28 November 2010

Sunday Quote 112810

The point here is a simple one. The name “Jesus” evokes an historical reality (like the name “Karl Marx” or “Sigmund Freud”). More than this, it is not testimony to some individual or group providing ideas about the world but rather testifies to a concrete expression of some new way of living in the world. In other words, something was witnessed. Something that might have existed independently of the one bearing witness (theistic Christianity) or that might have been made real by the eye of the beholder (atheistic Christianity).
So, at its zero level, to lay hold of the name “Jesus” is to make a claim that a new mode of being has been made manifest in the world, a particular mode of being that can be expressed through the categories of Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection and Salvation. In addition to this it is a claim that one participates to some degree in that mode of being.

Peter Rollins, Why Jesus, his blog post from yesterday, 11-27-10

jj