Author's Biography
*Tripp Fuller is a podcaster, theologian, minister and competitive home brewer. Currently he is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Theology & Science at the University of Edinburgh. He received his PhD in Philosophy, Religion, and Theology at Claremont Graduate University. For over 12 years Tripp has been doing the Homebrewed Christianity podcast (think on demand internet radio) where he interviews different scholars about their work so you can get nerdy in traffic, on the treadmill or doing the dishes. Last year it had over 3 million downloads. It also inspired a book series with Fortress Press called the Homebrewed Christianity Guides to… topics like God, Jesus, Spirit, Church History etc. Tripp is a very committed and (some of his friends think overly ) engaged Lakers fan, takes Star Wars and Lord of the Rings very seriously, enjoys coaching his oldest son Elgin’s flag football and basketball team, and prides himself in giving rousing editions of Sandra Boynton tunes during bedtime reading. Tripp, partner since 18 Alecia, & three kids (11, 5, & 2) are all headed to Scotland for three years where they hope to develop a sweet accent and avoid eating haggis. In the classroom, online, or in the pulpit, his passion is helping the church develop a zesty theology with traction in our world today.
*Thomas Jay Oord is a theologian, philosopher, and scholar of multi-disciplinary studies. Oord directs the Center for Open and Relational Theology and doctoral students at Northwind Theological Seminary. He is an award-winning author and has published more than twenty-five books. A gifted speaker, Oord lectures at universities, churches, conferences, and institutions. He is known for contributions to research on love, science and religion, open and relational theology, the problem of suffering, and the implications of freedom for transformational relationships.
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Doctoral Seminar with Team Oord
Sep 23, 2020
PODCAST
October 23, 2020
Episode 39: Our guest for this episode is Dr Tripp Fuller and (in one of our more meaty theological episodes) we dive further into all things 'Jesus'. Is Jesus just a nice guy, or did God jump down from heaven into human form... or is it possible that something else is going on here? We talk about all of this in relation to Tripp's latest book, Divine Self Investment, in which he proposes an open and relational constructive Christology.
If you're the kind of person who likes the idea of diving into an academic theological book that packs a punch, and that proposes bold, innovative and compelling ways of understanding the Jesus story, then you can check out his new book here.
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An Open & Relational Theology of Jesus
by Thomas J. Oord
An Open Future for God and Man. A God who is actively giving and receiving. This is a discussion of Open and Relational CONSTRUCTIVE Christology. Tripp's book covers the following:
Claim - Who God is and How God Acts: Metaphysically; Themes of God's love for man and creation; it is a giving and receiving love; a great emphasis on the role creation plays as co-creators and co-partners with God; Incarnation happens not just once but at all times everywhere per ORT; It is a robust statement of incarnation. God's power v God's love - avoids supernaturalism, creaturely freedom, real contingency all based upon Jesus; Jesus' temptations were real, He could have sinned and said no to God. Jesus is both human and divine, divine and human. In the Jewish view Jesus was monolithic. ORT draws out the Greek philosophical assumptions of historic Christology by getting rid of many of them.
How does Jesus mediate God? How did His actions have an affect on our thinking of God both then and now, today, on our lives in the present.
1 - Naturalistic Jesus approach: To read Jesus from a phenomenological approach to a metaphysical approach.
2 - Chasm Jesus mediates God crossing all those gaps which keep us from God. There is no ontological gap (re the chasm view) between God and us.
3 - The stories of Jesus in the bible shows us that the bible is also a mediating form of Jesus to us but ORT wants to go way beyond this; past the pages of the bible into real time.
4 - the Butterfly Affect Jesus which happened a long time ago which has built up over time is the Jesus legacies of today from causal chain of affects
5 - The resurrected Jesus continues to have subjective experiences in the after life and can this Jesus have affects upon us today like He did with Paul on the Road to Damascus? Can this Jesus become omnipresent after death? If not, the heavenly Jesus must go one event at a time. (I will chose to disagree with this one).
