The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For and Believe

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As happens with each of Rohr’s books, there’s a lot of fruit and many seeds. Consider, for example, the many possible applications in the spiritual practices of creativity, imagination, and attention, including in the visual and performing arts, based on this: Drawing on scripture, history and spiritual practice, Rohr articulates a transformative view of Jesus Christ as a portrait of God’s constant, unfolding work in the world. ‘God loves things by becoming them,' he writes, and Jesus’ life was meant to declare that humanity has never been separate from God – except by its own negative choice. When we recover this fundamental truth, faith becomes less about proving Jesus was God, and more about learning to recognize the Creator’s presence all around us and in everyone we meet. The acequias, which are run by the individual communities through which they flow, have gates that control the levels of the water that comes from the Rio Grande to help irrigate farmland. Likely originally dug by Native Americans, the acequias system was expanded during the Spanish colonial period in the 17th and 18th centuries. The Universal Christ is the unfolding and revelation of God throughout time and history. Perhaps to show that these ideas are not heretical, Rohr begins by quoting Karl Rahner, one of the central theologians of 20 th century Catholicism, in the frontmatter to The Universal Christ: “The only really absolute mysteries in Christianity are the self-communication of God in the depths of existence — which we call grace, and in history — which we call Christ.”

In his decades as a globally recognized teacher, Richard Rohr has helped millions realize what is at stake in matters of faith and spirituality. Yet Rohr has never written on the most perennially talked about topic in Christianity: Jesus. Most know who Jesus was, but who was Christ? Is the word simply Jesus’ last name? Too often, Rohr writes, our understanding has been limited by culture, religious squabbling, and the human tendency to put ourselves at the centre. The Apostle Paul will speak the final word to Richard Rohr, who has turned the gospel itself upside down.

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In his book "Acequia Culture," historian José Rivera describes how the aqueducts play an important cultural and even spiritual role in New Mexico, where annual blessings of the irrigation ditches often combine Catholic and pagan elements. See Douglas Groothuis and Sarah Geis, “Examining Contemplative Prayer,” Bibliotheca Sacra, 172 (January–March 2015). Rohr’s teachings are mentioned and critiqued several times in this paper. Creation: God—from the Big Bang onward—was already “incarnate” in all things: “This self-disclosure of whomever you call God into physical creation was the ‘first incarnation’ (the general term for any enfleshment of spirit), long before the personal, second incarnation that Christians believe happened with Jesus” (12). Rohr writes that “God loves all things by becoming them” (16, 20). Using these passages and others, advocates of the Cosmic Christ concept take a mystical view of the cosmos as showing the power, goodness, and concern of Christ for His creation. In light of its mystical and esoteric characteristics, a concise and clear definition of the Cosmic Christ or Universal Christ is hard to formulate. Generally, it seems the idea is that Christ is deeply concerned with the redemption and renewal of the cosmos and that this concern is equal to His concern for the glory of God and the salvation of mankind. References:
[1] Visit universalchrist.org to learn much, much more about the Universal Christ. Or read my book, The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For, and Believe (Convergent: 2019).

