drulogion

Featured at Wesley Seminary Blog

2009-11-03T09:18:00.002-05:00

Good news: I got a job! Next school year I will be teaching theology and ministry at Indiana Wesleyan University's new Seminary. The Dean's blog just posted a feature on me, so check it out. I'm excited about the Seminary's fresh approach to theological education and foresee it as a good place for me to serve.

As regular readers know, drulogion has been relatively inactive this year, mostly on account of my increased focus on dissertation writing. Well, the inactivity trend will most likely continue as I will be doubling my efforts to finish this school year. But I will still post occasionally, and intend to get back on a weekly posting schedule next Fall.

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The Connection between Creation and Resurrection in Trinitarian Perspective (Part One)

2009-08-26T11:27:00.003-04:00

Here's a partial draft a small section of my dissertation I am working on today. Any thoughts?

II, B, 1, iii. The Connection between Creation and Resurrection

In addition to the exclusivity and newness of God's act of raising Jesus, there is a third reason why Barth appropriates the raising of Jesus to the Father: the connection between creation and resurrection. Just as the work of creation is appropriated to God the Father (cf. CD III/1, p. 49), so the work of resurrection is appropriated to God the Father. There are three aspects to this connection, which correspond to Barth's first three points in VF. The first is the analogy between creation and resurrection as exclusively divine acts. The second is God's justification of himself as Creator in the resurrection. The third is the God's creation of a new time between the times that is oriented toward the coming new creation. In all three aspects, Barth appropriates both creation and resurrection to God the Father.

Creation/Resurrection Analogy

Barth makes explicit reference to the analogy between creation and resurrection under his first point: "Like creation, it [the happening on the third day] takes place as a sovereign act of God, and only in this way" (300). The point of similarity between the two is the absolute sovereignty with which God executes them. There is no creaturely co-agency in either the creation of the world or the raising of Jesus. Creaturely participation enters the picture in the history that commences with these acts. But in their inception they are exclusive acts of God. This exclusivity is witnessed to by the appropriation of these acts to God the Father. Creation and resurrection are both analogous to the Father's generation of the Son, and so it is fitting that we speak of creation and resurrection as acts of God the Father, though, following the logic of Barth's reception of the appropriation doctrine, not to the exclusion of God the Son or God the Spirit (cite III/1, p. 51ishff).

The analogy between creation and resurrection has been noted in Barth before. [cf Tanner article] The usual reason for pointing out the analogy is to highlight the unique sense in which both "historical." Creation and resurrection are both historical in the sense of being temporal events. Yet they are not historical in the sense of being the results of creaturely processes. They are free acts of God without creaturely cooperation. So it fitting that both God's work of creation and God's act of raising Jesus are born witness to by means of the genre of saga, which can set forth the temporality of these unique events without treating them as consequences of historical causality (CD III/1, p. 78).

This aspect of the analogy is certainly important. But this formal similarity in terms of genre is grounded in the material similarity in terms of subject. The point of Barth's generic observation is not merely to solve the problem of faith and history, but more basically to bear witness to the irreducible subjectivity of God. In these crucial moments in the history of God with us, God acts alone. Creation and resurrection are thus both acts of God's free grace. That's Barth's point. And my point is that in both cases Barth analyzes the trinitarian grammar of the event in order to make his point: in the first instance, we must speak of these events as acts of God the Father.

Now as with any analogy, the element of dissimilarity is as important as the element of similarity. The language here is explicitly analogical: "like creation" (300, emphasis added). Creation and resurrection are distinct works of God. For all their interconnection, they are not strictly identical. In CD III/1, Barth warns against collapsing creation and covenant, even though they belong to each other (p. 42-48). In the case of the analogy between creation and resurrection, the crucial element of dissimilarity is that ex nihilo applies to the former but not to the latter. Barth never speaks of the raising of Jesus as an act of creation out of nothing. Although it is an exclusive act of God (the Father) with no component of human action, it nevertheless happens to a creature with a prior history of human action. Jesus' prior history does not produce his resurrection--this delimitation is the point of Barth's emphasis on the Father's act of raising. But God the Father's act of raising does happen to the subject of this human history. So the event of resurrection, unlike the event of creation, is an event with a past [QUESTION: doesn't creation have a "past" in election", and if so, in what sense???]. This element of disimillarity is important to note, especially in the face of current attempts to apply the ex nihilo clause to resurrection.[FN]

Any thoughts?
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Barth Blog Conference: Hitchcock and Drury

2009-08-21T09:28:00.002-04:00

The Barth Blog conference continues over at Derevth today with a post by Nathan Hitchcock on the Resurrection in Romans 1:3-4, and includes a response from yours truly. Check it out!

Karl Barth Blog Conference 2009 begins Sunday at derevth

2009-08-15T14:48:00.002-04:00

Karl Barth Blog Conference 2009 begins Sunday at Der Evangelische Theologe. The theme is the knowledge of God in Romans 1. A number of young theologians will be posting papers and responses, including yours truly. Check it out!

Here's the schedule:

Day 1: Introduction (Travis McMaken)

Day 2: Calvin and Barth on the Exegesis of Romans 1.18-20 (Travis McMaken; response by Jason Ingalls)

Day 3: Exegeting Romans 1: A Critical Appraisal (title tentative: Shane Wilkins)

Day 4: Barth’s Exegesis of Romans 1 in his 2nd Edition of Romans (title tentative: David Congdon; response by Halden Doerge)

Day 5: Resurrection in Barth’s Rejection of Natural Theology: Romans 1.4 in Barth’s 2nd Edition of Romans (title tentative: Nathan Hitchcock, University of Edinburgh; Response by John Drury)

Day 6: Barth’s Exegesis in the Shorter Commentary on Romans (title tentative: Shannon Smythe, Princeton Theological Seminary)

Also, check out this older piece of mine concerning this same theme.

Enjoy!

Who is the Subject of Resurrection? (Part I)

2009-05-14T17:02:00.003-04:00

Since it is one of the central questions of my current research, I am revisiting the question Who is the subject of Christ's resurrection? this week. In other words, who raised Jesus from the dead?

Well, the obvious short answer is "God." But as things go for Christian faith seeking understanding, the short answer "God" inevitably requires further reflection. Because Christians don't talk about God without soon talking about Jesus Christ,which means making recourse to some variation of the doctrine of the trinity.

Here's two main ways of thinking about the question: (1) the Son raised himself, and (2) the Father raised the Son. I'm going to sketch the first way this week. I intend to follow-up soon with a sketch of the second option, followed eventually by an approach that attempts to critical appropriate the best insights of each.

So, on to the first option.

(1) The Son raised himself.

This is the "classical" approach, inasmuch as it can be found in a number of major figures in the history of Christian theology. It is where you would tend to end up taking your cue from traditional trinitarian theology. If God raised Jesus from the dead, and Jesus Christ is both fully God and fully human, then Jesus Christ raised himself from the dead. Actually, to be more precise, we'd need to say that Jesus Christ as God raised himself as human from the dead. But even with these specifications in place, one cannot avoid the reflexive pronouns entirely. The bottom line is the the Son raised himself.

Now this can be expanded in two directions. The first direction expands this through the lens of the incarnation: the divine nature hypostatically united to the human nature empowers (by deification) the human Jesus to overcome death. Death can't hold this man in the grave, because he is not just a man but God incarnate. In this line of thought, the divine nature is like a bomb that goes off in the grave and so frees the human nature from death. You find this sort of line developed by Alexandrian characters such as Athanasius and Cyril -- with more sophistication, of course.

The other direction (which does not contradict but in fact complements the first) expands this through the lens of the trinity: the triune God raised the human Jesus. This line of thinking retains the reflexive sense of the Son's self-raising by following through on the rule that the works of the trinity outside itself are indivisible. Because each triune persons fully indwells the other, no one persons acts without the participation of the other two. But this line of thinking also accounts for the sense in which the resurrection is attributed to God the Father. The triune God acts upon creation indivisibly, yet on the basis of Scriptural warrant we may attribute (or, in the classical lingo, "appropriate") certain acts to certain triune persons. For example, we attribute creation to the Father, while acknowledging that the Son and Spirit also participate in that work; we attribute redemption to the Son, while acknowledging that the Father and Spirit also participate in that work; we attribute sanctification to the Spirit, while acknowledging that the Father and Son also participate in that work; etc. So, concerning Christ's resurrection, in light of Scriptural warrant we may attribute Christ's resurrection to the Father while also acknowledging that the Son himself as well as the Spirit participate in the raising of the dead human Jesus. (Note: you can find this sort of thinking in a number of medieval scholastics, most beautifully and compactly in St. Thomas Aquinas ST III, q. 53, a. 4).

Now despite the conceptual precision of this whole approach and the care with which it upholds seemingly contradictory but necessary affirmations, a big question looms large over the whole enterprise: Do the dead raise themselves? If Jesus Christ raised himself from the dead, then was Jesus Christ really dead? Isn't one of the main elements of the condition of death the loss of agency or subjectivity? Can one who raises himself from the dead really be said to have been dead? The clarifications and specifications outlined above cannot rid this whole approach of the looming suspicion that either Jesus didn't really die or God the Son didn't unite himself to the human Jesus in his death. In either case, we're in a pickle. What can be done about this?

It is in respond to these questions that an alternative view emerges, which I intend to sketch in a subsequent post. But for now:

Any thoughts?
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The Holy Spirit "resurrects" faith in us

2009-04-01T11:37:00.005-04:00

Below is a passage in Barth that I have been busy interpreting today. What caught my eye is the pun on "awakening," that connects the resurrection of Christ and the Spirit's awakening of our faith in him, all against the implicit background of the Awakening as a technical term for German community movement (i.e., pietism). [Note: as some drulogion readers have already noticed, I'm in dissertation la la land right now and so most of what you'll get from me is Barth quotes for the next little while].

