Global Jesus versus National Jesus: The Political Hermeneutics of Resurrection, Part One
Introduction
Biblical interpretation is, if not the only, certainly the core task of theological hermeneutics. Unfortunately, religious conflict and biblical interpretation have always been joined at the hip. Is it therefore the case that theologians engage in “politics” when they offer authoritative interpretations? Is it too much of a stretch to characterize biblical hermeneutics as a branch of political theology? It does seem that biblical interpretation fits comfortably within almost any definition of the “political”. Politics is commonly associated with power. And he who controls the interpretation of the Word of God sets boundaries between Christian orthodoxy and heresy; he also shapes and sanctifies the ecclesiastical role in relationships between faithful Christians and their triune God. Indeed, the “political” nature of theological hermeneutics becomes self-evident the moment priests, pastors, and professors try to define what they mean by “politics”.
When Christian thinkers in the modern West turn their minds to politics, they generally fall somewhere along a spectrum stretching from those most attracted to cosmopolitan humanism to those characterized by a more parochial or patriotic political realism. The humanists, perhaps typified by the German Reformed theologian Jürgen Moltmann, espouse a future-oriented, eschatological vision of politics. Moltmann portrays politics as “the search for forms of human association and for uses of the powers of nature which foster the realization of full human life”.[1] This global vision of Christian politics stands in stark contrast to the more national focus of another famous German political theologian, the Catholic jurist Carl Schmitt. Highly sceptical of liberal humanism, Schmitt believed that the political has to do with the existential conflict between friend and enemy.[2]
The Resurrection as a Problem in Political Hermeneutics
In effect, Moltmann’s political “theology of hope” grounds Christian faith in an ontology of peace set in opposition to the ontology of violence he saw in Schmitt’s hard-nosed historical realism.[3] Whether such differences over the definition of the political are ontological or merely historical, the tension between cosmopolitan and parochial perspectives is baked into the cake of biblical hermeneutics. Even scholarly disputations over the resurrection of Jesus Christ are filtered through explicitly political interpretations of biblical texts. Political theology cannot be swept under the rug. The stakes are too high.
The survival of Christianity as we know it depends upon its capacity to maintain the faith in the risen Christ set out, inter alia, in the Nicene Creed:
For our sake [Jesus Christ] was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.
Professor Jürgen Moltmann
Individual believers, no less than various branches of the church universal, have vital interests, spiritual and material, in the perceived truth and/or utility of their version of the resurrection story. Theological hermeneutics is, has been, and forever will be in search of the “proper” interpretation of the “paschal mystery” at the heart of the Easter story.
Certainly, it is becoming painfully obvious that the ongoing quest for the “true” meaning of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection cannot be separated from the central political conflict of our time: globalism versus nationalism. Can it be mere coincidence that interpretations of the Easter story portraying the crucified-and-resurrected Messiah as a “global Jesus” are a staple of mainline Protestant preaching? “Global” Christianity teaches that the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ represents the hope of a still-future resurrection of the dead for the whole of “humanity”. Accordingly, most professing Christians would greet the very idea of a “national Jesus” as an oxymoron at best and a heresy at worst. But just as secular nationalism has arisen in opposition to the process of globalization in the temporal realm of politics, a growing number of Christian scholars, across a range of disciplines, now offer a “national Jesus” as a compelling alternative to the globalized interpretation of the resurrection story.
