(This update is based on a few sources: Marianne Sawicki’s “Seeing The Lord: Resurrection and Early Christian Practices”, Lecture #4 of Sharon Betcher’s “Constructive Theology II: Christology” course at Vancouver School of Theology, and my prior reading of the works of John Dominic Crossan.)
In the 1999 film “Galaxy Quest”, a group of B-list Hollywood actors is abducted by a race of extra-terrestrials who have received transmission of their cheesy sci-fi television series, and misinterpreted the episodes as “historical documents.” This alien culture is entirely credulous and cannot conceive of fictional narrative as an art form, or as a medium of truth. To them, the only alternative to credulous sincerity is “deception” and “lies”.
When Albert Schweitzer assessed the first “Historical Jesus” quest, in 1906, he said something along the lines of the following: in searching for Jesus, these thinkers had looked down the long well of history, and seen their own reflections shining back at them. Regardless of the accuracy of this view, the enterprise has continued largely unabated (though certainly adapted).
There are serious challenges with any attempt to postulate a historical figure of Jesus. We have no access to the man, whatsoever. The narratives that we have about him bear only the slightest resemblance to what we would consider a fact-based “life-story”. Marianne Sawicki insists that it is a modernist error to believe that the narrative gospels “deliver” Jesus to us. Rather, she says, they offer us a way of accessing a present reality of “the Risen Lord”. To use them as historical documents is not only to divert them from their original purpose, but in fact to dramatically misuse and misconstrue them.
If we have no access to an historical figure named Jesus of Nazareth, then any quest to discover him in situ is doomed to failure - as historical practice. However, Sharon Betcher in her course “Constructive Theology II: Christology” at Vancouver School of Theology asserts that they are not therefore bankrupt of value or insight. Rather, they need to be seen through the lenses of constructive christology. In this light, they can be rehabilitated and become a boon to our preaching, teaching, and practice of Christian faith.
The primary assumption of contemporary historical Jesus christologies is that Jesus’ life, death, and teachings represent a social/spiritual/theological/economic program that is defined relative to the programmatic of Roman Imperial colonialism within which Jesus’ ministry took place - and that this Jesus program can be translated into the contemporary context and thus provide us with a way of being faithfully in the world. This is notably contrary to the objectives of the original 19th century “quest” - which was to deliver a Jesus who was capable of being appreciated and appropriated by a non-spiritual, rationalistic, secular culture.
One of the most prominent scholars engaged in this work today is my own teacher, John Dominic Crossan. His method - carefully designed and skillfully adhered to - is to first analyze the best historical information, from archaeology, primary documents, and other sources, in order to establish context, into which he places the textual traditions of the church. The following step, often left unarticulated, is to analogize between that context and this one, and then challenge oneself to apply Jesus' program analogically in our own lives. (In this christology, it is the "program" or "programmatic" that stands-in conceptually for "the Christ.")
Unfortunately for this method, there are no extant texts about Jesus that were composed within living memory of his life, so we are forced to employ some circular reasoning - “I believe this text is early because it reflects what I believe to be early traditions.”
One important limitation of this approach is highlighted by the fact that it seems to be pursued only by men of european extraction. Historical Jesus christologies depend for their relevancy on a primary relationship with Jesus as ethicist, spiritual teacher, and social movement leader. For those whose primary relationship with Jesus is as fellow-sufferer, true God, or mystical lover, however, the precise interface between his purported activities and the socio-political context of his times is not an area of great interest.
The warning here to theologians and those in practice of ministry is that knowledge of the current state of the historical Jesus quest will not necessarily equip us to engage the theological horizon of concern of the people that we may encounter. We run the risk, if we neglect the lessons of post-modern thought, of believing that through this method we can “get” (or get hold-of) Jesus in a way that is somehow more legitimate than other (intellectually defensible) ways.
A second liability is in the fact that, when you examine the scriptural texts for historical relevance, you find only the communities that formed them and not Jesus himself. Therefore, we can speak only in the most general terms about the context from which they arose. Was it Galilee, or Judea, or Samaria, or Perea, or Roman Asia? Was it the 30s, or 40s, or 70s CE? Was it among Greek-speaking or Aramaic-speaking Jews? Each of these details has a necessary impact on the historical framing of a narrative or saying, and any time we attempt to answer them we find ourselves gazing down Schweitzer’s long well of history. We are left with only the umbrella context of the eastern regions of the Empire in the 1st century - which does little to add meaning to individual pericopes or units of tradition.
However, as a constructive christology alongside other such christologies, the historical Jesus endeavour can yield benefits. Post-modernity may become blind to the hidden structures of oppression and colonization that persist in our world, which the careful analysis of Roman Imperial colonialism can reveal. The overlooking of the Empire as a historical context has resulted in a great deal of questionable interpretation. Furthermore, people who are dissatisfied with their exposure to Jesus in mystical or theistic terms may find good news in a Jesus who is an ethicist and a social reformer.
