In this article I attempt to give a radical theological interpretation to the Christian idea that Jesus is the savior of the world
In the Christian tradition, Jesus is the Christ, i.e. he is not a mere mortal but the word become flesh, the anointed Messiah whose coming the prophets had foretold. In the Christian tradition, Jesus is the savior of the world, the Salvator Mundi. What it means for Jesus to be savior, is, of course, always subject to a lot of theologizing and interpretation. It always comes down, however, to this that faith in Christ (faith meaning a variety of things ranging from trusting his work on the cross to believing that he is the Messiah) leads to reconciliation with God. Christ is able to effect this change because he is both human and divine.
Interpreting Jesus in a post-Christian West
As we are entering a new era in the West with regard to the status of Christianity, it is interesting to take a fresh look at the notion of Christ as savior. Western thought may be characterized as thoroughly post-metaphysical and non-supernatural.
Bye-bye, Metaphysics
With the first, I don’t mean a non-metaphysical world per se since for human beings it is not possible to not inquire about the meaning of the world and humanity. To be human is to always engage in metaphysics. We always say about the world what it is about; that is metaphysics. But we are post-metaphysical in the sense that we are done making claims about the world and humanity that require the postulation of ontological realities or properties that cannot be derived from a sensory experience from the world.
Our era is also non-supernatural in the sense that we’re not very likely to believe in invisible entities, whether they be angels, demons, fairies of gods.
Renewed interest
At the same time, however, there seems to be a renewed interest, a careful but insistent curiosity, for the Christian roots of our Western society. Can we think of Jesus and God beyond the old metaphysics and supernatural worldview? Have we perhaps thrown out the baby with the bathwater? Have we perhaps “killed God, you and I” (to speak with Nietzsche) without realizing the consequences? Is the symbol of Christ still able to generate new meaning for us, post-Christian Westerners?
In that tension between the post-metaphysical stance of Western society and its curiosity for its Christian sources, the question emerges of how to interpret Jesus afresh. One way to address this question is, I believe, by deconstructing the idea of Jesus as Salvator Mundi, the savior of the world. If he is to be our savior in any intelligible way, this concept needs to be divested of its supernatural and metaphysical elements that are part of the premodern worldview in order to retrieve it meaningfully as having bearing on the fabric of human relationships.
The Phenomenological Approach
My proposal is framed by three parameters.
(1) In the context of an interpretation in the mode of Radical Theology, the notion of God is no longer a viable symbol, tainted as it is by big-otherness and the collusion of the religious and the political in Western history. Atonement or reconciliation with the god who didn’t stop Auschwitz is a meaningless objective.
(2) Demythologization is not the objective, because we can only live by myths and will inscribe the mythical, the unsayable, in whatever is at hand. If not myth then in something else. Instead of demythologization and supernaturalism, then, I seek an existential outcome through a phenomenological approach.
(3) As is often the case, the way to get there is not simply a departure from Christianity but a retrieval of something that was always already there: the wisdom tradition.
The phenomenological method
Phenomenology and existentialism go hand in hand. The goal is to obtain an understanding on the plane of the observable toward a form of existence that expresses the kind of being of Christ. The path toward it is phenomenological.
The phenomenological attitude brings with it a focus on the phenomena, the things in front of us. It is a philosophical method that focuses on phenomena and no longer on the question of whether or how we can get a grip on the noumena, the things in themselves, das Ding an sich. Kant had already argued that this is not possible. The phenomenologist says: alright if the noumena are not available we will concentrate instead on the things as they are and allow them to come to us on their own terms.
This focus, or narrowed concentration, is called a reduction or bracketing in phenomenology. The question about knowledge is bracketed because it is simply beyond our reach. Many phenomenologists have shown that in this way many intuitions about the world emerge and with it an understanding of the world that would not be available to us through an epistemological method of knowledge acquisition.
The Supernatural Reduction
In his recent book, “Cross and Cosmos,” theologian John Caputo explains that we can apply a similar reduction to the encounter with Christ in the way he comes to us on his own terms from the written texts. In this case, the reduction doesn’t pertain to epistemology but to supernaturalism. We leave all these fantastic claims about Jesus’ origin, essence, being, miracles, resurrection, etc. outside of our purview.
Instead, we’re paying attention to the structural depth that is proper to the Christ-event, regardless of how layered its mediation to us is, we undergo an encounter that demands more of us than any heavenly or angelic appearance ever could elicit.
If Jesus is savior, he is such not in terms of effecting a magical change in us, or conjuring up a magical divine substance in us or paying the price to god or satan in order to purchase us either from malicious bondage or omnipotent wrath. That’s all supernaturalistic mumbo jumbo to us today. Rather, in the encounter with the person of Christ, we encounter the kind of existence that draws us out of ourselves and away from our usual modus operandi as beings who survive by belonging to the fittest. We are drawn out, even beyond utilitarian social ethics, to esteem the other as worthy of infinite love, worthy of the ultimate sacrifice.
