"Jesus died to save us". I have known this for many years, and "knew" exactly what it meant, perhaps even before I could've written the words down. But it turns out (you don't say?!) that not every believer in all times and places has "known" the same meaning. I've been reading and thinking about this a lot lately. About how familiar images and formulations that present as objective and universal are in fact rooted in particular historical circumstances and power arrangements. About how oppressed and enslaved people have encountered and received Jesus in profoundly different ways to those prescribed by the religion of the ruling classes. About how the various ideas that resonate with me knock up against each other seemingly irreconcilably.
There is no "context-free" theology, and perhaps it is reductive to reach for such a thing. After all, God (I believe) was not content to remain an abstract idea, but consented (and consents) to self-emptying self-revelation in our specific and needy human contexts – as a 'tribal deity' effecting liberation for an enslaved people group; as a baby born into life-long solidarity with those oppressed by a violent status quo.
And while I remain keen to understand and weigh up the different ways that theologians have explained what Jesus accomplishes for us in his life, death and resurrection, the immediate thing increasingly seems to be to participate in it, and to go from there. As James Alison puts it, "as we come to look at how we are saved, [...] in the first place, we are looking not at a theory at all, but at a gradual induction into a set of practices [...] What I want to suggest is that this is not something which happens when we master the theory, and is thus a secondary or derivative access to the truth of our salvation, but is itself the beginnings of a possibility of discovering the truth of our salvation and being able to talk about it. It is the being inducted into the practices which equip us to be able to tell a new story as a story discovered through that process of being inducted." (James Alison, On Being Liked, 2003, p24).
So, solid answers pending (or not), here's a snapshot of that process as it finds me in the context of my now...
NOTES etc.
[Thumbnail image cc. from Tetiana Shevereva on Unsplash.]
There is no "context-free" theology, and perhaps it is reductive to reach for such a thing. After all, God (I believe) was not content to remain an abstract idea, but consented (and consents) to self-emptying self-revelation in our specific and needy human contexts – as a 'tribal deity' effecting liberation for an enslaved people group; as a baby born into life-long solidarity with those oppressed by a violent status quo.
And while I remain keen to understand and weigh up the different ways that theologians have explained what Jesus accomplishes for us in his life, death and resurrection, the immediate thing increasingly seems to be to participate in it, and to go from there. As James Alison puts it, "as we come to look at how we are saved, [...] in the first place, we are looking not at a theory at all, but at a gradual induction into a set of practices [...] What I want to suggest is that this is not something which happens when we master the theory, and is thus a secondary or derivative access to the truth of our salvation, but is itself the beginnings of a possibility of discovering the truth of our salvation and being able to talk about it. It is the being inducted into the practices which equip us to be able to tell a new story as a story discovered through that process of being inducted." (James Alison, On Being Liked, 2003, p24).
So, solid answers pending (or not), here's a snapshot of that process as it finds me in the context of my now...
[AND KEEP YOUR DISTANCE]
Meet me on the corner of enduring time
Alone
And keep your distance
Our extremity is touching
Wash your hands of me
Except
I love you neither half enough to spare you
Meet me
At the crossroads
Stand with me two metres distant
Show me where the ancient tends
And have me take it
With a shotgun to my head
Have mercy
Lead me where I cannot choose to go
And should it be that no-where
God-forsaken
You have been there and before me
Waiting
Search me where I am invisible and see me
Faintly
In the starts of weak connection
Hear me
Speak
But soft enough to miss
I haven’t left the house
Since the announcement
Meet me walking
In the garden in the evening breeze
If you can find me
Reconcile me to you
Slowly
I am breathing fearful in your breathing
Carolyn Whitnall, 2020 (revised 2022).
NOTES etc.
- Denny Weaver's The Nonviolent Atonement makes some resonant suggestions of its own about Jesus' life, death and resurrection as the ultimate demonstration of the Reign of God in self-risking confrontation with the powers of this age. But I especially appreciate his analysis of related ideas from womanist and Black liberation theologians, which has helped solidify my intent to prioritise those perspectives in my reading, and given me a very useful reading list – starting with Karen Baker-Fletcher's Dancing With God.
- James Cone, via Weaver's The Nonviolent Atonement: "Reconciliation was defined in timeless ‘rational’ grounds and was thus separated from God’s liberating deed in history. The political status of the post Constantinian church, involving both alliance and competition with the state, led to definition of the atonement that favored the powerful and excluded the interest of the poor.” (God of the Oppressed, 1975).
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, via Fiddes' Past Event and Present Salvation: "The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us. The God who makes us live in this world without using God as a working hypothesis is the god before whom we are standing. Before God and with God we live without God. God allows Himself to be edged out of the world and on to the cross. God is weak and powerless in the world, and that is exactly the way, the only way, in which God can be with us and help us." (Letters and Papers from Prison, 1951).
- Simone Weil: “God created through love and for love. God did not create anything except love itself, and the means to love. He created love in all its forms. He created beings capable of love from all possible distances. Because no other could do it, he himself went to the greatest possible distance, the infinite distance. This infinite distance between God and God, this supreme tearing apart, this agony beyond all others, this marvel of love, is the crucifixion. Nothing can be further from God than that which has been made accursed.” (Waiting For God, 1950)
- Jeremiah 6. "...Thus says the Lord: Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls. But they said, 'We will not walk in it.' Also I raised up sentinels for you: 'Give heed to the sound of the trumpet!' But they said, 'We will not give heed.' ..."
- Psalm 139. "...If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast..."
- Genesis 3. "...They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” ..."
- Rowan Williams, citing Margaret Masterman's Metaphysical and Ideographic Language (1953): "'Paradox is the most extreme kind of metaphor, just as metaphor is the most extreme kind of simile.' ... [W]hat she notes is that a series of 'descriptions' that violates with increasing recklessness the ordinary canons of consistency may end up saying 'something less preposterously untrue (in the common-sense and scientific senses of "true")' than a single metaphor." (Making Representations: Religious Faith and the Habits of Language, Lecture 5, 2013).
[Thumbnail image cc. from Tetiana Shevereva on Unsplash.]
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