Inviting and Hosting a Stranger in the Experiences of the Faith Communities: An Experiment in Con- structing an Ethical-Poetical Christology

The numerous 'faces of Christ' in Africa, as well as those resulting from historical study in the West, call for a rereading of the event of Jesus. From the inquiry into the origin of the numerous faces, and the biblical evidence for the 'process and purpose of naming God' which are textually introduced by Exodus 3 and again taken up by the 'ego eimi' sayings of Jesus, it is suggested that the event of rereading is to be seen as an integral-incarnatory ~ocio-historic dynamic. This dynamic is theologically understood and construed in an ethical-poetical Christology which will function within comtemporary contexts as an invitation of Christ into the experiences of the faith communities.


INTRODUCTION
In a document based on the Seventh International Conference of the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians (EA lWOT), Oaxtepec, Mexico in 1986, it is stated (Document 1986: 198).
Third World theologies are born of suffering and humiliation on the one hand and the will to dignity on the other.They are rebellion and protest against personal and social sin and against all forms of domination.They start from the people's painful experience of poverty and death.
Commitment to and practice of liberation comes first; praxis is pregnant with theory; theology articulates the truth of praxis.The starting point is the faith experience and description of' historical reality understood analytically/intuitively as well as struggles for change in favor of the oppressed.The event of Jesus and the tradition of his movement are accepted and reread in the light of our sufferings, struggles, and faith experience -(my emphasis).
* Not only has every period its own way of representing Jesus (Schillebeeclex), but also every culture.
Firstly I want to address the question of the numerous 'faces of Christ' within westernorientated and African theologies, and enquire into its origin: Why is this the case?Secondly I want to focus on the biblical evidence for the 'process and purpose of naming' and thirdly, to look at the theological implications of this process within our own context, characterized by cultural pluralism.Lastly I want tentatively to suggest, in the light of my understanding of this process of naming, that we have the responsibility for constructing and living an ethical-poetical Christology which will function as an invitation of Christ into the experiences of the faith community.This understanding I will characterize as 'beyond belief to relationships' .

FACING THE FACES
Within co~temporary western-orientated theologies, numerous characterizations of the person and life of Jesus are to be found: Visionary, moral/wisdom teacher, peasant, protester, magician, prophet, bandit, messiah, rebel, revolutionary 3. The same can be said of other contexts 4, be it in Asia (cf Sugirtharajah's (1993) 'Asian faces of Jesus' or Wessel's (1990) 'The Asiatic face of Christ' in 'Images of Jesus'), Latin America (Sobrino's (1987) 'Jesus in Latin America') or Africa (cf Wessel's (1990) 'The African Christ' in 'Images of Jesus'; Nyamiti's 'African Christologies Today' in Schreiter's (1991) 'Faces of Jesus in Africa' or Pobee's (1992) 'Exploring Afro-Christology').What do we make of this theologically and how is this to be understood?How are the many images of Jesus (that meet us for the first time) to be understood?How do these images relate to the historical Jesus, and: Should they?5 What makes the question even more complex, is the fact that historical study (in the West) produces re~u1ts very different from what Christians are accustomed to hearing and affirming about Jesus.Borg (1995c:942-3) alleges that contemporary scholarship affirm essentially none of the content of the Nicene Creed (eg born of a virgin, ascended into heaven in a visible way, a literal second coming).He puts it this way: 'If one of the disciples had responded to the question reportedly asked by Jesus in Mark's gospel, "Who do the people say that I am?", with words like those used in the Nicene Creed,we can well imagine that Jesus would have said, "What???" (Borg 1995c:943).
Deepening and broadening the complexity of this very (western) 'What???' from the perspective of the African contexts, is the admition of many African theologians that 'there are still many among us who do not succeed in expressing for themselves just what Jesus Christ is for them' (Penoukou 1991:26).Not only is 'Jesus a strange figure' to and in Africa 6, but also disfigured in such a way that it has led to a 'faith schizophrenia' and 'cultural confusion' (Onwa) among many African christians.A few quotes in this regard should suffice.Udoh (1988:80) states: 'If God was never an Alien in Africa or anywhere else in the world; and if Africans had long experienced and responded to deity, then religion is nothing new among us.The new element, and therefore problematic in African religious experience, is the image of Jesus Christ'.Mbiti (1991:28) elaborates: African Religion has not pronounced the name of Jesus Christ.But we might venture that He is present through the presence of God.He is the unnamed Christ, working in the insights that people have developed concerning God, inasfar as these insights do not contradict the nature and being of God as revealed more openly in the New Testament ....A great deal of ignorance about Him is present in African Religion.As long as His name is unknown, His many faces are blurred till they find a focus on the Jesus of history and geography, and the Christ of faith.
