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

by Richard Rohr

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - With a new afterword - From one of the world's most influential spiritual thinkers, a long-awaited book exploring what it means that Jesus was called "Christ," and how this forgotten truth can restore hope and meaning to our lives.

"Anyone who strives to put their faith into action will find encouragement and inspiration in the pages of this book."--Melinda Gates

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's last name? Too often, Rohr writes, our understandings have been limited by culture, religious debate, and the human tendency to put ourselves at the center.

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's 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.

Thought-provoking, practical, and full of deep hope and vision, The Universal Christ is a landmark book from one of our most beloved spiritual writers, and an invitation to contemplate how God liberates and loves all that is.

Genres: Spirituality, Religion, Nonfiction, Theology, Christianity, Faith, Christian

272 pages, Paperback

First published March 5, 2019

About the author

Fr. Richard Rohr is a globally recognized ecumenical teacher bearing witness to the universal awakening within Christian mysticism and the Perennial Tradition. He is a Franciscan priest of the New Mexico Province and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Fr. Richard's teaching is grounded in the Franciscan alternative orthodoxy—practices of contemplation and expressing itself in radical compassion, particularly for the socially marginalized.

Fr. Richard is author of numerous books, including Everything Belongs, Adam’s Return, The Naked Now, Breathing Under Water, Falling Upward, Immortal Diamond, Eager to Love, and The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation (with Mike Morrell).

Fr. Richard is academic Dean of the Living School for Action and Contemplation. Drawing upon Christianity's place within the Perennial Tradition, the mission of the Living School is to produce compassionate and powerfully learned individuals who will work for positive change in the world based on awareness of our common union with God and all beings. Visit cac.org for more information.

Reviews

[Jaidee]

I picked this up for my Easter read. I did not know what to expect. This book has an extremely high rating thus far and I imagine that it has been helpful and enlightening to those readers.

I have decided to not rate this particular book as I do not want to dissuade anybody from reading it.

I do, however, want to briefly share my experience of Father Rohr's book. Father Rohr is a Franciscan priest who has started a school of Christian Contemplation with some colleagues in New Mexico. The curriculum looks very interesting.

Father Rohr appears to know his scripture very well and he applies it to an all encompassing, all loving and all compassionate experience of Christ. He emphasizes everyday mysticism, good works and a willingness to suffer and love and share with the disenfranchised. He is very inclusive of all people, faiths and philosophical inclinations. I found his understanding of Paul and Mary Magdalene particularly moving and effective. He also includes some of his own written prayers and meditations that were not so helpful or resonant for me as I tried to work with them over several days.

I struggled to some and in some cases a lot with folksy tone, political correctness, his over criticism of what previous institutions have done poorly as opposed to a lot of the good and wisdom gathered as well as what appeared to be a fair bit of pandering to various disenfranchised groups. Although very knowledgeable in scripture his pulling in of neuroscience, depth psychology, politics and buddhism was flimsy. In a sermon or teaching this may have been sufficient but in a book of this type was very inadequate. He also injected a fair bit of his own ego and duality where he constantly stressed the importance of the release of self (in connection with Christ) and non-binary viewpoints.

I also found a fair bit of his own subjective experience extraneous and often presented as universal enlightenments as opposed to the personal.(ie his own)

I am glad that I read this but for me personally added little to my knowledge or spiritual growth.

[Reid Belew · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is so clearly the book Richard Rohr has been working to through every other book. In a way, it may be best to read this one first, then go back and treat other books as specific elaborations, having The Universal Christ as the context and foundation of them all.

I loved this book. I feel relieved to have read it.

I recommend it to anyone and everyone, even the nonreligious. If you take it at its word, it’s clear it will produce great change.

Big fan.

[Jeff · Rating 1 out of 5]

Update: I still think this book sucks. I still think Rohr does a terrible job of citing evidence. I still think Rohr doesn’t do history or theology well. I still think he pretends to be an academic when he’s a hack when it comes to academia. That being said, I couldn’t care less what Rohr (or any other Bible scholar, theologian, or mystic) believes.

[Alanna Schwartz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oof. How to describe this book? I took so long to read it because I had to put it down every few pages and digest what Rohr was saying. So many of my fears, hurts, and damage about the divine were healed through this book. It brings the message of Christ back to love, and love for all people, and all creation. The dedication for his dog at the beginning was enough to make me cry.
I now see and look for Christ in more— in the slushy sidewalk as I go to work, in the eyes of my parents, and in the people I work with. In the incarnation of “Christ,” Rohr points out that God loves things by becoming them, and that Christ is in every thing. I now understand that in a more whole and less religious way than ever before. My heart exhales.

[Robert D. Cornwall · Rating 3 out of 5]

Richard Rohr is one of the best known writers on spirituality. A Franciscan, he understands that there is a long tradition of spiritual writings to draw from. At the same time, he is open to other spiritual traditions, especially Buddhism. I have read a number of books and found many of them helpful, and even practical in orientation. The Universal Christ is, I believe, a followup to his previous book on the Trinity -- The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation. In this book he focuses on Christology.

I received an advanced reader's copy of the book, so I'm going off it. There may be additions, subtractions, and corrections to what I had in front of me, but I'm assuming that the essence of the book is present. The question that he seeks to address here is who is the Christ? In his estimation the answer to this question includes but is not limited to the person of Jesus of Nazareth. In other words he wants to challenge the idea that the incarnation of the divine presence was limited to the person of Jesus. He believes that this broader definition is true to Scripture and to early Christian thinking, especially in the Eastern Church.

In his mind, the universal Christ, or Christ principle, is in reality a a theory of everything. He defines himself as a panentheist, a position that I am drawn to. By this he means that God is in all things and all things are in God, but all things are not God. At the same time, his Christ principle, separated from Jesus, is in essence a template for all things. In this he draws from John 1.

