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Chapter 3: Jesus as Source of Ultimate Hope
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55 Reading through many of the Easter hymns in Voices United,1 a hymnbook of The United Church of Canada, one may notice how often Jesus’ resurrection is described in dramatic images of conflict and struggle. Numerous hymns celebrate Jesus’ resurrection as a victory, a triumph, an overcoming of sin, evil, and death. Even the hymn “In the Bulb There Is a Flower,”2 which uses natural images of change such as the turn of the seasons from winter to spring to describe the resurrection, sees it as the basis for the hope that there will be, “at the last, a victory.”3 Like many Easter hymns, this hymn celebrates hope for a radical transformation of reality. The use of dramatic images of struggle and terms like victory to describe Jesus’ resurrection reflects the understanding of Jesus’ saving significance found in what Gustaf Aulén called the “Christus Victor” or “classic” type of atonement theory.4 According to Aulén, this was the predominant way of understanding the atonement in the patristic era.5 It presupposes a dualistic outlook in which reality is seen as a site of conflict between God and evil. Sin here is an objective power, sometimes personified in the figure of Satan, and Jesus’ saving significance lies in the victory God achieves over it in Jesus’ death and resurrection.6 CHAPTER 3 u Jesus as Source of Ultimate Hope James Cone, Jon Sobrino, Elizabeth Johnson 56 Contemporary Christologies This is an “objective” model of the atonement.7 Jesus’ resurrection is understood to effect a change in the structure of reality, bringing the presence of transformed life into the world. In doing so, it promises a final overcoming of evil that empowers people to struggle against sin and evil in the present. What follows will examine how this Christus Victor understanding of the atonement is present in the Christologies of James Cone, Jon Sobrino, and Elizabeth Johnson. These three theologians address their church communities and link their theologies to justice movements seeking radical social change. Situating themselves at the intersection of these movements and the church, they find in Jesus Christ a source of hope empowering struggles for social justice and an exemplar illuminating where and how the church should be present in these. The proponents of the atonement models studied in the two previous chapters seek to understand Jesus within the structures of reality presupposed by contemporary Western secularity. Cone, Sobrino, and Johnson relate the two more dialectically. These three are contemporary in their focus on human flourishing and issues like the environmental crisis.8 Each relates Jesus positively to the values of liberation and justice espoused by contemporary social movements, and to the democratic ideals of contemporary Western cultures. Yet each also sees these cultures as oppressing certain social groups and in need of radical transformation. Each also remains rooted in the biblical traditions and patristic Christology in ways that conflict with secularizing tendencies of Western cultures, which presuppose that humanity has outgrown the kinds of affirmation about Jesus Christ that these theologians make.9 James Cone James Cone was born on August 5, 1938, in Fordyce, Arkansas.10 He grew up in the nearby town of Bearden. His mother was a “pillar” of the Macedonia African Methodist Episcopal Church. His father also belonged, and Cone remembers him as having constantly demonstrated courage and resistance to white racism.11 Cone summarizes the influence of his upbringing on his theology thus: Two things happened to me in Bearden: I encountered the harsh realities of white injustice that was inflicted daily upon [3.234.253.152] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 15:59 GMT) 57 Jesus as Source of Ultimate Hope the black community; and I was given a faith that sustained my personhood and dignity in spite of white people’s brutality.12 After graduating from high school, Cone earned a B.A. from Philander Smith College and then a B.D. from Garrett Theological Seminary . He found most of his theology professors at Garrett to be racist in their treatment and expectations of black students. Determined to prove them wrong, he applied himself to earning higher grades, and succeeded. Encouraged by professors William Hordern and Philip Watson, he earned M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in systematic theology at Northwestern University,13 completing the latter in 1965 with a thesis on Karl Barth’s anthropology. He has since received eight honorary degrees, including a doctor of divinity from Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, and is an...