He owes a lot for his position to H. Richard Niebuhr's theory of internal history as expressed in Niebuhr's book The Meaning of Revelation. Christians live out Christian stories such as Genesis and the histories of Jews in the Bible and the history of Christian churches. Christian identity is confirmed by these diverse stories in the way that those stories are "understood and appropriated by believers". According to these stories, Jesus is the center of history. But it does not necessarily mean that the center of history is the whole of history. The range of this history can and should be expanded to include other histories of humankind. In this process of the expanding of history, the Christian story can and should also be expanded. For Cobb, "the problem with that story is not, as some suppose, that Jesus is at the center, but that the circumference is far too narrow". He wants to expand the Christian story broadly enough to embrace Jewish history, East Orthodoxy history, Muslim history, other people in other countries such as India, China, and Korea etc., and even pagan history. He believes that it is possible and necessary to expand our Christian story because the divine Wisdom is present everywhere to overcome "the we-they dualism". What, then, is theological basis for this expansion of Christian internal history?
1987. "Toward a Christocentric Catholic Theology." In Toward a Universal Theology of Religion. Ed. by Leonard Swindler. Maryknoll: Orbis Books.
with a little help from my brother JeeHo Kim, 1999
...my questions was meant to provoke thought upon the importance of the life of Jesus in relation to the single event of the crucifixion. There are various theories of atonement at stake.
I do not intend to forsake other cultures, religions, or peoples. In fact, the Church has historically been an inclusive and multicultural community (with notorious and unfortunate exceptions), lacking in cultural specifics that would root it to a specific time, place, and people.
Jesus is the center of all peoples, times, places, cultures, and religions; ways of knowing, being and doing.
I would agree with the statement about widening the circumference; God is simply not confined to an American, individualistic, materialistic, experience; we must, like Peter, "take and eat..."
2 comments:
Have you been reading John B. Cobb Jr.?
He owes a lot for his position to H. Richard Niebuhr's theory of internal history as expressed in Niebuhr's book The Meaning of Revelation. Christians live out Christian stories such as Genesis and the histories of Jews in the Bible and the history of Christian churches. Christian identity is confirmed by these diverse stories in the way that those stories are "understood and appropriated by believers". According to these stories, Jesus is the center of history. But it does not necessarily mean that the center of history is the whole of history. The range of this history can and should be expanded to include other histories of humankind. In this process of the expanding of history, the Christian story can and should also be expanded. For Cobb, "the problem with that story is not, as some suppose, that Jesus is at the center, but that the circumference is far too narrow". He wants to expand the Christian story broadly enough to embrace Jewish history, East Orthodoxy history, Muslim history, other people in other countries such as India, China, and Korea etc., and even pagan history. He believes that it is possible and necessary to expand our Christian story because the divine Wisdom is present everywhere to overcome "the we-they dualism". What, then, is theological basis for this expansion of Christian internal history?
1987. "Toward a Christocentric Catholic Theology." In Toward a Universal Theology of Religion. Ed. by Leonard Swindler. Maryknoll: Orbis Books.
with a little help from my brother JeeHo Kim, 1999
...my questions was meant to provoke thought upon the importance of the life of Jesus in relation to the single event of the crucifixion. There are various theories of atonement at stake.
I do not intend to forsake other cultures, religions, or peoples. In fact, the Church has historically been an inclusive and multicultural community (with notorious and unfortunate exceptions), lacking in cultural specifics that would root it to a specific time, place, and people.
Jesus is the center of all peoples, times, places, cultures, and religions; ways of knowing, being and doing.
I would agree with the statement about widening the circumference; God is simply not confined to an American, individualistic, materialistic, experience; we must, like Peter, "take and eat..."
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