of the reign of God was both mystical--a new experience of God's presence in the here-and-now--and prophetic--the call to his followers to a personal and social change of heart.
However, for reasons we must now explore, Jesus' message and mission came to be interpreted as a threat to the religious and political status quo. Jesus is reported as noting this himself when he states: "A prophet is never accepted in his own country or among his own people"
The killing
of Jesus
It is safe to say that
Jesus was not crucified because he taught love and forgiveness
or because he set about debating legal points with the scribes
of his day. Jesus was crucified because he was seen as a threat
to the powers-that-be. His brand of non-violent resistance, his
manner of stirring the people and empowering the poor, were correctly
judged to be challenging the political power structures of his
day.
None of this is to suggest that Jesus was a political rebel (a zealot), but it is to state that his mission of proclaiming the reign of God had profound political implications. Such implications became more evident in view of Jesus' actions in 'the cleansing of the temple'. Now the temple was not just a place. The temple was the symbol of the entire Jewish faith and its religious authority structure. Significantly, in two passion narratives the charge is brought against Jesus that he 'threatened' the temple. In effect, what is being stated is that his teachings and actions were threatening the very basis of Jewish life. Although the gospel-writers refute this claim, there is evidence to suggest that in both subtle and profound ways, Jesus certainly did challenge some of the central practices and institutions of Jewish life.
This radical challenge to Judaism could be described in terms of bringing about a new nearness of God to people which would have the effect of eliminating--at least significantly decreasing--the need for human mediators. Jesus' mission very clearly implied the right of everyone to address God as 'Father'. This meant that the Jewish leaders, especially the chief priests and sadduccees mentioned in the passion stories, had good reason to suspect that Jesus' radicalized religion did threaten their own roles and status.
A couple of things can be said about the charges brought against Jesus by the Jewish sanhedrin. First, they imply that Jesus' mission was not altogether a failure. Significant numbers of people, including some from the Jewish ruling classes, had come to a point of accepting that Jesus was indeed a true prophet, perhaps even the Messiah for whom Israel had been waiting. Second, this achievement was a very real threat to the status of lawful authority. If Jesus was seen as 'Christ' and 'Lord' to some, this very fact threatened the familiar lordship of others, notably the chief priests and scribes. Consequently, Jesus was a problem to the Jewish hierarchy from both religious and political perspectives.
However, none of this explains the involvement of Pilate and the Roman authorities. Despite the trumped-up charge of blashpemy that is brought against Jesus, it is important to recognize that he was sentenced to death by the Romans on the charge of political treason: "He claimed to be King of the Jews". This messianic title had very clear political implications. Luke's gospel expands on this charge: "We found this man perverting our nation, and forbidding us to give tribute to Caesar, and saying that he himself is Christ, a king" (23:1). The point here is that, to the Roman occupiers of Israel, Jesus could well have been perceived as a would-be revolutionary. At the very least, Pilate and the Roman authorities had good reasons to put a stop to the Jesus-movement on the basis of its subversive possibilities.
Although there are many unknowns with regard to the events surrounding Jesus' death, we can surmise that there was a deal struck between the Jewish leaders and the Roman authorities. Both had a stake in eliminating Jesus' brand of religon: the Jewish leaders had power and status to protect; the Romans were more concerned with law and order.
It is generally recognized that the gospel narratives place most of the responsibility for Jesus' death on the Jews rather than the Romans. At best, this is unbalanced reporting. At worst, it suggests an anti-semitic bias in early christianity. To put the record straight, Jesus did die at the hands of the Romans and in the manner of a Roman execution (the Jews did not have power to crucify). Nonetheless, it is impossible to construct an account of Jesus' trial and crucifixion that does not implicate the Jewish leaders of the day. All this points to the intimate connection between religion and politics in the Jewish society of Jesus' time.
The crucifixion and death of Jesus should always be seen in context of his life and ministry. Although Jesus was not concerned with establishing a political kingdom, his teachings on God's reign were deeply challenging of traditional Jewish institutions and practices. Jesus took a dangerous path: he attacked power and wealth; he overturned social attitudes that oppressed 'unclean' or 'unworthy' people; he taught the need for prayer and self-sacrificing service; he called people to freedom and empowerment in the face of injustice; he named the religious elite a 'breed of vipers' for its manner of sponging off the poor and the needy. In other words, Jesus made enemies among the Jewish leaders and their Roman overlords. These wealthy and powerful elite came to be threatened to the point that they needed to do away with him.
Jesus' approach
to his death
What then can we say about
Jesus' own understanding of his approaching death? Since the
crucifixion and death of Jesus were the result of his life and
ministry, we can rightly assume that he must have reckoned with
the possibility of death well prior to the end of his ministry.
Jesus was neither a blind fanatic nor a fool. He was aware of
the beheading of John the Baptist and he knew of the tragic fates
of many prophets before him. Also, many of the charges levelled
against Jesus--casting out demons in the name of Beelzebub, being
a false prophet, breaking the sabbath, the accusation of blasphemy--were
traditionally punishable through death by stoning.
Consequently, there can be no doubt that Jesus' journey to Jerusalem was the result of a deliberate and conscious decision to face danger including the danger of death itself. He knew of the growing opposition to him and his mission. Yet, despite this, he chose to make the trip to Jerusalem at the time of the Passover, a time when huge masses of people would be gathered in the city.
Why would Jesus make such a dangerous choice? The decision to go to Jerusalem marks the end of Jesus' Galilean ministry. It acts as a symbolic gesture of his explicit refusal to accept the way of a political messiah. In spite of this, the disciples still pin their hopes on a worldly kingdom. Jesus' frustration with their blindness becomes a recurring theme in the gospel narratives of the Jerusalem journey. People may hail him as a wonder-worker, king or messiah, but they still fail to comprehend his real message and mission.
Jesus discerns that his mission of proclaiming God's reign on earth will not be achieved through more of the same. Different strategies are needed. We see that Jesus becomes more confrontational in his approach (the temple scene); the radical edge to his teaching becomes more central. Jerusalem, the symbolic centre of Israel, was the logical place for Jesus to take his message. Perhaps Jesus thought that the religious capital would be more open to his teaching. His triumphant ride into Jerusalem suggests an initial enthusiasm--but, again, the people are disillusioned when they learn that Jesus does not intend to be a political messiah of their making.
In fact, the tide quickly turns. The hailed one becomes the decried one! There would still be opportunity for Jesus to retreat. However, by now he knew that a retreat from Jerusalem would be the retreat from his mission of proclaiming God's reign of love and mercy for all. In any case, he was too well known; there was little chance of hiding in the Galilean hills. And to take the escapist option of renouncing his mission was not a line of action that Jesus would countenance. So, in the face of an increasingly hostile opposition, Jesus grows to accept that the remote possibility of death has become an impending probability. Then the realisation dawns that there is no escape; death is certain.
Notwithstanding the violent death that Jesus was to undergo, he was also faced with the inevitable question of how to reconcile this impending reality with the message of God's love and salvation. How could the God of love allow such a painful and violent death? How could the reign of God be achieved through such evil and injustice? Jesus, who understood himself at least in terms of God's special envoy, could not have avoided facing such questions.
In assessing Jesus' response, we should be careful to avoid two extremes. First, we should distance ourselves from the approach that says that Jesus went to his death with feelings of despair and total abandonment by God. The words of the psalm attributed to Jesus on the Cross--"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"--, even if historical, need to be read in terms of the complete psalm which is, ultimately, a prayer of trust in God despite the evil that surrounds us. Jesus' whole life was lived in the belief of God's utter fidelity. Such belief would not abandon Jesus even in these most tragic circumstances of his bloody crucifixion.
Second, it is most important that we do not paint Jesus going to his death as a passive victim who was blindly fulfilling some pre-ordained divine plan. It is wrong to think that the human, historical Jesus had some kind of immediate access to God's will for him. Jesus made his life-decisions in the way that we all do: in the face of uncertainty and risk. He prays that he will come to know the Father's will and make the right decisions in view of his prayer and discernment. Aware of the risks, Jesus had made the crucial decision to take his mission to the heart of Judaism. Now he knows he must live with the consequences of that decision, including death itself.
The events surrounding the last supper and the agony in the garden are recorded in such a way to show that Jesus went to his death freely and deliberately--not because he actively chose death itself, but because he continued to commit himself to the mission of the kingdom in the face of opposition and evil. The act of the cup and bread at the 'last supper' symbolises the totality of Jesus' life, a life lived in loving service of others. Now Jesus is challenged to integrate the failure of his mission and his impending death into his life of 'service in love'. In other words, Jesus' death was marked by the same attitude that constituted his entire life. Perhaps Jesus simply believed that the promises of God would be fulfilled despite his death and the apparent failure of his mission. Or it may be that Jesus saw in a veiled way that his death would be a 'ransom for many', that is, an event that God would use to bring about the kingdom-community of justice, love and peace.
Interpreting
Jesus' death
In the early Jesus-movement,
the suffering and death of Jesus came to be interpreted in many
different ways. For some, the death of Jesus was seen as a sign
that he was the eschatological
prophet-martyr.
After all, the Jewish tradition is full of stories of in which
the true prophets are killed. The fact that Jesus was killed
shows that he is the true prophet-martyr, in fact, the definitive
or eschatological figure. This interpretation did not ascribe
any particular theological significance to Jesus' death. It is
Jesus himself, his person and mission, that is the central focus.
Jesus' death merely shows that he is the one who is the 'true
light of the world'.
Another interpretation focussed on the suffering of Jesus as an indication that he was the 'righteous one', the suffering Son of Man. Before prophets are killed, they are rejected and despised. Here there is a tendency to see suffering as the hallmark of God's endorsement of the true prophet. Consequently, Jesus' suffering is read in accordance with the divine plan of salvation. However, within this approach, the death of Jesus does not figure with any degree of prominence and is not, in itself, theologically important.
A third approach, however, did focus primarily on Jesus' death as a redemptive and atoning act. This is summarized in the Pauline formula which states that Jesus 'died for us on account of our sins' (Romans 4:25). The understanding developed that Jesus' suffering and death were 'saving realities'. This meant that the focus of attention moved from the person and mission of Jesus to the cross as an 'atoning sacrifice'. From this there develops a theology of salvation that is centred on the crucifixion and which reads the cross as a positive act of God which 'expiated the sins of the world'.
These various interpretations of Jesus' death witness to the struggle to make meaning out of the act of evil that brought Jesus' earthly life and mission to such an abrupt and cruel end. However we make sense of this human tragedy, it is imperative that we do see it first and foremost as a tragedy. Then, of course, we may well recognise that God can and does overturn evil and convert it into good. This is what came to be called in the Christian tradition the 'law of the cross'. Nonetheless, God does not condone evil, let alone require it in order to fulfill the divine plan of salvation. The suffering and death of Jesus, along with all other instances of violence and murder, are ultimately outside the powers of rational explanation. The most we can do is to acknowledge in faith that the mystery of God's love is finally more powerful than evil and death. Jesus' death, too, needs to be recognised in this light.
If we can speak of a Jesus-movement during Jesus' earthly life and ministry, that movement came to an abrupt end with the crucifixion. However, as history records, Jesus' death was not the last word. Something happened in the lives of Jesus' disciples resulting in the formation of a new Jesus-movement which has endured till this day. It is equally true that, in the minds of the disciples, something happened to Jesus after his death which explains their remarkable and completely unexpected transformation.
If we are to achieve some understanding of how christian faith arose from the grave of Jesus, we need to investigate the Easter experiences and how it was that the disciples now experienced Jesus as 'risen from the dead'. In turn, this will lead to a discussion of how the first christians interpreted Jesus as Christ and Lord (that is, the New Testament christological process). We will also look at some of the implications of this process for the early followers of Jesus.
Easter experiences
It is worth stating at
the outset that nobody saw--nor, for that matter, claimed to
see--the resurrection of Jesus. However, what the New Testament
does present to us are accounts of Jesus 'appearing' to the disciples.
In the earliest account we have (1 Cor.15:3-8), Paul tells us
that Christ died for our sins, was buried, rose on the third
day, and then 'appeared' to Cephas, the twelve, to more than
five hundred, to James, and finally to Paul himself. Other than
this, Paul shows little interest in historical detail.
At first it seems that the gospel accounts are attempts to corroborate Paul's evidence with historical data. However, there is such diversity, even contradiction, in these stories of what happened following the death and burial of Jesus, that we are left with more questions than answers. In fact, the original Markan account has no appearance stories; in Matthew, Jesus appears to the disciples in Galilee after his ascension; in Luke, the appearances occur on the same day in Jerusalem prior to the ascension; in John, the story is different again. Biblical scholars generally agree that these and the many other discrepancies in the easter stories point to the fact that we are dealing with sophisticated literary or theological writings rather than attempts to write history.
Again, we are confronted with the same problem that we encountered in our attempt to sketch an historical portrait of Jesus of Nazareth. The gospels are less concerned with history (what happened) than with theology (how is God revealed to us in what happened). When it comes to accounting for the historicity of the easter experiences, we have the further difficulty of explaining a unique happening that is beyond the world of ordinary experience. The most we can do is to profile the various gospel understandings of how Jesus continued to live beyond death and how the disciples experienced his transformed presence.
Resurrection
belief
Orthodox Jewish belief
in the afterlife included belief in the immortality of the soul
and the resurrection of the body at the end of time. However,
Jewish belief did not countenance the idea of an individual
resurrection prior to the end of the world. In this respect
it is significant that there were other ways of explaining what
happened to Jesus. Apart from resurrection symbolism, early christians
spoke of Jesus the heavenly high priest, the exalted one now
living in glory, the coming Lord of the future, holy wisdom.
These were all ways of expressing belief in the new risen reality
of Jesus that surpassed ordinary Jewish resurrection faith.
In other words, by itself, Jewish resurrection symbolism was not an adequate way of explaining what happened to Jesus after his death. What the first believers struggled to express was that something completely strange and unexpected had happened to Jesus. It was something like what orthodox Jews imagined happening for virtuous people at the end of time except that, in Jesus' case, it had already occurred. In time, christian belief in what happened to Jesus came to be expressed as God raising him from death. However, in the context of Jesus' time, this was a totally unexpected turn of events. It also meant that the understanding of resurrection belief took on new and expanded meaning for Jesus' disciples.
Transformation
of Jesus
Whatever the discrepancies
in historical detail, the gospels witness to Jesus' transforming
experience enabling him to live beyond death. The accounts are
also clear in carefully distinguishing this transformation of
Jesus from bodily resuscitation (such as Jesus' raising of Lazarus).
Jesus is new and different. He does not seem bound by time and
space. Rather, he is depicted as living a new mode of existence
with God which alters the way that he is present to the world.
Mark says that 'he appeared in another form' (16:12).
The picture we are given of the transformed Jesus is often like
a spirit who 'comes' and 'goes' in a manner impossible for ordinary,
earthly beings (Lk.24:31; Jn.20:19, 26). In many of the appearance
stories, Jesus is not immediately recognizable.
Still, the language used to describe the transformed Jesus emphasizes his continuity with the earthly Jesus. In John, Jesus invites his disciples to see and touch him (20:20-27); in Luke, Jesus walks, talks and eats (24:39). It is this emphasis on the physicality of the risen Jesus that leaves the disciples with no doubt--despite Thomas' initial reluctance to believe--that the risen Lord is the same Jesus who was crucified and buried. Paul simply proclaims Jesus to be the crucified-and-risen one.
For the New Testament, then, the easter event represents the new, profound and totally unexpected revelation that Jesus has survived death and been transformed by God into a new mode of being. It is first and foremost an event that happens to Jesus himself and for which there is no precedent. No wonder that the New Testament strains to provide a linguistic and conceptual framework adequate for communicating this kerygma or good news. Inevitably, its language must be imaginative and symbolic as it seeks to convey a reality that represents a breakthrough in human and religious consciousness.
For us, as for the disciples themselves, this breakthrough in the understanding of what happened to Jesus beyond death remains in the realm of mystery. This side of death, we can but glimpse the full reality of what is intended by this resurrection, ascension and glorification language. Nonetheless, what is implied by the easter experience is not mythological talk. As Paul is at pains to explain: 'If Christ was not raised, your faith is in vain' (1 Cor.15:17). Matthew's resurrection narrative is also designed to counter those who would reduce the resurrection to the level of fable. And the empty tomb tradition, common to all the gospels, witnesses to the disciples' belief that Jesus is indeed 'risen' from the dead.
Our own ability to depth the reality of the transformed mystery of Christ is, of course, dependant on own belief and value system. For example, it would make very little sense to an atheist. However, for one who trusts in the divine mystery and believes that we can experience the graciousness of God in this life, there is already some sense or foretaste of resurrected life. Evidently, the earthly Jesus experienced the reality of the divine mystery in a profound way to the point of trusting his heavenly Father in the face of inhuman suffering and violent death. It is against this background that God's vindication of Jesus in death needs to be situated.
The vindication, transformation or resurrection of Jesus is then a surprise and a grace; but it affirms rather than violates our deepest human and religious aspirations.
Although there is little we can say with clarity regarding Jesus' new mode of existence with God, the world and ourselves, we know from the first believers that it was first and foremost a Spirit-filled experience--both for Jesus and for them. They knew Jesus to be alive with God and still present in the world because the Spirit of Jesus was communicated to them. We now move to a discussion of this other dimension of the easter event wherein the transformation of Jesus is communicated to the disciples.
Transformation
of disciples
It is the firmly held belief
of the early Church that the risen Jesus manifested himself to
the disciples through a number of actual, historical, revelatory
encounters. These encounters are normally--although not always--spoken
of as 'apparitions' or 'appearances' of the risen Jesus.
In an attempt to describe these encounters, Paul uses the Greek verb 'he appeared' (ophthe) which is linked to the Hebrew notion of theophany with its two-fold meaning: an objective, real initiative on the part of God to be made known, and; a subjective response in faith on behalf of those undergoing this religious experience. Both dimensions are strongly emphasized in the post-resurrection encounter narratives.
As recorded in the New Testament, the encounters are presented according to a fairly stable pattern: the disciples are despondent and afraid; Jesus' presence takes them by surprise; Jesus offers some form of greeting; the disciples recognise Jesus; a word of command or commission by Jesus concludes the encounter. The process could also be described in terms of the three-fold pattern we used to explore Jesus' parables: Advent - the death of Jesus is the last word leaving the disciples without hope or expectation; Reversal - Jesus who was crucified is now alive with them in a transformed state; Action - the disciples' own lives are transformed so that they now become fearless proclaimers of Jesus' victory over death.
The disciples understand themselves to be empowered by the new life that Jesus shares with God. The dramatic change which overtakes them--from despair and cowardice to faith and courage--can be described in terms of a religious conversion experience. Again, we need to stress that we are dealing with an objectively real moment of grace that springs from the divine initiative: Jesus is risen. Nonetheless, this experience of encounter with the risen Jesus does not violate the subjective disposition of the disciples. It is for this reason that only those 'with faith', that is, those who are open to the communication of the divine mystery in their lives, are the ones who are able to 'see' the risen Lord.
The description of these revelatory encounters ranges from a sense of fellowship and at-one-ment (Lk.24:13-25; Jn.21:1-14), to a new life of solidarity in the Spirit (Mt.28:16-20; Jn.20:22), and new experiences of peace and forgiveness (Jn.20:19-23). Such experiences correlate to our deepest yearnings for justice, love, peace, human fulfillment and the 'risen life'. On the one hand, they come as gifts of life and salvation. On the other, they cannot be imposed; they need to be responded to in freedom and love. This is equally true for the disciples who, in a number of texts, also struggle in freedom and love to recognize Jesus and experience the gifts he offers.
This transformation of the disciples' lives has a double-aspect: it enables them to overcome their fear and guilt at abandoning Jesus--the experience of grace as forgiveness; and it empowers them to continue the 'work' of Jesus in his struggle against sin and injustice. Like Jesus himself, the disciples undergo something of a transforming death-resurrection passage from 'egocentricity' to 'other-centeredness'. For them, to experience the risen Jesus and his gifts of salvation is to be 'commissioned' by him to continue his saving work.
Consequently, we can speak of easter in terms of: the transformation of Jesus (from death to life); the transformation of the disciples (from disbelief and fear to faith and courage); and the transformation of the message (from the kingdom to Jesus). The focal point for all three transformations is the resurrection and its manifestation to the disciples in their encounters with the risen Lord. These personal encounters, although communicated to us via symbol and metaphor, are real experiences of grace and salvation confirming God's unique presence in Jesus, a presence continuing beyond the grave and available to all who believe.
From the risen
Jesus to divine status
Even the experience of
the 'risen Jesus' does not automatically lead the first christians
to afford Jesus divine status. After all, these early christians
understood Jesus within the framework of strict Jewish monotheism
(belief in the one God). Moreover, the earthly Jesus'
self-understanding would seem to imply a relationship of intimacy
rather than equality with God (the Abba relationship,
for example, makes no claim to divine status). Nonetheless, the
marvellous things that God had done through Jesus, both in his
earthly existence and now in his risen life, inevitably lead
the first disciples to speak of Jesus in a new and exalted manner.
He is no ordinary human person but one in whom the divine mystery
is uniquely manifest.
In fact, there are many New Testament christologies that develop in the post-easter attempt to explain the mystery of who Jesus was and is. Such christologies always reflect the cultural and religious concerns of particular communities. As well, they develop in a liturgical or confessional setting, that is, as expressions of people's new religious experience of God's saving presence in Jesus. In turn, these experiences are interpreted according to the known categories and familiar languages of the various communities. From the beginning, there is simply a pluralism of confessional, linguistic and cultural interpretations of what Jesus does and who he is.
The earliest post-easter communities tended to use a two-stage christology to distinguish the earthly and the risen Jesus. The earthly Jesus is described acccording to prophetic-biblical categories such as 'servant', 'holy' or 'righteous' one and, perhaps, the eschatological, Moses-like prophet. Other christological titles--such as Son of God, Christ (Christos) and Lord (Kyrios) --, are reserved for the risen Jesus who is experienced as surviving death, taken into glory, and now waiting to return. These titles and descriptions of the risen Jesus recognise that he exercises some special kind of kingly, royal or divine authority.
It is important to realise that, in the early Palestinian communities, the experience of the risen Jesus is interpreted according to Jewish apocalyptic belief. This means that the emphasis is on the future, early return of Jesus, the 'heavenly Son of Man', who will come in power and glory. This resurrection-parousia christology is expressed liturgically in the maranatha-prayer: 'Come Lord Jesus'. However, as christian communities are confronted with the delay in Jesus' return, the focus shifts from the future to the present.
