by Harvey Cox
When I first visited India, I was surprised to find Christians there sitting cross-legged on the floor to pray and pictures of Christ teaching while seated in the lotus position. The Sri Lankan Catholic theologian Tissa Balasuriya is one among several Asian theologians trying to integrate Christianity into the primal religions of their region. In India Protestant theologians such as Paul Devanandan (1901–62) and M. M. Thomas (1916–96) attempted throughout their lifetimes to understand Jesus in Indian categories. But their efforts have never been easy. In January 1997 the Vatican excommunicated Balasuriya, declaring that his work promoted “relativism,” but after a worldwide outcry involving thousands of priests, nuns, and laypeople, he was reinstated a year later. His case dramatizes the growing influence of a no-longer-to-be-ignored laity as well as the ongoing conflict between those theologians who try to work from the ground up and the authorities who attempt—with diminishing success—to rule from the top down.4 Balasuriya is both genuinely Catholic and authentically Asian. He is a good example of both the resurgence and the transfiguration of Christianity today, especially in the global South.
I began this book by suggesting that a fundamental change in the nature of religiousness is occurring. The change assumes different shapes, but some of them overlap. With globalization, religions are becoming less regional. Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, and Hindus now live on every continent. Religions are also becoming less hierarchical. Lay leadership and initiative flourish in all of them, as the Muslim Brotherhood, Soka Gakkai, and the Latin American base communities demonstrate. In addition many are becoming less dogmatic and more practical. Religious people today are more interested in ethical guidelines and spiritual disciplines than in doctrines. They are also becoming less patriarchal, as women assume leadership positions in religions that have barred them for centuries, sometimes for millennia. Women are publishing commentaries on the Qur’an, leading synagogues, and directing Buddhist retreat centers. There are now women pastors, priests, and bishops in Christian denominations.
As these changes gain momentum, they evoke an almost point-for-point fundamentalist reaction. Some Shinto leaders retort by emphasizing the sacredness of Japan, while the Barata Janata party seeks to “Hinduize” India. Radical Islamists dream of reestablishing a caliphate that encompasses all of Allah’s land. Some Israeli settlers on the West Bank want to establish a “Torah state,” a holy land governed by scriptural law. The religious Right in the United States insists that America is a “Christian nation.” Literalist bishops in Africa and their American allies threaten to split the worldwide Anglican Communion over the ordination of gays and women. Indeed, a core conviction of all fundamentalist movements is that women must be kept in their place. All these, however, are in the true sense of the word “reactionary” efforts. They are attempting to stem an inexorable movement of the human spirit whose hour has come.
The wind of the Spirit is blowing. One indication is the upheaval that is shaking and renewing Christianity. Faith, rather than beliefs, is once again becoming its defining quality, 5 and this reclaims what faith meant during its earliest years. I have described how that primal impetus was nearly suffocated by creeds, hierarchies, and the disastrous merger of the church with the empire. But I have also highlighted how a newly global Christianity, enlivened by a multiplicity of cultures and yearning for the realization of God’s reign of shalom, is finding its soul again. All the signs suggest we are poised to enter a new Age of the Spirit and that the future will be a future of faith.
Also by Harvey Cox
How to Read the Bible
There are two groups of people who read the Bible—those who read for spiritual edification and those who study it academically—but both groups are missing something essential. In How to Read the Bible, Harvey Cox sets out to reconcile the two, showing how the Bible can be a resource that remains timeless and meaningful for all people.
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Acknowledgments
Many of the ideas that went into this book were nurtured over the past years in courses and seminars I have taught, panels and conferences I have attended, and in collegial conversations. These took place with far too many people to list them all. I would like especially to thank, however, my colleagues Allen Callahan, the late Krister Stendahl, Richard Horsley, Karen King and Helmut Koster whose knowledge of early Christian history I drew on shamelessly. I am indebted to Harvard Divinity School for supporting my attendance at gatherings outside Cambridge, and for generously arranging for me to teach a smaller number of courses so that I could devote more time to this book.
I am also grateful to the man once known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) for the interview he granted me when he was still Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. I am not sure how he would feel about that meeting should he read chapter 8 of this book, but the conversation was indeed memorable. It is also based in part on some conversations I enjoyed with Carlo Maria Cardinal Martini of Milan. My old friend Arvin Sharma, of Magill University and a leader in interfaith dialogue, has kept me up-to-date on developments in that field. I first presented the material included here in chapter 9 at the historic conference he planned and led in Montreal in 2006, marking the fifth anniversary of 9/11. I continue to be grateful to my friends among the Latin American liberation theologians, Gustavo Gutierrez, Leonardo Boff, and Jon Sobrino for their inspiration. The thoughts expressed here in chapter 14 were first tried out at the James Luther Adams Memorial Lecture I delivered at Harvard in 2006. My chapters on Fundamentalism grew out of a lecture course I offered for Harvard College and Harvard Divinity School students in which I was ably assisted by, among others, Dr. Atalia Omer, who is now teaching at Notre Dame.