6 - Jesus=God - Jesus mediates God: Jesus = God formulation? Why or Why Not? How does Jesus mediate God if they are one and the same?
7 - God mediates Jesus: If God is also part of this butterfly affect causal chain then how does God meadiating Jesus affect us today?
SUMMARY:
An Open & Relational Theology of Jesus
by Thomas J. Oord
Thomas Jay Oord’s Response to Tripp Fuller’s
Divine Investment: An Open and Relational Constructive Christology
A1. Open and Relational Theology:
- God is affected by creaturely action (passible), and
- God experiences ongoing time analogous to how creatures experience it (open future). God cannot foreknow nor foreordain all future events.
A2. Open and relational theology comes in diverse forms. Open and relational Christologies are diverse as well. But the following are common ideas:
- Love is God’s motivation and method.
- Most creatures have freedom to cooperate or reject God’s calls. Creatures can act as created co-creators with God.
- Theologians can make constructive claims about who God is and how God acts in the world without assuming these claims are fully true or capture God fully.
- God is always incarnate, although sometimes creation reveals God in special ways.
- God is always near and active but rarely if ever in a controlling way (Super/naturalism)
- O&RT denies that God foreordained and foreknew all the details of Jesus’ life.
- O&RT often begins with the human Jesus and explores how he might be divine.
- O&RT rejects classic theories of atonement that portray God as unloving.
- O&RT often criticizes classical Christological formulations as being unhelpful when they 1) rely upon a substance metaphysics and 2) don’t take history seriously
- Jesus reveals something true about God in his life, teachings, death, and resurrection.
For full summary, see first article below or go to link here: thomasjayoord.com “Tripp Fuller’s Open and Relational Christology”
B. Does Jesus Influence Today?
“Jesus Christ mediates the existential encounter with God.” – Tripp Fuller
Okay. But how?
- Naturalistic Jesus – Avoids any metaphysical moves
- Chasm Jesus – Jesus bridges gap between sinful creation and holy God
- Bible Mediates Jesus Who Mediates God – Stories
- Butterfly Effect Jesus – Jesus life long ago has ripple causal affects today
- Heavenly Jesus – Jesus lives now as a localized individual in “heaven”
- Jesus = God – Jesus mediates God, because Jesus simply is God
- God Mediates Jesus – God mediates Jesus (past or present) to us
For a full explanation of the typology, see second article below or go to link here: thomasjayoord.com “Does Jesus Influence Today?”
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Tripp Fuller’s Open and Relational Christology
by Thomas Jay Oord
October 27th, 2020
Tripp Fuller’s book Divine Self-Investment: an Open and Relational Constructive Christology makes an important contribution to understanding Jesus of Nazareth.
In this essay, I summarize Fuller’s book. I show how he affirms Jesus as a special expression of divine self-investment. As one who joins Fuller in embracing an open and relational theological vision, I am especially grateful for this work. It helps us better understand the person and work of Jesus in our time.
In a follow-up essay, I’ll engage Fuller’s work to wrestle with a question I have been asking for decades: in what sense should we say Jesus exerts causal influence today? But this essay is an overview of Fuller’s primary points.
Issues for Contemporary Christology
At the outset, Fuller aims to “investigate the possibility of a robust constructive open and relational Christology.” To do this, he 1) lays “out a broadly open and relational vision,” 2) “situates the constructive function of contemporary historical Jesus research,” and 3) “proposes three pairings of contemporary Christologies that share a thematic center with distinct trajectories.” An adequate open and relational Christology, says Fuller, “needs to include the historical Jesus, the existential register of faith, and the metaphysical referent to God.”
Christians typically account for who God is by telling the story of Jesus. Each age must make sense of Jesus and how to articulate the ongoing encounter with God that Jesus mediates. This means, says Fuller, contemporary theologians ought to offer constructive proposals that include “the historical person of Jesus, the contestability of God, and the irreducibly confessional nature of identifying Jesus as the Christ.”