Of course, the Jesus narratives are not equivalent to the imaginary 1970s sci-fi “GalaxyQuest” series. But nor are they historical documents, and we do ourselves a disservice if we try too hard to read them through the lens of post-Enlightenment historical facticity. Ultimately, the historical Jesus scholarship is itself culturally-located and contextually-determined (“Of course it is,” says post-modern thought). If we can keep this in mind, then we can employ its insights carefully and faithfully as we try to “get” not Jesus, but a glimpse of the living Lord who is active in all of history.
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Spirit Christologies and the Fallacy of The One
(The basis for this essay is primarily Lecture #3 in Sharon Betcher's Constructive Theology II: Christology course at Vancouver School of Theology, augmented by my own prior knowledge.)
There has been a (somewhat unfortunate in its implications) trend in our culture in at least the last century or so, and possibly the last fifteen centuries, to wait for The One who will have the special gifts and ability to (rescue/liberate/redeem/transform) us and our reality. From DC Comics’ “Superman”, who comes to earth as the (one and only) last survivor of a superior alien race, to Neo from “The Matrix”, we entertain a fictional realm in which all of our trust can be placed in a solitary individual who is worthy of that trust.
The results in the real world can be seen in the political arena - candidates are elected based on whether or not they seem like The One we have expected. And if they do, then two possible tragedies can result, both of which can be observed in recent history. First, the candidate thinks of him- or herself as The One, chosen and gifted to shepherd the people into redemption, in which case democracy and social justice go off the rails. Or, the candidate turns out to be just another person after all, in which case the public is left disillusioned and resentful.
There is a third unfortunate result of this type of thinking - those of us who are convinced that we are not The One convince ourselves that we must wait. That we are not gifted and chosen, and therefore can not change the world. That we must simply bear the times until someone (alien? ontologically distinct? miraculous?) other than we arrives.
One possible route through this unfortunate development is offered by Spirit Christologies. The “spirit” image was one of the first to be used to make meaning around the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth. At the most basic level, they take Jesus to be a prophet of liberation and divine justice, bringing a spirit of resurrection to “dry bones” people, and ushering them into a new creation. Spirit pre-existed Jesus as a metaphor for the Divine, and some of his earliest followers came to speak of him being filled with the Spirit, thus becoming God’s adopted son.
The origin of this notion is related to the Exodus and Genesis stories, in which God’s spirit hovers over creation - first, in Exodus, the creation of a people from no-people, and second, in Genesis, the creation of a cosmos from a chaos. We also find the spirit hovering over the waters of baptism in the synoptic gospels - do we dare say that in Jesus’ baptism God is creating a son from a man who was no man’s son?
Jesus, then, was a man around whom the spirit of God was particularly active. People who had been “dry bones” felt resurrected in his presence, as though by the breath of God. People who felt (or were) ostracized or homeless suddenly found themselves “adopted” into a new household - created into a new people. People who were abused, humiliated, raped, and degraded found themselves turned into some-bodies, instead of no-bodies. And after his death, this spirit was still accessible to them.
The greatest problem with these Spirit Christologies is that they conflict with classical theism and trinitarian theologies. According to the trinitarian view (which was normative in Christianity from the councils of the 4th and 5th centuries CE right up until the second half of the 20th) the Spirit is very clearly the “third” of the three members. It came after Jesus (on the day of Pentecost) and was his representative on Earth. If it was active before he came, and if it was the agency by which he worked, then the trinitarian view becomes highly unstable.
Likewise classical theism, which holds that Jesus is “begotten, not made”. The Universe was made by God, and then fell away into sin, says classical theism. Therefore anything that arises from the “made” universe is tainted. Jesus, in order to be divine, needs to come from “outside” the made-ness of creation (not unlike Superman being flung to our planet from another galaxy). Only a Jesus who was “eternally begotten of the father” could do what classical theism required him to have done - redeem a world that was ontologically fallen. Adoption by the spirit was simply not enough to satisfy the demands of the 4th century church.
If we are no longer beholden to classical theism (defined by Sharon Betcher in her lecture as “depending on a big God-Daddy outside the world”) and do not consider the world to be “fallen” from perfection into an ontological state of evil (but rather, perhaps, “fallen” into illusion and disharmony) then we do not require a Christ who was begotten outside of creation. Can we perhaps find meaning for our lives in spirit christology, as so many have in the last several decades?
One benefit that these approaches offer is in response to the problem outlined above, regarding waiting for The One. If the purpose of The One is to empower us with the Spirit, then we need not wait, because that spirit is moving now. All we must do is step out to meet it. And if we wait to put all of our trust into one individual, without trusting ourselves to be vessels of the spirit, then we will inevitably be disappointed. This will be seen as threatening, though, to many who hold religious authority and who wish to be the arbiters of theological truth.