And Obaje (1991:45) adds: The average African convert today is still not sure of how Christ is related to them ... Africa sees Christ as the Christ of Euro-American Christianity who comes to Africa only on Sundays on a missionary visit from Palestine via Europe and America, and one who does not speak the African language nor understands the African culture.
Is this admition of 'strangeness' and 'disfiguration' (especially if one looks at all the different ways that Christianity was introduced to Africa) only true of the African contexts 7 .Or are these theologians simply more honest?But is this 'strangeness' and danger of 'disfiguration' not true from the very inception of Judaism and Christianity itself?From its 'shaky beginnings' in Palestine Judaism in the Mediterranean, the contact with other different religious traditions throughout their wanderings, the later influential contact with Hellenism in the Greek-Roman empire, the process of the coining of theological concepts and confessions (and the powerstrategies behind them!) by the church and councils, the period under Constantine the Great in which Christianity became a legal religion of the Roman Empire (and with it the history of the Christian church in alliance with the powers that be) ....And so it continues!How then is this to be understood?I am not trying to give an answer to this question in tenns of content (-that would be premature and misplaced -), but I would like to focus on the process as such, and suggest that this very process of the 'naming of God and Jesus Christ' in different contexts, is an integral-'incarnatory' socio-historic dynamic 8 of Christianity, textually introduced by Exodus 3 and again taken up by the 'ego eimi' sayings of Jesus Christ 9, and which functions within contemporary contexts as the very challenge of exploringlliving a Christian life.

INTRODUCED TO THE INTENTION OF THE NAMELESS GOD
The question -in which he has cloaked his own doubt as to the intention of God -of Moses to the God who addressed him (Ex 3: 13) who he should say Jo the people has sent him (What is his name?), contains both a request for infonnation and an explanation of its significance (cf Childs 1974:74).By requesting his name, they seek to learn his new relationship to them.The word-play on the name of God ('I am who I am'), confInns the connection between name and signifIcance, that is, knowledge of the name was an indication of a relation with that person's being 10.
The fonnula is paradoxically both an answer and a refusal of an answer.Rather God announces that his will be revealed in his future acts, which he now refuses to explain.At least two elements are -in my opinion -of great importance: That God confInns his relationship with them and keeps it open toward the future, and secondly, that this relationship is characterized as a personal (name) relationship (not only with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but also with them).From a historic perspective, it is con-fInned in the ongoing relationship (God -Israel) and the establishing of new relationships (such as with Gideon and Jeremiah to name but two).
For my purposes of even greater importance, is the 'naming-process' which is set in historical motion and characterizes in content this ongoing relationship.It demonstrates a strong link between the divine activity and the social life of the community, that is, of a deity who draws into the sphere of his concerns the moral and social needs of a people: 'I am' is called eternal Governor, everlasting King, Ruler, Owner, Rock, Immanuel, Saviour, Shephard .... Thus, the elements which characterizes the relationship (the nearness and distance) such as worthy of being (exclusively) worshipped, 'place' of refuge, holiness, one that judges, leads, saves, protects, helps, is merciful etc are captured in the process of 'name calling' of the God, who humanity has not seen and whose name is not known, but who has established on his own initiative, a relationship 'from heaven'.Put in a different way: The historic-signifying process in which the 'More of reality' is 'called "personal" names' on the basis of the established relationships, thus functions as an ongoing invitation in continuity -but also in discontinuity -in each new historic context with the purpose of exploring the significance of the relationships with the 'nameless God'.Why also in discontinuity?
Simply because not all names seems in the long run to be appropriate to name the'significance of the 'nameless God' so that the names will always stand in a dialectic tension with both the 'new' names amongst ~h other as well as the aforegoing names.Did however this situation not change with the coming of Jesus Christ?

