Jesus in the Tide of Time by John Ferguson

Author:John Ferguson [Ferguson, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, Social History, Religion, Christianity, Christian Theology, Christian Church
ISBN: 9781000369359
Google: yd1FEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-11-30T02:47:42+00:00

THE CHRIST OF CULTURE

‘In every culture to which the Gospel comes there are men who hail Jesus as the Messiah of their society, the fulfiller of its hopes and aspirations, the perfecter of its true faith, the source of its holiest spirit. In the Christian community they seem to stand in direct opposition to the radicals, who reject the social institutions for Christ’s sake; but they are far removed from those “cultured among the despisers” of Christian faith who reject Christ for the sake of their civilization.’ With these eloquent words Niebuhr identifies his second group. They interpret culture through Christ; at the same time they understand Christ through culture. So they harmonize Christ and culture. They do not reject other-worldliness, but see it as continuous in time and character with life on earth. They belong to the category of ‘once-born’ and ‘healthy-minded’ Christians. Niebuhr does not quite accept the label ‘liberalism’ for this view, though on the whole it fits quite well, and prefers Karl Barth’s ‘Culture-Protestantism’, though it is by no means a post-Reformation phenomenon.

The attitude is a very common one. It is perhaps the commonest of all basic attitudes within the Church, whether we think of the glorification of the pacifistic Jesus within military cultures (Clovis is said to have remarked on the crucifixion ‘If my Franks had been there, we wouldn’t have let them do it,’ whereas the equivalent of his Franks were in fact available and Jesus refused to call on them), or of the export of European and American culture in the name of Christian mission (dear Anna Hinderer in Yorubaland could never quite distinguish between long skirts for girls and love of the neighbour). This makes Niebuhr’s choice of illustration the more puzzling. From the ancient world he chooses the Gnostics.

The Christian Gnostics, men like Valentinus and Basilides, though the theology which triumphed dismissed them as heretics, undoubtedly thought of themselves as Christians. Indeed their thought is Christ-centred. F. C. Burkitt said of them that ‘the figure of Jesus is essential, and without Jesus the systems would drop to pieces’ (Church and Gnosis p. 8). More recently R. M. Grant has suggested that a would-be Gnostic, searching for security in a troubled and evil world, could hardly ignore the claims being made for Jesus by Christians, and that it is highly probable that in all the Gnostic systems Jesus either is the Saviour or provides the model for the Saviour-figure (Gnosticism and Early Christianity pp. 35-6). This is broadly true, but they interpret the figure of Jesus almost beyond recognition. For example, as we have seen, according to Valentinus, the Pleroma or fullness of the godhead embraces thirty Aeons or spiritual beings. The thirtieth and weakest, Wisdom, is responsible for the production of the world of matter, a kind of fall. Because this stands in need of redemption the Father produces a new pair of Aeons, Christ and Spirit, and all the Aeons unite to produce Jesus, in whom the Fullness is gathered together and the unity of the cosmos realized.

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