One Down
So, yes, today I turned in my Christology paper. Not a work of art, but shows some serious thought and critical thinking I expect.
A couple tidbits (names removed to protect the innocent, or not so innocent):
Contemporarytheologiandude has established that for him the cross is a scandalous evil. Yet, it seems that the scandal for him is heightened by the previous scandal—the vulnerability, weakness and dependence demonstrated by Jesus in his suffering. For Contemporarytheologiandude, the “it should not be so” that arises out of Jesus’ suffering is not just that the innocent suffer needlessly but that the human being should be revealed to be characterized in large part not by “health and strength” but by weakness and vulnerability . . .
Divorced from any connection to God, and stripped of any supernatural significance, Contemporarytheologiandude is right to say that the cross is absurd and that it can’t be anything but evil. But my sense is that this is all ultimately because Contemporarytheologiandude expects too much from humans (health and strength, more than sickness and weakness) and not enough of God. God must be more than just the creative ground of being and the offerer of salvation, and Jesus must be more than just a guy who got life right and suffered for it . . .
Two papers and one take-home exam to go!
posted by Mark Mossa, SJ at 12:13 PM
7 Comments:
Vulnerability is one of the things I most value about Jesus. Maybe contemporarytheologiandude should switch to ganosticism .... I don't think their Jesus suffered at all :-)
I think you need contemporarytheologiandude on a t-shirt.
is this contemporarytheologiandude any relation to the one discussed in the Good Friday post?
And C-T-D all one word was really hard for me to type!
mamagiglio,
I think cotemporarytheolgoiandude is any one of my three brothers, actually. They all have problems with Jesus, and have rejected him for the reasons Mark gave.
Maggie
[cheerleader]
Yay! Keep on! You can do it!
[/cheerleader]
How does Contemporarytheologiandude relate to the First Beatitude? Or any of the Beatitudes for that matter?
Your post reminded me of the book Poverty of Spirit by Johannes Baptist Metz:
To become human means to become "poor," to have nothing that one might brag before God. To become human means to have no support and no power, save the enthusiasm and committment of one’s own heart [by grace]. Becoming human involves proclaiming the poverty of the human spirit in the face of the total claims of a transendent God.
We cannot face our absolute poverty and so we turn to the world and sin so that we can attempt to lay a claim to something.
Didn't Paul (call him ancienttheologiandude)say the cross was a stumbling block to the Jews and an absurdity to the gentiles? Didn't Jesus (the guy all those gospeldudes wrote about) say, "Whoever would be my disciple, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me?" Sounds like contemporarytheologiandude should reread the gospeldudes, ancienttheologiandude and the patristictheologiandudes (fathersofthechurchdudes) :-)
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