John B. Cobb, Jr.:Christ in a Pluralistic Age
John B. Cobb, Jr., Ph.D. is Professor of Theology Emeritus at the Claremont School of Theology, Claremont, California, and Co-Director of the Center for Process Studies there. His many books currently in print include: Reclaiming the Church (1997); with Herman Daly, For the Common Good; Becoming a Thinking Christian (1993); Sustainability (1992); Can Christ Become Good News Again? (1991); ed. with Christopher Ives, The Emptying God: a Buddhist-Jewish-Christian Conversation (1990); with Charles Birch, The Liberation of Life; and with David Griffin, Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition (1977). He is a retired minister in the United Methodist Church. His email address is cobbj@cgu.edu.. Christ in Pluralistic Age was published in 1975 by Westminster Press. This material was prepared for Religion Online by Harry and Grace Adams.
Preface
The evolution of the author's Christology includes the influences of Pannenberg, Altizer and Beardslee, as well as Whitehead, Hartshorne and others, and issues in what he describes as "the post-modern pluralistic method.
Introduction
Can Christ be alive when his image has passed from our basic vision? Addressing this question without resorting either to a condescending exclusivity or unqualified relativism calls for a process termed creative transformation, both in our understanding of Christ himself and of the place of Christianity in the pluralistic context of the world.
Chapter 1: Christ as Creative Transformation in Art
The thesis of this book is that Christ is no more bound to any particular system of religious belief and practice than is the creative power of art to any particular style, and the preliminary thesis of this chapter is that Christ himself is the creative power of art. "Christ" is understood as the power of creative transformation as that power has been apprehended through Jesus and his historical effects.
Chapter 2: Christ as Creative Transformation in Theology
The argument of this chapter is that Christ is not to be identified with any given form of theology established by past doctrine but instead with the creative transformation of theology that has broken our relationship to every established form. This transformation has come about chiefly through the rise of objective study of Christian history and experience as this is viewed in the global history of religions. We find Christ today as the principle of affirmation of the resultant pluralism and the present expression of our own faith.
Chapter 3: Creative Transformation as the Logos
Some theological questions about the reality and meaning of Christ can only be treated philosophically. Christ's ontological status as an image must be examined, and his cosmological locus as universal clarified. Christ as the incarnation of the Logos that is present in all events leads to an epistemology that Christ is not experienced through the sense organs, but to the extent we experience the being of things rather than the particular forms of their existence.
Chapter 4: The Logos as Christ
The importance of naming Logos in its incarnation and immanence as Christ is so that its character as dynamic, trustworthy love can be brought to effective realization in human affairs, however threatening such creatively transforming love may be to the established order. Faith in the Logos as Christ is the appropriate, primal response to what God is and does in calling us away from all idolatries. In this sense faith is reason, because it challenges us to understand the creative, transforming novelty the Logos presents.
Chapter 5: Jesus' Words and Christ
The relation between what is known of Jesus and the creative transformation that has been named Christ, as viewed in the results attained by historians Schweitzer, Bultmann, Perrin and Colwell suggests that Jesus' words can be the occasion for the fuller realization of Christ.
Chapter 6: Life in Christ
The chapter proceeds (1) to analyze the existential problem of the need to feel justified, showing the need for an objective basis; (2) to set the problem of justification in the larger context of Paul's understanding of the saving relationship to Christ; (3) to provide a theory of how a past event can function as Paul believes the Christ event to function; (4) to interpret Paul's understanding of life in Christ together with the justification it effects; and (5) to describe that structure of existence which Paul normatively envisions as "in Christ" and which he himself in some measure seems to have attained.
Chapter 7: From Jesus' Work to Jesus' Person
A consistent duality of focus that is not antithetical has characterized Christianity from the early days, including Jesus as teacher whose words and deeds perfectly revealed God, and Jesus as the one in whom the Logos entered history to overthrow the powers of evil. Turning from the latter Pauline "field of force" Christology, more recent scholarship has focused on the humanity of Jesus while noting and respecting Jesus' claim to a unique relation to the Logos.
Chapter 8: Jesus' Person as Christ
The structure of Jesus' existence lies in the distinctiveness of his message and the authority with which he spoke, and suggests that in some special way the divine Logos was present with and in him. Since Christ is the incarnate Logos, it follows that Jesus was Christ.
Chapter 9: The Christ of the Creeds
This chapter sketches the history of the Christological formulations of the Nicene and Chalcedonian creeds to clarify the meanings of the conceptual decisions involved in the final formulations, and showing that these decisions were governed not only by considerations of intelligibility and plausibility but much more by soteriological, liturgical, exegetical and political factors.