This is a difficult book to describe as Rohr takes on a number of ideas and weaves them together. He wants to connect his Christian faith to a broader religious framework, one that is inclusive rather than exclusive. I expect some readers will find the book spiritually uplifting. Others may find it heretical. As for me, I found it a bit wearying. In other words, it didn't hit the spot for me.

I do have a few concerns, and they center around the way in which Rohr separates Jesus and Christ. I understand his desire to broaden the message, but I discerned a bit of supersessionism in his description of this movement. He has this evolutionary view of religion that leads out of traditonal Judaism to Jesus , who seems superior to Judaism. We see this in Rohr's description of Saul's movement beyond "his beloved by ethnic-bound, religion of Judaism toward a universal vision of religion, so much that he changed his Hebrew name to its Latin form, Paul." (p. 40). While I don't think Rohr is anti-Jewish, historically when we put too strong of a divide between the person of Jesus and the Christ, there is the temptation to reenvision the faith in ways that lead to a dismissal of Jesus' own origins, as if Christianity replaces Judaism. Further, with this idea of the Universal Christ, is there a temptation to overlay Christianity on top of other faith traditions. At the same time, is something lost in the Christian understanding of reality, if we simply think of Christ as as a world view.

To put it succinctly, as I read through the book, I found myself somewhat uncomfortable with the direction Rohr is moving. Others may have a different experience, but this is mine.

[Zine Smith · Rating 1 out of 5]

I started this book with high hopes. The title was very engaging. The introduction was wonderful. The first chapter concerned me. The second chapter was heretical in my opinion. Fr. Rohr has excellent theological training. I was shocked. Christ is the tile of Jesus as the promised Messiah not a loosely understood concept.

No one but the only son of the Father is the incarnation of God. Seeing the mark of the Creator in all people and creation is beautiful. Saying all people are an incarnation of God is completely contradictory to Scripture.

I cannot recommend this book at all.

[Raymond · Rating 4 out of 5]

My review was originally published on Medium: https://medium.com/interfaith-now/the...

Richard Rohr’s latest work was a hard book for me to read, mostly because it challenged my thinking as it relates to Jesus Christ. In it I learned that my Western mind has limited my understanding of the Christ. Rohr tells a story about how the Western and Eastern churches view Jesus differently. The Western Church views Christ as Jesus’ last name while the Eastern Church views the Christ as the spirit of God that existed before it incarnated in the physical embodiment of Jesus. Rohr makes the argument that the Western church should come back to the mindset of the Eastern Church so that it can be less individualistic and more communal.

What I like about Rohr’s book is that he turns everything you think you know on its head. Growing up I was always taught that if you love your neighbor then you love God (i.e. 1 John 4:20). Rohr turns it around by saying in order to love God you must first love nature, animals, humans, and then loving God comes naturally. I’m not much of a nature person but this revelation has caused me to look at these things in a new light. Loving nature and animals should be much easier than loving humans, which is more of a process.

Rohr’s explanation of how the two church’s viewed Jesus’ resurrection is also eye-opening. The Western church focuses solely on Jesus rising from the dead, while the Eastern church puts emphasis on Jesus pulling souls out of hell. The view that the Western church has that Jesus sends people to hell is wrong, Jesus leads a corporate exodus out of hell.

This is a book that will stay with me, it has caused me to try to see the Christ in the things and people I would least expect. That’s hard to do but the more I do it the more “Christian” I’ll become. I also learned that God speaks to us in our thoughts. I think I knew that but it was reinforced here, especially that the harsh thoughts are not of God they come from within. God speaks to us through grace.

If you are looking for a powerful book that will challenge your thoughts, look no further than Richard Rohr’s The Universal Christ.

Favorite Quotes:

“Faith at its essential core is accepting that you are accepted! We cannot deeply know ourselves without also knowing the One who made us, and we cannot fully accept ourselves without accepting God’s radical acceptance of every part of us.” -Rohr

“Remember, the only thing that separates you from God is the thought that you are separate from God!” -Rohr

“If any thought feels too harsh, shaming, or diminishing of yourself or others, it is not likely the voice of God…That is simply your voice.” -Rohr

“Christians are meant to be the visible compassion of God on earth more than ‘those who are going to heaven’.” -Rohr

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Never has a book so thoroughly reframed the concept of faith and God in my life as ‘The Universal Christ’ did. In elegance and sheer simplicity Richard Rohr encapsulated everything I have been reconstructing in my own life, and offered a hope that there is a better way, a universal application of understanding and love in a Divine Reality that transcends how our modern society has described God. This book offers an ancient and better way of understanding God, and will undoubtedly be with me for many years to come as I walk out my faith journey.

[Scriptor Ignotus · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the most striking characteristics of our contemporary moral discourse is our seeming inability to grasp the proper relationship between particulars and universals, or between individuals and groups. A black, gay actor says he was brutally assaulted by two white men who shouted racist and homophobic slurs, and all white men are blanketed with culpability under the original sin of whiteness. The two “white men” turn out to be Nigerian bodybuilders who helped the alleged victim stage the whole thing, and the very concepts of racism and homophobia are taken to be nothing more than defamatory lies invented by social malcontents to sow discord. A white nationalist murders 49 people at a mosque in New Zealand, and progressive activists in the United States pour out their wrath—on Chelsea Clinton.

We exist between two profundities that seem mutually exclusive: the life and example of an individual can serve as a powerful symbol of universal truths, and universal truths are recapitulated in pluriform ways within the lives of individuals. We are at all times being put together and pulled apart by the categories that form the currency of our understanding of reality. If we place too heavy an emphasis on the individual and particular, we lose sight of the broader social and cosmic forces that shape our personal circumstances. If we consider only the collective and universal, we subordinate the totality of the human person and reduce real people—ourselves and others—to instruments of ideas that can never encompass the whole of reality.

