Re-visioning Christology through a Māori lens

Abstract

The central premise of this thesis is to re-vision what is known about Jesus Christ with a fresh set of Māori eyes to see what new insights can be added to Christological discourse. This thesis begins with a survey of Christological reflections by thirteen Māori writers from different theological, denominational and tribal backgrounds. This survey shows the richness and diversity of Māori epistemology in articulating and understanding who Jesus Christ is for Māori. Two significant themes are identified for further investigation being whakapapa (genealogy), and the relationship between land, people and God. The two genealogies of Jesus recorded in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke are analysed using a whakapapa methodology. New insights are discovered about the four women included in Matthew’s version of the genealogy of Jesus where the women are viewed through their indigenousness to the land of Canaan. Indigenousness and the land also play a major role in revisioning the genealogy of Jesus recorded in the Gospel of Luke. The land is articulated as the foundational layer in this genealogy that connects the world of humans and the world of God. The second theme significant to understanding Christology is Jesus providing a new hermeneutic to the relationship between land, people and God. This tripartite relationship is an important theme in the Old Testament and is held together in creative tension through Covenants and the Law. Chapter seven applies a Māori Christological analysis to this relationship and establishes that the land is more than a geographic backdrop to the story but has theological and Christological significance to understanding Jesus Christ. Chapter eight explores the term tangata whenua (people of the land) in the biblical context while drawing on comparisons with the Māori understanding of being tangata whenua in Aotearoa New Zealand. This term appears in the Bible for the first time in the narratives of Abraham and Sarah who acknowledge the Canaanites as the ‘people of the land’ of Canaan. As the biblical story progresses the Canaanite people go from being ‘people of the land’ to being disenfranchised landless people whose history and story is over-written by another people. All things Canaanite are the antithesis of all things Israelite. Jesus who has Canaanite women in his genealogy must realign his mission to address this bitter and violent historical past when he is conscientized in his encounter with a sole Canaanite woman with an ill daughter that he initially doesn’t care to much about.