Okay here goes:

It is not he [the believer] that is strong when he believes, but rather the One in whom he believes shows himself to be strong over him when he believes: strong as the one who is raised again from the dead to awaken him first from the death of unbelief to the life of faith. Faith means to be awake on the basis of this awakening : to be awake to the strong One who awakens him and who along can awaken him; to be awake to the necessity with which he does this, a necessity which excludes all pseudo-freedoms; to be awake to the implicitness of the arising which, on the part of man, will directly follow his awakening. (KD IV/1, p. 836; ET: CD IV/1, p. 748)

And here's the my nerdy version with the relevant German words inserted:

It is not he [the believer] that is strong when he believes, but rather the One in whom he believes shows himself to be strong over him when he believes: strong as the one who is raised again (auferstanden) from the dead to awaken (erwecken) him first from the death of unbelief to the life of faith. Faith means to be awake (wach sein) on the basis of this awakening (Erweckens): to be awake (Wachsein) to the strong One who awakens (erweckt) him and who along can awaken (erwecken kann) him; to be awake (Wachsein) to the necessity with which he does this, a necessity which excludes all pseudo-freedoms; to be awake (Wachsein) to the implicitness of the arising (Aufstehens) which, on the part of man, will directly follow his awakening (Erwecken). (KD IV/1, p. 836; ET: CD IV/1, p. 748)

Any thoughts?
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What's At Stake in Christ's Resurrection? (revisited)

2009-03-25T11:56:00.003-04:00

I've asked before on this blog, "What at stake in Christ's resurrection?" Here's another swing at it, but this time simply by quoting a series of questions Barth asks, and then quoting in brief the beginning of his answer. He pretty much puts the stakes this way: How could we come to know and so follow Jesus as Lord if he were not living one who reveals himself in the power of the Holy Spirit? But putting it so briefly doesn't do justice to how high the stake really are. So here goes:

"And it is only right that we should think of this first when we ask why the existence of Jesus Christ is so inaccessible to us. Is this the fulfilment of the covenant? Is this the Reconciler and Mediator between God and us men, the Messiah of Israel, the Saviour of the world? Is this His revelation? What place is there in this lowliness for the true Son of God, and the true Son of Man? Was He not there only for a moment, and then no longer there; shown to us, but now--with all the appearance of finality--withdrawn; a short and beautiful dream on which we can only look back with deep disillusionment in our long and bitter waking moments? And what became, and becomes, of us if it is true that that exalted One was humiliated and shamed and put to death in our place, that the Son of God and Man asked finally in our name why God had forsaken Him? Is it that the incarnation of the Word, and therefore the existence of the Son of God as one of us, only makes clear what apart from Him we cannot do more than suspect--that we are all rejected and lost? Does it merely seal the impossibility of the human situation? And if it does mean anything more, if in His lowliness He is still the exalted One, the Lord and Deliverer, if His name still encloses the salvation of the world and our salvation, how can this be true for us when His death on the cross was His final work and Word? How can we know Him as the true Son of God and Man? How can we know His being for us in this concealment ? How can we cleave to Him or even believe that He is this, when this was His
end, and the door was slammed behind Him and bolted from within?

"The Christian community and the individual Christian believe that He was and is the Son of God and as such for us, and cling to this fact. If we assume that it is given to us to be Christians, we can and must say that we know Him even in this concealment He is our Lord and Hero, the Shepherd of the whole world and our Deliverer, even in this lowliness He has acted as the true Son of God even in His suffering of death on the cross And we are made alive and justified and sanctified and exalted to the status of the children of God and made heirs of eternal life in His execution. For it was in His humiliation that there took place the fulfilment of the covenant, the reconciliation of the world with God. It is in Him that we have our peace, and from Him our confidence and hope for ourselves and all men. Let us assume that we can believe this in our hearts and confess it with our lips. Where the Holy Spirit intervenes and is at work between Him and us as the Spirit of Jesus Christ, as the self-activation and self-revelation of the living Jesus Christ, we can believe and confess it in face of that hard antithesis Christ the Crucified is a stumbling-block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks (I Cor. 1:23f), but to those who are called He is the power of God and the wisdom of God."

- Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV/2, pp. 349-50.

This comes from a section I am currently ruminating on while dissertating, so ...
Any thoughts?
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The Holy Spirit is not a magical third...

2009-03-18T08:55:00.001-04:00

“The Holy Spirit is not a magical third between Jesus and us. God himself acts in his own most proper cause when in the Holy Spirit he mediates between the man Jesus and other humans. For God is not the great immovable and immutable one and all ... [but] the living God, and as such, our God, who really turns to us ... because in the first instance distance and confrontation, encounter and partnership, are to be found in himself”
- Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV/2, p. 343

In Search of the Living God

2009-02-11T19:03:00.004-05:00

I've been thinking about God's Life: the God who lives, the Life of God, God as Life, God's Livingness, the living God, the God of the living, etc. Here's some quotes from Barth on God's life in the context of his doctrine of God (II/1). Interestingly, "life" is not a stand alone attribute or perfection, but it emerges at two crucial points. First, as a correlate of the basal description of God's being as act (§28.1). Second, as the last word on the identify of divine eternity (§31.3). Since Barth's actualist interpretation of divine being and his unique approach to eternity are significant contributions of his theology, I think the placement of the concept of "life" within these contexts is important. Okay, here's the quotes:

The definition that we must use as a starting-point is that God's being is life. Only the Living is God. Only the voice of the Living is God's voice. Only the work of the Living is God's work; only the worship and fellowship of the Living is God's worship and fellowship. So, too, only the knowledge of the Living is knowledge of God... We recall in this connexion the emphatic Old and New Testament description of God as "the living God." This is no metaphor. Nor is it a mere description of God's relation to the world and to ourselves. But while it is that, it also describes God himself as the one he is. (II/1, §28.1, p. 262)

This is the last thing which we have to emphasise in connexion with the concept of eternity. Like every divine perfection it is the living God Himself. It is not only a quality which He possesses. It is not only a space in which He dwells. It is not only a form of being in which He shares, so that it could belong, if need be, to other realities as well, or exist apart from Him in itself* We cannot for one moment think of eternity without thinking of God, nor can we think of it otherwise than by thinking of God, by knowing Him and believing in Him and obeying Him-for there is no knowledge of God without this by loving Him in return when He has first loved us. Eternity is the living God Himself. This radically distinguishes the Christian knowledge of eternity from all religious and philosophical reflection on time and what might exist before and after time. It distinguishes it from all speculations about different aeons, all the mythologies of past, present and future worlds, their essence and their relations to one another. The Christian knowledge of eternity has to do directly and exclusively with God Himself, with Him as the beginning before all time, the turning point in time, and the end and goal after all time. This makes it a complete mystery, yet also completely simple. In the last resort when we think of eternity we do not have to think in terms of either the point or the line, the surface or space. We have simply to think of God Himself, recognising and adoring and loving the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. It is only in this way that we know eternity. For eternity is His essence. He, the living God, is eternity. And it is as well at this point, in relation to the threefold form of eternity, to emphasise the fact that He is the living God. (II/1, §31.3, p. 638-9).

This is just the beginning. Stay tuned for more... Especially concerning how the livingness of God relates to Christ's resurrection from the dead!

Any thoughts?
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Who is the Subject of Resurrection? Who is the Subject of Vocation?

2009-01-22T09:53:00.004-05:00

Who is the acting subject of Christ's resurrection? Short answer: God. But to be faithful to scripture's witness to the risen Jesus, we must be more precise. Such precision requires recourse to some sort of "trinitarian" logic. We must speak of Jesus being raised by God the Father. We must speak of the rising of the Christ himself, the Son. We must speak of the Spirit by whom Jesus Christ was raised and now lives. And these three are one: the living triune God.

I have said all this before, and have shown how Karl Barth has taught me these moves. And I've tried to show some of the significance of this connection between resurrection and trinity. Let me indicate a further point of significance I just stumbled on this week. In his discussion of the event of vocation (CD IV/3, §71.2), Barth asks, who is the acting subject of vocation? Who calls humans to the service of witness? In the course of his answer, Barth draws on the trinitarian grammar of Easter:

If, in those passages which speak more generally of calling, God as well as Jesus Christ is described as the One who calls, this is not, of course, an indication that the New Testament knows two kinds of vocation, the one effected by God the Father, the other by Jesus Christ, and possibly a third by the Holy Spirit. It rather corresponds to, and is even interconnected with, the fact that in the New Testament there are also two ways of speak of the Easter event: on the one side, it is Christ's raising up by God the Father, and on the other it is his own resurrection, and a third possibility may perhaps be seen in Rom. 1:4 with its reference to the power of the Holy Spirit operative in this event. In both cases the statements are complementary. To the question of the concrete form in which God calls, the only answer is obviously that it is Jesus who does it in all the concreteness of his humanity. And to the question of how he does it, the only answer is obviously that in what this man does God is at work in his eternal mercy and omnipotence. The New Testament does not see two or three things here, but only one thing. (CD IV/3, p. 503, rev.; KD IV/3, p. 579)

So Barth argues for the living activity of Jesus Christ in the calling of humanity by reference to the triunity of God in the Easter event. Just as God in Christ is the subject of resurrection, so God in Christ is the subject of vocation. This point becomes crucial for Barth in securing the content of the doctrine of vocation Christologically: namely, that the the goal of vocation is sonship, fellowship, and union with Christ (§72.3), and that the concrete form of vocation is the service of witness to him for the sake of the world (§72.4).

Any thoughts?
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No Crying He Makes?

