Nerding Out
I am a proud nerd, but not just a Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica type of nerd, I am a theology nerd who is committed to bringing theology to the people. This is how you end up a podcaster with a PhD in Philosophy, Religion, & Theology.
Teaching
In the classroom, pub, or congregation I love teaching. In particular, I love the energy of conversations where new ideas are encountered and better questions are posed. For those too busy to tackle giant texts, I read big books, so you don’t have to… but I may try and talk you into it.
The Church
Unlike many of my friends I had some rather amazing experiences growing up in the church. It was in the church that I was challenged to grow in compassion, seek after justice, and invest in people. Knowing the potential power of a community centered in the way of Jesus I remain invested in the life of the church.
Humanoids
For the last 200,000-ish years planet earth has been rocking humans. I’m not sure the other species have decided if we are much of a blessing, but in the meantime we may as well look into creating a more beautiful community of life together.
Purple & Gold
In an attempt to minimize my own tribal outrage and judgement on the vile uninformed masses, I try to use all that caveman juice in support of the Lakers. The NBA is the best professional sports league and the LA Lakers are the single superior team. In heaven Jesus will be wearing Purple and Gold. #LakerFundy #TeamMamba
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Divine Self-Investment:
An Open and Relational Constructive Christology
by Tripp Fuller
August 17, 2020
When muttering the word “God” doesn’t come easy, what does it mean to call Jesus “the Christ?” Fuller offers a robust constructive Christology that engages three theological registers - historical, existential, and metaphysical.Beginning Christology not from above or below but from within the Disciple’s confession of Jesus as the Christ, Fuller constructs a powerful Open and Relational Christology. At the heart are three pairings of contemporary thinkers who share a thematic center with distinct trajectories. Fuller weaves each into a vision of God’s self-investment in history and the person of Jesus. The constructive proposal not only uses an Open and Relational vision but reshapes it in light of God’s self-investment in Christ. The significance of Fuller’s proposal is wide-reaching, engaging revelation, divine power, evil, the cross, hope, the imago dei, and the Spirit.What They're Saying...“This ambitious Christology marks Tripp Fuller as one of the most significant young systematic theologians to emerge on the scene in recent years. One can profitably read this book as an introduction to Open and Relational Theology; as a refresher on Logos Christology, Spirit Christology, and the quest for the historical Jesus; or as a primer on his six theological discussion partners. But the brilliance of the volume is actually the blending of biblical, classical, and process insights into a single moving vision of God’s self-investment in creation, Israel, and Jesus. Rarely have I encountered a young theologian who writes with this level of systematic depth.” -- Philip Clayton, Ingraham Professor, Claremont School of Theology"Tripp Fuller masterfully engages the crucial Christian question: Who do we say Jesus is? Engaging history, philosophy and theology, Fuller offers a vision of Jesus that weds evangelical convictions with progressive insights. His work stands alone side that of John Cobb, David Griffin and Elizabeth Johnson for required reading in Christology." -- Monica A. Coleman, Professor of Africana Studies, University of Delaware, author of Making a Way Out of No Way: a Womanist Theology
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The Homebrewed Christianity Guide to Jesus:
Lord, Liar, Lunatic, Or Awesome?
by Tripp Fuller
Christology is crazy. It’s rather absurd to identify a first-century homeless Jew as God revealed, but a bunch of us do anyway. In this book, Tripp Fuller examines the historical Jesus, the development of the doctrine of Christ, the questions that drove christological innovations through church history, contemporary constructive proposals, and the predicament of belief for the church today. Recognizing that the battle over Jesus is no longer a public debate between the skeptic and believer but an internal struggle in the heart of many disciples, he argues that we continue to make christological claims about more than an “event” or simply the “Jesus of history.” On the other hand, C. S. Lewis’s infamous “liar, lunatic, and Lord” scheme is no longer intellectually tenable. This may be a guide to Jesus, but for Christians, Fuller is guiding us toward a deeper understanding of God. He thinks it’s good news—good news about a God who is so invested in the world that God refuses to be God without us.
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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.
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Here’s my ongoing list of places people have posted about my book Divine Self-Investment. HOLLA if you podcast something or want to have me visit your podcast.
Audio/Video Visits
- Interview with Tom Oord’s Doctoral Seminar
- In the Shift Podcast: What’s so special about Jesus? with Dr Tripp Fuller
- On the Way Podcast: Is God as nice as Jesus?
- War Machine Podcast: pt1 Zesty Nuggets and pt2 Revenge of the Zesty Nuggz
- Philosophy, Theology, and Religion Podcast: pt1 and pt2
- ReligionProf Podcast with James McGrath: Divine Self-Investment
Blog Reviews
- THOMAS JAY OORD: Tripp’s Open and Relational Christology
- JAY MCDANIEL – Tripp Fuller and My Mother ??Invitations to Open and Relational Christologies
- SCOT JONES – Divine Self-Investment: An Open and Relational Constructive Christology
- BOB CORNWALL – Divine Self-Investment: An Open and Relational Constructive Christology (Tripp Fuller) — A Review
- CHRIS EYRE – Divine self-investment
- SIMON CROSS – Divine Self-Investment
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Tripp Fuller’s Open and Relational Christology
by Thomas J. 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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*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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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 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 thomasjayoord.com “Does Jesus Influence Today?”
