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The Political Christ: Some Reflections on Mr Cupitt's Thesis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

Colin Gunton
Affiliation:
King's College StrandLondon WC2R 2LS

Extract

Not far below the surface of most modern theological dispute lies the question of the interrelationship of theology and culture. How shall those who take their intellectual orientation from the Christian Gospel understand their position in relation to the intellectual currents that represent the spirit of the age? Should the stance be that of Tertullian, Eusebius, or Augustine; Kierkegaard, Barth, or Tillich; or of some variation and combination of these and others? One of the many ramifications of this complex area of inquiry concerns the relationship of the Christian community to the institutions of the society and the world in which it carries on its life, as is well illustrated by recent controversy over the aims and methods of the W.C.C. Programme to Combat Racism. Here, of course, are obvious, if highly complex, moral and practical issues. But underlying them is a further theoretical and theological question: What is Christianity? In this paper, I should like to suggest that both the theological and the ethical problems can be illuminated by an examination of the interrelationship between conceptions of the person of Christ and the church's understanding of its relation to earthly rulers.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1979

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References

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page 525 note 2 The Oration of Eusebius Pamphili in Praise of the Emperor Constantine, III. 5f.

page 525 note 3 Eusebius, op. cit., XI. 12.

page 525 note 4 op. cit., XII. 6. My italics.

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page 533 note 1 W. Elert, op. cit., p. 175. He need not deny, of course, that some of the things said by dogmatic theologians helped to feed that development.

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page 536 note 1 On one reading of Phil. 2.6 ‘… because he was in the form of God …’, the divinity of Christ, his God-hood, is seen to consist in his self-abasement. There might be here the beginnings of a theological justification of liberal institutions, not from rationalist ideas of human rights and capacities, but from the ‘human’ way in which God meets that which is opposed to him.

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page 538 note 2 It has been suggested to me by Professor Stewart R. Sutherland that the idea of tragedy may be helpful in developing an understanding of the Christian's involvement in politics. This will certainly have an element of the tragic about it if it is exercised in a world understood in a post- (or pre-!) Constantinian way. Cf. Moltmann's remark: ‘… even in the “classless society” Christians will be aliens and homeless.’ (op. cit., p. 17.) When the ‘powerless’ enters the world of the ‘powerful’ yet refuses to use the weapons of the latter, he is likely to suffer something of the fate of his Lord. The case of Antigone provides something of a parallel from another world of thought. Moreover, the concept of tragedy may help the theorist to steer a course between the triumphalism of much of Christian history in the West and the complaisant passivity that has often been the Christian response to tyranny in that same world.

page 539 note 1 S. Crites, op. cit., p. 17. The ‘rough beast’ may in some circles be thought to bear the name of Marx.