Michael Gorman Inhabiting The Cruciform Christ Analysis

The crucifixion of Christ is one of the central defining moments in human history. The revelation of God in the cruciform Christ is the central defining image for Christians. This is at the very heart of the case being made by Michael Gorman in Inhabiting the Cruciform God. Gorman, examining Paul's soteriology, makes the argument that for Paul justification is centered on theosis. Gorman thesis centers around defending his definition of this theosis in Paul's writings. Gorman writes, “Theosis is tranformative participation in the kenotic, cruciform character of God through Spirit-enable conformity to the incarnate, crucified, and resurrected/glorified Christ.”1 The following will examine Gorman's defense of this thesis focusing especially

God is being right to himself in the denial of himself in the person of Christ for the sake of the life of the world. Many wrongly suggest that justification is solely for the pardoning of sins apart from any action on our part. This wrongly suggests that salvation is either a universal experience or one predicated on God's predestination of the elect few. As Greathouse writes, “This [Rom. 3:23-24] might mistakenly be taken to imply that human redemption is as extensive and all-inclusive as human sinfulness. This is true in potential, but God's free gift of redemption is not unconditional, nor is salvation universal.”5 As Gorman correctly points out justification, as understood through the life of Christ, is one of both sacrifice and participation. Christ dies to himself, while participating in the life of God, in full hope of the resurrection. Justification is not without participation on the part of the recipient. The cruciformity of Christ is the breaking open of the life of God for the sake of the life of all creation. The response then becomes from humans to the divinely initiated act of redemption of Christ on the cross. Participation in fiath, as Gorman indicates, is the ongoing sharing in the co-crucifixion of Christ as means of living in the hope of also sharing in the co-resurrection of Christ, living out Christlikeness in the power of

Justification by faith alone is an important point of Paul in Romans, however the matter of whose faith is less clear. Faith, as basis for justification, can be viewed in one of two ways: the faithfulness of Christ or the human response of faith. Greathouse and Lyons suggest that perhaps it is both. As they write, “If Law as the system of salvation by human achievement is rejected as the means of being made righteous, faith as the system of trusting the crucified Christ alone for salvation includes both aspects of faith as used in Romans.”6 Consequently, justification by faith must be first understood as the display of Christ faithfulness to which humans can then respond to the divinely initiated act as an invitation to participate in the life of God. In other words, the faithfulness of God, displayed in the faithfulness of Christ that bring justification to all who believe, is an invitation of response to participate in the life of God through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit to live lives of