Christ in a pluralistic age

It is interesting to read this analysis, written in 1975, which provides good insights into the post-modern movement in American culture and its affect on thought and faith. Cobb takes a Process Philosophy approach to analyze ways to interpret the concept of Christ as incarnation of the Logos in Jesus, the historical person. He determines how this concept may be communicated in concepts of the contemporary worldview, and deals with the challenges to western thought in the post-enlightenment sciences, the role of reason and the post-modernist challenge of relativism of values. Cobb specifically discusses how the concept of Christ, in the traditional faith of the Christian church, can be related to the otherfaith expression in the world's religions, as these come face to face in our present world. It is good to see how these views fit with the world 30 years later.^ He goes into some detail in comparing Christian faith and Buddhist faiths to illustrates how Christians might inte ractwith other religions they now face in our pluralistic world. I am impressed with the grasp Cobb has on the problem, and the formulations he presents which attempt to overcome the static concepts of Aristotelian "orthodoxy" which has been rejected in modern western culture. Aristotle's (pre-Christian) philosophy, adopted by Thomas Acquinas for his Christian theology in the Middle Ages, focused on essence, or substance, in the discussion of the relation of Christ in Jesus, as God incarnate, Cobb formulates ways to see the reality of Christ in everyday realities and faith relationships in terms other than the static concepts of substance that so tangled the pre-medieval and medieval mind. Rather than explaining this in the classic Greek terms of substance, he focuses on relationships and our continuing consciousness of experiences as "selves" in our personal identity.^ A very helpful and impressive chapter ("The Christ of the Creeds") covers the discussions that led to formulations explaining how God was in Jesus in the incarnation. The unusual contribution he makes is to explain the line of argument and discussion that led to the formulations, helping us understand the steps involved over 5 centuries in getting to the final formal statements now on record from the various early Church Councils.This background illustrates how important current worldview and the questions it raises are in the statement of our formal propositions representing Christ, the Trinity and other respective aspects of the Christian faith.