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I mention these few examples as a reminder that our crisis is not unique. The church has a long history of discomfort with Christ. Jesus may have been rejected by Jews and crucified by Romans, but according to all four Gospels, he was first denied and abandoned by his own disciples—all of them. History requires a sad admission: Nowhere is Jesus more scandalous than among believers and in the church.

If this is so, what is the particular face or expression of our Christological crisis today? I suggest that we are witnessing a shift in the theological center from a theology of redemption to a theology of creation. We are shifting away from a theology of God's redemptive acts and promises in history to a theology of the state of things in their natural order as being the rightful and final expression of God's will. The final word of the new theology is not what God can do and wills to do in the gospel, but what God has done in creation.

Along with the shift from Christology to creation is a shift away from the doctrines of sin and repentance, which according to the preaching of the Cross are indispensable for receiving new life in Christ. The new theology often assumes that what is is essentially good. The paradigm shift changes the theological proclamation of the church from a call to transformation according to the image of Jesus Christ to one of affirmation of who I am as I am. The proclamation of the saving grace of the gospel has usually been expressed in transitive verbs of change—believe, turn, repent, follow. The new theology is couched in intransitive verbs of affirmation—being and becoming.

We are, in short, witnessing a shift from a theology of transcendence to a theology of immanence. Statements that are putatively about God are said to be statements about humanity, human community, and creation. The high theology "from above" is being replaced by a reductionist theology "from below" that has strong affinities in Deism and Unitarianism. The new theology is essentially one of solipsism, which believes that the one thing worth living and dying for is the self.

We Western Christians are undergoing an unavoidable and uncertain passage. For the first time since the pre-Constantinian era, Western Christians are no longer speaking from the center of the culture but from its margins. And we are speaking to a culture that in many respects has been inoculated against the gospel. Such changes are making new demands—and promise to make many more—on the way we conceive of the relationship between the gospel and our culture. Our new circumstances are making us aware that the proclamation and defense of the gospel rest upon the shoulders of each generation.

We are now in the season of Epiphany. According to the church calendar, Epiphany celebrates the appearance of God in the person of Jesus Christ. It is a time to reflect in new ways on the meaning of Jesus Christ for us and our desperate world.

The maneuvering of Christ to the margins of our culture—and to the margins of many of our churches—may diminish the status of Christianity. At the same time, it also puts believers in a position to experience the transforming power of the gospel in new ways, for the gospel is most empowered when it is least encumbered.

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February 4 2002, Vol. 46, No. 2