The dilemma is nothing new. Before it plagued our current cultural and political milieu it was a perennial object of contention among the theologians of our Christian past. It is impossible to develop a coherent account of sin, salvation, incarnation, atonement, and the dual nature of Christ without taking a stance on it. It is astonishing to note that for two thousand years, Christians have never fully agreed on what it means to say that Jesus died for our sins. They’ve all agreed that the death and resurrection of this one man somehow liberates all of humanity—indeed all of creation—from sin; but the precise logistics of the operation have been hazy at best.

In antiquity, the prevailing model of atonement was what scholars now call the Ransom Theory. This theory held that after the Fall of Adam and Eve, humanity was taken into the captivity of Satan. The only way for God to undo this captivity was to offer a ransom worthy of the entire human race: His Incarnate Son. Eager to claim his prize, Satan devoured Christ in death on the cross. But there was a catch. Humanity was in thrall to Satan because of original sin; since Christ was uncorrupted by original sin, He could not be held in death because He owed nothing to it, sharing as He does in the eternal life which is the nature of God. Thus Christ reemerged from death, humanity’s bond to Satan was broken, and Satan was left wishing he had read the terms and conditions before agreeing to the new Apple update.

Though it conjures some delightful imagery, the Ransom Theory didn’t sit well with the academic theologians of the middle ages for reasons that are probably clear. God and Satan are not equal powers waging a cold war over the fate of the world, so God would never be in the humiliating position of having to trade captives with him as if they were two generals. Neither does it seem appropriate that God would “trick” Satan in this way, even for such a worthy purpose. Beginning with Anselm of Canterbury in the eleventh century and being refined and reworked by the reformed theologians of the sixteenth, the Ransom model was superseded by the Substitution model, according to which Christ’s death was a repayment or restitution not to Satan, but to God the Father, whose honor and justice had been offended by human sin. Jesus substituted Himself in place of humanity by willingly paying a debt He did not owe, taking the sins of the world unto himself to make reconciliation between God and humanity possible.

I submit that the underlying theme of both The Universal Christ and Fr. Rohr’s work as a whole is his distaste for Substitutionary or Satisfactory models of atonement and his desire to rehabilitate the eastern, Johannine vision in the western church.

The Johannine model, often called the Christus Victor model in reference to the writings of a Swedish theologian named Gustaf Aulén in the 1930s, took the original Ransom Theory and modified it in a different way. Rather than being offered to Satan by God the Father as a ransom, which suggests an un-trinitarian disconnect between Father and Son, the Trinitarian God, incarnated in Christ, sojourned into death to defeat it on its own turf. Rather than a prickly piece of bait, Christus Victor imagines Christ as a knight going off to slay the dragon in its lair. Christ’s triumph over death is the decisive victory in an apocalyptic war between death and the creativity of God. That the battle was won through the self-giving of God in Christ is perfectly in keeping with God’s creative nature.

From beginning to end, eternally, God has been creating and perfecting the cosmos. Rohr draws a distinction between Jesus of Nazareth, the Galilean man who lived and died two thousand years ago, and Christ*, which he understands to be the universal principle of God’s self-outpouring creativity that underlies all of existence and its intelligibility to human beings. Creation itself is the “first incarnation”, and so the nature of the Christian God can and should be recognized in the utter giftedness of everything that is. The “second incarnation”—the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus—was the Trinity’s way of giving a human face to this universal truth and reawakening humanity to this preexisting incarnational reality. As created beings, we are all “incarnations” of God, and we are vindicated as such by our corporate solidarity in the universal Christ. We have never been separate from God or from one another, and our perceptions to the contrary are a symptom of that egocentric inwardness, in which we turn away from our divine foundation, that is the nature of sin.

It is a beautiful vision, and one that resonates highly with me. But I was put off by Rohr’s dismissal of the other atonement motifs—each of which has support in scripture and tradition—as primitive, juvenile, and violent. He gives all benefit of the doubt to his own understanding, and none to any others. It is unclear to me why Rohr thinks the Anselmian vision of Christ offering Himself to bear the burden of sin for which we are all culpable is violent, but the eastern vision of Christ storming the gates of Hell to liberate the righteous dead in a cosmological D-Day invasion is necessarily more peaceful. I reckon the apocalyptic, Johannine perspective occupied the imagination of the crusaders to a far greater extent than any quiet, personal reflection on how God takes responsibility for their—and MY—proclivity for evil.

Nor do I understand Rohr’s assertion that the Substitutionary understanding doesn’t prompt any change on the part of the believer, except perhaps for legitimating our cultures of punishment and revenge. That could be the case if the believer has a superficial understanding of scripture and tradition, but one can have an equally superficial understanding of the Christus Victor motif. Alternatively, the Substitutionary Christ can be a model of self-sacrifice and personal responsibility that every Christian can emulate. The nature of godliness is to take responsibility for the ills that afflict others. It doesn’t have to be violence and punishment all the way down; it can just as easily be self-sacrifice all the way down. Martin Luther King could have used his education to go anywhere and do anything. He could have left the segregated south behind, but instead he chose to live in the belly of the beast and work toward the dismantling of Jim Crow. He willingly drew the evil of racism onto himself and lost his life in the process, and his sacrifice caused a profound change in social consciousness. I think he demonstrates the potential that lies in personalizing the Substitutionary model of atonement.

Thus, we should be careful to let neither our personal nor our cosmic perspectives override one another. It may be in the navigation of the very interplay between them that we find our salvation.









*Rohr really should have used the word “Logos” instead of “Christ” in this sense. “Christ” connotes Jesus’s historical title as the promised Messiah of Israel, and is thus not the universal principle that Rohr refers to. Admittedly, The Universal Logos would not have made as good a book title.

