Marginal Christianity

“There can be no theology of the incarnation which does not become a theology of the cross . As soon as you say incarnation, you say cross. God did not become man according to the measure of our conceptions of being a man. He became the kind of man we do not want to be: an outcast, accursed, crucified. Ecce homo! Behold the man! is not a statement which arises from the confirmation of our humanity and is made on the basis of ‘like is known by like’; it is a confession of faith which recognizes God’s humanity in the dehumanized Christ on the cross” ( The Crucified God, 205). “He became the kind of man we do not want to be” – there you have it in a nutshell! -Why we have the kind of Christianity we’ve had through most of Western Church history. -Why Christmas is far more important to us than Easter. -Why we cannot admit he is the measure of genuine humanity and opt either for a quasi- or even fully docetic Christologies, on the one hand, or an ethical, moral(istic) Jesus, on t...

Andres Serrano's photograph of the cross of Christ suspended in a beaker of the artist's own urine has, not surprisingly, evoked head-scratching perplexity and vigorous opposition and condemnation. An artist's commentary on his or her work is obviously a place start in assessing that work. Serrano comments: ""At the time I made Piss Christ, I wasn't trying to get anything across . . . In hindsight, I'd say Piss Christ is a reflection of my work, not only as an artist, but as  a Christian." Say what, Andres? Christian? Really? "The thing about the crucifix itself" he continues,"is that we treat it almost like a fashion accessory. When you see it, you're not horrified by it at all, but what it represents is the crucifixion of a man. And for Christ to have been crucified and laid on the cross for three days where he not only bled to death, he shat himself and he peed himself to death. "So if Piss Christ upsets you, m...

Jesus Walks on Water (6:47-52) Mark ties this story with the feeding by mentioning the disciples’ failure to “understand about the loaves” (v.52). Likely, then, the two stories make the same point. There the point was Jesus’ royal messianic identity and authority as leader and agent of God’s New Exodus. We must look for the meaning of this story along those lines as well. Mark began his gospel by calling Jesus “Son of God” (1:1). And he ends it similarly with the centurion crying, “Truly this man was God’s Son!” (15:39). All the teachings, stories, and events in between fill out what this term means. It is just this that is at issue in the feeding and walking on water stories. And it is just this that Jesus’ disciples (then and now) struggle to embrace. Misunderstandings we have of the phrase “Son of God” don’t help. In the Old Testament it meant the king who was to rule the people as YHWH would (see Ps.72). For many of us today it means a divine figure, the second person ...

There’s a South Indian proverb that says, “Nothing grows under a banyan tree.” And it’s a proverb about leadership, actually. Here’s what I mean. Banyan leadership or banana leadership? The banyan is a great tree . It spreads its branches, drops air-roots, develops secondary trunks and covers the land. A full grown banyan may cover more than an acre of land! A banyan tree in Bangladesh (yes that’s ONE tree!)Birds, animals and humans find shelter under its shade. But nothing grows under its dense foliage.  When it dies, the ground beneath lies barren and scorched. The banana tree is the opposite. Six months after it sprouts, small shoots appear around it. The beginnings of new banana trees, a second generation. Banana tree from KeralaAt twelve months another circle of shoots appear beside the first ones, which are now six months old. Third generation banana trees are sprouting! At eighteen months the main trunk bears fruit: Banan...

( by Peter J. Leithart 12.1 5.15) The point of Trinitarian theology is not simply that there are three instead of one. We can’t just plug our pre-conceptions about God into the Trinity, and say that now we are Trinitarian. We can’t assume Deism, the idea that God is a watchmaker who leaves the world to run on its own, and then say that we are Trinitarian because we believe in three watchmakers. We can’t assume that God is sheer power like Allah, and then say we are Trinitarian because we believe in three Allahs and not just one.  To confess the Trinity is not merely to confess a number, but to confess that the true God is a certain kind of God. What kind of God? For Paul, the answer to that question has everything to do with Jesus. Read more at http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/leithart/2015/12/confessing-trinity

  Fr. Stephen Freeman 1 Comment   In my March lecture in San Francisco, I made an assertion that is worth isolating for an article. That assertion is that we are created in the image of the Crucified Christ, and that this is essential in understanding what it means to be human. I have been asked where I got such an idea. The most simple answer is: the Scriptures.   Arguably, the first reference to the Crucified Christ occurs in Rev. 13:5. All who dwell on the earth will worship [the Beast], whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. (Rev 13:8) The Lamb, slain from the foundation of the cosmos (τοῦ ἐσφαγμένου ἀπὸ καταβολῆς κόσμου), is St. John’s reference to the pre-existent Christ. This is easily familiar from his description in the gospel: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.   He was in the beginning with God. All things were made throug...

