Christology: The Jesus Of Today

724 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: catholic religion

Christology is a branch of theology relating to the person, nature, and the role of Christ. (Hill Fletcher) In other words, Christology is examining who Jesus Christ is and was. Jesus is the central focus of the Catholic faith and who is he and what he speaks for is central to what it means to be a Catholic. The features of different Christologies allow Christians to debate and discover what Jesus Christ means today in the twenty-first century. To Marcus Borg, the Post-Easter Jesus is the Jesus of today. In his article, he articulates two different Jesus’ - the historical Jesus of the past and the Jesus Christ of today. The Jesus of today is the one after the resurrection. According to Borg, that Jesus is “not simply an object of belief …show more content…

We experience this Jesus through the Gospels, the Creeds, and the entirety of the New Testament. Jesus is alive today through the ways people can experience him. Borg relies heavily on metaphors to interpret Jesus. Followers created these metaphors after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ which help interpret Jesus’ relationship with God. The first one he uses is a common phrase in the Christian dialogue. Borg describes Jesus as the Son of God. This phrase is nothing new and its true meaning can be lost thanks to its common usage. The term Son of God is used to illustrate the “intimacy of [the] relationship between Jesus and God”. (Borg 14) This means God is the father and Jesus is the son. This allows Catholics to see Jesus is part of God and close to him as a son would be for a father. The …show more content…

Cone believes that the “task of black theology to make theology relevant to the black reality”. (110) In other words, theology must be made relevant to what groups face today. This can be done by understanding who Jesus was because “that is the only way to assess who he is”. (Cone 113) This requires going back to the New Testament and to see who Jesus of Nazareth was and what he stood for because that is still who he is today. According to Cone, Jesus is the Oppressed One - someone who was with the poor, outcasts, and sinners. (114, 115, 117) From his birth to his death, Jesus was someone who was for the poor and sinners. He never was one with the wealthy. This is still who Jesus is today; he is with the oppressed today. This is why Cone describes Jesus as the “black Christ”. (121) Today, blacks are oppressed in society and they can use Jesus as someone they can relate to because he was oppressed when he was alive. The oppressed Jesus is the one who lives today. It makes sense for Jesus to be black because as white he could not be oppressed and that is not who Jesus is according to Cone. For Cone, Jesus is the black Christ who speaks for every oppressed group in the

Show More
Related

  • Jesus Is A Brand Of Jean Kilbourne Analysis

    289 Words  | 1 Pages

    In the article, Jesus is a Brand of Jeans, by Jean Kilbourne, we get an insightful look into the effects of advertising on us, as human beings. As we all know, humans let us down. We are imperfect beings, going about life interacting with each other, good and bad. It seems though, over the past 50 years advertising has taken away from human value, and brain washed us into thinking stuff is more important than people.

    Read More

  • Jesus And The Disinherited Analysis

    263 Words  | 1 Pages

    In this first chapter of Jesus and the Disinherited , the author Howard Thurman describes

    Read More

  • Explain how the principal beliefs of Christianity as they are expressed in the Bible, influence the lives of adherents

    1331 Words  | 3 Pages

    One of the main principles of Christianity is the belief in both the divinity and humanity of Jesus, that these two natures are combined harmoniously in one being. In general, all modern Christians believe that Jesus was human, he was considered to be “The Word was made flesh” (John, I: 14). However, Jesus was more than just a human, despite being subjected to pain, suffering and death like all other human beings, he was sinless and also possessed the power to heal and to defy death in order to ascend, both body and spirit, into heaven. He was all man and all God, a combination of these two elements, remaining distinct but united in one being. The deity of Jesus is a non-negotiable belief in Christianity, which is referred to in many parts of scripture, “God was revealed in the flesh” (I Timothy, 3:16). The Christian faith does not perceive Jesus as God but rather a reincarnation of God, a mysterious deity who is the second person of the Holy Trinity. Throughout history, controversy has surrounded the issue of the humanity and divinity of Jesus, leading to the formation of Docetism, the belief that Jesus was fully divine but not fully human, Arianism, that Jesus was superior to all of creation, but less divine than God, and Nestorius, that there were two separate persons within Jesus. This the proportion of the divine and human within Je...

