Waiting for Gospel, by Douglas John Hall

Chapter 5 – The Identity of Jesus in a Pluralistic World

1.  Hall addresses Christianity against the backdrop of religious plurality, which continues to gain momentum worldwide.  Christianity is essentially and fundamentally Christocentric.  Contrary to popular thought, there is no negotiation here.  The temptation, Hall notes, is to shift from Christocentric to Christomonism (not to be confused with my favorite grilled sandwich, the Monte Cristo).  This dogmatic conservatism quickly becomes fundamentalist, relying on “Jesus is God” as an overarching emphasis on the divinity principle.  The first corrective to this is the humanity of Jesus.

When did it become apparent to you that Jesus was “fully human?”  What process of worship, study, or discussion brought you to this important realization?

2.  “The other chief doctrinal guard against Christomonism is the doctrine of the Trinity.”  “Behind it there is an absolutely vital need of Christian faith to be Christocentric whilst remaining monotheistic – or in other words, to pay the closest attention to Jesus Christ without, in the process, displacing or replacing the transcendent God.” 

So…how exactly does this fully “human” Jesus participate also as the fully “divine” Christ of the Trinity?  As if that isn’t hard enough, what is the nature and relationship between the eternal Christ and the historical Jesus?  (Don’t sweat it…no one has ever adequately or definitively answered either question!)

3.  Now we move to “the scandal of particularity”…and who doesn’t love a good scandal every now and then!  But this is the greatest scandal of all…“that Jesus is the crucified one: a ‘crucified God!’ (Luther) – a stumbling block to the religious, and a scandal to the worldly wise.”  Hall points out that all religions single out “one person, one constellation of events centered around this one person.” 

 
Why?  “Because there is no grasping of the ultimate that does not pass through the sieve of some proximate or penultimate reality; there is no experience of the absolute that is not conditioned by something relative; there is no sense of the universal that is not mediated by some particularity.”  Got that?!

“How does your “particular” function for you?” Hall inquires, citing spouses and children as examples.  In this case, he invites us to seriously consider, “How does the particular called Jesus, the Christ, function for Christians?” 

How do you answer that?  How do others answer that? 

How is inclusivity – grace through faith in the crucified and risen Jesus – perhaps the greatest scandal of all?

Finally, Hall claims, “God, in Jesus Christ, does not give us Christians the Truth; God only allows the Truth, the living Truth, ineffable and uncontainable, to live among us.”  How does such a position and belief assist us “to recognize and to honor others who look beyond themselves for what is ultimate, even when these others are not looking specifically towards Jesus?”