2008-12-19T15:32:00.004-05:00

I have a series of questions this Christmas season...

Was the night of Jesus' birth a silent night? Did he really not make a cry?

Do we have reasons to say so? If so, what are they?

And then the real questions:

What do these reasons reveal about our assumptions regarding Jesus' identity and constitution?

What do they reveal about our assumptions regarding human nature?

What do they reveal about our definition of sin?

Any thoughts?
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Resurrection as Sanctification

2008-12-03T13:56:00.002-05:00

Last time we addressed the trinitarian grammar of Christ's resurrection under the rubric God's verdict. But this is not the only vantage point from which we may and must consider the trinitarian grammar of Christ's resurrection. For the Father's justification of the Son and us in him by the power the Spirit is only one side of the coin. If we flip the coin over, we also see Christ's resurrection as the revelation of his exaltation, which had been hidden in his life of obedience unto death on a cross. The risen Christ reveals himself as the exalted human being, the one true covenant partner of God. This living Son gives to us direction: in the power of the Spirit he re-orients us and sets us on a new trajectory. The direction of the Son discloses our slothfulness and santfies us for a life of love. So Christ's resurrection is not only the verdict of the Father, but also the direction of the Son. In raising his Son Jesus from the dead, God not only pronounced a verdict for us but also gives a direction to us. [Note: here we continue to follow the train of Barth's thought, but now drawing on CD IV/2]

Just as with God's verdict, God's direction is in the first instance self-referential. This can be seen initially in the dual meaning of the genitive phrase "the direction of the Son." Genitives can either be subjective or objective. A subjective genitive renders the prepositional noun the subject of the main phrase, whereas an objective genitive renders the prepositional noun the object of the main noun. So, in this case, "the direction of the Son" as a subjective genitive means the direction which the Son gives, while the "direction of the Son" as an objective genitive means the direction given to the Son himself. In the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, the Son's direction is given both to himself as the exalted human being and to us as those set apart to live lives that correspond to the exaltation achieved in him. The Son steps forward from among the dead and moves along the path from himself to us. He lives with this orientation and along this trajectory. And so the New Testament says not only that the Father has raised the Son but also that the Son rises, and even at times that he raises himself (cf. John 12). This is the self-referential activity of the Son in the event of the resurrection of Christ.

As is already evident, such self-referential language requires a trinitarian grammar. Just as with the resurrection as justifying verdict, so also the resurrection as sanctifying direction we must speak not only of "God" and "Christ" but also of "Father" and "Son." And the triune grammar of direction is both parrallel to and dialectically juxtaposed with the triune grammar of verdict. Christ's resurrection as divine verdict speaks in terms of humiliation: the Father in his omnipotent grace raised the humiliated Son of God. Christ's resurrection as divine direction speaks in terms of exaltation: the Son in his majesty rises as the exalted Son of Man. This two-fold trinitarian grammar of resurrection is grounded in the very mystery of God's life as triune: just as the "fatherly fellow-suffering of God is the mystery, the basis, of the humiliation of his Son," so also the "majesty of the Son of God is the mystery, the basis, of the exaltation of the Son of Man" (CD IV/2, pp. 357-8).

Now we cannot speak of the self-referential activity of God in abstraction from the action of God toward us, since the point of this self-referential activity is the revelation of our reconciliation and redemption. But we cannot make this turn without reference to a third piece of the divine puzzle: the Holy Spirit. We cannot understand Christ's resurrection as the direction of the Son without reference to the work of the Holy Spirit. But this post is already too long. So we will address this piece of the puzzle next week. For now, let us consider the risen Christ as the one who not only was raised for us and our justification but also rises toward us and our sanctification.

Any thoughts?

Resurrection as the Justification of God, Christ & Us

2008-11-19T14:12:00.005-05:00

As some drulogion readers may already know, my dissertation research is focused on the relationship of Christ's resurrection to the doctrine of the Trinity in constructive conversation with Karl Barth. One big piece of this doctrinal puzzle is the extent to which the resurrection is a self-referential event for God. Does God act upon himself on Easter morn? I believe that the answer to this question is yes: God raised himself through himself. For such an answer to work, God must be a self-differentiated subject: the Father raised the Son through the Spirit. In other words, a triune grammar is necessary for resurrection proclamation, which in turn suggests that a triune ground is necessary for the resurrection event.

But this whole line of thinking might be taken to mean that the resurrection is some sort of divine self-enclosed event that has nothing to do with us. Nothing could be further from the truth! The point is that divine self-referential activity is good for us. God is good for us by first enacting himself in history. In so doing God actualizes his goodness to us and so assures us. In raising his son from the dead, God the Father confirms himself as the creator and in so doing secures us as his creatures. In being raised from the dead, our Lord Jesus Christ receives grace from God the Father on our behalf, and so comes to us as one of us. The Spirit who testifies with our spirit that we are children of God does not assure by merely speaking as one more voice demanding blind trust, but by pointing us to the living risen Jesus Christ in whom God has acted for us.

All this serves as an introduction to a quote I'd like to place before you for your consideration. It comes from one of Karl Barth's discussions of the resurrection entitled "The Verdict of the Father" (Chuch Dogmatics IV/1, §69.3). In this summative statement, Barth displays the inner connection of God's self-referential and other-referential activity as they find their unity, distiction and order in Jesus Christ. The argument is put in terms of justification (befitting the forensic context of CD IV/1): God's justification of himself, of Jesus Christ, and of us in him. Here you go:

To sum up, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the great verdict of God, the fulfillment and proclamation of God's decision concerning the event of the cross... In this [acceptance of the act of the Son of God] the resurrection is the justification of God himself, of God the Father, creator of heaven and earth, who has willed and planned and ordered this event. It is the justification of Jesus Christ, his son, who willed to suffer this event, and suffered it to the very last. And in his person it is the justification of all sinful humans, whose death was decided in this event, for whose life there is therefore no more place. In the resurrection of Jesus Christ his life and with it their life has in fact become an event beyond death: "Because I live, you shall live also" (Jn. 14:19). (CD IV/1, p. 309, rev.)

Any thoughts?

To what extent are we permitted and encouraged to speak of God's self-referential activity? On what basis can we do so? What are the dangers?
Does hearing of God's self-referential activity give you a greater sense of assurance? Why or why not?
What other pay-offs might there be in rooted God's activity on behalf of us in God's self-referential activity?

Total Depravity and Parental Discipline

2008-11-12T14:33:00.004-05:00

From time to time I hear new parents say that they did not believe in original sin until they had children. Although this is meant partially in jest, it is also meant as a theological claim. It ought to be considered as such, for at least some parents either explicitly or implicitly draw disciplinary implications from this claim. Children are born totally depraved and therefore parents may and must execute harsh discipline, or so the argument goes. Is this a legitimate practical inference from the doctrine of total depravity? I contend that it is not, because said inference betrays a misunderstanding of the meaning of total depravity.

What does depravity mean? The term comes from the Latin verb depravare which means to bend or make crooked. Augustine used the term for the universal human inclination toward evil. More precisely, humans are bent or inclined toward misuse of the good, to use God and God's creatures for the enjoyment of one's self rather than to use one's self and other creatures for the enjoyment of God. To be depraved, despite its contemporary connotations, merely means to be bent or inclined towards one's self at the expense of God and others. So, for my son to be depraved doesn't necessarily mean his intentions and actions are sinister, but rather that he has a bent-ness or inclination towards himself at the expense of others.

But what does total depravity mean? There is a long Christian tradition that goes back at least to the fourth century of distinguishing between different aspects of the image of God in which humanity was created (e.g., moral image, intellectual image, volitional image, etc.). These distinctions served, among other things, to identify which aspects were affected by the fall and in what sense. So, for instance, we lost the moral image but retain our intellectual or volitional capacities. The notion of "total" depravity found in some radical Augustinian traditions emerged as a critique of such a use of this tradition, claiming that all the aspects of humanity have been tainted by the fall. So the "total" in total depravity is extensive not intensive. It's not as though we are as bad as we possibly could be, but rather there's no "safe" part of us that we can count on as innocent and good over against our fallen parts. We are bent as wholes. So, for my son to be totally depraved doesn't necessarily mean that he is as bad as he could possibly be, but rather that he as a whole person has an inclination or bent-ness toward using others for his own enjoyment.

So, does total depravity underwrite harsher discipline of children? No. Total depravity refers to a general inclination toward disorder that affects the whole person. And so a totally depraved child is not necessarily sinister in every intention or as evil as he or she possibly could be. An argument for harsh discipline cannot be made on this ground alone. One could in fact argue the reverse: that the inclination toward self-seeking at the expense of others will be fed by the threat of harsh discipline. A totally depraved child would require caution and care as much as if not more than force and discipline. Furthermore, one could argue that the universality of total depravity would function self-critically to call into question the purity of parental disciplinary intentions. Could it be that much of what passes for disciplining is actually self-serving? If the doctrine of total depravity is true, parents have as much reasons to question their own motives as they do their children's.

But one would not need to make these further moves to at least accept that total depravity alone does not warrant harsher discipline. That's the bottom line of this argument: the doctrine of total depravity does not in itself justify harsher discipline of children. In making this contention I do not claim to have defended the doctrine of total depravity, nor was that my design. Rather, I merely intend to block an illegitimate (and dangerous!) practical inference. This blockade is aimed both at those who might act out this unfortunate inference and at those who would object to the doctrine on account of its deleterious effects. So, the purpose of my argument is that those who affirm total depravity ought not execute harsh discipline on account of it and that those who reject total depravity ought not use this so-called practical implication as an argument against it.

Any Thoughts?