In the emerging story of “national Jesus,” neither the historical Jesus nor his apostle Paul offer a vision of the future extending beyond the then-imminent, spiritual restoration of national Israel. Among historians it is not at all controversial to observe that “Jesus’ God was the national God of Israel, not some abstract universal deity”.[4] Moreover, Jesus made it clear that his impending death “concerned Israel as a nation”. He did not want to create a “new religion. He wanted to consummate God’s promises to Israel, and he saw this taking place in the land of Israel”.[5]
Outside the historical profession, a dissident band of biblical exegetes reject the traditional church doctrine that the crucifixion-and-resurrection represent the fulfillment of Israel’s covenantal history.[6] These “preterist” (from the Latin, præter, meaning “past”) scholars locate both the Easter story and the subsequent parousia (a.k.a. the Second Coming) of Jesus Christ in the first century AD. The story of Jesus, they say, is an epic narrative inextricably bound up with the historical destiny of national Israel. If they are right, the covenantal eschatology inscribed in the biblical metanarrative tells us nothing about the future of “humanity”.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ was, as the creeds affirm, a shadow or a type of a second, general resurrection. But, preterists contend, the resurrection of the dead of which the apostle Paul spoke was a spiritual process occurring there and then in the first century; he was not expecting the physical bodies of dead people to climb out of the grave. Jesus did not appear in bodily form to Saul or his companions on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:3-8). His spiritual presence represented “the firstfruits of them that slept” (1 Cor 15:20); namely, the Old Testament saints together with those in Paul’s generation who had “fallen asleep” in Christ. The resurrection body of Christ was transfigured into the fulfilled telos of national Israel according to the flesh. On this biblical hermeneutic, the vindication of the martyrs, the spiritual restoration of Israel, was consummated with judgement at the Day of the Lord marking the end of the Mosaic Age. In short, the apocalyptic destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in A.D. 70 inaugurated the new heaven and a new earth.[7]
Anyone who reads the Easter story faces a hermeneutic choice: global Jesus or national Jesus. Whether or not we recognize the fact, the hermeneutic judgement we render on that issue has political significance. Historical criticism and covenantal eschatology, separately and together, provide growing support for a hermeneutic of resurrection centred on a national Jesus. Thus far, however, those who challenge the hermeneutical hegemony of “global Jesus” have been, for the most part, blind to the implications that a national Jesus carries into the realm of contemporary political theology. On the other hand, the progressive champions of global Jesus have been much less reticent. Indeed, like Moltmann, the “postmodern critical Augustinians” who now carry the torch for the political theology of hope wear their politics proudly on their sleeves.[8]
Global Jesus as Universal Victim
For Brian Robinette, “the language of resurrection is cosmic in scope,” extending in time and space far beyond the Sitz im Leben of biblical Israel. He upholds the traditional view that the crucifixion-and-resurrection of Jesus was “the precondition for Israel becoming the ‘light unto the nations’”. In the course of his ministry, Jesus had demanded righteousness and obedience from his followers. He insisted that Israel’s hope for restoration was crucially dependent upon repentance and forgiveness of sin. Flying in the face of such warnings, “Jesus’ crucifixion stands as the ultimate expression of human sin and guilt”. God’s response is utterly astonishing: by raising Jesus from the dead, God extends an “offer of forgiveness to Israel”. God made Israel a light unto the nations, first, by raising Jesus from the dead, thereby serving “eschatological justice to an innocent victim whilst unmasking the guilt of his accusers and murderers”. At the same time, by resurrecting Jesus from the dead, God acquits “those responsible for this death, using their own ignorance and sin as the very means to save them from self-condemnation” by welcoming the return of the risen victim.[9]
Professor Brian Robinette
Robinette maintains that this acquittal applies to every human person. All of us who have denied hospitality to the Other now have the opportunity “to participate in a new community, the ecclesia, founded upon the welcome of the victim”. Within the redemptive logic of Israel’s own story, therefore, God’s offer of forgiveness is “universal in its breadth”.[10] The death of the “risen victim…manifests the sin of the world in which all are implicated”.[11] The Easter story is not just about an historical event long ago and far away for which we carry no responsibility. Both justice and mercy are extended to all human persons when God vindicates “an innocent victim from the dead”.[12] The human spirit bears collective guilt for an historical crime even though we were not physically present where and when it was committed. The sin, guilt, and forgiveness of which Robinette writes are ontological, not historical, in nature.
In effect, like Augustine of Hippo long before him, Robinette rewrites the metanarrative of biblical Israel as the as-yet-unfinished story of humanity-at-large. He presents the crucifixion-and-resurrection story as an ahistorical, onto-theological drama. It was not just the disciples who were passively complicit in “Jesus’ lynching”. All of us “are entrenched in the dynamics that led to Jesus’ death—including you, dear reader”. We may not be “literally contemporaneous with the events that led to Jesus’ crucifixion in first-century Jerusalem” but “we are contemporaneous insofar as the dynamics involved in his crucifixion are operative in our own lives. Had we been there, the text is urging, we would have done the same thing”.[13] We, too, would have violently expelled Jesus from Israel’s midst. Sharing in the ontological guilt of the historic perpetrators of deicide, we, too, must pray for forgiveness.
