Jesus Christ for Contemporary Life

      His Person, Work, and Relationships

      Don Schweitzer

      CASCADE Books - Eugene, Oregon

      JESUS CHRIST FOR CONTEMPORARY LIFE

      His Person, Work, and Relationships

      Copyright © 2012 Don Schweitzer. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      Unless otherwise noted, all biblical quotations and references are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

      Cascade Books

      An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      isbn 13: 978-1-55635-107-5

      Cataloging-in-Publication data:

      Schweitzer, Don

      Jesus Christ for contemporary life : his person, work, and relationships / Don Schweitzer

      x + 308 p. ; 23 cm. Includes bibliographical references.

      isbn 13: 978-1-55635-107-5

      1. Jesus Christ—Significance. 2. Jesus Christ—Person and offices. 3. Jesus Christ—History of doctrines. I. Title.

      BT301 S395 2012

      Manufactured in the U.S.A.

      Dedicated to Leslie, Simon, and Ian

      Preface

      Christians today live in a cosmopolitan world. Previous bound-

       aries of nation, ethnicity, culture, class, gender, and race have become porous. Yet many injustices of the modern world remain, exacerbated now by the rise of an empire that enforces them ruthlessly and without compunction. Joined to this are the environmental crisis and a sense of the limitations and fallibility of all moral codes and religious traditions, Christianity included. Christian discipleship in this time requires an identity bound to an emancipatory vision yet open to others and capable of self-critique. Such an identity requires strong moral sources to sustain it.

      This book presents an understanding of Jesus Christ in a Trinitarian perspective that tries to provide these moral sources and identity. It argues that Jesus Christ communicates the beauty and goodness of God in a way that can empower people to further express this in their own lives, even in confrontation with the forces of empire and their own failings, and is open to celebrating other traditions and receiving from them. It draws upon the quest for the historical Jesus and from New Testament, patristic, and contemporary Christologies to argue this. It presents this understanding by examining first the person of Jesus Christ, then his saving significances, and finally his relationships, to the church and to others.

      Many people and institutions played a role in the writing of this book. Tatha Wiley encouraged me to begin. Various editors at Wipf and Stock have patiently waited for it to be completed. Mallory Wiebe, library technician at St. Andrew’s College, helped me obtain books and articles from other libraries in the Saskatoon Theological Union. Melanie Schwanbeck helped me when I had computer troubles. The interlibrary loans staff at the University of Saskatchewan also helped me access materials. Teaching sessions at Bishop’s College in Kolkata, Serampore College in Serampore, United Theological College in Bangalore, and Kerela United Theological Seminary in Trivanandrum, India, and visiting HanShin Graduate School of Theology in Seoul, Korea, all helped broaden my thought. Rev. Deborah Shanks and Rev. Gord Waldie, former students, and Dr. Harold Wells, a long-time colleague, read drafts of the chapters and made valuable suggestions. Many of the students who took the course “Jesus Christ and the Quest for Wholeness” in the years I taught it have also helped improve the ideas presented here. I thank all of the above and any others I have forgotten to name for their help with this book.

      Introduction

This book presents a Christology developed in a Canadian/North Atlantic context. A Christology is an understanding of Jesus Christ; who he was and is, what his saving significance is, and how he relates to the church, other religions, and other forms of knowledge and experience. Christologies are usually developed by interpreting the biblical witness to Jesus Christ in relation to one’s context, the time and place in which one lives. This involves (a) interpreting present experience, (b) interpreting Scripture, and (c) a way of bringing the two together. The criteria of a Christology are the adequacy of its interpretations of Scripture and the present, its systematic coherence, and its performance, how well it illuminates the reality of Jesus Christ in its context. At present there are various ways of doing (a), (b), and (c) that have a relative validity and integrity, but there is no one way that is adequate in every respect and superior to all others.1

Ultimately it is difficult to disentangle a reading of Scripture from a reading of one’s context, to say which came first or where one should begin. The two always mutually influence and interpenetrate each other. Both are also always influenced to some degree by preceding traditions of christological reflection. A Christology is always contextual, related to its time and place. Yet in seeking to understand Jesus Christ no one begins from scratch. If every speaker is “a respondent to a greater or lesser degree,”2 this is particularly true of those who write Christologies. Every Christology is a response to others that have preceded it as well as to one’s context. Ultimately, each is a response to what God has said and done through Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit.

      Scripture

This Christology interprets Scripture by drawing upon it on three levels. First, it works from what can be known about Jesus and the movement that gathered about him through the quest for the historical Jesus. In doing so it recognizes that there is more to Jesus as the crucified and risen Christ than what the quest for the historical Jesus can discern. Drawing upon what can be known about Jesus historically, without being limited to this, is intended to keep this Christology grounded in history and historically concrete in its references to Jesus. Recognizing that there is more to the risen Christ than can be known by the quest for the historical Jesus, this Christology also draws upon various Christologies found in the New Testament, primarily in the Synoptic Gospels and in the writings of Paul. Finally, the metaphysical framework of this Christology is drawn from the Johannine understanding of Jesus as the Word of God. A word is always addressed to someone. Jesus as the incarnate Word communicates the radical transcendence of God’s love and the aseity of God’s being, yet is not complete without an audience who receives this love and then seeks to further communicate it in their own lives.3

      The Canadian/North Atlantic Context

      This Christology is written from a Canadian context characterized by a diffuseness or lack of concentration in the issues it presents that a Christology must take up. For a white, middle-class, heterosexual, anglophone male like myself, there is no one issue or crisis in this context that predominates over all others. To be such in this context is to have a complicated moral identity. One is at least implicated in oppressions, yet also threatened by issues like the environmental crisis. To relate efficaciously to this kind of complicated identity, Christ must have more than one saving significance.

Theologians interested in the world have noted the diffuse nature of issues in this context for some time. Gregory