{"id":18579,"date":"2020-02-06T09:51:57","date_gmt":"2020-02-06T14:51:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=18579"},"modified":"2020-02-06T09:54:22","modified_gmt":"2020-02-06T14:54:22","slug":"the-universal-christ","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=18579","title":{"rendered":"The Universal Christ"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong><br><\/strong><span style=\"background-color: rgb(232, 234, 235);\">\\<\/span>Thursday, February 6, 2020<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<figure><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/C2U7ffUM5Ec\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Grace had already been granted to us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, and now it has been revealed to us in the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus.<\/em>&nbsp;\u20142 Timothy 1:9-10&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It seems we only&nbsp;give&nbsp;attention to&nbsp;that which&nbsp;we are told to&nbsp;give&nbsp;attention.&nbsp;The Franciscan alternative orthodoxy has given me the intellectual and spiritual freedom to&nbsp;<em>quietly but firmly pay attention to different things<\/em>.&nbsp;For the most part, Christianity has&nbsp;ignored the fact that Christ existed from all eternity, but Franciscan teaching&nbsp;emphasizes&nbsp;the&nbsp;significance of the&nbsp;universal Christ.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The word&nbsp;<em>Christ<\/em>&nbsp;means \u201canointed one.\u201d&nbsp;The divine&nbsp;anointing began with the first incarnation&nbsp;when God decided to show God\u2019s self,&nbsp;almost&nbsp;13.8&nbsp;billion years ago. We now call it the Big Bang. Franciscan philosopher John Duns Scotus basically&nbsp;taught&nbsp;that the first idea in the mind of God was&nbsp;Christ. Christ was the Alpha point.&nbsp;Good biblical theology calls&nbsp;creation&nbsp;itself&nbsp;the birth of the Christ, the materialization of God. Whenever matter and spirit coinhere, coincide, you have the Christ Mystery, which is a phrase&nbsp;the Apostle&nbsp;Paul introduces. Paul has a deep intuition of this, which&nbsp;leads to his understanding of the Eucharistic Body of Christ. Paul intuits&nbsp;that&nbsp;this incarnation of Christ is spread throughout creation,&nbsp;human nature,&nbsp;and even the elements of bread and wine. It\u2019s everywhere.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Francis himself was not a theologian, he was not an academic, he was not highly&nbsp;educated. He was just a sincere spiritual genius who intuited these things.&nbsp;When the next generation of Franciscans, including St. Bonaventure (1221\u20131274) and John Duns Scotus,&nbsp;came&nbsp;along, they&nbsp;created&nbsp;a philosophy and theology&nbsp;to&nbsp;substantiate Francis\u2019&nbsp;intuitive vision.&nbsp;They&nbsp;homed in&nbsp;on the first chapters of Colossians, Ephesians, John\u2019s Gospel, Hebrews, and the Letter of 1 John&nbsp;which&nbsp;say the Christ existed from all eternity.&nbsp;The&nbsp;universal Christ&nbsp;is a totally biblical notion.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The&nbsp;universal&nbsp;Christ is one of the crown jewels of early Franciscan&nbsp;theology&nbsp;and part of our alternative orthodoxy.&nbsp;It&nbsp;was there from the beginning,&nbsp;but it\u2019s only now&nbsp;becoming&nbsp;widely known,&nbsp;as the study of cosmology itself says&nbsp;that&nbsp;the very shape of the universe&nbsp;is dynamic&nbsp;and relational.&nbsp;It is all about relationship!&nbsp;The mystery of the universe reveals&nbsp;the mystery of&nbsp;a Trinitarian&nbsp;Creator God. So once cosmology becomes the&nbsp;framework for&nbsp;theology, we suddenly recognize the need&nbsp;to name&nbsp;what&nbsp;Christianity has&nbsp;always had\u2014a cosmic notion of Jesus, which is the Christ. [1]&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If we don\u2019t balance out Jesus with Christ, I think our theology is going to become&nbsp;a&nbsp;more and more limited&nbsp;worldview that&nbsp;will&nbsp;end up being in competition with the other world religions. Balancing Jesus with Christ gives us a vision that is so big, so universal that it includes&nbsp;every thing&nbsp;and everybody.&nbsp;You don\u2019t&nbsp;even&nbsp;have to use the words&nbsp;Jesus&nbsp;or&nbsp;Christ to&nbsp;contemplate&nbsp;this&nbsp;Mystery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\\Thursday, February 6, 2020 Grace had already been granted to us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, and now it has been revealed to us in the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus.&nbsp;\u20142 Timothy 1:9-10&nbsp;&nbsp; It seems we only&nbsp;give&nbsp;attention to&nbsp;that which&nbsp;we are told to&nbsp;give&nbsp;attention.&nbsp;The Franciscan alternative orthodoxy has given me the intellectual and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18579"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18579"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18581,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18579\/revisions\/18581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}