The liberal Christian theological trajectory offers important resources for Christological work. But liberal theology often offers a muted and reductive account of Christ. The problem, in part, is liberal theology’s wariness of metaphysics. Fuller offers an open and relational metaphysics as a remedy.
Fuller’s project is not merely academic. He believes this work matters for the life of the church. “The inability to articulate just how God was present in Christ and how that reality shapes the character of life together,” says Fuller, “destroys the very integrity of the church.” This articulating should not be aimed at proving Jesus with evidence that demands a verdict. But neither is it limited merely to the subjective confession of the believer. Fuller unites the confessional and metaphysical through the historical person of Jesus.
21st-Century Obstacles
The 21st-century theologian faces obstacles when doing Christology. Many people today regard God as unnecessary to account for the existence of the cosmos or to ground morality. Consequently, many people no longer assume God exists. Theology has been “dispersed from the center of town,” says Fuller, “to the private study of some but not all people.”
A 21st-century theologian must speak adequately about the historical Jesus. Fuller’s project builds from the contemporary awareness that history is an ongoing venture and the future is open, not settled. The contemporary theologian must account for the historical Jesus without allowing the often-naturalistic account of that quest to determine Christological formulations fully. To put it another way, metaphysical speculation must play a role in efforts to understand Jesus.
A contemporary theologian should acknowledge the subjective element in Christological formulation. Fuller calls this subjective element “the existential register,” because it also includes whether the person studying Jesus will claim him as the Christ. No one can obtain objective certainty on Christological matters.
The 21st-century theologian also faces metaphysical questions about God’s relation to the world. “How one understands the reality of God, the possibility of divine action, and the nature of divine revelation,” says Fuller, “will dramatically affect one’s Christology.”
The contemporary theologian functions as what Fuller calls a “believing-skeptic.” Theological questions today “are not settled upfront with triumphalist zeal or deflationary prolegomena.” But the Christological confession today cannot be about the historical Jesus alone. It cannot even be about how God is present in Jesus. Contemporary theologians must also consider whether God exists and how we best understand God.
To address these issues, Fuller engages prominent themes and theologians of contemporary Christology. He explores how we might best conceive of the historical Jesus in light of contemporary scholarship. From this, Fuller launches into comparing various Christologies. To address Spirit Christologies, he looks at contemporary Catholic theologians Roger Haight and Joseph Bracken. To address Logos Christologies, Fuller turns to Kathryn Tanner’s post-liberal work and John Cobb’s process theology. A final comparative chapter explores the Reformed Liberal theologian Douglas Ottati and Korean American Methodist theologian Andrew Sung Park.
Open and Relational Theology
As the subtitle of the book suggests, Fuller aims to offer an “open and relational constructive Christology.” To help the reader, he summarizes primary themes in open and relational theology at the outset.
The “relational” word primarily identifies the idea God affects creation and creation affects God. This means, Fuller says, “The history of our cosmos is the product of an ongoing process in which both God and the world are full participants.” This vision stands in stark contrast to traditional theologies that portray God as unrelated, unaffected, and determining outcomes singlehandedly.
Open and relational theology stands in contrast to theologies that portray God as distant. Christologies that consider God distant, says Fuller, often interpret concepts like incarnation “against the backdrop of radical divine transcendence from the world.” While open and relational theologians affirm the otherness of God, they don’t think of this otherness as divine distancing only crossed once in Jesus’ incarnation. God didn’t invade creation from the outside, nor is Jesus a one-off divine entrance and exit in history. From an open and relational perspective, God is always present and plays an essential role in each moment of creation’s becoming.
Open and relational theologies reject forms of naturalism that deny the presence and operative power of God in the world. But they also object to forms of supernaturalism in which God is primarily understood as acting upon the world from the outside. Forms of panentheism that speak of God and creatures co-creating in each moment fit the open and relational vision.
