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Perspectives on the Abbey: Heathens, Heretics, and Wholeness

In the Western, developed world, the Christian church is dying. Membership is shrinking; young people are taking their spiritual lives elsewhere. When one reflects on the kind of religion being peddled in such churches, particularly in the evangelical and fundamentalist factions, this doesn’t come as much of a surprise. It’s certainly not a surprise toContinue reading “Perspectives on the Abbey: Heathens, Heretics, and Wholeness”

Cruciformity: Cruciform Theology, Christology, and Reciprocal Kenosis

Part 4: The Cruciform Icon through a High Christology Lens
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“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.”

– John 1:1-4

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As is stated in prologue to John’s Gospel, Christ existed before having been made manifest in the person of Jesus – for Christ is, before anything else, God’s Eternal Word, referred to in the Greek as the Logos…

Cruciformity: Cruciform Theology, Christology, and Reciprocal Kenosis

Part 3: The Cruciform Icon through a Low Christology Lens
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“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”

– John 15:12-13
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As most folks surely know, orthodox christian doctrine states that Jesus the Christ was both fully God and fully Human. Paying attention to how these two natures interpenetrated within his life is the source of both the strangeness and the ingenuity and imagination of the Christian faith…

Cruciformity: Cruciform Theology, Christology, and Reciprocal Kenosis

Part 2: Cruciform Theology and the Cruciform Icon
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“Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.”
– 1 John 4:7-8

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There is a school of thought in the Christian tradition known as Cruciform Theology. This theological perspective, following Paul’s Christ hymn in Colossians (“image of the invisible God…”), essentially treats the image of Christ Crucified as an icon…

Cruciformity: Cruciform Theology, Christology, and Reciprocal Kenosis

Part 1: The Strangeness of the Particular ___________________________________________________ “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation For by Him all things were created, both in heaven and on earth“ – Colossians 1:15-16 ___________________________________________________ The Christian faith is deeply strange. And certainly, given that it is an outpouring of human imaginationContinue reading “Cruciformity: Cruciform Theology, Christology, and Reciprocal Kenosis”