Have you heard someone make the connection between the doctrine of sin and methods of parental discipline?
Have I described the doctrine of total depravity correctly in terms of its classical sense?
Do you find the extensive/intensive distinction helpful?
What kind of parental implications might flow from the doctrine of total depravity rightly understood?

N.B.: For clarity's sake, please keep original guilt and total depravity conceptually distinct for the sake of discussion despite their intimate relation. In other words, do not presume an objection to one applies automatically to the other.

Trinity & Subordination, Again

2008-11-06T08:26:00.000-05:00

Apparently a new wave of debate over subordination in the trinity and in social relations has irrupted in evangelical circles. Click here to track the debate. I have received some emails from friends in ministry asking how to address the matter. Here's my response to one such email, which asked three questions: What does the Trinity have to do with everyday life? Why should pastors preach on the Trinity? How can we address the rampant subordinationism among church folk?

What does the Trinity have to do with everyday life?

On the one hand, it doesn't. The doctrine of the trinity is the church's attempt to faithfully bear witness to who God is. It is not a ready-made spiritual and/or social program. On the other hand, it has everything to do with daily life. The doctrine of the trinity teaches us that the God we encounter in history corresponds to who God is in eternity. Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are not intermediaries to keep God at a distance. Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God and the Holy Spirit is the eternal Spirit of God, and so God is our eternal Father. When we speak of following Jesus or living according to the Spirit, we are talking about encountering God in our everyday lives. The doctrine of the trinity gives depth and clarity to our everyday Christian walk and talk.

Why should pastors preach on the Trinity?

They shouldn't preach the trinity as a stand alone doctrine. Instead, it should be preached along the way as a necessary tool for understanding and proclaiming the gospel. A sermon series that aims to teach trinitarian doctrine would select key biblical texts where recourse to the doctrine of the trinity helps make sense of the gospel and shows how the doctrine of the trinity gives depth and security to Christian claims. E.g., the baptism of Jesus, the resurrection narratives, the death of Jesus (esp. the cry of derliction), the prayer life of Jesus (e.g., who is he praying to in Gesthename?), Pentecost obviously, the farewell discourse in John (lotsa goodies there, esp. on the spirit in ch. 14 and 16, as well as on the eternally shared glory of the Father and the Son in ch. 17), some of the visions in Revelation with the "one on the throne" and the "lamb who was slain before the foundation of the world," etc. I think this would be the best strategy for preaching and teaching the trinity in the church.

How can we address the rampant subordinationism among church folk?

There are reasons why we slip into subordinationist thinking, some good and some bad. The bad reasons are linked to subordinationist assumptions about the way the world works, and the presumption that this is simply the fabric of being itself and so befits our God-talk. Such presumption must be exposed and set aside -- repeatedly if needed.

The good reason is that Scripture places the Father and the Son in an irreversible relationship, wherein the Father sends the Son and the Son is sent by the Father, the Father commands the Son and the Son obeys the Father. So also the Spirit is sent by the Father and the Son. Scripture does not permit a reversal of these relationships, even as it also indicates the unity, equality, and unrestricted fellowship of the persons. The mystery of the trinity is the unity, equality and fellowship of these three persons in their ordered relationships, and not just unity and equality as abstract divine principles.

Strictly speaking, this pattern in scripture is not a "problem" for trinity doctrine per se, because the church doctrine of the trinity has always claimed that the Father and the Son are eternally distinguishable from one another, even as they share all things as equally divine persons. The Father and the Son cannot be distinguished if there is no content to their relationship. So the Father begets the Son, and in begetting we see the distinction and order of their relations. This is not a subordination of being ala Arianism, but it is an ordered relationship.

Now one might try to then squeeze out of this the idea that women are equal to men in being but subordinate in function. Some people make such moves. But when we turn to whatever practical implications that may follow from the doctrine of the trinity, we must remember the following:

(1) Human persons do not relate in exactly the same way as divine persons do, because human persons do not share an identical essence. So there should be no 1-to-1 application of divine relations to human relations. Individual humans share a common human essence (however defined), but a community of individual humans are not a singular identity of essence in the way that the triune persons are one God. So sociopolitical debates cannot be swiftly solved by invoking the doctrine of the trinity. In fact, one could coherently advocate a strongly subordinationist doctrine of the trinity and maintain gender equality, while another could coherently advocate strongly the equality of divine persons and maintain complementarian gender roles. Although the trinity is not irrelevant, it is not the key that unlocks all doors.

(2) We are united to God through our union with Jesus Christ the incarnate Son, and so we should not be surprised that we stand alongside him as ones who are sent by God the Father and so submitted to God. We stand in some kind of "subordinate" relationship to God. Hence, subordination is not a dirty word in all contexts. One should embrace rather than reject subordination to God. Such subordination is of course loving and freeing because it is to the author of our existence and our salvation (which cannot be said of our relations with others). But it is still subordination and submission of the one sent to the one who sends, grounded in our union with Christ as the one sent by the Father. So the question is not whether subordination but what kind of subordination and to whom are we subordinated?

(3) Inasmuch as the relations of the trinity provide a model for human-to-human relationships, such direction should always be mediated through the God-human Jesus Christ, as opposed to some principle abstracted from the history of God with us (e.g., subordination, or equality, or relationality, etc.). It is in Jesus and his life that we see submission to God and to others that fulfills rather than destroys human personhood. In him we see obedience that is the crown and exaltation of human life. In him we see the transformation of fallen human relationships into fellowship that images God's eternal life. In him we hear the call to participate in the mission of God in this world by proclaiming the good news and living lives worthy of this gospel.

So we must tread carefully in applying the mystery of the trinity to our daily lives, not simply because it is so mysterious, but because upon reflecting on this mystery we learn of the uniqueness of the God we worship and do not presume to be like him in ways beyond our means. We must not seek to be gods, but to be godly. And it is in Jesus Christ the Son of God that we understand who God the Father is in his uniqueness and the ways in which he opens himself up to us become like his Son by the power of the Spirit.

So the bottom line for teaching the doctrine of the trinity, both for understanding and application, is to treat the trinity as the grammar and ground of christology. The trinity as grammar helps us to make sense of Jesus as not just some special guy but uniquely as the life of the only-begotten Son sent by the Father in the power of the Spirit, who in turn sends us in the Spirit unto all the nations. The trinity as ground reminds us that the life, death and resurrection of Jesus are not just a fluke or oddity but a revelation and outworking of who God is in eternity. If the doctrine of the trinity is true, then God is for us and with us from all and to all eternity. And that's good news.

Any thoughts?

Temporality (Dis)continuity and the Reformation of our Mental Furniture

2008-10-30T08:51:00.003-04:00

Two weeks ago I attempted to sketch some of the pastoral implications of the resurrection in critical conversation with Wright. The essay was also posted at another blog set aside for a course on Wright's work. A student in that course wrote the following lengthy reply, to which I offered a lengthy response below. I have decided to post this discussion here because it brings out in more detail some of the issues pass over in the original post.

Keas writes:

Impressive summary of Wright’s view of resurrection. I think you’re right by honing in on the continuity/discontinuity of creation and redemption in Wright’s presentation. 1 Corinthians 15:58 is a godzilla verse for him.

I especially liked your paragraph on discontinuity, and you definitely “sounded it loud and clear”. I’m interested in the last line or two of that riff, the bit about eternal life not simply extending time and space but transcending them – and how this is “a distinct and essential note of discontinuity between creation and redemption in the fundamental structure of Christian hope.” I hadn’t thought of ‘time’ in new creation in terms of such radical discontinuity. Wright definitely emphasizes the continuity of time in the eternal state since he fears the average churchgoer images eternity to be when “time shall be no more” (p. 162-163). Why do you feel it’s important at this point to sound the note of discontinuity of time in eternity? Isn’t that what the majority of us were fed large doses of growing up? And are there other authors (e.g. Torrance) you feel stress this better?

I know you’ve also been working through Wright’s big boy, The Resurrection of the Son of God. Does he do a better job there of articulating the “proper symmetry and proportion” of continuity and discontinuity or do you sense this emphasis lacking in his eschatology overall? In other words, is his timidity with the discontinuity of new creation in Surprised by Hope the result of a short book or a shortcoming of his theology?

You really started revving up when you got to your third proposal for funeral reform. I found your comments there, as well as in your fourth, to be incredibly helpful in how we might begin evaluating and tweaking our current funeral practices. I think you yourself have a nice dialectical tension of the continuity/discontinuity of funeral practices that Wright’s resurrection theology should bring about.

Having said that, I want to pose a question in response to your 3rd proposal, “Add Resurrection Language to Already Existing Forms.” There you said, “We can still talk about grandpa going to heaven and being with Jesus. We just need to also talk about grandpa coming back with Jesus to reign with us in the new heavens and the new earth.” I was surprised to hear you using this “up there, down here” language. Wright spends an enormous amount of his book ranting against the dualistic Gnostic worldview that manufactured such language and mental furniture. I really appreciate your pastoral concern here, by the way, and that’s why I’m interested to dialogue more. Do you think it’s wise for us to leave intact the “up there, down here” mental furniture and only add resurrection language to it?

Along those same lines, I’d like to bring the myth of the immortality of the soul into the discussion. I would contend that the church’s borrowing of this idea from Greek philosophy is chiefly responsible for muddling up Christian hope and the New Testament’s teachings on the after-life. Wright is obviously not happy about it either, but I’m not sure if he’s offered much in its place (the intermediate state, that is). What he does offer is Polkinghorne’s analogy that, “God will download our software onto his hardware until the time when he gives us new hardware to run the software again” (163). In my mind such word pictures come awfully close to what Wright had been combating in the previous 162 pages: the inadequate and simplistic body/soul dichotomy which always prioritizes the soul, or something like the soul, as the real essence of a person. Has does the software/hardware analogy paint a different picture for us?

