Martyr to What?

Understanding Richard Rohr’s complex theological and social teaching is a challenging enterprise particularly when we factor in the implied blast at Globalism and the world atheist order. Occasionally he adds references to his posts to broaden our knowledge and provide context for complicated issues. In two reading just prior to Easter he included Marcus Borg and John Crossan.

Rohr writes:
Two theologians I deeply respect, Marcus Borg (1942-2015) and John Dominic Crossan (b. 1934), offer important historical and symbolic context for the crucifixion. The theory of “penal substitutionary atonement” only became dominant in recent centuries.

“This common Christian understanding (Atonement) goes far beyond what the New Testament says. Of course, sacrificial imagery is used there, but the language of sacrifice is only one of several different ways that the authors of the New Testament articulate the meaning of Jesus’s execution. They also see it as the domination system’s “no” to Jesus (and God)...Though Mark provides the earliest story of Good Friday . . . Mark’s narrative combines retrospective interpretation with history remembered. . . .”

“Mark tells us that Jesus was crucified between two “bandits. [the Chinese Communists call opposition “bandits” or “roaders” not much different from the EU terms like “criminals” or “gangsters”, names for the French Yellow Jackets or Gilet Jaune] The Greek word translated “bandits” is commonly used for guerilla fighters against Rome, who were either “terrorists” or “freedom fighters,” depending upon one’s point of view….Ordinary criminals were not crucified. Jesus is executed as a rebel against Rome between two other rebels against Rome [to drive home the point]. . . .(When Jesus died), ‘the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom’ (Mark 15:38)...To say that the curtain was torn in two has a twofold meaning. On the one hand, it is a judgment upon the (Hebrew) temple and the temple authorities . . . who colluded with imperial Rome to condemn Jesus to death. On the other hand, . . . [it] is to affirm that the execution of Jesus means that access to God is now open.”

“This affirmation underlines Mark’s presentation of Jesus earlier in the gospel: Jesus mediated access to God apart from the temple and the domination system that it had come to represent in the first century. Then Mark narrates a second event contemporaneous with Jesus’s death. The imperial centurion in command of the soldiers who had crucified Jesus exclaims, ‘Truly this man was God’s Son’ (15:30). . . .That this exclamation comes from a centurion is very significant….The emperor was Lord, Savior, and the one who had brought peace on earth. But now a representative of Rome affirms that this man, Jesus, executed by the empire, is the Son of God. Thus the emperor is not.”

“Jesus...spoke to peasants as a voice of peasant religious protest against the central economic and political institutions of his day. He attracted a following and took his movement to Jerusalem at the season of Passover. There he challenged the authorities with public acts and public debates.

According to Mark, Jesus did not die for the sins of the world. The language of substitutionary sacrifice for sin is absent from his story. But in an important sense, he was killed because of the sin of the world. It was the injustice of domination systems that killed him...And thus Jesus was crucified because of the sin of the world. . . .”

“Was Jesus guilty or innocent? As Mark tells the story, Jesus was not only executed by the method used to execute violent insurrectionists; he was physically executed between two insurrectionists. Was Jesus guilty of advocating violent revolution against the empire and its local [Jewish] collaborators? No.
As Mark tells the story, was Jesus guilty of claiming to be the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed? Perhaps. Why perhaps and not a simple yes? Mark does not report that Jesus taught this, and his account of Jesus’s response to the high priest’s question about this is at least a bit ambiguous. Pilate asked Jesus, ‘Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus replies, ‘You say so’ (Mark 15:2). [or “Thou sayest it.” KJV]
As Mark tells the story, was Jesus guilty of nonviolent resistance to imperial Roman oppression and local Jewish collaboration? Oh, yes.”

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By using these two learned scholars Rohr supports a point he has made before, that Jesus was opposing not only the spiritual but the social order of the time. The Roman Empire was the political overlords but it was the Jewish bureaucracy that kept the civil reigns through the use of “The Law” an artifact of Old Testament Hebrew thinking.

These powers were the Globalists of the time. Rome was the supreme Global power and its vassals in the Hebrew bureaucracy were tasked with keeping the population under control. Today State powers like NATO are the equivalent to Rome and non government organizations (NGO) and quasi-governments like the European Union (EU) assume the role of controlling the people through the secular religion of Big Science and the atheist world order.

We will continue to unbolt the layered view of perennialism that Richard Rohr has brought into the world.

Many of you have been enjoying Perennis blog for years since the print version cease to exist.  After over a decade we continue to post on this blog as time permits.  I still go to work everyday as an artist squeaking out a living with my wife creating things to sell.  It is no easier today than ever .

I have added a Donorbox link to this blog.  Please consider contributing a monthly donation to keep this work going.  Or just a one-time sum will be appreciated. You can contribute anonymously if you like.   

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The Perennial Rohr

Recurring Springtime

When Richard Rohr gets it right he certainly shines. In this 2015 essay entitled The Perennial Tradition he give his definition for the Perennial Wisdom that we have been studying since the 1980’s. He mentions some of our favorite authors, particularly the often overlooked Huston Smith whose insights into perennialism and his critique of modernism are some of the best in print.

Richard Rohr writes...