To this point, my definition of a Christian has been “any person for whom Jesus holds decisive theological significance.” One criterion of a defensible Christology, then, is the role of Jesus in these terms. I believe that Spirit Christologies have no problems in this area. For when people encountered Jesus, they found themselves filled with the spirit, renewed, liberated, resurrected. And people continue to have this experience when they encounter the stories of him, and the community (of some-bodies) that continues to bear his name.
Someday, perhaps, that experience will no longer be accessible through him and his stories, but the spirit will nevertheless continue to blow new life into dry bones.
There has been a (somewhat unfortunate in its implications) trend in our culture in at least the last century or so, and possibly the last fifteen centuries, to wait for The One who will have the special gifts and ability to (rescue/liberate/redeem/transform) us and our reality. From DC Comics’ “Superman”, who comes to earth as the (one and only) last survivor of a superior alien race, to Neo from “The Matrix”, we entertain a fictional realm in which all of our trust can be placed in a solitary individual who is worthy of that trust.
The results in the real world can be seen in the political arena - candidates are elected based on whether or not they seem like The One we have expected. And if they do, then two possible tragedies can result, both of which can be observed in recent history. First, the candidate thinks of him- or herself as The One, chosen and gifted to shepherd the people into redemption, in which case democracy and social justice go off the rails. Or, the candidate turns out to be just another person after all, in which case the public is left disillusioned and resentful.
There is a third unfortunate result of this type of thinking - those of us who are convinced that we are not The One convince ourselves that we must wait. That we are not gifted and chosen, and therefore can not change the world. That we must simply bear the times until someone (alien? ontologically distinct? miraculous?) other than we arrives.
One possible route through this unfortunate development is offered by Spirit Christologies. The “spirit” image was one of the first to be used to make meaning around the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth. At the most basic level, they take Jesus to be a prophet of liberation and divine justice, bringing a spirit of resurrection to “dry bones” people, and ushering them into a new creation. Spirit pre-existed Jesus as a metaphor for the Divine, and some of his earliest followers came to speak of him being filled with the Spirit, thus becoming God’s adopted son.
The origin of this notion is related to the Exodus and Genesis stories, in which God’s spirit hovers over creation - first, in Exodus, the creation of a people from no-people, and second, in Genesis, the creation of a cosmos from a chaos. We also find the spirit hovering over the waters of baptism in the synoptic gospels - do we dare say that in Jesus’ baptism God is creating a son from a man who was no man’s son?
Jesus, then, was a man around whom the spirit of God was particularly active. People who had been “dry bones” felt resurrected in his presence, as though by the breath of God. People who felt (or were) ostracized or homeless suddenly found themselves “adopted” into a new household - created into a new people. People who were abused, humiliated, raped, and degraded found themselves turned into some-bodies, instead of no-bodies. And after his death, this spirit was still accessible to them.
The greatest problem with these Spirit Christologies is that they conflict with classical theism and trinitarian theologies. According to the trinitarian view (which was normative in Christianity from the councils of the 4th and 5th centuries CE right up until the second half of the 20th) the Spirit is very clearly the “third” of the three members. It came after Jesus (on the day of Pentecost) and was his representative on Earth. If it was active before he came, and if it was the agency by which he worked, then the trinitarian view becomes highly unstable.
Likewise classical theism, which holds that Jesus is “begotten, not made”. The Universe was made by God, and then fell away into sin, says classical theism. Therefore anything that arises from the “made” universe is tainted. Jesus, in order to be divine, needs to come from “outside” the made-ness of creation (not unlike Superman being flung to our planet from another galaxy). Only a Jesus who was “eternally begotten of the father” could do what classical theism required him to have done - redeem a world that was ontologically fallen. Adoption by the spirit was simply not enough to satisfy the demands of the 4th century church.
If we are no longer beholden to classical theism (defined by Sharon Betcher in her lecture as “depending on a big God-Daddy outside the world”) and do not consider the world to be “fallen” from perfection into an ontological state of evil (but rather, perhaps, “fallen” into illusion and disharmony) then we do not require a Christ who was begotten outside of creation. Can we perhaps find meaning for our lives in spirit christology, as so many have in the last several decades?
One benefit that these approaches offer is in response to the problem outlined above, regarding waiting for The One. If the purpose of The One is to empower us with the Spirit, then we need not wait, because that spirit is moving now. All we must do is step out to meet it. And if we wait to put all of our trust into one individual, without trusting ourselves to be vessels of the spirit, then we will inevitably be disappointed. This will be seen as threatening, though, to many who hold religious authority and who wish to be the arbiters of theological truth.
To this point, my definition of a Christian has been “any person for whom Jesus holds decisive theological significance.” One criterion of a defensible Christology, then, is the role of Jesus in these terms. I believe that Spirit Christologies have no problems in this area. For when people encountered Jesus, they found themselves filled with the spirit, renewed, liberated, resurrected. And people continue to have this experience when they encounter the stories of him, and the community (of some-bodies) that continues to bear his name.