So to reintegrate my question with the addition of the above paragraph, I’m wondered how much we, as pastors, should challenge notions of dualism and the immortality of soul at funerals. You are clear that communicating resurrection should be our fundamental concern rather than addressing all the “speculation” surrounding the intermediate state, but how much of this speculation should we try to deflate or rework while bringing the focus back on resurrection? Are there valid pastoral concerns that might lead us to keep alive some of the folk theology so popular today?

And, of course, brilliant way to cap off your essay with your fifth and final proposal. A Christocentric focus is the way forward as we continue to rethink and reform our funeral practices. Your Barthian blood is showing through!

_________________________________________

John replies:

Thanks for the opportunity to post here and the props you gave in your comment. You raised at least three issues: (1) temporal discontinuity, (2) Wright's other works, and (3) the reformation of our mental furniture. The third contains a number of interrelated material issues: (a) dualism, (b) the immortality of the soul, and (c) the intermediate state, all of which were aimed at (d) the pastoral question of whether, when and how to challenge such assumptions. I will treat each of these issues in the order they were raised.

(1) Temporal Discontinuity.

Although the issues under (3) are more numerous and more popular, let me try to say enough here that my response to those questions can be briefer. I say this not just to save time but because I think the issue of time itself is the most complex and most fundamental among the issues you raised.

You referenced a line towards the end of my riff on discontinuity. Let's get that in front of us first so I can comment on it, then I'll address your questions directly.

"The gift of eternal life includes within itself time and space, so it is not strictly timeless or spaceless. But the gift of eternal life transcends time and space, so it is not simply the infinite extension of time and space."

Note the note of continuity: eternal life includes time and space. So I would join Wright in critiquing concepts of eternal life as timeless and spaceless. [I'll focus on time since that's what you asked about, but most of the logic of my answer can be transferred over to space, as we'll see when we come to souls and bodies.] Eternal life is not a state of timelessness. Eternity is not simply the negation of time. This is one of the lessons God teaches us in raising his son Jesus from the dead. If we cease to inhabit time and space, we would cease to be human, for the human category of time is basic for self-consciousness and time is basic to creation as historical in character. What God has made has purpose and meaning and therefore has history. Redemption is the end of history, but "end" in the sense of consummation and goal, not in the sense of ceasing to be. Creatures are by definition temporal, so to cease to be temporal is to cease to be creatures, and that's not good news.

To cease to be temporal would also not mean that we become divine, for God himself has permanently taken on temporality in Christ and so, in light of God's immutablity, God's eternity cannot be sheer timelessness. God's eternal triune life must be ready for this assumption of time. God's eternity is God's self-sufficient possession of an interminable life. God is the living God, and this God has time for us. God's time is not our time. God's time embraces our time so that our time might be enveloped in God's time.

With the talk of God's eternity in front of us, we can begin to see where the discontinuity comes in. At first it seems as though we have read temporal continuity all the way back into God's being. And in a sense we have. But in reality the arrow runs the other way. God in his eternal life creates us in our temporal life. So there is a fundamental distinction between God and creation. But God purposes to share his eternal life with us, giving us something beyond our temporal life. We will receive this gift of eternal life as a gift, and will continually receive it as such. Eternal life is not the actualization of a potential inherent in human beings. Eternal life is the determination given to temporal human beings in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

Now (most of) all this is very conceptual in form. So let me recast it back into the narrative terms from which it arises: God raised Jesus from the dead. God does not remove Jesus from the space-time continuum (that would be discontinuity without continuity). But neither does God simply extend Jesus' life further along the space-time continuum (that would be continuity without discontinuity). Rather, God gives to Jesus a life that has death behind it; God raised Jesus from the dead. Jesus has death in his past. That is unprecedented, so unprecedented that it is hard to conceive of a "life" without "death" as its end-point. This is why we tend to think of "heaven" as boring, which in fact it probably would be if resurrection was merely the infinite extension of time as we know it. But the gift of eternal life is a life re-defined with death not as its end-point, but as a piece of its past. This relocation of death in the narrative logic of human life underlines the birth-and-death word games found in the New Testament (e.g., "unless it dies, it cannot bear fruit," "firstborn from the dead," etc.). Such a relocation entails a radical transformation of the experience of time as we know it, and so the note of temporal discontinuity which I believe must be sounded in a Christian doctrine of resurrection.

Okay, with that sketch in front of us, let me answer your questions directly.

Q: Why do you feel it’s important at this point to sound the note of discontinuity of time in eternity?

A: By understanding our future time as a new act of God, this note of discontinuity helps secure the gift-character and finality of eternal life. In other words, resurrection is grace and glory. Resurrection is grace: it is an act of God to which we contribute nothing. Resurrection is glory: death will be defeated so that it no longer determines human life. He is the light of life; in him there is no darkness at all.

Q: Isn’t that what the majority of us were fed large doses of growing up?

A: Probably not if the discontinuity is construed as I have sketched above. And if what I suggest bears some resemblance to what you were fed growing up, then that may just point to the grain of truth in all that stuff and therefore identify a pedagogical point of connection.

Q: And are there other authors (e.g. Torrance) you feel stress this better?

A: Big surprise: Karl Barth, Robert Jenson, T F Torrance, and Hans urs Von Balthasar have all contributed to my thinking on this matter.

(2) Wright's Other Works.

I won't say much here, as I cannot comment on the entirety of his corpus nor do my critiques so require me to do so. When one writes a book on a topic, one is responsible for what one says on the matter. If I were making an argument from silence, then Wright's other works would be germane. But I do not in fact claim that he has no discontinuity, but rather that his argument is so formulated to reveal that continuity is more basic. It is a matter of accent and emphasis (or, better yet, the function of concepts), which can be ascertained by a careful reader from even the smallest of books. But everything else I have read from Wright has confirmed that this is where the accent lies. He affirms discontinuity almost always within the greater continuity, which is his dominant note. That's his driving point, and again perhaps justifiable given the church's tendencies of late and perhaps warranted on the basis of a different doctrine of creation that the one to which I am committed. Note: this fits his historiographical orientation, as an emphasis on the continuity of the created order under-girds an evidentialist apologetical enterprise such as Wright's. In other words, you would only try to "prove" the resurrection on the basis of historical evidence if you understand resurrection according to the terms set by creation as such, rather than as an event that happens to creation.

(3) The Reformation of our Mental Furniture.

(a) Dualism.

Q: Do you think it’s wise for us to leave intact the “up there, down here” mental furniture and only add resurrection language to it?

A: Briefly: “up there, down here” language is inadequate, but so are all such world-pictures. The language itself is found in the New Testament, so I wouldn't stress out about the imagery for relating heaven and earth. The point is how you fill out the conceptual content and the way you work out the narrative. Perhaps some such imagery must go, but the alternative imagery will have its troubles too. Better to be on constant guard to explain yourself than to purify yourself of all potentially misleading imagery. That's a puny answer, but it will have to do for now. A fuller answer would make analogous moves with regard to space as made above with regard to time.

(b) The Immortality of the Soul.

Q: Along those same lines, I’d like to bring the myth of the immortality of the soul into the discussion...

A: This is of course a huge topic, and I have written on it elsewhere, though not to my satisfaction. See my eschatological musings at drulogion (click here) and my article entitled "Gregory of Nyssa's Dialogue with Macrina: The Compatibility of Resurrection and Immortality" in Theology Today 62:2 (Jul 2005) pp. 210-222. I'll just put a few things out there for now:

(i) Immortality and resurrection are not mutually exclusive concepts.

(ii) Soul-talk is not necessarily dualistic, inasmuch as we can attain a concept of "soul" that is conceptually distinct from the body yet materially existent only as that which animates the body. In other words, a commitment to embodiment does not require rejection of soul-talk.

(iii) The soul as materially existent (i.e., embodied) is not in itself immortal. Any immortality attributed to the human person is a divine gift and permanently retains its gift-character. Note: the soul as a concept may be spoken of as immortal, but only in the dull sense that concepts don't die. So the soul is only as immortal as the triangle or the number four. It is not ontically immortal in the robust sense of an existent that defies death, ala God.

(iv) Immortality is a function of resurrection. All theoretical talk of an immortal soul must serve and submit to the sure faith in the resurrection of the dead. The idea of the immortality of the soul is only a theory to explain whatever kind of existence we may have in the intermediate state, and that's all it is. Which brings us to our next point.

(c) The Intermediate State.

Q: Wright is obviously not happy about it either, but I’m not sure if he’s offered much in its place (the intermediate state, that is)...

A: You have raised a crucial question here. Needless to say, what I said about temporal continuity and discontinuity above has direct implications for the notion of an intermediate state. In my original post, I stuck with Wright's "two-stage post-mortem narrative" because it is so clear and is able to account for most of what needs to be said. But my own constructive inclination is to abandon the notion of an intermediate state altogether. Doing so would require thinking through the implications of the gift of eternal life and what they might mean retrospectively for the dead in the time between the times. One of the disappointments I felt with N. T. Wright's work is his lack of imagination on this front (see my comments to that effect here). This is a place where one must engage in the difficult but rewarding work of revisionist ontological reflection, the sort of thing N. T. Wright avoids because, among other things, he is too locked in to the continuity of created time to imagine the kind of discontinuities at work here. But I must heed my own warning to tread lightly with such major revisions. Don't cast out the intermediate state until you are ready to fill its place with something positive that can perform its theological function, or the demon will return bringing seven more demons with it and you'll be worse off than before (cf. Lk 11:24-26). It takes time and care to figure out what function a concept has performed in the tradition, which I am still sorting out. But once I have a better handle on the theological function of the intermediate state and I've found something else to perform that function, I'd be happy to dump it entirely, since it consistently proves distracting to resurrection hope.

