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​Salvation: Jesus's Mission and Ours

by John Cobb
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Imagined Conversation with John Cobb​
after reading his book on "Salvation"

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​Question to John Cobb. What was "salvation" for Jesus?
Response from John Cobb: "It included personal transformation and healing and forgiveness. But these were aspects of something more inclusive."

Question: What was this something more inclusive?
Response: Jesus called it basileia theou.

Question: What is that?
Response: It is a community in which the guiding ideal and animating spirit is divine love. People take care of each other, forgive one another, and love even their enemies.  Jesus believed that, if the people of Israel lived this way, they could be saved from the yoke of Rome.

Question: What does this mean for us today?
Response: Ecological civilization. 

Question: What is an ecological civilization?
Answer: It is a civilization in which people live with respect and care for the whole community of life, people much included.  They are faithful to the bonds of relationship in their local communities; they understand themselves as part of, not apart from, the larger web of life; they want to cooperate with other communities close by and abroad; and they see all living beings, not humans alone, as having intrinsic value

Question: You speak with a sense of urgency, as did Jesus. Why is that?
Response: "Israel was heading  for destruction through violent opposition to Roman oppression, and Jesus was offering a way of life that would nonviolently end the oppressiveness of Roman rule by loving the enemy.  Like the Jews of Jesus' day the human species today is heading for destruction by using resources wastefully to satisfy  our greed and in competition for power. Jesus is offering us  a way  of life that shifts from the  greed and competition (often violent) that is destroying us to sharing and cooperation  in mutual love and sustainable living.   In short Jews were heading for the destruction of Israel.  We are heading for the end of the habitability of the planet.  What would have saved the Jews from that fate would also save us from ours, that is accepting from God the gift of a human community in which God's purposes are fulfilled."     

Question: What is our version of the yoke of Rome?
Response:  Our yokes are many.  They include anthropocentric thinking that neglect the more-than-human world and university systems that teach 'value-free' thinking, but also American imperialism and the cult of wealth promulgated, among others, by financial elites.

Question:  So, if we are Americans, we need to be saved from ourselves?
Response: Yes, we need to repent of our past abuses and be saved from our own proclivities toward violence.

Question:  Who calls us toward such repentance?
Response: The Abba of Jesus.

Question: And how might we respond?
Response: Each of us can make a small contribution in our own way.

Question: Are we all on our own?
Response:  No, we are not alone.  Abba is with us, beyond us and within us. Our contributions can be woven by Abba into "a habitable planet, sensible ideas, and a humane society."

Question: Is this weaving is our salvation?
Response:  Yes, this weaving is our salvation.

More about the Book
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from Jay McDaniel
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The hypothetical question-and-answer session offered above is my own brief summary of John Cobb's Salvation: Jesus's Mission and Ours. 

I'd like to say more about the book below, but let me begin with its end.  One of the most beautiful paragraphs in the book is the final one.  It reads as follows:
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Receptiveness and responsiveness to God’s call always works for ecological civilization. There is no requirement that one think about this inclusive goal. But God has called some to think about the inclusive goal and offer that understanding to others…Others are called to give a cup of cold water to a thirsty stranger. Others are called to tell a joke. Others are called to express their love in a sexual embrace. Others are called to strive even harder in a race. Let us respect and love one another and put our hope in God’s weaving out of our small contributions a habitable planet, sensible ideas, and a humane society.

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​My quoting these lines might lead you to think that the book is about an individual's journey with God.  Or perhaps, because the word "salvation" is in the title, about an individual's continuing journey after death.  Let me dispel these impressions at the outset. 

The book is not about what some might call spirituality or spiritual flourishing.  It is not about awe, wonder, playfulness, silence, joy, inner peace, prayer, mindfulness, awakening to the interconnectedness of all things, or mystical absorption in God.  If there is a single 'spiritual' theme of the book; it is a very simple one.  It is that we are loved unconditionally by an encircling and cosmic love, a nurturing compassion, who is an eternal companion to the world's joys and sufferings, who beckons us to create humane and sustainable communities, and whom Jesus addressed as Abba.

Just as this book is not about inner states, it is also not about "salvation" as sometimes conceived in popular, conservative circles.  It is not about an individual being saved from hell and saved for heaven.  Cobb himself believes that there is some kind of journey after death.  He believes that the universe is much more miraculous that mechanistic science allows, and that when we die we move forward.  Nevertheless his book does not focus on this.  Instead its focus is on community and on how nurturing communities are God's hope for the world.  Here he speaks as a disciple of Jesus:
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According to all three synoptic gospels, Jesus’ message of salvation was about the “basileia theou.” For Jesus, the good news was that the basileia theou was at hand. So, the question about how Jesus understood “salvation” is more usefully formulated as: “What did he mean by the basileia theou?” What content did that phrase have for him? Yes, it included personal transformation and healing and forgiveness. But these were aspects of something more inclusive.

