Hi Sister, you wrote that the Christ Event is not a bandaid solution to human sin. That raised two questions for me, 1) What is the Christ Event? and 2) what do you mean by bandaid solution? I figure it has something to do with God willing the Christ Event from the beginning, but are you saying God did not send Jesus to deal with human sin? Thanks!
Thanks for the questions, and Merry Christmas! You are very much on the right track with your sense of what I meant when I spoke of a bandaid solution. First though, the term "Christ Event". Generally, the term means the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus as God's Christ. In this sense, it is synonymous with the term Incarnation since it takes the entire life, death, resurrection, and ascension for Jesus to fully incarnate the Word of God. This doesn't happen with Mary's fiat; instead, it is something that is realized only over time as Jesus, in the words of Luke, "grows in grace and stature" as the human one who is entirely transparent to the God he reveals definitively to us. I said in the post you asked about that our God reveals himself as the One who willed not to remain alone and was in search of a counterpart. The Christ Event points to all of those events in Jesus' life where he says yes to truly being the counterpart of the One he called Abba. One thing I should note is the importance of the term "event" in this. Theologians recognize that myriads of things occur throughout one's life only some of which have profound significance. When these rise to this level of significance, we speak of them as "events" and no longer as mere occurrences.
"Bandaid solution" is a way of saying Jesus' mission and the incarnation of the Word of God was about more than dealing with the problem of human sinfulness. It recognizes that as serious as the problem of human sin is, there is a deeper, more encompassing purpose to the Christ Event and to the will of God revealed there. It is a way of saying had mankind never sinned at all, God would still have sent Jesus to renew creation and to invite us to share in his true humanity. Within an evolutionary view of the world and the processes of creation, a creation that is ongoing, the Christ Event represents a moment in all of that that changes and even transfigures creation by making God personally present in space and time. Moreover, all Creation has been made for this Event and all it brings. This transfiguration is the deeper and inclusive purpose of God in the Christ Event; it is not simply a "bandaid solution" God threw on after the fact of human sin. It invites each of us to be remade in light of that Event, to become a new creation in Christ, and to be people who, in a conscious and focused way, live with, for, and from the One who is Emmanuel. We are those called to steward creation to its fulfillment with and for the One we know in Christ as "God with Us".
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