May 19, 2015 J. R. Daniel Kirk For the past six and a half years I have been working on a book whose end is now in sight. I’m calling it A Man Attested by God: the Human Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels . The question that has pushed me to endure through all of the trials and tribulations of the writing has been this: What does it matter that Jesus was fully human? Through no fault of the churches I grew up in, I think that I had a fairly flat understanding of the identity of Jesus and what it meant: Jesus is God. Therefore, all of the awesome stuff Jesus does he does (a) because he is God and (b) for the express purpose of demonstrating his deity. Jesus is human. This is because (a) we suck, so (b) Jesus has to be able to die for us. The only value to be found in his humanity was his death. Or, if we wanted to expand it a little bit, as in Hebrews, we might say that he occupied the same sucky existence we have (temptations to sin and the like) but mana...

Christology: twelve grammatical rules (Ben Meyers)   I've just finished another semester teaching christology. This is one of my favourite classes. (My other favourite is the Trinity.) Really it's one of the joys of my life to be able to explore such things in a classroom setting. In the tutorials we worked our way through two of the richest works on christology ever written: the third volume of Irenaeus's Against Heresies , followed by Athanasius's On the Incarnation . The twelve weekly lectures were as follows: Part I. Lord Jesus Christ: New Testament Christology   1. The Son of Man: Christ in the Synoptic Gospels 2. The great interchange: Christ in Paul’s letters 3. The Word made flesh: Christ in the Gospel of John  Part II. The Iron in the Fire: The Doctrine of the Incarnation  4. Adam recapitulated (Irenaeus) 5. Wisdom, Word, and Image (Origen) 6. What is not assumed is not healed (Gregory of Nazianzus) 7. The iron in the fire: two nat...

http://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2014/05/29/how-jesus-became-god-per-ehrman/ May 29, 2014     Having been asked to review Bart Ehrman’s new book, How Jesus Became God (HarperOne, 2014), for the Christian Century, I take the opportunity here also to comment on it.  This book is another of his now “best-selling” publications directed to a general readership, and, as with these earlier books (e.g., Misquoting Jesus ), this one seems intended to startle naïve Christians uninformed about biblical scholarship, agitate and respond to Christian apologists, and reassure fellow sceptics and agnostics (Ehrman’s self-description) that they have some basis for their doubts. Ehrman is generally a good communicator, and one of the positive things one can say about the book is that it is clearly written, and readily accessible to readers with little or no prior acquaintance with the issues and scholarly methods involved in the topic.  Indeed,...

Orthodox christology has insisted on both the full deity and humanity of Jesus Christ.   In practice, however, the emphasis has fallen on the “fully divine.”   Jesus’ humanity has usually been used to anchor his story in first century a.d. Palestine and to highlight his solidarity with us viz-a-viz his human energies and emotions.   Liberal christologies did more justice to his humanity and its normative or at least insistently exemplary character.   Unfortunately, it did so at the cost of rendering the “fully God” side of the statement opaque or non-existent.   I want to suggest that if we take both the Orthodox and liberal views seriously we can fashion a more adequate and fully Orthodox christology. The orthodox insistence on the full humanity and deity of Jesus Christ is, in my judgment, well-founded though often its execution leaves something to be desired.   Liberal christologies contribute that “to be desired” element by raising the human Je...

http://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2012/12/11/early-high-christology-a-recent-assessment-of-scholarly-debate/ December 11, 2012   I have to confess failing to notice earlier a major and important critical review of scholarly work on the origins of “high christology” by Andrew Chester:  “High Christology — Whence, When and Why?” Early Christianity 2 (2011): 22-50.  This is a very clear, accurate and incisive discussion, giving a good map of current/recent contributions/contributors and key issues. Chester first lays out the various views espoused in current/recent scholarship: (1) “High christology as late”: Maurice Casey, Geza Vermes, J.D.G. Dunn, all, though in different ways, contending that Jewish monotheism would have prevented any view of Jesus as “divine”, at least for the first several decades.  (Vermes even offering the somewhat desperate proposal that Philippians 2:6-11 was a 2nd-century insertion, as Paul could just neve...