Incarnation and the Cross - Term Paper Example

?Incarnation and the Cross 0. Introduction The Incarnation and the Cross-are truths permeating the human life and the human condition. These truthsare greater than humanity itself.1 However, this does not imply that it cannot be articulated upon or touched as humanity continues to the challenges posed by the enigma of the Incarnation and the Cross. Since, these mysteries are not abstracted realities, but are concrete manifestations of Divine Love, since, “…by the Incarnation God entered into nature to give it supernatural life and lead it back to himself” 2 and through the Cross, God has shown the most intimate self-communication of which humankind may see attributes of God’s being.3 In this regard, this research will delve on the mystery of the Incarnation and the Cross-as it looks into the question “Who do you say that I am?”4 In trying to address the question “Who do you say that I am?” the researcher draws from various scholarly discussions pertinent to the subject matter of the research and from there try to understand the Incarnation and the Cross as the way to answer the question. However, as the Incarnation and the Cross have been discussed since the inception of Christianity, which have resulted into voluminous works on these mysteries, the research limits its attention on the discourse of the Incarnation and the Cross from the articulations of the anawim of the contemporary period - women and racial groups who have been relegated in the periphery of faith. Their voices will be the main sources of answer to the primordial question of the research Who do you say that I am? The research will be having the following structure. The first part is the introduction wherein the focal ideas and question of the study is presented. It emphasizes the centrality of the Incarnation and the Cross from the perspective of the marginalized people are given the arena to respond to the question the study will attempt to address, Who do you say that I am? The second section of the study will deal with the issue of who is Jesus? This is significant, as it will try to show the historical Jesus vis-a-vis the construction of who he is among the Christians will be given consideration. This is essential as who is Jesus is a concern that afflicts Christians and non-Christians alike as they try to understand the life and messages of Jesus in their lives in the midst of the rapid changes of the globalize world. This section will be having two subsections. The first subsection will be dealing with the experiences of black women as they try to take re-look at the Incarnation and the Cross from the lens of their oppression and segregation. The second subsection will tackle the discourse of feminist theology within the context of communities that offer alternative elucidations to the theological explanations offered by the West to Jesus’ question ‘Who do you say that I am?’ The third part will present the analysis of the researcher on the issue. Finally, at the end of the study, the conclusion will be presented. It is the hope of the researcher that the end of this paper, the Incarnation and the Cross may bring us closer to the image of God and to believe that “goodness can and will triumph over evil. Despite the system, despite the magnitude, complexity and apparent insolubility of our problems today, humanity can be and in the end will be, liberated….suffering, fear, misery, injustice can be overcome. And the only power that can achieve this… the power of goodness and truth, the power of God.”5 2.0. Who do you say that I am? Jesus’ question Who do say that I am? is an invitation for all Christians to continue looking into our experience of Jesus in the midst of the existentialist angst and alienation that continue to plague the human condition.6 The Christian faith is the story of the triune God who creates the world, sustains it and since the beginning have continuously sought he means to be in constant relation with it.7 God has continually initiated the relationship between himself and humanity; and humankind’s response is both manifested in faith and in their concrete lives. However, sin plagues the world. In this condition, redemption is offered to humanity through the history of Israel, in the gospels of Jesus and in the communities who have followed Jesus’ way of life.8 This simplistic approach to the basic tenets of Christianity masks the complex faith discourse behind Jesus’ suffering on the Cross and his unique nature – he is both Divine and human.9 However, who is Jesus? Traditionally, when asked who is Jesus?, the conventional answer is that Jesus is the Son of God who was sent “to be the expiation for our sins”.10 Thus, Jesus’ mission is “to die for sins, save our souls, give us divine grace and bring us to heaven to see God face to face”.11 There is nothing wrong with this answer. However, it does not encompass the totality of Jesus’ mission. 