My wife, Dr. Nina Tumarkin, Professor of History at Wellesley College, both encouraged my thinking and offered candid criticism where she thought it was appropriate (and it usually was).
HARVEY COX
16 May 2009
Cambridge, MA
Notes
CHAPTER 1
1. Andre Corten and Marie-Christine Doran, “Immanence and Transcendence in the Religious and the Political,” Social Compass 54, 4 (December 2007): 565. The phrase “horizontal transcendence” is used by the French philosopher Luce Irigaray. See her Key Writings (London: Continuum, 2004), p. 172.
2. Simone Weil, Notebooks, p. 583, quoted in David McLennan, Utopian Pessimist: The Life and Thought of Simone Weil (New York: Poseidon, 1980), p. 191.
3. See Kieran Flanagan and Peter C. Jupp, eds., A Sociology of Spirituality (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007).
4. Seth Wax, “Placing God Before Me: Spirituality and Responsibility at Work,” in Howard Gardner, ed., Responsibility at Work (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2007), pp. 133–34.
5. Robert Wuthnow, Sharing the Journey: Support Groups and America’s New Quest for Community (New York: Free Press, 1994), pp. 18, 345.
6. Mother Teresa, Come Be My Light (New York: Doubleday, 2007).
7. New York Times, September 3, 2007, p. 16.
8. See Paul Borgman, The Way According to Luke (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006).
CHAPTER 2
1. Quoted in Walter Isaacson, “Einstein and Faith,” Time, April 16, 2007, p. 47; the article features excerpts from Issacson’s book Einstein (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007).
2. Isaacson, “Einstein and Faith.”
3. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man (New York: Scribner, 1951), p. 1.
4. See Emmanuel Levinas, The Levinas Reader, ed. Sean Hand (London: Blackwell, 2001).
CHAPTER 3
1. Jon Sobrino, Jesus the Liberator: A Historical-Theological View (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1994), p. 187.
2. For Thomas Aquinas’s discussion of faith, see his Summa Theologica, pts. I–II, Q 62, in Great Books of the Western World, vol. 20 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1941), pp. 61–63.
3. See Joao Batista Libanio, “Hope, Utopia, Resurrection,” in Jon Sobrino and Ignaci
o Ellacuria, eds., Systematic Theology: Perspectives from Liberation Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996). See also Rubem Alves, I Believe in the Resurrection (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986).
CHAPTER 4
1. In this respect, I am especially grateful for what I have learned from scholars Krister Stendahl, Elaine Pagels, Karen King, Allen Callahan, and Helmut Koester.
2. For the late emergence of the idea of “apostolic authority,” see the classic work Ecclesiastical Authority and Spiritual Power in the Church of the First Three Centuries by Hans von Campenhausen (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1969).
3. Karen King, What Is Gnosticism? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), p. 152. See also Helmut Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels: Their History and Development (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1992).
4. King, What Is Gnosticism? pp. 142, 147.
5. Charles Maier, Among Empires: American Ascendancy and Its Predecessors (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), p. 10.
6. Richard Horsley has been the pioneer in introducing the empire into New Testament and early Christian history studies. See especially his Jesus and Empire: The Kingdom of God and the New World Disorder (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2002). See also Pui-Lan Kwok, Dan H. Compier, and Jeorg Rieger, eds., Empire and The Christian Tradition: New Readings of Classical Theologians (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2007), a superb collection of essays covering the relationship of Christianity to various empires from Rome to the present. See also Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, The Power of the Word: Scripture and the Rhetoric of Empire (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2007).
CHAPTER 5
1. Stephen C. Rowan, Nicene Creed: Poetic Words for a Prosaic World (Mystic, CT: Twenty-Third Publications, 1991).
2. Quoted in Frances Fitzgerald, “The New Evangelicals,” New Yorker, June 20, 2008, p. 31.
3. Sara Miles, Take This Bread (New York: Ballantine, 2007).
CHAPTER 6
1. Helmut Koester, Paul and His World (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2007), p. 217.
2. James Robinson and Helmut Koester, Trajectories Through Early Christianity, (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1973), pp. 62, 69, as quoted in Karen King, What Is Gnosticism? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), p. 152; emphasis in original.
3. There is considerable controversy about the dating of the Gospel of John, but the consensus puts it later than Mark.
4. Hans von Campenhausen, Ecclesiastical Authority and Spiritual Power in the Church of the First Three Centuries (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1969), pp. 91–92.
5. Jaraslav Pelikan, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100–600) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), p. 117.
6. Margaret Poloma, Main Street Mystics (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2003).
7. Quoted in Campenhausen, Ecclesiastical Authority and Spiritual Power, p. 242.
CHAPTER 7
1. Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity (New York: Athenaeum, 1976), p. 88.
2. Eusebius, Life of Constantine 3.15, in Library of Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series (New York: Christian Life, 1990), 1:489.
3. Quoted in Johnson, A History of Christianity, p. 88.
4. Quoted in Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Great Books of the Western World, vol. 40 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952), p. 311.
