Second Response to Sullivan

Sullivan says that he believes in the divinity and resurrection of Jesus.  These are defining aspects of Christianity along with his death on the cross.  What they mean, however, requires interpretation.  The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus are polyvalent realities and point to multiple, true meanings.  It is impossible to define the significance of these events and therefore what it means to believe in them without risking that these acts of God will be diluted by finite human minds and communicated by fallible human speech.  There are those of us who believe that is precisely why we are called into communities of faith where we can share interpretations and hold one another accountable.  The problem is, of course, that human systems require that power is involved.  It has to be entrusted to people and can, therefore, be manipulated by them.  Every religious tradition has these moments of abuse, misuse and excess.  The media (I know that it’s too easy to blame them) like to chastise the church of these.  This abuse, that abuse or the other abuse has robbed Christianity of its goodness.  Perhaps.  Truth is Christianity has always been a mixed bag made up of people who are created in the image of God and re-created in the image of Christ and who on not so rare instances display those images in words and deeds.  But these very same people are marred by human sin and are capable of tremendous evil.  We are one and the same—saints and sinner.  OR as Luther would say simul iustus et peccator (simultaneously justified and sinner).  Sullivan wants to separate Christ from the very people Christ would claim—his idiot followers.  But Christ resists such division—the distance between Romans 7 and Romans 8 is paper thin.  And the one who can lament, “O Wretched man that I am, who will save me?” can turn around and declare, “Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ.”