For Robinette, the bodily resurrection of Jesus was both a demonstration of God’s power and a “universal offer of forgiveness to humanity”. By raising Jesus from the dead, God “overcomes death itself. It transforms death’s absolute non-presence into God’s self-presence to us in the crucified-and-risen One”. God triumphs “over those structural powers, including death itself, that led to the brutal death of God’s eschatological prophet; thus, the message of Easter draws our attention to God’s solidarity with the victims in our history”. Two thousand years after the empty tomb was discovered, Robinette believes, the “eschatological counter-gaze of the forgiving victim” still invites us to perceive just how deeply engrained are the processes by which we obtain our “identity, whether individually or in groups, through the expulsion of the Other”. Christian reflection on the resurrection “unseals the collective amnesia that has allowed us to suppress the injustice of our violent exclusions, showing once and for all that the effort to build our identities through the denial of hospitality to the human Other—is in fact a rejection of the divine Other”.[14]
Whenever and wherever Christians welcome “the Gift of the risen victim,” the heavenly ontology of peace finds its earthly abode. Historically speaking, the ontology of violence gave way incrementally to an ecclesiastical realm of peace on earth. Robinette holds that the second, general resurrection is a real historical process which began in the first century church and continues today. The already-but-not-yet resurrection of the dead has guided us “into a new story whose truth can set us free for full human flourishing”.[15]
Global Jesus and the Christian Hermeneutics of Mission
Robinette is convinced that the “human person” becomes a “catholic personality” by allowing “the Spirit of the risen Christ to graciously penetrate our self-enclosed patterns of perception and behaviour, and to disarm those many defences that prevent us from allowing the Other to be welcomed as co-constitutive”. Openness to the Other promises an “enrichment of the self” as we become “a personal microcosm of the eschatological new creation”. In that way, “we anticipate (or ‘analogize’) the general resurrection of the dead in which God will be all in all”. Human personhood is sanctified through a transition from a life “dominated by sinful existence to genuine freedom,” a transition which “comes only by welcoming an Other whose alterity is not an obstacle to human flourishing but the condition of possibility for it”.[16]
On this interpretation, the cross and resurrection are not mere signs of forgiveness. Like Robinette, John Milbank believes that “Jesus’ death is efficacious…also as a material reality”. This is “because it is the inauguration of the ‘political’ practice of forgiveness; forgiveness as a mode of ‘government’ and social being”. Milbank describes this practice as “itself ongoing atonement”. In other words, if atonement is “to be materially efficacious it cannot be ‘once —and for all’, like the sign or metaphor of atonement,” it “must be continuously renewed”.[17]
Both Milbank and Robinette turn to political thought and action as a means of making atonement effective in the real world. Robinette suggests that because “sin replicates itself through interpersonal, social, and cultural relations,” the central theme of atonement is the idea of a divine victory over the evil powers of the world. He warns us never to “lose sight of the fact that Jesus was crucified by a political power”. Of course, Jesus himself had no interest in obtaining political power but “his ministry was profoundly political insofar as it sought to reorient our social construction of reality”. Indeed, Jesus was put to death “as a political criminal because he represented a thoroughgoing challenge to the way we order interpersonal and social relationships, above all the way we order our world through the production of victims”. By participating in God’s “alternative Kingdom” we aim to embody the risen victim by means of solidarity “with the victims of our world”. It means associating “with those who are deemed the outsiders, the contaminants, the monsters, the prisoners, the dispensable, and the unclean according to the dominant purity maps in any given social-cultural setting”.[18]
In today’s political climate, Robinette’s vision of Christian political practice seems indistinguishable from fashionably progressive purity spirals. He is unlikely to face ostracism from academic colleague when he declares that the “ministry of reconciliation is one that puts the Christian in a mode of service to the Other”. All right-thinking people—especially white people—are under constant pressure “to become highly sensitized and responsive to those social mechanism that produce victims”. Not even the most enthusiastic globalist or leftist proponent of mass Third World immigration would object to Robinette’s claim that “[b]y offering hospitality to those who suffer expulsion or want, we offer hospitality to Christ himself (Matt. 25:34-46)”.[19] Indeed, Robinette simply follows in the footsteps of Jürgen Moltmann’s footsteps when he offers a “political interpretation of biblical eschatology…indebted to the philosophy of revolution of Hegel, Marx, and Ernst Bloch”.[20]
Contrary to popular misconceptions, Marx’s attitude towards Christianity was not exhausted by his famous dictum that “religion is the opium of the people”. Far from being opposed to religion per se, Marx sought to make “the living protest garbed in religious myth practically effective”. Recognizing the power latent in religious mythology and ritual, Marx aimed to bring about “an historical realization of religion…by translating myth into action”.[21] The political hermeneutic utilized by both Moltmann and Robinette parallels radical Marxist protests against oppression. Both proclaim “the liberation of the suffering creation out of real affliction”.[22] Both believe that the “proper interpretation of the gospel is its historical realization”. Robinette shares Moltmann’s conviction that Christian hermeneutics is an inescapably political “hermeneutics of mission”.[23]
Biblical interpretation thus becomes a way of promoting revolutionary change in historical time in the name of the risen victim. Moltmann, like Robinette, uses the biblical images of the “needy and the outcast, and foremost of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus as clues to the purpose and goal of God’s activity and his summons to man”. The image of global Jesus as universal victim transforms the gospel into “a power which intensifies and universalizes the quest of man for an all-embracing community of justice and freedom”. By arousing the hope of “God’s coming universal reign,” the gospel of the risen victim “provokes men to resist the institutional stabilization of present conditions”.[24]
But it is not just institutional life that will be destabilized by this Christian humanist dialectic of atonement. Human beings no longer “have to try to cling to their identity through constant unity with themselves, but will empty themselves into non-identity…into what is other and alien”.[25] Robinette insists that Christians must set out to undermine “every tendency to build our identities according to ‘us’ and them’”. Atonement requires “a ‘catholic’ identity that welcomes the Other in hospitality”.