[Christian Barrett · Rating 1 out of 5]

I always find it fascinating when theologians claim that they have found this new secret for the Christian life that has been over looked for two thousand years. Usually the secret they have found is not new, and rarely is it orthodox. Richard Rohr’s “The Universal Christ” is no different than many of these types of books, yet there are a few things that he does that separate him from other theologians I have read that fall prey to this way of thinking. First, Rohr claims to be Roman Catholic (he is actually a Franciscan Priest), yet he repeatedly speaks ill of the Pope and makes snide remarks at the Roman Catholic Church. As a Protestant I don’t necessarily disagree with these statements, but do find them odd for a Roman Catholic. Second, Rohr doesn’t present just one heretical view in this resource. Typically when theologians write a book that’s only 225 pages they present one idea, Rohr on the other hand presents at least four (panentheism, femininity of God, universal salvation, and some form of the incarnation that doesn’t see Jesus as fully God. I believe this last one to be closely aligned with Monarchianism). Third, typically these types of books that are really popular are decently written and well thought out, but Rohr’s work is probably one of the worst written books I have read from a pure literary standpoint. Overall, in this book Rohr seeks to point people to the Christ, and in doing saw he points them farther away from the biblical Messiah who is the Christ, the Son of God.

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Richard Rohr is my favorite priest-writer. His compassion shines forth from every page of his every book. This book is no exception.

Rohr presents Christ as an one expression of the face of God, while honoring other faiths and their worship of what he perceives as other expressions of God. His God is all-inclusive and all-loving. The greatest gift is God's love for us, which most of us have difficulty believing in and trusting.

Rohr's vision of Christ (Jesus post-Easter) is more traditional than the one portrayed by Marcus Borg, whose book I recently read and was intrigued, excited, and challenged by. His is the incarnational Jesus, the Son of God made man. For Rohr, that is an affirmation of God's embodied manifestation in the world, not only in Jesus, but is all people as well as in the world itself, the universe, all of nature.

This is not, however, only an embodied God but a transcendental one as well. God is both in us and beyond us, always available to us.

Rohr's God is with us in our suffering. He sees Jesus' appearance not simply as a transactional event, his death taking away our sin, but as a statement of how he is with us in our suffering, understanding our pain because he has also experienced it, compassionate and always available.

There are several exercises at the end to help us actually experience the Christ Rohr writes about. For Rohr, God is not reached analytically or by obeying the rules of the church or even by the sacraments although all these may help a person reach God. Rohr believes that ultimately God is experienced, not "understood" or explained.

He also believes that we best reach this experience when we are able to touch our own vulnerability. This usually happens when life breaks us in some way--but then, according to Rohr--each of us is challenged by our lives in some way. If we allow our pain or frustration to teach us, we can experience God in the midst of our suffering.

This is another wonderful book by Rohr and a terrific way to engage with his work. It speaks to those of us who consider ourselves both spiritual and material beings and wish to experience our life spiritually in ways that guide our actions as well.

[Nicholas McDonald · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really do not like the overuse of the word "heretic." I've been called a heretic for silly reasons, like mode of baptism and my beliefs about creation. So I don't throw the term out loosely. To be a heretic, for me, means that you're teaching things that contradict the universal testimony of the first 1,000 years of the united church. But I especially don't like overusing the word because we need it in special cases. Cases like Richard Rohr, who espouses a 2nd century heresy universally condemned by the church from its earliest years. After reading this book, I have to say, if Richard Rohr isn't a heretic...then no one is.

That's because this book is the most bold example I've seen of ancient Gnosticism in print. Rohr could have copied and pasted the Gospel of Thomas, quite honestly, and come out with something like this book. Rohr's faith is in fact based on American cultural intuitions. The Jesus who does not punish anyone is quite convenient for the privileged (see Miroslav Volf's "Exclusion and Embrace"), and his insistence that we are "not" our gender, culture or class is an ancient gnostic notion that pits spirit against body, and actually undermines the goodness of creation, and is in fact exactly what is behind the "colorblind" version of American racism.

Beyond that, Rohr's quotes from church fathers - both east and west - are taken out of context, in order to make points that both the eastern and western church have long condemned. For one small example - and these are on every single page - Rohr does mention the heresy of Gnosticism (see 1 John for the way the early church wrestled with this). He says that gnostics taught that we could know God through sound doctrine, since gnostic means "knowing". It's true that gnostic means "knowing." And in fact, Gnosticism did teach a form of "knowing". But Gnosticm's version of knowing had nothing to do with doctrine. It was actually about rejecting binaries (and thus, rejecting early Christian doctrines), embracing one-ness, having a higher "experience" of the Divine, and leaving behind the commandments of Jesus...In other words, all of the things Rohr is teaching us to do in this book.

I don't think Rohr really cares that he's taking this word out of context, because I think he must know that he is. Nor do I think he much cares that he does the same with the old/new testament scriptures he cites. For example, he claims that maybe "Christ" means "recognizing God in everything", which removes every culturally jewish understanding of this word to replace it with Rohr's more palatable, Americanized Jesus. In fact, separating "Jesus" and "Christ" was a very early Gnostic teaching.

Rohr goes on to call this an "evolutionary" view of religion. But this is almost heretic plagiarism. What he's actually teaching is a very particular version of Gnosticism called Marcionism, which saw the God of the Old Testament in opposition with The Christ. It's a strange thing to see Rohr complaining of the split of the eastern/western church whilst espousing Marcionism...which is a heresy both the eastern and western church universally condemned. Then again, I don't think Rohr really cares what the scriptures say. Or the church.

The point is to know what Richard Rohr thinks.

Or, more accurately, Rohr tells us what we white westerners think.

And if that's what you want to know, that's what you'll find here.

[Brian Fagan · Rating 4 out of 5]

My son read this book and discussed parts of it with me. He has a Masters in Divinity, and often the Christian books he reads, and the concepts he discusses are over my head. But it sounded compelling and he loaned it to me.

Richard Rohr is a Franciscan priest, and freely admits that his Christian spirituality has been deeply influenced by the teachings of St. Francis, and by Eastern religions and philosophy, which he has studied extensively in his world travels. His influences also include the thoughts and practices of the mystics. So he brings a broad-based, inclusive and what some would call holistic view to his teaching of the Bible, our savior Jesus Christ, and connecting to the world and the universe. The Universal Christ - How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For, and Believe is the first Rohr book that I've read, but based on its teachings I will say that his primary goal for Christians is their movement toward transformation, by which he means losing those ideas that inhibit the development of our souls into a more realized life IN Christ, and promoting those ideas and practices which help us enter that place more fully. He wants us to view transformation as a "descending" journey, not an ascending one. In other words, as we become closer to Christ, things and idols and priorities and political stances and even some of our thought processes fall away - it is a process of reduction, not one of "growth" as we typically understand it.

