Earthing the Cosmic Christ of Ephesians—The Universe, Trinity, and Zhiyi’s Threefold Truth, Volume 4: Commentary on Ephesians 2:13—3:21

By John P. Keenan

In a Tiantai theology, conventional truth is conventionally arisen, which means that such truth is never set once and for all, but is to be cherished and rethought in new circumstances, whether interreligious or scientific--but always in critical consonance with its ancient embodiments. Contexts shift frameworks, but life in Christ is translatable across cultures. Christian faith and theology discourage the assumption that the point of it can be clearly pinned down. God's appearance to Elijah out of the whirlwind is an eternal reminder of the paltriness of all human perspectives. Symbolic worlds of faith and wisdom are not themselves finished products. Because it has a past and a future, the cosmos itself is unfinished. Christian creeds ought not be defended as last-word ideological positions and bastions against relativity, but instead recognized in their cultural contexts and affirmed as grammars of communal and personal assent.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Feb 26, 2024
• ISBN: 9781666708615

John P. Keenan

John P. Keenan is professor emeritus of religion at Middlebury College and a priest in the Episcopal Diocese of Vermont. His previous works include The Emptied Christ of Philippians: Mahāyāna Meditations; The Meaning of Christ: A Mahāyāna Theology; The Gospel of Mark: A Mahāyāna Reading; A Study of the Buddhabhūmyupadésa: The Doctrinal Development of the Notion of Wisdom in Yogācāra Thought; and Grounding Our Faith in a Pluralist World—With a Little Help from Nāgārjuna.

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Abbreviations

A/Col The unknown author of Colossians, writing as the apostle Paul

AE The unknown author of Ephesians, writing as the apostle Paul

BAGD W. Bauer, W. F. Arndt, F. W. Gingrich, and F. W. Danker. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979.

Chi. Chinese

Gk. Greek

Js. Japanese

L. Latin

LSJ H. G. Liddell, R. Scott, and H. S. Jones, editors. A Greek-English Lexicon. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1940.

LXX Septuagint

MM J. H. Moulton and G. Milligan. The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament: Illustrated from the Papyri and Other Non-Literary Sources. 1930. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959.

NT New Testament

OED Oxford English Dictionary

OT Old Testament

Skt. Sanskrit

SNTSMS Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series

T Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō. 大正新修大蔵経 (Newly Revised Tripitaka of the Taishō Era). Edited by Takakusu Junjirō et al. Tokyo: Taishō Issaikyō Kankōkai and Daizō Shuppan, 1924–32.

TDNT G. Kittel and G. Friedrich, eds. Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964–76.

Tib. Tibetan

Books of the Bible

Old Testament

Dan Daniel

Deut Deuteronomy

Exod Exodus

Gen Genesis

Isa Isaiah

Jer Jeremiah

Josh Joshua

Lev Leviticus

Neh Nehemiah

Prov Proverbs

Ps Psalms

Zech Zechariah

New Testament

Col Colossians

1–2 Cor 1–2 Corinthians

Eph Ephesians

Gal Galatians

Matt Matthew

Phil Philippians

Rom Romans

1–2 Thess 1–2 Thessalonians

Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical

1–2 Macc 1–2 Maccabees

PART I

Ephesians 2:13–18

¹³νυνὶ δὲ ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ ὑμεῖς οἵ ποτε ὄντες μακρὰν ἐγενήθητε ἐγγὺς ἐν τῷ αἵματι τοῦ Χριστοῦ. ¹⁴Αὐτὸς γάρ ἐστιν ἡ εἰρήνη ἡμῶν, ὁ ποιήσας τὰ ἀμφότερα ἓν καὶ τὸ μεσότοιχον τοῦ φραγμοῦ λύσας, τὴν ἔχθραν, ἐν τῇ σαρκὶ αὐτοῦ, ¹⁵τὸν νόμον τῶν ἐντολῶν ἐν δόγμασιν καταργήσας, ἵνα τοὺς δύο κτίσῃ ἐν αὐτῷ εἰς ἕνα καινὸν ἄνθρωπον ποιῶν εἰρήνην, ¹⁶καὶ ἀποκαταλλάξῃ τοὺς ἀμφοτέρους ἐν ἑνὶ σώματι τῷ θεῷ διὰ τοῦ σταυροῦ, ἀποκτείνας τὴν ἔχθραν ἐν αὐτῷ. ¹⁷εἰρήνην ὑμῖν τοῖς μακρὰν καὶ εἰρήνην τοῖς ἐγγύς καὶ ἐλθὼν εὐηγγελίσατο ¹⁸ὅτι δι’ αὐτοῦ ἔχομεν τὴν προσαγωγὴν οἱ ἀμφότεροι ἐν ἑνὶ πνεύματι πρὸς τὸν πατέρα.