(d) Pastoral Implications.

Okay, now to your final questions:

Q: How much should we, as pastors, challenge notions of dualism and the immortality of soul at funerals?

A: I don't think a funeral service is the setting for direct challenge. Perhaps this just comes from my own pastoral experience, but my tack was to teach clearly and critically on this matter as we went through the bible and/or topics, but when someone got sick or died I gave the people freedom to speak in their own familiar language even while I followed through on mine. Pastors are not theological or liturgical police officers. They are teachers and guides. We cannot control people's thoughts or language, nor should that even be our goal. We can, however, discipline our own thoughts and language, and thereby model to others and guide them over time. But a funeral service seems an inappropriate setting for a frontal attack. Better to prepare them all along than to hit them all at once.

Q: How much of this speculation [concerning the intermediate state] should we try to deflate or rework while bringing the focus back on resurrection?

A: As indicated above, I am not interested in reworking the intermediate state other than finding what function it performs and finding other things to play those roles. But I am also not interested in deflating it either, because I find it superfluous rather than pernicious. I am confident that the beauty and truth of the resurrection of the dead is more than sufficient to compete with the potential distraction of the intermediate state. Keep the main thing the main thing, and let it crowd out all else.

Q: Are there valid pastoral concerns that might lead us to keep alive some of the folk theology so popular today?

A: Well, there's always the pastoral concern of not being a jerk. Also, listening to the linguistic habits of a congregation is a crucial pastoral skill. One can only shape clay that one has felt and dug one's hands into. When you have a sense of the inner logic or grammar of a community's theological speech, then you can start to tweak and adjust. So the professionally-trained pastor must become a kind of folk theologian if he or she ever wishes to shape the thoughts of his or her people. In the process, one may discover that the folk have some insights one might have missed, so listening is not just a trick to get a hearing of one's own, but a genuine openness to be taught by the people as you also teach them.

Thanks for your thorough engagement, Keas. I hope these responses are somewhat satisfying to you and keep the conversation moving forward.

-John

The Political Implications of Resurrection Hope

2008-10-22T20:35:00.005-04:00

Last week I addressed some of the pastoral implications of the resurrection in conversation with N. T. Wright's new book Surprised by Hope. This week I would like to address some of the political implications of the resurrection. If Jesus is risen, then how should we live, not only in relation to those in and around our churches, but also in relation to those in the wider human community to which the church has been called to serve? In order to answer this question, I'll follow a similar pattern to last week's post by (1) sketching briefly how Wright approaches the sociopolitical implications of his doctrine of resurrection, (2) identifying some points of criticism, and (3) laying out some points of orientation.

So, first, how does Wright squeeze something political out of resurrection hope? It seems odd at first that the resurrection would have anything to do with contemporary sociopolitical realities. Wright sets his sights on this apparent oddity, exposing that our inclination to separate eschatology and public policy is a reflex of our confused views of the afterlife. If we understand resurrection as a code word for life-after-death, some other-worldly spiritual destiny that has no continuity with our life lived here and now, it is no wonder that we would think of resurrection hope as irrelevant to issues of state and society. Wright's move is to suggest that the element of continuity between creation and new creation entails a responsibility for the structures of society and the care of creation. If resurrection means new creation, then what we do now matters later. So this should expand our understanding of the church's mission to include not only evangelism but also works of justice and beauty as God begins to restore his creation through us and we build for his coming kingdom.

Now N. T. Wright is careful to remind us of the element of discontinuity between the work we do now and the divine judgment to come. This is why he harps on the distinction between building the kingdom and building for the kingdom -- a linguistic distinction the adoption of which I would strongly recommend. But nevertheless, the argument is controlled by the element of continuity. Discontinuity primarily functions in his argument as a limit concept: it keeps us from overstating the significance of our human efforts. But it does not seem to provide any substantial contribution to his political theology. Rather, his doctrine of creation (confirmed by God's resurrection of Jesus) is doing most of the work. We are obliged to work for justice in the world because we are responsible to the created order. This is a responsibility carried in hope, and so we do not carry it alone. But it is a responsibility first and foremost owed to God as the creator, and so not defined from the start from the redemption wrought in Jesus Christ.

Why is this a problem? Well, let me identify a symptom of this creation-centered continuity argument, and then say a word about what is provided by more substantive attention to the element of eschatological discontinuity. It is symptomatic of Wright's overall orientation that he treats justice and evangelism as two categories that need to be related. His intention is great: namely, to overcome any false dichotomy between the two, which a purely spiritual interpretation of Christian hope leads to (i.e., justice is either irrelevant or strictly subordinated to evangelism, as the former concerns our bodies in space and time while the latter concerns our immortal souls). But his attempt to overcome this dichotomy fails because he continues to treat them as two poles to be related rather than challenging their separation at the root. Note: I am not suggesting that merely discussing justice and evangelism under distinct headings is an error. We must create sub-topics in order to move discursively through an argument. Rather, I am suggesting that Wright's fundamental orientation toward the continuity of the created order lends him to define justice primarily in terms of the preservation and restoration of the created order, which necessarily separates it from evangelistic activity that by definition points forward to the new and different work of God beyond the potentialities of God's good creation. So justice and evangelism from the beginning of his argument point in different directions, and therefore all his moves to unite them are bound to fail. In my view, it would be better simply to start with the radical discontinuity of Christian hope, and then speak of the calling of Christian witness to hope in Jesus Christ which takes form both as word (aka "evangelism") and deed (aka "justice"), both of which are parables of God's reconciling love and neither of which can be strictly identified with the word and work of God for us in Christ.

The separation of justice and evangelism is just one symptom that highlights a more fundamental problem of dominance of created continuity Wright's theology. What's the alternative? I believe that we can relocate many of Wright's moves and goals within a framework that gives proper attention to the radical discontinuity in God's redemptive purpose in such a way that we can say much of what he says without some of the problems. Of course, I can't do such relocation in a comprehensive fashion here. But I can point to the central benefit that comes from a greater emphasis on discontinuity with specific reference to the political implications of resurrection hope.

The central benefit of an emphasis on the element of discontinuity is the critical focus given to Christian thinking and action. When the element of discontinuity functions as a limit concept (as I suggested it does for Wright), then it only serves to curtail the optimism of an otherwise generally reformist agenda, one which takes the realities of civic life for granted and seeks adjust the systems in such a way to favor the victims of the current status quo. Wright does a very good job of curtailing such optimism in favor of realistic Christian hope, and should be commended for it. But if the element of discontinuity played a more critical role in his eschatology, then his political theology would move in the direction of a more radical agenda, one which calls into question the potentialities of all social systems. If God's resurrection of his son Jesus from the dead tells us not only that God has confirmed himself as creator and sustainer of all things but also that God has revealed himself as the reconciler and redeemer who makes all things new, turning on their heads even the "realities" of the created order, then God's politics is not merely reformist but radical in orientation. Thus we who believe in the resurrection of the dead will challenge the adequacy of even the most progressive sociopolitical agendas, for our hope is found in nothing less than the living Jesus Christ. The political implications of resurrection are progressive in their leanings, but even as such these progressive implications cannot be identified with the word and work of God. They are at best parables of God's reconciling and redeeming work, and should be treated as such from beginning to end, and not merely limited as such from time to time. This is not a call for cynicism in the face of the evils and injustices of this world, but rather for a deep criticism sensitive to the idolatry of all worldly political arrangements.

As with the pastoral implications of Wright's work discussed last week, my critique of Wright does not undermine his key insights, but rather modifies them by placing them in a different conceptual context. So, with these critical lenses firmly in place, we can still draw on Wright to sketch some of the political implications of resurrection hope. I will identify three points of orientation to direct us in our political thinking, deciding and acting. It should be evident that these points, while by no means neutral, keep at a distance from endorsing particular parties or candidate. This is first of all a result of the critical distance appropriate to any exercise in sketching the political implications of Christian theology. But it is also an exhibition of the kind of political reasoning Christians can and should engage in -- one that is both affirmative and critical, creating alliances without strict loyalties. Finally, the breadth of these points is a reminder that political life includes much more than merely casting ballots. So, here goes:

(1) The hope of resurrections points us toward a critical appropriation of the politics of life.

By raising his son Jesus from the dead, God has shown himself to be the God of the living, not of the dead. In the living Jesus Christ, God has taken humanity to himself in order to make and keep life human. The resurrection of the dead is the ultimate act of humanization: the gift of eternal life. So God falls on the side of life against death.

The politics of life in the U.S. and elsewhere is tragically divided into divergent "issues," ranging from the protection of life at its beginning and end to the taking of life for the sake of security. Very few politicians have found a way to take the side of life in every issue, those some have tried harder than others. Those who hope for the resurrection of the dead should have an unwavering bias towards life. How this works out at a policy level can and should be debated and discussed. But the overwhelming orientation must be towards the affirmation of all human life: both our unborn and dying friends and near and far away enemies.

This political orientation must be self-critical, eschewing all strict identification of the exercise of political will with the reality of the living God. It also must materially criticize the creation-centered argumentation of much Christian reflection on these issues. What we owe to a fellow human cannot be reduced to her rights or sanctity or goodness as a creature. Such reflection needs to be re-ordered toward the telos of human life in fellowship with God, and thus concerned not only with the protection of life but also with the flourishing of life. Most importantly, the critical edge of resurrection provides a firm basis for a bias against death and its powers in this world. Too much public policy treats death as just a part of life. The resurrection of the dead teaches us that death is the last and greatest enemy of God. Those who hope for resurrection take sides with those who fight against the forces of death in their myriad of forms as a parabolic witness to the resurrection.

(2) The hope of resurrection points us toward a critical appropriation of the economics of generosity.