Someday, perhaps, that experience will no longer be accessible through him and his stories, but the spirit will nevertheless continue to blow new life into dry bones.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
The Christ That Emerges From Within
(This update is based on a few sources: Marianne Sawicki’s “Seeing The Lord: Resurrection and Early Christian Practices”, Lecture #2 of Sharon Betcher’s “Constructive Theology II: Christology” course at Vancouver School of Theology, and my own reflections and accumulated insights. The one reference to Jay McDaniel is from his book “Living From the Center”.)
In her book “Seeing The Lord”, Marianne Sawicki outlines a key conceptual difference between the Hellenic and Northern European languages (including Greek and English) and the Semitic languages (including Hebrew and Aramaic). While the northern languages, originating in locales where hardship is represented by cold, wet, dirty, and dark (evocative of winter), favour light, cleanliness, and spaciousness as hallmarks of goodness, the Semitic languages, originating in desert regions where heat, light, and exposure to the air are threats to wellbeing, place value in the cool, wet, dimness of twilight and the earthy, “fleshy” solidity of gardens, riverbanks, and orchards. One of the responsibilities of Christian interpreters in post-modernity is to identify locations in our tradition where this (essentially irreconcilable) interface has resulted in confusion, distortion, or abuse.
“Cosmic Christologies” describe a theology of the nature of Christ relative to the doctrine of creation, as a counterpoint to a reductionist, mechanical, essentialist understanding. This understanding consigns the Christ-event to a moment in history and reduces the definition of Christ to the figure of Jesus. Alternately, a cosmic Christology, while acknowledging a decisive significance for the life and times of Jesus, allows the universe itself to serve as the vessel for the Christ-principle. The Christ is the “wisdom” or “spirit” present in the cosmos, which became visible and enfleshed in Jesus of Nazareth.
The above conceptual interface between the Hellenic and the Semitic comes into play heavily when it comes to the relationship between the Christ and the Cosmos. It is not difficult to imagine, given the Hellenic value of spaciousness, cleanliness, and light, that it is the Greek influence which gives us the notion of a Christ that exists outside or beyond the world - free of the “muck” and shadow and ambiguity of enfleshed life. This Christ must, by its own divine agency, inject itself into history in order to redeem humankind from its shadowed, impure, unclean sinfulness. The Christ travels from the pure “light” of the divine into the “fallen” cosmos, pulling humanity out of the earth in a once-and-for-all ontological gesture of atonement.
Cosmic Christology, however, tends to favour the Semitic view - that the cosmos is heavy or “saturated” with the divine. The divine settles upon us like dew upon the mulch at twilight, and rests in the corners of reality the way blessed shadows cover the corners of a room. The incarnation of the Christ in Jesus is thus not a once-and-for-all injection of divinity into the world, but a “recapitulation” or reminder of the way in which the divine has operated in the cosmos from the very beginning. The Christ-principle (differently described as Sophia/Wisdom or Logos/Word) is revealed in Jesus not as a coming-from-without, but as a surfacing-from-within.
I have used the Hellenic/Semitic dialectic in order to highlight an important element of Cosmic Christology: it is neither new, nor is it a fringe-view. But because the dualistic/reductionist/mechanical/essentialist worldview has held sway in the post-Enlightenment West, it may seem that contrary ideas are novel or revolutionary. Especially so in this case, as this Christology bears much similarity to Mahayana Buddhism, which holds that the Buddha-individual is an earthly projection of the eternal Dharmakaya principle, and thus may be perceived as a post-modern syncretism or “new age” novelty.
As revolutionary as this view may seem to many on-the-ground in our Christian communities, it is nonetheless extremely ancient in the Church and has much to offer us in post-modernity. One gift that it offers is the very compatibility with certain other world religions that I mentioned above. The good here is not in any attempt to manufacture a “super-religion” or to blur the boundaries between the faith traditions, but is in finding components of the traditions that can be laid side-by-side and appreciated across those boundaries.
The primary gift of this view for post-modernity depends on the difficulty that post-moderns have with the notion of a fallen world that needed to be redeemed through an act of atonement by the ontologically-unique figure of Jesus. This is a sticking point for many in our congregations (especially in the United Church of Canada) and the ability to offer an alternative view that is rooted in cultural dialectics that were already current in the first century CE is a great boon. The flipside to this benefit is the relative peripheralization of the cross and of Jesus himself. Do Jesus and the cross remain constitutive of the church in this theology?
Certainly the cross, according to this view, is moved out of the center of things, to be replaced by the reconciling love of God. And in a sense, this theology would be entirely available to humankind without the life and story of Jesus. However, both remain constitutive because the life and story of Jesus show us how the love of God operates in the world, and the cross reminds us that love continues to be crucified (after Jay McDaniel).