Open and relational theologies not only say creation affects God, they also say God’s experience changes in the ongoing process of existence. Fuller heads off the usual criticism of this view by arguing that God’s experience changes moment by moment, but God’s nature remains constant. In terms of love, this means God’s feelings and expressions of love vary. But the fact that God loves remains steadfast, because God’s nature is immutable.
An open and relational analysis of existence points to creation’s moment by moment becoming. This view plays a key role in Fuller’s own Christological formulation. The basic idea is that each moment in a creature’s life involves inheritance from the past, the gift of possibility for the future, and the responsibility of freedom in the present. A creature’s life also requires God’s ongoing self-investment. “For an open and relational theologian,” says Fuller, “there is nothing more natural than the Creator co-creating the world in each moment with the world.”
Fuller addresses the “open” portion of open and relational theology by emphasizing God’s ongoing experience of time. Because of time’s incessant flow and genuine creaturely freedom, God cannot foreknow with certainty all that will someday occur. But the God who cannot exhaustively foreknow isn’t blind. God knows everything knowable, which includes the completed past, the becoming present, and possibilities for the future. “God is very much aware of what is both possible and probable on the immediate horizon,” says Fuller. “Like a flashlight pointing the way forward in the dark, awareness of the future is much clearer for what is near.”
The Historical Jesus
Given the quest for the historical Jesus and sense of ongoing history, many today begin Christological reflection “from below.” This common phrase means the one engaging in Christological construction starts with Jesus as human. Fuller laments that those who begin from below often assume claims about God’s action must be bracketed.
Open and relational theology resists this bracketing. Using Peter’s confession, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God,” Fuller argues contemporary Christology should start not from below nor from above but from within. By “within” he means the existential confession of Jesus as the Christ. But this confession is only the beginning, not the conclusion. And it may be deconstructed and reconstructed in an ongoing engagement with Christ, as fresh ways of understanding the Christian mission emerge.
This existential confession of Jesus as the Christ does not arise ex nihilo. “The open and relational theologian,” says Fuller, “needs to take account of the genuine influence that creaturely cooperation and participation played in the history of Israel.” The expectation of a Messiah emerges in actual history, as does the revelation of a covenantal God. In fact, this God, says Fuller, chooses “to invest Godself in the world with this people.”
Unlike Christologies that assume an overly transcendent God, open and relational theology says God neither foreordains nor foreknows from the foundation of the world the specificities of Jesus’ life. And God enters covenantal relationship – self-investment – long before Jesus emerges in history. An open and relational Christology embraces the dynamic openness and contingencies displayed in Jesus.
While Jesus is not God’s only expression of self-investment, he enjoyed a special relationship – “oneness” – with his Abba. This special relationship involved Jesus’ responses to God’s self-investment. And the community that emerged in response to Jesus was not a community divinely predetermined. They too responded to God’s self-investment as witnessed in Jesus.
Spirit Christology
According to Fuller, Spirit Christologies affirm the fullness of Jesus’ humanity and the fullness of God’s presence in Jesus. “It was through the faithfulness of Jesus to Abba,” says Fuller, “that a unique and particular bond between God and humanity was established.” Because of Jesus’ fidelity to the Spirit, a qualitatively new relationship with God emerges.
A significant number of theologians turn to Kenosis Christologies to account for God as revealed in Jesus. Fuller rejects Kenosis Christologies that say a preexistent one rescinds divinity to become incarnate in Jesus. Fuller argues, instead, that Jesus understood himself to be known and loved by the one he called Abba. In light of this understanding, Jesus trusted God’s call to be a faithful servant in and through his humanity.
Fuller extends Kenosis beyond Jesus. An open and relational Christology can connect the kenotic pattern of Jesus’ subjectivity to that of God’s within Israel’s covenantal context.” In fact, “the faithfulness of the Spirit-filled Jesus himself would not have been possible,” says Fuller, “without the living tradition of the people.”