¹³But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near in the blood of Christ. ¹⁴For he himself is our peace who has made the two one and taken down the dividing wall of hostility, ¹⁵nullifying in his [own] flesh the Torah of decrees in judgments, so as to create in himself one new human being out of the two, thus making peace, ¹⁶reconciling the two through the cross in this one body to God, in himself abolishing that hostility. ¹⁷Coming, he preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near, ¹⁸that through him we both have approach to the Father in one Spirit.

1

In the Blood of Christ

Writing in the name of the apostle Paul to a late first-century Christian community in the city of Ephesus, the author of this letter opened its second chapter with a description of members of the community.¹ He wrote that although all of us have once lived upside down in the cravings of our flesh . . . [and] were by nature angry children . . . God, being rich in compassion because of his great love whereby he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, enlivened us together in the Christ . . . For we are his making, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, for which God has prepared us beforehand so that we might walk in them. Then, in 2:11–12, the author turned to address one particular portion of this Ephesian Christ community as "you gentiles² by birth, called ‘the uncircumcision,’ emphasizing that these non-Jewish members previously had been apart from Christ, being aliens from the community in Israel, and [thus] foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and godless in the world."

It was thus clear that the Christian community to whom this letter was directed was composed of both Jews and gentiles—formerly two very distinct groups now united in what had begun as an entirely Jewish movement. Here, neither Jews nor gentiles are separated from Christ, or from the covenants of the promise. And the former alienation between the two is contrasted to the peace that they now experience together within this Christ household in the city of Ephesus in Asia Minor.

Addressing gentile members of the Ephesian community in the second person as you who once were far away, the author is clearly identifying himself here as a Jewish Christian. Earlier, in 2:1–2, he had described the former lives of the gentiles who are now disciples of Paul, declaring that You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, but here he reassures them that you (ὑμεῖς) no longer experience that sad plight.³ All of that lies in the past when you were far distant (οἵ ποτε ὄντες μακρὰν) but now (νυνὶ) you have been brought near (ἐγενήθητε ἐγγὺς), he proclaims in 2:13. This language of being far and coming near appears to be borrowed from traditional Jewish discussions of proselytism, wherein those said to have been brought near had come to join the people of Israel.⁴ The phrase likely alluded to Isaiah 57:19, where the Lord announced peace to those both far and near. Some commentators, however, do not agree that this is an allusion to Isaiah, offering a more nuanced exegesis.⁵ Andrew Lincoln:

The use of the language of ‘near’ and ‘far’ here does not constitute a quotation of Isa

57

:

19

(contra Barth, Ephesians

1

­

–3,

278

), or even necessarily an allusion to it. The writer speaks of those far off having come near, a notion not found in Isa

57

:

19

, but one which uses terminology common in Jewish discussions of proselytism.⁶

Others conclude that our author does indeed employ Isaiah’s terms in speaking of gentile members of the community—in the sense that formerly they had indeed been very far from the promises of Israel. Rudolf Schnackenburg observed that

[t]he vivid expression is connected to the way of speaking of the ‘far’ people and islands (cf. Mic

4

:

3

; Isa

5

:

26

;

49

:

1

;

66

:

19

; Jer

31

:

10

) which usually refers to the Israelites who return to Jerusalem from distant lands (Zech

6

:

15

; Isa

43

:

6

;

49

:

12

;

60

:

4–9

).⁷

But, because in our author’s time there was no benefit in returning to the now-destroyed city of Jerusalem, the description of those who once were far away and have now been brought near was more likely to be applied to gentile believers. Klyne Snodgrass:

The impact of Isaiah

52

:

7

and

57

:

19

is clear in [Eph]

2

:

13

and

17

, but a much larger theology of peace associated with the Messiah stands behind this section. Judaism had linked Isaiah

9

:

6

with

52

:

7

, but also texts like Micah

5

:

5

a and Zechariah

9

:

9–10

focused on the Messiah as the bringer of peace. Micah

5

:

5

a, portraying a messianic shepherd ruler, is virtually identical to Ephesians

2

:

14

a and seems to be the origin of Paul’s [AE’s] wording.⁸

In sum, gentiles now are [included] in Christ Jesus (νυνὶ δὲ ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ ὑμεῖς), for they (i.e., you) now live in the one body of Christ, brought near in the blood of Christ (ἐν τῷ αἵματι τοῦ Χριστοῦ)—a strange claim to our modern ears.