Chapter 10: Christ and the Creeds
Historically the Chalcedonian creed has been either accepted or rejected in terms of a supernatural Jesus and an exclusivist faith. Radical scholarship has freed Christological thought from supernaturalism and exclusivism, and made it accessible to contemporary consciousness while remaining faithful to the intentions of Chalcedon in affirming the immanence of God in Jesus.
Chapter 11: Christ as the Image of Hope
This chapter justifies the affirmation of Christ as Logos and interrelates it with the conclusions of Parts One and Two. Following the deeschatologization of Christian hope in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a resurgent burst of protest against the loss of images of hope has issued in a blossoming of the theme of hope, both in secular and theological thought. The promise of creative transformation through trust in Christ provides an eschatological image for hope in a pluralistic world, suggesting that wherever hope is present, Christ is present, whether recognized or not.
Chapter 12: The City of God
The presence of multiplying signals that our civilization cannot continue in the direction of its recent past has altered the whole context of theology, suggesting that Christ himself, as the incarnation of the Logos in the life of our planet, is threatened. Hopeful images for the future of mankind can emerge from creative responses to the possibilities as seen in the works of Teilhard de Chardin and Paolo Soleri.
Chapter 13: The Perfection of Love
Through the interiorization of pluralism our understanding and existence will be transformed and we can move toward a new spiritual unity. Since openness to others is love, it can only be through the perfection of love that such unity is achieved. This chapter fashions an image relevant to one phase of the creative transformation that is required by exploring the encounter of Christianity with Buddhism.
Chapter 14: The Kingdom of Heaven
This chapter offers an analysis of what is required for hope and, following Whitehead, shows how his understanding of the world and its relation to the Kingdom of Heaven meets these requirements.
Chapter 15: The Resurrection of the Dead
Christ as the risen Jesus is contrasted in the work of Willi Marxsen of the post-Bultmannians and Ulrich Wilckens of the Pannenberg circle. Marxsen disparages the resurrection while appealing to ungrounded, self-vindicating faith, and Wilckens views the resurrection of Jesus as the central event of Christian history providing an image of hope grounded in a comprehensive vision of history.
Chapter 16: The Unity of Hope
The author considers the images of hope found in Soleri, Whitehead and Pannenberg with a view that ultimately, through creative transformation of each, they will unite in becoming one complex, satisfactory and convincing image of Christ as the content of hope.
Postscript: The Trinity and Sexist Language
In attempting to reimage the Trinity, the author acknowledges that the Christological and Trinitarian positions put forward in this book are works in progress, including gender issues seen in the masculine character of all three persons in the traditional formulation of the Trinity.
Preface
The evolution of the author's Christology includes the influences of Pannenberg, Altizer and Beardslee, as well as Whitehead, Hartshorne and others, and issues in what he describes as "the post-modern pluralistic method.
Introduction
Can Christ be alive when his image has passed from our basic vision? Addressing this question without resorting either to a condescending exclusivity or unqualified relativism calls for a process termed creative transformation, both in our understanding of Christ himself and of the place of Christianity in the pluralistic context of the world.
Chapter 1: Christ as Creative Transformation in Art
The thesis of this book is that Christ is no more bound to any particular system of religious belief and practice than is the creative power of art to any particular style, and the preliminary thesis of this chapter is that Christ himself is the creative power of art. "Christ" is understood as the power of creative transformation as that power has been apprehended through Jesus and his historical effects.
Chapter 2: Christ as Creative Transformation in Theology
The argument of this chapter is that Christ is not to be identified with any given form of theology established by past doctrine but instead with the creative transformation of theology that has broken our relationship to every established form. This transformation has come about chiefly through the rise of objective study of Christian history and experience as this is viewed in the global history of religions. We find Christ today as the principle of affirmation of the resultant pluralism and the present expression of our own faith.
Chapter 3: Creative Transformation as the Logos
Some theological questions about the reality and meaning of Christ can only be treated philosophically. Christ's ontological status as an image must be examined, and his cosmological locus as universal clarified. Christ as the incarnation of the Logos that is present in all events leads to an epistemology that Christ is not experienced through the sense organs, but to the extent we experience the being of things rather than the particular forms of their existence.
Chapter 4: The Logos as Christ
The importance of naming Logos in its incarnation and immanence as Christ is so that its character as dynamic, trustworthy love can be brought to effective realization in human affairs, however threatening such creatively transforming love may be to the established order. Faith in the Logos as Christ is the appropriate, primal response to what God is and does in calling us away from all idolatries. In this sense faith is reason, because it challenges us to understand the creative, transforming novelty the Logos presents.
