We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater
There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead
Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater
The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller
The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller
According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater
Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater
Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger
Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton
I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon
Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII
Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut
Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest
We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater
People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon
Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater
An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater
Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann
Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner
“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”
Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton
The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon
The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul
The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah
If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon
Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson
We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord
Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater
To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement
Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma
It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater
God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater
In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall
Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater
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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater
Founding Director of the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice
Affiliate Faculty, Turner Family Center for Social Ventures, Owen Graduate School of Management
Joerg Rieger is Distinguished Professor of Theology, the Cal Turner Chancellor’s Chair of Wesleyan Studies, and the Founding Director of the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice. Previously he was the Wendland-Cook Endowed Professor of Constructive Theology at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University. He received an M.Div. from the Theologische Hochschule Reutlingen, Germany, a Th.M. from Duke Divinity School, and a Ph.D. in religion and ethics from Duke University.
Rieger’s work brings together the study of theology and of the movements for liberation and justice that mark our age, exemplified by the following questions: Considering the multiple relations of religion and power, what difference does religion make, for good and for ill, and what might be the constructive contributions of theology? What are the implications of various embodiments of faith for politics, economics, and ecology? What options and alternatives can we envision and how might the tools of theology help us make appropriate choices? Rieger’s constructive work in theology draws on a wide range of historical and contemporary traditions, with a concern for the roles that images of the divine play in the pressures of everyday life, locally, nationally, and internationally.
Author and editor of 22 books and more than 140 academic articles, a selection of his books includes Jesus vs. Caesar: For People Tired of Serving the Wrong God (2018), No Religion but Social Religion: Liberating Wesleyan Theology (2018), Unified We are a Force: How Faith and Labor Can Overcome America’s Inequalities (with Rosemarie Henkel-Rieger, 2016), Faith on the Road: A Short Theology of Travel and Justice (2015), Occupy Religion: Theology of the Multitude (with Kwok Pui-lan, 2012), Grace under Pressure: Negotiating the Heart of the Methodist Traditions (2011), Globalization and Theology (2010), No Rising Tide: Theology, Economics, and the Future (2009), Christ and Empire: From Paul to Postcolonial Times (2007), and God and the Excluded: Visions and Blindspots in Contemporary Theology (2001). His books have been translated into Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, German, Korean, and Chinese.
Rieger is editor of the academic book series New Approaches to Religion and Power with Palgrave Macmillan Publishers and, together with Professor Kwok Pui-lan, he edits the academic book series Religion in the Modern World (Rowman and Littlefield).
Rieger has lectured throughout the United States as well as internationally, including presentations in Brazil, Argentina, Costa Rica, Mexico, South Africa, Zimbabwe, India, China, Cambodia, the Philippines, Thailand, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Slovakia, the Netherlands, Belgium, England, Russia, and Israel/Palestine, with planned presentations in Korea, Taiwan, and various countries in Oceania. He is an ordained elder in The United Methodist Church.
Rieger is the author and editor of more than 20 books and over 135 academic articles, which have been translated into Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, German, Korean, and Chinese.[8]
Rieger is editor of the academic book series New Approaches to Religion and Power with Palgrave Macmillan Publishers and, together with Kwok Pui-lan, he edits the academic book series Religion in the Modern World (Rowman and Littlefield).[8][failed verification]
Rieger has lectured throughout the United States as well as internationally, including presentations in Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Mexico, Canada, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Slovakia, the Netherlands, Belgium, England, Russia, Thailand, and China.[9]
Rieger describes his work as an effort to bring theology and contemporary liberation movements together.[17] His work addresses the relation of theology and public life, reflecting on the misuse of power in religion, politics, and economics.[a] His main interest is in developments and movements that bring about change and in the positive contributions of religion and theology. His work in theology draws on a wide range of historical and contemporary traditions, with a concern for manifestations of the divine in the pressures of everyday life.[9][18][19]
Rieger advocates for a materialistic spirituality centered on working to improve the material conditions of the marginalized.[20] He believes current economic systems are incompatible with the biblical conception of God.[21] Rieger has described economic ideologies as religions, and asserts that people typically assent to them as a matter of blind faith, not empirical evidence. He renounces the perceived hegemony of free market ideology offering Christian theology as an alternative.[22]
Rieger's criticizes the currently dominant economic system especially for increasing global economic inequality,[23] and also for poverty, distorting of the way people and their work are valued, and limiting control people have over their lives.[24] As a response to economic injustice, Rieger promotes solidarity with those negatively impacted by current economic processes[25] and encourages Christians to modify economic systems to promote the wellbeing of everyone.[26]
Rieger and Kwok Pui-lan coined the notion of deep solidarity,[27] which is a recognition that the community as a whole is harmed by the unjust system, not just a particular group to be paternalistically supported from a place of superiority or distance.[28] Within this framework, the presence of college-educated individuals participating in the Occupy movement is not lack of authenticity in their appeal for economic justice, but rather an achievement in helping a broader portion of the public identify themselves as oppressed and able to see inequality as a threat to society as whole.[29]
Published works
Books authored
Jesus vs. Caesar: For People Tired of Serving the Wrong God. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2018.
