Thursday, 4 February 2016

Seeing Judaism Anew: Christianity's Sacred Obligation,
Ed. Mary C. Boys, Rowman and Littlefield, 2002
Chapter 11, "Jesus as the Universal Saviour", 127-137, page 134

In moving on to his sixth post-supercessional Christology element, Phan appears to admit that he might have gone too far:

In light of what has been said above, one may question the usefulness of words such as "unique", "absolute" and even "universal" to describe the role of Jesus as saviour today.

But, no, he then calls on "colonialist imperialism, economic exploitation, political domination and religious marginalisation" - as if those forces were not at work throughout the centuries of the Bible's writing and are still very much alive and kicking today - to allow him to get rid of such awkward and embarrasing terminology:

... in the post-Holocaust era, these expressions have outlived their usefulness. They should be jettisoned and replaced by other, theologically more adequate equivalents.

While prepared to concede that G-d has brought salvation for mankind in a "most effective and powerful manner" through Christ ... he reshapes the vocabulary by saying that:

Christ's "uniquness", "absoluteness" and "universality" are not exclusive, eliminative and abrogative but ... "constitutive" and "relational".

Apparently, since other non-Christian religions are part of G-d's plan of salvation ...

Christ is related to these religions ... there is a reciprocal relationship between Jesus and non-Christian religions, in particular Judaism.