The main concept that Rohr pushes forward in the book is that of the Universal Christ. What he means by this is that we can better understand Jesus's life- and world-changing greatness if we refer to Him during His life on earth as Jesus, and to his presence IN EVERYTHING since His resurrection as Christ. Jesus was God's son, made human. But the risen Christ lives through every atom in the universe and is the goodness and love that surrounds and literally inhabits us.

Maybe this will expose my ignorance, but this was a book that I came away from with more answers than questions. Aren't we supposed to have more questions, if we are halfway intelligent? Actually there is just one big question that I have, and it is probably more a matter of semantics than of substance. When Rohr refers to the Universal Christ as the living inhabitant of everything in the world, how does he differentiate that from the Holy Spirit? A few times in the book he mentions the Trinity, but never to clarify this issue.

What I've written above is an off-the-top-of-my-head summary of the primary focus of The Universal Christ. If you are intrigued, read the book. If you are put off, you can dispense with the remainder of my review. But if you aren't sure, the remainder of the review will flesh out some of Rohr's working points.

Paul is a major focus of Rohr's book, because his words (and later life) so clearly expressed what it means to live in Christ. "There is only Christ. He is everything and he is in everything." (Colossians 3:11). Rohr says, "If I were to write that today, people would call me a pantheist (the universe is God), whereas I am really a panENtheist (God lies within all things, but also transcends them)."

In discussing how we can better discern the voice of God in our lives, Rohr says, "If any thought feels too harsh, shaming, or diminishing of yourself or others, it is not likely the voice of God. ... That is simply your voice. Why do humans so often presume the exact opposite - that shaming voices are always from God, and grace voices are always the imagination? ... God is supremely nonviolent."

Rohr suggests that we can experience God, in Christ, more readily if we change our mindset a little. "Most of us understandably start the journey assuming that God is 'up there' and our job is to transcend this world to find 'him'. We spend so much time trying to get 'up there', we miss that God's big leap in Jesus was to come 'down here'. ... In Christ, God is forever overcoming the gap between human and divine - the Christian path becomes less about climbing and performance, and more about descending, letting go, and unlearning. Knowing and loving Jesus is largely about becoming fully human wounds and all, instead of ascending spiritually or thinking we can remain unwounded." ... Remember, the archetypal encounter between doubting Thomas and the Risen Jesus is not really a story about believing in the fact of the Resurrection, but a story about believing that someone could be wounded and also resurrected at the same time! ... we are indeed wounded and resurrected at the same time - all of us. In fact, this might be the primary pastoral message of the whole Gospel."

Rohr reminds us how God works through our life events to put our minds in a receptive place. " ... great love and great suffering are the universal, always available paths of transformation, because they are the only things strong enough to take away the ego's protections and pretensions."

Recognizing the Universal Christ in everything is a necessary part of Christian spiritual transformation, and is one of the transformation's effects as well. "(It is unlikely that you will) see the image of God in your fellow humans if you cannot first see it in rudimentary form in stones, in plants and flowers, in strange little animals, in bread and wine, and most especially cannot honor this objective image in yourself,"

I want to say that I strongly recommend this book to all people, but especially to "former Christians" who became angry or disenchanted with aspects of the Christian church. If I could only use one word to describe the book, I would use the word "unifying".

Rohr learned something from the experience of his beloved dog Venus's death. " ... the only way out of deep sadness is to go with it and through it. ... Recognize that we cannot do it alone.... When I can find a shared meaning for something, especially if it allows me to love God and others in the same action, God can get me through it. ... When we carry our small suffering with the one universal longing of all humanity, it helps keep us from self-pity or self-preoccupation. We know that we are all in this together, and it is just as hard for everybody else. ... Unless we find the communal meaning and significance of the suffering of all life and ecosystems on our planet, we will continue to retreat into our individual, small worlds in our quest for personal safety and sanity."

After reading Rohr's chapter The Resurrection Journey, in which he discusses the "What" of the resurrection, and what it means for us, I found that I had re-phrased his message into this affirmation: "God creates, and He also re-creates."

In the Chapter Two Witnesses to Jesus and Christ, Rohr looks at the significance of Mary Magdalene being the first true apostle, in that she was the first person to proclaim the risen Christ. "(After Jesus speaks to her), she sees the one before her in a different way, you might say relationally instead of merely physically. ... Spiritual knowing is an inner encounter and a calm inner knowing that we usually identify with "soul knowledge". ... She knew and trusted Jesus's voice, even when she couldn't recognize him." I've awakened from dreams with a similar feeling, that a person or even a dog I know was there in the dream with me in their soul, even though they weren't visible to me in the dream. Obviously, Rohr's point has to do with a new way of recognizing and "seeing" Christ in the world.

Finally, I was fascinated by an experiential observation that Rohr makes in the book's second appendix, The Pattern of Spiritual Transformation. Rohr runs the Center for Action and Contemplation, and enjoys working with people on their spiritual journeys. After a lifetime of this, he has noticed that the impediments to transformation are different in liberals and conservatives, and indeed have everything to do with the world views that we take on as political people. The specifics of these world views are exactly the types of things that get in the way of living in Christ. He's not saying that we can't transform if we have a certain world view, but that in his experience, strong political stances often block access to real transformation. I imagine Rohr's monastic and Eastern backgrounds contributed strongly to his observation, right or wrong.