One might have expected the writer to say in the body of Christ or in the power of his resurrection. Why, instead, is it in his blood (ἐν τῷ αἵματι)? The only other mention of Christ’s blood in this letter is found in 1:7, where we have release from sin through his blood (διὰ τοῦ αἵματος αὐτοῦ). Older commentators saw in this phrase a reference to the propitiatory effect of Christ’s cross: Christ died for us⁹—which, they thought, surely meant that some sacrificial sense is intended. Indeed, the phrase ties in with in his [own] flesh and through the cross in 2:16. So in some sense, Jesus’ death on the cross and his bloodied flesh were understood as leading to our salvation and peace. As John P. Meier (1942–1922) summarized:

Intriguingly, within the NT, the Christian response to the problem of the cross exhibits no one normative way of interpreting Jesus’ death; many different strategies are employed to cope with the embarrassment. Early pre-Pauline formulas of faith, reaching back probably to the

30

s of the

1

st century, already interpret the crucifixion as some sort of atoning sacrifice for sins (e.g.,

1

Cor

15

:

3–5

; Rom

3

:

24–26

; Rom

4

:

25

; later on, this approach is developed at great length in the Epistle to the Hebrews).¹⁰

Still, why should the bloody execution of Jesus result in anyone being incorporated into the body of Christ? Some modern theologians follow social philosopher René Girard (1923–2015) and see the crucified Jesus as a scapegoat, one who bore the sins of the people and, though innocent, was banished from life on their behalf.¹¹ It is, I think, fair to say that interest in Girard’s thought is propelled by our discomfort with the traditional theory of sacrificial atonement—that Jesus’ death assuages the Father’s anger. Atonement theology focuses on human sinfulness and our inability to find justification through our own efforts. Indeed, our author teaches immediately before this that we are saved by grace, not by our works. Yet that atonement theology entails corollaries that we now find unpalatable—the notion that the Father God is so angry that he required Jesus’ death to assuage his ire—an idea that stands in stark contrast to the merciful God of the entire Jewish tradition. In our Old Testament, God often exhibits anger at the sinfulness of his people, but it is always balanced by his quickness to forgive whenever his people turn to him in repentance. Why would this same forgiving God now need the blood of Jesus? Unease with this picture drives many modern theologians to seek a better interpretation. Does the idea of Jesus as scapegoat offer any better understanding?

The practice of scapegoating is widespread,¹² often used culturally and politically to attribute all manner of evil to an animal, a person, or a people, who are then identified as objects of hate and persecution.¹³ Western Christians scapegoated the Jews as a people, as Myanmar Buddhists do today to Rohingya Muslims. Americans have scapegoated immigrant Muslims particularly since 9/11, and White Americans have for centuries scapegoated Blacks, perhaps because they remind us of our ancestors’ sins of enslaving and maltreating their ancestors. Our primal American sin was our refusal to see Indigenous peoples as human and our consequent murder of those peoples one after another. The movie Dances with Wolves depicts the oft-repeated story of an individual who, through a fortuitous set of events, came to know and value an indigenous nation (here the Lakota Sioux) only for that indigenous community to be driven away by force of the willed ignorance and violence of our White forebears.¹⁴

As in many cultic practices, the scapegoated bear the hatred and violence of a privileged in-group who derive an ersatz satisfaction in waging war against them. Could it be that here in Ephesians, the new community of Jews and gentiles is brought together in peace through the sacrifice of the blood of the scapegoated Christ? Perhaps, but it is not that community who drove him to the desert of suffering and death. Yet the image of Christ bleeding upon the cross does recall sacrificial animals in the temple; or, it could be understood as the covenantal blood used to seal the promise made in Ephesians before the foundation of the cosmos.¹⁵ Ephesians is likely influenced here by Col 2:11, which speaks of the tearing circumcision of Christ’s entire body, depicting his dying as the ripping off of his flesh in bloody cruelty: In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of flesh in the circumcision of Christ. Margaret MacDonald expands on the theme:

The author of Ephesians may have been influenced in vv.

13–14

by Col

1

:

20

: and through him to reconcile all things to himself, making peace through the blood of the cross. Similarly, Rom

5

:

8–11

describes the reconciliation to God that takes place through the blood of Christ (cf.

2

Cor

5

:

18–20

).¹⁶

Ripping the flesh from the body of Jesus is a disturbing image, and Ephesians did not repeat that Colossian depiction. The author did regard risen life as reversing Jesus’ crucifixion, but with no mention of a scapegoat. When in Christian liturgies we sacramentally call forth the presence of Christ, we celebrate his sacrifice, but we do not reenact his sacrificial death. Rather, we read ourselves into his life, and into his final act of self-abandonment. Viscerally sharing the same human lifeblood that energized the physical body of Jesus, we become one common body, seeking to prosper through gospel living, wherein there are no scapegoated people. James D. G. Dunn (1939–2020) saw such embodiment as the tie that draws together diverse communities, and factions within communities:

Paul’s conception of the body of Christ and Rom

14

:

1

—

15

:

6

are powerful ecumenical texts. The body of Christ, as expounded in

1

Cor

12

, is the scriptural model of unity in diversity, for relations between churches as well as within churches.¹⁷

Nonetheless, our theologians and exegetes over the centuries have had much difficulty in explaining just how it is that we are saved by the blood of Jesus.