Greek-speaking Jewish christians soon concentrate their liturgy on the present exaltation of the risen Jesus: 'Jesus is Lord'. The titles attributed to Jesus--including Christ, Lord and Son of God--take on a developed understanding of Jesus' present, mediating role between God and the world. Jesus will not only return at the end of time to judge the world, but is already now exercising a saving presence in the world. A further development is that these christological titles, which are originally reserved for Jesus' post-easter existence, are now projected back onto Jesus' earthly life. For example, the historical Jesus is recognised to be the 'messiah' for whom the Jews had been waiting; Paul says that he dies as Christos (1 Cor.15:3); and then 'Christ' simply becomes part of Jesus' proper name throughout his whole career (Rom.1:8).
Greek thinking is also evident in the development of a three-stage christology which becomes highly developed in the communities of Greek Christians. This christology is evident in the prologue of John's gospel (1:1-14) where Jesus Christ is identified as: the pre-existent Word of God through whom all creation is brought into existence; the Word who became flesh in the human, historical Jesus through the miracle of the incarnation; and the reigning Lord of post-easter glory. This three-stage Word-christology of John--pre-existence, incarnation and exaltation--is mirrored in the much earlier cosmic-christology of the Pauline hymns (Phil.2:6-11; Col.1:15-20). These high christologies tend to read the entire cosmos--from its conception till its completion--in terms of the mediating role of Jesus who is Christ and Lord as well as 'image', 'word', or 'wisdom' of God.
These christologies also tend to push the exaltation of Jesus into his historical life and ministry. This is clearly the case with the entire gospel of John as with the infancy narratives, baptismal accounts and transfiguration scenes in the synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke). These christologies see beyond what the disciples experienced of Jesus during his earthly existence and even beyond what Jesus saw about himself. Nonetheless, these developments should not be seen as falsifying the historical Jesus, but as depthing the inner-reality of Jesus' earthly identity in the light of the easter experiences. They witness to the early church's belief that the earthly and risen Jesus are not two, but one and the same reality.
Eventually, if cautiously, the New Testament comes to acknowledge Jesus' divine status in an unambiguous manner to the point of saying that Jesus is Theos in the sense of God's equal (Jn.1; Jn.20; Heb.1:8-10). Precislely how this is compatible with monotheistic belief is left to subsequent generations to interpret. However, before embarking on a discussion of the development of christology in the early Christian centuries, we need to acknowledge that the question of Jesus' divine status should not override our entire interpretation of the early Jesus' movement. In some ways, this movement from lower to higher christological titles to designate Jesus was an ambiguous phenomenon precisely because it tended to overshadow the human side of the Christ mystery. This was, in fact, a problem for the early Jesus movement itself.
The crucified
and risen One
Over-concentration on the
exalted nature of Jesus' divine status runs the risk of diminishing
the full power of the message that Jesus preached. As we have
seen, this was the liberating message of the kingdom-community
of God, a kingdom-community of those called to suffer and struggle
to make Jesus' vision of justice, love and peace a reality in
the world where oppression, injustice and evil so often reign.
It is Paul who appreciates this most keenly in his christology of the crucified and
risen one. This
is also the christology of many of the earliest christian communities.
For Paul, the easter event does not annul Jesus' earthly struggle against the forces of evil that led to his violent, bloody death. In fact, the opposite is the case: it is precisely the crucified Jesus who reigns as Lord. The resurrection continues and confirms the life of the Cross. Jesus' messiahship and lordship are always read in terms of Paul's servant christology: Jesus lives his life for others and calls them into mutual servantship with him. This is the critical edge to Paul's liberating, radical christology: it is only in self-giving love through the cross of suffering on behalf of others that the kingdom of God's universal love can arrive.
In keeping alive the two-fold reality of Jesus crucified and risen, Paul retains the acute tension in Jesus' message between the 'already' and the 'not yet' of the kingdom. He also berates the Corinthians for identifying the kingdom with displays of divine power instead of focussing their concerns on building a community of love and service. Paul believes that, in Jesus, God has already begun the kingdom of justice and peace. However, he also recognises the unfortunate tendency in certain sections of the Jesus-movement to act as if Jesus had completed the work. In fact, the very reason for the Jesus-movement is to carry on the work which Jesus has begun.
The loss of the liberating, critical edge of the Jesus-movement is both a concern for Paul and a trap into which he himself sometimes falls. At least there is evidence to suggest that Paul's attitude to women, for example, is not entirely consistent with his love christology that opposes all forms of oppression and injustice. In fact, earlier letters account for Paul's commitment to women's equal freedom and dignity with men: women are Paul's co-workers, not subordinates (Rom.16:6,12); they are leaders of community-churches (Phlm.2; 1 Cor.16:19); Junia is even called an 'apostle' by Paul (Rom.16:7); and Phoebe is a 'deacon' for the whole church (Rom.16:1f.). [ Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 205-241. ]
These texts contrast most starkly with Paul's admonitions to women (1 Corinthians 11:2-26; 14:33-36) where they are asked to play a very subsidiary role to men in society at large as in the christian assembly. Here, it seems, Paul is more concerned with making the christian movement acceptable to the cultural standards of the wider world. It is a trap into which the christian church would often fall. Of course, it is difficult for any movement to retain the purity and freshness of its beginnings. In order to endure, movements need laws and structures; they need to be institutionalized. We have seen enough to recognise that this process already begins in the time of the New Testament writings and that part of the price that is paid is the loss of the radical, liberating edge which characterized the Jesus-movement in its origins.
As we move to a review of historical and contemporary understandings of the Jesus movement and the Christ mystery, we need to keep alive the memory of the historical Jesus--the one who preaches the kingdom and suffers and dies--as well as the risen Christ of glory who is proclaimed in easter faith. The scandal of the Cross and the wonder of the resurrection are two inseparable dimensions of the one mystery of Jesus (the) Christ.
The result has been an explosion of christologies: 'a period of christological ferment unmatched since the first century'. These different and often diverse approaches to the mystery of Christ need to be seen against the backdrop of modern experience. If the 1960's was a decade of rebellion, it was also a time of hope and optimism in the future; the 1970's was, for many Australians, a period of idealism, experimentation and disappointment (often symbolized by the rise and fall of the Whitlam government); the 1980's has become known as the decade a crass materialism, greed and lost fortunes; and the 1990's a time of careful restructuring and cautious preparation for a precarious future in a world threatened by religious fundamentalism, ethnic wars and ecological disasters. Although we need to be careful in making such generalizations, we can rightly speak of a certain 'spirit' operating within an age--and note that this 'spirit' has the uncanny knack of influencing the way we think about the world and reality.
It is helpful to read such contemporary human experiences according to three distinct models or paradigms. Each model represents a significant turning point or transition in modern history; and it provides us with a different understanding of the Christ-mystery. The first is the transcendental or idealist paradigm which highlights the importance of individual human experience in our knowledge and understanding of reality. It depicts an understanding of Christ that resonates with our deepest human longings. The second way of viewing reality--the practical or political model--is more sensitive to negativity, suffering and evil that operate within the world, society and human lives. Within this paradigm, we are presented with a confronting and liberating Christ. There is yet a third transition that can be called the global paradigm: it reflects on the world and human existence according to our need for a new type of consciousness that is genuinely 'world'-oriented. These 'different ways of reading the world' provide different starting-points, questions and issues that influence the kind of christological investigations we make and the sort of christological answers we receive.
Throughout the 1960's and 1970's transcendental and narrative christologies (first paradigm) challenged the way most Christians thought of Jesus Christ by insisting on his genuine humanity and his historical life as a first-century Palestinian Jew. These christologies coincided with an optimistic belief in human life and progress: with the aid of science and technology, it was thought, all or most of the world's problems (such as poverty and disease) would be solved in time. Even the 'problem' of unravelling the life-story of Jesus could be 'solved' by applying 'scientific' techniques to the Scriptures. In this context, Jesus' humanness was no longer something to be covered over, but a source of life and hope for Christians and all people of goodwill. The 'humanised' Jesus was a more 'accessible' Jesus who related to people's everyday concerns.
By the 1980's a new mode of thought (second paradigm) had begun to emerge in Jesus-studies. These newer histories and theologies of Jesus noted that all christologies reflect the historical, political and cultural biases of their authors. In particular, it was noted that, when Jesus is interpreted from the vantage point of the poor and oppressed, we see a more radical and subversive Jesus who is caught up in the politics of his time. Such political christologies insist there can be no pure Jesus-studies: the Christ-mystery is always understood according to the 'context' of enquiry. Moreover, every context reflects particular social evils and political distortions whether these be the inequities and dehumanizing patterns of wealthy, Western nations (the political Jesus), the poverty and corruption of Latin American and other third-word countries (Jesus Christ liberator), or the widespread experience of gender-division that oppresses women (advocate for women). These christologies understand their role in terms of challenging distorted social systems and duhumanizing attitudes in the name of the liberating Christ.
As we head towards the third millennium, there is increasing awareness that the claims of Christianity--such as the claim that Jesus is the 'universal saviour figure'--need to be read in terms of other religious traditions. What, for example, is the relationship between Jesus and Mohammad, or Jesus and the Buddha? Moreover, it needs to be asked to what extent traditional expressions of belief in the Christ-mystery have been responsible for Christian anti-semitism? In the light of such questions, there is an attempt to develop more global christologies (third paradigm) with the aid of cross-cultural and interreligious dialogue.
We now turn to a more detailed discussion of contemporary christologies according to these three paradigms or ways of reflecting on Jesus Christ through the lenses of human experience, political reality and the emerging global situation.
Jesus Christ
and human experience
This approach to christology
begins with the question: what does it mean to be human? In light
of this reflection, it then asks: how is it possible to account
for our faith in the historical figure, Jesus of Nazareth? It
is, if you like, the study of Jesus Christ through the study
of human experience--sometimes called 'christology through anthropology'
[ This
anthropological approach to christology is developed by Karl
Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith (New York: Seabury,
1978), esp. ch. 6; also see the essays expounding Rahner's christology
in Leo O'Donovan, ed., A World of Grace (New York: Seabury,
1980), chs. 7 & 8 ].
The fundamental question being addressed is whether or not it
is meaningful for human beings today to believe in the story
of Jesus that has been handed down to us in the Christian tradition.
In other words, is christology anything more than mythology?
Or is it, as Christian faith claims, the answer to our deepest
human longings for peace, justice and love. In more traditional
language: how does contemporary thinking understand Jesus as
Christ, Lord and Saviour?
As indicated, this approach begins with the question of what it means to be human. Many centuries ago, Aristotle defined the human as a 'rational animal'. Modern existentialist thought takes a different tack: to be human is to be involved in a dynamic process of living, growing, dying. We live in an evolving universe that is thrust towards an open future; humans are in integral part of this dynamic cosmos. More than this, humans represent the moment in which the cosmos attains self-consciousness. More than any other (known) creature, humans are this mysterious unity of matter and spirit enabling them to express the fundamental unity of the entire cosmos.
To admit that we live within the mystery of an evolving universe is also to admit that we live in relationship to the ultimate mystery--what most religious traditions call 'God'--who is the source and goal of all creation. To be genuinely human, then, is to be radically related to this divine mystery--even if many people today are reluctant to use the name 'God'. It is finally not a matter of rational thought or clear understanding or even the ability to name this God which accounts for our humanness. Whether we 'know' it or not, the divine mystery so pervades the cosmos and human experience that we 'live' within this mystery as fish live in the sea. Karl Rahner, who develops this anthropology, says that our small islands of knowledge are always grounded in the sea of infinite mystery. [ See Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith (New York: Seabury, 1978), ch. 2; and M. Buckley, Within the Holy Mystery in L. O'Donovan, ed., A World of Grace (New York: Seabury, 1980), ch. 3. ]
Once we situate ourselves within this dynamic or evolutionary understanding of the world and humanity, a number of other points follow. A major one is the realisation of human finitude. All human knowledge and experience is limited by time, place and culture. We can only hope to know and understand the world and ourselves according to our particular, historical situation. We might even say that, for us, humanness is much more a question than an answer. Nonetheless, we are called upon to live authentic human lives and make responsible human choices in the face of this unknown. In fact, to be human means to be involved in the process of becoming more human through the authentic use of human freedom--and despite the fact we often do not know where our decisions will lead us.
A further aspect that relates to modern experience is the tendency to reject the voices of tradition and authority unless they are also validated by one's 'own experience'. People are less inclined to keep on believing something simply because their parents or grandparents believed it. This becomes more understandable given the speed with which things are changing today. And as Australians, living in an increasingly pluralistic society, it would be naive to expect our children not to question the political, social, moral and religious values of their parents. If they accept the truth of these values, it will only be on account of their acceptance that these values are true and life-giving for them. Jesus Christ will be warmly embraced, outwardly rejected or indifferently ignored in accordance with how he relates to people's experience. He will not be simply accepted as the saviour-figure because of the power of tradition.
The cosmic Christ
and saviour-figure
Insofar as this analysis
of human experience is a true indication of being human in the
modern evolutionary world, we then move to the question of the
meaningfulness of a saviour-figure. After all, what is it that
human beings need saving from? In answer to this question,
we can then ask in what way Jesus Christ fulfills the criteria.
In earlier times, the answers seemed more simple: people felt
the need to be 'saved' from the devil and sin. It was understood
that this was why Jesus Christ came into the world. However,
this seems to us today, at best, a partial response to people's
existential concerns. It may well be argued that people need
to rekindle their sense of sin and guilt in order to appreciate
the saving role of Jesus Christ. Nonetheless, it may be more
helpful to admit that people need to be able to relate to Jesus
Christ in terms of their own experience of the world and life
today. This is the approach transcendental
christologies follow.
In the light of our modern cosmology and anthropology we will want to situate the saviour-figure in terms of an evolutionary understanding of the world in which the human being is called to authentic existence. The pioneering work of Teilhard de Chardin fits in here. He not only saw that the universe is a dynamic unity of matter and spirit; he also recognised that the evolutionary thrust of the universe from matter to spirit was due to the divine empowerment within creation. He further identifies that power with Jesus Christ who is the alpha and omega, the beginning and end, the origin and culmination, of all creation (see Colossians 1:15-16; Ephesians 1:9-11). Jesus Christ also represents the climax of divine creation and human history, the one in whom God's plan for the entire universe reaches its peak. Evolution, for Teilhard, is explicable only in terms of this dynamic activity of the cosmic Christ who is also the human-historical Jesus. [ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Christianity and Evolution (New York: Harcoourt & Brace, 1969); The Phenomenon of Man (London: William Collins, 1977); The Divine Milieu (London: Collins, 1960). See also, Denis Edwards, Jesus and the Cosmos (New York: Paulist Press, 1991); The God of Evolution (New York, Paulist Press, 1999). ]
In terms of human experience, Teilhard would suggest that the striving for world peace and human community are indications of the power of Christ operating within the created order. Christ 'saves' the cosmos from endless multiplicity and fragmentation which threaten the evolutionary impulse towards unity. At a human level, this means being 'saved' from the diabolical realities of sin and evil by the superior power of (divine) love. Whereas Teilhard was a scientist, and so wants to bridge the world of science with Christian faith, it is Karl Rahner who provides us with a more direct account of a christology based on contemporary views of the human person and human experience.
For Rahner, the human being's thrust towards the future, the inifinite, the divine mystery, is expressed in both general and specific terms. Generally, the human person lives in hope, acts with courage, dares to forgive and, above all, tries to love--all this despite the evident fact that despair, selfishness and all kinds of human guilt threaten to engulf our human lives. At a more specific level, Rahner asserts that human beings search in history for an answer to their quest for meaning and fulfillment. In other words, it is not adequate to simply hope that the universe is trustworthy or that our deepest human yearnings will be fulfilled. We seek confirmation of these realities in a saviour-figure who both shares our human experience (one like us) and yet whose human longings have already been achieved (the divine goal).
Rahner maintains that all authentic human life is lived with at least hopeful anticipation of this saviour-figure who assures us that our human longings for the divine mystery are not in vain. Moreover, the true saviour-figure will need to be one who lives life in full human freedom and yet in total surrender to the divine mystery. Both these dimensions--human freedom and surrender to God--are necessary since they are integral to our human identity and authenticity. It is also necessary that the historical life of the saviour-figure be given the divine seal of approval, that is, that the saviour be loved and accepted by God in a definitive way. The saviour-figure, of course, is perfectly embodied in Jesus of Nazareth who 'is one like us in all things but sin' while also being the specially annointed and chosen one of God or, indeed, God's own Son. In Christ Jesus, then, God both respects human freedom and responds to our human longing to be loved irrevocably by God.
This approach to christology through reflection on human experience in an evolutionary universe also situates the Christ-event as the high-point or climax of all creation and history. God does not act in the world in a way that violates the integral processes of the cosmos or the true freedom of human beings. To the contrary, the mystery of the Incarnation is nothing other than the confirmation that the unifying forces of the cosmos and the human yearnings for God are achievable through Christ because they have already occurred in Christ. Creation and salvation are not two separate and disconnected events in the history of the cosmos. Rather, they are part of the one movement of God's self-communication to the world which reaches its fulfillment and perfection in the divine mystery.
Jesus Christ
and political reality
Political christologies
also begin with reflection on human experience but, rather than
focus on the 'transcendental longings' of human beings, they
point to the dark realities of suffering and oppression that
inscribe our earthly existence. The real world in which humans
live, it is suggested, is a world marked by torture and death-camps,
ecological crises and starving peoples, the experience of the
holocaust and the threat of nuclear war, the exploitation of
women and the near-extermination of entire cultures, gross misuse
of political power and sheer capitalistic greed. These forces
of negativity and corruption--the forces of evil--impoverish
whole societies of human beings and threaten our very planet
with extinction.
Consequently, political christologies have no difficulty in admitting that the world stands in need of 'salvation'. Their question is not whether human beings are in search of a saviour-figure but, given our evident need to be saved and liberated, how does Jesus Christ fulfill this role? How does the life and ministry, death and resurrection, of Jesus of Nazareth enable us to transform this situation of 'death' into a situation of 'life'? And there is a sense of urgency in their questioning.
The approach could be called 'christology through sociology' because it reads human experience in terms of the social, economic and political realities which shape human lives. [ Two classic texts, both from a South American perspective, are: Leonardo Boff, Jesus Christ Liberator (Maryknoll NY: Orbis, 1978); Jon Sobrino, Christology at the Crossroads (Maryknoll NY: Orbis, 1978). ] It specifically rejects the evolutionary optimism of a Teilhard de Chardin or Karl Rahner. It points to the 'political' realities of twentieth century life in which there has been more human suffering and death than in the entire history of the world. It develops its christology in the light of the three great twentieth century crises of Marxism, Auschwitz and the Third World. Following Marx, what is important is not theory but praxis (critical reflective action); following Jesus Christ, what is important is not a theology of Christ that 'explains' the world, but practical Christian discipleship which 'changes' the world and 'liberates' human beings.
The political
Jesus
The first type of political
christology was worked out in the affluent cultures of wealthy
western nations which are heirs to Christian faith. [ For two examples of
notable European 'political theologians' see: J. B. Metz, Faith
in History and Society (New York: Seabury, 1979); Edward
Schillebeeckx, Jesus in our Western Culture: Myticism, Ethics,
Politics, (London: SCM, 1987). ] Consequently, it is a christology which could
well find a home in the Australian context. It sees its task
as challenging the bourgeois religion of middle-class
Christianity which is too often devoid of a sense of the radical,
social-justice demands of the Gospel. Recognising how Jesus'
own ministry was a political as well as a religious challenge
to the status quo of his day, these political theologians
ask if the churches have not lost sight of the intimate connection
between faith and politics which should be at the heart of Christian
life and mission. If anything, it is suggested, Christianity
has so readily identified with the capitalist society of money,
power and greed, that it has turned Jesus Christ into a respectable
supporter of white, European (and Australian) middle-class values.
Where is the dangerous Jesus who so fearlessly opposes those
who work against the kingdom-community of justice, love and peace?
In fact, all political christologies focus their reading of Jesus in his prophetic proclamation of the reign of God: 'The reign of God is at hand: repent and believe in the gospel' (Mark 1:15). We have seen earlier that this proclamation was inclusive of all, but especially of the 'little ones': the poor and the persecuted, those who suffer and mourn, the ones who work for justice, the merciful and the peace-makers (Matthew 5:3-10). Political christologies emphasize that these kingdom-values involve both personal and social conversion. They challenge the violence and selfishness that oppress human lives and they invite people to a new way of life together. The church too stands in need of ecclesial conversion: to return to the kingdom-values by confronting its own tendencies to opt for the comfortable 'bourgeois' life.
What is it about these bourgeois values that is so opposed to the kingdom values of Jesus and the gospels? According to German theologian Johann Metz, bourgeois culture is a culture of apathy and lost memory: people have lost the ability to feel sorrow and guilt; and they no longer have the capacity to grieve suffering and death. In the absence of these human and humane qualities, bourgeois culture is unable to express pathos, love and compassion. Caught in a time-warp with the foreboding sense of a 'faceless evolution', Metz thinks that bourgeois life has lost any real hope of changing things or making a different future in which the human being counts. Human life has become banal, predictable and boring. Having been bombarded with technology--and now totally dependant on it--, affluent cultures have lost the ability to be shocked or surprised (even by the images of devestation and death on our television screens).
For Metz, these bourgeois attitudes are not so much directly opposed to kingdom values as they are deaf to their life-giving power. Consequently, he seeks to confront bourgeois society with the dangerous and subversive stories of Jesus who challenged the society of his time with words and actions of crisis. Recalling a statement of Jesus in the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas--'He who is close to me is close to the fire'--Metz wants us to be shocked, surprised and confronted by the human figure of Jesus who boldly proclaimed the kingdom in the face of opposition and was then led to his death in a state of utter human depravity. Our own identification with the dangerous and suffering Jesus will hopefully shock us out of our complacency, enable us to feel empathy with the victims of history, and then empower us to be proclaimers of God's reign in our own lives, the church and society at large.
Political christology is, then, primarily a christology of discipleship. It calls for a deep, personal conversion to the kingdom values in a world where justice, love and peace are suffocated by the dominant forces of industrial capitalism. Seeking to unlock the hardened hearts of mainly western, middle-class Christians, it challenges them to true compassion and solidarity with the victims of history by entering into and imitating Jesus' own dangerous story. This is a story of hope for humanity insofar as the story of Jesus includes the mystery of the resurrection. However, as long as social justice and true humanity elude our world, the 'saving power' of Jesus will not be the transforming reality that Christianity proclaims it to be.