CHAPTER 8
1. See Harvey Cox, The Silencing of Leonardo Boff: The Vatican and the Future of World Christianity (Oak Park, IL: Meyer Stone Books, 1988).
2. Joseph Ratzinger, Seek That Which Is Above (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2007). See also Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger with Vittorio Messori, The Ratzinger Report: An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1986).
3. Peter Hebblethwaite, John XXIII: The Pope of the Council (London: Chapman, 1984).
4. Giancarlo Zizola, The Utopia of John XXIII (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1978), p. 171.
CHAPTER 9
1. For Arvind Sharma, see Part of the Problem, Part of the Solution: Religion Today and Tomorrow (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2008); Hermeneutics and Hindu Thought: Toward a Fusion of Horizons (New York: Springer, 2008); Fundamentalism and Women in World Religions (New York: Clark, 2007); New Focus on Hindu Studies (New Delhi: D. K. Printworld, 2005); A New Curve in the Ganges (New Delhi: D. K. Printworld, 2005); A Guide to Hindu Spirituality (Bloomington, IL: World Wisdom, 2006); Hindu Egalitarianism: Equality or Justice? (New Delhi: Rupa, 2006).
2. See Gary Dorrien, The Remaking of Evangelical Theology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1998).
3. John Burdick, Looking for God in Brazil (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
CHAPTER 10
1. For a brief account of the Keswick movement, see Ernest R. Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism, 1800-1930 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1970), pp. 176–77.
2. See Harvey Cox, Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-First Century (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1995).
3. Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, Left Behind (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale, 1995).
4. Quoted in George M. Marsden, Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991), p. 21. See also his Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of American Evangelicalism 1870-1925 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980).
5. The “manifesto” of Islamist movements is Seyyid Qutb, Milestones (Damascus: Dar al-Ilm, n.d.). See also Gilles Kepel, The War for Muslim Minds: Islam and the West (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004).
6. For Jewish West Bank settlers, see Idith Zertal and Akiva Eldar, Lords of the Land: The War over Israel’s Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967-2007, trans. Vivian Eden (New York: Nation Books, 2007).
7. See Christopher A. Ferrara and Thomas E. Woods, Jr., The Great Façade: Vatican II and the Regime of Novelty in the Roman Catholic Church (Wyoming, MN: Remnant, 2002).
CHAPTER 11
1. “Apocrypha, NT,” in The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, Supplementary Volume (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1976), p. 34.
2. Sakae Kudo and Walter F. Specht, So Many Versions? Twentieth-Century English Versions of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1983).
3. See “Job,” in The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, Supplementary Volume, p. 479.
3. World Net Daily, March 22, 2007, p. 1.
4. For this analysis of Resolve, I am indebted to one of my students, Kevin Anderson, for his unpublished paper, spring 2007.
5. Howard Rubenstein, Maccabee: An Epic in Free Verse (El Cajon, CA: Granite Hill Press, 2004).
6. See “Thomas, Gospel of,” in The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, Supplementary Volume, p. 902.
7. Elaine Pagels, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (New York: Random House, 2005), p. 231.
8. See Kenneth Kramer, World Scriptures (New York/Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1986).
9. See Wilfred Cantwell Smith, What Is Scripture? A Comparative Approach (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1993).
10. See Peter Gomes, The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart (New York: Morrow, 1996).
CHAPTER 12
1. Philip Jenkins, The Lost History of Christianity (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2008).
2. See Andrew Walls, “Christian Scholarship and the Demographic Transformation of the Church,” in Rodney Peterson, ed., Theological Literacy in the Twenty-First Century (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), pp. 166–84.
3. Carol Osiek and Kevin Madigan, Ordained Women in the Early Church, 30-600: A Documentary History (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005). Also Kaven Jo Torjesen, Women’s Leadership in the Early Church and the Scandal of their Subordination in the Rise of Christianity (Harpercollins, 1993)
4. See Stephen Jay Gould, Rocks of Ages (New York: Ballantine, 1999).
CHAPTER 13
1. Jon Sobrino, Archbishop Romero: Memories
and Reflections (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990).
2. See Alfred T. Hennelly, S.J., ed., Liberation Theology: A Documentary History (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990).
3. See Gustavo Gutiérrez’s seminal A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics and Salvation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1973).
4. Quoted in Sergio Torres, “Gustavo Gutiérrez: A Historical Sketch,” in Marc H. Ellis and Otto Maduro, eds., The Future of Liberation Theology: Essays in Honor of Gustavo Gutiérrez (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1989), p. 99.
5. Sergio Torres and John Eagleson, eds., The Challenge of the Basic Christian Communities (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1981).
CHAPTER 14
1. Eric Patterson and Edmund Rybarczyk, The Future of Pentecostalism in the United States (Lanham, MD: Towman and Littlefield, 2007). See also Harvey Cox, “Spirits of Globalization: Pentecostalism and Experiential Spiritualities in a Global Era,” in Sturla J. Stalsett, ed., Spirits of Globalization (London: SCM, 2006), pp. 11–22.