By raising his son Jesus from the dead, God has shown himself to be the God of grace. God gives to the creature beyond its inherent merits and resources. Resurrection is not merely the affirmation of the goodness of the created order but the gift of eternal life beyond any inherent potential. The resurrection of the dead is the ultimate act of generosity, giving what is undeserved and unattainable and unimaginable without the gracious initiative of the living God. So God falls on the side of generosity against scarcity.

Economic thought and policy in the U.S. and elsewhere is dominated by the logic of scarcity. The common assumption is that there is one pie, and the debate is usually only over who or what should get which piece. Such zero-sum thinking does not have to be greedy in its intention to foster greed as its result. So attacks on greed (often in the context of quasi class warfare) do not get beyond the logic of scarcity, and thereby only perpetuate the problem. Those who hope for the resurrection of the dead should have an unwavering bias towards generosity. This means not only personally seeking opportunities to share one's blessings with a neighbor but also contributing to expand the common goods shared by the wider human community. This requires thinking outside the scarcity box and so seeking to develop forms of economic life that entail the sharing of common goods. Of course, this means we need to stop thinking of the economy in reductively financial terms. In doing so, however, we may rediscovery the classical theological sense of the term "economy" as God's household, which is revealed by the resurrection to be run according to the logic of generosity, not scarcity. (Check out 2 Cor 8-9 for more on the complex interplay of God's grace, human gifts, and the Christian virtue of generosity, all of which turn our usual economic thinking on its head. Also, check out Kathryn Tanner's book, Economies of Grace, which develops this line of thinking in great detail.)

Any appropriation of the economics of generosity must be critical, and the key critical move that must be made here is the realization that the created order itself does not have the infinite resources God has. Remember: resurrection is not an inherent possibility within creation, but a transcendent transforming gift. So we may very well encounter scarcities, especially of natural resources. So we must be aware of our limits even as we pursue renewable and sustainable common goods. More fundamentally, we must not identify human giving and sharing with God's act of grace in Jesus Christ. This means that we should resist absolutist systems that promise generosity, for they are idols--false images of the true God of grace. But we nevertheless seize every opportunity not only to act generously but to develop generous ways of life in the wider community. Those who hope for resurrection take sides with those who develop systems of generosity as a parabolic witness to the resurrection.

(3) The hope of resurrection points us toward a critical appropriation of the rhetoric of hope.

By raising his son Jesus from the dead, God has shown himself to be the God of hope. In the living Jesus, God speaks a word of promise to the whole creation that by his Spirit he will make all things new. Resurrection hope is not a vague desire for progress or a path of escape from this world, but a sure and certain promise that God is for us and not against us and that he will triumph in the end. The resurrection of the dead is the ultimate word of promise, giving confident hope to the fearful and hopeless. So God falls on the side of hope against fear.

Political rhetoric in the U.S. and elsewhere all too often degrades into an appeal to our fears. Whether our woes are fiscal, cultural or military, politicians exploit our fears in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. Such appeals are electorally effective, and so will not go away any time soon. But occasionally, politicians break out of this mold and realize that what people need in times of crisis is not more fear but hope for something new. This is part of the reason why Barack Obama has captured the imaginations of so much of the American public, for like FDR and Reagan he offers hope rather than fear in the face of crises and challenges. Those who hope for the resurrection of the dead should have an unwavering bias towards hope. This should not mean we are gullible to those who speak in platitudes, but it does mean we will give a fair hearing to those who ask us to think beyond our own self-interest and look to the future for new possibilities. Such rhetoric befits the orientation of resurrection hope.

As with the politics of life and the economics of generosity, the appropriation of the rhetoric of hope must be critical. Perhaps here more than elsewhere the criticism needs to be penetrating, for the rhetoric of hope can so easily turn out to be mere rhetoric, mere words, mere talk of things to come without genuine transformation. But the danger of mere words should not undermine our appreciation for the formative power of words. Our political rhetoric contributes significantly to the moral formation of the civil community. So we should take seriously the kind of rhetoric employed by leaders and would-be leaders. But there's a deeper level of critical consciousness that we must keep in mind with regard to the rhetoric of hope. We must never identify our hope in the living Christ with our hope in this or that politician or political program. This does not mean politics should be more "realistic" or even "pessimistic," but rather than we keep a critical distance between the hope to transform a society and the transcendent hope that transforms the world. Such critical distance has no patience for messianic civil religion, even as those who hope for resurrection take the side of those who speak a word of hope into a hurting world as a parabolic witness to the resurrection.

Any thoughts?

Where have I missed Wright's point? Where have I got him right?
Does the continuity/discontinuity issues apply in the same way here as it did for the pastoral implications of resurrection last week? Or are there some important differences?
Are there some points of direction that you would add to the three listed here? Do you have any concerns with the way these points where put?
What attitudes does Christ's resurrection commend to us when engaging in political discourse and action?
Although electoral politics is only one aspect of a wider democratic life, given the timing of this post I gotta ask: what parties and/or candidates might one support who followed these points of political orientation?

N. T. Wright's Suprised By Hope (Part Five): What Happens to Funerals if Wright is Right?

2008-10-15T02:33:00.006-04:00

I have been asked to contribute the following post for a blog used by a group of three bright Princeton seminarians doing a directed study on the work of N. T. Wright under the supervision of J. Ross Wagner. I thought I'd post it here too as a contribution to my recent series of reflections on N. T. Wright's book, Surprised by Hope.

What happens to funerals if Wright is right?

What happens to funeral practices if Wright is right about resurrection? That is the question I have been assigned and to which this post will attempt an answer. Answering this question requires that we answer two prior questions: (1) What does Wright teach about resurrection? (2) What, if anything, does he get right about it? These prior questions are necessary because only practical implications that flow from constructive engagement are worthy of pastoral consideration. In other words, if Wright is wrong then we ought not "apply" his theory to our practice. And we can't know if Wright is right or wrong unless we know what he really says. So, I'll briefly answer these two questions, then identify some implications for the concrete practice of Christian funerals that flow from this constructive engagement. Just to get my cards on the table now, my central claim is that Wright is right inasmuch as his understanding of resurrection can be incorporated into a vision that accounts for both the continuity and discontinuity between creation and redemption. This broader vision implies specific proposals for the reform of funeral practice, but does not necessarily imply a revolutionary overhaul.

So, what does Wright teach about resurrection? Well, to know what Wright teaches we need to understand how he teaches it. Any Christian understanding of resurrection worthy of the name addresses two distinct but related elements: Christ's resurrection from the dead and the general resurrection of the dead. In terms of the traditional division of theological topics (i.e., loci), resurrection straddles both Christology and eschatology. As Wright argues in chapter three of Surprised by Hope, the temporal distinction between Easter and the End is one of Christianity's fundamental modifications of Jewish resurrection hope (44-45). This distinction underlies the structure of Wright's book: the first part addresses the historical event of Christ's resurrection while the second part asks what Christ's resurrection tells us about our own future hope for resurrection. The third and final part traces the implications for the present mission of the church, including questions of liturgical reform with which we are concerned in this essay. Since it gives priority to Christ, this structure is spot on in my mind.

So, following Wright's movement of thought, what does Christ's resurrection tell us about our future hope? "Life after life after death" is the hook with which Wright grabs the attention of his reader and on which he hangs his central insights. Initially, this hook is simply a short hand definition of "resurrection" as it was used in the ancient world. When Jews and Pagans said "resurrection," they were not referring to some kind of ghostly afterlife. Rather, resurrection entailed a two-stage post-mortem narrative: first you have whatever sort of existence one has after dying, then second you have a renewed bodily life. On the whole, pagans only brought the term up to deny its possibility, while some Jews made it the centerpiece of their hope. So when the first Christians (most of whom were Jews) came along and said, "Jesus is risen," it meant that this man had experienced not only life after death but life after life after death: a renewed bodily life. So, broadly speaking, Christians fell on the Jewish side of the spectrum of views regarding the afterlife, yet with the major modification that they believed the first-fruits of resurrection had already been reaped in Jesus Christ, the first-born from among the dead. This means that for Christians, not only has the reality of our future hope been secured in the one who has stepped forward from beyond, but also the character of our future hope has been revealed in him.

There are at least five such characteristics germane to our discussion. Although each one is worthy of detailed discussion, I will merely enumerate them in order to identify a common theme. Although the form of these statements reflects my idiosyncrasies, these characteristics emerge clearly and repeatedly throughout Wright's book. (1) Just as Jesus was raised to never die again, so the dead will be raised into eternal life and thus will never die again. In other words, death will be defeated. (2) Just as the risen Jesus was and is embodied, so the dead who rise will be embodied. In other words, we won't just be ghosts or souls, but bodies in time and space. (3) Just as the embodied risen Jesus speaks and acts, so the dead who rise will speak and act. In other words, we will live. (4) Just as the living Jesus speaks and acts in created space and time, so the dead who rise will inhabit space and time. In other words, we will not ultimately leave earth to go to heaven but rather heaven will come to earth as all things are made new. (5) Just as Jesus has a two-stage post-mortem narrative (Easter Sunday is preceded by Holy Saturday), so the dead will pass through two stages of their own (resurrection preceded by an intermediate state of some sort). In other words, the dead who will rise are "with the Lord" in the meantime. But the meantime is not the point, but rather a time of waiting for the resurrection of the dead. Eternal, embodied, active life is what awaits us in God's new creation. That's the character of Christian hope as revealed in Jesus Christ.

