Marginal Christianity

Gerhard Lohfink in his No Irrelevant Jesus offers the following list of ways he sees the church domesticating Jesus (black print).   This list is from Scot McKnight’s blog at http://nblo.gs/11kDRL .   I offer what I take as translations of them for my life in red print. Jesus is tamed and made irrelevant in a terrible way when we cease to speak about his imminent expectation. What if Jesus really is coming back, perhaps today, even this hour?   How would that change my life? Jesus is rendered irrelevant when his preaching of judgment, which makes up a significant portion of the gospel tradition, is ignored and there is talk only of the loving and tender Jesus. And if he’s really coming back, what if I have to account before him for how I’ve served him in my life? Jesus is tamed when there is no more preaching about his sharp words against the rich. “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kin...

Aug 13, 2014 by Stanley Hauerwas            http://www.christiancentury.org/reviews/2014-07/untamed-jesus          Distinguished New Testament scholar Gerhard Lohfink and his brother, Norbert Lohfink, a Jesuit and an Old Testament scholar, are members of the Catholic Integrated Community in Germany. The community was founded in 1945 by Catholics who thought that Nazi rule in Germany was not some freak event but an indication that a deep moral failing was at the very heart of German life. Members of the Integrated Community believe that if Germany is to have a moral future, a fundamental reconstruction of German life is demanded. That project, they believe, requires a people committed to living as an alternative community. The Catholic Integrated Community now has over a thousand members. That Lohfink and his brother are members of the Integrated Comm...