[Derek Driggs · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone raised in a very conservative, high-demand religion, I came away with trauma surrounding my queerness and dissonance around my beliefs in social equity; but I also came away with a deep feeling of spiritual identity and an abiding belief in God. Because of that background I find so much healing and joy in the profound writings of progressive, open-minded, forward-thinking spiritual thinkers and practitioners. Richard Rohr presents Catholic doctrine in a way that embraces, heals, encourages, and refines; eschewing traditional notions of hellfire and merit-based salvation. As Carl Jung had inscribed on his headstone, “Whether invoked [by name] or not, God is there.”

I especially like Rohr’s distinction between the magic religious worldview—“if I follow a list of rules, God will solve my problems”—and a practice-based worldview—“If I follow certain teachings, I will become a better person.” He emphasizes how unhelpful orthodoxy (religion based on specific doctrines and focused on what is true and what isn’t) is compared to orthopraxy (religious practice focused on refining oneself and lifting others). The latter encourages us to care for the poor, care for the planet, and care for people who believe differently, while the first often encourages tribalism and comparison. To me, spirituality means I should be actively engaged in making this world a better place, trust in a greater meaning than offered by capitalism or career achievements, and believe in an inherent connection between myself and other humans.

[Marty Solomon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great read from Richard Rohr. I have always appreciated his more mystical, contemplative approach to faith that complements my usual infatuation with the cerebral and intellectual approach to study. This book certainly delivered that typical Rohr wisdom; however, this book was also not lacking in meaty substance either.

This book covered everything from atonement to thoughts about Mary and the redemptive arc of justice in the story of God. Each chapter seemed like an exciting journey to turn the page and see what the topic would be next, but it also flowed a steady stream of consciousness. The book centered around the idea of what many scholars have pointed out in the Pauline usage of "Christ"; that this is not some empty messianic reference, but something that refers to something more transcendent... trinitarian... something that the person of Jesus embodied, bti has always been since the beginning.

This academic idea has been worth studying and understanding, and this book helped focus on the practical, every-day nature of things in this regard. An excellent read, especially for those who love or who need to be challenged by a more contemplative wisdom.

[Deb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although I love to listen to Richard Rohr in interviews and on Another Name for Every Thing podcast, reading this book was a bit of a struggle. Getting together with pals to discuss it proved difficult--mostly we had a hard time even figuring out where to begin or how to wrap our minds around what he's getting at so we ended up jumping around randomly and talking about quotes we liked. Which isn't all bad. Seems like it makes sense while you are reading it, but a few minutes later, you're like, "I have no idea what that chapter was about."

Listening to him talk feels like a warm hug. Reading this book was not that.

[Steve · Rating 1 out of 5]

272 pages of babbling, pantheistic, "oh-wow" baloney, cherry-picked from scripture, Buddhism, pop psychology, and assorted medieval saints. The biggest waste of my time in the past ten years.

[Dominic Budhi · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don’t want to put anyone off reading this book, but I can’t say enough bad things about it. The only reason it is getting two stars instead of one is because it consistently made me laugh. This book should be categorised as comedy instead of spirituality. I hate to offend those who enjoyed it, but I honestly couldn’t stand reading page after page of misquotation s of church fathers, Greek, the New Testament and his consistent adoption of Jungianism, no doubt an attempt to ground an absurd theology in scientific reason - a scientific reason that is rejected by all psychologists with any academic qualifications.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has to be his life thesis, where he was going with all of his other books.

[Jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This Gospel actually sounds like good news, so it will turn some people off immediately! And that’s okay.


Big Ideas:

+ Trust is closer to what we mean by faith; trustworthy is more like what we mean by faithful

+ Jesus, the Christ, became the ultimate/final/last scapegoat so we could finally stop scapegoating ourselves and others once and for all. He forgave even those who caused the ultimate kind of suffering and humiliation, so what business do we have judging others or harboring unforgiveness? He forgave even those who didn’t believe in him (who had unbelief so strong they crucified him). As he cried out “why have you forsaken me?”, so too will those who feel abandoned by God be resurrected

+ 4 main worldviews
- Material: there is only physical matter (scarcity mentality)
- Spiritual: there is only spirit (physical matter is an illusion; reality is disembodied)
- Priestly: matter and spirit need to be united (the domain of organized religion)
- Incarnational: matter and spirit are already united (we can awaken to the fact that matter and spirit have never been separate)



Potent Quotables:

When the Western church separated from the East in the Great Schism of 1054, we gradually lost this profound understanding of how God has been liberating and loving all that is. Instead, 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.

Remember, light is not so much what you directly see as that by which you see everything else. This is why in John’s Gospel, Jesus Christ makes the almost boastful statement “I am the Light of the world” (John 8:12). Jesus Christ is the amalgam of matter and spirit put together in one place, so we ourselves can put it together.

Numerous Scriptures make it very clear that this Christ has existed “from the beginning” (John 1:1–18, Colossians 1:15–20, and Ephesians 1:3–14 being primary sources), so the Christ cannot be coterminous with Jesus. But by attaching the word “Christ” to Jesus as if it were his last name, instead of a means by which God’s presence has enchanted all matter throughout all of history, Christians got pretty sloppy in their thinking. Our faith became a competitive theology with various parochial theories of salvation, instead of a universal cosmology inside of which all can live with an inherent dignity.

God loves things by becoming them... God did so in the creation of the universe and of Jesus, and continues to do so in the ongoing human Body of Christ.

Unfortunately, the notion of faith that emerged in the West was much more a rational assent to the truth of certain mental beliefs, rather than a calm and hopeful trust that God is inherent in all things, and that this whole thing is going somewhere good. Predictably, we soon separated intellectual belief (which tends to differentiate and limit) from love and hope (which unite and thus eternalize).

[Jesus] did ask us several times to follow him, and never once to worship him.

The point of the Christian life is not to distinguish oneself from the ungodly, but to stand in radical solidarity with everyone and everything else.

Without a Shared and Big Story, we all retreat into private individualism for a bit of sanity and safety.

Any kind of authentic God experience will usually feel like love or suffering, or both.