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Tripp Fuller and My Mother
Invitations to Open and Relational Christologies
Notes While Reading Divine Self-Investment: An Open and Relational
Constructive Christology by Tripp Fuller
by Jay McDaniel
As I pick up Tripp Fuller’s Divine Self-Investment I think of my mother, Virginia McDaniel. Not that my mother would have understood his book. It is a scholarly book for scholars. Still, I remember what she told me that summer night when I was six years old. I was sitting with her on a patio on a summer evening, after having had a Sunday School class earlier in the day. The topic of the class that morning was Jesus, and I was confused on why we were hearing so many stories about him. I believed in God, but I wasn’t sure where to place Jesus within the spectrum of beliefs, so I asked her: “Mom, who is Jesus?” She answered: “Jesus is someone who is always holding your hand even when you don’t know it.”
I’ve never forgotten those words and believe them still today. She was saying to me that there is something deep and mysterious, tender and loving, within the very depths of the universe, that it is always holding our hand, and that Jesus is a window to this something.
Fuller anchors his book with the story of Peter responding to Jesus’ question: “Who do you say that I am?” Jesus says “You are the Christ.” Fuller’s point is that Peter’s answer was not an attempt to ‘get it right’ with labels, or to draw an inference from observable facts, but rather to confess: that is, to share his heart with the one standing in front of him:
“What Peter is doing is making a confession of his faith, a response itself a response to the God who is present to him through Jesus.”
I get this. I’m pretty sure that, if the historical Jesus had been sitting beside my mother and asked: “Who do you say that I am?” I would have responded: “You are God’s window, revealing the loving side of God.” And, truth be told, I think he was sitting beside me that night. I think that, in that moment, he was my mother.
Three Registers
Fuller speaks of this existential response on Peter’s part to Jesus as one of three dimensions of Christology he wants to emphasize. The first is what he calls a historical register, and it deals with how scholars seek to understand the historical Jesus. The second is the existential register, and it deals with the confessional response just identified. And the third is a metaphysical register that deals with how we understand God and the universe cosmologically or, as it were, metaphysically. Much of the book is introducing scholarly readers to various theologians who are addressing these three registers - Roger Haight, Joseph Bracken, Douglass Ottati, Andrew Sung Park, for example – and bringing them into conversation. Along the way readers receive a primer in various kinds of Christology: Logos Christology and Spirit Christology in particular.
A good bit of this material is presented in terms so technical, and with nuances so subtle, that the non-scholarly reader will be lost. Only the die-hard theology nerds will survive. But the whole idea of three registers or domains will make sense to people, including my mother. In speaking of Jesus and his significance for me she was speaking to the existential register (in this case my own) and in linking his hand-holding love with the mystery in which we live and move and have our being (God) she was speaking to the metaphysical register in her way. In effect she was giving me what Tripp Fuller and others call an “open and relational theology.”
Hand-Holding?
I know that the image of ‘hand-holding’ can seem sentimental, perhaps appropriate to a six year old but not adults or even adolescents. In particular, to those of a prophetic mind-set, it seems too comforting and far-removed from the challenging side of a life of discipleship. I was six, after all! But in hearing the phrase I ask you to mean what Fuller means when he speaks of the promise of the God of Love: Hear him out:
“The promise of the God of love is that God will be ever faithful, that the God of love is ever shaped by God’s deep solidarity with the world, and that the God of love promises to bear each moment of history within God while offering greater beauty, healing, and goodness to each moment of the Creation’s becoming.”
He speaks of a God who ‘bears each moment of history” with us and with the whole of creation, and adds that this ‘bearing’ includes vulnerability, suffering and pain. Let this be part of God’s love: a receptive side of God which can share joys and which can be wounded. This is what process theologians mean by the “consequent nature of God.”
And Fuller also speaks of a God who, in response to what is felt, offers “greater beauty, healing, and goodness to each moment of creation’s becoming.” Let this be part of God’s love, too: a side of God which is nurturing in an active way, providing us with fresh and empowering possibilities relative to the situation at hand. This is what process theologians mean by the primordial nature of God as active in the world through initial aims.
Yes, let ‘hand-holding’ refer to these two sides of God, with God imagined along the lines of a truly loving parent, an Abba or Amma. Fuller’s point, and I think my mother’s as well, is that this God is indeed ‘metaphysically’ real in some important sense and beckoning us in love to become more loving ourselves. As Fuller explains, when we respond existentially to God as revealed in Jesus, we simultaneously commit ourselves to a journey, a pilgrimage, the ends and implications of which cannot initially foresee. The life of discipleship to Christ, for individuals and communities, is an open-ended journey into a future that is itself open, even for God. So saith open and relational theologians, so saith Tripp Fuller, and so suggesteth Virginia McDaniel to her six year old son.