Why should the murder of Jesus save anyone? Does Jesus as scapegoat really carry away all our sins? The fathers and the medieval theologians could appeal to an ontological order wherein our sinful lives are seen as experiencing a magical change engendered by his death—that by dying Jesus changed the very fabric of reality. But absent that now-abandoned ontological perspective, theology has been set adrift once again, flailing about to understand how indeed we are saved by any blood, even the blood of Christ. Central to our confusion is the age-old habit of understanding the passion narratives as recording divine facts—that both Jesus and the Father willed Jesus to die on the cross as a predetermined salvific event. I suspect the divine necessity of Jesus’ death is a later New Testament theological interpretation intended to explain the brute fact that he died in such an ignoble manner, and to bring such a monstrous event back within the all-encompassing will of the Father and the Son he sent. Nevertheless, I squirm at the notion of the Father God being so angry and offended that he needed to will Jesus’ death. Could we not understand this sacrifice as the complete abandonment of Jesus’ selfhood, transcending and reconfiguring all his possibilities? Yes, surely, especially if we model our understanding on the Philippian hymn (2:6–11), in which he empties his very self. For Tiantai master Zhiyi, as for other Mahāyāna Buddhists, self-emptying is the liberating experience that embraces all wisdom (Skt. sarvajñāna)—a fundamental teaching that can aid us in understanding our own tradition.

Yet that still would not explain the emphasis placed upon Jesus’ blood. No doubt, our ancestors spoke of his blood because when he was murdered, blood (and water) flowed from his pierced side. It could be that Jesus was simply snatched by Roman soldiers and eliminated as a troublemaker, as were many Jews in his time—and in our own: countless desaparecidos in Argentina; Rohingyas banished from Buddhist Myanmar; Uighurs swept into deculturation centers in China; and Black Americans incarcerated in vast, newly constructed private prison complexes. Lethal violence has never been far from any group of human beings. Nonetheless, to understand the death of Jesus as more a matter of the Father’s sovereign will than a stark historical instance of murder does allow for the creation of a dramatic theological narrative—even if it raises such unintelligible conundrums as: Why would the same God who had always before been so ready to offer forgiveness now require an especially bloody murder to evoke the same forgiveness?

Later theologians encountered great difficulty whenever they attempted to fathom why the Father would send his Son to die—why Jesus’ death was necessary (δεῖ). Why would the Father somehow be implicated in the killing of Jesus? If death had simply meant the end of Jesus, it would have been just one more story of a failed messiah. But in the gospel event, it was his resurrection, and the conviction of his followers that they had beheld him alive, that nourished their faith and inspired the formation of the Jesus communities.¹⁸ And because, as believing Jews, they understood all events to be willed by God, they felt the need to sketch the entire sequence of events as an insanely cruel divine plan, in order to avoid the scandalous impression that their savior was executed as a common criminal. To them, nothing happened that was not the Father’s will.

Historically, as reported in the Gospels, Jesus’ death was folded into the paschal sacrifice by Jesus himself, who saw it coming.¹⁹ Many scriptural passages support the image of Jesus as the innocent lamb through whose blood we are spared, because the Last Supper was so closely associated with the paschal sacrifice. And yet, throughout the early tradition no one attempted to unpack the cluster of questions thereby engendered in regard to the divine will. Was it not enough to state, as in Eph 5:2, that he gave himself for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God? But how did an act of murder come to be regarded as a sacrifice? If it was seen as a sacrifice, we could understand how New Testament writers might have seen Jesus’ death as replacing temple sacrifices that had been interrupted some decades previously. Perhaps it is best to accept that Jesus was simply put to death as the troublemaker he was perceived to be—despite his preaching peace and compassion. Yet, our first-century ancestors could hardly have proclaimed to good Roman citizens the salvific meaning of a Jesus executed on a whim by Roman authorities. For a text as sensitive to the Greco-Roman order as was Ephesians, that was hardly a real option.

So although our earliest texts confessed the sacrificial death of Jesus, they refrained from developing a clear theological explanation. Somehow it had to be included in divine providence, although it would take many years for the fathers to account for it in their ontological philosophy. They did, however, remember to employ Isaiah in regarding Jesus as an innocent lamb led to slaughter. Scapegoating is such a common phenomenon that it can explain almost any act of violence. Today, we do best to understand that Jesus stood with the marginalized and was murdered for his efforts. No pre-planning or blood-requiring Father is needed. No special machinations. Just another poor man swept up and eliminated, like a lamb to the slaughter. It is enough to meditate on the Philippian hymn to the Christ who emptied himself and to understand the cross as the self-emptying of Jesus. And then to empty ourselves of the sundry stratagems that bolster our own illusions of selfhood. In the end, scapegoat theology simply reinforces what we have believed all along—that Jesus died for our sins.