No Religion but Social Religion: Liberating Wesleyan Theology. With Contributions by Paulo Ayres Mattos, Helmut Renders, and José Carlos de Souza. Nashville: GBHEM, 2018.
Unified We Are a Force: How Faith and Labor Can Overcome America’s Inequalities. With Rosemarie Henkel-Rieger. Saint Louis, Mo.: Chalice Press, 2016.
Faith on the Road: A Short Theology of Travel and Justice. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2015.
Graça libertadora: como o metodismo pode se envolver no século vinte e um. (Liberating Grace: How Methodism Can Engage the Twenty-First Century.) With additional contributions by Helmut Renders, José Carlos de Souza, and Paulo Ayres Mattos. Portuguese only, translated from the English by Elizangela A. Soares. São Bernardo do Campo, SP: Editeo, 2015.
with Pui-lan, K. (2012). Occupy Religion: Theology of the Multitude. Religion in the Modern World. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ISBN978-1-4422-1793-5. Chinese Translation (transl. by Jenny Wong Yan). Hong Kong: Chinese Christian Literature Council, 2015.
Traveling: Christian Explorations of Daily Living. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011. Portuguese translation: Fé e viagens no mundo globalizado (transl. by José Raimundo Vidigal). Sao Paulo: Editora Paulus, 2014. Chinese Translation (transl. by Jane Ng). Hong Kong: Chinese Christian Literature Council, 2014. Korean Translation. Seoul: Poiema, an imprint of Gimm-Young Publishers, 2015.
Grace Under Pressure: Negotiating the Heart of the Methodist Tradition. Nashville: United Methodist General Board of Higher Education and Ministry. 2011. ISBN978-0-938162-77-3. Portuguese translation: Graça sob Pressão: Negociando o Coração das Tradições Metodistas (transl. by Felipe Maia). São Bernardo do Campo: Editeo, 2012. Spanish translation: Gracia bajo presión (transl. by Alejandro Alfaro-Santi). Buenos Aires: Ediciones La Aurora, 2016.
Globalization and Theology. Horizons in theology. Abingdon Press. 2010. ISBN978-1-4267-0065-1. Italian translation: Globalizzazione e Teologia (transl. by Andrea Aguti). Preface by Rosino Gibellini. Brescia: Editrice Queriniana, 2015.
No Rising Tide: Theology, Economics, and the Future. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. 2009. ISBN978-1-4514-1112-6. Spanish Translation: La religion del Mercado: Una aproximación crítica a la acumulación y la probreza (transl. and ed. by Néstor Míguez). Buenos Aires: Ediciones La Aurora, 2016.
Beyond the Spirit of Empire: Theology and Politics in a New Key. Reclaiming Liberation Theology Series. Co-authored with Néstor Míguez and Jung Mo Sung. London: SCM Press, 2009. Portuguese translation: Para além do espírito do Império: Novas perspectivas em política e religião (transl. by Gilmar Saint’ Clair Ribeiro and Barbara T. Lambert). Sao Paulo: Paulinas, 2012. Spanish translation: Más allá del espiritu imperial: Nuevas perspectivas en política y religión (transl. by Nicolás Panotto and Néstor Míguez). Prologo de F. Hinkelammert. Buenos Aires: Ediciones La Aurora, 2016.
