Earthing the Cosmic Christ of Ephesians—The Universe, Trinity, and Zhiyi’s Threefold Truth, Volume 1: Introduction and Commentary on Ephesians 1:1–2

by John P. Keenan

This is the introductory volume of a multivolume, verse-by-verse, interfaith rereading of the New Testament letter to the Ephesians. It looks to the Tiantai Buddhist master Zhiyi and his “threefold truth” to enhance our appreciation of nascent trinitarian themes in Ephesians. And it draws upon a broad array of scientific, theological, and philosophical thinkers in aid of rejecting the epistle's ancient, geocentric cosmology and its accommodations to the misogynistic, patriarchal, and slaveholding norms of its first-century surroundings. As a whole, the work constitutes a twenty-first century apologetic for doctrinal humility and for theologizing within a global theological commons.

256 pages, Paperback

Published July 28, 2021

Reviews

[Christian Sims · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tonight I picked up this year's Christmas cards. It will take me four months to address and write a note to my friends and supporters. Christmas is not a literal fact, but a mythological view of the incarnation.


In the same way, I view Christmas, our author approaches the book of Ephesians, from a mythological point of view. A myth is a story we do not take literally but speaks the truth.


Ephesians was written a few years after the death of Paul, as a means to help the church to understand the Gospel apart from the early belief of the Second Coming, and to help keep people true to the Gospel in light of the many religious expressions around them. Its author used the

pseudo name of Paul to give it more authority.


Using the Buddhist approach of Zhirtis the author raises the understanding of the Trinity to a new level, seeing the emptying of God into believers and bringing the believer into a new source of awakening practice. In the cosmic vision,


Ephesians focuses on the fullness of God in which the Spirit takes on the mind of Christ and sums up all meaning, the cosmic equivalent of the parousia (Second Coming) that had not materialized. Because the end had not come, the author of Ephesians replaced the coming of Christ in linear time (parousia) with the spatial fullness of the cosmic Christ, our life on earth expands in a tripartite pattern that is concretizing ultimacy in the incarnate Christ by Spirit approach.


Christ followers are to put on the mind of Christ--which means to embrace the dying of Jesus, as our own, to be united in the likeness of his death, and abandon the illusion that we foster in sinful hatred and lust, as well as the delusion that a distant God will spare us from suffering and death.


It is better to follow the path, to have faith because we do not know where this universe will unfold because the vastness of the universe defeats our visions. Far from seeing into the vastness of cosmic evolution, we can see only our cosmic past as we examine the light from galaxies and stars in the heavens. We know nothing of the evolutionary path, of the vastness of the universe, and so our gospel path is to abide in Christ without knowing any of that.


Being in the now, in this moment of living is all we have, our days are in Eternal life. Our calling is not to ourselves but to the cosmos. We are all one family, we are not owners of the Earth and our hope is to be one in all things.


Keeman brings our faith in the Cosmic Christ down to earth, seeing ourselves as very minute, and trusting in God calls us to not judge, and to care for each other.

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Fr. River Damien Sims, sfw, D.Min., D.S.T.

P.O. Box 642656

San Francisco, CA 94164

www.temenos.org

415-305-2124

[Jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most fascinating Bible commentaries I have ever read. His way of looking at Ephesians could be a way forward for American Christians in our current cultural context.