Jesus Christ
liberator
The need for human liberation
is most poignant in so-called third-world countries where poverty,
corruption and all forms of human injustice reign supreme. The
specific image of Jesus the liberator arose in small base-community
churches of Latin America in response to the extreme violence
(tyrannical governments, death squads, dire poverty and mass
starvation) which seemed to be the fruit of some four hundred
years of 'Christian colonization'. It began to be noted that
images of the kingly, imperial Christ were used to justify an
unjust social order in which the wealthy few used their power
to keep the natives and peasants in their situation of poverty
and unfreedom.
Just as 1968 was the year of peace marches and anti-war demonstrations in wealthy, capitalist 'northern nations' (notably Europe and North America--and also Australia), it was also a time of raised hopes and consciousness in the peoples of the poor, dependant 'nations of the south' (notably Latin America). 1968 was the year that Paulo Friere published his book Pedagogy of The Oppressed which provided a method for empowering the poor to take up their own struggles (he called this the 'conscientization of the poor') [ Paulo Friere, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Continuum, 1970). ] In the same year, the Catholic bishops of Latin America met in Medellin, Columbia, and produced a challenging document on the situation of poverty and injustice that was rife throughout the Continent. Specifically, the Medellin document recognised the intimate link between 'liberation' and 'redemption': they proclaimed that 'all liberation is an anticipation of the complete redemption brought by Christ'. The bishops also spoke of the priority or 'option for the poor' which marked Jesus' own earthly life and should therefore be central to Christian life and ministry.
Soon after Medellin, the Peruvian Jesuit, Gustavo Gutiérrez published his work entitled A Theology of Liberation. [ Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll NY: Orbis, 1973) ]. Since that time, there have been hundreds or perhaps thousands of works on 'liberation theology'. These have sprung up not only in Latin America but also in Africa, Asia and among indigenous and other impoverished peoples throughout the world. Liberation christologies reflect on Jesus Christ from the perspective of the suffering of particular oppressed groups. They begin by listening to the voices, the struggles and the outcries of the 'disfigured children of God'. These voices provoke a sense of 'religious outrage': if God is a God of total goodness and love, and if Jesus has come to 'save' us and 'redeem' the world, then all people have the responsibility to change the situation of oppression into a situation of liberation. To refuse to challenge the unjust system is tantamount to being complicit with evil.
Liberation and other political christologies are highly conscious of the social and political nature of human existence. Redemption and sin, grace and guilt, salvation and evil are embedded in the very fabric of human society. It is not only individual people who are good and just or sinful and inhuman; social systems (whether capitalist, socialist, democratic or monarchical) are also inherently moral or immoral, just or unjust, life-giving or death-dealing. Typically, social systems will exhibit a mixture of goodness and evil. Nonetheless, any social system which promotes violence or walks on the heads of people's dignity needs to be called 'inherently evil'. In order to understand this evil or 'social sin', it is important to uncover the root causes through social analysis. Why in some countries, for example, do 5% of the people control 90% of the wealth? Is this an economic or class based evil? If so, marxist socio-economic analysis may help. Why are indigenous people (such as Australian aboriginal people) so often dehumanized and made voiceless? Is this due to racism? If so, it needs to be named, confronted and changed.
However, it is not only society that stands in need of critique. The Christian tradition itself can be a cause of oppression. How often in Christian history has the suffering and death of Christ been used to keep people in their situation of powerlessness? How many sermons have promoted the idea that to be a 'good Christian' it is necessary to suffer quietly and passively as Christ did? How often has the image of the kingly Christ been used to justify the tyrannical misuse of power on the grounds that obedience to all civil and ecclesiastical authority (even if corrupt) is obedience to the will of God. Liberation christologies acknowledge that false images of Jesus Christ are part of the history of oppression that has been especially evident in the 'colonial era' when the Gospel of the Church and the Sword of the State were too often hand in hand.
In marked contrast to the passive Jesus and the imperial Christ is the image of Jesus Christ the liberator. Liberation christologies focus on the historical Jesus of the Gospels who was neither a passive victim nor a dominating Lord. The liberationist Jesus is depicted as challenging the unjust powers of his day, healing the sick and broken-hearted, forming community with the marginalized. He is involved in conflict, rejection and struggle in the name of the living God who alone is king. The 'option for the poor' is seen to be at the heart of Jesus' own ministry of proclaiming and enacting the reign of God. Among key gospel texts which are used to highlight Jesus' liberating ministry is his recitation from the scroll of Isaiah:
The suffering and death of Jesus are read as liberating acts of God through Jesus. Jesus does not walk blindly and passively to his death. Rather, his death comes about as the result of his active engagement with the forces of evil and injustice which pervaded the society of his time. Of course, Jesus was a victim to those powerful forces. Yet, even in the face of death, he retains his powers of compassion and love: 'Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing' (Luke 23: 34). Jesus nowhere evades his active mission of love and service--had he done so, he may well have evaded the tragic circumstances that led to his crucifixion and death. Consequently, from a liberation perspective,
Liberation christology strongly emphasizes the importance of praxis, that is, critical action on the basis of reflection and critical reflection on the basis of action. In other words, it demands getting one's hands dirty through solidarity with the victims of the world in their active opposition to injustice. It may well demand, as with Jesus and the Christian martyrs, that we put our very lives on the line. However, liberation theology is not a purely social action movement. This is where critical reflection is paramount. Such reflection must begin and end with Jesus Christ who alone is the liberating Word of God in our midst. It is this living, liberating Word that reunites us to the servant christology of the scriptures and provides us with a new image of God for our time: a God who is especially present in the poor and oppressed. Liberation christology tells us that we can meet this God only through our identification with Jesus in the poor.
Advocate for
women
In light of today's reflections
on the status of women in society and religion, Christian theology
is led to examin its own heritage and, as far as possible, to
investigate Jesus' own attitudes to women and gender equality.
These are crucial issues in view of the fact that, throughout
Christian history, the church has often portrayed women as of
less importance than men. Tertullian, for example, taught that
'the curse of God' was on women; Augustine claimed that 'only
males' were made in the 'complete image of God'; and Thomas Aquinas
held that 'woman is a misbegotten man'. [ Elizabeth Johnson, Consider Jesus:
Waves of Renewal in Christology (New York: Crossroad, 1990),
101. ] Much of
this thinking was based on a one-sided and ultimately false reading
of Original Sin which saw Eve as the seducer of a less culpable
Adam. This is ironic insofar as it portrays men as victims of
women's sexuality when it is patently obvious that, for the most
part, it is men who abuse, exploit, batter and rape women for
their own sexual gratification.
Feminist christologies follow a similar pattern to liberation christologies. First, they seek to understand and name the situation which oppresses women. They notice two significant factors. Most human societies are inherently patriarchal, that is, most positions of political power and social prestige are reserved for men; typically, women are at the bottom of the pile, subordinate to and dependant upon better-paid, better-fed and better-educated men. This social structure is supported by what is termed androcentrism (from the Greek 'andros' meaning adult male) where the 'norm' for 'humanness' is 'maleness'; it follows that women are less human than their more 'normal' counterparts. Taken together, patriarchal structures and androcentric thinking lead to what feminist theologians name 'the sin of sexism'. This leads them to critique the ways in which the Christian tradition has contributed to the subordination of women.
The second step involves the critique of sexist interpretations of Jesus Christ. Noting that the historical Jesus was a male human being, feminist theologians claim that Jesus' maleness has been used in such a way as to falsify both the reality of God and the reality of being human. Certainly, in Christian belief, Jesus reveals God to us in a special way; and, certainly, both Jewish and Christian scriptures speak of God in male terms such as king, male warrior, or Abba Father. However, only a fundamentalist reading of scripture could take these images or metaphors in such a literal way as to imagine God being male. God is evidently beyond gender.
Nonethless, it is important to recognise that the scriptures do speak of God in female form as mother, midwife, nurse, mother-hen brooding over her young, or Sophia (Wisdom). Similarly, Jesus often uses female images when speaking of the reign of God: it is women who knead the dough and go in search of the lost coin. The point here is not that God is literally female, but that these female images of God have been neglected in the Christian tradition. This is why many Christians still find it difficult to speak of God in anything but male terms. It may be said that Jesus himself uses the male term Abba and that we should do likewise. However, if we accept the whole of Jesus' teachings on the reality of God, we will notice that the characteristics of this God--compassion, love, intimacy, friendship, forgiveness--are probably much more 'feminine' than 'masculine'. As well, the scriptural image of God as (Holy) Spirit ('ruah')--hovering, creating and renewing the earth--especially lends itself to the feminine 'she' rather than the masculine 'he'.
The other part of this critique concerns the way in which the gender of Jesus has been falsely interpreted to indicate male superiority. It has been suggested, for example, that only men can truly imitate Jesus. It is not a long step from here to say that Jesus' saving power is only fully available to men. Evidently, the mystery of the Incarnation means that the Word became flesh in the human reality of Jesus who was Jewish, who spoke Aramaic, who was a carpenter, and who was male. These historical factors were not insignificant to the human Jesus: they defined his world. However, if the Incarnation has meaning for the world, and if christology has any meaning at all, the issue of Jesus' gender is no more significant than the issue of his nationality. Moreover, if women are genuinely human, and if the God of Jesus is the God of love and salvation, then Jesus' embodiment as a male is a matter of historical contingency. As well, if Jesus is to be experienced as the saviour of women and men today, he needs to be understood as one in whom femininity and masculinity are authentically integrated.
A feminist liberation christology will need to show that Jesus is such a person. This is the third and final step of the process. It shows that Jesus' programme of justice, peace and love is genuinely inclusive of all people. Despite the patriarchal structures which operated in the society of Jesus' time, the various stories reported to us in the Gospels show no androcentric attitudes in Jesus. In fact, Jesus is remembered and reported as treating women and men with equal respect and dignity. He even goes out of his way to stand up against oppressive laws and attitudes which denigrated and ridiculed women. Examples of this include: Jesus' defence of the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-11); his welcoming acceptance of the woman who visits the house of Simon the Pharisee (Luke 7:36-50); his challenge to the abusive divorce practices of the time which gave all the say to men and none to women (Mark 10:1-12; Matthew 5:28-32); and Jesus' attacks on those who oppressed widows (Mark 12:38ff).
Jesus shows no concern for following the social and religious taboos of his time when these interfered with his ministry of proclaming God's inclusive reign of forgiveness, love and compassion. This is evident in his healing ministry where he directly challenges various taboos regarding what is 'clean' and what is 'unclean'. For example, it was generally accepted that women's blood was 'unclean'. However, on one occasion, Jesus responds to the touch of a 'constantly unclean' woman (she had been haemoraging for twelve years) by demanding she come forth to praise her faith and place her as a model of human trust in God (Mark 5: 25-34). Jesus does not simply heal the physical malady of the woman. More poignantly, he returns to the woman the lost dignity that human prejudice had denied her. There are many other examples--touching a dead girl, mixing with female prostitutes, talking to foreign women, befriending women as his equals--where Jesus' words and actions confront the sexism of his day.
It is not only that Jesus 'treats' all people--women and men, adults and children, the sick and the healthy--with equal respect and dignity. He also 'empowers' them to take up their own authority as authentic persons. One of his more radical moves in this regard was the call of women to be disciples. Whereas the patriarchal system worked to keep women in a position of inferiority, to be mothers and home-makers, Jesus teaches that the mission of the kingdom takes precedence over social and family patterns. There are plenty of examples where women like Joanna, Mary Magdalene, Martha and Mary, and Jesus' own mother, Mary, are empowered by Jesus to take on discipleship-ministry. This pattern is highlighted in the stories of the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus where it is women rather than male disciples who are centre-stage. Feminist scholars also point to the vigorous ministry that women played in the early church as missionaries, teachers, healers, leaders of community-churches, and the like.
There is enough here to indicate that Jesus can be reclaimed today as 'advocate for women'. He does this through his proclamation and embodiment of the kingdom-community of justice, love and peace. In this community, no-one is to be excluded or considered inferior on account of race, social position, or gender. Where traditional attitudes, laws and taboos impede this call to rightful dignity and equality, they are to be challenged and discarded. Feminist readings of the scriptures show how patriarchal structures and androcentric attitudes begin to blunt the radical nature of Jesus' mission of universal inclusiveness. In this context, what is remarkable is the way in which the scriptures contain so many 'memories' of Jesus' advocacy for women. These memories confront all non-inclusive theologies which would deny women true social, political and religious equality.
Saviour of the
world
The 'global turn' in theology
is provoked by the overwhelming question of what it means to
call Christ the 'universal saviour-figure' in an age where genuine
tolerance and respect for all people, cultures and religions
is seen to be both a generally human and specifically Christian
virtue for our time. Various contemporary authors speak of a
breakthrough in human experience and consciousness that amounts
to the discovery or realisation that humans live in a single,
interrelated world. [ See, for example, Raimon Panikkar, The Cosmotheandric
Experience (Maryknoll NY: Orbis, 1993). ]
This new story of our human, global co-existence is only beginning to be written. For some, it will be a story of great beauty and promise as diverse cultures and religions begin to meet at new levels of depth and meaning. Others see the story in more pessimistic terms as they contemplate the profound inability of human beings to celebrate their ethnic, ideological and religious differences.
Quite evidently, Christian intolerance toward other religions has been an unfortunate aspect of Christian history. [ As one example of Christian intolerance towards Judaism, see Dan Cohn-Sherbok, The Crucified Jew: Twenty Centuries of Christian Anti-Semitism (London: HarperCollinsReligious, 1992). ] Moreover, such intolerance is still prevalent today in various parts of the globe. Theologians ponder the question of how belief in Jesus the Christ has contributed to this state of affairs. And they wonder how Christian belief can be reformulated in a way that is both faithful to belief in Christ as saviour and yet genuinely respectful of the freedom of other people to live according to their own cultural and religious traditions. After all, the scriptures themselves teach us that 'God wills all people to be saved' (1 Timothy 2:5). The Second Vatican Council applied this teaching to other religions by declaring that they often reflect the divine ray of truth and so can be authentic paths of salvation. [ Declaration on the Relations of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, article 2. ]
However, we are still left with the christological question of how Jesus Christ is to be understood as saviour of the world. [ A good overview of different theoretical positions on this question is Paul Knitter, No Other Name? A Critical Survey of Christian Attitudes toward the World Religions (Maryknoll NY: Orbis, 1985). ] The traditional approach to this question can be called exclusivism because it generally 'excludes' the reality of the divine presence outside of Christian baptism and the explicit confession in Jesus as Christ, Lord and Saviour. It follows that other religions are false and other saviour-figures are, at best, merely models of how to live a reasonable human life. Christianity, it was maintained, is the 'supernatural' religion whereas other religions are purely 'natural'. This approach was often based on an over-literal reading of the non-scriptural text which stated: 'Outside the church there is no salvation'. Nonetheless, it must be stated that most theologians operating within this model left room for the 'mystery of God's love' which is available, albeit in exceptional circumstances, to 'pagans and the unbaptised'.
Well before the Second Vatican Council, most Catholic theologians were already beginning to adopt a more optimistic and inclusive understanding of Christ's role in salvation. The best-known expression of this inclusivism is Karl Rahner's 'anonymous Christianity' [See Karl Rahner, The One Christ and the Universality of Salvation, Theological Investigations 16 (New York: Seabury, 1979), 199-224. ] His position flows from his notion of the cosmic Christ which we viewed earlier. Fundamentally, there is one God, one universe and one saving mystery, Jesus Christ, who mediates God's love and salvation to the world. Christians are those who know Jesus Christ in an explicit way. However, the saving mystery of Christ is not reserved for the church and its members. It is present throughout the universe or cosmos and manifests itself in the lives, cultures and religions of people everywhere. In fact, for Hindus or Buddhists, for example, the saving reality of Christ's presence in their religions means that they achieve salvation precisely by being good Hindus or good Buddhists. Here, they come to 'know' Christ in an implicit rather than an explicit way.
Another example of the inclusivist approach is that of Catholic priest and interreligious scholar, Raimon Panikkar, who once made the startling comment that he went to India a Christian, found himself a Hindu, and became a Buddhist--all without ceasing to be a Christian! [ Raimon Panikkar's most significant work outlining an inclusivist approach is The Unknown Christ of Hinduism (rev. ed., Maryknoll NY: Orbis, 1981). See also, The Jordan, the Tiber, the Ganges: Three Kairological Moments of Christic Self-Conscciousness in his A Dwelling Place for Wisdom (Louisville Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993) 109-159. ] Panikkar had the advantage of being born of European-Christian and Asian-Hindu parents. He proposes the interesting idea that Jesus' identity as Christ and Lord should not preclude other possible ways of naming 'the saving Supername'.
In other words, he is suggesting that the Word of God is capable of more than one Incarnation. This allows for the possibility of the incarnate Word being present in the saviour-figures of other religions. Panikkar likens the world's religions to the various colours of the rainbow: each reflects a different aspect of the one divine saving mystery that Christians call the Christ and rightly identify with Jesus of Nazareth. However, Christ cannot be limited to any one religion or even to Jesus of Nazareth since 'every being is a christophany, a showing forth of Christ'.
Some scholars today suggest we need to move beyond both the exclusive and inclusive approaches. For them, the whole attempt to ascribe to Jesus Christ a universal saving role has resulted in an attitude of Christian superiority that has been historically disastrous for people of other traditions. Although this position is sometimes called relativism, it does not say that any religion is necessarily as good as another, or that all religions are equal, or that all saving figures perform the same role. It still affirms that faith in Jesus Christ is necessary for Christian salvation. However, it does not want to impose Christ on other peoples or to suggest that the truth of their religions is to be measured against Christianity. After all, it was this kind of thinking that led Christians to develop such negative attitudes towards the Jewish people 'for turning their backs on Christ'. The solution that is advocated is to say that Jesus Christ is a universally relevant historical-figure (in much the same way as Moses or Mohammad) but an ultimately specific saviour-figure.
None of these approaches is without difficulties. Exclusivism can and should be discarded as being against the central Gospel teaching of God's universal saving presence. Inclusivism is a better option though it is problematic in the way it imposes Christian understanding on other people's experiences. Others critique inclusive approaches on the grounds that they do not adequately acknowledge the profound unity between the Christ-mystery and the historical Jesus of Nazareth. Likewise, relativism has the significant difficulty of showing itself compatible with the fullness of Christian revelation. Perhaps the major difficulty is the Western-Christian tendency to want a completely rational solution to what is, after all, the profound mystery of creation. Jesus himself did not come to give Christians a kind of secret knowledge of the universe. Rather, he entered into the reality of people's lives and challenged them to the new community of justice, love and peace in the name of the living God. Today, we stand at a point of human history where a new global community needs to be founded on the basis of interreligious and cross-cultural dialogue.
There is a story told in Mark's Gospel (7:24-30) where Jesus is confronted by a foreigner, a Syro-Phoenician woman. Jesus' reaction indicates his initial discomfort with her: 'It isn't right to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs'. However, the woman is persistent and retorts: 'Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's left-overs'. By now, Jesus' interest is captured to the point that his entire attitude changes. He commends the woman for her insight, heals her daughter and, in Matthew's version, praises her for such great faith (15:28). This story is sometimes used in feminist christologies to show how Jesus came to a new awareness of the importance of women in the kingdom-community. It may also be read as a moment in Jesus' ministry where he comes to a new consciousness of the importance of the 'foreigner'. His dialogue with this foreign woman changes the way he thinks and acts. Christianity stands in a similar position with regard to the 'foreign' religions. It is still the moment of discomfort. However, like Jesus, Christians need to enter into the dialogue, to be open to the challenge it brings, and be prepared to think and act differently as a result of the encounter.
In acknowledging Jesus as the Saviour of the world, Christians need to hold in tension two distinct principles: Jesus is Christ, Lord and Saviour, the one who mediates the God of all love and goodness to the world; other people, cultures and religions experience God and 'salvation' by other names (or by no name) and with different understandings. Our mission as Christians is wrongly understood if it amounts to convincing the other person to our way of seeing the world. Our mission is certainly to testify to the reality that our experience of grace and salvation, truth and goodness, forgiveness and love, comes to us through the one whom we name the Christ and who is identified with Jesus of Nazareth. However, as Karl Rahner once said, proclaiming Christ is not the same thing as informing people that the continent of Australia exists! It is not a matter of intellectual knowledge, but of the knowledge of the heart. Heart-knowledge cannot be imposed: it must be shared; it must be two-way. Christian mission is first and foremost a call to human authentici
There have been many figures throughout human history who have exerted a profound influence on the world. No single figure has exerted more influence than the first century prophet from Nazareth called Jesus the Messiah, the Annointed One, the Christ. Even our calendar dating system (e.g. 2000 "Common Era") is based on Jesus' supposed birthdate at Bethlehem in Judea. Our task is to seek to unravel something of the mystery of this person in his own time and context and then to investigate the various ways in which Jesus has been understood from New Testament times until our own day.
To speak of the mystery of Jesus Christ is to acknowledge, first of all, that human life itself is mystery. Human beings are not just minds and bodies; they are also spirit. God is the supreme Mystery and, as St. Paul remarks, it is only 'in God that we move and live and have our being'. Mystery, then, invades every dimension of our lives including our knowledge of ourselves and our world. Mystery is at the heart of our relationships with others. If we ever get to the point where we say of someone that 'there is no mystery there', we can be sure that we are failing to appreciate the depth, the beauty, the pain, the reality of who that person is. We are effectively saying that 'God is not there'. This is why the more we come to know and appreciate another person, the more we become aware of the depth of mystery and the reality of God in that person.
The mystery of the person of Jesus is even more profound on account of the kinds of human faith-responses that he inspired in the disciples of his own day and in Christian believers throughout the centuries. Of course, people touched by the Jesus-story--then as now--respond in different ways and at different levels. However, it remains true that the story of Jesus continues to capture the imagination of people, to inspire new vision and hope. These people feel that Jesus somehow enables them to be more authentically human and to live their lives with greater openness to the divine mystery.
How is it, then, that this first century Jew from Palestine came to exert such influence on human beings and world history? Evidently, there is no simple answer to this question. In fact, the best answers are not expressed in words, but in the lives and deeds, the witness and testimony, of Jesus' followers. In other words, it is only by risking our own lives and entering into the mystery of the Jesus-story that we can begin to understand something of the profound meaning of his life, death and resurrection for us and our world.