Something more Inclusive​

What is this something more inclusive?  For Cobb it is 'ecological civilization.' His particular concern is how communities in the United States and, by implication, other parts of the world can embody the spirit of ecological civilization or, as Pope Francis puts it in Laudato Si, the spirit of integral ecology. 

Cobb is indeed influenced and impressed by Pope Francis and the Pope's Laudato Si.  In the Preface Cobb writes:
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“Laudato Si” deals at once with the problems of the ocean, the land, and the atmosphere, and, also, of human society.  Francis’ encyclical is at once Roman Catholic teaching, general Christian teaching, and universal human teaching.  If humanity would orient its education and research, its economics and its politics, its agriculture, and its human culture, by the wisdom of this encyclical, hope for the future could be greatly expanded...I have been struck not only by the remarkable connection between this pope and Francis of Assissi, but also by the parallels with Jesus of Nazareth. 

Like Pope Francis, Cobb is not simply proposing that an ecological civilization would be a ‘nice’ option.  He thinks it is absolutely necessary for survival.  And that’s what salvation is: it’s survival as nourished, not by responsible human action alone, or by the sacramental energies of the more than human world, but also by God's love.

Back to Jesus, Back to Abba
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Cobb writes the book while in his nineties and thinks that it may be his last book. In the preface he tells us:
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As a nonagenarian, I am constantly asking myself what activities to continue and which to end. I have been attracted to the idea of ending one facet of my career, writing books, with one that put Jesus at the center. I wrote about Jesus’ thought of God as Abba. It was a kind of back-to-Jesus appeal that felt OK as a way to conclude my work as a Christian theologian. I think my spiritual life began with a “Papa (Abba) in Heaven” who, like my Papa (and my Mother) on Earth, loved me unconditionally. The difference was that my Papa in Heaven knew me totally, and still accepted me. From my parents I could hide quite a lot. Not from God. My theology has not changed much.

​Given his sense that God is papa-like not authoritarian, and that Jesus points the way toward this nurturing God, Cobb writes Salvation primarily for fellow travelers in the Christian way: for "anyone who wants to be a disciple of Jesus."
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A Most Inclusive Mission

Cobb's thesis is as follows:
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​Jesus’ mission was to save his people from the Roman yoke. Most of those who shared that mission turned to military means, which Jesus saw to be self-destructive. So, the mission to save his people included saving them from their own proclivity to violence.

Saving his people from Rome and from themselves was the most inclusive mission possible at that time. To follow Jesus today is to adopt the most inclusive mission in our day. That is to save the world from the self-destruction on which it now seems bent. Some of those who claim to share this goal offer programs that will speed the self-destruction. We need to save the people of the world from themselves as well as from the consequences of our multi-century crimes and mistakes.

Jesus’ method is more promising. To me the call to Jesus’ disciples to save the world seems clear and simple. We need to stop serving wealth. We need to love our enemies.

Mission Failed but not a Failure
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These are striking words for many more traditional Christians.  We are invited to recognize that Jesus’ own ministry, namely that of saving Israel from destruction by Rome, failed.  Nevertheless, says Cobb, Jesus was not a ‘failure.’  In loyalty to his Abba – a God of love - Jesus inaugurated an aspiration that has been adopted others and contributed to the well-being of life.  And Jesus taught along the way a radical idea that can serve us, too, if we but have the courage: to love our enemies.

If we, too, are to be loyal to the Abba of Jesus, thinks Cobb, we must recognize that the primary forces that inhibit our capacities for ecological civilization are not so much individuals with malevolent intent as they are economic institutions, theories and practices control much modern life, including political and military establishments.  There truly is, for John Cobb, a ‘deep state’ and its philosophy is endless economic growth.  What is needed, he believes, is an economics for community: human and ecological.  To be a disciple of Christ is to challenge the very basic assumptions of American exceptionalism and capitalism, and to move past the idea that America ought to "lead" the world.  Cobb's hope is for a network of communities, a democracy of nations, each learning from the other and none presuming authority over the others.
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So where is the religion in all of this.  Cobb is not enamored by the word “religion” insofar as it is primarily a western word imposed on cultures to which it is alien.  He knows, of course, that all cultures have feasts and festivals, ceremonial events and personal prayer practices, and if these are parts of “religion” broadly understood, they are indeed universal.  But these are not his focus.  It is instead that which Jesus sought to introduce and embody in his own life: a basileia theou in which the will of Abba is done on earth as it is in heaven.  Whereas some might translate this term as kingdom of God, Cobb speaks of it as a divine commonwealth – or, as others might say, an inclusively beloved community in which the earth and animals, too, are members.  An ecological civilization is one in which this kind of community is approximated in meaningful ways.

