Word: christ
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Like hundreds of millions of Christians, Anglicans recite these venerable words about Jesus Christ each Communion service: "Very God of very God ... of one substance with the Father ... who for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man." These tenets of the Nicene Creed should be relegated to the ash heap, according to a new book by seven British theologians. Their attack on the ancient tradition has caused the country's biggest theological row in years...
...make no claim to being original. The divinity of Jesus has been under more or less continual attack from the Christian left for a century and a half. Why the flap then? For one thing, Britain remains fairly conservative. As the book's preface puts it, belief in Christ's incarnation has "long been something of a shibboleth" in England. Besides that, one contributor, Oxford Theologian Maurice Wiles, was for five years chairman of the Church of England's influential Doctrine Commission...
Christian tradition holds that Christ is the second Person of the Trinity, who became God in human flesh. The seven theologians consider this belief "a mythological or poetic way of expressing [Jesus'] significance for us," not literal truth. The old doctrine was formulated to express faith in Jesus within a Greco-Roman culture, the authors contend, but in modern times it just will...
...Jesus is to be demoted from the Godhead, what faith remains? The authors do not want the sort of vague Christianity without Christ that Unitarianism has become since it dropped belief in the Trinity. Wiles sees two possibilities. The "stronger form" would avoid metaphysical claims about Jesus but insist that "his life and all that has stemmed from it" are essential to human faith. The "weaker form" would simply recognize the "contingent historical fact" that faith "came alive through the figure of Jesus" for those raised in Christian cultures. To another of the authors, Michael Goulder, a tutor in theology...
...Arrowhead Stadium, where the Kansas City Chiefs play football, and called time out for "a Holy Ghost break." He began to shout: "Glory to God! Jesus is Lord." The audience rose and joined in. The Scoreboard flashed JESUS IS LORD and then displayed an illuminated portrait of Christ. As the excitement built, a gurgling sound rose from the audience: "Ye ked ee aky shangda." The Charismatics were celebrating the New Testament-period practice of glossolalia, or speaking in tongues...