Robinette acknowledges that such a political hermeneutic flatly denies the existential distinction between “friend” and “enemy”. In fact, the truly radical character of Christian hospitality toward the Other only “comes into focus when we consider that this Other may be our ‘enemy’”. We imitate global Jesus most faithfully “when we engage with love those who persecute us”.[26]
Here, however, we should be aware that, as a matter of fact, Jesus did not ask his listeners to “love” their persecutors in the Sermon on the Mount; rather, he urged prayers on their behalf. It is even more important to realize what Jesus meant when asked the audience to love their enemies. In the Greek, he refers specifically and only to “private” enemies (echthros) not to “public” or “alien” enemies (polemoi).[27] Unless one keeps such distinctions in mind, a Christian hermeneutics of mission can easily degenerate into pathological altruism.[28] The existential distinction between friend and enemy cannot be dissolved by transforming Christianity into a deracinated, cosmopolitan cult of the Other. National Jesus knew better than to mistake historical choice for ontological essence.
[1] Daniel L. Migliore, “Biblical Eschatology and Political Hermeneutics,” (1969) 26(2) Theology Today 116, at 118.
[2] Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political tr. George Schwab (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1976), 26.
[3] Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope (New York: Harper & Row, 1967); Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty tr. George Schwab (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988).
[4] Scot McKnight, A New Vision for Israel: The Teachings of Jesus in National Context (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1999), 69.
[5] Ibid., 6.
[6] Cf., Brian D. Robinette, Grammars of Resurrection: A Christian Theology of Presence and Absence (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 2009), 294.
[7] One of the most prolific preterist scholars is Don K. Preston who has published too many books to list here. One useful introduction to his work is: Don K. Preston, We Shall Meet Him in the Air: The Wedding of the King of Kings! (Ardmore, OK: JaDon Management, 2009).
[8] Cf., John Milbank, “‘Postmodern Critical Augustinianism’: A Short Summa in Forty Two Responses to Unasked Questions,” (1991) 7(3) Modern Theology 225.
[9] Robinette, Grammars, 309, 294-295.
[10] Ibid., 293-294.
[11] Ibid., 309-310 emphasis in original.
[12] Ibid., 309.
[13] Ibid., 293-294.
[14] Ibid., 296, 309-310, 301.
[15] Ibid., 293.
[16] Ibid., 309, 305.
[17] John Milbank, “The Name of Jesus: Incarnation, Atonement, Ecclesiology,” (1991) 7(4) Modern Theology 311, at 327.
[18] Robinette, Grammars, 304, 312-313.
[19] Ibid., 307.
[20] Migliore, “Biblical Eschatology,” 122.
[21] Ibid., 122.
[22] Moltmann, quoted in ibid., 123.
[23] Ibid., 123.
[24] Ibid., 128-129.
[25] Moltmann, quoted in Robinette, Grammars, 309.
[26] Ibid., 311.
[27] Cf., Schmitt, Concept of the Political, 28-29.
[28] Cf., Barbara Oakley, et. al., Pathological Altruism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).
Not until the very last paragraph did the article get around to the pertinent application of these ideas to our concerns:
“In the Greek, he refers specifically and only to “private” enemies (echthros) not to “public” or “alien” enemies (polemoi).[27] Unless one keeps such distinctions in mind, a Christian hermeneutics of mission can easily degenerate into pathological altruism.[28]”
This needs to be developed further, to justify the purpose for the article. Who actually HAS kept such distinctions, as these above, in mind? It’s the first time I’ve heard it made (and it may be just in the nick of time, as I’m about to say ‘enough!’ to the cuck-tian faith, for related reasons).
@Felton Newisher
“It’s the first time I’ve heard it made (and it may be just in the nick of time, as I’m about to say ‘enough!’ to the cuck-tian faith, for related reasons).”
It is a very sad state today to have once upon a time read Christ’s words and to see how they are ignored and a NEW & IMPROVED jesus is sold to the masses.
The only religion that I know of that stands up against the self-chosen people, is Islam.