Ephesians affirmed the social order of its day and shied away from describing sin as embedded in societal structures. It was reluctant to question the structural sins embedded in the Roman Empire of its time, thereby bequeathing to later churchmen their own inclination to focus upon reforming individuals while in blissful nescience of the societal sin that bedeviled their times—an entire economy driven by institutional slavery, misogyny that kept married women safely in-house, daughters in the care of patriarchal fathers, and enslaved women in constant danger of socially acceptable rape. As a new and minuscule community attempting to find a place for itself in the broader society, perhaps we would have done no better. But, unfortunately, later Christians’ naïve reading of scripture did result in their common historical acceptance of both scapegoating Jews and, until relatively modern times, supporting the institution of slavery.²⁰

Employing the Buddhist notion of self-emptying may possibly help us to confess a Christ who died by random violence, only then to be experienced as risen, heightening the salvific reversal of the cross and pervading our flesh and bones with an awareness of our own transient lives. By contrast, atonement theology—whereby an individual makes an effort to remove obstacles to a reconciliation with God—in fact makes it less likely that we will share in Jesus’ sufferings, or in his resurrection. Traditional atonement theology assures us of forgiveness and grace but it changes nothing at all, for the entire plan takes place in a distant heaven far above our earthly lives—indeed, a distant heaven that belonged to an ancient cosmology and simply does not exist. But a self-emptying Jesus who refuses to engage his tormentors in violence can insinuate himself into our attentive minds and our inner viscera, and has in fact done so over and over in our history.

Other commentators, seeing atonement here, hold that the initial phrase in Christ Jesus (ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ) in 2:13 should be taken in a local, incorporational significance—describing a profound, dynamic relationship that reaches back to an objective participation with [Christ] in his death, resurrection, and exaltation.²¹ All brought about by means of his sacrifice. And yet—unlike Paul himself—nowhere does this Ephesian writer speak of our participation in Christ’s death or sufferings—indeed, who would wish to participate in being crucified? In Ephesians, we share in the risen life of Christ and are seated with him in the heavenly realms, while his suffering and dying are regarded as significant but long-ago events in his life. Somehow they enable us now to share with him in risen life, but they constitute no part of the ethical practice that is commended to us in this letter.

Self-emptying is a foundational teaching of Mahāyāna Buddhism, and thus of my Mahāyāna Christian thinking.²² It implies to me that incorporation in Christ can hardly be expressed by speaking of relationship with Christ, for relationships imply separate selves, not the incorporation of one in the other. James D. G. Dunn focused upon social differences and wrote much about relationships and identity:

A good hypothesis regarding Christianity’s beginnings should equally be required to explain how Christianity emerged from Jesus and how the movement which thus emerged within the matrix of Second Temple Judaism so quickly broke out of that matrix. And always the underlying issue is that same tantalizing question about identity: did the developments remain true to the initiating impulse provided by/embodied in Jesus?²³

Identity is a conventional marker of who we are, but again we should hesitate to read our modern understanding of flexible identities back into ancient times and cultures. Modern dilemmas of how today we choose to belong and how we choose to identify ourselves are of great concern in our culture, but ought not be applied to ancient times, when one’s place in the world was socially determined by birth. Women were born female and thus lesser. Slaves were born from slaves and continued to be slaves. It is anachronistic to apply our fluid modern assumptions about identity to ancient Greco-Roman society, where individual roles and affiliations were very well defined. Indeed, the offer in Ephesians is resurrection life, not a newly affirmed identity—although these ancient Christ followers did see themselves as set apart from other Jews and Greeks. The present section of Ephesians is about peace among Christ-believing Jews and gentiles within a community where a once-alien people (gentiles) had come to be related to Christ just as some Jews had done. That is all that is going on in this passage—the once-distant aliens have now become us, for the experience of risen life does more to empty individual identity than it does to establish a new one.

The template for the inclusion of strangers is found in the Old Testament, in Isaiah 56, wherein distant people come to belong to Israel so long as they join themselves to the chosen people and become familiar:

And the foreigners who join themselves to the

Lord

, to minister to him, to love the name of the

Lord

, and to be his servants, and all who keep the sabbath, and do not profane it, and hold fast my covenant—these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. Thus says the Lord

God

, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, I will gather others to them besides those already gathered. (Isa

56

:

6–8

)

This ancient model was adopted by the Ephesian community; no more extended social analysis than that is necessary. In 2:11–12, all confessed Christ together in the newly formed Christ community. The only mark of difference would be their former ethnicity, which is now erased by their inclusion in the Ephesian community.

