Friday, 24 July 2015

Canon & Community: A Guide to Canonical Criticism,
James A. Sanders, Wipf and Stock, 2000, page 58-59

Sanders urges that we must all engage in monotheising if we are to meet the canonical challenge. Now hear Sanders' words carefully:

Every generation of the call people of G-d is a gift of G-d. We Christians forget that Christ, the Son of G-d, was G-d's gift to the world, and tend to make Christ an idol and a symbol of divisiveness in humanity. Christomonism is Christianity's failure to monotheise.

I'm assuming that 'Christomonism' means to say that Christ alone is G-d, that there is no other G-d except Christ. Sanders continues:

Just as the heavenly council was the result of Israel's effort to monotheise over against foreign pantheons of the Iron Age, so the trinitarian formula was a result of early Vhristianity's brave efforts to monotheise in the Hellenistic-Roman period. But some Christians easily slip into thinking that the triune G-d is three gods.

The Bible speaks, Sanders explains, in the cultural idions of each of the five eras through which it passes. In a tangible way, it is a product of its time! But then Sanders moves on to intersect with the writing of Richard Bauckham. Hang on to your seats - it is worth the ride ...