    Read More

  • Letter from Birmingham Jail, by Martin Luther King Jr.

    780 Words  | 2 Pages

    He purposely conveys the message acknowledging Jesus Christ, because Christians where treating his corresponding African American’s immorally wrong and participating in sinful acts such as lynching. Mr. King knew that Jesus C...

    Read More

  • The Meaning Of Jesus Analysis

    1241 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Meaning of Jesus begins with Borg speaking about how we know about Jesus. Borg explains that the gospels have two natures. First, they are a developing tradition and second, the gospels are a mixture of history “remembered” and history “metaphorized”. Borg believes that some of the material is from Jesus and some is from the Christian community. The material from the Christian community should be considered metaphors, so this material is history metaphorized. Borg also states that there are two ways to refer to Jesus: pre and post-Easter Jesus; human and divine. The importance of pre-Easter Jesus is that, according

    Read More

  • Summary Of A Black Theology Of Liberation By James H. Cone

    1015 Words  | 3 Pages

    James H. Cone is the Charles A. Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Dr. Cone probably is best known for his book, A Black Theology of Liberation, though he has authored several other books. Dr. Cone wrote that the lack of relevant and “risky” theology suggests that theologians are not able to free themselves from being oppressive structures of society and suggested an alternative. He believes it is evident that the main difficulty most whites have with Black Power and its compatible relationship to the Christian gospel stemmed from their own inability to translate non-traditional theology into the history of black people. The black man’s response to God’s act in Christ must be different from the whites because his life experiences are different, Dr. Cone believes. In the “black experience,” the author suggested that a powerful message of biblical theology is liberation from oppression.

    Read More

  • Uncle Tom's Cabin: Christianity Supported Slavery

    871 Words  | 2 Pages

    ... is invoking language of the Christ’s crucifixion on the cross by the Romans. Stowe makes an analogous statement to this in describing the daily plight of black slaves. Most whites view the system of slavery as natural; they see black as inferior to them and therefore designed to serve them based on the color of their skin. Blacks however see bondage through the forced biblical paradigm that has been imposed upon them. Stowe makes the analogy that African Americans suffer daily in bondage like Christ suffered on the cross.

    Read More

  • Black Liberation Theology

    1822 Words  | 4 Pages

    ...ans had for generations practiced and defended not just slavery, but the hatred and demise of anything black or African. Cone's mission was to bring blackness and Christianity together.”# In 1969, Cone published Black Theology and Black Power. In this book, Cone brought attention to racism in theology and proposes a theology addressing black issues, this theology would provide liberation and empowerment of blacks and “create a new value structures so that our understanding of blackness will not depend upon European misconceptions.”# From these convictions, the idea of black liberation theology was created. Black relate Christianity to the struggles they have endured, therefore it has to be black. “In a society where men are defined on the basis of color of the victims, proclaiming that the condition of the poor is incongruous with him who has come to liberate us.”

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Discourse On The State And Grandeurs Of Jesus

    1454 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Pierre De Berulle’s selected writings pages 134 through 147 we continue to learn about the “Discourse on the State and Grandeurs of Jesus. The fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth discourse is on the communication of God in this mystery.

    Read More

  • The Case For Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation Of The Evidence For Jesus

    1045 Words  | 3 Pages

    Being a Christian and a student of Communications, I felt compelled to reading The Case for Christ. I decided to use this book for this review especially due to the large amount of criticisms and backlash it had received. Lee Strobel is known for being a hard-nosed skeptical journalist and ex-investigative reporter for the Chicago Tribune. He also described himself as a "former spiritual skeptic" before his personal mission for the proof of God. Skeptics around the world claim that Jesus either never said He was God or He never exemplified the activities and mindset of God. Either way they rather triumphantly proclaim that Jesus was just a man. Some will go so far as to suggest that He was a very moral and special man, but a man nonetheless. For Strobel, there was far too much evidence against the idea of God, let alone the possibility that God became a man. God was just mythology, superstition, or wishful thinking.

