Richard Rohr New Book the Universal Christ Review
Richard Rohr is a well-known and pop instructor, and his books are regularly best-sellers. Despite that, he is something of a 'Marmite' theologian—people either adore or loathe him. Depending on which side you come up down on, you lot will either observe his latest book, The Universal Christ (London: SPCK, 2019) a scintillating and energetic tour de forceof broad-castor theology, or an irritating, simplistic and infuriatingly inaccurate repetitive jumble of ideas. Edward Dowler, in his review in theChurch Times, puts it rather well:
Many will warm to him who call up that theological linguistic communication and concepts grown stale and fusty will benefit from being thrown up in the air so that we can be excited by seeing where they country. And they oft do land in interesting places, thus yielding a wealth of hit aphorisms and insights.
Others, however, who value plodding virtues such as accuracy and attention to what the scriptures and teachers of the tradition have actually said, will find difficulty with the sweeping generalisations, questionable assertions, and Aunt Sallys that Rohr frequently sets upwards, so as and then to exist able, triumphantly, to knock them down.
It is worth starting with his broad-brush theological ideas, since that is where the volume itself starts, plunging immediately into a radical claim virtually the pregnant of Jesus and Christ which is and so repeated and reiterated throughout the book. Rohr starts by recounting at length an experience from someone when travelling on the London Underground; all at in one case, as she looks down the railroad vehicle, she suddenly sees 'Christ' in everyone and everything—the 'universal' Christ who is in all, whether nosotros realise it or not. Beginning in this fashion offers a arrow to three consistent features of Rohr's writing. The first is the primacy of feel; for Rohr, supposedly unmediated experience offers us authoritative insights into reality, including theological truths, though at that place is no recognition that there is no such thing as unmediated feel, since all experiences sit within a pre-existing set of assumptions, and all need interpretation. The second is that this highlights the shape of his argument, in which he sets out large-calibration claims without whatever real justification, and and so writes around them, revisiting them repeatedly and showing their importance, though without offering much analytical reflection about what they involve or what issues they raise. The third is the way he plunders both biblical texts and theologians in the tradition for broad-castor claimed back up for his ideas—this 1 only beingness followed by '(Colossians one, Ephesians 1, John 1, Hebrews 1)' which obviously demonstrates conclusively that what he is setting out would have been accepted past the apostolic church.
Taking this decision of universality as his starting indicate, he so makes several moves in relation to the nature of God and the Christian revelation. The get-go motility is to carve up 'Jesus' (the historical figure) from 'Christ' (the universal presence of God). In the volume overall, his claim seems contradictory, in that his showtime business concern is that the 'Church' has non paid sufficient attention the cosmic linguistic communication attached to Jesus, particularly in Paul's writings—nevertheless in the first half of the volume he seems to completely detach this catholic language from the person of Jesus, using the term 'Christ' in a quite singled-out fashion. In the later on chapters, he appears to return to the specifics of the person of Jesus, simply information technology is (similar many things) not articulate how he makes connections with the before language of universality.
His second move functions equally a complement to this separation, and consists of an integration between cosmos and the creator. Believing that the incarnation of the universal Christ as the item Jesus is non something novel, only a continuation of God'due south action, he asserts that the 'beginning incarnation' is the human activity of creation itself. The principle here is that 'God loves things by becoming them' (p 20), the comment that is pulled out by Bono on the dorsum cover citation as a key, startling insight of the volume. This reads very much similar the eastern idea of pantheism, which features in many strands of Buddhism and Hinduism, and afterward in the book Rohr acknowledges the connexion with Buddhism (whilst asserting differences). He too claims that his view is panentheism, which in some forms maintains a departure between the creation and the created, rather than pantheism, though information technology is non articulate in the kickoff half of the book how this is realised, and he further claims that this is not much more than than the pedagogy of Eastern Orthodoxy with its interest in 'theosis'—but again, at that place is no exploration of this with any care.
In this context, he briefly appears to dismiss any notion of eschatology equally traditionally understood or prepare out in the New Attestation. The 'second coming' of Christ is best understood as the 'third incarnation', which is the realisation of the presence of the universal Christ in all. This leads to what might be described as his understanding of atonement and salvation: the only thing which separates u.s.a. from God is our failure to realise that nosotros are non separated from God. What is therefore needed is an awakening or enlightenment, a realisation that God is already present in us. One time more he comes close to what appears to exist a Buddhist understanding—though I retrieve it would be distinct from Buddhism in offer some sort of immediate confidence of God's presence, rather than seeing enlightenment as the last goal of a long path of discipline and contemplation.