It comes in various forms such as Bashar al Assad. He celebrates Christmas and Easter. The form of Shia makes a a difference, whilst there are nice Sunnis it isn’t what resonates with Aryan man.
Muhammad was a white man and was an honest man.
A great reformer.
Think of it as a religion with BALLS.
While the American White Christian worships jews and Israel, a WHITE MUSLIM can stand against the eradication of his people.
However while Christianity is clearly DYING, I don’t think whites will embrace a time tested self-defense religion such as Shia or the form Bashar is, well there is always Basketball and Football.
I leave you with a quote from the leader of Hezbollah do you think American little boys measure up to these chlldren:
Shaykh Hassan Nasrallah February 2010
Going back to these leaders – Sayyed Abbass, Sheikh Ragheb and Hajj Imad and looking in their personalities, bearing and conduct for common points we find that these common characteristics almost coincide: faith, piety, religiousness, devoutness, sincerity, truthfulness, loving people, being humble to people, being eager to help people and having passionate emotions. With such persons we might understand how a man might be full of pity for others and yet tough! How a man might stand in face of the enemies of his nation and people and destroy them and yet might weep like children when viewing the limbs of martyrs in Qana Massacre among other massacres. So we might find many common points. But I would like to stress today on one factor from which I will get started. It is the factor of youth which unite these martyr leaders. Since their youth, these brethren martyrs had early awareness regarding the cause of struggle against the Israeli enemy, Al Qods and Palestine… Since youth, they had the enthusiasm to be part of the responsibility, work, offering and sacrifice. Since youth they were men and not lads.
They did not know the life of amusement, luxury and the life admissible to those of their age. They were men since they were but children and remained men while they were lads and passed away men as martyrs. Allah Almighty chose every one of them his course and way to be in his position and to play his role in the formula. Thus Sheikh Ragheb Harb was the embodiment of the public intifada. He was the symbol of challenge, civil steadfastness and the intifada of woman and children.
He was the symbol of passive resistance as he refused to shake hands with the enemy or smile in its face besides accepting its existence. His blood established for the victory of the resistance at that time.
The power politics of Christian theology are must be analyzed in the context of the evolution of Euroman. Euroman, more than other peoples, were cultured for individual integrity by a pre-civil culture that approves mob killing of any self-declared individual sovereign who does not accept a challenge to _natural_ duel. This genetic legacy of individualism is the non-renewable natural resource of Christian power. Natural duel — with roots in mutual hunts between individual heads of households over limited hunting territory calories — is male intrasexual selection with even deeper roots going back 600 million years to the Cambrian Explosion.
The first thing a would be king, Christian or not, must do to exploit this natural resource is subvert the natural duel. Initially this can be as simple as formalizing it in a way that imposes artificial conditions divorced from the natural conditions of a mutual hunt. This makes the duel dysgenically specialized — as Holmganga became leading, ultimately, to Christianization. The next stage is to adopt Christianity in conjunction with outlawing even dysgenic duel — as was done in Iceland circa 1000AD. Once this is accomplished blood feud is unleashed as the tensions normally released via duel erupt in gang warfare. This causes such chaos and bloodshed that a king can become “the prince of peace” supported by his priests all of whom are protected from challenges to eugenic duel. The pacification of blood feud by the king’s gang is welcomed by the population who are given morals of pacifism by the priests. Individual sovereignty becomes a distant memory — perhaps abstracted into things like “property rights” which are, ultimately, at the pleasure of the king’s gang.
However, the genetic tendency toward individual integrity can now be harnessed by fealty to king and produce a society of highly lawful individuals of integrity, treating each other as “of the body” — interiorizing their Being. The individual initiation of force is now cut off and undergoes the sociosexual equivalent of a water hammer in the pipelined momentum of 600 million years of masculinity. This force can be unleashed by the king in fury unmatched by societies enjoying less individual integrity and less genetic quality generally. So in peace and in war, the Christian society is unbeatable. It has perfect continence between the peaceful interior and the exterior against which it wages holy war.
But during this entire period, defectors will evolve abilities to exploit the king’s natural resources — including kings themselves since they are no longer subject to the selection pressures of individual integrity that fuels the golden age.
The New World was an attempt to escape this dysgenic decay in a frontier with land that could be conquered, and it extended the golden age of Christianity for hundreds of years, but it was a terminal euphoria.
This doesn’t address the powerful mythic appeal of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection particular to peoples of individual integrity, but a moment’s reflection should suffice to see it. Here’s a clue: Christ maintained his integrity as an individual to his tortured death at the hands of a mob, despite being denied by all, even by Peter, the foundation of his church.