A common theme running through all these elements is the continuity between creation and redemption. For Wright, the resurrection of the dead will be God's final confirmation of the goodness of his creation (cf. esp. pp. 93-97). God will not give up on his creation. That's what makes Easter hope such good news. Resurrection is only good news for us if it is really us who are raised. The concept of continuity supplies not only thematic unity to Wright's doctrine of resurrection but also the hinge for Wright's transition from the character of Christian hope to its present tense practical implications. The creation in which we find ourselves now will be the creation God will renew then. So what we do in and with creation is given eternal significance. We will not just be held arbitrarily accountable for our deeds in this life which have no real bearing on the next life. Rather, we are called to participate in God's renewal of creation both now and then, so we might as well get started now.

With the basic contours of Wright's view of resurrection before us, we may now briefly assess its adequacy. In terms of its basis, Wright is certainly right to ground the character of Christian hope in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. By following the logic of first-fruits, he helps us fill out the picture of Christian hope without engaging in futuristic speculation. In terms of theme, Wright is right to emphasize the continuity of creation in God's redemptive plan. So much Christian discourse describes future redemption in terms so discontinuous with creation as we know it that we are left with the impression that God saves us from his creation. This implies that God gives up on his creation, which calls into question whether our identity is contingent on anything but sheer divine fiat. But God did not raise a horse and call it "Jesus," but raised the Jesus who had died -- nail marks and all. So the element of continuity is crucial to Christian hope.

But continuity is not the only crucial element in Christian hope. There is also an essential note of discontinuity that must be sounded. Wright sounds this note periodically, but it is certainly not the dominant one. So I will sound it here loud and clear. Dead people don't live again. Creation as we know it is not so ordered to produce eternal life. The resurrection of Jesus Christ does not imply otherwise. It's not that eternal life was always hiding there as an inherent potential in the created order and Jesus just pointed it out to us. Eternal life is a gift bestowed by God. And since it is a gift bestowed to the dead, it is a gift bestowed without any participation of the recipient. Dead people don't contribute to their resurrection. The gift of eternal life includes within itself time and space, so it is not strictly timeless or spaceless. But the gift of eternal life transcends time and space, so it is not simply the infinite extension of time and space. There is a distinct and essential note of discontinuity between creation and redemption in the fundamental structure of Christian hope.

Given the situation in which Wright writes, he is right to emphasize continuity. We have lost this element. But this should never be anything more than a matter of strategic emphasis. A coherent and comprehensive Christian eschatology must sound both the note of continuity and of discontinuity in proper symmetry and proportion. In Christ we hasten and await new creation in both its newness and its createdness. And so we must restore this balance before we too quickly initiate reforms that merely overcompensate. Overcompensating inevitably leads to head on collisions with those who came before us and equal and opposite over-compensations by those who will come after us. So we are better off just getting our focus right than constantly consuming ourselves with corrective maneuvers.

Thankfully this is a matter of emphasis, so it is easily dealt with. We can affirm nearly everything Wright says about resurrection hope, while at the same time casting more light on elements he does not mention much and adding elements he does not mention at all. By so taking into account both the discontinuity and continuity in God's redemption of his creation, we can finally turn to the pastoral implications of Christian hope. If Wright is right, which for the most part he is, what happens to funerals? I'll enumerate five guidelines and proposals for reform, briefly commenting on each.

(1) Tread Lightly.

Although all reforms of church practice can be tricky, tinkering with funerals is perhaps the most tricky. This is not only because the wishes of the deceased are regarded as sacrosanct. It is also because those giving pastoral care to the bereaved have no desire to be theological cops. But there is something even more fundamental than these pragmatic hurdles. Ministers must seriously consider that the faith of the people of God has come to expression in the funeral practices we encounter today. There is an old rule of thumb in the church: lex orandi, lex credendi, or the law of prayer is the law of faith. Piety for the most part precedes doctrine. This does not mean that doctrine can never guide piety, but it does mean that doctrinaire proposals for reforms must seriously consider the faith of the people before running rough-shod over their preferences. And given the complexity of Christian hope with all its entailed continuities and discontinuities, there is every reason to think that there is at least something to affirm in any Christian funeral. So, when instituting reforms, be sure to tread lightly, both out of love for people and out of a desire for truth.

(2) Welcome both Grief and Hope.

If God's redemption of all things stands in both a deep continuity and a radical discontinuity with God's good creation, then the human encounter with death may be greeted with both grief and hope. Grief is appropriate, for death continues to condition human existence. Death is encountered as the great canceler of all human hopes, and so it is entirely appropriate and healthy to grieve. No Christian should rebuke another Christian for grieving. Grief is both an affirmation of the goodness of a fellow creature who was lost and a serious expression of the radical end that death really does bring even within the context of Christian hope.

But grief is not the only expression we should welcome from one another. There is also a place for genuine hope, even and especially in the face of death. Hope is appropriate, for although death still conditions human existence, in the light of Easter death no longer determines human existence. Rather, human existence is determined for life, and life eternal. So it is fitting that Christians would express their hope and even joy in the context of funeral ceremonies. No Christian should rebuke another Christian for hoping. Hope is both an affirmation of God's promised gift of restoration and an expression of the desire for God to transcend the sinfulness and weakness of our current condition.

So both the continuity and discontinuity of Christian eschatology support the place of both grief and hope in the Christian encounter with death. Thus we should welcome expressions of both in funeral practices, in pastoral care of the bereaved, and in the general life of the church in its regular encounter with death.

(3) Add Resurrection Language to Already Existing Forms.

If Christian hope is for life after life after death, then talk of mere life after death is not so much wrong as inadequate. Therefore, most of the necessary reforms do not need to replace so much as add important language and perspectives. We can still talk about grandpa going to heaven and being with Jesus. We just need to also talk about grandpa coming back with Jesus to reign with us in the new heavens and the new earth. This reform-by-addition approach can help guide the selection of hymns, biblical passages, and other liturgical forms that bring to the fore the general resurrection of the dead as our final and ultimate hope. Wright's book identifies a number of these, and the many on-line hymnody and liturgy resources can help search for appropriate selections. But this reform-by-addition approach also calls for the production of new songs, texts, and activities that bring to expression Christian hope for life after life after death. The five characteristics of Christian hope identified above can perhaps supply patterns of thought to guide such creative endeavors.

(4) Prioritize Resurrection by Transforming Completion Language into Interim Language.

But addition alone is not enough, for the intermediate state and the general resurrection are not two equal pieces of the pie. Rather, the former is fundamentally ordered to the latter. This is why there is so very little in the New Testament about the former, whereas the New Testament is consumed with the latter. Furthermore, the best theological speculation concerning the intermediate state has always been controlled by and in service to the more fundamental belief in resurrection. "Speculation" is the key word here, because we do not have a lot to go on about the intermediate state (i.e., what kind of life does a disembodied identity lead?). We are left to speculate precisely because Christian hope does not have a lot to say about the matter, but rather is concerned primarily with the final hope of resurrection.

This biblical priority seldom comes to expression in Christian funeral practices, which often construct a vision of the intermediate state into which the dead person is now entering in such a way that any additional element like resurrection is rendered superfluous. This must be remedied by more than mere addition of resurrection language, which simply cannot on its own compete with the ingrained one-stage picture of life after the death. One must also transform the language describing the present state of the person to express its interim character. We can still say they have gone to a better place, but we must then immediately modify this by saying that they will one day enter the best place of all, the new creation. We can still say they have entered into rest, but we must then immediately modify this by saying they are resting in the sense of waiting, waiting for the final act in God's story. These are just some of the ways to transform language that implies immediate completion into language that implies an intermediate time between the times, and thereby give priority to the resurrection of the dead.

(5) Bear Witness to the Risen Christ.

Finally, however we talk about the life, death, rest and resurrection of those who have departed, the center of a funeral service should be the risen Christ. He is the one in whom we hope. He is the one who characterizes our hope. He is the one in whom all eschatological continuities and discontinuities find their reconciliation. He is the one who holds together past, present and future. He is the one about whom we need not nor may not speculate concerning his destiny, for he has ascended to the right hand of the Father and will come again to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom shall have no end. Funeral services should celebrate the life and grieve the death of a loved one. Funeral services are also opportunities to express Christian hope in both its present and future dimensions. But most of all a funeral is a service of worship to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures. A funeral that does not bear witness to the risen Christ is not a Christian funeral. It may be many other wonderful things, but it is not that. As we debate over and experiment with funeral practices, we at least all agree that we could use more of the risen Jesus in them. This alone would be a giant leap in the right direction, and might take one small step toward guiding more specific reforms like the ones suggested above.

In the second chapter of Surprised By Hope, N. T. Wright states, "I hope that those who take seriously the argument of this present book will examine the current practice of the church, from its official liturgies to all the unofficial bits and pieces that surround them, and try to discover fresh ways of expressing, embodying, and teaching what the New Testament actually teaches" (25). In this essay, I have attempted to heed these words, taking seriously the argument of Wright's book -- serious enough even to engage in some constructive criticism -- and have offered some guidelines and proposals for contemporary funeral practice. If you have any further points of criticism (for Wright or for me), or any further suggestions for church practice, please comment on this board and/or contact me through my email: JohnLDrury at gmail.com.

Any thoughts?

What other relevant characteristics of our future hope are entailed by Easter faith?
What are some of the consequences of emphasizing the continuity between creation and redemption?
What alternative lines of critique would you put to Wright?
What are some further pastoral implications of Wright's general line of thinking about hope?

Anselm's Cur Deus Homo

2008-10-09T12:27:00.002-04:00

I'm going to interrupt my series on N. T. Wright's Surprise By Hope to post a lecture I prepared and delivered this week in an introductory course in Systematic Theology at PTS. I'll return to the fifth and final installment of my series on Wright next week, which will address the pastoral implications of his argument, specifically as it relates to funeral practice. But this week, enjoy a taste of Anselm.

Text: Romans 5.6-11
[6] For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. [7] