booklogging

This book traces the theme of paradise in Christian teaching from earliest records to the present. The main thesis is that a partial realisation of paradise in the present experience of Christians was the normal understanding for the pre-Constantinian church. Such an understanding of Christian faith tends towards life-affirming and creation-friendly spirituality and mission. As such the book reads as a re-telling of Christian Western history attentive to the way that paradise motifs may have correlated with more justice- and creation-affirming attitudes and there is a corresponding exploration of theological understandings that would underpin or hold together such attitudes.

In a world of environmental crisis, resurgent religious /ideological conflict and awareness of the horror of violence and abuse, it is important that we can tell the Christian story and think it through in ways that de-legitimise some of the uses made of that story in the past to support actions and attitudes that contribute to the ills we now so clearly face and have to deal with. It is also important to find support in scripture and tradition that enable us to make constructive engagements with these challenges, not only for the sake of doing right but also for the sake of making positive connections (apologetically so) with the emerging plausibility structures which support life-perspectives where justice, peace and the integrity of creation are important.

However we should be wary that we are not simply re-projecting Christian faith in a wish-fulfillment idol. Sometimes a picture emerges in this book which raises concerns that perhaps this is going on, though in seeing that we are at least brought to question what our own readings-back and fond imaginings might be and so this is perhaps a further issue in ongoing debate about gospel and culture.

In the course of researching the book the authors realised that the corpse of Christ is not depicted in Christian art until near the start of the second millennium in what we now know as Germany. Until then, and this gives the book its title and main theme, predominant motifs are to do with paradisal imagery and theologically-related scenes from the gospels and other stories of the Hebrew Bible. To be sure, crosses are depicted but they corpse-free. The appearance of Jesus' corpse in medieval art is at a significant cultural moment in the assimilation of Christianity as a tool of Empire (in this case, firstly, the Carolingian Holy Roman Empire). At this point the 'sinfulness' (in resisting Roman rule) of the conquered is linked with the passion and death of Christ.

The authors dispute that penal substitution is a primitive (even biblical) family of doctrine. As part of this argument a helpful discussion is made of the origins of the doctrine in Anselm and of Peter Abelard's response to it which recognises nicely the cultural and political backgrounds involved. The discussion is nuanced by a recognition of how, in turn, as is not unusual in cultural development, the oppressed Saxon communities also managed to subvert the ruling interpretation of the crucifix into one more comforting to their own situation. Part of the evidence for this is the emergence of the Eucharistic dispute about whether it was the crucified or Risen Christ that was present in the Eucharistic elements the former being more ideologically convenient for the conquerors.

The twinned theme that emerges from the story as told in this book is the corrupting influence of violent power on the gospel. However, this is not a simple tale which calls implicitly for a renunciation of power. Saving Paradise suggests that a just empowerment may be possible and 'gospel', that the issue is whether it really serves justice and peace or simply the interests of ruling or wealthy groups. This dimension is not fully explored but the corrupting influence of a fatal series of compromises with violence and the developing apology for its use in Christian terms (culminating in Crusades -holy war) is well-made in this book and deserves further attention especially for the way that such perspectives are being re-appropriated for propagandistic purposes relating to the projection of Western power on the global scene.

On a more personal note, I found the exposition of the political ramifications of the Arian controversy very helpful: it made sense of why Constantine would have accepted Arian rather than orthodox baptism towards the end of his life. I also found it helpful to see a sympathetic yet critical account of Abelard's approach to Atonement placed against a useful recounting of salient points in his and Heloise's lives and I hope to read more of Abelard's approach and indeed of Heloise's apparently sane and much-needed corrective perspectives. It was also interesting to note her objections to marriage -which seem to have been based in a dislike of the dynastic and political thing that it had become rather than being based in mutual affection and support with parity of esteem for the partners. I actually think that there is a lot to reflect on in that respect also.

I was also taken by the linkage of paradisal imagery with what seems to have been early Christian experience of nature and beauty as partaking in paradise in some way. This is intriguing because, for me and I suspect many coming into Christian faith, part of the experience of entry into faith is of a greater subjective sense of the aliveness and blessedness of the world of nature (including human beings). I find CS Lewis making a similar observation in his account of conversion. I'm intrigued doubly because this seems to have been part of the experience of many people of early Charismatic renewal in the 1970's. For example, much material used in worship by Anglican Churches touched deeply by Renewal at that time seems to have quite a lot of appreciation for nature and reveling in the glory of God as experienced in Creation. In addition the churches of Christ the Redeemer (?) in Texas where Betty Pulkingham worshipped, St Michael-le-Belfry in York (under David Watson, then) and groups such as the Post Green Community in Dorset also developed quite a folk arts emphasis in their common life and mission as well as a social-change (justice and integrity of creation) edge to their life.

What happened to all of that? Have we, in the last 30 years seen a compressed-time reprise of the loss of paradise to a sacred-violence, somewhat neo-platonic (?) account of Christian faith? I suspect that there may be something in this: the Evangelical fear of illuminism along with an unreflective and sometimes (often?) too-simplified proclamation of a particular kind of atonement theory may well have severed or de-emphasised a Spiritual experience of the Spirit of God in creation in favour of something more ecclesiocentric, more culturally churchy. I think we may have lost some important mission opportunities in so doing

Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire: Amazon.co.uk: Rita Nakashima Brock, Rebecca Ann Parker: Books