And, finally, given the present dramatic increase in ecological awareness and concern, we could do worse than to embrace a Cosmic Christology, which sees the Christ-principle as pervading and enlivening the entire world. For according to this view, when we take advantage of the world which was generated by God’s creative love, we engage in nothing less than the crucifixion of the Christ.
In her book “Seeing The Lord”, Marianne Sawicki outlines a key conceptual difference between the Hellenic and Northern European languages (including Greek and English) and the Semitic languages (including Hebrew and Aramaic). While the northern languages, originating in locales where hardship is represented by cold, wet, dirty, and dark (evocative of winter), favour light, cleanliness, and spaciousness as hallmarks of goodness, the Semitic languages, originating in desert regions where heat, light, and exposure to the air are threats to wellbeing, place value in the cool, wet, dimness of twilight and the earthy, “fleshy” solidity of gardens, riverbanks, and orchards. One of the responsibilities of Christian interpreters in post-modernity is to identify locations in our tradition where this (essentially irreconcilable) interface has resulted in confusion, distortion, or abuse.
“Cosmic Christologies” describe a theology of the nature of Christ relative to the doctrine of creation, as a counterpoint to a reductionist, mechanical, essentialist understanding. This understanding consigns the Christ-event to a moment in history and reduces the definition of Christ to the figure of Jesus. Alternately, a cosmic Christology, while acknowledging a decisive significance for the life and times of Jesus, allows the universe itself to serve as the vessel for the Christ-principle. The Christ is the “wisdom” or “spirit” present in the cosmos, which became visible and enfleshed in Jesus of Nazareth.
The above conceptual interface between the Hellenic and the Semitic comes into play heavily when it comes to the relationship between the Christ and the Cosmos. It is not difficult to imagine, given the Hellenic value of spaciousness, cleanliness, and light, that it is the Greek influence which gives us the notion of a Christ that exists outside or beyond the world - free of the “muck” and shadow and ambiguity of enfleshed life. This Christ must, by its own divine agency, inject itself into history in order to redeem humankind from its shadowed, impure, unclean sinfulness. The Christ travels from the pure “light” of the divine into the “fallen” cosmos, pulling humanity out of the earth in a once-and-for-all ontological gesture of atonement.
Cosmic Christology, however, tends to favour the Semitic view - that the cosmos is heavy or “saturated” with the divine. The divine settles upon us like dew upon the mulch at twilight, and rests in the corners of reality the way blessed shadows cover the corners of a room. The incarnation of the Christ in Jesus is thus not a once-and-for-all injection of divinity into the world, but a “recapitulation” or reminder of the way in which the divine has operated in the cosmos from the very beginning. The Christ-principle (differently described as Sophia/Wisdom or Logos/Word) is revealed in Jesus not as a coming-from-without, but as a surfacing-from-within.
I have used the Hellenic/Semitic dialectic in order to highlight an important element of Cosmic Christology: it is neither new, nor is it a fringe-view. But because the dualistic/reductionist/mechanical/essentialist worldview has held sway in the post-Enlightenment West, it may seem that contrary ideas are novel or revolutionary. Especially so in this case, as this Christology bears much similarity to Mahayana Buddhism, which holds that the Buddha-individual is an earthly projection of the eternal Dharmakaya principle, and thus may be perceived as a post-modern syncretism or “new age” novelty.
As revolutionary as this view may seem to many on-the-ground in our Christian communities, it is nonetheless extremely ancient in the Church and has much to offer us in post-modernity. One gift that it offers is the very compatibility with certain other world religions that I mentioned above. The good here is not in any attempt to manufacture a “super-religion” or to blur the boundaries between the faith traditions, but is in finding components of the traditions that can be laid side-by-side and appreciated across those boundaries.
The primary gift of this view for post-modernity depends on the difficulty that post-moderns have with the notion of a fallen world that needed to be redeemed through an act of atonement by the ontologically-unique figure of Jesus. This is a sticking point for many in our congregations (especially in the United Church of Canada) and the ability to offer an alternative view that is rooted in cultural dialectics that were already current in the first century CE is a great boon. The flipside to this benefit is the relative peripheralization of the cross and of Jesus himself. Do Jesus and the cross remain constitutive of the church in this theology?
Certainly the cross, according to this view, is moved out of the center of things, to be replaced by the reconciling love of God. And in a sense, this theology would be entirely available to humankind without the life and story of Jesus. However, both remain constitutive because the life and story of Jesus show us how the love of God operates in the world, and the cross reminds us that love continues to be crucified (after Jay McDaniel).