JESUS CHRIST: AVOIDING BEING ONTOLOGICALLY LABELLED BUT NOT EXISTENTIALLY NAMED
In exploring the main lines of Christological affIrmations (Messiah, Son of God, Son of Man, Lord, God) to be found in the New Testament and as understood in contemporary historical scholarship, it is notebly accepted that (a) Jesus of Nazareth was quite different from how he is portrayed in the gospels -and for that matter, in the creeds of the church, and (b) that all of the Christological affIrmations does not appear to have explicitly been used by Jesus of himself (the pre-Easter Jesus), but are of post-Easter origin.If this is the case -apart from all the different questions that this raise -I would like to suggest that th~ 'name calling process' can be understood in line with the Old Testaments 'invitation' that the relationship between God and his people should be 'called names' which would be explanatory to its significance.I would like to mention especially the seven 'I am' (ego eimi) sayings of Jesus which he used to describe himself.They cover a wide range of metaphors II whichin each case -illustrates some function of Jesus: .to sustain, to illuminate, to admit, to care for, to give life, to 'guide and to make productive.
Is it then not theologically acceptable to infer from the preceding, that in the light of the historic preceding encounter (introduction of the 'nameless God') and the ongoing process of name-calling of the relationship, the theological interpretations of the signifIcance of the incarnation the content of the message of Jesus and the way that he relates his person to the message and to his relationships (The 'way' as indicated in the aforegoing formulation: avoiding being ontologically labelled, but not existentially named) that his 'person and work' can be seen as leaven of this very interpersonal, sociohistoric process in 'which the 'presence of God' in the 'incarnated Jesus' through the 'Spirit which blows where and when it wills', is named (,christened') in every new context 12, be it historically or demographically.
If this interpretation is justified, then the 'new names' for Jesus Christ in Africa today should not be frowned on.But even more: Then it should not be the case that embracing Christ and his message means rejection of one's own cultural valq.es,be it African or Western or Asiatic.However, at the same time the aforementioned dialectic of contemporary names amongst each other (also interculturally) and with names of the past, is applicable, that is, it should function (self)critically.Put in another way: The ongoing process of the 'naming of the faces of Christ' in different contexts and in the encounter of contexts must lead to the challenging questions:• What do they tell me of the 'other', the experience of the 'More of the other' and of myself and my relationships.The process of 'naming' thus function in this way -theologically understood as an invitation to search together for the concrete significance of 'Incarnational presence' here and now•.
How can this be spelt out more clearly in terms of Christology?Before I finally tum to this question, we must briefly tum to the 'faces of Christ' in the context of Africa.

NAMING JESUS CHRIST IN AFRICA
God is no stranger to Africa (Udoh), since religion is in the African's whole system of being (Mbiti).The stranger -as noted above -is the figure of (or disfigured) Christ.However, especially in the last two decades (cf Wessels 1990: 109) much work has been done on African concepts of Christ010gy so that within the context of Africa today one encounters an astonishing range of expressions for Jesus: Christ the victor, integral healer, chief, elder-brother, master of initiation, ancestor, black messiah (cf Nyamiti 1991:3-23;Pobee 1992;Schreiter 1991:viii-xiii;Wessels 1990:109-115).These concepts are part and parcel of African worldviews and addresses directly the contexts from which they originate.

WORLDVIEWS
The most important 'basic' elements of the African worldviews, according to Dyrness (1990:42-52), are: * 302 harmony (preserved or enhanced by religion and ritual; the human community does not create it, but it is given by God and the ancestors; it is enshrined in the normal orders of life and death, rainy season and dry, planting and harvest; life however is also vulnerable); God and the powers (the universe is alive and controlled by powers that sustain the harmony; the belief in a single, all-powerful and present God, creator and controller of the universe, is unquestioned; living in close relation to God are the spirits, created by God to mediate his power; the spirits, which are called by various names, are thus separate sources of power; closer to the living community, though still in the spiritual realm, are the ancestors (called the living or lively dead); the ancestors are of the utmost importance; as they have represented the stability of the community in life, after death they remain a vital part of the community until enough time has elapsed for them to pass out of living memory and finally disintegrate into the corporate memory of the tribe; as God can not be approached directly, the mediation of specialists (priests, mediums) is necessary.Other human mediators which all functions on different 'levels', are the diviners, medicine men, chiefs, elders and fathers.
The Human community (the human person plays a central role in all African thinking, but always in the context of the community) Means of fellowship (Are not meant to provide for communion with the gods, but to enlist these pOwers in support of the community; the object of ritual and cultic acts is to sustain the social and cosmic order).
