[Peace-discuss] Christianity and War - from Alex Cockburn

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Two passages from the late Oxford theologian Herbert McCabe, OP -- a friend of
Rowan Williams, whose sermon Cockburn describes. They may be compared with
Marx' motto, which he took from a bawdy play by the 2nd century BCE playwright
Terence -- homo sum, humani nil a me alienum puto ("I am human, so I consider
nothing human to be foreign to me"). --CGE]

...The claim that Jesus is perfectly human is the claim that his social world is
co-extensive with humanity, that he is open to  all, and moreover open to all
that is in humanity.  It is not just that he would like to be or that he
proposes this as an ideal (this would be true of any liberal philosopher) but
that he actually is; the communication that he offers is unmixed with
domination or exclusiveness.  So the coming of Jesus would not be just the
coming of an individual specimen of the excellent or virtuous man, a figure who
we might try to imitate, but the coming of a new humanity, a new kind of
community amongst people. For this reason we can compare the coming of Jesus to
the coming of a new language; and indeed, John does this: Jesus is the word, the
language of God which comes to be a language for humanity...

...We come to the Father in Jesus Christ not because he has revealed to us the
way by which we may go.  (In John 14, Thomas wants to know about this and Jesus
tells him that is not the point; that is not what he offers.)  We come to the
Father in Christ simply because Jesus is the way in which the Father comes to
us; not first our way but the way the Father comes, the Father's truth, the life
of the Father.  And when the Father comes to us in the human life of Jesus it is
not to show us how to know, how to be successful at coming to him or successful
at anything else. He comes to us, after all, in a complete failure, in one who
suffers and is defeated.  He comes to us as a condemned and despised and
executed criminal.
     The Word of God is made flesh not to tell us something, not to make us
better informed; he does not show us how to teach the world new secrets; what he
shows us is our ignorance, our failure to understand...

E. Wayne Johnson wrote:
>>>> He is the presence of the power of creation itself
> 
> In the beginning before all time was the Word, and the Word was with God, and
>  the Word was God Himself. He was present originally with God. All things 
> were made and came into existence through Him; and without Him was not even 
> one thing made that has come into being. In Him was Life, and the Life was 
> the Light of men.  And the Light shines on in the darkness, for the darkness 
> has never overpowered it, put it out or absorbed it or appropriated it, and 
> is unreceptive to it.
> 
> 
> C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>> Against Saviors [by Alex Cockburn]
>> 
>> My brother Patrick called on Christmas Day, from his home in Canterbury 
>> [England]. Opposite his house is St. Dunstan’s church, containing the head
>>  of Sir Thomas Moore, retrieved by his daughter Margaret after her father 
>> was beheaded in 1535 for refusing to sign the Act that declared Henry VIII
>>  Supreme Head of the Church in England. Patrick’s house is as old as St. 
>> Dunstans and contains a right of way, through which custom decreed that 
>> pastoralists could lead their sheep. One of these days I’ll rent a flock 
>> and ratify the right, just in case the brother has any notion of 
>> privatizing the whole of his premises.
>> 
>> Patrick reported that he and his family had gone along that morning to 
>> listen to Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, give his Christmas
>>  sermon. He said it was pretty good. I looked it up online, and the brother
>>  was right. It was a bracing critique of “great man” theories of change, 
>> specifically citing excessive hopes, now vested in Barack Obama.
>> 
>> “In recent weeks,” the Archbishop  declared, “we've seen some of Barack 
>> Obama's advisers and colleagues warning about the level of messianic 
>> expectation loaded on to the president-elect.
>> 
>> “The gospel tells us something hard to hear – that there is not going to be
>>  a single charismatic leader or a dedicated political campaign or a war to
>>  end all wars that will bring the golden age…
>> 
>> “There is a savior, born so that all may have life in abundance, a savior …
>>  hidden in the form of poverty and insecurity, a displaced person … whose 
>> authority does not come from popularity, problem-solving or anything else 
>> in the human world. He is the presence of the power of creation itself.
>> 
>> “It is not the restoring of a golden age, not even a return to the Garden 
>> of Eden; it is more – a new creation, a new horizon for us all…
>> 
>> “And our own following of the Word made flesh is what gives us the 
>> resources to be perennially suspicious of claims about the end of history 
>> or the coming of some other savior exercising some other sort of power. To
>>  follow him is to take the risks of working at these small and stubborn 
>> outposts of newness, taking our responsibility and authority.
>> 
>> “We can't pass the buck to Caesar Augustus, Barack Obama or even Canterbury
>>  City Council – though we may pray for them all and hope that they will 
>> play their part in witnessing to new possibilities.”
>> 
>> Not bad at all. The last year the liberals and a lot of the left here have
>>  passed the buck entirely to Obama.
>> 
>> http://www.counterpunch.org/
>> 
>>