Champion combat is no substitute either, not even in the case of an emperor vs king, as in the case of the Byzantine Emperor John Tzimisces’s challenging the Rus Viking King Svyatoslov to single combat — let alone the risible English tradition of “The King’s Champion” in which the king doesn’t even answer a challenge to his coronation himself. In the case of Tzimisces’s challenge, we have a Christian ruler challenging a Viking ruler to single combat, and the Viking ruler demures, preferring to negotiate.
Champion combat does, at least, even within group conflict, evince a deep connection with individual masculine sovereignty. Champion combat appears to be an aspect of conflict between hunting packs of wolves and may be an aspect of the coevolution of humans and wolves.
Better for readers here to read Gilad Atzmon’s recent article on CHOSEN-MESS [ no typo ] than to witness the laundering of the diapers of these two geniuses.
Marx’s UTILIZATION of Christianity misfired miserably because it fell into his co-religionists’ hands: culminating in the GDR ” Volksmund “, or folk wisdom : What is thine is mine. And what is mine is none of your business !
Simple chance does not explain my survival during 44-45 in Berlin, nor on April 21, 45, forty feet from the road. I said here before, that I believe Christ put in overtime on my behalf. I will always remain indebted to Him.
I am slightly ashamed to make even a bachelor’s simple supper, without being able to share, and to pull my blankets up in a cozy, smallish apartment.
If there only weren’t ca. 3.5 billion OTHERS who would instantaneously flood into the West, given half a chance, and a Democratic or EU equivalent welcome.
The ‘ deep thinkers ‘ cited here are not worthy their mention. The moral dilemma is our personal affair.
“I said here before, that I believe Christ put in overtime on my behalf. I will always remain indebted to Him.”
How can you separate a belief in Christ from Christ himself? There are people who have been miraculously saved from horrible events who didn’t believe in Christ, never have known him personally, and indeed in some cases know nothing about him at all. Also, there are nonChristians who have a completely different interpretation of the meaning of Christ. You know, a psychological explanation.
I believe that Christ put in overtime on my behalf, because he allowed me to survive three bombings of our apartment building, during which the reinforced basement ceiling held up: unlike many other places. Before our fourth bombing we were already sent to ” safety ” to the south-east of Berlin, unknowingly awaiting the arrival of the emissaries of that Jewish Bolshevik swine Ehrenburg, many, but not all of whom did his bidding announced daily by him in the Red Army’s RED STAR. Kill, kill them all, men women and children alike. Your day is not complete unless you killed a few Germans today ! Apparently he was not beyond plagiarizing sections of the Talmud.
In 46, every Thursday at school, for two hours we were obliged to watch movies of mutilated children, many in several, widely strewn body parts, who ignored the warnings to stay away from unexploded ordinance.
The short-cut to school took us through the roads of an enormous rubble dump. We found three small, but highly explosive bomblets showered on railway depots. We thought of others driving over them and took them to the police station where we plopped them on the sergeant’s desk. He ordered the evacuation of a four story apartment building in which his precinct was housed. Some ensuing excitement and unending chastisement.
This is not the last occurrence in my life where I could envision Christ sighing to himself: oh, not him again ! I’m not the story here: millions perished; some, less fortunate were mutilated in body or mind.
My dilemma is deciding whether I’m obliged to fully give my heart to the OTHER, while being weary whether that will be reciprocated by the OTHER’S intention to take my heart, quite literally. Enough mush for one day.
If Jesus was so great why do you get to live a nice peaceful life as your wonderful Christian civilization devolves into drag queen story hour? Guess those kids should have prayed harder!
“Political theology cannot be swept under the rug. The stakes are too high.”
It’s exactly because the stakes are high that it’s worth pointing out what this article helps make clear, that we live in an interpreted world.
There are interpretations everywhere and of all kinds.
But no Theory of Interpretation.
Same goes with Evaluation, closely connected to Interpretaion.
Lots of evaluations, but no Theory of Evaluation.
There are many modes of both interpretation and evaluation, but no real theory of either.
And, since both are Explanations, we might as well take this time to point out there there is no Theory of Explanation.*
And since Explanation is a mode of Behavior, there’s no Theory of Behavior based on Observables that shows us exactly what it is that connects language to the world, or, how a word gets to the world.
But since word and world are both words that’s the same as saying, “How does a word get to a word?” And the answer obviously is that a word doesn’t do anything.
And now we’re back to why we live in an interpreted world.
I just think that as long as we’re going to take the time to use words to construct the most embarrassing silliness (Marxism comes to mind, and not just Marxism) and use that constructed silliness to justify wholesale slaughter, it might be worth it to point these things out.
*Actually, there is one.