It is in the light of the.se basic elements of the African worldview and the challenges and needs of their (existential-religious) contexts, that Pobee (1992:15) states: If the depositum fidei is important for homo africanus' statement of Who Jesus is, equally important is who the African is, because homo africa- nus is encountered by Christ as he or she is.In any case, homo africanus's history travels with them in the encounter with Christ.Its impact travels directly out of.traditional African religion into a whole new existence structure around faith in the God of Jesus Christ with them in this encounter with Christ.
If then in the encounter with the (strange or disfigured) Christ, the 'who' of the African and the 'who' of Christ are respectively exposed as Pobee explains, and if the same can be said of other contexts 13, what does this entail for the encounter of the others, and, for Christology in Africa? 7. FACE TO FACE: CONSTRUCTING AN ETIllCAL-POETICAL CHRISTO-LOGY AS INVITATION TO MOVE BEYOND BELIEF TO RELATION-SIllPS Is not the encounter of the interface of the very diverse and different faces of Christ a 'heavenly' invitation and urging on of humanity to search and concretely find 'the nameless God' anew in our relationships here and now, and contexts?Can it not thus also be understood in some way or another as a religious corrective and directive?Put differently in the words of Schillebeeckx (1979:671): Whereas God is bent on showing himself in human form, we on our side slip past this human aspect as quickly as we can in order to admire a 'divine Ikon' from which every trait of the critical prophet has been smoothed away.Then we 'neutralize' the critical impact of God himself and run the risk simply of adding a new id~logy to those which mankind already possesses in such plenty: that is to say, Christology itself!Taking Schillebeeckx' s understanding of the 'neutralization of the critical impact of God himself seriously, I would like tentatively to suggest that the challenges which 'face' us in the encounter of the diverse 'faces of Christ', can theologically be made sense of in an ethical-poetical Christology, tr.at is, a Christology which will be testimonial (with the catch-word 'remembering' as constitutive), utopian (with the catchword 'imagining' as constitutive) and emphatic (with the catchword 'hope' as constitutive) 14.I now tum to this suggestion.

AN ETIllCAL-POETICAL CHRISTOLOGY: A 'FORWARD' SUGGESTION
In the light of the aforegoing exposition of the process of the 'naming of the nameless God' in relationships, and taking Christ's incarnation seriously (which concretely imply to be committed to a lifestyle which seeks the realisation of the coming of God's kingdom), I would like to put my interpretative vantage point in the short phrase: It invites us to face God in the other.Put differently: The coming of God's kingdom as God's story in our world, 'named', told and written anew in imaginary commitment and con-frrmation (that is, being the image of God and conforming in action to the image of Christ), must bring peoples face to face with one another.The 'face to face' encounter must empower and thus enable the peoples in the naming and recognition of the risen' .Lord in our midst.Such a christology which seeks to bring one another face to face, I would like' to designate as an ethical-poetical cpristology.This is a christology which is a process where someone says something to someone about something.It is a christology structured as response and address which 'names' the practical and concrete manifestation of God's kingdom in a given place and at a given time.Such a christology cannot be (rationally) 'possessed', but must be written anew in terms of the 'who', the 'where', the 'why' and the 'when'.
In the formulation of an ethical-poetical Christology in the 'interface' of encountering contexts in Africa, it is precisely the cultural pluralism and the very real concrete needs of the different contexts, which necessitate an ethical priority over the epistemological question 15 .Put differently: The good has to come before the question of truth and being.Why., and: Does this not imply uncritical action?Firstly: Why? Simply because the different (and conflicting) worldviews in Africa do not only push us into a labyrinth of images, but also confronts us with the endless spiral of undecideability (the epistemological question).It is precisely the ethical responsibility and the ethical response that reintroduces a dimension of depth, that is, reintroduces a 'new, concrete quest' for humaness here and now.It is to come 'face to face' (Levinas) with one another, with the other as an other.The other in need makes an ethical demand upon me so that the question 'where are you?' (ethical demand) must be asked before the question 'who are you?' (epistemological question).However, in addressing the ethical demand, the face of the respondend (,Here I am') will take shape in due course (if we have patience with one another!).Secondly: Does this not imply uncritical action?No.It demands constant discernment.The face -for exampleof a terrorist or of a 'blue collar ~usinessman' (the image of power) and the face of one being terrorised or of a squatter (the image of powerlessness) is simply not the same.It is thus to reinterpret ethically the role of imagination as a relationship between the self and the other, that is, imaginary must be recognised as a process which relates to something or somebody other than itself (Kearney).It is to imagine otherwise, that is, an imagination that is able to respond: 'Here am 1'.However, the responsive imagination can not only be ethical since it is not enough.It must also be poetical.
