22 April 2019 01:17 am Views - 273
The traditional theologians (or rather, the mere holders of doctoral degrees in West’s God-Study framed within a given rational system) look down disdainfully on Francis as a non-theologian who needs to be guided and even corrected by experts such as they think they are. Gerhard Ludwig Mueller, the former Prefect of the CDF (Congregation for Doctrine of Faith) was presumptuous enough to make that pompous claim, which the present writer immediately debunked in the Italian Journal Adista.
We, therefore, rejoiced when Francis removed him from that post. It is such ‘theologians’ (who are sadly a majority in the contemporary Church) that need to be re-educated in the methodology of Third World Theologian into whose category Francis fits quite comfortably, if we take into account not only his thinking which was shaped by his Catholic upbringing in a land exploited by First World but also the empathetic posture he has adopted towards the writings of the Latin American Liberation Theologian from Peru, Gustavo Gutierrez.
For since the 1970s, all those (including the present writer) who were part of the tri-continental movement known as EATWOT or the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians (of which Gustavo Gutierrez was a founding member) have challenged the legitimacy and the validity of the West’s Traditional Theology, criticizing not only the social location of its genesis and growth but also its dissonance with the Revealed Word.
In this article, I focus only on the second aspect of this critique, namely, its discrepancy with Scriptural Revelation.
- This heaven identified with salvation is not another world, but another age
- The Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, which transformed the young man Jorge Bergoglio into a Jesuit, have inculcated in him a strong this-worldly engagement as befits a co-worker of God
- This is the theological perspective revealed in the letters of St. Paul
The theology taught in all traditional seminaries is the bitter and poisonous fruit of imprisoning the Biblical Vision of Salvation within the dualism of Greek philosophers such as Plato, Plutarch, Aristotle and even Epicurus as has been convincingly demonstrated in the voluminous writings and in the equally numerous lectures of the West’s most renowned Scripture Scholar and Theologian, Bishop Tom Wright of the Anglican Church.
He and his colleagues have amply substantiated their constant complaint that the West has created not just an unbiblical but also an anti-biblical definition of ‘salvation’ as going to some place called “heaven” totally outside this present creation!
No Jewish prophet or any patriarch nor the Jewish Messiah from Nazareth would tolerate such an ungodly distortion of
biblical soteriology!
The Bible clearly teaches that ‘heaven and earth’ which God created is this present existence while the ‘new heaven and earth’ is this same existence renewed in the final resurrection as is guaranteed and anticipated by the Risen Jesus, who is present within us through His Spirit, inviting us to “transform” this world into His Reign……rather than just explain God and creation rationally as do Traditional Theologians!
"This brand of papal teaching is diametrically opposed to Trump’s pseudo-Christianity (a product of traditional theology) which sees no sin at all in exploiting this earth and its resources even destructively ….. because, after all, the final salvation is misapprehended as taking place not here on this earth (which allegedly will be destroyed) but somewhere else!"
That is why the evangelical momentum of the theology of Francis leaves behind every theoretical explanation of the nature of God and creation resorted to with the aid of a rational system, Greek or otherwise; for the Pope’s theology assumes the guise of a prophetic appeal for a radical transformation of this creation (both human and infra-human) into a harmonious anthropo-cosmic co-existence permeated by God’s justice and mercy. This theology, unlike that of his critics, resonates with the biblical soteriology, as we are about to demonstrate.
The Scriptures make a concerted effort to correct the pessimistic view about the present existence advocated by the Middle Eastern Religions of those ancient times; such religions (now defunct) taught and sought a way out of this allegedly evil world.
By contrast, the Bible insisted that this existence (including matter and marital sex, fauna and flora, humans and celestial bodies) is truly good and holy, is a creation of a God who is good and holy.
Salvation, therefore, does not consist of leaving this creation in search of another better place; the Bible does not know of such a place! Though desecrated by human sin, this creation, designated as “heaven and earth” (God’s residence and human habitation) was designed as a Sacred Temple where, as in all sacred shrines, an image of God is venerated, namely the human person who is that Divine Image destined to be revered and loved in a society that knows neither inequality
nor injustice!
Though desecrated by humans, this Holy Temple will be rebuilt by the First Born of Creation, Jesus, who is also the Word by which everything came into existence as well as the Word by which this same creation (polluted by us) will be renovated into the new heaven and a new earth. This heaven that is identified with salvation is not ‘another world’, but ‘another age’: a new age which this very world will experience thanks to God-Man Jesus.