The proof that you are a Christian is that you can see Christ everywhere else.

Dignity is not doled out to the worthy. It grounds the inherent worthiness of things in their very nature and existence.

We all know positive flow when we see it, and we all know resistance and coldness when we feel it. All the rest are mere labels.

Farmers, forestry workers, and Native peoples know that fire is a renewing force, even as it also can be destructive. We in the West tend to see it as merely destructive (which is probably why we did not understand the metaphors of hell).

As St. Augustine said, we must feed the body of Christ to the people of God until they know that they are what they eat! And they are what they drink!

The Franciscans, ... led by John Duns Scotus (1266–1308), refused to see the Incarnation, and its final denouement on the cross, as a mere reaction to sin. Instead, they claimed that the cross was a freely chosen revelation of Total Love on God’s part. In so doing, they reversed the engines of almost all world religion up to that point, which assumed we had to spill blood to get to a distant and demanding God. On the cross, the Franciscan school believed, God was “spilling blood” to reach out to us! This is a sea change in consciousness. The cross, instead of being a transaction, was seen as a dramatic demonstration of God’s outpouring love, meant to utterly shock the heart and turn it back toward trust and love of the Creator.

Love cannot be bought by some “necessary sacrifice”; if it could, it would not and could not work its transformative effects. Try loving your spouse or children that way, and see where it gets you… If forgiveness needs to be bought or paid for, then it is not authentic forgiveness at all, which must be a free letting-go.

Jesus demonstrated that Reality is not meaningless and absurd, even if it isn’t always perfectly logical or consistent. Reality, we know, is always filled with contradictions.

The image of the scapegoat powerfully mirrors and reveals the universal, but largely unconscious, human need to transfer our guilt onto something (or someone) else by singling that other out for unmerited negative treatment.

He did not come to change God’s mind about us. It did not need changing. Jesus came to change our minds about God—and about ourselves—and about where goodness and evil really lie.

The cross, then, is a very dramatic image of what it takes to be usable for God. It does not mean you are going to heaven and others are not; rather, it means you have entered into heaven much earlier and thus can see things in a transcendent, whole, and healing way now.

If we do not recognize that we ourselves are the problem, we will continue to make God the scapegoat—which is exactly what we did by the killing of the God-Man on the cross. The crucifixion of Jesus—whom we see as the Son of God—was a devastating prophecy that humans would sooner kill God than change themselves.

Jesus became the victim so we could stop victimizing others or playing the victim ourselves.

You alone, Christ Jesus, refuse to be a crucifier, even at the cost of being crucified.

The only way out of deep sadness is to go with it and through it.

If creation is “very good” (Genesis 1:34) at its very inception, how could such a divine agenda ever be undone by any human failure to fully cooperate? “Very good” sets us on a trajectory toward resurrection.

In the undisputed seven original letters of Paul, he does not speak of personal forgiveness as much as of God’s blanket forgiveness of all sin and evil. Sin, salvation, and forgiveness are always corporate, social, and historical concepts for the Jewish prophets and for Paul. When you recognize this, it changes your entire reading of the Gospels.

Paul intended that his new people “live in the church,” as it were—and from that solid base go out to the world. We still have it all backward, living fully in the worldly systems and occasionally going to church.

Remember, it is not the brand name that matters. It is that God’s heart be made available and active on this earth.

I do encounter Christians who are living their values almost every day, and more and more are just doing it (“orthopraxy”), without all the hype about how right they are (“orthodoxy”). Training instead of teaching, as today’s coaches often put it.

The binary mind, so good for rational thinking, finds itself totally out of its league in dealing with things like love, death, suffering, infinity, God, sexuality, or mystery in general. It just keeps limiting reality to two alternatives and thinks it is smart because it chooses one!

The binary mind provides quick security and false comfort, but never wisdom. It thinks it is smart because it counters your idea with an opposing idea. There is usually not much room for a “reconciling third.”

What many have begun to see is that you need to have a nondualistic, non-angry, and nonargumentative mind to process the really big issues with any depth or honesty, and most of us have not been effectively taught how to do that in practice. We were largely taught what to believe instead of how to believe.

It seems to take a minimum of a year to get back to “normal” after the loss of anyone you were deeply bonded to, and many times you never get back to “normal.” You are reconfigured forever. Often this is the first birth of compassion, patience, and even love, as the heart is softened and tenderized through sadness, depression, and grief. These are privileged portals into depth and truth.

I am convinced that in many ways Buddhism and Christianity shadow each other. They reveal each other’s blind spots. In general, Western Christians have not done contemplation very well, and Buddhism has not done action very well.

We became a formal and efficient religion that felt that its job was to tell people what to see instead of how to see. It sort of worked for a while, but it no longer does.

Experience, Scripture, and Tradition… must be allowed to regulate and balance one another… Up to now, Catholics and Orthodox have used Tradition in both good and bad ways, Protestants used Scripture in both good and bad ways, and neither of us handled experience very well at all.

Mostly, we must remember that Christianity in its maturity is supremely love-centered, not information- or knowledge-centered,

Ken Wilber’s distinction between “climbing religions” and “descending religions” is helpful here. He and I both trust the descending form of religion much more, and I think Jesus did too. Here the primary language is unlearning, letting go, surrendering, serving others, and not the language of self development—which often lurks behind our popular notions of “salvation.”

All of us travelers, each in our own way, have to eventually learn about letting go of something smaller so something bigger can happen. But that’s not a religion—it’s highly visible truth. It is the Way Reality Works… The way things work and Christ are one and the same. This is not a religion to be either fervently joined or angrily rejected. It is a train ride already in motion. The tracks are visible everywhere. You can be a willing and happy traveler, or not.

Telling is not training.

Practice is looking out from yourself; analysis is looking back at yourself as if you were an object. You may learn something intellectually through analysis, but in doing so, you might actually create a disconnect from your deeper inner experience. Until you know what your own flow feels like, you do not even know that there is such a thing.

You do not have to see the sun to know that it is still shining.

