Christology, Suffering, and Salvation: Reflections on Theology and Healthcare
Panelists: Joseph Lenow, PhD, Resident Assistant Professor of Theology, Creighton University; and Mandy Rodgers-Gates, ThD(c), Duke Divinity School. Respondent: Stanley Hauerwas, PhD, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus of Divinity and Law, Duke Divinity School. Moderator: Brett McCarty, ThD, St. Andrews Fellow in Theology and Science, Duke Divinity School
Since the crucifixion of Jesus, Christians from the apostle Paul to the present day have faced a pressing question: How should they understand the suffering of Christ in relation to their own suffering? While this question is transformed in important ways by the advent of modern healthcare, this panel argues that the resources of centuries of Christian theology can helpfully illuminate how we understand and respond to persons suffering today. It does so by examining the relationship between Christology, suffering, and salvation in two different theologians, seeking to apply their thought to our own context within modern healthcare.
The first panelist begins by exploring Augustine’s interpretation of Christ’s cry of dereliction—“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”— which is often treated as a famously unconvincing bit of exegesis. Augustine holds that Christ is not expressing his own sense of abandonment or godforsakenness, but is rather holding up a mirror to our own spiritual condition. Augustine’s interpretation of this passage points to one of the central theological mysteries in his thought, his theology of the totus Christus or “whole Christ.” For Augustine, Christ and the Church should be considered one corporate person: Christ is able to speak in the voice of the Church on the cross, because their life is completed in his, and his in theirs. In this paper, the first panelist builds upon this Augustinian account of the cross to offer a constructive account of social suffering. The presentation first analyzes the effects of sin on human community: as our desires are turned away from God, we lose the capacity to know and love the world rightly. As a result, all our human relationships are marked by a violence (what Augustine calls the libido dominandi) that tends toward solitude, loneliness, and finally, spiritual death. In light of this account, the first panelist argues that the Crucifixion is only incompletely understood as either Christ bearing God’s judgment for sin, or as sinful humanity’s violent resistance to God’s redemptive work. The cross is, rather, the event in which Christ fully enters into community with sinful humanity—which is to say, he enters into the violent, death-dealing, godforsaken simulacrum of community toward which human sin inevitably tends. In the Resurrection, Christ opens his eschatological body to a new modality of human life in which we may truly be present to one another as he is truly present in us. In light of this account, and in light of Scarry’s description of the loneliness of suffering in The Body in Pain, the first panelist concludes by offering some reflections on how this christological account might help inform theological understanding of the fellow-suffering (compassio) of the family, friends, and medical professionals present to those in pain.
The second panelist explores the relationship between sin, suffering, and Christology in the work of Óscar Romero. Initially, this connection might seem strange if not offensive; few would see attention to sin as a helpful approach to suffering in the 21st century. When sin is brought into the picture, particularly when speaking of the suffering addressed by healthcare, we worry that victims will be blamed, that suffering will be depicted as punishment for one’s own trespasses or, at the very least, as the consequences of one’s own neglect and failures. Yet one of those who spoke most eloquently on behalf of the suffering, Óscar Romero, rarely speaks of suffering without speaking too of sin. And he does not only condemn the sin of the main perpetrators of suffering in 1970s El Salvador. Certainly, he speaks to that sin too; such denunciations led directly to his assassination. But as a pastor, addressing his afflicted flock, he directs their eyes to the face of the crucified Christ. As he does so, he directs them to see their own suffering in the face of Christ, but also their sin. Here, in the face of the crucified Christ, Romero sees the faces of sinners: “the blasphemers, the adulterers, the thieves, those who trample the dignity of men, all the sinners” (Romero, Homilías, Tomo I, 135). With that last category of sinners – “those who trample the dignity of men”- we see that Romero does indeed have his flock’s persecutors in mind. However, Romero consistently calls those whose dignity has most been “trampled” to bring their own sin into the light, and to see the sin of their enemies in the light of Christ. It is in the crucified Christ that the relationship between sin and suffering is made clear, and for Christians it is in submitting both our guilt and our pain to him, that we find healing. Romero’s eloquent depiction of the face of the crucified Christ as the meeting place of sin and suffering has much to offer 21st century Christianity in its own encounter with pain and affliction.
The panel will conclude with a response from a senior theologian who has written extensively on Christology, suffering, and modern healthcare.
The first panelist begins by exploring Augustine’s interpretation of Christ’s cry of dereliction—“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”— which is often treated as a famously unconvincing bit of exegesis. Augustine holds that Christ is not expressing his own sense of abandonment or godforsakenness, but is rather holding up a mirror to our own spiritual condition. Augustine’s interpretation of this passage points to one of the central theological mysteries in his thought, his theology of the totus Christus or “whole Christ.” For Augustine, Christ and the Church should be considered one corporate person: Christ is able to speak in the voice of the Church on the cross, because their life is completed in his, and his in theirs. In this paper, the first panelist builds upon this Augustinian account of the cross to offer a constructive account of social suffering. The presentation first analyzes the effects of sin on human community: as our desires are turned away from God, we lose the capacity to know and love the world rightly. As a result, all our human relationships are marked by a violence (what Augustine calls the libido dominandi) that tends toward solitude, loneliness, and finally, spiritual death. In light of this account, the first panelist argues that the Crucifixion is only incompletely understood as either Christ bearing God’s judgment for sin, or as sinful humanity’s violent resistance to God’s redemptive work. The cross is, rather, the event in which Christ fully enters into community with sinful humanity—which is to say, he enters into the violent, death-dealing, godforsaken simulacrum of community toward which human sin inevitably tends. In the Resurrection, Christ opens his eschatological body to a new modality of human life in which we may truly be present to one another as he is truly present in us. In light of this account, and in light of Scarry’s description of the loneliness of suffering in The Body in Pain, the first panelist concludes by offering some reflections on how this christological account might help inform theological understanding of the fellow-suffering (compassio) of the family, friends, and medical professionals present to those in pain.
The second panelist explores the relationship between sin, suffering, and Christology in the work of Óscar Romero. Initially, this connection might seem strange if not offensive; few would see attention to sin as a helpful approach to suffering in the 21st century. When sin is brought into the picture, particularly when speaking of the suffering addressed by healthcare, we worry that victims will be blamed, that suffering will be depicted as punishment for one’s own trespasses or, at the very least, as the consequences of one’s own neglect and failures. Yet one of those who spoke most eloquently on behalf of the suffering, Óscar Romero, rarely speaks of suffering without speaking too of sin. And he does not only condemn the sin of the main perpetrators of suffering in 1970s El Salvador. Certainly, he speaks to that sin too; such denunciations led directly to his assassination. But as a pastor, addressing his afflicted flock, he directs their eyes to the face of the crucified Christ. As he does so, he directs them to see their own suffering in the face of Christ, but also their sin. Here, in the face of the crucified Christ, Romero sees the faces of sinners: “the blasphemers, the adulterers, the thieves, those who trample the dignity of men, all the sinners” (Romero, Homilías, Tomo I, 135). With that last category of sinners – “those who trample the dignity of men”- we see that Romero does indeed have his flock’s persecutors in mind. However, Romero consistently calls those whose dignity has most been “trampled” to bring their own sin into the light, and to see the sin of their enemies in the light of Christ. It is in the crucified Christ that the relationship between sin and suffering is made clear, and for Christians it is in submitting both our guilt and our pain to him, that we find healing. Romero’s eloquent depiction of the face of the crucified Christ as the meeting place of sin and suffering has much to offer 21st century Christianity in its own encounter with pain and affliction.
The panel will conclude with a response from a senior theologian who has written extensively on Christology, suffering, and modern healthcare.