And, finally, given the present dramatic increase in ecological awareness and concern, we could do worse than to embrace a Cosmic Christology, which sees the Christ-principle as pervading and enlivening the entire world. For according to this view, when we take advantage of the world which was generated by God’s creative love, we engage in nothing less than the crucifixion of the Christ.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Epiphany and the Rhythms of Christology
(This entry is based on three major sources: Chapter 1 of Marianne Sawicki’s “Seeing The Lord: Resurrection and Early Christian Practices”, Lecture #1 of Sharon Betcher’s “Constructive Theology II: Christology” course at Vancouver School of Theology, and a recent sermon that I preached on the Epiphany and the story of the Magi (Matthew 2:1-12).)
In the wake of Epiphany, I have been reflecting on the story of the magi in Matthew 2. So much has been made of this story throughout the history of the church, that isn’t present in the text itself. Much of the elaborations to the story are rooted in medieval and modernist understandings of christology, ecclesiology, and missiology.
Sharon Betcher, in her course “Constructive Theology II: Christology” at Vancouver School of Theology, insists that it is the responsibility of contemporary theologians to “decolonize” christology for the post-modern condition. For lay people, this will mostly consist of removing the lenses of various “-isms” to see the Christ and the christ-story as being multi-valent, mysterious, and life-giving in the here and now. Some of these -isms include:
• ethnocentrism - the belief that one’s culture is superior
• sexism - the belief that one’s gender is superior - this one comes in both feminist and patriarchal forms
• anthropocentrism - the belief that humankind is of supreme value relative to the natural world
• essentialism - the belief that there is one truth to any reality or one answer to any question
• supersessionism - the belief that one’s religious tradition is superior to all others, and renders them obsolete
All of these “-isms” have combined in the church to create a monolithic institution that I and others have come to call “Christendom”. A major piece of the work of public theology in the coming decades will be to liberate the notion of “Christianity” from the burdens of “Christendom” in the imaginations of the people.
What, then, is left when the lenses of these -isms (and Christendom) are removed? Let us use the story of the magi as an example. The tale in Matthew 2 is quite straightforward: astrologers (or “magi”) from afar observe an omen in the heavens, of the birth of a new “King of the Jews”. They travel to Jerusalem and ask devious, brutal King Herod about the birth. He, sensing a threat to his power, finds out where the messiah is foretold to be born, and sends the magi to Bethlehem, telling them to find the child and report back to him, so that he might also go and pay homage. The magi find the house by walking toward the star that first alerted them to the birth. When they see the modest house in the small village, they “rejoice with much great joy”. Then they pay homage to the child and give him three gifts. They do not return to King Herod or Jerusalem, but go straight home.
Chances are a majority of North American readers know something of this story, from nativity scenes, holiday carols, or greeting cards. But the story commonly known in the culture is known through the lenses from which we are asked to “de-colonize” it. Perhaps you are surprised to hear that there are no shepherds or angels in the story. But these elements come from the gospel of Luke, and do not appear in the gospel of Matthew. Including them in the same story is an example of “essentialism”. If there is only one truth, then both stories must be held as one in an act that biblical scholars call “conflation”. When we conflate the stories, we ignore their distinctiveness and lose our grasp on what they are trying to communicate to us.
When, on the other hand, we hold the stories not as one-and-the-same but as separate-and-parallel, we can pick out the relative emphases of their authors and gain access to what they want us to understand. While Luke wishes to make a distinction between rich and poor (shepherds being the “working poor”), Matthew rather chooses to distinguish the ambition of power (Herod) from the love of wisdom (the Magi). When we conflate them, we place all of the emphasis on the baby Jesus (“to whom every knee shall bow”) and lose the mysterious, dynamic energy that can come from holding them parallel, but separate. This is the gift of the post-modern approach to scripture.
You might also have been surprised to read that these figures are not “Kings” but “magi”. Last week I attended a worship service in which we sang the Epiphany hymn “We Three Kings of Orient Are”. This song is based upon a medieval tradition which held that the visitors to the infant Jesus were the Kings of India, Arabia, and Persia. In this tradition we encounter the strength of Christian supersessionism, which holds that all the traditions of the world find their fulfillment in the figure of Jesus. Treating the story in this way justifies the colonization of the East by the West. According to this view, we need not feel uncomfortable with such colonialism, since at the very beginning of Jesus’ life, the Kings of those regions bowed before him and recognized his right to rule. When we de-colonize this story by removing this unfortunate (non-biblical) layer of tradition, we can begin to redress some of the wrongs done during the colonial era.
Nor are they “Wise Men”. True, the Greek word “magoi” is in the masculine plural, but this does not preclude the inclusion of women among their number, nor in fact that the group may have been entirely made up of women. A post-modern reading encourages us to let go of an anxious attachment to phony historicity and allow the power of the narrative to convey us to meaning. How does the story impact us if we imagine a group of women? Or a mix of men and women? A rigid conviction that they must have been men reflects a patriarchal cultural paradigm.