Chapter 5: Jesus' Words and Christ
The relation between what is known of Jesus and the creative transformation that has been named Christ, as viewed in the results attained by historians Schweitzer, Bultmann, Perrin and Colwell suggests that Jesus' words can be the occasion for the fuller realization of Christ.
Chapter 6: Life in Christ
The chapter proceeds (1) to analyze the existential problem of the need to feel justified, showing the need for an objective basis; (2) to set the problem of justification in the larger context of Paul's understanding of the saving relationship to Christ; (3) to provide a theory of how a past event can function as Paul believes the Christ event to function; (4) to interpret Paul's understanding of life in Christ together with the justification it effects; and (5) to describe that structure of existence which Paul normatively envisions as "in Christ" and which he himself in some measure seems to have attained.
Chapter 7: From Jesus' Work to Jesus' Person
A consistent duality of focus that is not antithetical has characterized Christianity from the early days, including Jesus as teacher whose words and deeds perfectly revealed God, and Jesus as the one in whom the Logos entered history to overthrow the powers of evil. Turning from the latter Pauline "field of force" Christology, more recent scholarship has focused on the humanity of Jesus while noting and respecting Jesus' claim to a unique relation to the Logos.
Chapter 8: Jesus' Person as Christ
The structure of Jesus' existence lies in the distinctiveness of his message and the authority with which he spoke, and suggests that in some special way the divine Logos was present with and in him. Since Christ is the incarnate Logos, it follows that Jesus was Christ.
Chapter 9: The Christ of the Creeds
This chapter sketches the history of the Christological formulations of the Nicene and Chalcedonian creeds to clarify the meanings of the conceptual decisions involved in the final formulations, and showing that these decisions were governed not only by considerations of intelligibility and plausibility but much more by soteriological, liturgical, exegetical and political factors.
Chapter 10: Christ and the Creeds
Historically the Chalcedonian creed has been either accepted or rejected in terms of a supernatural Jesus and an exclusivist faith. Radical scholarship has freed Christological thought from supernaturalism and exclusivism, and made it accessible to contemporary consciousness while remaining faithful to the intentions of Chalcedon in affirming the immanence of God in Jesus.
Chapter 11: Christ as the Image of Hope
This chapter justifies the affirmation of Christ as Logos and interrelates it with the conclusions of Parts One and Two. Following the deeschatologization of Christian hope in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a resurgent burst of protest against the loss of images of hope has issued in a blossoming of the theme of hope, both in secular and theological thought. The promise of creative transformation through trust in Christ provides an eschatological image for hope in a pluralistic world, suggesting that wherever hope is present, Christ is present, whether recognized or not.
Chapter 12: The City of God
The presence of multiplying signals that our civilization cannot continue in the direction of its recent past has altered the whole context of theology, suggesting that Christ himself, as the incarnation of the Logos in the life of our planet, is threatened. Hopeful images for the future of mankind can emerge from creative responses to the possibilities as seen in the works of Teilhard de Chardin and Paolo Soleri.
Chapter 13: The Perfection of Love
Through the interiorization of pluralism our understanding and existence will be transformed and we can move toward a new spiritual unity. Since openness to others is love, it can only be through the perfection of love that such unity is achieved. This chapter fashions an image relevant to one phase of the creative transformation that is required by exploring the encounter of Christianity with Buddhism.
Chapter 14: The Kingdom of Heaven
This chapter offers an analysis of what is required for hope and, following Whitehead, shows how his understanding of the world and its relation to the Kingdom of Heaven meets these requirements.
Chapter 15: The Resurrection of the Dead
Christ as the risen Jesus is contrasted in the work of Willi Marxsen of the post-Bultmannians and Ulrich Wilckens of the Pannenberg circle. Marxsen disparages the resurrection while appealing to ungrounded, self-vindicating faith, and Wilckens views the resurrection of Jesus as the central event of Christian history providing an image of hope grounded in a comprehensive vision of history.
Chapter 16: The Unity of Hope
The author considers the images of hope found in Soleri, Whitehead and Pannenberg with a view that ultimately, through creative transformation of each, they will unite in becoming one complex, satisfactory and convincing image of Christ as the content of hope.
Postscript: The Trinity and Sexist Language
In attempting to reimage the Trinity, the author acknowledges that the Christological and Trinitarian positions put forward in this book are works in progress, including gender issues seen in the masculine character of all three persons in the traditional formulation of the Trinity.
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