12 Jesus, before he died on the Cross, has a pre-crucifixion mission, which centers on the preaching and proclamation of the kingdom of God.13 This reality is being raised because knowing Jesus, the Son of God, Is not simply looking at the cross as if it is the only way and means in which to understand the divine nature of Jesus and God. The historical Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels has shown the authenticity of the proclamation of the Kingdom of God, its dawning, is God’s rule.14 In effect, in trying to address who is Jesus? from the historical perspective allows us to look into the past, look into the “individual books of the Scriptures in the context of their historical period and then analyzes them using further sources”15. This process, although shedding light to the understanding of the historical Jesus, it brings to the fore the basic reality that the past cannot be brought into the present. 16 As such, there is a limit to the certainty that can be attached to modern exegesis, although it cannot be denied that there are certain hypotheses, which enjoy high probability.17 In effect, this limit in the historical-critical method opens the arena in which an alternative means of understanding and, hopefully, answering who is Jesus? becomes an option. This brings to the fore the supposition that figure of Jesus through the New Testament presents an image of Jesus that exhibits a deep harmony despite the differences in the presentation.18 This exposition highlights an important notion regarding who is Jesus. The historical Jesus present the truism that Jesus’ salvific act is not simply perceived on the cross. It is a mission that starts prior to the crucifixion.19 In effect, as the mission is for “His son to be the expiation for our sins”20, it is about God’s rule, the proclamation of the kingdom of God. 21 In this context, the Son of God becoming man points to a new way of looking at Incarnation and the Cross. The Incarnation ceases to be a single point or event in the story of Jesus. Incarnation is no longer just the Son of God being born to a Virgin, becoming a baby at a particular time and place.22 It directs the focus on the Incarnation and the Cross as the power of God that is “for the message about the cross is a foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God”.23 This means that the Incarnation is series of connected event are manifested in the story of Jesus – pre-crucifixion, crucifixion and post –crucifixion. As such, the gory details of the entire passion of Christ become a violent paradox to the reality of the Incarnation and at the same time an inadequate emphasis in understanding Christ.24 This is claim on the premise that the Incarnation and the Cross create a condition wherein the humanity of Jesus as a conscious diminishing of the divine nature in kenosis clearly presents an attribute of God – sacrificial love.25 The Incarnation and the violence of the Cross shatters rationality “for the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but for those of us who are saved it is the power of God”.26 Sacrificial love establishes a whole gamut of explanation. As such, it asserts the truism that there is no one definitive approach in apprehending the Divine–human nature of Jesus. 27 Understanding the Incarnation is a continuous struggle as peoples interpret God’s revelation in God’s Son – Jesus. At this stage, the question ‘who do you say that I am? presents the fact that Jesus’ divine and human nature is not a simple dichotomy of natures inhering in one person, Jesus, thus; giving him a unique position in the course of human story. Rather, the incarnation and the cross perceived as God’s kenosis, identify the reality that have touched human reality and human condition - it is the conscious decision of God to empty himself of divinity and accept the limits of humanity. In this sense, the Incarnation becomes a story of the unfolding of the decision made God as Jesus embrace our humanity. In effect, the salvific action of God is not only the violence on the cross28, but it is the entire story and narratives on how communities in the past as well as in the present continue to make sense God’s revelation in Jesus.29 The continued searches for the answer to the question who do you say that I am? has been addressed within the socio-cultural, political, economic and historical context of believers who continuously search for the meaning and significance of Jesus in their lives. Thus, giving rise to diverse Christology, each infused and suffused with the people’s desire to understand the meaning of God’s revelation - Jesus. 30 In this context, the first insight that is gleaned from the works of theologians is the truism, that in the narratives of the Christian faith, since its birth, is filled with the accounts of how Christians in their own life conditions, stories, experiences and struggles try to find the answer to the question who do you say that I am? The historical approach to Jesus, although anchored on Canonical Scriptures, is trying to find who is Jesus from traces of past via the present articulations and experiences. As it leads to some clarity, it is simply an approximation of who is Jesus through the eyes of the Synoptic writers and through this approach, the succeeding sections of the research will also try to see who is Jesus in the eyes of the anawim – the marginalized. 