It has been over a month sine I posted last and I think this is the longest I have gone without posting. So if there are any regular readers out there I am going to try and get back in the swing of things. I have an idea to post on some of the stuff I am reading for my new classes. I am taking a class on Christology, Missiology and Celtic Christianity at Pittsburgh Theological seminary. So I thought I would post some quotes from the books I am reading, thoughts on lectures and interesting conversations. I hope you will enjoy the posts.In Christology we are reading a collection of essays from a text called Who Do You Say That I am? edited by Mark Allan Powell and David R. Bauer. The first few chapters are on Jesus' understanding of his own Christology. How did Jesus understand himself? There was some good stuff in the first chapter by Ben Witherington III. The whole of the chapter was on how all of Jesus' understanding of himself was based upon relationships. His relationship to God the Father as Son of God and Son of Man similarly as the Messiah, the anointed one, as one who had been anointed by God and the Lord in relationship to his subjects. These titles and understandings were redefinitions of the social relational and religious status quo and therefore stood in stark contrast to the cultural norms of Judaism. Here is quote from the end of the chapter.
"Jesus did not come on the scene of first-century Judaism to conform to anyone's preconceived expectations about prophets, sages or messiahs, much less to our expectations at the end of the twentieth century. He came to make known something about God and something about humankind and something about their interrelationship in the crucible of a volatile environment, in which proclamations about the intervening saving reign of God were dangerous and could get one crucified because of what such messages implied about ones own relationship of power to both God and God's people."
Why has relating to Jesus lost it's risk? Why as followers of Jesus are we no long suspect of upsetting the social and relational apple cart? Why is the intervening saving reign of God no longer dangerous? Does the Gospel have nothing to do with the redistribution of power? Have we domesticated Jesus and the inbreaking of his his kingdom? Your thoughts?
2 comments:
Blame it on Contantine...
While Constantine is the scapegoat du jour, and a very good one I might add, we also need to take responsibility that the church is rarely the voice that is questioning the status quo on anything other than homosexuality or abortion. We rarely critique consumerism, apathy towards the poor, militarism, and international atrocities in places that don't have oil. What got Jesus crucified primarily was his dealing with the religious structure of his day. He called them out as trees that had withered and become barren. Jesus mobilized people outside of the religious institution and that made the institution nervous. I think we need to start making the institution nervous again. Maybe we've already started...
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