The open and relational emphasis upon the past, the gift of possibility, and the responsibility of freedom fit Spirit Christology well. What the Spirit does in the present is influenced by the past. But the Spirit and creaturely responses also influenced that past. In terms of Jesus, says Fuller, this means, “without the faithfulness of Abraham and Sarah, the Exodus from Egypt, the voice of the Prophets, and so on Jesus could not have been the Christ.”
God’s work in the world, in the history of Israel, and in Jesus “revealed both a new possibility for the world,” says Fuller. This new possibility “makes the singular relationship of Jesus to God definitive for both God and a new potential possibility for the world’s continued future.” In Jesus, says Fuller, “the intention and desire of God for the world has been revealed.” Jesus’ response to the Spirit introduces a new reality.
Logos Christology
Most Logos Christologies lead to tensions if not contradictions. They usually begin with a pre-existent Christ who is both the eternal Son and Word of God. This starting point moves the typical Logos Christology to say the wholly spiritual Christ was united with physical creation in a “hypostatic union” that resulted in Jesus as the Christ.
Fuller rejects the hypostatic union approach. He does so in part because of the spirit-matter dualism it assumes. Fuller suggests a non-interventionist account of incarnation. In this account, the self-investing God is always already present to creation but especially revealed in Jesus. God’s creative initiative is necessary, but this initiative is not fully determinative. It requires creaturely response.
To spell out what his open and relational Christology entails, Fuller draws from the work of John Cobb. Cobb describes God as the ground of freedom, the ongoing Creator, the call for creation, and the giver of possibilities. God does this by providing an initial aim moment by moment to Jesus and all creation. “The initial aim of God in each moment,” says Fuller, is “a potential embodiment of God in the world…”
In Jesus, God’s initial aim co-constitutes the very self-hood of Jesus. “In Christ,” says Fuller, “the distance between the source of the initial aim and the response to it is dissolved.” In this, we find a fusion of God’s will and Jesus’ will. The result is a profound revelation of God in Jesus.
Fuller’s Christological vision extends beyond Jesus’ own response to God, as important as that response is. “An open and relational Logos Christology,” says Fuller, “connects the universal history of the cosmos with both the person of Jesus and the disciple’s salvation history.” To put it another way, “The Word which became flesh in the person of Jesus was the same Word that was present through the Spirit over all Creation.” This “includes calling the people of God throughout Israel’s history into its fullest expression in each moment of becoming.”
By emphasizing both Jesus’ response to the Spirit and the work of Christ in all creation, Fuller unites the central themes in Spirit and Logos Christologies. This union grounds a contemporary Christology to affirm Jesus’ special relation to God, God’s relation to the entire cosmos, and our own personal relations to the divine. “When one has encountered God in and through Jesus Christ, the history of God’s ongoing investment in the world can be reinterpreted,” says Fuller. This history of God’s investment includes evolutionary emergence, a special relationship with Israel, and our own lives today.
The Cross and Hope
The God who relates to and suffers with the world is profoundly revealed in the cross of Jesus. This Nazarene identifies with the downtrodden, forsaken, and hurting. God not only brings salvation in the cross, but a suffering God also needs saving. This salvation is “not an external solution to the never-ending pattern of victim and violator,” says Fuller, “for God is also the victim.”
If Fuller concluded his book by saying God needs salvation, one might wonder if his Christological vision offers eschatological hope. Fortunately, Fuller’s vision is hopeful. This hope is grounded first in God’s covenantal faithfulness toward all creation. God is committed to suffering with us… all!
Secondly, Jesus’ resurrection provides grounds for a future with promise. But even this divine work occurs alongside a redeemed community that cooperates. After all, eschatological theories that require divine intervention through solitary power, says Fuller, “run contrary to the nature of love and the integrity of relationships.” Our hope is not established by a God who could overrule creation.