2.1. Women: Her Blackness and God Women have been considered in recorded history as the inferior specie of humanity. In fact, until 17th century, the age of industrial revolution, women are still considered as not human beings.31 This reality of women being relegated in the periphery of not being human enough 32 has established a divided between men and women. Men being the ideal, women the aberration; men the norm, women the devalued beings; men the rational, women the irrational33, these characterization is the first cross that women have to carry because of their sex. The second cross that women have to deal and be burdened with her racial color – her blackness. Black women have been the double burden, the double cross of being a woman who belongs to a different racial group.34 Sex and skin color have become powerful tools of oppression, injustice and dehumanization that have been committed against women.35 With this experience of oppression, devaluation and dehumanization, black women’s experiences posit a powerful challenge to one of the attributed of the Incarnated God and the Cross – sacrificial love. The “still deeper manifestation is given in the man. And the incarnation is in its fullest sense complete when that manhood is made perfect through suffering, and when in the victory of the cross Godhood and manhood are forever joined in the risen and ascended life”.36 As such, human beings are to live over again the life of Christ in the Church’s celebration of life. However, where is the black women? The black women’s experience of oppression renege the fullness of life in Christ. In fact, the sacrificial love of God on the Cross has been perverted to the extent that black women have been taught to accept the oppressions and injustices that they suffer as a form of sacrificial love. What does this mean? Jesus died on the cross to redeem a sinful world. Christ’s death is an expiation of our sins and in the interpretation of Isaiah, “He was pierced for our offenses… by his stripes we were healed.”37 “The Lord upon Him the guilt of us all.”38 “He was… smitten for the sins of his people.”39 “Through his suffering , my servant shall justify many, and their guilt he shall bear”40 Sacrificial love is understandable to the Judaic people and the Romans.41 The bloody suffering to appease the wrath of God was comprehensible to them because of their experiences.42 In this context, the Incarnation offers the perfect, spotless sacrifice that wins God’s favor. Jesus freely and willingly undertook the suffering in order to win God’s pleasure.43 However, this wholly does not make sense when it is juxtaposed with the prophetic mission that Jesus himself proclaims. The mercy and goodness, justice and humility, God’s desire for the person is humankind’s loving response to God’s call to life. Analogously, the oppression, dehumanization, devaluation and injustices committed against black women because she is black and woman affirms the violence of the cross, but not the expiatory sacrifice, the sacrificial love.44 In other words, Jesus represents the ultimate surrogate figure; he stands in the place of someone else – the sinful humankind. This surrogacy, attached to Jesus, has taken the aura of the sacred.45 However, again, the question remains how can the bloody sacrifice be united to the image of the loving God, of the Father that Jesus reveals? This contradiction continues as we continue to ponder the image of God as continuously taking the initiative of being with humanity, Emmanuel, a God who forgives, a benevolent father. This is the God that Jesus reveals and in Jesus “The incarnation is the expression of the divine purpose, the perfect unity of God and man”.46 This leads back to the question who do you say that I am ? in the context and condition of black women oppression. With the idea of surrogacy, the image of wrathful God is offered.47 However, it does not provide the meaning and significance that the experience of oppression gives to black women. In this regard, the Incarnation and the Cross are also doubly oppressive as it becomes a living witness to the violence against women and the offered salvation only to men. In this sense, there is an urgency for a paradigm shift that will not relegate the experiences of black women in the salvific act of Jesus. The integration of their experiences of oppression and injustice necessitates that Jesus points to healing, wholeness, survival and quality of life.48 In this regard, the model of Incarnation and the Cross present Jesus as the liberator in solidarity with all humankind.49 In this context of the Incarnation and the Cross, the same humanity, the same biological processes that all human persons share50 and he life in solidarity with other human beings create a view of common human life, of human experiences that affirms that no human person is self sufficient on its own. The inherent need for others establishes the common bond that defines the human condition. In looking at the Incarnation and the Cross-as Jesus the liberator in solidarity with humankind affirms the universal communion that human being have with all of humanity.51 Jesus shows the concreteness of God, in unity with the confusion that people experience as they traverse the abyss of oppression and injustice. God becomes real in the experience of human life. Jesus has shown that ‘God with us’ (Emmanuel) is not an abstraction, but is manifested in the day-to day life of the Jesus the carpenter, of Jesus who got mad, of Jesus who provoked altercations and of Jesus who suffered the penultimate debasement on the Cross. Here is the “oneness between God and the human being without lost of identity on either part. Here is the point Omega – our maximal hominization, and the maximal plenitude of our salvation and liberation”. 