Judgment and Sin
Make no mistake, as someone reared in evangelical traditions, Tripp Fuller also speaks of a judgmental side of God. No, God is no namby-pamby. In his words:
God feels with the world, judges and redeems what the world has become, and then gives to the world the gift and grace of new possibilities.
But when Fuller says judgment I don’t hear something like retaliation, but rather something like discernment: a capacity to distinguish violence from peace, injustice from justice, cruelty from care, greed from generosity, sin from goodness, and to recognize that we human beings fall short from who we can be, and should be, when we embody the sinful traits. Moreover, and so important for Fuller, these sinful traits belong not only to individuals but to groups and societies. Entire societies can fall into greed, hatred and delusion, indeed in God’s name! Surely, the loving heart of the universe, the very One who is wounded along with us, the Abba of Jesus, judges, too. For Fuller we can experience God through holy No’s as well as Yes’s. Through tough love as well as tender love.
Sharing in Jesus’ Faithfulness
What might it mean, then, to be saved? For Fuller, it seems to mean something like wholeness, human and divine. Interestingly, Fuller points out that the very God revealed in Jesus needs saving, too: healing from the wounds suffered from receiving and absorbing the world’s sins and other kinds of violence. God has, as it were, a wounded heart. If we speak of the ministry, death, resurrection of Jesus as an activity on God’s part and on Jesus’ part (and Fuller does) then one purpose of this activity is to help save or heal God!
Moreover, after having happened, these events become part of God’s own ongoing history as well as our own. Consequent to Jesus, we humans inherit a past that includes a memory of him within our own consciousness, and we can advance his own healing ministry by sharing in his faith. Here Fuller quotes John Cobb:
“We interpret Paul’s statements in Romans 1:16-17 as pointing to the participation of believers in Jesus’ faithfulness, which involves a real change in those who were bound to sin. Jesus’ faithfulness breaks the bonds of sin for those who participate in Jesus’ faithfulness, not sin. Anyone who participates in Jesus’ faithfulness lives in the sphere of influence of that faithfulness, instead of in the sphere of sin’s power. That does not mean they are no longer in danger of coming again under the bonds of sin, but it does mean that they can turn to the faithfulness of Jesus to deal with that danger.” (John Cobb)
Was Jesus God?
Back to my mother. Later, as she was approaching the end of her life, I asked her if she thought Jesus was identical with God: God in the flesh. My impression was that, for her, this was not such an important question. She loved him and believed he loved her and everyone else. And he was somehow wrapped into what, for her, was a more encompassing metaphor: God as an encircling Spirit whose love includes all. I think that this being wrapped into the divine Encirclement was her way of saying that Jesus sits at God’ right hand. But whether he preexisted his birth was irrelevant to her. It was the love, understood as a window to the God and the Spirit, that counted.
Tripp Fuller, too, does not find the notion of Jesus pre-existing his birth all that helpful. And while he does seem to believe that Jesus responded to God’s lure at every single moment of this life, such is not his emphasis. For my part, along with John Cobb, I am doubtful. I doubt that even when he was a teenager he always responded ‘perfectly’ to God’s lure. Maybe so, but not so important. As Fuller emphasizes, part of what is most important about Jesus for us is what he means to us. We, too, have a voice in answering the question: “Who do you say that I am?” As Fuller emphasizes, the question is a love question not a label question. It’s a bit like asking: “Do you love me and will you walk with me?”
Fuller’s book is an invitation for Christians to say “Yes,” each in our way. He speaks of a divine reality who is invested in us: of a God who is self-invested. I might add that this God is, like any good abba, world-invested. Fuller does not point to a God who is about flattery or power, domination or control, but rather a God who says “Come, walk with me, and we will be healed together,” and then adds, like my mother, “I will always be with you, even when you don’t know it.” This is the God who is revealed in Jesus: a God in whom, along with Jesus, we can place our faith and who, in the spirit of an already existing covenant, faithful to us.
Chapter Six: Jesus Christ and
the Divine Self-Investment of God
Fuller, Tripp. Divine Self-Investment:
An Open and Relational Constructive Christology (p. 135).
SacraSage. Kindle Edition.
"This meant that God was not only the bringer of salvation, but also in need of it…Salvation is then not God’s external solution to the never-ending pattern of victim and violator, for God is also the victim…Abba is revealed to be a God who will be faithful to all—sinner and the sinned-against alike.
Salvation then is not primarily for the individual but also for the community, for it is there where true reconciliation is needed...Our hope in God is established not in God’s over-ruling power, but in God’s fidelity, solidarity, and promise…This promise comes from the very nature of God…The process of salvation is thus sustained by the constant dreaming and becoming of both God and the world. Yes, it includes the transferable nightmares that can awaken the sinner to salvation, but it also includes a transferable dream of divine solidarity and promise—a dream that God insists is for all and that will continue to be given until all are free at last."
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