The Hebrew wisdom tradition
We anchor this phenomenological approach in a retrieval of Jesus as rooted in the wisdom tradition. Some feminist theologians have already done a lot of work in this area (Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Elizabeth A. Johnson). Jesus as representative of the wisdom tradition even goes back to Paul who called Jesus the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1).
How, then, is Jesus the savior understood within the context of the wisdom tradition? We need to reinterpret the salvific aspect of Christ from the perspective of wisdom. In order to do so, we return to the earth-oriented focus of the Hebrew wisdom tradition. In one sense, wisdom was rooted in God. There is a depth-dimension to wisdom that one recognizes when one encounters and internalizes it. But wisdom is not supernatural nor does it perform magical tricks. it is also not directing us away from the world but toward it. Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes stand as important testimonies to such an earth-bound attitude.
Interestingly, in wisdom literature, there is a point, where to a certain extent, God becomes superfluous. In Job, God is the great antagonist, who, precisely in his acts and speech, continues to remain obscure, incomprehensible, and dark. With the question of suffering and divine justice unresolved, the focus returns to the rewards reaped in this life. In Ecclesiastes, the figure of God may provide the silent argument for living well, but the focus is entirely on a this-worldly material world. Proverbs is rather interesting in this regard. Though the fear of the Lord underlies all wisdom, at one point wisdom is being personified as a woman calling people to heed her message. Again the focus is on a life lived well but the novelty here is that it takes on ontological independence.
Jesus As Fulfillment and Subversion of the Wisdom Tradition
If in Proverbs wisdom is personified as a figure of speech, divine wisdom takes on human flesh in the event of the incarnation. Jesus is the embodiment of wisdom. Jesus, however, diverges in two important ways from the Jewish wisdom tradition. (a) Jesus doesn’t produce wisdom teachings but tells paradoxical stories that confound and he teaches what is offensive. (b) He doesn’t talk about wisdom as a property that one may acquire but as something that is tied to his personality, his work, and his purpose.
We do notice a similar phenomenological reduction in which the supernatural attitude is suspended. Jesus talks about hell a lot but always as a figure of speech in which a reversal takes place: the chosen ones are going to taste hell precisely because they take their chosen state in pride. In other words, he uses the hell trope as a way to make a point; not to teach a literal hell! Where the wisdom tradition admonishes people to preserve their life, Jesus confuses people by saying that they have to lose it in order to find it. The wisdom Jesus reveals, ups the ante of what wisdom really is. It is a kind of wisdom that Paul would later call foolishness. And indeed, Jesus the sage is so wise that he ends up being crucified. The price he pays for this wisdom is suffering and death. Utter foolishness in the eyes of the world.
Performative and Embodied Wisdom
The wise speak knowledge but Jesus paradigmatically embodies it in his life and then pays the price for this as the powers that be destroy him. Jesus is the savior in the sense that he not only imparts knowledge but draws us into a new way of being, an existential path of living life with and for others, that really does radically transform those that participate. The kind of teaching that accompanies such praxis of necessity requires being uttered in paradox and offensiveness. This is both to protect the wisdom it contains and because its wisdom is antithetical to the entire wisdom tradition in the way it transcends it.
Jesus is a savior in that his wisdom transcends the tradition it is part of not in a heavenward movement to God but precisely because it is more earthbound. It radicalizes the transcendence of the other. Its love is a dangerous and reckless love. Jesus is a savior in that he embodies this wisdom in his life, teachings, and death on the cross. It is performative wisdom. Jesus is a savior in that he draws us into a new kind of existence of which the sheer possibility exists in its being lived out by him even when its realization is beyond our means.
A Religionless Jesus
Jesus and Paul spoke within a religious context and so they developed and brought their message within a particular God-world construct in which the relationship with God was an ultimate concern, i.e absolutely important. In our Western world, this relationship with God is no longer of ultimate concern. Rather, it is considered mythical, superfluous, and part of religious fantasies.
Regardless of whether God is real or not, given the world we live in and the Jesus that interests us, we will have to reinterpret this Jesus outside the God-human relationship. Insisting on God as being of prime importance, is insisting on a fantasy and results in Jesus’ message missing the mark.
Interestingly, wisdom tradition, Jesus, and Paul give us important help in our effort. All three show a concentration in their message in which the earthliness and intern-human relationships are central. It is somewhat analogous to the phenomenological reduction I propose in which the matter at hand takes center stage.
Wisdom tradition, Jesus, Paul, and phenomenology all say the same: look at what is in front of you. The neighbor. In the love for the neighbor, God’s will is fulfilled. Atonement between us and God is really truly fulfilled in living wisely (wisdom tradition), in loving the neighbor as yourself (Jesus), in Christ (Paul). And phenomenology says: the reduction thus completed allows us to let religious fantasies be what they are so we can focus on the matter at hand (die Sache selbst): being with and for others.
These, then, are the rough contours of my religionless existentialist interpretation of Jesus as savior. Jesus is the savior, not in a religious-magical sense in which an invisible relationship with an invisible entity is restored. Jesus is the savior in that his performative message is something that transforms us and thus transforms our relationships with others.
Is resurrection useful with the nonmagical christ? Or is it outdated magical thinking we no longer have use for?