And since Explanation is a mode of Behavior, there’s no Theory of Behavior based on Observables that shows us exactly what it is that connects language to the world, or, how a word gets to the world.
On contrar Richard B
A mere look into the Book of Job may help with this. I especially like the words
“Have you entered the storehouses of the snow or seen the storehouses of the hail, which I reserve for times of trouble, for days of war and battle? Job 38:22
Words which are observable here:
https://youtu.be/aw_lwS7scTY
https://youtu.be/Gi7GOcwUwQg
https://time.com/5618209/guadalajara-mexico-hail-hailstorm/
An interesting article, but are the esoteric debates of theologians of any significance to the average White person in their daily lives, especially since the churches have abandoned most of the formerly cherished doctrines and now regard the resurrection as ‘symbolic’.
As the Maoists avered, “everything is political” . And they are quite right. But the central issue is, as Solzhenitsyn stated, that the line between good and evil passes through us all regardless of class or race.
In this context the parable of the Good Samaritan is enlightening.
A White Nationalist is called to mercifully help the ‘other ‘ but is not called to harm his own kin by allowing the ‘other ‘ to dispossess them.
After that wonderful article on classical music, this nonsense. Gaby Johnson’s frontier gibberish at least was amusing, and even made more sense. I’m reminded of something Colin Wilson described as being “like two drunken queers arguing at a party. What’s next, phlogiston and white genocide?
I glance down and to my right- on the floor, The Outsider by Colin Wilson.
There was a scene in a movie where the Scots were faced with an enemy of the English King who had hoped and fully expected their demise at their hands. Looking out over the battle scene the King watched as both armies were yelling and screaming at each other, waving their weapons in the air and such. Then the smiling king watching them run towards each other in great commotion only to meet in the center of the field dropping their weapons to the ground and laughing hysterically, patting each other on the back and hugging one another. The King looks at the scene and says something to the effect of Fcu*ing Irish.
Yep, if only Christian nations had done something similar on the battlefields of the world maybe then what Christ said would have greater meaning ‘they will know you are my disciples if you love one another.’
Do you know what is the single greatest political statement ever made by anyone at any time in any period in the entire history of mankind period?
Matthew 6:9-13 or Luke 11:2-4
That right there is the sum and substance of everything.
As for ‘globalism versus nationalism’ if it weren’t for the invention of the nuclear bomb globalism would hardly be a factor. That invention however, changed everything.
The problem with Christianity is God’s people go through life accepting only the good things that the bible has to say while ignoring and even rejecting the hard and difficult issues.
What I really don’t understand however, is why so much ignorance of a book like Job which provides the sum and substance of everything political where God is concerned? A book that lays the foundation totally and completely for understanding how Go uses the weather not only as a means of communicating but ultimately punishment and judgment.
“God’s voice thunders in marvellous ways; he does great things beyond our understanding. He says to the snow, “Fall on the earth,” and to the rain shower, “Be a mighty downpour.” So that everyone he has made may know his work, he stops all people from their labor. The animals take cover; they remain in their dens. The tempest comes out from its chamber, the cold from the driving winds. The breath of God produces ice, and the broad waters become frozen. He loads the clouds with moisture; he scatters his lightning through them. At his direction they swirl around over the face of the whole earth to do whatever he commands them. He brings the clouds to punish people, or to water his earth and show his love.” (Job 37:5–13)
God is even according to it a military commander with his own weapons?
“Have you entered the storehouses of the snow or seen the storehouses of the hail, which I reserve for times of trouble, for days of war and battle?” {Job 38}
So ask yourself if after reading such scriptures is this what is going on with the weather today? Could climate change actually be the work of ?
Is there not a pattern to what is going on?
Gerry Fox has the answer in astonishingly the only book ever written on the subject Climate Change the Work of God
“Jesus did not appear in bodily form to Saul or his companions on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:3-8). His spiritual presence represented “the firstfruits of them that slept” (1 Cor 15:20);”
Jesus DID appear in bodily form.
Matthew 24:49
Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.
Christ is the firstfruits of all believers who will enter into the deified state into which Christ re/entered in his resurrection.
Philippians 3:21
Who shall change OUR VILE BODY, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.
Our vile body is our mortal body which is corrupted by sin. It is to be transformed into a spiritual body, deified as Christ himself (1 Corinthians 15:44, 46).
1 Corinthians 15:50-55
50 Now this I say, brethren, that FLESH AND BLOOD cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.
51 Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but WE SHALL ALL BE CHANGED,
52 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and WE SHALL BE CHANGED.
53 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and THIS MORTAL MUST PUT ON IMMORTALITY.