In Eph 2:13–16 enmity is eliminated through the cross (διὰ τοῦ σταυροῦ) and peace created in his own flesh, all this taking place in his own body (ἐν τῇ σαρκὶ αὐτοῦ). This echoes Paul, but it is notably the only mention of the cross of Christ in this Ephesian letter. And the cross is not described here as setting the pattern for our own lives as it is in Paul’s authentic letters (see Phil 2:5–18). One might have hoped for a clear explanation, but the passage that follows instead descends into a jungle of interpretive problems. It is as though the author of Ephesians wished to avoid any notion that our lives should be patterned after Jesus’ cross. Instead, it appears that the writer wished readers to understand the cross as but preliminary to the cosmic power now exercised by Christ at the right hand of the Father for the sake of the Ephesian household community.

New Testament texts often speak of Jesus’ death in sacrificial language, in the sense that by dying he swallowed up death and removed sin. Yet many remaining questions hover over just how that happened. In a Tiantai theology, we would participate in Jesus’ dying by abandoning self and all its defenses, so as to live as one body in a conventional community that holds to truth (Skt. satyagraha) while eschewing enmity and violence (Skt. ahiṃsa). We speak of Jesus’ sacrificial dying, but in a Tiantai context the reality of that does not reach up to the Father, as if God were somehow responsible for Jesus’ death. Although our New Testament ancestors did think of it that way, for they needed to see a divine design unfolding in all things, even in such an untoward event. But we can instead understand Jesus’ sacrificial dying as a path metaphor, maintaining simply that Jesus’ dying for us was the sacrificial abandonment that capped the path of his Palestinian life.

Death as sacrifice recalls René Girard and the spiral of violence he describes, wherein the victim is made sacred to assuage our own sins.²⁴ It also recalls the many martyrs over time who have offered their lifeblood to witness to truth. Perhaps when our Gospel passion narratives are understood as history, they mislead, for these are constructed theological readings (L. theologomeuna) about what happened—the inner meaning of the fact that Jesus was murdered but emerged alive. The cross invites our participation when we practice its pattern of no-self. It is enough that, emptying ourselves, we be found in Christ, who was made sin in that he was the object of hatred, but he himself did not sin, led like a lamb to the slaughter (Isa 53:7; Acts 8:32)—that is, Jesus made no compensatory attempt to right the injustice. Evil remained intensely present to him, who had done no evil.

We are saved when we enter into a self-abandoning death like Jesus, even dying in weakness in our own beds. We are saved when we enter into a resurrection like his, for our wounds are knit together into the body of Christ. Importantly—unlike the Ephesian letter—Paul himself taught in Rom 6:5–6 that "since we have been knit together [σύμφυτοι, symphytoi] in the likeness of his death [τῷ ὁμοιώματι τοῦ θανάτου αὐτοῦ], we shall be knit together with him in the likeness of his resurrection. The term σύμφυτοι often is translated as united with but it more literally means the knitting together of a wound as the skin heals and the injured flesh grows together. That Paul could use the term in his Letter to the Romans when speaking of our share in Jesus’ death and resurrection suggests a broader meaning—of healing death and overcoming the grave by living in a larger, shared body. Nowhere here are we dealing with individuals in their selfhood. As soon as the implications of his resurrection began to bubble up among the earliest believers, they moved beyond the story of Jesus’ individual death to confess an enlarged Christ within the body of believers (Phil 1:20: νῦν μεγαλυνθήσεται Χριστὸς ἐν τῷ σώματί μου), defined anew by his risen life, exaltation, and ongoing presence. This is why we need to step back to read scripture—not only in its ancient context but also within the empty horizon of a resurrection beyond conventional time. We are crocheted by interlocking loops into the one body of Christ. A contrast exists between the body of sin" and the ongoing body of Christ—between our deluded and lonely raging against the dying of the light as set-apart individuals and the acknowledgment of our shared transience in that one body of Christ through Spirit liberation.

Romans 6:6 continued: We know that our old selfhood [ὁ παλαιὸς ἡμῶν ἄνθρωπος] was crucified with him, so that the sinful body might be nullified [καταργηθῇ] and we no longer be ruled by sin. Paul in Romans was describing the selfless death of Jesus knitted together with us by our practice of no-self, for he is one body with us, despite the fact that the church, the body of Christ, has been broken, again and again, on shoals of enmity that belie resurrection faith. The potential of evil has not been banished from its life. Which is why anything that stands in the way of that interweaving of Christ and Christians is to be nullified. In Romans, the blockage is the body of sin, but Eph 2:15 ambiguously went further to nullify [καταργήσας] the Torah of commands in judgments, despite all later teachings that affirm Torah and appeal to the commandments. Nothing is to stand between the varied entanglements of believers and the larger body of Christ, which is why this Ephesian nullification of Torah globally refers to anything that would prevent our participation in the larger body of Christ—in this context meaning practices that have become obstacles to gentile members; in other words, circumcision, and dietary laws. The text could have been clearer here, but when any scriptural interpretation stands in the way of our incorporation into Christ, it too is to be consigned to ancient polemic and nullified. Only then are we free from what the Yogācāra Buddhists call the obstacles of knowing what it is all about (literally, in Sanskrit, ज्ञेयावरण, jñeya-āvaraṇa, the obstacles to what is known), for they prevent the insights needed to practice the middle path, embracing both death and life through participation in the risen Christ.