    Read More

  • Christianity

    559 Words  | 2 Pages

    The broadest definition of Christianity is also perhaps the simplest. Across the history and branches of the religion, “it is faith in Christ, not the scrupulous and religious keeping of the law...which is the basis of salvation” (McGrath 15). The religion that is now a major global force has grown out of a small group tucked away in one corner of the world, breaking and changing over time, yet united by a faith in this revolutionary man who claimed to be the son of God, Jesus Christ.

    Read More

  • James H. Cone's The Spirituals and the Blues

    1775 Words  | 4 Pages

    James H. Cone was born on August 5, 1938 in Fordyce, Arkansas. He attended three small colleges, including a theological seminary, before receiving his Masters and Ph.D. from the prestigious Northwestern University. Cone is married and has two children. He has held membership to many prominent boards and organizations including the National Committee of Black Churchman (member of board of directors), American Academy of Religion, Congress of African Peoples, and Black Methodists for Church Renewal. His career includes being a professor of religion and theology at Philander Smith College, Adrian College, and Union Theological Seminary, where he now teaches. James H. Cone is now an American clergyman and author. Cone achieved his greatest acclaim in 1969 with the ground-breaking book, Black Theology and Black Power. This book attracted a great deal of attention due to its defense of the black power movement from a Christian point of view. He has since written many theological works including Risks of Faith, where he provides vital insights into American realities and the possibilities for American theology. Cone has been the Charles A. Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminar in New York City since 1977.

    Read More

  • Book Review: God Of The Oppressed

    1895 Words  | 4 Pages

    "God of the Oppressed" is brilliantly organized into ten chapters. These chapters serve as the building blocks to the true understanding of Cone’s Black Theology. This progressive movement begins with an introduction of both him and his viewpoint. He explains that his childhood in Bearden, Arkansas and his membership to Macedonia African Methodist Episcopal Church (A.M.E) has taught him about the black Church experience and the sociopolitical significance of white people. “My point is that one’s social and historical context decides not only the questions we address to God but also the mode of form of the answers given to the questions.” (14) The idea of “speaking the truth” is added at this point because to go any further the reader must understand the reason and goal for Black Theology. Through the two sources in that shape theology, experience and scripture, white theology concludes that the black situation is not a main point of focus. Cone explains the cause for this ignorance, “Theology is not a universal language; it is interested language and thus is always a reflection of the goals and aspirations of a particular people in a definite social setting.” (36) This implies that one’s social context shapes their theology and white’s do not know the life and history of blacks. As the reader completes the detailed analysis of society’s role in shaping experiences, Cone adds to the second source, scripture.

    Read More

  • Black Theology

    1507 Words  | 4 Pages

    James Cone is accredited as the most prolific and sophisticated writer of the new Black Theology. Black Theology was developed by early theologians because Black people needed something to believe in and give them help in times of need. The idea of Black Theology did just as it set out to do.... ... middle of paper ...

    Read More

  • The Anointed One: Jesus Christ

    1531 Words  | 4 Pages

    Born to Mary, Jesus of Nazareth is commonly referred to as “Christ”, the Greek synonym for the “Hebrew” word “Messiah” (Paul, John, II. "King."). Messiah can be defined in the Hebrew language as the “Anointed One” (Paul, John, II. "King."). Jesus’s three-fold title of prophet, priest, and king will be discussed from the perspective of the Catholic tradition which states that those who are called to the office of God are anointed with oil (Han).

    Read More

More about Christology: The Jesus Of Today

Open Document