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Christ: The Experience of Jesus as Lord

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This sequel to the late Fr. Schillebeeckx's book, "Jesus: and Experiment in Christology" is extraodinarily rich in its explication of the Christian experience of the depth and breadth of the salvific reality of Jesus Christ. His discussion of the "seven anthropological coordinates" are essential to understanding the all-inclusive nature of God's saving work in Jesus Christ. His discussion on the mystery of suffering reflects his deep concern for addressing the questions raised by the political theologies of J.B. Metz, S.J. and Jurgen Moltmann in Europe and the liberation theologies coming out of Latin America, Asia,and Black and the Feminist movements. His discussion on the structure of grace coming from the gospels and epistles in very helpful in helping to better understand the experience of grace as it is interpreted within the various traditions of the early Church.

I recommend this book most enthusiastically for those interested understanding the some of the Scritpural and Traditional warrants for promoting the Social Teaching of the Catholic Church.

Edward Schillebeeckx (1914-2009) was a Dutch Catholic theologian and Dominican priest, who wrote a number of important "progressive" books in the Catholic tradition (e.g., Jesus, which he wrote in 1974, and it promptly got him into serious trouble with the Catholic hierarchy).

He states in the Introduction to this 1977 book, "The perspective of this book is different from that of its predecessor, 'Jesus: An Experiment in Christology,' of which it is a continuation. At this point I am not concerned, as in the first volume, with those features of the 'historical Jesus' which may have led to the New Testament confession of him. Now I am immediately concerned with the New Testament celebration of what Christians experienced in their encounter with Jesus the Lord. I might say that the first volume was a 'Jesus book,' though it did not neglect the Christ; this second volume is a 'Christ book,' though it does not forget Jesus of Nazareth."

Here are some representative quotations from the book:

"For (early Christians) the authority of this literature was existential, and derived from its content; in it they found an expression of their own understanding of Jesus and at the same time of their understanding of themselves as Christians." (Pg. 69)

"Only after Jesus' death do his disciples, who see his resurrection as an eschatological event, as the beginning of universal eschatolgical happenings, begin to understand themselves consistently as the eschatological comunity." (Pg. 492-493)

"The danger of referring to a 'political' or to an 'apolitical' Jesus consists in the fact that people feel that this removes the need for any political arguments! Even if Jesus was political---or apolitical---in his time, it does not tell us how we should behave in the light of the same faith in other historical situations." (Pg. 585)

"The way in which suffering became a theme for preachers from the nineteenth century until well into the twentieth is clear from pastoral letters ... the mysticism of suffering establishes the 'existing order' in church and society." (Pg. 700)

"The Christian message does not give an EXPLANATION of evil or our history of suffering." (Pg. 728)

"I reject any 'dogmatism,' whether it comes from the right wing or the left or from any church." (Pg. 789)

"Nevertheless, the prophetic vision of Jesus is not---or at least not directly---a SOLUTION to the problem of human life." (Pg. 821)