Some Radical Christological Thoughts for Easter: A Re-enchantment of Jesus Without Supernaturalism, and a Naturalistic Conception of the Reality of the Resurrection
Charles Bledsoe, Super Apostle, Apr 17, 2025
Please bear with me while I preface my thoughts about the meaning and resurrection of Jesus with an opening philosophical excursus. Repurposing two terms from the philosophy of Jean Paul Sartre (i.e., not using them quite the way he did) I would say that a life consists of two ways of being. Our first mode of existence is pour soi, being for itself, an activity and process of growing and exercising our subjectivity and agency; exercising one’s subjectivity and agency to make self-creative choices; and creative self-actualization.
When this phase of one’s life, one’s pour soi mode of existence as an experiencing subject and agent living toward its self-actualization comes to an end, i.e., when we die, we then transition to an en soi way of being, an existence as an object, for the experience of others. We’re resurrected, as it were, from the perishing of our subjecthood into a new life as a subjectively encountered object that contributes to the self-creativity and enrichment of others. Our en soi existence involves our postmortem activity in the lives of our posterity, our being objectified by those engaged in the pour soi mode of life. (To give a nod to another philosopher, this is what the Alfred North Whitehead calls our “objective immortality”.)
Recall, however, that I said I’m not using the pour soi and en soi terminology strictly like Sartre does. For Sartre a thing whose mode of being is en soi not only lacks the ability to experience, it’s also static and lacks the ability to change and grow. But in the ontology of life, the understanding of what it means to be alive that I subscribe to, in our en soi phase we’re not mere dead objects; rather, we’re still very much alive in terms of being able to change and grow, which we do by others creatively engaging with our memory, or the legacy of influence they inherit from us.
And now I finally get to Jesus. For Jesus, his pour soi existence of course ended with his crucifixion, but then like all perished individuals he was resurrected into his en soi phase. In Jesus’ case his en soi existence has been particularly impactful because his followers soon came to believe that he had been resurrected in a more literal sense, and started a movement that has led to some 80 generations of people all over the world engaging and being powerfully affected by his actions, teachings, and values.
But this engagement is a creative one, meaning that it involves not merely Christians objectifying Jesus in their own lives, shaping their self-actualization by the example he set, but rather their interacting inventively with what they’ve inherited from him. From almost immediately after his execution Christ-believers began to refigure, reconceptualize their master, making his en soi existence vital, lively with their own Christological dealings with, additions to, and transformations of it.
What does this mean for Christology, and for the question who is the real Jesus? From the perspective I’ve been articulating it means that Jesus isn’t limited to the historical Jesus, to what he was while he was still in his mortal coil, to Jesus the man and apocalyptic preacher from Galilee. He’s also what Christians have crafted him into, a model of holiness; a revelation that God’s nature is love, that God is immanent in the world, that God’s mode of power is persuasive not controlling and dominative, and that God works to claim life’s constructive, healing, and renewing possibilities from the deathly and destructives events of the past.
This has all become a part of the truth of Jesus, whether or not the flawed historical Jesus, the Jesus who was not ahead of his time in every respect, Jesus the failed apocalyptic preacher would bear much resemblance to it. But Christians haven’t made it all up out of whole cloth. The failed apocalyptic preacher also preached an ethic of love that has made his en soi life ripe for being worked into the morally and spiritually beautiful form it’s taken for many.
The historical Jesus then is continuous with the idealized Jesus of his en soi phase. They’re a single process. There is not a disconnect or absolute distinction between the “real Jesus” and the Jesus of faith. The Jesus of faith—rather than being a mere myth, story, or theological construct as many secular-minded folks view him—is the “real Jesus'” resurrection into aliveness in the spirituality of his devotees, as a vital force shaping their pour soi existence toward ideal existential possibilities, toward realizing life-affirming possibilities even from the deathly and destructive events of their own past; which to my way of thinking is the real way that we participate in Jesus’ resurrection.
This is my Christology and Resurrection without supernaturalism; a naturalistic perspective that appreciates the Jesus of faith, and that reconceives the Resurrection to be just as meaningful as Paul’s, Peter’s, or John’s understanding of it, or that found in the dogmas and creeds of the churches. And, by the way, it’s a naturalistic perspective that nevertheless gives God a role, not at all a traditional one, but rather a role as a muse-like force inspiring our creative molding of Jesus’ en soi form. I’m curious to know if any of this makes sense to, or finds favor with anyone else here?
Robert Draper, Apr 17
Yes, I think it makes sense. With regard to Jesus, the “en soi” phase that followed indicates to me that he must have been one hugely charismatic figure during the “pour soi” phase. The life, death and Resurrection? of this itinerant preacher from rural Galilee inspired persecution, evangelism, martyrdom, warfare, magnificent cathedrals, the Vatican, fabulous artwork, beautiful music, festive holidays, a mind-boggling amount of literature, and some 2 billion followers 2000 years later. It literally changed the world, or much of it, like nothing else before or since. But is it all naturalistic or is something “supernatural,” something beyond the physical realm involved here? I can’t help but wonder.
