Sublime

John 3:16, “that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” There we are, think average Christian readers. This is the biblical promise of a timeless heavenly bliss. But it isn’t.

Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531), the priest and humanist scholar who, as early as 1516, began preaching against clerical abuses, and whose sermons ‘from true, divine scripture’, starting in 1520, inaugurated a popular movement in Switzerland against such practices as priestly celibacy and the keeping of fasts.

Pastor Martin Luther King Jr. may have understood American Protestantism better than anyone. By staging resistance at the center of ordinary life (again on buses and at diners), he revealed an overwhelming lack of flourishing.

Like a child you must meet a living world through relationship as gift. As Bonhoeffer says in his own exploration of this text, Jesus belongs (is attached) to children. You must be a person bound to others to enter this kingdom. This is a kingdom of resonance, not resources (and the alienation that resource obsession will inevitably produce).

Bonhoeffer, says Gorman, “recognizes at the end of the day that discipleship is not about imitation or even obedience to an external call or norm. It is about transformation, theosis.” He continues, “What we find in Bonhoeffer is the Eastern Christian tradition of theosis merged with a radical interpretation of discipleship expressed primarily in t

Jesus communicates that the entire Torah is summed up in these simple commands: love God, love self, and love neighbor. A fully transformed human is one who can love God, self, and neighbor through God’s presence and power, and by participating in the eternal-kind-of-life of Jesus.

Bonhoeffer might have argued that a true theological conception of persons that creates a community of persons allows for a resonance that is encountered as the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Abraham is righteous because he is absurd; he is willing to enter a reality where what cannot be is made possible by the act of God’s gift.