The ultimate end for the Christian is immortality, man physically transformed into deity, made immortal.
“Certainly, it is becoming painfully obvious that the ongoing quest for the ‘true’ meaning of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection cannot be separated from the central political conflict of our time: globalism versus nationalism.”
Its a waste of time looking for some political significance in the death & resurrection of Christ to apply to the globalism vs. nationalism debate/dynamic. There is none to be found there. But, that doesn’t stop “theologians” from working overtime to read all manner of political significance into scripture that is nowhere to be found.
“Can it be mere coincidence that interpretations of the Easter story portraying the crucified-and-resurrected Messiah as a ‘global Jesus’ are a staple of mainline Protestant preaching? ‘Global’ Christianity teaches that the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ represents the hope of a still-future resurrection of the dead for the whole of “humanity”. Accordingly, most professing Christians would greet the very idea of a “national Jesus” as an oxymoron at best and a heresy at worst.”
There is no such thing as a “global Jesus” or “national Jesus”. Galatians 3:28 & Colossians 3:11 are the scriptures upon which the “global Jesus” construct is built. Both scriptures establish that all humanity regardless of race, gender, class, etc. can become Christians. Put another way, all humanity can become a part of one covenant community. However, Christian theologians then take the next, unwarranted step of reading these scriptures as prescriptions for immigration policy or naturalization law when that is NOWHERE found in the context(s). They do the same thing with “welcoming the stranger”—a favorite Jewish trick—which is not a teaching on immigration policy, but rather showing hospitality to someone passing through on a journey.
The Bible gives states or nations authority to determine who can become citizens and who can be excluded.
See
(1) https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2017/01/31/saint-thomas-aquinas-opposed-open-borders/
(2) https://www.tfp.org/what-does-saint-thomas-say-about-immigration/
(3) http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2105.htm
Its a waste of time looking for some political significance in the death & resurrection of Christ to apply to the globalism vs. nationalism debate/dynamic. There is none to be found there. But, that doesn’t stop “theologians” from working overtime to read all manner of political significance into scripture that is nowhere to be found.
@ Will
And what of these words:
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
O wait maybe we should do what the Church Fathers did with Revelation spiritualize it
Israel was a theocracy and will be yet again when Christ returns and His government will be global this the scriptures fully teach both New and Old.
the great error and sin of today however, is the Jews think this will come about through what Jesus again said:
“Very truly I tell you Pharisees, anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. John 10:1
sums up current history perfectly does it not!
Nevertheless, even if Jesus is ok with “public enemies”, who would that really be? Sure, the gospels lay out quite well that Jesus was concerned mostly if not entirely with the threat the Pharisees posed, in his view, to the nation of Israel, but if that issue could have been resolved, who is the second issue? The Romans. Us. If Jesus is a Jewish nationalist what separates him from the Jews currently exploiting our people for the betterment of Israel, save for some religious disagreements?
Why is there no mention in this essay on Chiliasm? Further why is there also no mention of the Feast of Tabernacles either in this essay? Two events of such huge significance that teaches first and foremost there will be a 1000 thousand year reign of Christ from the City of Jerusalem and that globally for all nations an attendance will be required at this Feast held in honor and thanksgiving to God. Every family at that time will need to send a member of his or her family to Jerusalem for this feast otherwise no rain will fall upon their respective nations.
“I saw thrones on which were seated those who had been given authority to judge. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony about Jesus and because of the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years. (The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended.) This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy are those who share in the first resurrection. The second death has no power over them, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with him for a thousand years.” (Revelation 20:4–6)
“Then the survivors from all the nations that have attacked Jerusalem will go up year after year to worship the King, the Lord Almighty, and to celebrate the Festival of Tabernacles. If any of the peoples of the earth do not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord Almighty, they will have no rain. If the Egyptian people do not go up and take part, they will have no rain. The Lord will bring on them the plague he inflicts on the nations that do not go up to celebrate the Festival of Tabernacles.” (Zechariah 14:16–18)
This is important and especially for a topic like a national and / or global Jesus.
Unfortunately however, people do not read the scriptures correctly or for the Church Fathers who like us were so caught up in the Jews incessant troubling of the Church and their own desire to fulfill their national hopes they simply threw the baby out with the bath water so to speak. Meaning instead of just taking the Book of Revelation at its word they decided to spiritualize it. An error of such unbelievable consequences that unfortunately millions are deceived by it. God however, promised through his angels Gabriel from and to Daniel that at the appointed time an understanding will come! That day I believe has arrived or is shortly about to and the consequences for the whole of humanity is going to be huge! Just go and read a book entitled Lies all Lies by Gerry Fox and one will not be disappointed in finally finding the truth.