The continuation of the Jesus-story throughout human history has been expressed in many ways: some have retreated to the desert, or at least to a monastery, to contemplate the mystery of Christ in solitude and prayer; others have chosen to live their Christianity in the market-place, inspired by Jesus' who heals the sick, defends the poor and upholds the rights of people against all forms of injustice. In these multiple testimonies to the power of Jesus Christ at work in the world, we can discern different ways of telling, embracing and interpreting the Jesus story.
From very early times in Christian history, it became evident that there are essentially two distinct approaches to the mystery and reality of Jesus Christ. One is called a christology 'from below' because the emphasis is on the events in the historical life of Jesus: the one who came among us as a great prophet to announce the kingdom of God and who, despite his untimely death, has been raised on high by God. The other approach is called a christology 'from above' because it begins by affirming the divine origins of Jesus who is 'God made man'.
These two approaches--sometimes called 'low ascending' and 'high descending' christologies--are meant to be complementary. However, throughout the centuries, it has been the 'high descending' christology that has held the most sway. More recently, the 'low ascending' christology has had a return to favour. Just as we can speak of trends in clothes or music, we might also speak of christological trends. The important thing is to realise that the mystery of Jesus Christ surpasses all our attempts to speak and understand. Moreover, it is only by entering the story in word and deed, that is by becoming followers of Jesus, that we can hope to understand who he is and what he means for us today.
This does not mean that the Gospels are unhistorical. They tell us much about the Jesus of history and the events of his historical life. The Gospels are based on eye-witness accounts which, however, are first of all told in stories before they are committed to writing. In fact, it is some thirty to sixty years after Jesus' death that the Gospels are written in their final form. This means that we can identify three different layers of tradition underlying the Gospel stories: the original words and deeds of Jesus; the oral proclamation of the apostles; and the written words of the Gospel-writers. Consequently, we can say that the Gospels are a complex set of documents that combine history and theology, facts and faith, events and interpretation. Each of the Gospels does this in a unique way (in much the same way an artist depicts a scene according to his or her own 'way of seeing things').
If the Gospels are works of art rather than straight histories, this is not to reduce their truth-claims but to enhance them. Each of the Gospels is seeking to answer the same fundamental question that Jesus put to Simon Peter: 'Who do you say that I am?' Yet, each evangelist (Gospel-writer) is struck by a different aspect of the mystery of the person of Jesus. This means that the four Gospels present us with different portraits of the same Jesus.
The Gospels of Mark and Matthew are especially concerned to situate Jesus within the framework of Jewish faith and life. For Mark, Jesus is the suffering Messiah; for Matthew, he is the new Moses and teacher of the new law. In the Gospels of Luke and John, Jesus is seen as the Saviour of all people within and beyond the world of Israel. The Lukan Jesus is identified as the one in whom the Holy Spirit is specially present; the Johannine Jesus is the Word of God made flesh. These represent different approaches to the one mystery of Jesus the Christ:
Differing in culture, geography, time and emphasis, these various writers make clear that from the beginning there has been more than one christology in the Christian community. All confessing the same faith, they articulate this in a pluralism of ways. Taken together, their writings form the Christian Sciptures, foundational to doing christology now since they carry the remembrance and witness of the inspired early communities. [ Elizabeth Johnson, Consider Jesus: Waves of Renewal in Christology (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 6f. ]
To stand within this 'living Jesus tradition' means that we must attempt to reinterpret his meaning for us today. Our interpretation must be both faithful to the Gospels and the ongoing tradition of faith while also being creative in the way that we re-express our Christian faith today. It is, if you like, up to us to keep the Jesus-story alive through faithful yet enterprising discipleship and interpretation. It is not adequate to merely repeat the past--as if the tradition was dead--, but we must also reinterpret the mystery of Christ from within the faith-tradition that he has inspired. This is what it means to be part of a living tradition or an ongoing community of believers.
We face the mystery of Jesus Christ with our contemporary twenty-first century eyes. Accordingly, we will develop our christologies with reference to the issues and questions that are part of our world and experience. We could not do otherwise. Consequently, what we will be exploring in the following pages can be described very much in terms of a dialogue between our contemporary world-situation and the Jesus-movement as it began some two thousand years ago. We are exploring this reality because we believe that Jesus, a first-century Palestinian Jew, somehow holds the key to the meaning and significance of our lives and the world in which we live.
Jesus was a Palestinian Jew. He would have grown up with stories of conquest and oppression. These stories recounted the many waves of foreign invasion that sought to subjugate the Jewish people. The Roman occupation of Israel (63 BCE.) was the last in a long line of invasions beginning with the Babylonians (539 BCE), then the Persians and the Greeks. Jewish identity also rested on stories of the Patriarchs--Abraham, Isaac and Jacob--as well as the founding story of the Moses-led liberation from the Egyptians at the Exodus. There were yet other stories that recounted successful self-rule under the Hebrew kings Saul, David and Solomon. However, history records that the Jewish people were more often the victims than the victors in their fight for national sovereignty.
Hebrew identity was maintained--as it is with most oppressed peoples--through a deep spiritual conviction. This conviction was expressed in terms of a Covenant theology: the belief that Yahweh had chosen them to play a unique role in the history of the world. In particular, the Jewish people had come to expect a Messiah who, they believed, would enable them to fulfill this divine mission. There were differing understandings of the mission and role of the Messiah ranging from the establishment of a Jewish political kingdom here on earth to the eschatological notion of a heavenly kingdom at the end of the world (which many Jewish people considered to be immanent). It goes without saying that religion and politics were deeply intertwined in Hebrew faith and self-understanding.
By the time of Jesus' birth, the Romans had established a two-tiered system of government consisting of Roman overseers and Jewish leaders who exercised control in the name of Rome. This was the system of power in which the family of Herod the Great grew to prominence. Although half-Jews, the Herodian family was detested by the Jewish people for its tyrannical rule and also because of its key role in selling out the Jewish heritage to a foreign power. One of Herod's sons, Archelaus, was so brutal in his exercise of power in Jerusalem, that Rome replaced him with one of its own governors, Pontius Pilate, who was to play a significant role in the crucifixion of Jesus. Another of the sons, Herod Antipas, was responsible for the beheading of John the Baptist. It was the same Antipas who is accredited with the mocking of Jesus at his pre-crucifixion trial.
Education was a priority for Jewish people. Jesus would have learnt the Bible at the village school (until the age of twelve) and at the local synagogue. This accounts for Jesus' knowledge of Hebrew (the language of the Bible) and Aramaic (the language in which religious discussion was held). It was also the custom of the time for young adults to attach themselves to a local teacher or sage. Although we know little of Jesus' young adult life, we do know that he eventually chose to be a disciple of John the Baptist. Certainly, by the time of his 'public ministry', Jesus was well versed in the Scriptures and the Jewish tradition. This suggests that he spent many years learning and discussing his Jewish faith and heritage.
The Zealot movement took the revolutionary option. It advocated outward violence, even armed rebellion, to rid Israel of Roman oppression. Nothing else, they figured, would bring final liberation to the Jewish people. Depending on the point of view, Zealots were looked upon as freedom-fighters or terrorists. One thinks of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka or activities of the Irish Republican Army during the 'troubles' in Northern Ireland. Certainly Jesus had zealots among his followers, for example 'Simon the Zealot'. Moreover, Jesus came into conflict with both the Jewish temple and the Roman state. Finally, he was executed as a zealot revolutionary. However, few would argue that Jesus was a violent revolutionary. Like other non-violent figures in history, such as Mahatma Gandhi, Jesus posed a more radical threat to the established order than any armed person might do.
The Sadduccees were the great pragmatists of the day. As wealthy lay-nobles, priests and aristocrats, they sought to conserve their wealth and power through comprosmise with Rome. Politically speaking, this was the most realistic option. Most of the members of the Sanhedrin were from the Sadduccee group. In many ways, the Sadduccees could be described as the least religious group as is evidenced by their non-belief in the resurrection from the dead. However, it would be wrong to see them as agnostics or atheists as some have argued. They were committed to the Jewish faith on the basis of the earlier books of the bible. Moreover, as the people at the top of the pecking order in the Jewish society of their time, they were much more concerned with present-day affairs than speculation on the life-to-come. In the Gospels, it is evidently the Sadduccees who are the main opponents of Jesus at the time of his trial and death. They rightly saw that Jesus' radical brand of religion threatened their power and status.
The Pharisees were in many ways the idealists of Jewish society. Most of the Scribes (the 'theologians' of the day) were Pharisees. In general, despite their 'bad press' in the Gospels, the Pharisees sought to live a life of spiritual purity by a meticulous following of the torah (Jewish law). They did not believe in compromise with the Romans (as did the Sadduccees) nor in revolutionary activity (as did the Zealots). No doubt their emphasis on the law could result in legalism which may, in turn, become a pretext for hypocrisy. Nonetheless, many Pharisees were highly committed and deeply spiritual people. They believed in the resurrection of the dead. From their perspective, Jesus seemed to relativize the law which explains their anger towards him.
Finally, there were the Essenes who solved the problem of Jewish identity in a Roman-occupied Israel by withdrawing to a monastic-like setting. They were, if you like, the hippies of the day insofar as they completely opted out of mainstream Jewish society. The most notable group in Jesus' time was the Qumran community who lived an ascetic life and were waiting for God's apocalyptic intervention in human history. It is unlikely that Jesus had any contact with this particular group. Still, he was introduced to the ascetical option through his contact with the disciples of John the Baptist who represented a quasi-Essenic withdrawal from maintstream society. Jesus' public ministry demonstrates his decision to engage directly with the wider members of his society.
Consequently, while Jesus had dealings with the various socio-political groups and religious ideologies of his his time, he took his own unique life-option. It was a position that had certain parallels with the likes of his mentor, John the Baptist, though there are significant differences in their teachings and ministry. Some scholars compare Jesus to a near-contemporary of his, a teacher named Hillel. Both Jesus and Hillel had profound respect for the Jewish torah, but they were also renowned for preaching compassion, forgiveness and love. Their ministries were profoundly people-oriented. However, Jesus was more than a teacher. He was also experienced as prophet, miracle-worker, healer, defender of the poor and oppressed. Nonetheless, Jesus' distinctiveness needs to be appreciated in the context of his Jewish life and times. This was a context in which religion and politics were intertwined in a much more complex way than we think of them today.
This historical approach does not bypass Christian faith; nor is it solely dependant on faith. In this sense, it is meaningful to make a distinction between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith. We are speaking about the same Jesus, but we do not assume that the Jesus who is portrayed in the gospels as Lord and Saviour was experienced precisely this way by his disciples during their time with him in Palestine. The developed New Testament christologies are post-resurrection accounts which witness to post-resurrection belief in Jesus as the Christ, the Annointed One of God.
Literalist or fundamentalist readings fail to take into account the ways in which resurrection-belief transformed the disciples' understanding of who Jesus was. They assume, for example, that throughout his earthly existence, Jesus was always fully aware of his own divine status and, therefore, knew everything there was to know including the future events of his own earthly life and death. Such a fundamentalist reading of the Scriptures denies Jesus' full humanity; it also fails to appreciate that the gospels are complex faith-documents rather than simple biographies or straightforward histories.
On the other extreme are the rationalists who assume there is a total rupture between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith. For them, Jesus of history is depicted as an ethical teacher, a moral reformer or even as a deluded fanatic who mistakenly preached that the world was coming to an end. In one rationalist account, the whole post-Easter Christ tradition is purported to have been made up by the apostles who were able to get away with the resurrection story by stealing Jesus' body. In another account, Jesus survived the crucifixion and married Mary Magdalene with whom he lived many years in Rome prior to dying a natural death. These approaches are not able to account for the transformation in the lives of Jesus' disciples nor in the fact that these first believers, who had known Jesus during his earthly life, now acclaimed this same Jesus to be Christ, Lord and Saviour.
Our approach is to adopt the centrist position which recognizes both continuity and development in the gospel accounts of Jesus of Nazareth. This is a matter of affirming that the gospels are based on real memories of what Jesus said and did. Accordingly, the stylized gospel accounts are grounded in the historical events of Jesus' earthly life now seen through the eyes of resurrection-faith. Without this continuity between faith and history, Christianity would not be based on historical reality but in a groundless myth.
The historical reality is that the person of Jesus impacted so profoundly on his followers that the encounter itself became integral to the interpretation of his identity. This is not dissimilar to our knowledge of living persons: we come to know others in depth to the extent that we encounter them in a living relationship. It becomes important, therefore, to keep the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith together as the full expression of the saving encounter with the mystery of Jesus' unique personhood. One writer expressses it this way:
'Jesus Christ' refers to an interpersonal event initiated by Jesus of Nazareth and received by the people he encountered. In relationship to Jesus people contacted the transformative power of divine reality. One response to this mediated encounter with God was to call Jesus the Christ, the Anointed One. It is interesting to note that Jesus did not call himself the Christ. Although Jesus had a definite consciousness of himself and his mission, it is difficult to tell if he ever used any titles for himself. But where he was reluctant, others were eager. It was the people who were saved through Jesus who bestowed the titles. 'Jesus Christ' designated a relational flow between Jesus and his followers. It is a Christian code, a compressed way of talking about an experience which the Gospel of John suggests could not be compressed into all the books ever written. [ John Shea, An Experience Named Spirit (Chicago: Thomas More Press, 1983) ]In this way, faith and history coalesce. Consequently, we need to approach the Scriptures with both the eyes of faith and the tools of historical research if we are to appreciate with any depth the mystery of the personhood of Jesus Christ.
Jesus teaches a radical form of Judaism, but he does not see himself as starting a new religion. It is also important to recognize that Jesus was neither a professional teacher nor an ordained scribe. Like them, he does teach in the synagogues; unlike them, he also teaches by the lakeside and in the open fields. Especially distinctive is the way that Jesus directs his teachings to all--including women, children, sinners, the sick--and not just to the educated class or to a particular religious group. His message is not secretive or esoteric but is directed towards anybody 'who has ears to hear'. Moreover, Jesus differs from conventional teachers or rabbis by choosing his own disciples and drawing them into a relationship of friendship and mutuality.
In many ways, Jesus combines the offices of teacher and prophet. Prophets tend to arise in situations of cultural or religious crisis; they appeal first and foremost to alienated groups within a society; they are deemed to possess special gifts of insight into the nature of the present reality; and they are unusually gifted with rhetorical powers of speech. The ethical prophet is also noted for critiquing the unjust sufferings of marginal groups and for playing a significant role in redefining the tradition. Evidently, Jesus fulfills each of these criteria in his teaching ministry.
Nonetheless, there is a uniqueness to Jesus' ministry which defies all attempts to define him according to any particular set of categories. There is this unmistakable 'otherness' about him in his manner of proclaiming the reign of God, his miracle-performances, his addressing Yahweh as 'Abba-Father', his freedom in ministering to social outcasts, and his consistent claim to forgive sins. In all these actions, Jesus emerges as one who speaks and acts with great personal authority, an authority that seems to surpass the traditional role of the ethical Israelite prophet. Whereas these other prophets take upon themselves the task of speaking in God's name ('Thus the Lord says'), Jesus is recorded as speaking on his own authority ('I say to you').
Something of the uniqueness of Jesus' teaching and prophetic ministry is captured in the following quotation:
Jesus spoke with an immediacy and directness that seemed to come from the depths of the divine Mystery, and not merely from the expert interpreters of the time. He could speak as a Pharisee, as an apocalyptic prophet, or as a wandering charismatic story teller. At times he sounds like the Socratic teacher, challenging his students to ask new questions and to think anew. At other times he seems to be the wandering Greek Cynic preacher, suffering for his teachings and standing up against the corrupt authorities of his time. Many parallels can be drawn, but, in fact, Jesus of Nazareth stands alone as a unique religious teacher who was beyond comparison. [ Brennan Hill, Jesus the Christ: Contemporary Perspectives (Mystic CT: Twenty-third Publications), 62. ]We can glean much about Jesus the religious teacher and ethical prophet by focussing on central aspects of his ministry. First and foremost among these is his teaching on God's kingdom or reign.
It is in this context of Jesus' religious experience--his 'Abba-experience' and his sense of being chosen by God for a special mission to the world--that Jesus embodies and proclaims a new message for all people. It is a message of justice, love and peace which is, in Jesus' own language, expressed in the metaphor of God's kingdom or reign.
We have already stated that Jesus' religious experience of a personal and loving God needs to be understood in the context of his Jewish faith. It is equally true that his experience and understanding of the kingdom of God draws from the best insights of the Jewish tradition which understood God as king (Isaiah 52:17). However, by the time of Jesus, the understanding of kingdom had been largely distorted through people's experiences of various forms of tyranny and misuse of power. Jesus brings a fresh approach to the notion of kingdom by linking it to his own experience of a deeply loving and caring God whose only concern is to liberate people from the forces of evil and to empower them with a new life-vision.
In contrast to the more popular interpretations of his day, Jesus does not identify the coming of the kingdom with apocalyptic destruction, scribal legalism, secterian withdrawal from society, nor revolutionary uprising. Rather, through his words and actions, Jesus preaches a message of God's coming reign which is to be marked by personal, social and even cosmic transformation. However, for Jesus, the kingdom is not just a future reality. It is also 'at hand' in the here-and-now because God's compassion and mercy are available to all people at all times. This is the message in many of Jesus' parables and is proclaimed in his radical sayings and healing ministry. This coming/already-present reign of God is especially symbolized in the table-fellowship that Jesus establishes with all types of people including the marginalized and outcasts of society.
Jesus' preaching the reign of God is also linked to his call to conversion and the invitation to experience the wonderful closeness of God. In this way, the reign of God in Jesus' ministry emanates from his own religious experience. He emphasises that it is only God's reign or God's doing that is able to overturn evil and negativity in human life and history. Yet he also stresses that human beings must respond to God's invitation and so be converted to a new way of living if the reign of God is to become real. Moreover, Jesus directly challenges social and religious attitudes that act to keep the marginalized in their places of oppression. His actions in the temple, his friendships with women, and his advocacy for the poor, make it clear that his programme included a deep and fearless challenging of the prejudices and injustices of his day.
There is no single meaning that we can equate with this notion of God's reign as it occurs in the ministry of Jesus. It stems from the Jewish notion that God (Yahweh) is Lord and King: all creation is subject to its Creator (creation theology); and God's kingship is evident in the life-events of Israel's history (salvation theology). This provided Israel with a sense of expectation and hope that, just as God's reign manifested itself in past events such as in the Exodus experience, so it would be manifested in the future. Jesus radicalizes this message of the kingdom of God by indicating that its future fulfillment is already happening now (Lk.11:20) and is, in some way, associated with his own ministry and person (Mt.11:2ff.).
Consequently, the reign of God is not restricted to individual experience. It overflows into social and political action--but only, and always, on the understanding that God alone can enable the kingdom to happen. The kingdom of God is God's doing and God's gift. This is why Jesus not only ministers in the name of the kingdom; he also prays for it: "may your kingdom come!" The reign of God is the central focus and controlling horizon of Jesus' entire life and mission. In personal terms, it is a call to a complete metanoia or change-of-heart. In social terms it calls for the establishment of an alternative community based on the values of the Sermon on the Mount. In cosmic terms, it recognizes that God will bring the entire world and all creation to fulfillment. The reign of God is a mystical or religious category with profound political and cosmic overtones.
Take, for example, the parables of the Pharisee and the Publican (Lk.18:9-14) and the Good Samaritan (Lk.10:29-37). Good Jewish people in Jesus' day had fairly clear ideas about prayer and virtue: the prayer of good-living people (pharisees) would be heard by God, whereas the prayer of sinners (publicans) could not be successful; certain types of people (priests and levites) were good and virtuous, whereas low-class foreigners (Samaritans) were not capable of virtue. What we find, however, is that Jesus reverses the plots: it is the sinner's prayer that is heard by God; it is the foreigner who acts with virtue. More shocking still are the imputations that the prayer of the religious pharisee is unsuccessful and the actions of the holy priest and levite are sinful. Evidently, the initial hearers of these parables are led to a point of decision with regard to their own value-systems, religious judgments and moral actions.
We can recognize in these parables a three-stage pattern of advent (what people expect), reversal of expectations (what Jesus says) and the call to new vision and action (how people must change). This same pattern applies to the reception of Jesus himself in his mode of relating with women, the poor, foreigners and sinners. 1) Advent: good Jewish people associated with other virtuous people. 2) Reversal: Jesus associates and shares table-fellowship with the wrong mob. 3) New Vision/Action: my presumed religious virtues may be human prejudices. At the very least, one is forced to make a decision with regard to Jesus and oneself. In this sense, we can say that Jesus is himself a parabler: he proclaims the reign of God through words and deeds which shatter people's accepted world making them vulnerable to a new understanding of what it means to be human and a new experience of God.
This new and urgent vision of the kingdom, powerfully summed up in the Sermon on the Mount, is primarily a call to personal and social transformation in the name of the reigning God. The social dimension is evident in the parables of the Talents and the Final Judgment (Mt.25:14ff.). It is also at the heart of Jesus' own liberating praxis which is a further manifestation or symbol of the reign of God--a reign of justice, peace, forgiveness and love.
The intimate connection between present liberation and future salvation is also conveyed in the parables of the Mustard Seed (Mk.4:30) and the Leaven and the Dough (Mt.13:33). The God of Israel in Jesus' parables is not a God of the status quo or the unknown future, but a God who induces change in the here-and-now.
It is also helpful to read the radical sayings of Jesus as small but poignant parables of the kingdom. As reported in the Gospels, Jesus makes the following kinds of seemingly unreasonable demands on his followers:
Such statements as these are meant to shock or jolt the hearer, to bring him or her to a deep form of self-questioning. Evidently, the reign of God is closely allied to the response of the hearer who may find all this too much and, like in the parable of the rich young man, walk sadly away. However, if one truly receives the message, one must change. To truly listen to Jesus' radical sayings is to already experience something of God's kingship in the world of the here-and-now.Leave the dead to bury their own dead (Lk.9:60)
If anyone strikes you on the right cheek . . . (Mt.5:39)
Whoever tries to save his life will lose it (Mk.8:35)
It is easier for a camel to pass through an eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven (Mk.10:23)
The first will be last; and the last will be first (Mk.10:31)
The things that come out of a person are what defile (Mk.7:15)
The kingdom of God must be received like a little child (Mk.10:15)
In these radical sayings of Jesus, the three-fold pattern of advent, shock, new vision/praxis defies a merely rational or logical explanation. It is much more like the raw experience we have when somebody we love challenges our attitudes and behaviour. Initially we feel hurt and betrayed; we had not expected this to come from you of all people! Our life is thrown into turmoil. Then, we may just come to see that what the person has said to us and about us is true. We see that we need to change our ways, alter our very being, in order to be true to ourselves. To take another example on a social level, Australians are beginning to see and understand that, despite often best intentions, 'white' Australia has exhibited racist attitudes, or sexist ones, that need to be overturned. This is a hard truth to confront. Yet, only when that truth is most deeply acknowledge, can there be forgiveness, growth and reconciliation.