Christ & Empire: From Paul to Postcolonial Times. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. 2007. ISBN978-0-8006-2038-7. German translation: Christus und das Imperium: Von Paulus bis zum Postkolonialismus (transl. by Sabine Plonz). Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2009.Portuguese translation: Cristo e Império: de Paulo aos tempos pós-coloniais, Coleção Bíblia e Sociologia (transl. by Luiz Alexandre Solano Rossi). Sao Paulo: Editora Paulus, 2009.
Religious Experience and New Materialism: Movements Matter. Co-editor with Edward Waggoner. Radical Theologies Series. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
Religion, Theology, and Class: Fresh Engagements after Long Silence. New Approaches to Religion and Power. New York: Palgrave Macmillan US. 2013. ISBN978-1-137-33924-9.
Across Borders: Latin Perspectives in the Americas Reshaping Religion, Theology, and Life. Editor. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013.
Empire and the Christian Tradition: New Readings of Classical Theologians. Co-editor, with Don Compier and Kwok Pui Lan. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007.
Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Justice. Associate Editor. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 2007.
Opting for the Margins: Postmodernity and Liberation in Christian Theology. American Academy of Religion, Reflection and Theory in the Study of Religion Series. Editor. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Methodist and Radical: Rejuvenating a Tradition. Co-editor with John Vincent. Nashville: Kingswood Books, 2003.
Theology from the Belly of the Whale: A Frederick Herzog Reader. Editor. Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1999.
Liberating the Future: God, Mammon, and Theology. Editor. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998.
When we observe a tension between Jesus and Caesar, we acknowledge that a fundamental tension remains at the heart of Christianity. When this tension is poorly understood, Christians face disastrous consequences. The tension is not between religion and atheism or secularism. Nor is it between organized religion and personal spirituality. The tension is located within the heart of Christianity itself because it is a radical conflict between true and false forms of Christian faith. Jesus embodies and exposes this tension in ways that illuminate both how God is with us and what must change for a world that participates in God’s life. This book serves as an indictment of the pieties of empire, whether government, corporate or any other forms of the faith that dominate and exclude. One form of Christian faith (Jesus) versus another form of Christian faith (Caesar). Whom and what will we trust and serve? What did Jesus disclose to the religious, economic, and political worlds of Israel and Rome?
This tension between true and false forms of religion is also deeply rooted in the Jewish traditions. The Hebrew prophets were gravely concerned about established forms of Jewish religion that appear to be respectable but result in oppression. The prophet Isaiah hears the voice of God pronouncing judgment: “You serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers” (Isaiah 58:3). True religion loosens “the bonds of injustice" (Isa 58:6) while self-serving religion is false religion.
This tension between true religion and false religion is a critical opportunity for those who would follow Jesus instead of “Caesar.”
Please note: I write these notes to myself. They are not intended to be exact transcriptions from the speakers themselves. What I have written are not their words but my own thoughts. - res
Please note: All panelists provided textual statements for comments to attendees. These are not allowed to be publically published as they are intended to form to the moment-in-time not replicable beyond the panel discussions themselves as very specific conversations to one another in the AAR setting
Panelist Bios:
Craig Keen, Ph.D., is an award-winning professor of theology who has held various offices in the Wesleyan Theological Society, including promotional secretary, program chair, and president. Keen has published several articles in the Wesleyan Theological Journal, has a chapter in the book Embodied Holiness: Toward a Corporate Theology of Spiritual Growth (InterVarsity Press, 1999), and has written two books, both published by Cascade Books: The Transgression of the Integrity of God: Essays and Addresses (2012) and After Crucifixion: The Promise of Theology (2013). He is also under contract with Cascade Books to write Sanctity: Standing Up to the Coming of God. He served as co-chair of the Systematic Theology Working Group of the Twelfth Oxford Institute of Methodist Theological Studies, and in 2002 he served on an eight-member committee that envisaged, planned, and implemented the first Global Theology Conference of the Church of the Nazarene in Guatemala City, Guatemala.
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.
