6/26/2008 9:45:37 AM
Her soteriology, if I can even call it that, is almost wholly pelagian and bourgeois. We recover shalom by turning to God and others in love. As long as we do not succumb to temptation but allow such temptation to spur us on to loving relationships, we will recover the shalom of Eden. This is not only a non-christological soteriology—and, not surprisingly, Jesus hardly ever came up in her talk—but it is also a Western, American, bourgeois theology of individual self-realization. According to Harper, I find true wholeness by choosing to love God rather than falling into temptation. The wholeness intended by God in creating the world depends upon whether I choose God or myself. This is an Arminian concept of abstract human freedom which undermines the biblical identification of freedom with obedience. Freedom is not found in choosing God over against choosing something else; freedom is found in following the way of Jesus and becoming a “slave of righteousness,” as Paul says. Freedom is not rooted in my choice of God, but in God’s choice of me in Jesus Christ. Wholeness is not located in what I accomplish, but in what God accomplished for us in the death and resurrection of the Son. Shalom is not found in self-realization, but in God’s actualization of new humanity.
Not only is Harper’s soteriology seriously confused, but her bourgeois theology of self-realization reduces the Fall to temptation when Scripture views it as suffering and death. Genesis 3 is an etiological myth that seeks to explain why humans suffer and die. Harper instead read the story through the lens of human choice and self-actualization. At one point, she mentioned that death and pain are described in Genesis 3 as consequences of the Fall, but she never followed up on that insight. What we see throughout Scripture is not mere temptation, however, but radical oppression and suffering. The slavery in Egypt is the fullest manifestation of the Fall: the Israelites work the ground to no effect, and the women give birth to children slaughtered by Pharaoh. God’s liberation of Israel is the proleptic anticipation of God’s deliverance of the cosmos from the Fall.
By reducing the Fall to temptation, Harper’s “theology of shalom” provides no answer to those seeking liberation in the midst of social injustice, political oppression, and radical evil. But the Bible does have an answer: namely, Jesus Christ, who suffered and died in our place so that we might have confidence that all things are made new in him. Shalom is indeed about relationship: not our relationship with God, but rather God’s relationship with us in Jesus Christ. Wholeness is not found in platitudinous ideas of loving people in the abstract. Wholeness is found in the concrete act of God’s love for us in Jesus, which then overflows into concrete acts of love for others. Harper’s whole message was abstract and individualistic, despite her intention to speak concretely and communally. It was, in the end, closer to the Religion of Oprah than the radical discipleship centered on Jesus.
(Fire and Rose)