If my underlying thesis in this book is true and Christ is a word for the Big Story Line of history, then the incarnational worldview held maturely is precisely the Good News! You do not need to name this universal manifestation “Christ,” however, to fully live inside of it and enjoy its immense fruits.

[Jeremy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some good stuff in here, but I can't agree that Christ is another name for every thing. If you are interested in convo about why I think this Christology ends up being sorta a white liberal style way of taking away the true specificity of Jesus, in such a way that takes away Jesus' real rescuing power, feel free to message me! My feelings here are complex. Hard to summarize.

[Cole Swearengen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Took my time reading this one, allowing time to chew on the overwhelming amount of gold nuggets in this book. So thankful for the experience and can truly say it’s an outstanding work by an outstanding man.

[Blythe · Rating 5 out of 5]

A game changer that helped me wrestle through things I’ve been struggling with regarding Christianity for 30 years.

[Douglas Graves · Rating 5 out of 5]

As soon as I finished reading the final page I wanted to flip back to the front and start again. Not just because it was that good, although I did thoroughly enjoy reading it, but because there is so much there. Somewhere near the beginning, Rohr encourages his readers to read slowly-he's even marked with italics sentences and phrases that should be read a couple times over, meditated on and contemplated. I wish I had done this more intentionally, and I predict I will probably read this again within a year and do just that. I might advise setting a side a specific time of the day or the week to shut everything else out and just sit with this book.

A couple of years ago when Fr. Rohr first began writing The Universal Christ he hosted a webinar on the topic. It was the first time I'd heard this idea presented with such eloquence and clarity. I had listened to podcasts discussing pantheism & panentheism, mulling over the differences and similarities and where one might find hints of each in Scripture, so I was familiar enough with the idea of the incarnation of Christ indwelling all things. But that night Fr. Rohr made it out to be all so clear and obvious. In the years following, leading up to the release of this book I've listened and read a great deal about the Universal or Cosmic Christ. Rohr's Center for Action and Contemplation actually released series of podcasts talking through the book. I would highly recommend this is a reading companion to the book. Truthfully, the book presents complex and unique ideas that are difficult to explain. Rohr does as good a job as I would say can be done, but it certainly helps to be familiar with the language.

But that is exactly what is so rewarding about this book. It is a completely new way of seeing things. Rohr is honest enough to call it an entirely different epistemology than most Western world views are used to or even capable of. This type of growth takes more than just reading a book. In that sense, this book on its own is probably not enough to change anyone's mind-although I would say that is not even Rohr's intentions. However, if it seems as if the typical modern day religious experiences is missing something-as it has for me over the last several years-this book might help explain why that is and even what it is that's missing: Incarnation, not just found in Jesus but in everything, even ourselves, especially ourselves; the role of love & suffering in our awareness and consciousness of our connectedness; the importance of the community over the individual; and the abundant grace that removes all need or demand for quid pro quo score keeping, the endless tit-for-tat demands of retributive justice, and the fear & anxieties that come with living with a scarcity mindset.

When I begin to wonder why I still call myself a Christian, this book will forever remind me why.

[Brittany · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have, for a long time, been looking for a good way to describe how I view Christ, Christianity, & what I feel my role is as a Christian. This book doesn’t hit it 100%, but there were many moments reading it when I thought, “yes - this makes sense. This is me.”
Rohr’s whole point in this book seemed to be to push his readers toward a broader view of Christ & what it means to be a follower of Christ. My personal view was already pretty broad, comparatively, so it was interesting having him push it even further.
I read through this with my book group, which was helpful as we discussed & learned together.

[Joy Matteson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another Rohr book to really contemplate (no pun intended) and take your time understanding. Now in his 70s, Fr. Rohr has taken his many years of wisdom to reclaim the name of "Christ" to mean much more than Jesus' last name. Truly, if you take anything from this book, it's that Christ is in all, and in everything. And that is good news. I loved it. Thanks Netgalley for the free e-galley. I'll need to buy a copy to recommend and re-read.

[Debbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Yes, yes, yes!" I thought to myself as I began reading this book at too fast a pace. I had to force myself to slow down and allow the words and wisdom to really sink in. Richard Rohr has awakened and given words to what I suspect has been at the heart of my faith all along. This book is not finished with me yet-- I look forward to using it as a guide as I begin practicing the lessons it contains.

[Matthew Paul Letten · Rating 5 out of 5]

First book read by Richard Rohr. All I can say is wow.

He describes my spiritual realizations and I feel a kindred spirit with him.

This book is not for “Christians” or religious folks only. In fact, many religious people will be upset by this book, just like many atheist materialists will be. However, if you are open to life and what it has to show us, this book is for you.

[Meredith McCaskey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't really know how to review this book. It messed with my brain, with my core, in an unsettling–but-a-good-unsettling way. I had to race through it because it was a Kindle loan from the library and I wasn't able to renew it, when it's a book that is worthy of long-term attention and pondering.

I think my biggest takeaway was this: God is so much more than we can ever fathom, and because of our diversity we are going to engage with Him/Her (the Godself? I'm still getting used to this avoidance of gendering God) in hundreds (thousands? millions?) of different ways. God lovingly meets us in the ways we need, and our needs are as diverse as our stories, our traumas, our personalities, our flaws and weaknesses, our strengths and triumphs. Richard Rohr has met God in a way that is lightyears away from the way I was taught God must be met, and different from the way that I meet God, but I don't think that makes either of us wrong.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have always enjoyed listening to Richard Rohr speak over the years and now reading his most recent book despite some resistance to his perspective and beliefs from those in my Christian realm. I think he gives freedom to see how there is something happening spiritually, physically, and even religiously in all our lives and how life is journey of discovering rather than knowing. Or at least that life is much more enjoyable when we seek to discover instead of trying to know all the answers. I appreciated his thoughts on contemplation and his methodology of the “tricycle,” where we can let our experience guide us along with allowing scripture and tradition to balance us along the way.