Grace Ji-Sun Kim received her M.Div. from Knox College (University of Toronto) and her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. She is Professor of Theology at Earlham School of Religion. Kim is the author or editor of 19 books. She is honored to be included in the Englewood Review of Book‘s list of “Ten Important Women Theologians That You Should Be Reading” and to be included in their list of books to read under “Our God is Too White? Diversifying our Theology”. Eerdmans included her in Five Great Women Scholars (and Their Books) and is included in the “15 Majority World Books that will Change the Way you see the World in 2017”. She is also one of the “Top 10 Writers Shaping Our Movement” put together by the Center for Progressive Renewal. Grace Ji-Sun Kim is an ordained minister of word and sacrament within the PC (USA) denomination. She is married to Dr. Perry Y.C. Lee (Associate Professor of Mathematics, Kutztown University) and they have 3 children Theo, Elisabeth and Joshua.
Joerg Rieger is Distinguished Professor of Theology, Cal Turner Chancellor’s Chair of Wesleyan Studies, and the Founding Director of the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice at Vanderbilt University. His work addresses the relation of theology and public life, reflecting on the misuse of power in religion, politics, and economics. His main interest is in developments and movements that bring about change and in the positive contributions of religion and theology. Author and editor of 23 books and over 160 academic articles, his books include Jesus vs. Caesar: For People Tired of Serving the Wrong God (2018), No Religion but Social Religion: Liberating Wesleyan Theology (2018), Unified We are a Force: How Faith and Labor Can Overcome America’s Inequalities (with Rosemarie Henkel-Rieger, 2016), Faith on the Road: A Short Theology of Travel and Justice (2015), Occupy Religion: Theology of the Multitude (with Kwok Pui-lan, 2012), No Rising Tide: Theology, Economics, and the Future (2009), and Christ and Empire: From Paul to Postcolonial Times (2007). Lecturing nationally and internationally, his works have been translated into Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Croatian, German, Malayalam, Korean, and Chinese.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
Please note: I write these notes to myself. They are not intended to be exact transcriptions from the speakers themselves. What I have written are not their words but my own thoughts. - res
Please note: All panelists provided textual statements for comments to attendees. These are not allowed to be publically published as they are intended to form to the moment-in-time not replicable beyond the panel discussions themselves as very specific conversations to one another in the AAR setting
Panelist Bios:
Jeffrey Pugh: Jeffrey C. Pugh, an influential teacher and mentor, joined Elon’s faculty in 1986 after earning his master of divinity degree from Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., and a master’s degree and doctorate in theological and religious studies from Drew University Graduate School in Madison, New Jersey. His graduate research focused on systematic and historical theology and he has continued that work during his career at Elon. He received Elon’s Daniels-Danieley Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2000 and the Distinguished Scholar Award in 2010. Pugh’s ambitious research has resulted in six books, ranging from Nazi-era theologians Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer to his work in religion and science. His most recent book, “The Homebrewed Christianity Guide to the End Times: Theology After You’ve Been Left Behind,” was published by Fortress Press in 2016 as part of a series sponsored by the popular Homebrewed Christianity podcast that takes a unique approach to helping delve into key Christian concepts, figures and ideas. He has also made numerous presentations at professional meetings and conferences, written articles, book chapters and book reviews for various publications, and served eight years as a member of the board of directors of the International Bonhoeffer Society.
Jacob Erickson: Jacob J. Erickson has lectured in theological ethics at Trinity since 2016. He previously taught Religion and Environmental Studies at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, USA. Alongside theologian Marion Grau (Norwegian School of Theology), he chairs the Sacred Texts, Theory, and Theological Construction Unit and serves on the Steering Committee for the Martin Luther and Global Lutheran Traditions Unit for the American Academy of Religion. His research and teaching interests include:
Ecotheology, Environmental Ethics, and the Environmental Humanities
Queer Theologies and LGBTIQ Ethics
Theology in Posthumanism and New Materialism
Lutheran Theology and Ethics
Erickson is currently working on an extended project on the intersections of global warming and theology called A Theopoetics of the Earth: Divinity in the Anthropocene. He's also working on an introductory text on sexuality and queer theological ethics.
Donna Bowman: Donna Bowman is a professor of interdisciplinary studies in the Norbert O. Schedler Honors College at the University of Central Arkansas. Her work in process theology focuses on reinterpreting Christianity as it is lived out in the pews and in the streets, with conceptions and meanings arising from ordinary people’s experience. Her most recent books are Prayer Shawl Ministries and Women’s Theological Imagination (Lexington, 2015) and The Homebrewed Christianity Guide to Being Human (Fortress, 2017).
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.
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.
Observation by Thomas J. Oord
see online statement
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?
