Emerging Christology (2)

So, blog readers, I'm delighted to see some of the issues that emerged out of the last post on Christology. I've thought for a while that there is a need for more theological work if this "Emerging conversation" continues to any length. So here are two questions for you:

1.  Where do YOU think the most significant Christological statements have been made so far in "Emerging" discourse? What are the books, the blog-posts, the podcasts etc., that you think make up the essential bibliography (however incomplete it may be) of issues surrounding Emerging Church and Christology?

2.  Is there one thing, one big question or one big stumbling block for you, in considering "who is Jesus Christ?"

Comments

[Tom Allen]

Not sure that I can think of anything for the first question - which rather illustrates the point that there is not much creative thinking and I look forward to suggestions and ideas. However if I think of "missional" theology then there seems to be an implicit Christology which focuses on the Johannine phrase " As my Father sent me, so I send you"

The answer to the second question is relatively easy - "St Paul" is the biggest stumbling block - most of the ideas and theologies which inhibit my understanding of Jesus Christ seem to originate with a Pauline interpretation - penal substitution being the most obvious. I have long recognised that many such ideas come from the " followers of Paul" rather than the man himself.

[Dana Ames]

I am not aware of any significant Christologic work by anyone under age 40 who identifies as "emerging". That doesn't mean it doesn't exist...

However, I can't imaging anyone being more thorough in investigating the "Who is Jesus?" question than NT Wright. I think "Jesus and the Victory of God" is just about the best any human author can shoot for.

The way it helped me was that it started not with the premise that Jesus is "God", but rather the question, "How did Jesus the human being view himself in his context?" Sort of a "back-door" entry- into what turned out for me to be a very high Christology indeed. But it was contemplating Jesus' human-ness that led there. And it was a huge surprise to me that that was how I was led there.

It was like opening the window and letting in the freshest breeze I've ever smelled; or going from a candle-lit room to the brightest daylight; or from a breakfast of porridge to a splendid banquet.

Wright helped me with Paul too; I don't fear Paul any longer, but rather can take him in *his* own context as well. (And with that has come to me a sense that, though he was certainly a master thinker and writer, Paul seemed to struggle mightily to put his reality into words.) But it has been Wright's work on Jesus that has truly saved me from existential despair as a protestant, and has contributed to my seeking (again, very unexpectedly) a more sacramental expression of church life.

Dana

[Mark Bennet]

I'm not sure that this qualifies under question 1, but I do think the significance of the incarnation will come to the fore in any worked-through Christology which engages with the "post-modern" character of the world. This is because, in a world of fluid ideas and images and of (alleged) constructed identities the datum of a physical being with physical continuity in time has the potential to be a reference point. Also because wherever people are, there is the possibility for a person to be - and the existence of Jesus as a physical person seems to me to help us to understand that this implies that, wherever people are, God's love, the Gospel, has the potential to penetrate.

The work of Christology may be to untangle incarnation from incarnated fantasy, so that the self-created-self becomes the God-created-self.

[Random Thinker]

I was looking at it from a different angle. This is my take on Trinity:

http://outoftheboxthinker.blogspot.com/2007/10/are-christians-polytheists-judaism-when.html

[Tony B]

Question 1: No idea, but I'm off borrowing theology books again.

Question 2: opinions, lots of them. Just when you read something and think it makes perfect sense, someone comes along and tells you why it's all rubbish.