In like manner, the parables and radical sayings of Jesus draw his hearers to a moment of crisis and decision regarding their attitudes and behaviours. They are also drawn to examine their assumptions about God, the kingdom and Jesus himself. Either Jesus will be dismissed as another religious crackpot or everything changes!
The miracles are post-resurrection accounts. That is, they have become somewhat stylized in their reporting. Again, we need to recall that the Gospels are first and foremost faith-accounts rather than straight histories. Moreover, there is evidence to suggest that some of the more far-fetched nature miracles have been borrowed from other traditions and attributed to Jesus as a sign of belief in his messiahship. However, the bulk of the miracles reported in the Gospels need to be seen as historically based: they are part of the earliest strata of the Jesus-tradition; they are certainly congruous with Jesus' overall mission of proclaiming God's reign in the world; and there is no evidence to suggest that the people of Jesus' time disputed the fact of such miracles (even if they disputed their interpretation).
It is helpful to compare the reports of Jesus' miracles with the reports of the magicians of his day. By contrast, Jesus' miracles are marked by moderation and constraint. They do not seek to be spectacular, to overpower the will of others, to be secretive, or to draw attention to himself. It must be remembered that in the Judaism of the day, magic was more often seen as a 'sign of the devil'. This means that the disciples and evangelists would have been inclined to ignore this dimension of Jesus' ministry unless they saw it as somehow central to his mission. For them, at least, Jesus' miracles were a sign, not of the devil, but of God.
Consequently, whatever the historical details of the miracle-stories, they were recognized by those who believed in Jesus as 'signs of God'. However, the miracles are not presented as proofs of Jesus' divine status. They were far too ambiguous for that. In this regard, it is interesting that Jesus is depicted on one occasion as 'refusing to give a sign'. It is also significant that neither Paul nor any other post-Gospel New Testament writer makes reference to the miracles.
As used by Jesus, the miracles need to be seen in context of his ministry of proclaiming the reign and power of God. They do not emphasize the notion of an 'extraordinary event' and, in one way or another, the performance of miracles is always related to the faith of the people and the wider community. Sometimes, Jesus' miracles are directed towards his desire to challenge traditional prejudices and attitudes such as the false notion that people's sickness is due to their sinfulness. Finally, it needs to be stated that the central miracle with regard to Jesus is his resurrection from the dead which is pre-eminently the act of God on and through Jesus to the world. All miracle-stories need to be seen in this light of the divine presence in the universe. Only with the eyes of faith, can miracle-stories be placed in this proper perspective of God's abiding presence in the cosmos.
By the time of John the Baptist and Jesus, Israel had been without a significant prophet for several generations. Moreover, under the yoke of Roman oppression, the sense of expectation had sharpened. It was inevitable that at first John, and then Jesus, were looked upon by many as this eschatological prophet for whom the Jewish people had been waiting. However, as inevitably occurs when people project their expectations onto others, there comes the time when hopes are dashed. Disappointment and frustration set in. Both the initial popularity of Jesus and the eventual animosity towards him are partly explained in terms of his identification with the eschatological prophet on whom Israel had pinned its hopes. When people's hopes are dashed, irrational and violent forces are often unleashed.
It is highly probable that Jesus understood himself as the eschatological prophet whose mission was to inaugurate the 'last days' of 'God's reign'. However, Jesus did not understand the reign of God in either narrow political terms (establishing a new political regime) or in traditional apocalyptic ways (the literal destruction of the universe). As we have seen, for Jesus the reign of God was linked to a new experience of the divine presence, something to be experienced in the here and now and yet whose final fulfillment was yet to occur. On the basis of the gospel portraits of Jesus, we can say that his understanding of the reign of God was both mystical--a new experience of God's presence in the here-and-now--and prophetic--the call to his followers to a personal and social change of heart.
However, for reasons we must now explore, Jesus' message and mission came to be interpreted as a threat to the religious and political status quo. Jesus is reported as noting this himself when he states: "A prophet is never accepted in his own country or among his own people"
None of this is to suggest that Jesus was a political rebel (a zealot), but it is to state that his mission of proclaiming the reign of God had profound political implications. Such implications became more evident in view of Jesus' actions in 'the cleansing of the temple'. Now the temple was not just a place. The temple was the symbol of the entire Jewish faith and its religious authority structure. Significantly, in two passion narratives the charge is brought against Jesus that he 'threatened' the temple. In effect, what is being stated is that his teachings and actions were threatening the very basis of Jewish life. Although the gospel-writers refute this claim, there is evidence to suggest that in both subtle and profound ways, Jesus certainly did challenge some of the central practices and institutions of Jewish life.
This radical challenge to Judaism could be described in terms of bringing about a new nearness of God to people which would have the effect of eliminating--at least significantly decreasing--the need for human mediators. Jesus' mission very clearly implied the right of everyone to address God as 'Father'. This meant that the Jewish leaders, especially the chief priests and sadduccees mentioned in the passion stories, had good reason to suspect that Jesus' radicalized religion did threaten their own roles and status.
A couple of things can be said about the charges brought against Jesus by the Jewish sanhedrin. First, they imply that Jesus' mission was not altogether a failure. Significant numbers of people, including some from the Jewish ruling classes, had come to a point of accepting that Jesus was indeed a true prophet, perhaps even the Messiah for whom Israel had been waiting. Second, this achievement was a very real threat to the status of lawful authority. If Jesus was seen as 'Christ' and 'Lord' to some, this very fact threatened the familiar lordship of others, notably the chief priests and scribes. Consequently, Jesus was a problem to the Jewish hierarchy from both religious and political perspectives.
However, none of this explains the involvement of Pilate and the Roman authorities. Despite the trumped-up charge of blashpemy that is brought against Jesus, it is important to recognize that he was sentenced to death by the Romans on the charge of political treason: "He claimed to be King of the Jews". This messianic title had very clear political implications. Luke's gospel expands on this charge: "We found this man perverting our nation, and forbidding us to give tribute to Caesar, and saying that he himself is Christ, a king" (23:1). The point here is that, to the Roman occupiers of Israel, Jesus could well have been perceived as a would-be revolutionary. At the very least, Pilate and the Roman authorities had good reasons to put a stop to the Jesus-movement on the basis of its subversive possibilities.
Although there are many unknowns with regard to the events surrounding Jesus' death, we can surmise that there was a deal struck between the Jewish leaders and the Roman authorities. Both had a stake in eliminating Jesus' brand of religon: the Jewish leaders had power and status to protect; the Romans were more concerned with law and order.
It is generally recognized that the gospel narratives place most of the responsibility for Jesus' death on the Jews rather than the Romans. At best, this is unbalanced reporting. At worst, it suggests an anti-semitic bias in early christianity. To put the record straight, Jesus did die at the hands of the Romans and in the manner of a Roman execution (the Jews did not have power to crucify). Nonetheless, it is impossible to construct an account of Jesus' trial and crucifixion that does not implicate the Jewish leaders of the day. All this points to the intimate connection between religion and politics in the Jewish society of Jesus' time.
The crucifixion and death of Jesus should always be seen in context of his life and ministry. Although Jesus was not concerned with establishing a political kingdom, his teachings on God's reign were deeply challenging of traditional Jewish institutions and practices. Jesus took a dangerous path: he attacked power and wealth; he overturned social attitudes that oppressed 'unclean' or 'unworthy' people; he taught the need for prayer and self-sacrificing service; he called people to freedom and empowerment in the face of injustice; he named the religious elite a 'breed of vipers' for its manner of sponging off the poor and the needy. In other words, Jesus made enemies among the Jewish leaders and their Roman overlords. These wealthy and powerful elite came to be threatened to the point that they needed to do away with him.
Consequently, there can be no doubt that Jesus' journey to Jerusalem was the result of a deliberate and conscious decision to face danger including the danger of death itself. He knew of the growing opposition to him and his mission. Yet, despite this, he chose to make the trip to Jerusalem at the time of the Passover, a time when huge masses of people would be gathered in the city.
Why would Jesus make such a dangerous choice? The decision to go to Jerusalem marks the end of Jesus' Galilean ministry. It acts as a symbolic gesture of his explicit refusal to accept the way of a political messiah. In spite of this, the disciples still pin their hopes on a worldly kingdom. Jesus' frustration with their blindness becomes a recurring theme in the gospel narratives of the Jerusalem journey. People may hail him as a wonder-worker, king or messiah, but they still fail to comprehend his real message and mission.
Jesus discerns that his mission of proclaiming God's reign on earth will not be achieved through more of the same. Different strategies are needed. We see that Jesus becomes more confrontational in his approach (the temple scene); the radical edge to his teaching becomes more central. Jerusalem, the symbolic centre of Israel, was the logical place for Jesus to take his message. Perhaps Jesus thought that the religious capital would be more open to his teaching. His triumphant ride into Jerusalem suggests an initial enthusiasm--but, again, the people are disillusioned when they learn that Jesus does not intend to be a political messiah of their making.
In fact, the tide quickly turns. The hailed one becomes the decried one! There would still be opportunity for Jesus to retreat. However, by now he knew that a retreat from Jerusalem would be the retreat from his mission of proclaiming God's reign of love and mercy for all. In any case, he was too well known; there was little chance of hiding in the Galilean hills. And to take the escapist option of renouncing his mission was not a line of action that Jesus would countenance. So, in the face of an increasingly hostile opposition, Jesus grows to accept that the remote possibility of death has become an impending probability. Then the realisation dawns that there is no escape; death is certain.
Notwithstanding the violent death that Jesus was to undergo, he was also faced with the inevitable question of how to reconcile this impending reality with the message of God's love and salvation. How could the God of love allow such a painful and violent death? How could the reign of God be achieved through such evil and injustice? Jesus, who understood himself at least in terms of God's special envoy, could not have avoided facing such questions.
In assessing Jesus' response, we should be careful to avoid two extremes. First, we should distance ourselves from the approach that says that Jesus went to his death with feelings of despair and total abandonment by God. The words of the psalm attributed to Jesus on the Cross--"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"--, even if historical, need to be read in terms of the complete psalm which is, ultimately, a prayer of trust in God despite the evil that surrounds us. Jesus' whole life was lived in the belief of God's utter fidelity. Such belief would not abandon Jesus even in these most tragic circumstances of his bloody crucifixion.
Second, it is most important that we do not paint Jesus going to his death as a passive victim who was blindly fulfilling some pre-ordained divine plan. It is wrong to think that the human, historical Jesus had some kind of immediate access to God's will for him. Jesus made his life-decisions in the way that we all do: in the face of uncertainty and risk. He prays that he will come to know the Father's will and make the right decisions in view of his prayer and discernment. Aware of the risks, Jesus had made the crucial decision to take his mission to the heart of Judaism. Now he knows he must live with the consequences of that decision, including death itself.
The events surrounding the last supper and the agony in the garden are recorded in such a way to show that Jesus went to his death freely and deliberately--not because he actively chose death itself, but because he continued to commit himself to the mission of the kingdom in the face of opposition and evil. The act of the cup and bread at the 'last supper' symbolises the totality of Jesus' life, a life lived in loving service of others. Now Jesus is challenged to integrate the failure of his mission and his impending death into his life of 'service in love'. In other words, Jesus' death was marked by the same attitude that constituted his entire life. Perhaps Jesus simply believed that the promises of God would be fulfilled despite his death and the apparent failure of his mission. Or it may be that Jesus saw in a veiled way that his death would be a 'ransom for many', that is, an event that God would use to bring about the kingdom-community of justice, love and peace.
Another interpretation focussed on the suffering of Jesus as an indication that he was the 'righteous one', the suffering Son of Man. Before prophets are killed, they are rejected and despised. Here there is a tendency to see suffering as the hallmark of God's endorsement of the true prophet. Consequently, Jesus' suffering is read in accordance with the divine plan of salvation. However, within this approach, the death of Jesus does not figure with any degree of prominence and is not, in itself, theologically important.
A third approach, however, did focus primarily on Jesus' death as a redemptive and atoning act. This is summarized in the Pauline formula which states that Jesus 'died for us on account of our sins' (Romans 4:25). The understanding developed that Jesus' suffering and death were 'saving realities'. This meant that the focus of attention moved from the person and mission of Jesus to the cross as an 'atoning sacrifice'. From this there develops a theology of salvation that is centred on the crucifixion and which reads the cross as a positive act of God which 'expiated the sins of the world'.
These various interpretations of Jesus' death witness to the struggle to make meaning out of the act of evil that brought Jesus' earthly life and mission to such an abrupt and cruel end. However we make sense of this human tragedy, it is imperative that we do see it first and foremost as a tragedy. Then, of course, we may well recognise that God can and does overturn evil and convert it into good. This is what came to be called in the Christian tradition the 'law of the cross'. Nonetheless, God does not condone evil, let alone require it in order to fulfill the divine plan of salvation. The suffering and death of Jesus, along with all other instances of violence and murder, are ultimately outside the powers of rational explanation. The most we can do is to acknowledge in faith that the mystery of God's love is finally more powerful than evil and death. Jesus' death, too, needs to be recognised in this light.
If we can speak of a Jesus-movement during Jesus' earthly life and ministry, that movement came to an abrupt end with the crucifixion. However, as history records, Jesus' death was not the last word. Something happened in the lives of Jesus' disciples resulting in the formation of a new Jesus-movement which has endured till this day. It is equally true that, in the minds of the disciples, something happened to Jesus after his death which explains their remarkable and completely unexpected transformation.
If we are to achieve some understanding of how christian faith arose from the grave of Jesus, we need to investigate the Easter experiences and how it was that the disciples now experienced Jesus as 'risen from the dead'. In turn, this will lead to a discussion of how the first christians interpreted Jesus as Christ and Lord (that is, the New Testament christological process). We will also look at some of the implications of this process for the early followers of Jesus.
At first it seems that the gospel accounts are attempts to corroborate Paul's evidence with historical data. However, there is such diversity, even contradiction, in these stories of what happened following the death and burial of Jesus, that we are left with more questions than answers. In fact, the original Markan account has no appearance stories; in Matthew, Jesus appears to the disciples in Galilee after his ascension; in Luke, the appearances occur on the same day in Jerusalem prior to the ascension; in John, the story is different again. Biblical scholars generally agree that these and the many other discrepancies in the easter stories point to the fact that we are dealing with sophisticated literary or theological writings rather than attempts to write history.
Again, we are confronted with the same problem that we encountered in our attempt to sketch an historical portrait of Jesus of Nazareth. The gospels are less concerned with history (what happened) than with theology (how is God revealed to us in what happened). When it comes to accounting for the historicity of the easter experiences, we have the further difficulty of explaining a unique happening that is beyond the world of ordinary experience. The most we can do is to profile the various gospel understandings of how Jesus continued to live beyond death and how the disciples experienced his transformed presence.
In other words, by itself, Jewish resurrection symbolism was not an adequate way of explaining what happened to Jesus after his death. What the first believers struggled to express was that something completely strange and unexpected had happened to Jesus. It was something like what orthodox Jews imagined happening for virtuous people at the end of time except that, in Jesus' case, it had already occurred. In time, christian belief in what happened to Jesus came to be expressed as God raising him from death. However, in the context of Jesus' time, this was a totally unexpected turn of events. It also meant that the understanding of resurrection belief took on new and expanded meaning for Jesus' disciples.
Still, the language used to describe the transformed Jesus emphasizes his continuity with the earthly Jesus. In John, Jesus invites his disciples to see and touch him (20:20-27); in Luke, Jesus walks, talks and eats (24:39). It is this emphasis on the physicality of the risen Jesus that leaves the disciples with no doubt--despite Thomas' initial reluctance to believe--that the risen Lord is the same Jesus who was crucified and buried. Paul simply proclaims Jesus to be the crucified-and-risen one.
For the New Testament, then, the easter event represents the new, profound and totally unexpected revelation that Jesus has survived death and been transformed by God into a new mode of being. It is first and foremost an event that happens to Jesus himself and for which there is no precedent. No wonder that the New Testament strains to provide a linguistic and conceptual framework adequate for communicating this kerygma or good news. Inevitably, its language must be imaginative and symbolic as it seeks to convey a reality that represents a breakthrough in human and religious consciousness.
For us, as for the disciples themselves, this breakthrough in the understanding of what happened to Jesus beyond death remains in the realm of mystery. This side of death, we can but glimpse the full reality of what is intended by this resurrection, ascension and glorification language. Nonetheless, what is implied by the easter experience is not mythological talk. As Paul is at pains to explain: 'If Christ was not raised, your faith is in vain' (1 Cor.15:17). Matthew's resurrection narrative is also designed to counter those who would reduce the resurrection to the level of fable. And the empty tomb tradition, common to all the gospels, witnesses to the disciples' belief that Jesus is indeed 'risen' from the dead.
Our own ability to depth the reality of the transformed mystery of Christ is, of course, dependant on own belief and value system. For example, it would make very little sense to an atheist. However, for one who trusts in the divine mystery and believes that we can experience the graciousness of God in this life, there is already some sense or foretaste of resurrected life. Evidently, the earthly Jesus experienced the reality of the divine mystery in a profound way to the point of trusting his heavenly Father in the face of inhuman suffering and violent death. It is against this background that God's vindication of Jesus in death needs to be situated.
The vindication, transformation or resurrection of Jesus is then a surprise and a grace; but it affirms rather than violates our deepest human and religious aspirations.
In some real sense, Jesus still 'lives' with God, with a God who is present within the world and human history, gifting them with life. God, world and humanity can never be separated. Now, if we trust that Jesus still 'lives' with the Divine Mystery, then we can also trust that he still 'lives' with us. If you like, Jesus has made the final death-resurrection passage from egocentricity to other-centeredness. He is still with us, but in God's way: as a risen power of justice, love and peace. [ William Thompson, The Jesus Debate: A Survey and Synthesis (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), 228f. ]Consequently, Jesus' new mode of existence with God transforms rather than severs his relationship to the world and human history. Whereas the life and ministry of the earthly Jesus were confined to a few short years in first century Palestine, the life of the risen Jesus is able to transform the whole universe with justice, love, peace--and the other fruits of the Holy Spirit. In this way, Jesus' real earthly absence is at the same time a new heavenly presence within the world and human history.
Although there is little we can say with clarity regarding Jesus' new mode of existence with God, the world and ourselves, we know from the first believers that it was first and foremost a Spirit-filled experience--both for Jesus and for them. They knew Jesus to be alive with God and still present in the world because the Spirit of Jesus was communicated to them. We now move to a discussion of this other dimension of the easter event wherein the transformation of Jesus is communicated to the disciples.
In an attempt to describe these encounters, Paul uses the Greek verb 'he appeared' (ophthe) which is linked to the Hebrew notion of theophany with its two-fold meaning: an objective, real initiative on the part of God to be made known, and; a subjective response in faith on behalf of those undergoing this religious experience. Both dimensions are strongly emphasized in the post-resurrection encounter narratives.
As recorded in the New Testament, the encounters are presented according to a fairly stable pattern: the disciples are despondent and afraid; Jesus' presence takes them by surprise; Jesus offers some form of greeting; the disciples recognise Jesus; a word of command or commission by Jesus concludes the encounter. The process could also be described in terms of the three-fold pattern we used to explore Jesus' parables: Advent - the death of Jesus is the last word leaving the disciples without hope or expectation; Reversal - Jesus who was crucified is now alive with them in a transformed state; Action - the disciples' own lives are transformed so that they now become fearless proclaimers of Jesus' victory over death.
The disciples understand themselves to be empowered by the new life that Jesus shares with God. The dramatic change which overtakes them--from despair and cowardice to faith and courage--can be described in terms of a religious conversion experience. Again, we need to stress that we are dealing with an objectively real moment of grace that springs from the divine initiative: Jesus is risen. Nonetheless, this experience of encounter with the risen Jesus does not violate the subjective disposition of the disciples. It is for this reason that only those 'with faith', that is, those who are open to the communication of the divine mystery in their lives, are the ones who are able to 'see' the risen Lord.
The description of these revelatory encounters ranges from a sense of fellowship and at-one-ment (Lk.24:13-25; Jn.21:1-14), to a new life of solidarity in the Spirit (Mt.28:16-20; Jn.20:22), and new experiences of peace and forgiveness (Jn.20:19-23). Such experiences correlate to our deepest yearnings for justice, love, peace, human fulfillment and the 'risen life'. On the one hand, they come as gifts of life and salvation. On the other, they cannot be imposed; they need to be responded to in freedom and love. This is equally true for the disciples who, in a number of texts, also struggle in freedom and love to recognize Jesus and experience the gifts he offers.
This transformation of the disciples' lives has a double-aspect: it enables them to overcome their fear and guilt at abandoning Jesus--the experience of grace as forgiveness; and it empowers them to continue the 'work' of Jesus in his struggle against sin and injustice. Like Jesus himself, the disciples undergo something of a transforming death-resurrection passage from 'egocentricity' to 'other-centeredness'. For them, to experience the risen Jesus and his gifts of salvation is to be 'commissioned' by him to continue his saving work.
These encounters were not only moments of recognition of what Jesus positively is, was, and works for. They were also moments of liberation from what was opposed to him, and still is so opposed. They were free-ing moments, moments of recognition of how Jesus acts to save us from oppression and sin. . . . The disciples were similarly impelled (to continue this liberating work of Jesus) as their commissioning indicates. [ William Thompson, The Jesus Debate: A Survey and Synthesis (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), 222f. ]The Easter experiences confirm what the disciples already experienced in a veiled way during Jesus' earthly life, namely, that he was God's special envoy of peace, love and justice. In their encounter with this same Jesus now experienced in a new way, the disciples' lives are transformed so that they become the new agents of God's liberative action for the kingdom. However, instead of speaking of the kingdom of God as Jesus had done, the disciples begin to focus their proclamation on Jesus himself.
Consequently, we can speak of easter in terms of: the transformation of Jesus (from death to life); the transformation of the disciples (from disbelief and fear to faith and courage); and the transformation of the message (from the kingdom to Jesus). The focal point for all three transformations is the resurrection and its manifestation to the disciples in their encounters with the risen Lord. These personal encounters, although communicated to us via symbol and metaphor, are real experiences of grace and salvation confirming God's unique presence in Jesus, a presence continuing beyond the grave and available to all who believe.