In 2:13, you who were far away are reconciled right now (νυνὶ) in this present life in Christ Jesus (δὲ ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ ὑμεῖς). It is not just that gentile members of the community now have a future expectation of the coming of Christ, or that in the cosmic context of Ephesians they—once far away (μακρὰν) in linear time, a generation or more in the past—are saved by the death of Christ on the cross.²⁵ Salvation is not ontological magic. I would submit that the mere fact of the death of Jesus on the cross changed nothing at all, any more (or less) than the many lynchings of Black people in the American South. The lynchings of Black men and women evince what Black theologians call the weak power of the cross—weak not only in that those who were murdered often took their last refuge in the cross, nor in that a tree was their own instrument of death,²⁶ but weak because their dying left intact the virulent racism of their murderers.²⁷ They did not willingly imitate Jesus in their dying, but they did share in his tortured and bruised body, as have so many.

In Ephesians, it is this cross that has already brought near (ἐγενήθητε ἐγγὺς) all the members of the community. And that occurs concretely, in the blood of Christ (ἐν τῷ αἵματι τοῦ Χριστοῦ), the very same physiological lifeblood that flowed through and out of his veins and now flows through our own veins, for we already form one human body. To do so in Christ means that we recognize our being human by embracing our own transience in the light of risen life. All humans share the same 99.5% of our DNA. Already we humans are one organic whole. Even the amount of melanin in our skin has no DNA blood marker. Our evolutionary past means that neither race nor ethnicity mean anything—all are social constructs that are negated whenever we live in Christ, or elicit the desire for awakening (bodhicitta). Or seek truth within other culturally arisen paths of wisdom and compassion. The time has long passed when adherents of any one faith tradition can realistically hope to convert all the adherents of other traditions. Too often we confuse the appeal and efficacy of our own path with an assumed superiority above all others.

For the Ephesians, the actual cross lay in the past of their Jesus tradition. In their now, the members of the Ephesian community are enlivened by Christ’s risen life to share the life force of that risen body. For them, Christ in his risen body presently abides at the right hand of the Father, while yet his blood flows through our veins, for as the head of the body of the church, the exalted Christ is indivisible with his everyday followers. What on earth does that mean? Does it mean that the transcendent Christ remains incarnate in this blood-flowing immanence, through the church that is us? Perhaps. Churches often confess the presence of Christ as their living foundation. Better, possibly, is to confess an apophatically transcendent Christ—which takes on enunciable meaning only as he is indivisible with the immanent, conventional life of his embodied church. Arguments over apophasis versus kataphasis then take on significance only within a trinitarian teaching, wherein the transcendent emptiness of the Father is enfolded within the conventional Christ in an ongoing path of Spirit practice. For Jews today, that threefold pattern signifies that the indescribable G-d is embodied in Torah, Mishnah, and Talmud, as they practice the path therein elaborated. (The Talmud, however, is immense—2,711 pages of rabbinic discussion—so that, together with expositions by modern rabbis, practice entails lifelong study.)

When Paul encountered the risen Christ on the roadway (Acts 9:1–9), Jesus asked him, Why do you persecute me?, not, Why do you persecute my followers? Perhaps the meaning is simply that because we embrace the cross with its self-emptying power, our consciousness is enabled to evolve differently—from delusion to faith, from greed to sharing, from hatred of Jesus’ followers to love of them as the continuing body of Christ. In such multiform patterns of consciousness, the body and blood of Christ becomes a proliferative metaphor, employed in varied ways to signal our unity with God in Christ, nourishing justice, peace, and unity. As Jesus knew that he approached his death in Jerusalem, so did Martin Luther King Jr. realize that his end was near, which is why he preached non-violence in the hope of breaking the repetitive engendering of racial enmity and violence. We are all blood siblings of Black people in Christ because we share the same human blood, no matter how that blood will be poured out, whether by accidental injury, as the victim of rage, or in battle, or decorously pumped out by a mortician and poured down the drain. Our blood is our own, but only for a time.

