Keys to a transtheist Christology
It is not easy to offer today a presentation of Jesus of Nazareth that is brief, substantial and easy to understand, in addition to being interesting and novel. Annamaria Corallo has done so in this book and I congratulate her with the same pleasure that I have read these pages. Pages that instruct the mind and speak to the heart. In each one of them, she fuses intellectual rigour and a tender sensitivity, the critical analysis of ancient texts and the breath of the universal Spirit, always present, free and new.
The author demonstrates with no ostentation a broad knowledge of the most recent investigations about Jesus, but it is not her first objective to inform us about what he taught and did on the trails and rural villages and humble homes of Galilee 2000 years ago. She wants to bring us closer to the vital sources that inspired the Galilean prophet and which can still inspire us in our world, so different from his. From yesterday’s letter a new Gospel arises, a good news for our days, more necessary than ever. And thus this book is born, full of freshness, a good open outline for a coherent and inspiring Christology for this fast-moving 21st century, a century in which the acceleration of what we call progress is suffocating life.
I want to particularly emphasize its subtitle, very relevant in my opinion, and not without boldness: Gesù di Nazaret in chiave transteista (Jesus of Nazareth in a transtheistic key). This is a novel expression which in some people may provoke strangeness, reticence or even an open protest. Yet, to my mind, it defines the fundamental key for the profound renewal of Christology that our time requires.
Let’s contextualize the term transtheist. Paul Tillich (theologian and luteran pastor) and Heinrich Zimmer (Indologist) were the ones that invented the concept (transtheistic) in the 50s of the 20thcentury, the formerreferring to Greek religious philosophy (particularly pre-Socratic and Stoic), and the latter designating hindu philosophy-theology. In his theological writings and in his sermons as a pastor, Tillich invited to the unrenounceable spiritual task of transcending the traditional “theistic” concept of God, namely: a supreme Being different from the beings that constitute the world, or a divine Person separate from human persons. “Perhaps –he would say to his audience in one of his sermons- you will have to forget everything that you have traditionally learned about God”. Just the same as Master Eckhart preached at the end of the 13th and beginning of the 14th centuries. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said the same when, in his prison writings, shortly before being hanged by the Nazis in April 1945, he confessed to “the Christ of the non-religious” and called for a “non-religious Christianity” and called to live “before God without God”. In the last decades of the 20th century and the first ones of the 21st, Episcopalian bishop John Shelby Spong is the one who,best and most, has developed a systematic, non-theistic theology.
Following these lines, Annamaria Corallo presents Jesus in a transtheistic key, and in my opinion, it is one of her most decisive and boldest successes. Certainly, it is not possible to speak about Jesus without speaking about God –with or without this name- because his presence enveloped him and lived within him, it sustained his vital confidence, his messianic hope, his risky prophetic mission. But, today and here, it is not possible to speak well about Jesus, that is, in an understandable and inspiring way without speaking well about God, namely, in a reasonable manner, coherent with the common culture after Kant, Darwin and Nietzsche, after Einstein and the James Webb telescope. The God as Supreme Being, external to the world, just and clement, universal sovereign creator and legislator, who governs the world, intervenes in the world as he wishes, reveals or hides himself, speaks or keeps silent, pays attention to prayers or disregards them, forgives or punishes, saves or condemns… has no place in the scientific worldview and modern thinking of today’s men and women. The “theistic God” is not believable for the great majority of the people, from children to the old. It is an increasing majority which, according to all data, will continue to expand beyond the frontiers of the so-called “West”.
For an increasingly great majority of our knowledge society and of an excessively rapid change, a Jesus understood in a theistic key is no longer believable, either. This is an image that still exists in liturgical texts, in the official doctrine and in the backgroound of the imagination of so many “believers” and “non-believers”: Jesus as the Logos or pre-existing son of God, incarnated in a sapiens male Jew, sole revelation and full incarnation of god on Earth and the Universe, only universal saviour, a perfect man…In a gesture of cultural lucidity, theological courage and ecclesial responsibility, Annamaria Corallo outlines a Christology in a transtheistic paradigm, which is inseparably liberating, feminist and ecological. Thus, she speaks well about Jesus and about God. And speaking in that manner, I say it with deep conviction and gratitude, she offers a transformative breeze to a global humanity which faces the most urgent challenges and serious threats of its entire history, such as the climate emergency, the ecological crisis, artificial intelligence and the universal war of the financial and arms economy.
Many people call this new cultural and theological paradigm postheistic in stead of transtheistic. I do not think it is worth engaging in a discussion, but I prefer the term chosen by the author. I find the prefix trans- more suggestive and open than post-. The latter seems to establish a clear dividing line: before theism, after theism. By contrast, I understand that whoever says trans- does not define doctrines or establishes boundaries, but opens then: beyond. Life is continuous movement and transforming dynamism. Certainly, the spirit –which beats in particle and atom, in water and stone, in plant and animal, in the entire universe- never existed or manifested itself without form in Jesus, but did not lock itself in any of the forms in which it manifested and operated in him (in his image of God, in his religious beliefs, in his ritual practices, in his synagogal membership…). Undoubtedly, Jesus was a theist, but its deep breath pushed him and pushes us beyond his image of God, of his beliefs, of the temple and of all institutions. The spirit is free, and it moves through and transcends all forms in which it manifests and operates. We are free to use one form or another –theistic or non-theistic or atheistic- but as simple provisional places of encounter and relationship, of moving to Life made of energy, relationship and tenderness.
The profound inspiration of Jesus, the living Jesus, free and inspiring, beyond historical facts and the dogmatic construct, in communion with all historic peoples and with all literary figures, is decisive in a deep and fecund Christology. So it is in this book. Each page expresses the conviction – which I fully share- that the living figure of Jesus emerging from the freely read Gospel descriptions –whether it does or does not correspond to strict historicity or to traditional dogmas- is completely up to date. In his subversive Beatitudes, in his unconditional empathy with the least ones, in his healing proximity, in his open and happy meal sharing, in his risky freedom in the face of the “divine law”, in the face of religious,political and economic power, in his announcement of a universal Jubilee, in his contemplative gaze at nature as a sacrament of the Fontal Reality that he called and we call “God”, in his critique of patriarchalism, in his practice of universal brotherhood-sisterhood with no hierarchies, in his itinerant life group of men and women alike…we can continue to find inspiration and encouragement to respond to the enormous challenges of global survival that today confront us humans, sons and daughters of the Earth, brothers and sisters of all living beings,
José Arregi
(Published as the Prologue to the book by Annamaria Corallo l’uomo che narró Dio. Gesù di Nazaret in chiave transteista, Gabrielli, 2023, pp. 11-14).
Translated by Mertxe de Renobales Scheifler