Thomas Jay Oord Summary
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.
see online statement - very helpful. Too much again to write down.
Who is Jesus Christ for us today? Christology is a pilgrim's task. Who are we in the midst of a world of sin and evil? When children are torn from their parents arms by racist policies and millions go to bed hungry while the rich increase their wealth at the poor's expense?
Observation by Jacob Erickson
see online statement
Christology has been as much misused as helpfully used. The insidiousness of Christologies of power has harmed the message of the church to its Lord. Examples of Christo-facisms given in statement. Erickson is making rightful and powerful exertions of how Jesus has been misused by the church in its lynchings and Jim Crow laws; its killings of homosexuals; its oppression of so many unlike itself.
Erickson likes the presentness of Tripp's Christology. Finds its powerfully helpful that moves beyond the metaphysical Christologies towards the Process Christ inviting us into the present O&R way of thinking of Jesus's being and presence today in our lives. To imagine how Jesus may be imagined into the ways of our dark worlds as co-creators of light and ongoing lived and organic reality. Christology to become an art for living on a damaged planet lifting up ecological and Jesus themes. The reconstruction of Christology lifted into the world today.
Meekness is to give up the anthropocentrism of our lives for the wellbeing of nature. A divestment of power existentially answering the call of the Spirit to be in solidarity with the world at large. Of constant creativity and perpetual perishing will help us move from an anthropocentric Jesus. Climate justice + interracial justice + presentness of Jesus in all things.
Can a male Savior save women in like question whether a human Savior save creation? Do we need to move to different pneumological ways if an anthropocentrical Christology? What is our existential engagement with Christ in our lives today?
Observation by Donna Bowman
see online statement - another Process/Barth theologian with great insights!
Re the subject of idolatry and it's contrasts, "How are we shaped by figures other than Christ? Such as the traditional 'Anti-Christ' mediating an evil force against God?" Example: Satan, dark angels, human figures, nature events, etc vs the monotheism of Christology as the mediating figure of God-like figures. What are God's multiple mediations vs mutliple mediations of anti-God, anti-Christ like forces and personages, cults and movements? Other examples were of the crowds around Jesus wishing him to be their political leader. Of course we would never do this in our day would we? (sic, Trumpism). By removing Jesus from the human realm to the divine realm can grant us the idea of worshipping a Jesus other than He is a the man-God Christ.
Response by Tripp Fuller
see online statement
Tripp was fun to listen to in his lighthearted banter with his fellow Q&A'ers. Underneath the banter were serious concerns of biblical proportions.
It would be fun to take a Process/Barth course from Tripp/Oord/Bowman and another course with Tipp and Jacob Erickson.
What is our postmodern constructive task when we do theology? We are tending to the fire and presence of the lived body of Christ speaking back life and not death into the bowels of humanity. We are fire-breathers!
Loved Erickson's relating of Christology to Creationing!
Best quote: "God refuses to be God without us!"
re Bowman: Barth Quotation - "God did not create the Evil One. The denomic lives off of creaturely constructs and beings."
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."
The Future of Christology addresses the questions that Christology currently faces and/or will face in the future in 12 topics. The book consists of two parts. In the first part Kim deals with five topics related to traditional Christology, while in the second part he wrestles with seven topics related to issues of Christology.
The twenty-first century is a challenging time for Christianity. Many in our age are asking what Jesus Christ means in various dimensions of history, culture, nature, and even beyond the Earth. Changes in values, worldviews, and views of the universe are forming a new zeitgeist. Dong-Kun Kim argues that ways of understanding Christ should change accordingly, for a Christology that fails to communicate meaningfully with the times is void of vitality. Postmodernism, dehistoricization and life post-ideology, multiculturalism, multiple religions, and, above all, the rapid development of the natural sciences pose a serious challenge to traditional Christology.
Who is Christ in the age of an infinite cosmos? How do daily human life, social devotion, and praxis relate to salvation? How can we discuss salvation history in an era post-history? Where does Christ stand in the public sphere? Can the Chalcedonian definition of the two natures of Christ, “true God and true human being,” encompass nature and the cosmos; would a third nature of Christ be necessary? Will the cyborg, which may appear in the near future, be the object of Christ’s salvation? If scientific determinism becomes popular in the future, will the basis of faith in Christ lose ground? If intelligent life exists in the universe, what does Christ mean to such life? This book provides innovative answers to these questions in an academic context.