Putting these together, it is quite difficult to see any of this having any real connectedness with anything that could be described as orthodox Christian belief every bit historically expressed. Rohr repeatedly claims that his vision is radical, startling, surprising and new, and that readers might struggle to understand it if they accept been raised in traditional Christian religion.
If all of this is true, we have a theological footing for a very natural faith that includes everybody. The problem was solved from the beginning. Take your Christian head off, shake it wildly, and put it back on!
Just he ofttimes immediately combines this with the merits that there is fiddling new here, merely a recovery of what the writers of the New Testament, and their starting time readers, believed, but which the Western church has 'forgotten' or obscured. (Similar numerous others, he is then claiming that his insight is a new kind of 'reformation'). All the same, he does this by paying no attending to what the texts of Scripture that he cites actually say, and stopping to ask whether theologians that he claims for his case actually hateful what he claims they mean would slow the argument too much.
In light of this, it is worth request two questions. The first is: how does he get to this point? I am not certain the answer is much more complicated than maxim he pays no attending to what things actually mean and say, just happily adapts them into his thinking, bending them to fit into his argument. This applies to things non-theological as well as texts of Scripture and the ideas of theologians. For example, on p 14 he claims that
Scientists have discovered that what looks like darkness to the human eye is really filled with tiny particles called 'neutrinos', slivers of light that pass through the entire universe.
Scientists have discovered no such thing. There is a 'neutrino theory of light', which claims that photons (lite 'particles') might consist of neutrino–anti-neutrino pairs, but there is simply no experimental show for this, and neutrinos and photons remain quite distinct primal particles. It seems equally though Rohr has heard someone mention this, and the thought that what looks like darkness is 'actually' light fits with his idea that what appears to be the absence of God in the universe is in some sense the presence of God—so in goes the illustration.
The approach marks Rohr'south utilise of scripture and theology without—a connection is establish, and a text or idea is levered in to provide 'support' for his ideas. I can honestly say that I did not find a unmarried biblical text which was cited with any plausibility; every unmarried one was either misread, or taken out of context, or even cited with errors. It doesn't aid the credibility of his example that he cannot spell either the Hebrew termmeshiach ('messiah', anointed one) or the Greeken Christo ('in Christ')—though I suppose that using non-conventional spellings in transliteration could be function of a merits to be novel. He claims that John 1.14 uses the term 'mankind' to propose that the incarnation was not confined to a single body (p 7); that the inclusion of gentiles from Acts 10 confirms should exist understood every bit universalism; that the 'all' in John 17.21 means all of humanity, non all believers; that Paul's catholic language in Col 1.19 implies panentheism; that, since light is universally present in the cosmos (in the form of neutrinos), when Jesus says 'I am the light of the world' (John 8.12) he is challenge to be universally nowadays; and so it goes on. What is notable hither is Rohr dislocates these textboth from their cultural context, failing to ask how these words might have been understood by either speaker, writer or hearer in the first century, but also ripping them from the wider text itself, ignoring the 'approved' context, fifty-fifty of immediately surrounding sentences. If Jesus is the universal light and universal 'flesh', why do we immediately observe comment nearly 'those who would not receive them' (John 1.11), or nearly the repeated references to those who 'continue to walk in darkness'? There are some questions to be asked nigh Paul'due south universal and cosmic vision—but it is not 1 that can ignore the centrality of repentance, faith and judgment in Paul'due south theology.
This happiness with inaccuracy so extends to Rohr's characterisation of the positions of other people. As Dowler notes, the argument is choc-a-block with Aunt Sallys, with exaggerated caricatures of opposing views which are depicted as so ridiculous that it is hard to resist how superior Rohr's own view is. Yous are either a happy universalist like him, or y'all are obsessed with a wrathful God who is but waiting to condemn everyone. You lot either agree with his vision of the cosmic Christ, or you lot are locked into a narrow misunderstanding which is over concerned with the human being Jesus and misses the real point of the whole narrative. This kind of rhetoric is i that is then embedded in one of effortless superiority, which I think is something of a paradox. I suspect in person that Rohr is a kind and gentle man, and listening to a few minutes of online interview certainly confirms that he comes beyond in an avuncular manner which matches his advent. Simply his consequent line is that his position is the mature understanding of Christian faith, and that if you have any objections to information technology, information technology is essentially because you have not nevertheless understood and not however reached his degree of contemplative maturity. The answer to this is not to enquire questions or delve into the arguments, simply to sit and wait, read again, contemplate, and eventually enlightenment will come up and you will realise that he is right. If you lot don't practice this, yous are not only unenlightened, y'all are positively damaging, and yous have 'no good news' (p 29).
