Moderate and liberal Christians, unite! Reclaim Jesus, reclaim God, reclaim Christianity from the evangelical Christian Right! Just as Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of Wittenberg Castle Chapel in 1517 to speak up against the abusive practice of the sale of indulgences for the forgiveness of sin, so it is time for moderate and liberal Christians alike to speak out against a new set of abuses threatening to undermine the very fabric of Christianity. In other words, it is time for a new set of 95 Theses for the 21st Century: Reclaiming Jesus.

The Christ Event

May 5, 2008 - 9:59am — todonnell

In our previous blog, “The Chicken or the Egg?,” we asked the question: which came first? Belief in the Incarnation or belief in the Resurrection? And when you hear the phrase, “The Christ Event,” what do you firs think of? The birth story or the death story?

Today, we go one step further. To do so, we turn once more to Geoffrey Lampe’s “God As Spirit,” for inspiration. What if, Lampe asks, the “Christ-event” is seen simply “as a special moment within an evolutionary continuum, and not as an altogether fresh and discontinuous intervention of God in history. If we speak of this continuum as a single creative and saving activity of God the Sprit toward and within the spirit of man, and of his presence in the person of Jesus, as a particular moment within that continuous creativity, it is yet fully possible for us to claim that this moment is the fulfillment of all the divine activity which preceded it, and that it determines the mode in which God the Spirit is experienced in all subsequent history.”

In other words, the “Christ Event” is not a single one-time unique event of God becoming flesh or God dying on the Cross. Rather, the Christ Event is an on-going, continuous saga of God living within and among God’s children, living and dying with them each and every moment as they themselves live and die to sin, to despair, and to darkness. Just as God was within Jesus, and Buddha, and Confucius, and Mohammed, so too, God is within us all. The Christ Event goes on. And so does God. As Spirit.

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