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(Author) Dong-Kun Kim: Dong-Kun Kim is a professor at Youngnam Theological University and Seminary, South Korea. He has published over 15 books and 50 academic papers, which have been published in English and Korean, and many of which have received awards in Korea.
Please note: I write these notes to myself. They are not intended to be exact transcriptions from the speakers themselves. What I have written are not their words but my own thoughts. - res
Please note: All panelists provided textual statements for comments to attendees. These are not allowed to be publically published as they are intended to form to the moment-in-time not replicable beyond the panel discussions themselves as very specific conversations to one another in the AAR setting
Panelist Bios:
Fred Sanders: Fred Sanders is a systematic theologian who studies and teaches across the entire range of classic Christian doctrine, but with a primary focus on the doctrine of the Trinity. Fred has taught in Torrey Honors College since 1999, and is an amateur historian of Biola's institutional history. He is co-founder of the annual Los Angeles Theology Conference, and maintains an active internet presence via Twitter and blog. He and his family are members of Grace Evangelical Free Church.
Natalie Marandiuc: Natalia Marandiuc’s work focuses on feminist constructive and systematic theology and draws from interdisciplinary sources in theology, humanities, social sciences, and neuroscience. She earned a Ph.D. in Religious Studies, with a specialization in systematic theology, from Yale University (2013). Her first book, The Goodness of Home: Human and Divine Love and the Making of the Self was published by Oxford University Press in 2018 and won the Aldersgate Prize. She is currently writing her second monograph, provisionally titled Love and Human Thriving: A Feminist Soteriology, and has received a Templeton award to support this work. She teaches at Perkins School of Theology, SMU, where she also serves as affiliate faculty in the Religious Studies graduate program. She co-chairs the Christian Systematic Theology Unit at the AAR, is a member of the steering committee of AAR’s Kierkegaard, Religion, and Culture section, and participates on the board of Logia.
Sameer Yadav: Sameer Yadav (Th.D., Duke, S.TM., Yale) is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Westmont College. Sameer is an analytic theologian whose research and publications have focused on the philosophy and theology of religious experience, apophatic and mystical theology, the nature of Christian scripture, the problem of divine hiddenness, and the significance of historical intersections of race and religion for theology. He is on the steering committee for the Philosophy of Religion group at the American Academy of Religion, the editorial board of the Journal of Analytic Theology, and serves on the diversity committee of the Society of Christian Philosophers. Sameer is the author of The Problem of Perception and the Experience of God (Fortress Press, 2015), as well as having published in various edited volumes and journals including Faith and Philosophy, Religious Studies, and The Journal of Religion. His current projects include a work of philosophical theology on race in a Christian doctrine of peoplehood and a book on narrative theology and doctrinal formation.
Jeorg Rieger: Joerg Rieger is Distinguished Professor of Theology and the Cal Turner Chancellor’s Chair of Wesleyan Studies. He is also the founding director of the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice. Previously he was the Wendland-Cook Endowed Professor of Constructive Theology at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University. He received an M.Div. from the Theologische Hochschule Reutlingen, Germany, a Th.M. from Duke Divinity School, and a Ph.D. in religion and ethics from Duke University. For more than two decades he has worked to bring together theology and the struggles for justice and liberation that mark our age. His work addresses the relation of theology and public life, reflecting on the misuse of power in religion, politics, and economics. His main interest is in developments and movements that bring about change and in the positive contributions of religion and theology. His constructive work in theology draws on a wide range of historical and contemporary traditions, with a concern for manifestations of the divine in the pressures of everyday life
(Author) Dong-Kun Kim: Dong-Kun Kim is a professor at Youngnam Theological University and Seminary, South Korea. He has published over 15 books and 50 academic papers, which have been published in English and Korean, and many of which have received awards in Korea.
Observation by Fred Sanders
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DKK subscribes to panentheistic v ancient biblical pantheism
Observation by Natalie Marandiuc
see online statement
Observation by Sameer Yadav
see online statement
Observation by Jeorg Rieger
see online statement
Response by Dong-Kun Kim
see online statement
My personal impression - DKK seems quite interesting and should be read. The material on DKK is thin and could not be found through normal sources. We are left with his books of which there are two at present.