"Teilhard de Chardin, Jesuit and Scientist, who perceived the evolution of the cosmos as Christogenesis or the gradual emergence of the Cosmic Christ (in line with Johannine and Pauline Christology) is a paragon of the “this-worldly spirituality” characteristic of Judeo-Christianity. Francis’ encyclical Laudatisi is saturated with this eco-theology or ‘cosmic spirituality’
The Bible introduced this revolutionary concept about the innate goodness of the whole of creation, which is never to be abandoned in favour of another ideal world as Greek Philosophers thought and taught. The Jewish advocates of Biblical soteriology never expected a place other than this world but always dreamt of olam ha ba which in Hebrew means the age-to-come.
It is my guess that confusion could arise from the two Greek words that one might employ to translate the Hebrew term Olam, namely, kosmos (world) and aiōn (age).
The world (kosmos) has two meanings in John: (a) the World that God loved so much as to send his son to it, and (b) the World that epitomizes the antagonism against the
mission of Jesus.
Hence the Lord’s ’ answer to Pilate, “my kingdom is not from this world”, is misinterpreted to mean that the kingdom is somewhere other than this very world for whose salvation Jesus entered it. The authentic meaning is that the Kingdom is of this world for sure, but certainly not of this age. In this age the world is ruled by power-greedy humans who need armed forces to maintain order (as Jesus emphatically warned Pilate); but in the “age-to-come” (Olam ha ba), this very world will be ruled by Divine Love and not by human violence. .
The Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, which transformed the young man Jorge Bergoglio into a Jesuit, have inculcated in him a strong this-worldly engagement as befits a
co-worker of God.
Ignatius brings the exercitant to a spiritual climax with the final exercise known as “Contemplation to Obtain Love” in which God is gratefully experienced within the whole of Creation as our Divinely Humble Servant ceaselessly slaving for us humans out of
sheer love! This explains why men formed in the Ignatian school are involved in every aspect of earthly realities so that there is a Jesuit specialist in every branch of human knowledge.
Hence this Jesuit Pope does not believe in Fuga Mundi (escaping from this world in search of God-experience); on the contrary, Nature in all its infinite variety is, for him, a sacred locus of a God-experience. For therein we feel, touch, hear the Word by which everything came into being, the Word which is also the Crucified-Risen Christ inviting us to join him in the Christification of this very creation.
Teilhard de Chardin, Jesuit and Scientist, who perceived the evolution of the cosmos as Christogenesis or the gradual emergence of the Cosmic Christ (in line with Johannine and Pauline Christology) is a paragon of the “this-worldly spirituality” characteristic of Judeo-Christianity. Francis’ encyclical Laudatisi is saturated with this eco-theology or ‘cosmic spirituality’. This brand of papal teaching is diametrically opposed to Trump’s pseudo-Christianity (a product of traditional theology) which sees no sin at all in exploiting this earth and its resources even destructively ….. because, after all, the final salvation is misapprehended as taking place not here on this earth (which allegedly will be destroyed) but somewhere else!
What Francis has acquired from his Ignatian formation is a Pauline theology which is one of putting on Christ (i.e., the crucified-risen Jesus), which is to say, putting on a new mind that resonates with the mind of Christ until he could say “I live, but not I but Christ lives in me”; not only does Christ live in me, but Christ permeates all creation, as Paul taught.
"We advise traditional theologians to stop lecturing to this Pope and start learning from him the method of theologizing which the very first Theologian in Christian history, had left behind as a precious legacy"
Thus when one acts and lives in conformity with a Christ-saturated mind and heart, seeing things in their salvifically conducive nature, then everything on earth (i.e., the whole History of God’s creation and the whole History of God’s People as well as the stories of all nations converging on Christ and opening up into a new age of the Final Resurrection) makes sense as the irruption of God’s Redemptively Royal Presence which had already exploded as a cosmic event such as the darkness that lasted several hours on Calvary on that Friday that Friday which we rightly call “Good” ever since. This is the theological perspective revealed in the letters of St Paul and this is also the perspective in which Francis expresses the Mystery of Salvation in his daily homilies and weekly catechesis as well as in all his
Apostolic Exhortations.
Hence we advise traditional theologians (and those who communicate their theology in our seminaries in Asia) to stop lecturing to this Pope and start learning from him the method of theologizing which the very first Theologian in Christian history, Paul of Tarsus, had left behind as a precious legacy now distorted by an ‘acosmic soteriology’ which even the Greek Fathers such as Basil had repudiated as unbiblical.