Elizabeth Johnson's Quest For The Living God

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At the core of Elizabeth Johnson’s theology of a living God lies a God who is active here and now. In “Quest for the Living God,” Johnson found God had acted in human history through incarnate Word and the renewing Spirit. He has done so with the historical person of Jesus Christ and the grace of the Spirit. Jesus manifested himself and reached us in person. The Spirit travelled with us in the changes of history. Yet, she defines that God is an ineffable and incomprehensible mystery. As Aquinas wrote, “God surpassed whatever we can understand and account for in terms of our thought.” As biblical history shows, God is in compassionate solidarity with people. God reaches us in our concrete lives, which makes Christianity not a religion of souls only, but one of embodied souls. On the Spirit, she explains “the spirit creates, indwells, compassionately loves, and empowers the world on its great adventure. In her view, God is not a boss in the cloud. …show more content…

Soelle insists that being a Christian means more than going to church on Sunday and that one should ‘live out’ God by standing against social injustice. Her radical Christianity presents political alliance of the sufferers for a solution of tension between the oppressor and the oppressed. In resisting the status quo, this liberation theologian commends the idea of human beings as the image of God and maintains we can act like God. She also calls for a democratization of mysticism in church dogmas so that God should be available for all. In Theology for Skeptics”, she raises two issues. Firstly, she contends that the word, God, became an authoritarian expression that legitimizes the social structure of domination. We should honor God not because he is a superior power, but because He submerges us in His love. Secondly, Soelle stresses God should be our partner in justice to secure our autonomy in the face of dehumanizing

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