Theodicy and Black Theological Anthropology in James Cone’s Theological Identity

Abstract

This article’s underlying objective is to reassess James H. Cone’s theological vision and meaning, with a special interest in his theological anthropology, Christology, and his efforts to articulate cogently an adequate response to the crisis of black theodicy in the United States. Cone’s theological identity is framed within the discourse of the greater African American intellectual (radical) tradition, the Black Consciousness movement, as well as within the historical trajectories of the crisis of American white theology and the segregated white Church. While Cone’s theological corpus is associated with the emergence of a constructive theology of emancipation in the Americas, his theological knowledge and political theology evoked the American democratic tradition and ideals. Cone insisted that African Americans should also be beneficiaries of the promises of democracy and the nation’s future possibilities. Yet Cone, as a fierce critic of the American democracy and white supremacy, was not optimistic about the willingness of the American government to provide liberative political interventions to black theodicy and suffering; rather, he sought an alternative, one that is abstract and theoretical but experimental and psychological: the cross of Christ as a possible solution to the crisis of black theodicy. Hence, Cone could develop a Christology of appropriation to deal symbolically with the burden of black history of suffering and pain in relation to the historic suffering and agony of Jesus Christ. For Cone, the theological is implicated in the political and the cultural; while the political is not cathartic, the theological may provide a mental relief to black folk.