Jesus Christ for Contemporary Life. Don Schweitzer
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by “a complex intermeshing of technocratic depersonalization and immobility, economic domination and exploitation, racial exclusion and inferiorization, and other forms including the subjugation of women.”4 To this list one should add today the threat of the environmental crisis, the struggles of First Nations peoples for liberation and of Quebec and francophones in Canada for recognition. Baum argued that as a result of this diffuseness, “the analysis of social sin in North American will inevitably be complex,” and that in this context “the commitment to justice and human emancipation, to which Christians are summoned, cannot be expressed by identification with a single movement.”5
This diffuseness of issues remains, but is now joined by a new development, the rise of empire. Empire designates “massive concentrations of power that permeate all aspects or life and that cannot be controlled by any one actor alone.”6 An empire not only exerts control through its massive power, but also uses this “to extend its control as far as possible”7 in every conceivable domain. In the early 1980s a new economic, cultural, political constellation of empire began to emerge “that protects the interests of the developed nations, regulates the flow of money all over the world, controls oil and other natural resources,” and pacifies “the unruly by military force.”8 This “contemporary empire is a more dispersed reality”9 than previous imperial regimes. It “is embodied in various dependencies maintained through less visible ties.”10 But its power and presence are no less real. It is centered in the boardrooms and political offices of developed North Atlantic nations. Canada is one of the developed nations whose economic interests this empire protects. Therefore it seems more accurate to describe the Canadian standpoint of this book as located within a North Atlantic rather than a North American context. This North Atlantic context at present is characterized by both a diffuseness of issues and the presence of empire.
Writing in 1990 in the shadow of this emerging empire and responding to the diffuseness of the issues facing Christologies here, Mark Lewis Taylor identified a postmodern trilemma of three demands that Christian theologies must simultaneously respect: “to acknowledge some sense of tradition, to celebrate plurality, and to resist domination.”11 His analysis remains accurate.
The first trait of this trilemma, the need “to acknowledge one’s tradition,”12 runs two ways. First, one needs to acknowledge the reality and importance of tradition for human life, how it can authorize and guide one by articulating transcendent moral sources that identify the good, critique evil, and empower and sustain resistance to evil. Second though, one needs to acknowledge the limits of one’s tradition, the evils and injustices it has been involved in, and the privilege it may be accorded and the power it may have in contemporary society. Part of acknowledging one’s tradition is owning up “to where you are, whoever you are and however complex your located self and group identities may be.”13 For Christians it is the moral values articulated in the confession of Jesus Christ that demand this acknowledgement and openness to critique.
The second trait is the need to celebrate and embrace plurality. This needs to happen in three ways. First there needs to be a recognition of the religious and cultural pluralism of the present; that it is not going away, and that Christian theology must be able to live within this as a force for peace and justice for all. Second, there needs to be a recognition of the functional value of pluralism. Dialogue with the other can lead to insights about one’s self and one’s context that cannot be had in any other way. Finally, there needs to be a recognition that traditions and cultural heritages other than Christianity are a good in and of themselves, and hence worthy of respect. The celebration and embrace of pluralism requires an openness to the other.
The third trait is the need to resist domination. Again, this needs to happen in a number of ways. Domination can be exercised along lines such as race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and class. It also comes in different forms. It may be the domination of hegemony which suppresses ideas and voices so that only those of a certain group are heard or deemed legitimate. It may be domination by violence and military force. It may be economic or cultural domination. Resistance to domination requires different kinds of power. The one Christ empowers people to resist different forms of domination in several different ways.
What makes these three traits a trilemma is the necessity and difficulty of addressing all three at once. Taylor argues the necessity of this as follows:
First, a program of resisting domination, without the other two postmodern emphases, easily fails to actualize its own envisioned strategies for achieving justice and freedom from oppression. Without developing a sense of plurality, the struggle to be free from domination can founder on the divisiveness that springs up among agents for change who work with different visions of “the just” and from different experiences of oppression. Moreover, without a sense of tradition (some tradition of myth and ritual, at least, not necessarily the established Traditions), the struggle is impoverished, lacking the resources of communal memory and symbolic heritage that often provide some minimal dialogical consensus for marshalling critique and action.14
Second, it is difficult to do all three at once. Acknowledging tradition has frequently been seen as denying an embrace of pluralism. Resisting domination for many has meant a critique of tradition(s). Celebrating pluralism sometimes leaves one without a substantive basis for resistance to evil. Still, difficulty does not equal impossibility. This trilemma can present a possibility. The complexity of the present and its diffuseness of issues can be an opportunity to discover the complexity of the New Testament witness to Jesus Christ, the many different saving significances it attributes to him, and the ways in which they can be appropriated in the present.
The Structure and Argument of This Book
This book is structured according to my own interpretation of Taylor’s trilemma. The need to acknowledge tradition issues in part I, which focuses on the person of Jesus Christ. The need to resist domination issues in part II, which looks at Jesus’ saving significance. The need to embrace and celebrate plurality issues in part III, which looks at some relationships of Jesus Christ, to those within the church and to others. This division into parts is a matter of focus, not an airtight compartmentalization. The three demands of acknowledging tradition, celebrating plurality, and resisting domination are present to some degree in each section. The acknowledgment of tradition in part I provides a metaphysical framework that informs how domination should be resisted and plurality celebrated, and is also present in other ways in parts II and III. Conversely, the needs to celebrate plurality and resist domination inform the way tradition is acknowledged in part I.
Modern Christologies have often been divided into two parts, studying Jesus Christ in terms of (1) his person and (2) his work. In one sense this is a false distinction. If one follows the guidelines of the Chalcedonian Definition, Jesus’ person as the Christ is also his work as such. Jesus saves by being the Christ. Yet the modern distinction between person and work in Christology remains a useful heuristic for focusing discussion. The structure of this book maintains this division for this reason but extends it by adding a third category, that of relationships. This third category has been developing in recent decades as a result of the emphasis of feminist and process theologies on relationality and the increased recognition of religious pluralism.
The argument of this book is that Jesus Christ can be understood from a Trinitarian perspective as the incarnation of the Word of God. This incarnation happens to further communicate the goodness and beauty of God in time and space. As this occurs it brings