In fact, there are many New Testament christologies that develop in the post-easter attempt to explain the mystery of who Jesus was and is. Such christologies always reflect the cultural and religious concerns of particular communities. As well, they develop in a liturgical or confessional setting, that is, as expressions of people's new religious experience of God's saving presence in Jesus. In turn, these experiences are interpreted according to the known categories and familiar languages of the various communities. From the beginning, there is simply a pluralism of confessional, linguistic and cultural interpretations of what Jesus does and who he is.
The earliest post-easter communities tended to use a two-stage christology to distinguish the earthly and the risen Jesus. The earthly Jesus is described acccording to prophetic-biblical categories such as 'servant', 'holy' or 'righteous' one and, perhaps, the eschatological, Moses-like prophet. Other christological titles--such as Son of God, Christ (Christos) and Lord (Kyrios) --, are reserved for the risen Jesus who is experienced as surviving death, taken into glory, and now waiting to return. These titles and descriptions of the risen Jesus recognise that he exercises some special kind of kingly, royal or divine authority.
It is important to realise that, in the early Palestinian communities, the experience of the risen Jesus is interpreted according to Jewish apocalyptic belief. This means that the emphasis is on the future, early return of Jesus, the 'heavenly Son of Man', who will come in power and glory. This resurrection-parousia christology is expressed liturgically in the maranatha-prayer: 'Come Lord Jesus'. However, as christian communities are confronted with the delay in Jesus' return, the focus shifts from the future to the present.
Greek-speaking Jewish christians soon concentrate their liturgy on the present exaltation of the risen Jesus: 'Jesus is Lord'. The titles attributed to Jesus--including Christ, Lord and Son of God--take on a developed understanding of Jesus' present, mediating role between God and the world. Jesus will not only return at the end of time to judge the world, but is already now exercising a saving presence in the world. A further development is that these christological titles, which are originally reserved for Jesus' post-easter existence, are now projected back onto Jesus' earthly life. For example, the historical Jesus is recognised to be the 'messiah' for whom the Jews had been waiting; Paul says that he dies as Christos (1 Cor.15:3); and then 'Christ' simply becomes part of Jesus' proper name throughout his whole career (Rom.1:8).
Greek thinking is also evident in the development of a three-stage christology which becomes highly developed in the communities of Greek Christians. This christology is evident in the prologue of John's gospel (1:1-14) where Jesus Christ is identified as: the pre-existent Word of God through whom all creation is brought into existence; the Word who became flesh in the human, historical Jesus through the miracle of the incarnation; and the reigning Lord of post-easter glory. This three-stage Word-christology of John--pre-existence, incarnation and exaltation--is mirrored in the much earlier cosmic-christology of the Pauline hymns (Phil.2:6-11; Col.1:15-20). These high christologies tend to read the entire cosmos--from its conception till its completion--in terms of the mediating role of Jesus who is Christ and Lord as well as 'image', 'word', or 'wisdom' of God.
These christologies also tend to push the exaltation of Jesus into his historical life and ministry. This is clearly the case with the entire gospel of John as with the infancy narratives, baptismal accounts and transfiguration scenes in the synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke). These christologies see beyond what the disciples experienced of Jesus during his earthly existence and even beyond what Jesus saw about himself. Nonetheless, these developments should not be seen as falsifying the historical Jesus, but as depthing the inner-reality of Jesus' earthly identity in the light of the easter experiences. They witness to the early church's belief that the earthly and risen Jesus are not two, but one and the same reality.
Eventually, if cautiously, the New Testament comes to acknowledge Jesus' divine status in an unambiguous manner to the point of saying that Jesus is Theos in the sense of God's equal (Jn.1; Jn.20; Heb.1:8-10). Precislely how this is compatible with monotheistic belief is left to subsequent generations to interpret. However, before embarking on a discussion of the development of christology in the early Christian centuries, we need to acknowledge that the question of Jesus' divine status should not override our entire interpretation of the early Jesus' movement. In some ways, this movement from lower to higher christological titles to designate Jesus was an ambiguous phenomenon precisely because it tended to overshadow the human side of the Christ mystery. This was, in fact, a problem for the early Jesus movement itself.
For Paul, the easter event does not annul Jesus' earthly struggle against the forces of evil that led to his violent, bloody death. In fact, the opposite is the case: it is precisely the crucified Jesus who reigns as Lord. The resurrection continues and confirms the life of the Cross. Jesus' messiahship and lordship are always read in terms of Paul's servant christology: Jesus lives his life for others and calls them into mutual servantship with him. This is the critical edge to Paul's liberating, radical christology: it is only in self-giving love through the cross of suffering on behalf of others that the kingdom of God's universal love can arrive.
In keeping alive the two-fold reality of Jesus crucified and risen, Paul retains the acute tension in Jesus' message between the 'already' and the 'not yet' of the kingdom. He also berates the Corinthians for identifying the kingdom with displays of divine power instead of focussing their concerns on building a community of love and service. Paul believes that, in Jesus, God has already begun the kingdom of justice and peace. However, he also recognises the unfortunate tendency in certain sections of the Jesus-movement to act as if Jesus had completed the work. In fact, the very reason for the Jesus-movement is to carry on the work which Jesus has begun.
The loss of the liberating, critical edge of the Jesus-movement is both a concern for Paul and a trap into which he himself sometimes falls. At least there is evidence to suggest that Paul's attitude to women, for example, is not entirely consistent with his love christology that opposes all forms of oppression and injustice. In fact, earlier letters account for Paul's commitment to women's equal freedom and dignity with men: women are Paul's co-workers, not subordinates (Rom.16:6,12); they are leaders of community-churches (Phlm.2; 1 Cor.16:19); Junia is even called an 'apostle' by Paul (Rom.16:7); and Phoebe is a 'deacon' for the whole church (Rom.16:1f.). [ Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 205-241. ]
These texts contrast most starkly with Paul's admonitions to women (1 Corinthians 11:2-26; 14:33-36) where they are asked to play a very subsidiary role to men in society at large as in the christian assembly. Here, it seems, Paul is more concerned with making the christian movement acceptable to the cultural standards of the wider world. It is a trap into which the christian church would often fall. Of course, it is difficult for any movement to retain the purity and freshness of its beginnings. In order to endure, movements need laws and structures; they need to be institutionalized. We have seen enough to recognise that this process already begins in the time of the New Testament writings and that part of the price that is paid is the loss of the radical, liberating edge which characterized the Jesus-movement in its origins.
As we move to a review of historical and contemporary understandings of the Jesus movement and the Christ mystery, we need to keep alive the memory of the historical Jesus--the one who preaches the kingdom and suffers and dies--as well as the risen Christ of glory who is proclaimed in easter faith. The scandal of the Cross and the wonder of the resurrection are two inseparable dimensions of the one mystery of Jesus (the) Christ.
Having surveyed the New Testament understanding and experience of the historical and risen Jesus, it would be tempting to by-pass the history of the ways in which Jesus Christ has been interpreted in order to bring the Christ mystery into immediate dialogue with our contemporary situation. However, since we carry the history of our tradition with us, it is important that we acknowedge the way that it shapes our lives and understanding. We are, if you like, part of a living, changing Jesus tradition that influences both the questions we ask and the answers we give to the Jesus event. We are part of an ongoing story.
In this regard, William Thompson highlights the importance of giving attention to the historical unfolding of the Jesus tradition:
It is simply artificial, even naively uncritical, to think that one can jump directly from the biblical inheritance into the modern period. The tradition-bound nature of our humanity and faith means that the way we experience Christianity today is, in theory and practice, at least partially the result of the entire tradition from which we spring. [ William Thompson, The Jesus Debate: A Survey and Synthesis (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), 299. ]This is not a matter of taking sides in the old Protestant-Catholic debate on the question of scripture versus tradition. Today, centrist biblical scholars and theologians, whether Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox, acknowledge both the normative nature of the bible and its mediation via the effective history of the Church. This does not mean that we are bound to an uncritical acceptance of the tradition. In fact, it is only by being aware of the tradition that we are then able to learn from its strengths and avoid or overturn its weaknesses.
Lest this approach be misunderstood, we may also like to say with the easter liturgy that 'Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow', but that our experience and understanding of this central mystery of our christian faith is always contingent or finite. Some appreciation of the historical unfolding of the interpretation of Jesus Christ enables us to recognise the ways in which culture and history always enter into our attempts to explain the christian mystery. Moreover, such explanations are closely entwined with practical expressions whether personal (liturgy and life-style), ecclesial (church life and organization) or political (relationship of church to wider society). In our discussion, we should not lose sight of this intimate connection between theory and practice.
The post-biblical approach to Jesus 'We ought to think of Jesus Christ as of God' said Clement of Rome in a late first century sermon. Beyond christian sources, Pliny the Younger writes to his fellow Romans that these 'christians' would gather to sing 'a hymn to Christ as though to a god'. It is evident, then, from sources both within and beyond christianity, that the divine status of Jesus continues to be a central affirmation of the christian movement. The theoretical and practical implications of this fact would take many centuries before reaching a point of equilibrium.
In the early christian centuries of the Roman empire, to express belief in the divinity of Jesus was not a matter of idle speculation or mere academic debate. It was a highly political and dangerous act as is evidenced by the fact that many christians were prepared to be--and quite often were--martyred rather than renounce their belief. After all, the Romans had already afforded their emperor with divine honours and so were not about to be troubled by a group of christian enthusiasts keen to recognise divinity in someone else. Rome reasoned that, whatever else this incipient christian movement's claim represented, it was a potential threat to the life and order of the empire. As history would show, it was a reasoning process that proved quite correct.
If Rome was captivated by the political implications of Jesus' acclaimed God-status, christians themselves had their own problems in reconciling their confession of faith with both Hebrew and Greek notions of divinity. Apart from the old problem of reconciling Jewish monotheism with a divine-human Jesus, the progressive Hellenization of christianity (that is, the deepening influence of Greek thought on christian self-understanding) brought new problems. How could the all-powerful and unchanging God of Aristotle--and, to a lesser extent, of Plato--be in any way identified with a humiliated and crucified figure of history?
Early debates Debates in the second century focus on this issue of reconciling the human figure with the divine identity of Jesus. These debates led to the final split of Christianity from Judaism which, however, did little to lessen the internal divisions within Christianity itself as it struggled to account for the human-divine identity of Jesus Christ. As we shall see, it is not just a matter of striking the right formula (seeing things aright), but also a matter of being converted to a new way of naming and experiencing the perfect divine presence in our most imperfect human world.
One of the earliest groups of faithful Jews who also wanted to acknowledge the special status of Jesus were the Ebionites. They recognised Jesus as God's chosen prophet who had come to put an end to the Old Testament priesthood. However, in expressely denying the virginal birth of Jesus and the pre-existence of the Son, they found themselves on the outside of accepted christian belief and practice. Their position was not dissimilar to that of the Moralists who spoke of Jesus as a unique, 'moral' figure of human history, endowed with special powers, and who could serve as an example for others to follow.
Even after the separation from Judaism, Christians continued to identify themselves as monotheists. Influenced by Greek thought, the Monarchists and Adoptionists struggled with the idea of God's absolute, unchanging reality. This led the former group to speak of God's 'monarchy' and to deny any distinction between the Father and the Son. In this scenario, the divinity of the Son, Jesus, is achieved through denying his true individuality and humanity. The latter group tried to solve the problem by suggesting that Jesus was 'adopted' as God's Son and thereby was not fully or truly divine.
Another widespread movement in early christianity was known as Gnosticism because its members claimed to be 'gnostics', that is, those who possessed secret knowledge. Part of their 'knowledge' involved an understanding of the material world as either evil or unreal and therefore not created by God who is both good and real. It is interesting for us to note that such a negative view of the world and creation generally has often plagued Cristianity as many another religion and culture. Early Christian gnostics logically reasoned that the incarnation was not an acceptable doctrine. Their christology is best expressed by the Docetists who said that Jesus only 'appeared' to be human or that he took a human form in the manner of a 'costume'.
It is customary to divide these early movements into those which deny the full divinity of Jesus (Ebionites, Moralists and Adoptionists) and those that declaim Jesus' true humanity (Monarchists, Gnostics and Docetists). While this is no doubt the case, there is much more at stake in these debates, namely, the inability to understand or experience the divine as the pathos of love and compassion and the inability to understand or experience the human as the locus of genuine divinity. Neither side of these christological debates is able to breakthrough the dualistic separation of an all-powerful and absolutely transcendent God and a messy, changeable all too human (= too corrupt) created world.
In essence, these debates represent a failure to fully depth the mystery of the Hebrew God of the Old Testament and of Jesus whose pathos and world-involvement are constantly evident. They likewise represent a failure to relate to the human and creative possibilities that are manifested to us in the life of Jesus (itself based on the Jewish experience of the essential goodness of all creation that springs from God). The issue of Jesus identity really comes down to the issue of how God is, or even can be, present to the world. Certainly, this was the key-issue behind the christological debates in the second and third centuries.
Logos-christology In fact, the Jewish notion of Logos -- God's divine Word active in creation and history--had already provided a way of expressing how divine transcendence acts in the world. The Word, understood as of God and in God, was also the means by which God created and sustained the universe. Logos is the creative word of Genesis, the prophetic word of the Jewish prophets and, in Johannine theology, the pre-existent, divine reality that becomes incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth. This would seem to be an adequate Jewish model for depthing the way in which the divine mystery is especially revealed to us in Jesus Christ.
However, the very success of Christianity in spreading itself throughout the Graeco-Roman world led to the increasing pressure to explicate its mysteries and beliefs in the high intellectual Greek philosophy of the day. It so happened that Hellenistic philosophy also used the word Logos in a subtly but significantly different way to Hebrew thought. For the Greeks, Logos was the principle of unity, order and reason within the universe. It too had its origins in God but, under the influence of Platonic thought, Logos tended to be separate from God. We might say that, whereas the Jewish Logos was a non-created and fully divine power, the Greek Logos tended to be interpreted as a created, semi-divine power.
The result was a series of masterful attempts to blend the Jewish and Greek understandings of Logos to explicate how the divine reality was present in the human Jesus. However, under the increasing influence of the Greek understanding of the Logos, most of these christologies were subordinationist: that is, they were unable to account for the equality of the Father and the Son:
For Justin, the Logos was derivative of God. For Irenaeus, the Son was not quite equal to the Father. For Tertullian, the Father and the Son are of the same substance, but not equal. And for Origen, the Logos is indeed an image of God, but is clearly not God. [ Brennan Hill, Jesus the Christ: Contemporary Perspectives (Mystic CT: Twenty-third Publications), 218f. ]However, there was an equal problem in that many of these christologies also failed to account for the genuine humanity of Jesus. Jesus becomes a kind of 'third-entity' between divinity and humanity. We remain caught in the bind of inadequate understandings of both the divine mystery and the human reality. This is most evident with regard to the teachings of Arius (d.336).
From Arius to the Council of Nicea Arius was one of the early Christian monks who brought matters of Jesus' divine-human identity to a point of crisis. He was probably more a popularizer of prevailing ideas than an original thinker himself. Indeed, apart from his evident preaching abilities, part of his appeal was in the fact that he lived a holy, austere and moral life. As is often the case with religious politics, it is only when ideas stir the people--to the point, it is said, that there were massive demonstrations in the streets of Alexandria--, that civil and religious authorities take note and react. And react they did, to the point of banishing Arius and calling the first full-scale Council in the church's history.
What was it that Arius and his followers, the Arians, taught that created such a stir? Arius held that the Logos was a demi-God interceding between God and the world. The Logos was not God but a creature, albeit of exalted status; nor, strictly speaking, could the Logos be identified with a purely worldly reality. This meant that Jesus, in whom the Logos was uniquely present, was neither fully divine nor truly human, but something in between both. If Arius was only baldly declaring what had been implied in earlier teachings, history was to present him with the role of scapegoat for holding a doctrine contrary to orthodox Christian belief.
Whether we call it fate or providence, the fact is that the Arian dispute occurred at a point in history where Christian unity was considered essential for the unity of what came to be called the 'Holy Roman Empire'. The emperor Constantine, upon his conversion to the Christian faith in 312 CE, soon santioned Christianity with 'official religion' status. This meant that any source of inner-religious division was likely to boil over into political and civil unrest. History records that it was Constantine rather than the bishop of Rome or the patriarch of Alexandria who actually decreed the Council at Nicea in 325 CE. It was likewise the emperor Constantine who opened the Council and confirmed its decrees.
Evidently, religion and politics had become entangled to the point where matters of theological debate were significant for social harmony. Over two hundred bishops gathered at Nicea in a mood of enthusiasm and optimism. As much as anything, the Council symbolized the wonderful advances of Christianity--from a Jewish sect to a Gentile church and from a persecuted minority to the established religion of the empire--in fewer than three hundred years.
The Council also responded to the theological matter at hand: it condemned the teachings of Arius and upheld that Jesus was not a demi-God but indeed 'God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, Begotten, not made, . . .' Most significantly, Nicea defended Jesus' divine status not just in scriptural terminology but through the use of Greek language--'homoousios' ('translated 'one in substance' or 'one in being') with the Father. Effectively, Nicea established the principle of the necessity of translating the Christian message into the language and the culture of the people to whom it is being addressed. This is sometimes called the incarnational, sacramental or missionary principle of Christian faith which has been so significant in the ability of the church to make its message heard in diverse cultures throughout the centuries.
What, then, are we to make of Nicea's christological achievements? By affirming the full divinity of Jesus, Nicea actually saves Christianity from the excesses of Greek philosophy which held on to a totally changeless and immutable God who is somehow immune from any real contact with the created world. Because the divine mystery is fully present in the human Jesus, this works as a powerful symbol for the reality of God's pathos and love in human history. Moreover, properly understood, this links in with a notion of salvation that consists, not in flight from the (evil) world, but in commitment to a (healing) world. In these ways, Nicea reiterates the central insights of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.
Nonetheless, Nicea's single focus on the divinity of Jesus leaves us with a most unbalanced picture. What about the other dimensions of the Jesus event such as his humanity, his life and ministry, his death and resurrection? In essence, where is the connection to the historical Jesus to be made in all this talk of divine status? It would seem that Nicea affirms Jesus' divinity but then severs it from the concrete reality of his human existence. Neither should we forget that there are political dimensions to the Council which are related to the cause of the Roman empire: Jesus is now the triumphant, imperial Lord rather than one who sides with the oppressed, alienates the powerful, and goes to his death in a state of abject humiliation.
Evidently, one Council cannot achieve everything. Consequently, we need to read Nicea's 'high christology' in relation to the christology of the humiliated Jesus presented to us in the writings of the early Christian martyrs. This may also be a place to mention that the more masculine Word/Logos-christology adopted by the 'early fathers' should be complemented by more attention to the feminine Wisdom/Sophia-christology of the Scriptures. [ See Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Jesus: Miriam's Child, Sophia's Prophet (New York: Continuum, 1995), 131-162; and Denis Edwards, Jesus the Wisdom of God (Homebush: St Paul's, 1995), 19-68. ] It is surely significant, that as Christianity lost contact with its more radical roots, it relegated the feminine, along with the poor and outcast, to a less than central position in its life and self-reflections. In all this, there is a loss of contact with the biblical understanding of Jesus.
In any event, the Council of Nicea was a significant ecclesial and political event in Christian life and self-understanding. Its promotion of the divinity of Jesus soon affected the church's liturgy which moved away from the sense of communal meal and celebration towards the more private experience of worship. Nicea was also a symbol of the new unity of church and state. Henceforth, as Constantine had predicted, Christianity would 'play a role similar to that which the old State religion of Rome had played'. [Cited by William Thompson, The Jesus Debate: A Survey and Synthesis (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), 310. ] Moreover, the articulation of the Christian mystery would now become increasingly dependant on Greek philosophy rather than the Jewish and Christian scriptures.
Nonetheless, as history would soon reveal, Nicea does not have the last word on the issue of Jesus' identity. Its many unanswered questions were soon to flare up in a new series of controversies.
From Athanasius to the Council of Chalcedon The issue that Nicea failed to address could be summarized as follows: if Jesus is both divine and human, how are these two realities united in his personhood? One answer solves the problem by simply accepting the 'other half' of Arianism (the 'half' that Nicea does not directly condemn) which states that Jesus' humanity is a 'costume' or 'mask' which he wore to conceal his real (divine) identity. This is only a solution to the extent that it dissolves the problem: Jesus is not genuinely human at all. Although this may appear to be a far-fetched kind of answer, it is actually the image of Jesus that has underpinned many a Christian theology and piety throughout the ages.
A couple of extreme examples of this solution to the issue of Jesus' identity are the following:
For he ate, not for the sake of the body, which was kept together by a holy energy, but in order that it might not enter into the mind of those who were with him to entertain a different opinion of him. (Clement of Alexandria)Athanasius (d.373), who had attended the Council of Nicea as a deacon, and had subsequently been appointed bishop to the influential see of Alexandria, sought to explain Nicea's teaching on the divinity of Jesus without falling into this trap of comprimising his humanity. Athanasius taught that, unless Jesus was both genuinely human and truly divine, then the purpose of the incarnation--the divinization of humanity--could not be achieved.
Our Lord felt the force of suffering but without its pain; the nails pierced the flesh as an object passes through the air, painlessly. (Hilary of Poitiers) [ Clement of Alexandria and Hilary of Poitiers respectively, cited by Elizabeth Johnson, Consider Jesus: Waves of Renewal in Christology (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 8. ]
The approach of Athanasius and the Alexandrian School is sometimes called 'Word-flesh' christology. It begins by affirming the divinity of the pre-existent Logos which is then united to the human flesh of Jesus. To the question of whether Christ really suffered--a prospect which Hilary of Poitiers clearly denies (see the quotation above)--, Athansius says that Christ, the Word, the divine Logos does suffer 'in his body' but 'not in himself'. For Athanasius and Alexandrian christology generally the divine in Jesus always takes precedence over the human. Specifically, it does not seem to provide a place for the human 'soul' (intellect, emotions and will) of Jesus. Nonetheless, Athanasius' attempt to explicate the divine-human identity of Jesus does take us some steps forward.