52 Black women who carry the burden of double-cross, experience, appreciate and embrace the Incarnation and the Cross not in the situation of the surrogacy, but in the context of solidarity in the quest for liberation, healing and quality of life. This becomes authentic as it is juxtaposed with the verified history of the life of Jesus. As such, the struggle and liberation ceases to be an ideology that provides false hopes and fleeting solutions to women’s objectification , oppression and relegation in the periphery. On the other hand, the Incarnation and the Cross “becomes the convergence of all our longing for oneness, reconciliation, communion, liberation, and intimacy with the Mystery that permeates our existence, spring into full bloom, achieve their maximal realization”.53 Nonetheless, the Incarnation and the Cross encounter and are encountered by other communities of believers who have been marginalized because of the cultural and political differences and context that pervades their human condition. In this sense, we go back again to the question, who do you say that I am? 2.1.2. The Powers that Be and Other Images The quest of who is Jesus? is a “quest for cultural origin, national identity and racial genealogy”.54 It has been acknowledged that the Church’s journey through time and history does not make it immune to the cultural influences. In fact, through it, new insights, dimensions in faith and ways of understanding and embracing the meaning and significance of the Incarnation and the Cross in the historicity of the human life and the human condition becomes open and available to people who are searching for the meaning and answer to the question who do you say that I am? The encounter with other cultures has established the ‘contact zone’ or the ‘borderland’ between the human and the divine, the one and the many, the historical and the cosmological.55 Pui-lan has provided five different images of God, namely, 1) the Black Christ; 2) Jesus as the Corn Mother; 3) Jesus as the Feminine Shakti in India; 4) Jesus as the theological transvestite; and 5) Jesus as the Bi/Christ.56 Perhaps, when one goes over these images, one may get lost in the imagination and the deconstruction of the image of Jesus. The tension these images stand for is a counter to the hegemonic representation and construction of Europe and white Americans of the image of God. For instance, the Black Nazarene is one of the most popular images of Jesus Christ in the Philippines. The Black Nazarene is the Black Christ. In a culture that looks at the color of the skin as an edge an holds dark skin as inferior, the Black Nazarene shatters transcends the cultural hegemony of the White Christ. When devotees are asked why they have such a deep devotion to the Black Nazarene, the most common reply is that they can connect with this image of Christ. His presence is not alienating superior white God, but the loving presence of the Black Christ.57 The image of the Black Nazarene is an affirmation of the culture and the reality of the local faith community. This manifests the truism that the answer to Jesus’ question who do you say that I am? is not a monolithic dogma that is encapsulated in a dogmatic truth that cannot be shaken nor wavered. It is fluid and unsettling, resisting easy categorization and closure.58 The Incarnation and the Cross manifest its concrete reality not only in the lived experiences of humanity, but it is also deeply united and intertwined with the culture and socio-political dynamics of the local faith community. An important question that has to be addressed is the query whether the reality of pluralism poses a threat to the authenticity and genuineness of the messages and reality of the Incarnation and the Cross. Looking at the varied representations and experiences of human beings as they try to search for who is Jesus, gives rise to one element of faith that has been easily forgotten - the people of God is not of a particular culture but is drawn around the globe. They are peoples of the world.59 This reality does not deny the deep divide that exists because of the differences in culture, but it also supports the supposition that the myriad of cultures establishes a relatedness and complementary that leads to unity and wholeness in the midst of cultural differences and diversities. Who do you say that I am? The Son removed in totally his divinity as He embraced humanity in all its limits and faults, the “The Son gave all of Himself, His entire life….The sacrifice of the Divine love does not tolerate limitation.”60 Moreover, “the Son of God, who in His human essence had defeated the death-bearing selfhood, had power over life”.61 As such, the Incarnation