Finally, you may be interested to note that they do not follow the star from the East to the West. They see the star in the eastern sky, and it prompts them on a westward journey. It is only after they have encountered Herod, and begin to backtrack toward Bethlehem (which lies to the east of Jerusalem) that the star beckons them on. However, it supports western ethnocentrism to believe that God sends the eastern peoples on divine pilgrimages to pay tribute to western religion. It is a jarring experience for many people who believe they are familiar with this story, to imagine the magi travelling all the way to Judea with the star of their divinations not in front of them, but at their backs. Matthew’s intent in telling the story this way becomes clear, when the magi realize (and we with them) that the placement of the star is meant to help them find their way NOT from the “orient” to the west, but from Jerusalem, the seat of power and greed, to the little town of Bethlehem.
In Chapter 1 of her book “Seeing The Lord: Resurrection and Early Christian Practices”, Marianne Sawicki defines the church as those people who are able to identify the risen lord as being Jesus of Nazareth, and how to acknowledge the spirit of Jesus as a tangible agency in their midst. They “know” these abilities in part cerebrally and in part somatically. Theology therefore becomes a matter of mind-body exploration, of which propositional argument is only a small part (others including poetic discourse, liturgical drama, and social activity). Over the ages, the church has done its best to “see” the Lord in the light of its historical context and to treat the stories of the tradition with gentle hands (Sawicki uses the image of the “Pieta” - Jesus falling from the cross into the arms of Mother Mary - as a symbol for how he also fell into the arms of “Mother Church”).
So, if we are to shed the superstructure of medieval and modernist Christianity in order to construct a theology that is somatically, psychologically, and cerebrally meaningful and powerful in the context of post-modernity, what will we need to do?
Once again, we can turn to the magi of Matthew 2 for guidance. The magi, in their wisdom-love (as distinct from Herod’s power-ambition), discern an omen of good news. All that they know is that it is a birth, and the nation in which it took place. They have no other guidance of their own - not even the star that gave them the news will show them the way. So they must feel their way forward, trusting that good things lie in store. Theirs is a journey of personal transformation, as they encounter Herod and the infant Christ - encounters which will mark them forever.
Can there be a Christianity (or a Christology) independent of Christian supersessionism, ethnocentrism, and essentialism? I believe I have provided an example of what this post-Christendom Christianity can look like, in my analysis of Matthew 2:1-12. When liberated from Christendom, the story continues to have spiritual power - and this power is relevant and meaningful in post-modernity. When focus is shifted off of the baby Jesus and the cosmic meaning of his birth, we are able to see ourselves in roles other than passive observers who give rational assent to doctrine. We become somatic participants in the drama of the gospel, journeying with the magi, encountering Herod, seeing the Lord, and returning by another path. And this, the epiphany traditions assure us, is the rhythm of “doing” Christology.
In the wake of Epiphany, I have been reflecting on the story of the magi in Matthew 2. So much has been made of this story throughout the history of the church, that isn’t present in the text itself. Much of the elaborations to the story are rooted in medieval and modernist understandings of christology, ecclesiology, and missiology.
Sharon Betcher, in her course “Constructive Theology II: Christology” at Vancouver School of Theology, insists that it is the responsibility of contemporary theologians to “decolonize” christology for the post-modern condition. For lay people, this will mostly consist of removing the lenses of various “-isms” to see the Christ and the christ-story as being multi-valent, mysterious, and life-giving in the here and now. Some of these -isms include:
• ethnocentrism - the belief that one’s culture is superior
• sexism - the belief that one’s gender is superior - this one comes in both feminist and patriarchal forms
• anthropocentrism - the belief that humankind is of supreme value relative to the natural world
• essentialism - the belief that there is one truth to any reality or one answer to any question
• supersessionism - the belief that one’s religious tradition is superior to all others, and renders them obsolete
All of these “-isms” have combined in the church to create a monolithic institution that I and others have come to call “Christendom”. A major piece of the work of public theology in the coming decades will be to liberate the notion of “Christianity” from the burdens of “Christendom” in the imaginations of the people.
What, then, is left when the lenses of these -isms (and Christendom) are removed? Let us use the story of the magi as an example. The tale in Matthew 2 is quite straightforward: astrologers (or “magi”) from afar observe an omen in the heavens, of the birth of a new “King of the Jews”. They travel to Jerusalem and ask devious, brutal King Herod about the birth. He, sensing a threat to his power, finds out where the messiah is foretold to be born, and sends the magi to Bethlehem, telling them to find the child and report back to him, so that he might also go and pay homage. The magi find the house by walking toward the star that first alerted them to the birth. When they see the modest house in the small village, they “rejoice with much great joy”. Then they pay homage to the child and give him three gifts. They do not return to King Herod or Jerusalem, but go straight home.