“The promise of the God of love is that God will be ever faithful,” says Fuller, and this God offers “greater beauty, healing, and goodness to each moment of the Creation’s becoming.” In short, the Divine self-investment we see most powerfully in Jesus’ resurrection is the first fruits for the hope of all creation.
Conclusion
I am impressed by Tripp Fuller’s work on Christology. He articulates an open and relational vision of Jesus that makes so much sense!
While this essay has summarized Fuller’s book, a subsequent essay will engage Fuller’s view that Jesus “mediates” God to us. The follow-up essay is less a criticism and more an inquiry. But I strongly recommend those who engage Christology from an academic perspective to get and read Tripp Fuller’s book!
By the way, an online panel exploring Tripp’s book will be held later in November. Here’s a link with details.
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Does Jesus Influence Today?
by Thomas Jay Oord
November 12th, 2020
In his ground-breaking book, Divine Self-Investment: An Open and Relational Constructive Christology, Tripp Fuller offers exciting proposals for making sense of Jesus in the 21st Century.
I previously offered an overview of Fuller’s key ideas. That essay and this are part of my response to Fuller’s book at the upcoming Christ Among the Disciplines online conference. For this essay, I ask two related questions:
Does Jesus influence us today? If so, how should we understand his influence?
Jesus Mediates God?
To explore answers, I might turn to explore the verbs in Fuller’s book that speak of Jesus’ causal influence. In Divine Self-Investment, we read that Jesus “reveals God,” “initiates faith,” “functions as a representative of God,” “proclaims the kin-dom,” “symbolizes God,” “becomes the Christ,” “reveals a higher order of subjectivity,” “embodies the fruit of a tradition,” “models salvation,” and “reveals the nature of God.” Most of these verbs are Fuller’s own but some come from his interlocutors.
The verb I choose to highlight is “mediate.” Fuller says “Jesus Christ mediated the presence and salvation of God,” and “Jesus Christ mediates the existential encounter with God.” To explore what it might mean for Jesus to influence today, we might ask what it means to say, “Jesus mediates God.”
Naturalistic Jesus
One way to handle “mediate” and the other verbs is to say they apply only to Jesus’ actions roughly 2,000 years ago. This way might say Jesus acted long ago but it does not influence us today. Let’s call this the “Naturalistic Jesus” view of how Jesus mediates God.
This view doesn’t address many of our metaphysical questions about God, except perhaps how God acted 2,000 years ago. It does not address how Jesus’ mediating might occur today.
I get the impression from Fuller that he wants to affirm something about how Jesus’ mediates God in the present. He talks, for instance, about Jesus “mediating an existential encounter with God.”
Perhaps I’m wrong, but Fuller seems to believe Jesus is causally influential in our time.
Chasm
In my Evangelical youth, the word “mediate” was used to by my religious teachers to portray Jesus as the “go-between.” Jesus mediates a God “up there” who cannot associate with rotten sinners down here. We need Jesus to bridge this gap. Let’s call this second way the “Chasm” view.
Fuller’s open and relational vision dismisses the idea Jesus is the bridge across a chasm separating a distant and holy God from isolated and sinful creation. He believes we and all creation always already experience God directly. Our alleged sin doesn’t keep God at arm’s length. If only I had heard Fuller’s message in Sunday school!
In short, Fuller’s view that Jesus mediates God doesn’t fit the Chasm view of mediation.
Bible Stories Mediate Jesus
I’ll call the third possibility for understanding Jesus as mediator the “Bible Stories” view. It says stories of Jesus in the Bible may (or may not) inspire us today to think about, understand, or encounter God. These biblical texts aren’t themselves causal agents. They are literary resources of information and inspiration.
Scripture mediates Jesus so we can witness Jesus as mediating God. Without the Bible, says this view, Jesus’ mediating revelation would be lost.
Fuller’s Christological work can incorporate the Bible Stories view of Jesus as mediator. But I think he wants to say more. Scripture is important. But I suspect Fuller believes Jesus mediates God, even if the Scriptures had not been written.
