© 1997 Meredith Sprunger
© 1997 The Christian Fellowship of Students of The Urantia Book
| Significant Books: The Good Book by Peter J. Gomes | Fall 1997 — Index | To be Wise as Serpents, Harmless as Doves |
John B. Cobb, Jr.
Westminster John Knox Press, 1997, 110 pp.
John B. Cobb, Jr., is Professor Emeritus at the School of Theology at Claremont. He is the author of Matters of Life and Death and coauthor of Process Theology. Prof. Cobb, a United Methodist, diagnoses the decline of mainline churches as a spiritual sickness of lukewarmness that is the result of an inability of the church to think theologically.
This small book gives a succinct analysis of the history and dynamics of Protestantism leading to the dispirited condition of mainline churches. Preoccupation with social action has sidelined the central importance of spiritual nurturance and theological thinking in the church. The contemporary church is struggling with the scriptural basis of anti-Judaism, the innovations of feminism, the ecological crisis, and the professionalization of theology. The church has turned the study of theology over to the university, and the university has transformed spiritual thinking into academic disciplines. Theology is no longer a vital concern of the church.
Added to these concerns, we are experiencing the end of an era in Western Civilization. We are seeing the passing of Eurocentrism, Western hegemony, and the decline of nationalism. The dominance of Enlightenment rationalism has been undermined in the field of physics and this has undercut its credibility in other fields as well. Our culture is also witnessing a sexual revolution and the ending of patriarchy. We are now living in the post-modern era.
Cobb discusses two approaches for reforming the church: renewal and transformation. Renewal is the more conservative attempt to breath new life into the church. Prof. Cobb prefers the more radical change of transformation that searches for a new way of thinking about reality. “This alternative response is giving rise to a more organic, ecological, relational, communal, nondualist, nonsubstantialist, and nonanthropocentric way of thinking of human beings and their world.”( p. 46)
This fresh view of the kingdom (Greek, “Basileia”) of God will recognize that the Spirit of God is at work in all of the religions and peoples of the world, and it suggests that we can find a common ethic and purpose. Just as the three great branches of the Christian Church-Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant — have established ecumenical relations during the last hundred years, there is hope that the Pentecostals and the Fundamentalists may be brought into the dialogue in the future. There is even hope that we can bring an end to Christian arrogance and we can learn much from the other religions of the world. Perhaps the peoples of the world will begin to see God as an active participant in an open-ended creative process.
It is possible that the renewal of the church can come about without a transforming change, but Cobb doubts it. “We have been trying that for half a century — just that half century in which we have moved from being mainline churches with some confidence in our message to being oldline churches or, perhaps better, sideline churches, unclear about our calling. Simply doing better what has not been effective in the past does not seem to be the answer.” (p. 110)
Professor Cobb’s greatest problem is trying to explain how one recognizes “Christ as Lord” and at the same time view other religions as authentic pathways to God. The cosmology of The Urantia Book solves this problem in a unique and beautiful way. Unfortunately, the experience of the last forty years suggests that even such open-minded theologians as Professor Cobb are hardly ready for the transformation of a new spiritual paradigm, the Fifth Epochal Revelation, that would bring a real renaissance in the Christian Church.
“The acid test for any religious philosophy consists in whether or not it distinguishes between the realities of the material and the spiritual worlds while at the same moment recognizing their unification in intellectual striving and in social serving.” (UB 101:7.5)
| Significant Books: The Good Book by Peter J. Gomes | Fall 1997 — Index | To be Wise as Serpents, Harmless as Doves |