Chances are a majority of North American readers know something of this story, from nativity scenes, holiday carols, or greeting cards. But the story commonly known in the culture is known through the lenses from which we are asked to “de-colonize” it. Perhaps you are surprised to hear that there are no shepherds or angels in the story. But these elements come from the gospel of Luke, and do not appear in the gospel of Matthew. Including them in the same story is an example of “essentialism”. If there is only one truth, then both stories must be held as one in an act that biblical scholars call “conflation”. When we conflate the stories, we ignore their distinctiveness and lose our grasp on what they are trying to communicate to us.
When, on the other hand, we hold the stories not as one-and-the-same but as separate-and-parallel, we can pick out the relative emphases of their authors and gain access to what they want us to understand. While Luke wishes to make a distinction between rich and poor (shepherds being the “working poor”), Matthew rather chooses to distinguish the ambition of power (Herod) from the love of wisdom (the Magi). When we conflate them, we place all of the emphasis on the baby Jesus (“to whom every knee shall bow”) and lose the mysterious, dynamic energy that can come from holding them parallel, but separate. This is the gift of the post-modern approach to scripture.
You might also have been surprised to read that these figures are not “Kings” but “magi”. Last week I attended a worship service in which we sang the Epiphany hymn “We Three Kings of Orient Are”. This song is based upon a medieval tradition which held that the visitors to the infant Jesus were the Kings of India, Arabia, and Persia. In this tradition we encounter the strength of Christian supersessionism, which holds that all the traditions of the world find their fulfillment in the figure of Jesus. Treating the story in this way justifies the colonization of the East by the West. According to this view, we need not feel uncomfortable with such colonialism, since at the very beginning of Jesus’ life, the Kings of those regions bowed before him and recognized his right to rule. When we de-colonize this story by removing this unfortunate (non-biblical) layer of tradition, we can begin to redress some of the wrongs done during the colonial era.
Nor are they “Wise Men”. True, the Greek word “magoi” is in the masculine plural, but this does not preclude the inclusion of women among their number, nor in fact that the group may have been entirely made up of women. A post-modern reading encourages us to let go of an anxious attachment to phony historicity and allow the power of the narrative to convey us to meaning. How does the story impact us if we imagine a group of women? Or a mix of men and women? A rigid conviction that they must have been men reflects a patriarchal cultural paradigm.
Finally, you may be interested to note that they do not follow the star from the East to the West. They see the star in the eastern sky, and it prompts them on a westward journey. It is only after they have encountered Herod, and begin to backtrack toward Bethlehem (which lies to the east of Jerusalem) that the star beckons them on. However, it supports western ethnocentrism to believe that God sends the eastern peoples on divine pilgrimages to pay tribute to western religion. It is a jarring experience for many people who believe they are familiar with this story, to imagine the magi travelling all the way to Judea with the star of their divinations not in front of them, but at their backs. Matthew’s intent in telling the story this way becomes clear, when the magi realize (and we with them) that the placement of the star is meant to help them find their way NOT from the “orient” to the west, but from Jerusalem, the seat of power and greed, to the little town of Bethlehem.
In Chapter 1 of her book “Seeing The Lord: Resurrection and Early Christian Practices”, Marianne Sawicki defines the church as those people who are able to identify the risen lord as being Jesus of Nazareth, and how to acknowledge the spirit of Jesus as a tangible agency in their midst. They “know” these abilities in part cerebrally and in part somatically. Theology therefore becomes a matter of mind-body exploration, of which propositional argument is only a small part (others including poetic discourse, liturgical drama, and social activity). Over the ages, the church has done its best to “see” the Lord in the light of its historical context and to treat the stories of the tradition with gentle hands (Sawicki uses the image of the “Pieta” - Jesus falling from the cross into the arms of Mother Mary - as a symbol for how he also fell into the arms of “Mother Church”).
So, if we are to shed the superstructure of medieval and modernist Christianity in order to construct a theology that is somatically, psychologically, and cerebrally meaningful and powerful in the context of post-modernity, what will we need to do?
Once again, we can turn to the magi of Matthew 2 for guidance. The magi, in their wisdom-love (as distinct from Herod’s power-ambition), discern an omen of good news. All that they know is that it is a birth, and the nation in which it took place. They have no other guidance of their own - not even the star that gave them the news will show them the way. So they must feel their way forward, trusting that good things lie in store. Theirs is a journey of personal transformation, as they encounter Herod and the infant Christ - encounters which will mark them forever.
Can there be a Christianity (or a Christology) independent of Christian supersessionism, ethnocentrism, and essentialism? I believe I have provided an example of what this post-Christendom Christianity can look like, in my analysis of Matthew 2:1-12. When liberated from Christendom, the story continues to have spiritual power - and this power is relevant and meaningful in post-modernity. When focus is shifted off of the baby Jesus and the cosmic meaning of his birth, we are able to see ourselves in roles other than passive observers who give rational assent to doctrine. We become somatic participants in the drama of the gospel, journeying with the magi, encountering Herod, seeing the Lord, and returning by another path. And this, the epiphany traditions assure us, is the rhythm of “doing” Christology.
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