An extreme form of Alexandrian teaching, which shows its inherent weakness, is evident in Apollinaris (d.390) who outrightly denies that Jesus has a human mind and soul. For Apollinaris, Christ was the 'heavenly man' who, he says, 'is neither fully man nor God, but a mixture of God and man'. For Apollinaris, the divine Logos is the human consciousness of Jesus: that is another way of saying that the historical Jesus did not have human consciousness at all. This teaching was condemned by the first Council of Constantinople in 381 CE. Evidently, there was need for another model to explain how the divine could be present in the human Jesus. It so happened that an alternative approach was being developed--not in Alexandria, but in the rival city of Antioch.
As often happens with rival cities, not only are they divided on matters of food and custom, but they also develop their own ideologies, theologies and ways of thinking about life. Followers of the Antiochene School developed what is called a 'Word-man' christology. By beginning their reflections with the human Jesus rather than the pre-existing Logos, they hoped to safeguard the humanity of Christ. One of their chief ploys and lasting impacts was to speak of 'two natures' in Jesus Christ, one human, the other divine. Consequently, they were able to locate Jesus' real human soul in his human nature while allowing for another, separate, divine nature. If there was a problem with this apprroach, it is that we are still left with the issue of understanding how these two natures could co-exist in the one identity. Surely, if there were two natures, there must be two Christs!
Of course, to our ears today, all this sounds very abstract as well as being devoid of any real interest in the historical realities of Jesus' earthly life. However, we should not think that, for the ordinary Christian folk of the fourth and fifth centuries, these matters were either uninteresting or reserved for scholarly church debate. Elizabeth Johnson tells the story of one bishop going out to buy a loaf of bread and finding that 'even the baker' wanted to discuss whether there were one or two natures in Christ! [ Cited by Elizabeth Johnson, Consider Jesus: Waves of Renewal in Christology (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 8. ] In fact, debate was beginning to rage over this issue. One catch-cry was: 'Cut him in two who divides Christ!' [ Cited by Brennan Hill, Jesus the Christ: Contemporary Perspectives (Mystic CT: Twenty-third Publications), 225. ] Alexandria and Antioch were in conflict.
Unfortunately, what followed in the first half of the fifth century was a most turbulent and unseemly period in Christian history that owed as much to political intrigue as to theological argument. There were rigged Councils, banished bishops, imprisonments, ecclesiastical witch-hunts and even physical fights resulting, in one case, with the death of a bishop (Flavian, patriach of Constantinople). The church was, in many ways, reflecting the power-play that was occurring in the Roman empire, a power-play that acted out the rivalries between East and West and eventually led to Marcion's unconstitutional seizure of the emperor's throne.
Significantly, it was Marcion, the new emperor, who called the Council to meet at Nicea to decide once and for all on this problem of understanding Jesus' identity. Fights broke out again and the Council had to be aborted. It then reconvened at Chalcedon in 451 CE. The central christological issue was how to maintain appreciation of Jesus' identification both with God and with humanity. Pope Leo I stated the matter succinctly: 'It is as dangerous an evil to deny the truth of the human nature of Christ as it is to refuse to believe that his glory is equal to the Father'. [ Cited by Elizabeth Johnson, Consider Jesus: Waves of Renewal in Christology (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 9. ]
In many ways, the Council of Chalcedon provided a masterful compromise of Alexandrian and Antiochene teachings. Thus, it accepted (with the Antiochenes) that there were indeed 'two natures' in Christ so that he should be understood as both 'perfectly human' and 'perfectly divine'--'one in being with Father as to divinity and one in being with us as to humanity'. Consequently, Jesus' humanity is not just a costume or mask: he had a human body that suffered and a human will that made human decisions in the face of doubt and risk.
Yet (with the Alexandrians), Chalcedon also taught that Jesus' dual natures did not in any way compromise the essential unity of his 'person' since there is only 'one and the same Christ'. Effectively, Chalcedon had 'solved' the problem of Jesus' identity by using Greek categories of 'substance', 'person' and 'nature': Jesus Christ is of the same substance as the Father and the same substance as us; and although possessing two natures, divine and human, these are united in the one person. This unity of Christ's personhood was also expressed in the Council's teaching (against Nestorius d.451) that Mary is not only the mother of Christ ('christotokos') but, indeed, the mother of God ('theotokos'). To say otherwise, it reasoned, would be to 'split Christ'.
Following Chalcedon, two further so-called Christological Councils were held at Constantinople in 553 and 680-681 CE. respectively. Their major contribution was to refine aspects of Chalcedonian christology. Constantinople II, for example, specified that Jesus possessed two fully functioning wills, divine and human. Nonetheless, it is fair to say that christological development essentially stopped with Chalcedon. It became the benchmark upon which all further christology was measured. Moreover, it seemed that christianity was exclusively tied to the 'one person--two natures' manner of expressing who Jesus was and is.
Only in 1951, on the fifthteenth hundred anniversary of Chalcedon, was there any serious attempt in Catholic theology to 'go beyond' Chalcedon. German theologian, Karl Rahner, wrote an essay entitled: Chalcedon: End or Beginning? [ Karl Rahner, Chalcedon: End or Beginning? redacted as Current Problems in Christology, Theological Investigations 1 (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 149-200. ] He spoke of the sorry and stagnant state of christology which seemed to be so opposed to new ways of expressing the reality of Jesus and his significance for our world today. He was especially critical of the fact that most Christians seemed to ignore the deep truth that Chalcedon had tried to express--Jesus Christ, Word and Son of God, was indeed genuinely human. Evidently, Chalcedon and the classical christological doctrines were in need of review.
Interpreting the doctrines today The problem is essentially one of translating fifth century Greek language and thought into the twentieth century. To begin, we need to ask what it can possibly mean for us today to speak of 'substance' ('ousion') in either God or humanity? To our way of thinking, 'substance' is normally associated with 'inert matter' which is clearly an inappropriate and unhelpful way of describing either divine or human reality. In fact, the Greek 'ousion' is better translated as 'being'--a more dynamic, living category--than 'substance' which is passive and static. Yet, even here, we need to ask what it can possibly mean to apply the same notion--whether 'substance' or 'being'--to refer to two such totally different realities as God and humanity.
As well, our modern understanding of 'person' ('prosopon') is at odds with Chalcedon. We understand 'person' in psychological terms as the ego-centre of human consciousness, freedom and action. By contrast, Chalcedon used the notion of 'person' to describe in abstract language how there was a 'centre of divine-human unity' in Jesus Christ. If anything, to contemporary ears, this seems to devalue the human personhood of Jesus. In fact, Chalcedon had used the word 'nature' ('phusis') to describe the reality of Jesus' human personhood. But, in modern usage, 'nature' sounds more like an abstract quality than a dynamic source of human life and activity.
In the wake of these kinds of difficulties, it may be more important for us today to attempt to express the christological mystery in different language. This approach seeks to be faithful to the intentions of the classic doctrines, and yet open to the insights of contemporary psychological, historical and biblical scholarship. Today we might begin with the question of what it means to be a person and then apply this to our understanding of the mystery of the person of Jesus. Our 'answer' may look something like the following.
To 'be a person' is essentially to 'be in relationship' with the physical world of nature, with the social reality of human others and institutions, with oneself, and with the divine mystery. These are all dynamic, living, growing dimensions of what it means to be a human person. We might even say that 'personhood' is not so much who one is as who one becomes through interaction and relationship. Applying this to the mystery of the personhood of Jesus, we can recognise that he shares in all these relationships. If we can speak of a unique or superior personhood of Jesus, this does not in any way deny his full human reality. To the contrary, Jesus' uniqueness resides precisely in the fact that he lives out all these relationships--with the world of nature, with others, with himself, and with God--to a superior degree.
In fact, the classical christological doctrines can be interpreted in this light. Chalcedon's intuition is surely to do with the reality that Jesus' identity is a dynamic, living relationship with divinity and with humanity. His relationship with the divine mystery does not annul his genuine humanness, but crowns it. We have seen how some of the early Fathers saw the human project in terms of the 'divinization' of humanity; today, there is more talk of the need for 'humanization'. The story of Jesus is the story that says divinization and humanization are not opposed projects, but different dimensions of the one human-divine process in which we are all called to play a part. Christian faith acclaims that this process has been lived most fully and completely in Jesus Christ.
This approach, then, has important implications for our appreciation of Jesus' humanness, an appreciation that is underscored by the Second Vatican Council:
Human nature as (Christ) assumed it was not annulled. . . . He worked with human hands, he thought with a human mind, he acted by human choice, and loved with a human heart. Born of the Virgin Mary, he has truly been made one of us, like us in all things except sin. [ Dogmatic Constitution of the Church in the Modern World, article 22. ]This understanding of Jesus is very different to the kind of one-sided power-christology that is unfortunately often associated with the classical doctrines. However, it should not be thought that a genuine appreciation of Jesus' human status was absent from the best interpreters of the tradition. For example, Cyril of Alexandria (d.444), a strong defender of the divinity of Jesus, had this to say:
We have admired his goodness in that for love of us he has not refused to descend to such a low position as to bear all that belongs to our nature, included in which is ignorance. [ Cited by Elizabeth Johnson, Consider Jesus: Waves of Renewal in Christology (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 46. ]These quotations from such diverse sources as Vatican II and Cyril of Alexandria not only express belief in Jesus' genuine and complete humanity; they also understand that it is precisely in his humanity that the divine mystery is disclosed.
Consequently, the recovery of the human Jesus is equally a new and profound disclosure of the self-emptying divine love present in his earthly life and especially symbolized in the mystery of the cross. This kenotic--'self-emptying'--christology is expressed in an early Christian hymn:
The state of Jesus Christ was divine, yet he did not cling to equality with God but emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave, and became as we are: and being as we are, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross. . . . (Philippians 2:6-11)This represents a double disclosure: it alters our perceptions of the divine mystery (God is pure pathos and compassionate love); and it stretches our horizons of what it means to be human (to live one's life in loving service of God and others even, or especially, in the face of evil and death). Properly understood, this does not glorify the evil of the cross, but shows us that God's love in Jesus transforms evil and death into goodness and life. Such divine love is also open to those who follow in the footsteps of Jesus' life of love and service. A kenotic christology leads to a christology of discipleship.
In fact, discipleship christology is more evident in the writings of the Christian martyrs, saints and mystics than in the classical doctrines of Nicea and Chalcedon. It is also more evident in the writings of some of the reformers (such as Martin Luther) who, while accepting the teachings of the Councils, focus their meditations more directly on the historical Jesus of the scriptures and the humiliated Jesus of the cross. This is a timely reminder of the fact that any set of propositions regarding Jesus Christ will always be inadequate. It is also a reminder that we need to search within the whole Christian tradition to find undercurrents that off-set a too dogmatic and authoritarian approach to the Christ-mystery.
On the other hand, we stand within a living Christian tradition which has, in large measure, been formed by the classical christological doctrines. They were important moments in the history of our Christian self-understanding. Consequently, we acknowledge our debt for the way in which they helped clarify the Christian mystery in their own historical context--ambiguities notwithstanding. Nonetheless, as indicated earlier, we do not merely repeat the past: ours must be a creative fidelity. Hopefully, this brief attempt to reinterpret the classical doctrines of Christ within a larger framework has provided some light for our contemporary understanding of who Jesus Christ is for us and our world-situation today.
We are in a period of christological ferment unmatched since the first century. Like the first-century church reflected in the New Testament we once again have a pluralism of christologies or different ways of formulating Jesus Christ's significance and identity while remaining united in the confession of the one faith. Like the Christians of the first century, we too are being called to write the good news in an idiom suitable to our time and place. . . . We must name Jesus Christ again and claim him again for our own people, so that a living christology will be handed on to the next generation into the twenty-first century. [ Elizabeth Johnson, Consider Jesus: Waves of Renewal in Christology (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 145f. ]Change in the way Catholics began to think about Christ occurred with the Second Vatican Council's call for the church to 'dialogue' with the joys and sorrows, hopes and fears, of the modern world. Pope John XXXIII, who called the Council, recognised the church's need to move beyond the 'ghetto mentality' in which Catholic identity was formed 'against' the world of modern culture and other religions. Pope Paul VI spoke of the responsibility of speaking the Christian message to the modern world in ways that it could understand. Inevitably, the 'opening of the windows' of Catholicism to 'dialogue' with contemporary thought and culture, and with other religious traditions, brought new questions to bear on the meaning and significance of Jesus Christ for our age.
The result has been an explosion of christologies: 'a period of christological ferment unmatched since the first century'. These different and often diverse approaches to the mystery of Christ need to be seen against the backdrop of modern experience. If the 1960's was a decade of rebellion, it was also a time of hope and optimism in the future; the 1970's was, for many Australians, a period of idealism, experimentation and disappointment (often symbolized by the rise and fall of the Whitlam government); the 1980's has become known as the decade a crass materialism, greed and lost fortunes; and the 1990's a time of careful restructuring and cautious preparation for a precarious future in a world threatened by religious fundamentalism, ethnic wars and ecological disasters. Although we need to be careful in making such generalizations, we can rightly speak of a certain 'spirit' operating within an age--and note that this 'spirit' has the uncanny knack of influencing the way we think about the world and reality.
It is helpful to read such contemporary human experiences according to three distinct models or paradigms. Each model represents a significant turning point or transition in modern history; and it provides us with a different understanding of the Christ-mystery. The first is the transcendental or idealist paradigm which highlights the importance of individual human experience in our knowledge and understanding of reality. It depicts an understanding of Christ that resonates with our deepest human longings. The second way of viewing reality--the practical or political model--is more sensitive to negativity, suffering and evil that operate within the world, society and human lives. Within this paradigm, we are presented with a confronting and liberating Christ. There is yet a third transition that can be called the global paradigm: it reflects on the world and human existence according to our need for a new type of consciousness that is genuinely 'world'-oriented. These 'different ways of reading the world' provide different starting-points, questions and issues that influence the kind of christological investigations we make and the sort of christological answers we receive.
Throughout the 1960's and 1970's transcendental and narrative christologies (first paradigm) challenged the way most Christians thought of Jesus Christ by insisting on his genuine humanity and his historical life as a first-century Palestinian Jew. These christologies coincided with an optimistic belief in human life and progress: with the aid of science and technology, it was thought, all or most of the world's problems (such as poverty and disease) would be solved in time. Even the 'problem' of unravelling the life-story of Jesus could be 'solved' by applying 'scientific' techniques to the Scriptures. In this context, Jesus' humanness was no longer something to be covered over, but a source of life and hope for Christians and all people of goodwill. The 'humanised' Jesus was a more 'accessible' Jesus who related to people's everyday concerns.
By the 1980's a new mode of thought (second paradigm) had begun to emerge in Jesus-studies. These newer histories and theologies of Jesus noted that all christologies reflect the historical, political and cultural biases of their authors. In particular, it was noted that, when Jesus is interpreted from the vantage point of the poor and oppressed, we see a more radical and subversive Jesus who is caught up in the politics of his time. Such political christologies insist there can be no pure Jesus-studies: the Christ-mystery is always understood according to the 'context' of enquiry. Moreover, every context reflects particular social evils and political distortions whether these be the inequities and dehumanizing patterns of wealthy, Western nations (the political Jesus), the poverty and corruption of Latin American and other third-word countries (Jesus Christ liberator), or the widespread experience of gender-division that oppresses women (advocate for women). These christologies understand their role in terms of challenging distorted social systems and duhumanizing attitudes in the name of the liberating Christ.
As we head towards the third millennium, there is increasing awareness that the claims of Christianity--such as the claim that Jesus is the 'universal saviour figure'--need to be read in terms of other religious traditions. What, for example, is the relationship between Jesus and Mohammad, or Jesus and the Buddha? Moreover, it needs to be asked to what extent traditional expressions of belief in the Christ-mystery have been responsible for Christian anti-semitism? In the light of such questions, there is an attempt to develop more global christologies (third paradigm) with the aid of cross-cultural and interreligious dialogue.
We now turn to a more detailed discussion of contemporary christologies according to these three paradigms or ways of reflecting on Jesus Christ through the lenses of human experience, political reality and the emerging global situation.
As indicated, this approach begins with the question of what it means to be human. Many centuries ago, Aristotle defined the human as a 'rational animal'. Modern existentialist thought takes a different tack: to be human is to be involved in a dynamic process of living, growing, dying. We live in an evolving universe that is thrust towards an open future; humans are in integral part of this dynamic cosmos. More than this, humans represent the moment in which the cosmos attains self-consciousness. More than any other (known) creature, humans are this mysterious unity of matter and spirit enabling them to express the fundamental unity of the entire cosmos.
To admit that we live within the mystery of an evolving universe is also to admit that we live in relationship to the ultimate mystery--what most religious traditions call 'God'--who is the source and goal of all creation. To be genuinely human, then, is to be radically related to this divine mystery--even if many people today are reluctant to use the name 'God'. It is finally not a matter of rational thought or clear understanding or even the ability to name this God which accounts for our humanness. Whether we 'know' it or not, the divine mystery so pervades the cosmos and human experience that we 'live' within this mystery as fish live in the sea. Karl Rahner, who develops this anthropology, says that our small islands of knowledge are always grounded in the sea of infinite mystery. [ See Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith (New York: Seabury, 1978), ch. 2; and M. Buckley, Within the Holy Mystery in L. O'Donovan, ed., A World of Grace (New York: Seabury, 1980), ch. 3. ]
Once we situate ourselves within this dynamic or evolutionary understanding of the world and humanity, a number of other points follow. A major one is the realisation of human finitude. All human knowledge and experience is limited by time, place and culture. We can only hope to know and understand the world and ourselves according to our particular, historical situation. We might even say that, for us, humanness is much more a question than an answer. Nonetheless, we are called upon to live authentic human lives and make responsible human choices in the face of this unknown. In fact, to be human means to be involved in the process of becoming more human through the authentic use of human freedom--and despite the fact we often do not know where our decisions will lead us.
A further aspect that relates to modern experience is the tendency to reject the voices of tradition and authority unless they are also validated by one's 'own experience'. People are less inclined to keep on believing something simply because their parents or grandparents believed it. This becomes more understandable given the speed with which things are changing today. And as Australians, living in an increasingly pluralistic society, it would be naive to expect our children not to question the political, social, moral and religious values of their parents. If they accept the truth of these values, it will only be on account of their acceptance that these values are true and life-giving for them. Jesus Christ will be warmly embraced, outwardly rejected or indifferently ignored in accordance with how he relates to people's experience. He will not be simply accepted as the saviour-figure because of the power of tradition.
In the light of our modern cosmology and anthropology we will want to situate the saviour-figure in terms of an evolutionary understanding of the world in which the human being is called to authentic existence. The pioneering work of Teilhard de Chardin fits in here. He not only saw that the universe is a dynamic unity of matter and spirit; he also recognised that the evolutionary thrust of the universe from matter to spirit was due to the divine empowerment within creation. He further identifies that power with Jesus Christ who is the alpha and omega, the beginning and end, the origin and culmination, of all creation (see Colossians 1:15-16; Ephesians 1:9-11). Jesus Christ also represents the climax of divine creation and human history, the one in whom God's plan for the entire universe reaches its peak. Evolution, for Teilhard, is explicable only in terms of this dynamic activity of the cosmic Christ who is also the human-historical Jesus. [ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Christianity and Evolution (New York: Harcoourt & Brace, 1969); The Phenomenon of Man (London: William Collins, 1977); The Divine Milieu (London: Collins, 1960). See also, Denis Edwards, Jesus and the Cosmos (New York: Paulist Press, 1991); The God of Evolution (New York, Paulist Press, 1999). ]
In terms of human experience, Teilhard would suggest that the striving for world peace and human community are indications of the power of Christ operating within the created order. Christ 'saves' the cosmos from endless multiplicity and fragmentation which threaten the evolutionary impulse towards unity. At a human level, this means being 'saved' from the diabolical realities of sin and evil by the superior power of (divine) love. Whereas Teilhard was a scientist, and so wants to bridge the world of science with Christian faith, it is Karl Rahner who provides us with a more direct account of a christology based on contemporary views of the human person and human experience.
For Rahner, the human being's thrust towards the future, the inifinite, the divine mystery, is expressed in both general and specific terms. Generally, the human person lives in hope, acts with courage, dares to forgive and, above all, tries to love--all this despite the evident fact that despair, selfishness and all kinds of human guilt threaten to engulf our human lives. At a more specific level, Rahner asserts that human beings search in history for an answer to their quest for meaning and fulfillment. In other words, it is not adequate to simply hope that the universe is trustworthy or that our deepest human yearnings will be fulfilled. We seek confirmation of these realities in a saviour-figure who both shares our human experience (one like us) and yet whose human longings have already been achieved (the divine goal).
Rahner maintains that all authentic human life is lived with at least hopeful anticipation of this saviour-figure who assures us that our human longings for the divine mystery are not in vain. Moreover, the true saviour-figure will need to be one who lives life in full human freedom and yet in total surrender to the divine mystery. Both these dimensions--human freedom and surrender to God--are necessary since they are integral to our human identity and authenticity. It is also necessary that the historical life of the saviour-figure be given the divine seal of approval, that is, that the saviour be loved and accepted by God in a definitive way. The saviour-figure, of course, is perfectly embodied in Jesus of Nazareth who 'is one like us in all things but sin' while also being the specially annointed and chosen one of God or, indeed, God's own Son. In Christ Jesus, then, God both respects human freedom and responds to our human longing to be loved irrevocably by God.
This approach to christology through reflection on human experience in an evolutionary universe also situates the Christ-event as the high-point or climax of all creation and history. God does not act in the world in a way that violates the integral processes of the cosmos or the true freedom of human beings. To the contrary, the mystery of the Incarnation is nothing other than the confirmation that the unifying forces of the cosmos and the human yearnings for God are achievable through Christ because they have already occurred in Christ. Creation and salvation are not two separate and disconnected events in the history of the cosmos. Rather, they are part of the one movement of God's self-communication to the world which reaches its fulfillment and perfection in the divine mystery.
Consequently, political christologies have no difficulty in admitting that the world stands in need of 'salvation'. Their question is not whether human beings are in search of a saviour-figure but, given our evident need to be saved and liberated, how does Jesus Christ fulfill this role? How does the life and ministry, death and resurrection, of Jesus of Nazareth enable us to transform this situation of 'death' into a situation of 'life'? And there is a sense of urgency in their questioning.
The approach could be called 'christology through sociology' because it reads human experience in terms of the social, economic and political realities which shape human lives. [ Two classic texts, both from a South American perspective, are: Leonardo Boff, Jesus Christ Liberator (Maryknoll NY: Orbis, 1978); Jon Sobrino, Christology at the Crossroads (Maryknoll NY: Orbis, 1978). ] It specifically rejects the evolutionary optimism of a Teilhard de Chardin or Karl Rahner. It points to the 'political' realities of twentieth century life in which there has been more human suffering and death than in the entire history of the world. It develops its christology in the light of the three great twentieth century crises of Marxism, Auschwitz and the Third World. Following Marx, what is important is not theory but praxis (critical reflective action); following Jesus Christ, what is important is not a theology of Christ that 'explains' the world, but practical Christian discipleship which 'changes' the world and 'liberates' human beings.