“The things I teach come from a combination of inner and outer authority, drawn from personal experience and a long lineage of the “perennial tradition” as Aldous Huxley, Huston Smith, Ken Wilber, and many others have called it. I don’t believe God expects us to start from zero and reinvent the wheel of faith in our one small lifetime. Thankfully, we can each participate in the “communion of saints,” and draw upon the force field of the Holy Spirit. The Great Tradition, the perennial philosophy, has developed through the ages, and is an inherited gift.”

“The Perennial Tradition points to recurring themes and truths within all of the world’s religions. At their most mature level, religions cultivate in their followers a deeper union with God, with each other, and with reality—or what is. The work of religion is to re-ligio—re-ligament or reunite what our egos and survival instincts have put asunder, namely a fundamental wholeness at the heart of everything. My calling (and the CAC’s work in the last twenty-nine years) has been to retrieve and reteach the wisdom that has been lost, ignored, or misunderstood within the Judeo Christian Tradition. Any truth that keeps recurring and gathers humanity’s positive energy is called wisdom and most assuredly has to be from the One Holy Spirit.”*

Of course this squares very nicely with what we have written in Perennis as well as what others have taught for years.

* https://cac.org/the-perennial-tradition-2015-12-20/

Many of you have been enjoying Perennis blog for years since the print version cease to exist. After over a decade we continue to post on this blog as time permits. I still go to work everyday as an artist squeaking out a living with my wife creating things to sell. It is no easier today than ever.

I have added a Donorbox link to this blog. Please consider contributing a monthly donation to keep this work going. Or just a one-time sum will be appreciated. You can contribute anonymously if you like.

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Richard Rohr in the Weeds

At times Richard Rohr writes stunning Christology and powerful prose that strikes to the heart of perennialism.  At other times he wanders into the weeds.

In his March 5 post he first discusses the symbolism of taking Eucharist at the Last Supper and how scandalous this practice was to the Jews.  Rohr writes, “As if eating his body weren’t enough, Jesus pushes us in even further and scarier directions by adding the symbolism of intoxicating wine as he lifts the cup and speaks over all of suffering humanity, ‘This is my blood.’  Jesus then dares to say, ‘Drink me, all of you!’ “

To the Jewish establishment this was utter blasphemy.  

Rohr continues, “During Jesus’ time, contact with blood would typically mean ritual impurity for a Jew. How daring and shocking it was for Jesus to turn the whole tradition of impure blood upside down and make blood holy! And what an affirmation of the divine image within women—whose menstruation was often considered unclean.”

These are important insights regarding the magical initiation practices the Christ Jesus employed to awaken people while exasperating the Jewish establishment.  

However in the next breath he goes off on male initiation ceremonies stretching the metaphor  to American holidays stating, “For example, on July 4 in the United States, we celebrate Independence Day with fireworks and parades to show we’re ‘proud to be an American’ while never acknowledging colonists’ genocide of Indigenous Peoples, the enslavement of Africans, how our over-consumption has contributed to planetary devastation, and other ways our “freedom” has cost others.”

What does his political opinions have to do with male initiation ceremonies?

In a ponderous attempt to save the train of thought he continues, “We are not allowed to note these things without being considered unpatriotic or even rebellious. True sacred ritual is different than mere ceremony because it offers an alternative universe, where the shadow is named and drawn into the light. Sadly, most groups avoid real life-changing and healing rituals—even the church.”

Okay, I get the drift;  somehow America is tainted with a past and that corrupts its ceremonies because they aren’t sacred. History is full of corruption. Take a few minutes to study the Roman Catholic Church then consider throwing stones at America .

I respect Richard Rohr for many things , however, these bizarre leaps in thinking serve only to undercut his theological points and fuel his critics.  He seems to be channeling the discredited “Liberation Theologists” of the 1970’s.

All of us occasionally go a little astray from our main points.  Perhaps this was not one of Fr Rohr’s finest but it shouldn’t detract from his solid Christology.  

More about Richard Rohr:

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Facing the New Rome

On March 2, 2019 Richard Rohr posted this:

“Paul offers a theological and ontological foundation for human dignity and human flourishing that is inherent, universal, and indestructible by any evaluation of race, religion, gender, sexuality, nationality, class, education, or social position. He does this at a time when perhaps four out of five people were slaves, women were considered the property of men, temple prostitution was a form of worship, and oppression and wholesale injustice toward the poor and the outsider were the norm. Into this corrupt and corrupting empire Paul shouts, ‘One and the same Spirit was given to us all to drink!’ (1 Corinthians 12:13). (Then) Paul levels the playing field: ‘You, all of you, are sons and daughters of God, now clothed in Christ, where there is no distinction between male or female, Greek [Pagan] or Jew, slave or free, but all of you are one in Christ Jesus’ (Galatians 3:26-28). ‘You are the very temple of God” (1 Corinthians 3:16-17).’ “

When Rohr writes, “Into this corrupt and corrupting empire Paul shouts…”  Paul by way of our author is talking to us in our time. We are confronted with the great corruption of the Globalist world atheist order that is forcing an aggressive materialism on the nations of the world. Not unlike Ancient Rome today billionaires and oligarchs lurk in the shadows with their lurid agenda in their hands.

Read more about Fr Richard Rohr:

www.cac.org