When Rita Brock and Rebecca Parker began
traveling the
Mediterranean world in search of art depicting the dead, crucified
Jesus, they discovered something that traditional histories of
Christianity and Christian art had underplayed or sought to explain
away: it took Jesus Christ a thousand years to die.
During their first millennium, Christians filled their sanctuaries with
images of Christ as a living presence in a vibrant world. He appears as
a shepherd, a teacher, a healer, an enthroned god; he is an infant, a
youth, and a bearded elder. But he is never dead. When he appears with
the cross, he stands in front of it, serene, resurrected. The world
around him is ablaze with beauty. These are images of paradise
—
paradise in this world, permeated and blessed by the presence of God.
But once Jesus perished, dying was virtually all he seemed able to do.
Saving
Paradise
offers a fascinating new lens on the history of Christianity, from its
first centuries to the present day, and asks how its early vision of
beauty evolved into one of torture. In tracing the changes in society
and theology that marked the medieval emergence of images of Christ
crucified, Saving
Paradise
exposes the imperial strategies embedded in theologies of redemptive
violence and sheds new light on Christianity's turn to holy war. It
reveals how the New World, established through Christian conquest and
colonization, is haunted by the loss of a spiritual understanding of
paradise here and now.
Brock and Parker reconstruct the idea that salvation is paradise in
this world and in this life, and they offer a bold new theology for
saving paradise. They ground justice and peace for humanity in love for
the earth and open a new future for Christianity through a theology of
redemptive beauty. |
Saving Paradise
How Christianity Traded Love
of This World for Crucifixion and Empire
by Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker
Beacon Press,
2008
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