JESUS CHRIST AS THE PRIMAL SACRAMENT OF OUR FREEDOM

1. The Christian claim that the church is exclusively and specially called and charged with the responsibility of saving as many people as it can for God through Jesus Christ by baptizing and bringing them into membership within the church is biblically and theologically questionable. Such a claim has been the dominant understanding of the meaning of the event of Jesus Christ throughout most of the church's history after Constantine's acceptance of Christianity as a religion of the Roman Empire in the early fourth century. This claim of the church is not the meaning of the event of Jesus Christ for humankind.

2. Some of the early church theologians called such an understanding questionable: (1) Justin Martyr (100-165) claimed that Socrates, the Greek philosopher, and any other Greek or barbarian were Christians because they lived according to the Logos, the wisdom of God; (2) Gregory of Nazianzus (329-389) said of his father that he was a Christian even before he became one; and (3) Augustine (354-430) in his paper "Of True Religion" wrote that what is now called the Christian religion has always existed, even before it was known as such.

3. In the middle nineteenth and twentieth centuries, major church theologians said the following about the church's special mission: (1) Frederick Denison Maurice, a theologian of the Church of England, stated that from his studies of the early church writings the world, not the church, is the object of God's redemptive work through Jesus Christ; (2) Karl Rahner, a Roman Catholic theologian, commented that in the Second Vatican Council's "Dogmatic Constitution on the Church," the church alone is not the community of those who are saved, but the sign of salvation for those who do not belong to it; and (3) Juan Luis Segundo, a Roman Catholic and Latin American liberation theologian, argued that the absence of the church would not mean that God's love would be absent from the world because the only purpose of the church is to be a sign-bearing community for God's love in the world.

4. So among some theologians there is agreement that to be a Christian in the church is to be a sign or a sacrament for the redeeming love of God for the world. In this sense "sacrament" is understood not as a Christian ritual, but as a means for God's love for all, that is, a sign for a redemptive spiritual reality. Such an understanding of sacrament as a sign for God's redeeming love opens a way to a different understanding of the church's exclusive and special mission.

5. The alternative understanding of the church's special mission is not as the only means for God's salvation for the world, but to be a sign-bearing community for God's redeeming love that has always been present as a possibility to be embraced by humankind for its salvation now. "Salvation" is to be conceived as a freedom from our selfishness. We are freed from our bondage of selfishness to hope, to love, and to seek justice for all who are also selfish and oppressed by things.

6. Roman Catholic theology distinguishes between the church as the "primary" Christian sacrament and the Christ as the "primal" Christian sacrament. Using this distinction, it can be suggested that the alternative church's special mission as a sign-bearing community for God's redeeming love points beyond itself. The church points to the "meaning" of the event of Jesus Christ as experienced and conceived by the earliest Christians as distinguished from Jesus himself as the beginning of this alternative understanding of the special mission of the church. Also the meaning of the event of Jesus Christ is more than the beginning of this particular understanding. The meaning of the event of Jesus Christ is the authority for the alternative church's special mission, that is, as the decisive sign for God's redeeming love that is the authorizing source for all of humankind. The church is not the authorizing source.

7. How are we to understand the distinction of the meaning of the "event of Jesus Christ" and Jesus himself? H. Richard Niebuhr, a contemporary Protestant theologian, defines an "event" as one that (1) captures the imagination of a community in such a manner that it alters the community's way of looking at the totality of its experience; and (2) strikes the community as illuminatory for understanding all other events of the past, present, and future. Van A. Harvey, a contemporary Protestant philosopher, speaks of a "paradigmatic event" as one that fuses the historical with a wider meaning, such as the events of Buddha and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. We know a few details about the historical life of Buddha. Yet it is not his historical life, but his religious teachings that has given a wider meaning to human life. Buddha's religious teachings have for centuries, and will continue to do so, defined the worth of living for many. More is known about the life of John F. Kennedy than Buddha's. Still it is the effect of the event of his assassination that has given a wider meaning to his Presidency, to world affairs, and to individuals who were born as well as those who will be born. For most persons, Buddha and President Kennedy will never be known personally, but both have informed and will continue to shape humanity forever. In a similar manner, we can make the distinction between the wider meaning of the event of Jesus Christ and Jesus himself.

8. To claim that Jesus Christ is the primal sacrament of our freedom is to say that Jesus Christ is the paradigmatic event that is the "decisive re-presentation of our freedom." The event of Jesus Christ is the wider meaning that lets us decide truthfully among all the other religious claims as to the ultimate meaning of human living, that is, the possibility of freedom through God's redeeming love and our response.

9. The basic claim that distinguishes and establishes Christianity is "Jesus is the Christ" which is fundamentally different from Jesus himself. The Jesus whom Christians accept to be the Christ is the Jesus interpreted as a wider meaning for the past, present, and future by the earliest Christians, not Jesus himself.

10. Before the written New Testament, the teachings and some healing stories about Jesus were collected orally, and later written down. Eventually these became part of the so-called religious biographies of Jesus written in the books of "Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John." Even in the letters of Paul which were written before the religious biographies of Jesus, Paul quotes early creeds, religious statements, worship rituals, and a hymn about Jesus Christ. From the earliest written stories, including Paul's letters, Jesus was re-presented less as a human being and more as a divine being. The whole point in asserting that he is the Christ was to place him on the divine, not the human, side of the relationship between God and human beings. As a human being, he was understood to be the "decisive re-presentation," and thus the real, sacramental presence of God to all humankind.

11. In the New Testament, Jesus is not re-presented as the Christ because of the perfection of his own personal faith in God. Even in the "Letter to the Hebrews," when it speaks of him as "the pioneer and perfecter of our faith" (12.2) it is "our" faith it addresses, not the faith of Jesus. Moreover, in chapter 11 Jesus is not listed among the cloud of witnesses of faith. Jesus is re-presented in this letter as the "mediator" both of the reader's faith and ours, not as the subject of his own faith. Within the whole of the New Testament Jesus is characterized in this manner.

12. A similar point can be made about any references in the New Testament to the love of Jesus or to his obedience. References like these are the stories of believers who believe in Jesus' decisive significance. This is the manner in which they are describing their faith in the wider meaning of Jesus. These claims are not setting forth any historical facts on which their faith in the wider meaning of the event of Jesus Christ is based.

13. Any reference that describes Jesus as the Christ because he is the perfectly true man is simply a mistaken projection of what some Christians think is required of any human being who is to be the decisive re-presentation of our freedom. As far as the stories about Jesus in the New Testament are concerned, Jesus is the Christ not because he in fact actualized the possibility of freedom perfectly, but because he re-presents the possibility of freedom for us decisively in its wider meaning for the past, present, and future. Only in this sense is Jesus Christ the primal sacrament of our freedom.

14. In summary, the church's exclusive and special mission is to be a sign-bearing community for God's redeeming love that has always been a possibility throughout human history, even before the church. God's gift of salvation for humankind has been decisively re-presented through the wider meaning of the event of Jesus Christ which confronts our selfishness, and offers all of humankind again the possibility to respond, and to be freed from its selfishness so that human beings can hope, love, and seek justice for all.

This article was written for the purpose of presenting Dr. Schubert Ogden's answer to the question of the exclusive and special mission of the Christian Church. One may find a complete response in his book, Faith & Freedom: Toward a Theology of Liberation. Revised and Enlarged Edition. (Abingdon Press, 1989); see chapter 4, "Jesus Christ as the Primal Sacrament of Freedom."

Mac McPherson July 24, 2002

Back to Top