Charles Bledsoe, Super Apostle, Apr 17
Robert Draper Robert Draper I agree, there’s more to what Jesus’ en soi existence, as I’m calling it, grew into than just the input into it of Christ-believing human beings. In my theological perspective God has a role, but I don’t conceive it or God to be supernatural or controlling. I hold God to be an element of this natural reality that we all participate in; not a metaphysical alien to it, capable of supernaturally overriding our freedom or nature’s operating system, so to speak, and imposing “His” will.
That means that I certainly don’t envision divine power to be the controlling kind of power traditionally attributed to God. Rather, I’m a theological finitist who conceives God’s efficacy in our lives and the universe to be limited to the power of inspiration. Mine is a theology of a God from whom we receive noncoercive guidance via an empathic connection—guidance we’re inherently at liberty to follow or flout.
From this perspective I would say that God’s role in shaping Jesus’ en soi life has simply been to inspire and guide our engagement with it. Sometimes God’s efforts to do so has met with receptiveness, and sometimes not. This is why Jesus is such a mixed bag, why he’s both a model of love and godliness, and also the centerpiece of a Christian Creed that has been complicit in so much hate and ungodliness, in crusades, inquisitions, colonialism, slavery, and genocide. This mixed and contradictory en soi career of Jesus argues that God is at work in, but not in control of its evolution.
Robert Draper, Apr 18
Charles Bledsoe “That means that I certainly don’t envision divine power to be the controlling kind of power traditionally attributed to God. Rather, I’m a theological finitist who conceives God’s efficacy in our lives and the universe to be limited to the power of inspiration. Mine is a theology of a God from whom we receive noncoercive guidance via an empathic connection—guidance we’re inherently at liberty to follow or flout.”
Did the God that you envision then come into being along with the rest of the universe or “pre-exist”? Is this God a “conscious” being or a divine inspirational force of some other sort?
Charles Bledsoe, Super Apostle, Apr 18
Robert Draper I would say that God and the creative universe are equaprimordial. God and the universe are of equal fundamentality. Which is to say that God is for all practical purposes an inherent and age-infinite aspect of the creative universe, neither preexisting nor preexisted by it.
And note the term “age-infinite”. I subscribe to an infinite-past cosmology, a concept of the universe as an aseitous, unoriginated creative matrix and process. In my usage the word “universe” doesn’t refer merely to the astronomical universe that began with a big bang event 13-14 billion years ago. The current astronomical universe is just an epoch of a beginningless and endless duration (to borrow Bergson’s term), a duration with respect to which the question which came first, God or the universe becomes a chicken and egg pseudoquestion.
Speaking technically from my Whiteheadian perspective, the creative universe then is logically but not chronologically prior to God. Which is to say that, using the language of Boehme, I hold that the creativity of the universe is its and God’s Ungrund, bottomless metaphysical base reality, an activity or process that interminably goes all the way down, like William James’ turtles. And God is an effect of this base reality that shares its bottomlessness, that endlessly goes all the way down with it. Given this equaprimordiality the question of priority doesn’t even arise.
(And no, “equaprimordial” is not a neologism of mine, and a weasel word. A little background on the term. It was coined by theologian John Macquarrie, as a translation of Heidegger’s term gleichursprünglich. Here’s a definition from a Heidegger lexicon published by Cambridge University: “Two or more different phenomena are equiprimordial (equally original or co-original; gleichursprünglich) if they are mutually interdependent and can only be understood in relation to each other, and if in addition they are not based on a common, more fundamental, phenomenon. They belong to a common phenomenon and highlight different aspects of it, but are not reducible to it. Furthermore, there is no hierarchy between equiprimordial phenomena, no phenomenon is more basic than the other.”)
Craig Wells, Apr 17, Retired Technology Educator
A powerful summation of an evolutionary process! Intriguing to say he least. I am really working hard to articulate a worldview that pays homage to my evangelical past and my unaffiliated present. Process theology has been the best fit but still FEELS overcomplicated and lacking. This recovering exVangelical would love for you to follow up with / suggest some specific readings that have most influenced the views you have expressed.
Charles Bledsoe, Super Apostle, Apr 17
Craig Wells Yes, unfortunately some of the seminal works in process philosophy and theology are quite technical and most people who undertake to read them find them to be “overcomplicated” and opaque. (This of course includes Whitehead’s Process and Reality. There’s an amusing anecdote, perhaps apocryphal, perhaps not, that illustrates this. The books was originally delivered as a series of Gifford lectures, and on the first day the room was packed because Whitehead was a genius and an intellectual celebrity. But his audience found his lecture to be so incomprehensible that on the second day he found himself lecturing to an almost empty room. LOL.)
This is why I presented my perspective in non-Whiteheadian language, and repurposed well-known Sartrean terms. My hope was that this would make tmy process thinking more accessible.
Regarding your request, the books that have most influenced the perspective on offer in my post are works of process philosophy and theology that are indeed too technical or “overcomplicated” for the majority of folks. In recent years, however, thinkers in the process community have been endeavoring to detechnicalize and present process thought in an easy to process form. Jay McDaniel is a part of this effort at popularization, his book What is Process Thought? Seven Answers to Seven Questions is not at all overcomplicated. You might also wish to check out his website, Open Horizons: https://www.openhorizons.org/christian-process-theology-an-introduction-by-jay-mcdaniel.html .
There’s also a theological school of thought that’s in part an offshoot of process theology, called open and relational theology. One of its popular authors is Thomas Jay Oord. He’s written many great books that have influenced my perspective. The majority of them are nontechnical. (He’s so advanced in his views that he was recently put on trial by his evangelical church and convicted of heresy, defrocked, and excommunicated. To my mind that’s all to his credit.)
Here’s a link to a book by Lewis Ford, one of the big names in process theology, The Lure of God: A Biblical Background for Process Theism. The entire book is available to read at this link. https://www.religion-online.org/book/the-lure-of-god-a-biblical-background-for-process-theism/
A great introduction to process philosophy is Process Theology: A Basic Introduction, by C. Robert Mesle.
There’s also Process Theology: A Guide for the Perplexed, by Bruce Epperly. Epperly has also written a series of great nontechnical, short books on various aspects of process thought. They’re available on Amazon for a couple of dollars each.
The eminent process theologian Marjorie Suchocki has written a book in which she sets forth her own process theology of death, the title is The End of Evil: Process Eschatology in Historical Context. But be warned, this one is technical and not an easy read for someone not already familiar with process philosophy.
While dying the brilliant process thinker David Ray Griffin wrote a nontechnical books about life after death titled James and Whitehead on Life After Death. I recently read it as a part of my preparation for having a major surgery with a potential for life-threatening complications.
John Cobb (who is practically the founding father of contemporary process theology) has of course authored a number of great books.
And there’s a great book on process theology and the Bible by a religious studies professor and New Testament scholar named Ronald L. Farmer, Process Theology and Biblical Interpretation. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Process_Theology_and_Biblical_Interpreta/lwEhEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0
Joseph Warren, Super Apostle, Apr 17
Moses, the Buddha and Mohammed did much the same. It was not until after their lives ended did their second act unfold in completely inspired, profound, and horrible directions. How to disentangle those results, both past and current, from our understanding of the Historical confounds the bravest efforts.
Charles Bledsoe, Super Apostle, Apr 17
Joseph Warren I think that disentangling would be the wrong project. In my view their pour soi and en soi existences, their career while embodied and their postmortem career are continuous and inseparable. I think that the better project would be to seek a more holistic, integrative understanding of historical figures. That is, in the case of Jesus, an interdisciplinary approach that brings what historical-critical biblical scholarship is able to tell us about him into dialogue with theology and philosophy and the perspectives and insights they have to offer, producing a more panoramic vision of his totality.
Joseph Warren, Super Apostle, Apr 17
So the living George Washington can be integrated with present and past interpretations of the man? Interesting. Sort of biography annotated within all temporal evaluations and judgements.
How about blatantly bad or biased judgements?
Charles Bledsoe, Super Apostle, Apr 17
Joseph Warren Weeding them out will always be a work in progress—a service performed by good critical scholars such as Drs. Mendez and Ehrman.
Joe Ricciardi, Apr 17
It isn’t much good having anything exciting, if you can’t share it with somebody. Winnie-the-Pooh
Really nice sharing Charles.
Two lines stick out for me:
“…Christians have crafted him into a model…”
“…made his life ripe for being worked into the…form it’s taken…”
To even try to articulate why would be outside the scope of a reply, so carry on!
Charles Bledsoe, Super Apostle, Apr 17
Joe Ricciardi Thank you. And yes, the why is indeed a complex question. Critical biblical scholarship can be of significant help answering it, but it’s really an interdisciplinary project and the answer that project produces will be outside of the parameters of inquiry and methodological scope of biblical scholarship.
As for the strictly historical factors, I think it merely affirming of the meaning of Jesus to his followers and not a slight to him to posit that their response to his execution, their cognitive dissonance-reducing response of exalting him into some manner of divinity, did as much to set the trajectory of his postmortem career as his personal qualities and teachings.
I think that however we explain it, the disciples’ experience of encountering the resurrected Jesus is the germinal moment in what I’m calling the en soi phase of Jesus’ existence, in which he begins to grow into the Jesus of faith. If he had not been crucified, and if there had been no post-crucifixion vision of him, regardless of how spiritually beautiful he might have been he would likely have become just another Apollonius of Tyana, Egyptian Prophet, or Theudas; i.e., a first-century teacher or messiah who faded into obscurity, not the “Son of God” worshipped by over two billion people over two thousand years later.
His qualities indeed made it possible for him to be crafted into the Christ, but it was the belief of early Christ-believers in his resurrection and its meaning that was the critical catalyst for his postmortem glow-up into an incarnation of the divine, a vehicle for insights about God, and the Light of the World.