For Paul, Christ practice was all about sharing in the dying and rising of Christ. Which is why it is so striking that this later Deutero-Pauline author of Ephesians made only one brief reference to the cross—as the instrumental cause for our salvation, stressing our share in Christ’s risen life. For Ephesians, it was all about risen life and the power of the resurrection. Still, to have his lifeblood circulate together with ours signifies the unity of people who live in peace beyond the borders of life and death—a heuristically realized peace as described in Ephesians. In our text, the end-time is already inscribed upon our bodies and minds because both body and mind are to be one with Christ. The physical limits of our bodies are stretched to participate in the one Christ body and our minds are to empty themselves of self-clinging, as Paul stresses in Philippians. Perhaps our Hellenized Jewish-Christian author wished at all costs to contrast his community’s already-accomplished social harmony in Christ with the more recent Roman peace that was achieved only through the empire’s suppression of the Jewish rebellion²⁸—the latter accomplished by military might, the former through the Spirit energy of the mind of no-self-left-to-protect. In Paul’s words, I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me (Gal 2:20).

Although blood imagery is familiar in our long tradition, in ancient times blood was not so closely associated with the cross. Crucifixion itself is not a particularly bloody affair, for the crucified dies by asphyxiation or heart failure, sometimes without shedding any blood at all. Jesus may have died when his heart stopped after repeated, brutal beatings. In the earliest passion narrative, in the Gospel of Mark, blood is not mentioned. But in Matthew the Jews are described as crying out to Pilate for Jesus’ death, saying, Let his blood be upon us and our children!²⁹ Later Christians sinfully adopted that infamous blood curse of Matthew to scapegoat Jews as God-killers; and to our lasting shame, once they gained political power, our Christian ancestors began to murder Jews in the name of a crucified Jew.

Soon after the time Ephesians was written, it became obvious that Jews were not flocking into the Christian communities. To later Christian believers, those Jews and their descendants were a scandal, most egregiously so in the Gospel of John. Why would they not follow Christ as their messiah? There was no penalty to claim to be the messiah, and many did. Furthermore, Jews had been the first to develop the Logos theology that Christians then employed to describe Jesus’ relationship to God,³⁰ so how could Jews not have understood the early Christian claim that Jesus was God’s wisdom in the world? Why could they not accept that? Perhaps, in ancient days, it may have had to do with the degradation and shame of crucifixion. Even more likely, Jews were repelled by the blatant anti-Jewish hatred and palpable bias so clearly expressed in the Gospels of Matthew and John. Or, perhaps they had hoped instead for a victorious messiah, one who actually delivered social and political liberation.

Possibly the Jews’ hesitancy had more to do with their ancient faith in the one God, which seemed to be violated by a Logos theology—Jewish or Christian—that would attribute a separate divine status to Jesus. Indeed, in the Gospel of John, Jesus does make claims that undermine traditional monotheism. Jews’ refusal to become Christ followers may also have been a reaction to passages in Ephesians and Hebrews that abolish Torah.³¹ But feelings engendered by the mutually antagonistic self-definitions must have been more visceral than any mere theological disagreement. Ephesians 2:14–15 states that Christ nullified Torah viscerally, in his own flesh (ἐν τῇ σαρκὶ αὐτοῦ). And if we would heed the words of biblical scholar and rabbi Samuel Sandmel (1911–1979), the Gospel of John is the source of an anti-Semitism that has bedeviled western culture since first it was penned. Because there is so much that is beautiful in the Johannine Gospel—the mutual abiding of Jesus within his followers and they within Jesus, and both within the Father and the Spirit—many wish to stress its devotional character. But, despite being our most cherished mystic document, the Gospel of John unfortunately has for centuries provided justification for Christian hatred of Jews. Anglican church historian Henry Chadwick (1920–2008), on the question of the historical accuracy of John’s Gospel, and its enmity toward the Jews:

[Third-century theologian] Origen likewise sees that the fourth evangelist’s divergences from the synoptic tradition are bound up with theological rather than historical considerations: it was the purpose of the evangelists to give the truth, where possible, at once spiritually and corporeally (or outwardly), but where this was impossible, to prefer the spirit to the body, the true spiritual meaning being often preserved, as one might say, in the corporeal falsehood. None can understand the profundity of the gospel unless he has first, with the [Johannine] author, leant on Jesus’s breast.³²

Yet leaning on Jesus’ breast does not lessen this Gospel’s anti-Semitism. Deeply felt mystic experiences do not of themselves cure us of conventional enmity and hatred. Our ancestors read all the Gospels as theologically driven lives of Jesus and understood John’s portrait of the Jews as historically accurate, and valid far beyond the time of Jesus’ own life, death, and resurrection. The Gospel of John became a pillow for pious Christians to smother the life from Jews. It was in that Gospel that the strongest anti-Jewish polemic appeared, for John’s community was depicted therein as having been expelled from the synagogue.³³

By the