Historical Thinking as "Spirituality"

Cobb emphasizes that today Christians need to rediscover the kind of historical thinking found biblical texts and, more generally, in Abrahamic traditions.  Historical thinking does not seek grounding in a-historical sources or mystical depths, but instead asks which way the winds are blowing in a given historical period.  It recognizes that God is present, not simply (if at all) as source of timeless wisdom or even as a font of inner peace, but as a call forward relative to the situation at hand.

A friend of mine who read Cobb's book said that she wished were more 'spirituality' in Cobb's book, that is, more attention to the inner life of the individual and to sacramental living.  I felt the same way.   On the other hand, I think there is a powerful lesson to be learned from the very absence of such attention.  It is that historical thinking - combined with rigorous analysis and the prophetic hope -- is a way of walking with the God revealed in Jesus. 

Much as I might wish otherwise, it does not seem to me that Jesus was much of a mystic or, for that matter, much of a sage encouraging people to turn to timeless sources either above them or within them.  His attention was directed to a fresh and healing possibility for his people: basileia theou.  

Might mystics and contemplatives, sages and solitaries, have a place in this community of love?  Yes, of course.  And how about lovers and fun-lovers, shamans and poets, athletes and accountants?  Yes, again,  All can be part of the weaving,  Do they need to thematize the basileia theou  as their inclusive goal? 

God calls us in different ways.  But always the call is in a particular historical context, and in our time, says Cobb, we need to be context guided.  It doesn't take a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing, says Bob Dylan in Subterranean Homesick Blues.  It does take a John Cobb, and for him I am forever grateful.

In this book you will find thoughtful critiques self-centered politics (liberal and conservative), value-free education, growth-obsessed economics, mechanistic metaphysics, out-of-whack defense spending, Wall Street greed, and, yes, the arrogance of an authoritarian Christianism.  If you are an American you will be encouraged to understand the dark sides of American history and to repent or turn around toward a new and fresh wind, coming from a holy spirit, that is community centered, nurturing, and salvific.  In the New Testament the turning around from sin and turning toward life, collectively as well as individually, is called metanoia.  This book is an invitation to metanoia.

​- Jay McDaniel

Addenda

John Cobb's Three Clusters of Books 
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I have written three clusters of books.  One is explicitly Christian theology as that is generally understood.  A second cluster is on the philosophy of Whitehead and its implications and applications.  A third cluster is about the world I hope is coming, what I now call “ecological civilization.”  In my mind these are all closely related and jointly constitute a coherent theological position.  I think it all points to the call to save the world.  But I’m not sure that any of my books have made that clear. 

*

Most of what I have written on ecological civilization has been published only in Chinese.  The Chinese know I am a Christian theologian, and they do not automatically reject my ideas for this reason.  They accept those that make sense to them as Marxists, or Confucians, or simply seekers.  But writing for this audience does not lead to talk explicitly about theology.  Hence the connection to ecological civilization of my faith and its theological expression has remained unformulated.  However, it is important to me. The goal that has dominated my life in recent decades is to move the world toward an “ecological civilization.” 


- John Cobb in Salvation

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John Cobb in China
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Process in China

John Cobb in China

Two Questions for John Cobb about China

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Interview with John Cobb at age 95
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No, the Bible is not an infallible book of rules; but, yes, it can guide a life. No, God is not an all-controlling power; but, yes, God is a companion to the world’s joys and sufferings, and an indwelling lure to radical love. No, Jesus is not a man to be worshipped as an infallible deity; but, yes, he is a savior for the world, in whose compassionate way of living we can share, and who appeared after his death to his disciples, giving hope for all. These are among the ideas we hear from John B. Cobb, an American theologian, philosopher, and environmentalist, known as the preeminent proponent of process philosophy and theology. In this Conversation in Process, John Cobb, age 95, shares his journey in faith with Jay McDaniel and, along the way, reveals a poignant life in process.

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The Cobb Institute: A Community for Process and Practice

The Cobb Institute