The Bible Stories view falls short of a robust view of Jesus mediating God.
Butterfly Effect
A fourth way to understand Jesus’ mediating builds from the open and relational ontology Fuller embraces. It says Jesus’ action thousands of years ago launched a community who remembered and lived out Jesus’ vision. This community continues today, thanks to messages and practices passed along by generations of Jesus followers through formal means (e.g., apostolic succession) or informal ones (e.g., house churches).
Let’s call this the “Butterfly Effect” view of Jesus as mediator in honor of the chaos theory notion that actions far away and in the past can through a causal chain affect the present right here.
Fuller’s ontology can incorporate the Butterfly Effect view. In fact, a relational vision says ideas and practices in the past can be consciously carried to the present. It also says such causal influence can be carried forward through unconscious, pre-linguistic, and nonsensory causation.
An open and relational ontology supports a host of claims theologians often make about the transmission of ideas, rituals, and ways of being launched by Jesus. They claim God plays a key role in this mediation, but it is neither all divine action nor all creaturely causation.
But can Fuller say more? Does it make sense to say Jesus acts today mediating God through direct causal influence on you and me?
Heavenly Jesus
A fifth way builds from Jesus’ resurrection and continued subjective experience beyond the tomb. I’ll call this view the “Heavenly Jesus” perspective. It says life after death is possible for humans and perhaps all creatures. Those who continue living beyond bodily death have causal capacities that can influence the living.
If this view of the afterlife is true, the risen Jesus could influence us now and mediate God. Fuller doesn’t address this Heavenly Jesus possibility, but a Whiteheadian metaphysic allows for it.
In my view, the Heavenly Jesus theory has a problem. This problem emerges when we consider the scope of Jesus’ post-mortem influence. I and most theologians don’t think a life after death experience would involve creatures becoming omnipresent. Wherever we “go” or “are” in the afterlife, we remain localized, not ubiquitous.
If the risen Jesus directly mediates God now, he could only affect a few of us. Jesus might be our brother alongside others in great cloud of witnesses or the ghost-like “stranger on a bus trying to make his way home.” But the risen Jesus is not an omnipresent Spirit influencing all creation, all at once.
The influence of the localized Heavenly Jesus would, to use the Whiteheadian language, be negatively prehended by the majority of us.
Jesus = God?
Upon hearing these five possibilities for how Jesus mediates God, the reader might wonder why I have not addressed the possibility Jesus directly mediates God in the present because Jesus is God. Let’s call this sixth option the “Jesus = God” view. It says an omnipresent God influences all creation in the present, and therefore Jesus — being divine — influences all in the present.
Although it is popular in some circles, there are many reasons to reject the Jesus = God view. It’s not a view Fuller adopts. Jesus did not exhibit the attributes most theologians think essential to God: omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence, necessary existence, and so on.
Besides, if we say Jesus = God, then saying, “Jesus mediates God” also means, “God mediates God’ and “Jesus mediates Jesus.” What Fuller seems to mean by “Jesus mediates God” slips into circularity.
Confusion abounds!
God Mediates Jesus?
Let me mention a final possibility. This view says God prehends all creaturely activity, including Jesus’ past and (if a Heavenly being) current actions. Upon prehending these actions, God offers Jesus’ causal influence to us now. God presents Jesus to us in each moment in various ways, using various means.
Fuller’s open and relational metaphysics readily accepts this view. It’s part of his open and relational vision. But I don’t list it as a seventh model, because it sounds more like God mediates Jesus than Jesus mediates God.
Fuller seems to have something else in mind when he says “Jesus mediates God” or “Jesus Christ mediates the existential encounter with God.”
Other Ways?
Among the six options for understanding what it means for Jesus to mediate God, I find option four most helpful. But I don’t rule out options three and five.
Perhaps there are other ways of understanding what it means for Jesus to mediate God. I’d love to hear which option or options Fuller finds most helpful and if he can imagine others.
If you have other options to propose, let me know!
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