Function of the difficulty with this is that Rohr is leading us down some very odd paths and a long fashion from orthodox Christian faith at numerous points. There is, he believes, no real difference between the 'holy' and the 'profane' (p 15), which gives united states a problem with the biblical understanding of God'southward holiness. Christianity should not be in the business of making universal claims, only should provide a hospitable infinite for different theological positions (p 17). Jesus is a Third Someone, a different kind of fauna, which sits very oddly with orthodox understandings of Christology. Since the life of God is in all things, Jesus' resurrection is not at all surprising, but what we might naturally expect. (It is non actually surprising that any sense of the Jewishness of either the Erstwhile Attestation or the historical accounts of Jesus in the gospels, or Paul'south theology, is completely absent.) The goal of the gospel is self-credence and universal inclusion. God is not an 'old human being on a throne' (p 28), despite God being depicted as, well, an old man on a throne in the visions of Daniel 7 and Rev iv which provide some of the virtually central ideas (ancient venerability and universal sovereignty) to the New Attestation. In his reading of Paul, any question of ideals has no connection with the cosmic theological vision, an exclamation contradicted by simply about every Pauline passage. But this is necessary since, like Buddhism, Rohr'south theology appears to have niggling upstanding content beyond the virtue of 'inclusion'.
One of my concerns here for the general reader is what seems to me to be the failure to have seriously pastoral realities. If the universal Christ is present in all, how do I make sense of that in the person who has hurt or driveling me, or in those who dispense power, or (in the farthermost) collude in or initiate murder and genocide? What is Rohr's theology of evil, beyond 'lack of enlightenment'? Is the Bible actually that easy to read, and can we merely pluck universal formulae from information technology? Tin can we really brush aside the 'scandal of particularity' then that we don't need to have Jesus seriously every bit a offset-century Jew? Rohr's simple answers seem to me to avert all the hard questions, and I cannot help feeling that we do people a disservice past taking such an arroyo.
Only this leads to a second major question to ask: why is Rohr so popular? And what challenge does that get out the states? It would be easy to dismiss Rohr'due south writings as a mishmash of theological psycho-babble, and this is made easy by his generalising turns of phrase. Just I feel the need to move across such dismissal, non least considering a number of friends whom I respect like his writing and have found this book to be energising.
Kickoff, Rohr clearly recognises the divide between 'thinking' and 'feeling' approaches to organized religion and spirituality, and conspicuously comes downward on the 'feeling' side in response to an over-accent on the 'thinking' side, especially in his own context in N America. Is there a strategy that ensures that 'orthodox' thinking does not fall into this trap on the other side?
Second, I think Rohr articulates a general sense of exhaustion with the complexities of modern life. Nosotros are overwhelmed with the demands of everyday existence; even turning on the television receiver now requires the use of two remote controls and (information technology feels like) a degree in engineering, and both regular circulate media and social media tell us relentlessly of the bewildering variety of competing theories of life that we are supposed to live with, cope with and even engage with. Rohr's wide-brush, simple approach has an almost visceral entreatment to information technology. Tin can we practice some serious reflection on life and theology without wearing people out?
Thirdly, this spills over into how we appoint with others and make sense of the world. I doubtable all of us accept a sneaking feeling that taking time to really understand all the dissimilar claims made past those with different views volition just take too long to understand. Far improve, so, to choice and choose, and detect easy points of agreement, than become into statement and dispute. Can we do justice to the viewpoints of others, with respect, whilst retaining the integrity of divergence?
And lastly, of form, the language of 'inclusive' feels much easier to live with in a tired globe, fifty-fifty if it is actually incoherent, even in its own terms. Can we disagree with others, even profoundly, whilst also engaging?
I am non at all convinced that Rohr offers the states helpful answers to any of these questions—simply he surely highlights the desires around us for spirituality and discipleship which is not confined to the intellectual, which offers rest and respite from complication, which is content, and is known more for what it is for than what it is against.
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