and the Cross offers an opening where within the limitation of the human mind, the grasping of some of the Trinitarian relationship is made possible. At the death of Jesus on the Cross, it brought travails to the Trinity but not discontinuation. The “kenotic humiliation continued… The Trinitarian relations are here carefully preserved even in this depth of kenosis—Bulgakov maintains that the Son’s spirit, which he gave up at the cross, reposes in the loving care of the Father”62 Although, this may be difficult to understand, but what remains is the wisdom of the cross.63 The cross is the symbol of divine judgment over human beings, which declare the culmination of all human efforts to have fellowship with God. It destroys both natural theology and self-righteous moral theology. It hides God, yet reveals the hidden God not in might, but in lowliness and helplessness. God’s power is God’s helplessness, God’s life is God’s death. 3.0. An Analysis In this section, an analysis of what had just been presented will be undertaken. In the course of presenting the various articulations regarding the variegated answers that have been provided to the Jesus’ question who do you say that I am? , what has become clear is the idea that there is really no one way of answering the question. The incarnation and the Cross-is a paradox that will continue to haunt humanity until the time comes when they meet the Creator. Nobody can really attest or claim that they have found the one answer to Jesus’ question. However, despite the difficulty in finding the answer to the question, what is salient is that it is in fact an invitation for the person to delve into her own humanity, in his human condition and from there draw the possible reply to Jesus’ query who do you say that I am? . The Incarnation and the Cross defy clear-cut human articulation, but it presents the loving and concrete reality of God in the historicity of humanity. The fluidity and resistance to categorization of the Incarnation, the Cross, and the connection between the two establishes the continual invitation from God to look into who is Jesus in the story of the life of Jesus, in the story of our lives in the direction of God. In the end, the Incarnation and the Cross is an enigma, but it is the grounded conception of God’s self-giving love. 4.0. Conclusion The incarnation and the Cross are not just mere specific events in the story of the life of Jesus. These are events that are continuously unfolding from the birth of Jesus to His pre-crucifixion mission of proclaiming God’s rule and the invitation to the Kingdom of God, on His violent death on the Cross and finally His triumph over death in His resurrection and ascension. In understanding the Incarnation and the Cross, one cannot be removed from the reality of marginalization, oppression, alienation, injustice, devaluation and debasement. These experiences have been part of the life condition and experiences of black women. In continuing to hold the surrogacy of Jesus for the sins of the world, these experiences are muted and removed from the reality God’s self-giving love. As such, in their condition and context, the Incarnation and the Cross-becomes the authentic manifestation of liberation in solidarity with all humankind. It reaffirms the supposition that no man is an island and that communion with one another in our common and shared humanity is the concrete unity in the midst of confusion and frustrated hopes. In the same manner, differences in our culture and socio-political condition establish different and diverse images of God. The hegemony of the European and white American God is challenged by the presence of the images of God as it is influenced by the faith of the local community. The encounters with other communities provide new insights and meanings to the Incarnation and the Cross. As such, it needs to be reiterated that the Mystery is not a monolith. It is fluid and open in the reality of pluralism. Since, the people of God is drawn from all the different cultures of the world and that each contact with different cultures allow for the blossoming of new ways of looking and finding meaning and significance to the Incarnation and the Cross. Finally, the Incarnation and the Cross-offer humankind a glimpse of the Trinitarian communion and God’s self-giving love. Does the Incarnation and the Cross-create, open the Trinity to travail and discontinuation? Nonetheless, what is ascertained is that it hides God, yet reveals the hidden God not in might, but in lowliness and helplessness. God’s power is God’s helplessness; God’s life is God’s death. Bibliography Abesamis, Carlos, A Third Look of Jesus. Quezon City: Claretian Publications, 1999. Bauckham, Richard, The Theology of Jurgen Moltmann. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995. Bulgakov, Sergius, The Lamb of God, trans. 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Williams, Delores S., Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God- Talk. New York: Orbis, 1995. Youngs, Samuel J., ‘Wounds of the Emptied God: The role of kenosis at the cross in the Christologies of Jurgen Moltmann and Sergius Bulgakov’, American Theological Inquiry (nd). Read More