In fact, all political christologies focus their reading of Jesus in his prophetic proclamation of the reign of God: 'The reign of God is at hand: repent and believe in the gospel' (Mark 1:15). We have seen earlier that this proclamation was inclusive of all, but especially of the 'little ones': the poor and the persecuted, those who suffer and mourn, the ones who work for justice, the merciful and the peace-makers (Matthew 5:3-10). Political christologies emphasize that these kingdom-values involve both personal and social conversion. They challenge the violence and selfishness that oppress human lives and they invite people to a new way of life together. The church too stands in need of ecclesial conversion: to return to the kingdom-values by confronting its own tendencies to opt for the comfortable 'bourgeois' life.
What is it about these bourgeois values that is so opposed to the kingdom values of Jesus and the gospels? According to German theologian Johann Metz, bourgeois culture is a culture of apathy and lost memory: people have lost the ability to feel sorrow and guilt; and they no longer have the capacity to grieve suffering and death. In the absence of these human and humane qualities, bourgeois culture is unable to express pathos, love and compassion. Caught in a time-warp with the foreboding sense of a 'faceless evolution', Metz thinks that bourgeois life has lost any real hope of changing things or making a different future in which the human being counts. Human life has become banal, predictable and boring. Having been bombarded with technology--and now totally dependant on it--, affluent cultures have lost the ability to be shocked or surprised (even by the images of devestation and death on our television screens).
For Metz, these bourgeois attitudes are not so much directly opposed to kingdom values as they are deaf to their life-giving power. Consequently, he seeks to confront bourgeois society with the dangerous and subversive stories of Jesus who challenged the society of his time with words and actions of crisis. Recalling a statement of Jesus in the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas--'He who is close to me is close to the fire'--Metz wants us to be shocked, surprised and confronted by the human figure of Jesus who boldly proclaimed the kingdom in the face of opposition and was then led to his death in a state of utter human depravity. Our own identification with the dangerous and suffering Jesus will hopefully shock us out of our complacency, enable us to feel empathy with the victims of history, and then empower us to be proclaimers of God's reign in our own lives, the church and society at large.
Political christology is, then, primarily a christology of discipleship. It calls for a deep, personal conversion to the kingdom values in a world where justice, love and peace are suffocated by the dominant forces of industrial capitalism. Seeking to unlock the hardened hearts of mainly western, middle-class Christians, it challenges them to true compassion and solidarity with the victims of history by entering into and imitating Jesus' own dangerous story. This is a story of hope for humanity insofar as the story of Jesus includes the mystery of the resurrection. However, as long as social justice and true humanity elude our world, the 'saving power' of Jesus will not be the transforming reality that Christianity proclaims it to be.
Just as 1968 was the year of peace marches and anti-war demonstrations in wealthy, capitalist 'northern nations' (notably Europe and North America--and also Australia), it was also a time of raised hopes and consciousness in the peoples of the poor, dependant 'nations of the south' (notably Latin America). 1968 was the year that Paulo Friere published his book Pedagogy of The Oppressed which provided a method for empowering the poor to take up their own struggles (he called this the 'conscientization of the poor') [ Paulo Friere, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Continuum, 1970). ] In the same year, the Catholic bishops of Latin America met in Medellin, Columbia, and produced a challenging document on the situation of poverty and injustice that was rife throughout the Continent. Specifically, the Medellin document recognised the intimate link between 'liberation' and 'redemption': they proclaimed that 'all liberation is an anticipation of the complete redemption brought by Christ'. The bishops also spoke of the priority or 'option for the poor' which marked Jesus' own earthly life and should therefore be central to Christian life and ministry.
Soon after Medellin, the Peruvian Jesuit, Gustavo Gutiérrez published his work entitled A Theology of Liberation. [ Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll NY: Orbis, 1973) ]. Since that time, there have been hundreds or perhaps thousands of works on 'liberation theology'. These have sprung up not only in Latin America but also in Africa, Asia and among indigenous and other impoverished peoples throughout the world. Liberation christologies reflect on Jesus Christ from the perspective of the suffering of particular oppressed groups. They begin by listening to the voices, the struggles and the outcries of the 'disfigured children of God'. These voices provoke a sense of 'religious outrage': if God is a God of total goodness and love, and if Jesus has come to 'save' us and 'redeem' the world, then all people have the responsibility to change the situation of oppression into a situation of liberation. To refuse to challenge the unjust system is tantamount to being complicit with evil.
Liberation and other political christologies are highly conscious of the social and political nature of human existence. Redemption and sin, grace and guilt, salvation and evil are embedded in the very fabric of human society. It is not only individual people who are good and just or sinful and inhuman; social systems (whether capitalist, socialist, democratic or monarchical) are also inherently moral or immoral, just or unjust, life-giving or death-dealing. Typically, social systems will exhibit a mixture of goodness and evil. Nonetheless, any social system which promotes violence or walks on the heads of people's dignity needs to be called 'inherently evil'. In order to understand this evil or 'social sin', it is important to uncover the root causes through social analysis. Why in some countries, for example, do 5% of the people control 90% of the wealth? Is this an economic or class based evil? If so, marxist socio-economic analysis may help. Why are indigenous people (such as Australian aboriginal people) so often dehumanized and made voiceless? Is this due to racism? If so, it needs to be named, confronted and changed.
However, it is not only society that stands in need of critique. The Christian tradition itself can be a cause of oppression. How often in Christian history has the suffering and death of Christ been used to keep people in their situation of powerlessness? How many sermons have promoted the idea that to be a 'good Christian' it is necessary to suffer quietly and passively as Christ did? How often has the image of the kingly Christ been used to justify the tyrannical misuse of power on the grounds that obedience to all civil and ecclesiastical authority (even if corrupt) is obedience to the will of God. Liberation christologies acknowledge that false images of Jesus Christ are part of the history of oppression that has been especially evident in the 'colonial era' when the Gospel of the Church and the Sword of the State were too often hand in hand.
In marked contrast to the passive Jesus and the imperial Christ is the image of Jesus Christ the liberator. Liberation christologies focus on the historical Jesus of the Gospels who was neither a passive victim nor a dominating Lord. The liberationist Jesus is depicted as challenging the unjust powers of his day, healing the sick and broken-hearted, forming community with the marginalized. He is involved in conflict, rejection and struggle in the name of the living God who alone is king. The 'option for the poor' is seen to be at the heart of Jesus' own ministry of proclaiming and enacting the reign of God. Among key gospel texts which are used to highlight Jesus' liberating ministry is his recitation from the scroll of Isaiah:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has appointed me to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives, to give the blind new sight, and to set free all who are oppressed. (Luke 4: 16-18)Significantly, in Luke's Gospel, this passage is set at the beginning of Jesus' ministry. It is as if everything that follows in Jesus' life takes it cue from here. Whatever else about Jesus' public life, Luke understands that it has special relevance for the poor and victims of history. Luke's entire Gospel can be read as a liberation christology in which the powerful and mighty of the earth will be overthrown by the little ones (see the Magnificat, 2:46-55).
The suffering and death of Jesus are read as liberating acts of God through Jesus. Jesus does not walk blindly and passively to his death. Rather, his death comes about as the result of his active engagement with the forces of evil and injustice which pervaded the society of his time. Of course, Jesus was a victim to those powerful forces. Yet, even in the face of death, he retains his powers of compassion and love: 'Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing' (Luke 23: 34). Jesus nowhere evades his active mission of love and service--had he done so, he may well have evaded the tragic circumstances that led to his crucifixion and death. Consequently, from a liberation perspective,
the cross reveals that God identifies with the one unjustly executed rather than the rulers. Far from legitimating suffering, the cross . . . shows victims that God is in powerful solidarity with them in their suffering, and opens the possibility of their own active engagement, both interiorly and exteriorly, against the forces of oppression. [ Elizabeth Johnson, Consider Jesus: Waves of Renewal in Christology (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 92. ]The resurrection of Jesus is seen as the final confirmation that God is stronger than all forces of evil, negativity and death. It tells us that evil does not have the last word; equally, it commissions us to oppose all expressions of evil--personal, social and political--that we encounter in our world.
Liberation christology strongly emphasizes the importance of praxis, that is, critical action on the basis of reflection and critical reflection on the basis of action. In other words, it demands getting one's hands dirty through solidarity with the victims of the world in their active opposition to injustice. It may well demand, as with Jesus and the Christian martyrs, that we put our very lives on the line. However, liberation theology is not a purely social action movement. This is where critical reflection is paramount. Such reflection must begin and end with Jesus Christ who alone is the liberating Word of God in our midst. It is this living, liberating Word that reunites us to the servant christology of the scriptures and provides us with a new image of God for our time: a God who is especially present in the poor and oppressed. Liberation christology tells us that we can meet this God only through our identification with Jesus in the poor.
Feminist christologies follow a similar pattern to liberation christologies. First, they seek to understand and name the situation which oppresses women. They notice two significant factors. Most human societies are inherently patriarchal, that is, most positions of political power and social prestige are reserved for men; typically, women are at the bottom of the pile, subordinate to and dependant upon better-paid, better-fed and better-educated men. This social structure is supported by what is termed androcentrism (from the Greek 'andros' meaning adult male) where the 'norm' for 'humanness' is 'maleness'; it follows that women are less human than their more 'normal' counterparts. Taken together, patriarchal structures and androcentric thinking lead to what feminist theologians name 'the sin of sexism'. This leads them to critique the ways in which the Christian tradition has contributed to the subordination of women.
The second step involves the critique of sexist interpretations of Jesus Christ. Noting that the historical Jesus was a male human being, feminist theologians claim that Jesus' maleness has been used in such a way as to falsify both the reality of God and the reality of being human. Certainly, in Christian belief, Jesus reveals God to us in a special way; and, certainly, both Jewish and Christian scriptures speak of God in male terms such as king, male warrior, or Abba Father. However, only a fundamentalist reading of scripture could take these images or metaphors in such a literal way as to imagine God being male. God is evidently beyond gender.
Nonethless, it is important to recognise that the scriptures do speak of God in female form as mother, midwife, nurse, mother-hen brooding over her young, or Sophia (Wisdom). Similarly, Jesus often uses female images when speaking of the reign of God: it is women who knead the dough and go in search of the lost coin. The point here is not that God is literally female, but that these female images of God have been neglected in the Christian tradition. This is why many Christians still find it difficult to speak of God in anything but male terms. It may be said that Jesus himself uses the male term Abba and that we should do likewise. However, if we accept the whole of Jesus' teachings on the reality of God, we will notice that the characteristics of this God--compassion, love, intimacy, friendship, forgiveness--are probably much more 'feminine' than 'masculine'. As well, the scriptural image of God as (Holy) Spirit ('ruah')--hovering, creating and renewing the earth--especially lends itself to the feminine 'she' rather than the masculine 'he'.
The other part of this critique concerns the way in which the gender of Jesus has been falsely interpreted to indicate male superiority. It has been suggested, for example, that only men can truly imitate Jesus. It is not a long step from here to say that Jesus' saving power is only fully available to men. Evidently, the mystery of the Incarnation means that the Word became flesh in the human reality of Jesus who was Jewish, who spoke Aramaic, who was a carpenter, and who was male. These historical factors were not insignificant to the human Jesus: they defined his world. However, if the Incarnation has meaning for the world, and if christology has any meaning at all, the issue of Jesus' gender is no more significant than the issue of his nationality. Moreover, if women are genuinely human, and if the God of Jesus is the God of love and salvation, then Jesus' embodiment as a male is a matter of historical contingency. As well, if Jesus is to be experienced as the saviour of women and men today, he needs to be understood as one in whom femininity and masculinity are authentically integrated.
A feminist liberation christology will need to show that Jesus is such a person. This is the third and final step of the process. It shows that Jesus' programme of justice, peace and love is genuinely inclusive of all people. Despite the patriarchal structures which operated in the society of Jesus' time, the various stories reported to us in the Gospels show no androcentric attitudes in Jesus. In fact, Jesus is remembered and reported as treating women and men with equal respect and dignity. He even goes out of his way to stand up against oppressive laws and attitudes which denigrated and ridiculed women. Examples of this include: Jesus' defence of the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-11); his welcoming acceptance of the woman who visits the house of Simon the Pharisee (Luke 7:36-50); his challenge to the abusive divorce practices of the time which gave all the say to men and none to women (Mark 10:1-12; Matthew 5:28-32); and Jesus' attacks on those who oppressed widows (Mark 12:38ff).
Jesus shows no concern for following the social and religious taboos of his time when these interfered with his ministry of proclaming God's inclusive reign of forgiveness, love and compassion. This is evident in his healing ministry where he directly challenges various taboos regarding what is 'clean' and what is 'unclean'. For example, it was generally accepted that women's blood was 'unclean'. However, on one occasion, Jesus responds to the touch of a 'constantly unclean' woman (she had been haemoraging for twelve years) by demanding she come forth to praise her faith and place her as a model of human trust in God (Mark 5: 25-34). Jesus does not simply heal the physical malady of the woman. More poignantly, he returns to the woman the lost dignity that human prejudice had denied her. There are many other examples--touching a dead girl, mixing with female prostitutes, talking to foreign women, befriending women as his equals--where Jesus' words and actions confront the sexism of his day.
It is not only that Jesus 'treats' all people--women and men, adults and children, the sick and the healthy--with equal respect and dignity. He also 'empowers' them to take up their own authority as authentic persons. One of his more radical moves in this regard was the call of women to be disciples. Whereas the patriarchal system worked to keep women in a position of inferiority, to be mothers and home-makers, Jesus teaches that the mission of the kingdom takes precedence over social and family patterns. There are plenty of examples where women like Joanna, Mary Magdalene, Martha and Mary, and Jesus' own mother, Mary, are empowered by Jesus to take on discipleship-ministry. This pattern is highlighted in the stories of the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus where it is women rather than male disciples who are centre-stage. Feminist scholars also point to the vigorous ministry that women played in the early church as missionaries, teachers, healers, leaders of community-churches, and the like.
There is enough here to indicate that Jesus can be reclaimed today as 'advocate for women'. He does this through his proclamation and embodiment of the kingdom-community of justice, love and peace. In this community, no-one is to be excluded or considered inferior on account of race, social position, or gender. Where traditional attitudes, laws and taboos impede this call to rightful dignity and equality, they are to be challenged and discarded. Feminist readings of the scriptures show how patriarchal structures and androcentric attitudes begin to blunt the radical nature of Jesus' mission of universal inclusiveness. In this context, what is remarkable is the way in which the scriptures contain so many 'memories' of Jesus' advocacy for women. These memories confront all non-inclusive theologies which would deny women true social, political and religious equality.
This new story of our human, global co-existence is only beginning to be written. For some, it will be a story of great beauty and promise as diverse cultures and religions begin to meet at new levels of depth and meaning. Others see the story in more pessimistic terms as they contemplate the profound inability of human beings to celebrate their ethnic, ideological and religious differences.
Quite evidently, Christian intolerance toward other religions has been an unfortunate aspect of Christian history. [ As one example of Christian intolerance towards Judaism, see Dan Cohn-Sherbok, The Crucified Jew: Twenty Centuries of Christian Anti-Semitism (London: HarperCollinsReligious, 1992). ] Moreover, such intolerance is still prevalent today in various parts of the globe. Theologians ponder the question of how belief in Jesus the Christ has contributed to this state of affairs. And they wonder how Christian belief can be reformulated in a way that is both faithful to belief in Christ as saviour and yet genuinely respectful of the freedom of other people to live according to their own cultural and religious traditions. After all, the scriptures themselves teach us that 'God wills all people to be saved' (1 Timothy 2:5). The Second Vatican Council applied this teaching to other religions by declaring that they often reflect the divine ray of truth and so can be authentic paths of salvation. [ Declaration on the Relations of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, article 2. ]
However, we are still left with the christological question of how Jesus Christ is to be understood as saviour of the world. [ A good overview of different theoretical positions on this question is Paul Knitter, No Other Name? A Critical Survey of Christian Attitudes toward the World Religions (Maryknoll NY: Orbis, 1985). ] The traditional approach to this question can be called exclusivism because it generally 'excludes' the reality of the divine presence outside of Christian baptism and the explicit confession in Jesus as Christ, Lord and Saviour. It follows that other religions are false and other saviour-figures are, at best, merely models of how to live a reasonable human life. Christianity, it was maintained, is the 'supernatural' religion whereas other religions are purely 'natural'. This approach was often based on an over-literal reading of the non-scriptural text which stated: 'Outside the church there is no salvation'. Nonetheless, it must be stated that most theologians operating within this model left room for the 'mystery of God's love' which is available, albeit in exceptional circumstances, to 'pagans and the unbaptised'.
Well before the Second Vatican Council, most Catholic theologians were already beginning to adopt a more optimistic and inclusive understanding of Christ's role in salvation. The best-known expression of this inclusivism is Karl Rahner's 'anonymous Christianity' [See Karl Rahner, The One Christ and the Universality of Salvation, Theological Investigations 16 (New York: Seabury, 1979), 199-224. ] His position flows from his notion of the cosmic Christ which we viewed earlier. Fundamentally, there is one God, one universe and one saving mystery, Jesus Christ, who mediates God's love and salvation to the world. Christians are those who know Jesus Christ in an explicit way. However, the saving mystery of Christ is not reserved for the church and its members. It is present throughout the universe or cosmos and manifests itself in the lives, cultures and religions of people everywhere. In fact, for Hindus or Buddhists, for example, the saving reality of Christ's presence in their religions means that they achieve salvation precisely by being good Hindus or good Buddhists. Here, they come to 'know' Christ in an implicit rather than an explicit way.
Another example of the inclusivist approach is that of Catholic priest and interreligious scholar, Raimon Panikkar, who once made the startling comment that he went to India a Christian, found himself a Hindu, and became a Buddhist--all without ceasing to be a Christian! [ Raimon Panikkar's most significant work outlining an inclusivist approach is The Unknown Christ of Hinduism (rev. ed., Maryknoll NY: Orbis, 1981). See also, The Jordan, the Tiber, the Ganges: Three Kairological Moments of Christic Self-Conscciousness in his A Dwelling Place for Wisdom (Louisville Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993) 109-159. ] Panikkar had the advantage of being born of European-Christian and Asian-Hindu parents. He proposes the interesting idea that Jesus' identity as Christ and Lord should not preclude other possible ways of naming 'the saving Supername'.
In other words, he is suggesting that the Word of God is capable of more than one Incarnation. This allows for the possibility of the incarnate Word being present in the saviour-figures of other religions. Panikkar likens the world's religions to the various colours of the rainbow: each reflects a different aspect of the one divine saving mystery that Christians call the Christ and rightly identify with Jesus of Nazareth. However, Christ cannot be limited to any one religion or even to Jesus of Nazareth since 'every being is a christophany, a showing forth of Christ'.
Some scholars today suggest we need to move beyond both the exclusive and inclusive approaches. For them, the whole attempt to ascribe to Jesus Christ a universal saving role has resulted in an attitude of Christian superiority that has been historically disastrous for people of other traditions. Although this position is sometimes called relativism, it does not say that any religion is necessarily as good as another, or that all religions are equal, or that all saving figures perform the same role. It still affirms that faith in Jesus Christ is necessary for Christian salvation. However, it does not want to impose Christ on other peoples or to suggest that the truth of their religions is to be measured against Christianity. After all, it was this kind of thinking that led Christians to develop such negative attitudes towards the Jewish people 'for turning their backs on Christ'. The solution that is advocated is to say that Jesus Christ is a universally relevant historical-figure (in much the same way as Moses or Mohammad) but an ultimately specific saviour-figure.
None of these approaches is without difficulties. Exclusivism can and should be discarded as being against the central Gospel teaching of God's universal saving presence. Inclusivism is a better option though it is problematic in the way it imposes Christian understanding on other people's experiences. Others critique inclusive approaches on the grounds that they do not adequately acknowledge the profound unity between the Christ-mystery and the historical Jesus of Nazareth. Likewise, relativism has the significant difficulty of showing itself compatible with the fullness of Christian revelation. Perhaps the major difficulty is the Western-Christian tendency to want a completely rational solution to what is, after all, the profound mystery of creation. Jesus himself did not come to give Christians a kind of secret knowledge of the universe. Rather, he entered into the reality of people's lives and challenged them to the new community of justice, love and peace in the name of the living God. Today, we stand at a point of human history where a new global community needs to be founded on the basis of interreligious and cross-cultural dialogue.
There is a story told in Mark's Gospel (7:24-30) where Jesus is confronted by a foreigner, a Syro-Phoenician woman. Jesus' reaction indicates his initial discomfort with her: 'It isn't right to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs'. However, the woman is persistent and retorts: 'Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's left-overs'. By now, Jesus' interest is captured to the point that his entire attitude changes. He commends the woman for her insight, heals her daughter and, in Matthew's version, praises her for such great faith (15:28). This story is sometimes used in feminist christologies to show how Jesus came to a new awareness of the importance of women in the kingdom-community. It may also be read as a moment in Jesus' ministry where he comes to a new consciousness of the importance of the 'foreigner'. His dialogue with this foreign woman changes the way he thinks and acts. Christianity stands in a similar position with regard to the 'foreign' religions. It is still the moment of discomfort. However, like Jesus, Christians need to enter into the dialogue, to be open to the challenge it brings, and be prepared to think and act differently as a result of the encounter.
In acknowledging Jesus as the Saviour of the world, Christians need to hold in tension two distinct principles: Jesus is Christ, Lord and Saviour, the one who mediates the God of all love and goodness to the world; other people, cultures and religions experience God and 'salvation' by other names (or by no name) and with different understandings. Our mission as Christians is wrongly understood if it amounts to convincing the other person to our way of seeing the world. Our mission is certainly to testify to the reality that our experience of grace and salvation, truth and goodness, forgiveness and love, comes to us through the one whom we name the Christ and who is identified with Jesus of Nazareth. However, as Karl Rahner once said, proclaiming Christ is not the same thing as informing people that the continent of Australia exists! It is not a matter of intellectual knowledge, but of the knowledge of the heart. Heart-knowledge cannot be imposed: it must be shared; it must be two-way. Christian mission is first and foremost a call to human authentici
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