Poetics (in the broad sense. of poiesis as 'inventive' making and creating) is the carnival of possibilities where everything is permitted, nothing censored.It is the willingness to imagine oneself in the other person's skin, to see things as if one were, momentarily at least, another, to experience how the other half lives (Kearney 1988: 368-9).It is a creative letting go of the drive for possession, of the calculus of means and ends.It empowers to identify with the heroes and heroines as well as the forgotten or discarded persons of history.It opposes the apartheid logic of black .andwhite.In short: the poetical imagination nourishes the conviction that things can be changed.
But the ethical and poetical, albeit two different ways in which imagination can open us to the otherness of the other, belong together.
The task of an ethical-poetical Christology thus will be hermeneutical (discernment, integrating), historical (remembering the past to change the future) and narrative (to tell and retell one's story, enabling the proliferation of the narrative identity).
The task undertaken by such a Christology, will determined the character thereof.
Three dimensions' (which correlates to the three constitutive elements of religious experience 16), namely remembering, imagination and hope) ~ 'in my opinion -must be pointed out: * * * 306 It will be testimonial, that is, the power to bear witness to exemplary narratives (eg Jesus' story) legacied by our cultural memories and traditions.It is to listen and respond to one anothers stories, to put oneself in others' shoes.It is to recall the 'names of God/the images of Christ' and the forgotten victims of history.This is what Metz calls 'dangerous/subversive memories'.It is to forgive (to forget the wrongdoings of the other) and to.accept forgiveness.It is precisely this testimonial dimension which helps the utopian dimension not to degenerate into empty fantasy.
It will be utopian, that is, exploring self-critically and learning 'ways of being' Christians (being the images of the unseen God and conforming to the Christ images) in our world in the coming of God's kingdom.It is 'thinking/acting as' the body of Christ.It is the imaginative ability to disclose the possible in the actual, the other in the same, converging differences without fusing, the new in the old, and the never-yet realized enabling to guard against dogmatism.
It must be emphatic, that is, to remain open to what is given from beyond (to be receptive), to respect the otherness of the other person, to treat the other as an end rather than means, to expose oneself in welcoming the stranger, to empathize.It is a receptivity that becomes compassion.It is a compassion that brins hope into the world.
be undertaken -committed in finding a way together -but then in the spirit of being willing to hear one another as we all have something to say, and with the openness to be corrected and/or to acknowledge different points of view.
2 The term 'world view' is not understood and used in the sense of being a monolithic entity (such as a Western over against an African worldview), but simply as an indication of frames of references with distinctive/different orientations.
3 Scholarly contributions specifically on 'Who Jesus was' have become vast.See amongst many others the recent contributions of Borg (1995b), Crossan (1991) and Macquarrie (1990).For a recent overview (with bibliography) of South African contributions, see Van Aarde (1993).
4 It is rather conspicuous that whereas theological reflection in Asia or Africa speak of their respective perspectives on Christ (eg Asiatic faces of Christ), western-orientated theologies until recently seldom make mention of '(North) American faces of Christ' [Borg (1995b) an exception] or 'European faces of Christ'.If such terms are used, it is mostly from another context and then in a incriminatory way (cf for example Obaje 1991 :45).Is this perhaps not a very justified criticism of an implicit (rational) arrogance of traditional western theological reflection which pretends that it and only it, can lay claim to formulating the (universal) truth? 5 Yes, they should in one way or another.The 'way' however is the question.I here follow Schillebeeckx (1987:15-6) who states: 'People talk about Jesus because they believe in him and not out of historical interest.However, what is also important here is the fact that this confession relates to a historical person, from a quite' specific situation in our history: Jesus of Nazareth, no one else, and also not some mythical being or other.Christology without a historical foundation is empty and impossible'.Cf also the qualified point of view of Borg (1995c) on historical scholarship in its relationship to Christian theology which I find very illuminating.In the light of Borg's exposition, I find Sugirtharajah (l993:x) unqualified point of view in which he states that the crucial question in Asia is not what the historical Jesus looked like but what he means for Asia today, inadequate.