Rohr gave this presence a name. For him, the Cosmic Christ is the spirit that is embedded in—and makes up—everything in the universe, and Jesus is the embodied version of that spirit that we can fall in love with and relate to. (Their simultaneous distinctness and oneness can be difficult for an outsider to grasp; Rohr describes “The Universal Christ” as a sequel to “ The Divine Dance,” his book about the mysteries of the Trinity.) He uses many of the same verses as the early Franciscans to support his claims. “Christ’s much larger, universe-spanning role was described quite clearly in—and always in the first chapters of—John’s Gospel, Colossians, Ephesians, Hebrews, and 1 John, and shortly thereafter in the writings of the early Eastern fathers,” he writes. He believes that, after the schism between the Eastern and Western Churches, in 1054 A.D., the Eastern Church held onto a more expansive vision of Christ, but the Western Church increasingly focussed on Jesus the man. “We gradually limited the Divine Presence to the single body of Jesus, when perhaps it is as ubiquitous as light itself—and uncircumscribable by human boundaries.” The notion of Jesus as a god-king—wearing a golden crown and seated on a throne—was pushed by political rulers, who used it to justify their own power, but it limited our understanding of divinity. “It was like trying to see the universe with a too-small telescope,” Rohr writes. See Walter Martin, “Scaling the Language Barrier,” Kingdom of the Cults (1965, reprint, Minneapolis, MN: Bethany Press, 2002). Rohr came to his thinking about the Universal Christ through early Franciscan teachings. In the thirteenth century, Francis rebelled against a Catholic Church that had become fixated on its own pomp and hierarchy; he renounced worldly goods, lived in a cave, and found God in nature, revealed to him in figures such as Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Brother Fire, and Sister Water. “His was an entirely intuitive world view,” Rohr said. Later, Franciscan theologians gave heft to Francis’s holistic universe by tying it to scripture—for example, to a passage of Colossians that reads, “The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible. . . . He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” This, they argued, was evidence that God is present in the natural world. In some ways, it is rather odd that the book carries an endorsement from Bishop Michael Curry, whose frequent description of the Church as the Jesus Movement encourages us to look at the particular example of Jesus himself and his early followers. In Rohr’s view, our sights should not be set so much on the historical Jesus but, as the title of the book indicates, on “the universal Christ” to whom he points. As Rohr cheerfully admits, “I am really a panentheist . . . exactly like both Jesus and Paul.”Anyone who has made a confession of faith in Jesus Christ should read this book to grasp more fully the vast and startling implications of this belief. This is Richard Rohr at his best, providing an overall summation of his theological insights that have been life-changing for so many.” Building on Scripture such as Colossians 3:11 — "There is only Christ. He is everything and he is in everything" — and Colossians 1:19-20 — "Through him all things are reconciled, everything in heaven and everything on earth" — Rohr believes that "everything, without exception, is the outpouring of God."

There is something somnolent in Rohr’s sunlit satisfaction that everyone’s fine and everything’s okay. No one with real problems in life—a violent gang infesting one’s street, an alcohol or drug addiction, a family member who committed suicide—will find much encouragement in learning that “Christ is another name for everything.” Those crushed by life might respond to Rohr’s Panglossian optimism with outrage. Despite Rohr’s talk in The Universal Christ about overcoming social privilege, this is a book likely to be read by the comfortable and privileged few. It’s not a book that someone in a homeless shelter is going to read or appreciate. To quote Dorothy Parker, “This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown aside with great force.” Real Christian Spirituality

A Kindle search finds no reference to three other passages that single out Jesus as the only Lord and Savior: Matthew 11:27, Acts 4:12, and 1 Timothy 2:5. Rohr sees the Christ everywhere, and not just in people. He reminds us that the first incarnation of God is in Creation itself, and he tells us that "God loves things by becoming them." Just for that sentence, and there are so many more, I cannot put this book down. Y]ou and I can reopen that ancient door of faith with a key, and that key is the proper understanding of a word that many of us use often, but often too glibly. That word is Christ. Without any apology, lightweight theology, or fear of heresy, I can appropriately say that Venus was also Christ for me," he wrote.

Rohr’s attempts to downplay Jesus and extol a false version of “the Christ” notwithstanding, the Incarnation was a one-of-a-kind and once-for-all event. An infinite God cannot become anything finite. Even in the Incarnation, Jesus’ divine and human natures remain distinct and do not blend. As the Council of Chalcedon (451) stated, Christ is “truly God and truly man,” one divine person “in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union.” 20 The word Christ means “anointed one.” The divine anointing began with the first incarnation when God decided to show God’s self, almost 13.8 billion years ago. We now call it the Big Bang. Franciscan philosopher John Duns Scotus basically taught that the first idea in the mind of God was Christ. Christ was the Alpha point. Good biblical theology calls creation itself the birth of the Christ, the materialization of God. Whenever matter and spirit coinhere, coincide, you have the Christ Mystery, which is a phrase the Apostle Paul introduces. Paul has a deep intuition of this, which leads to his understanding of the Eucharistic Body of Christ. Paul intuits that this incarnation of Christ is spread throughout creation, human nature, and even the elements of bread and wine. It’s everywhere.

See Douglas Groothuis, “Pantheism and Panentheism,” in Paul Copan, et al., Dictionary of Christianity and Science (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017). The word panentheism does not appear in The Universal Christ.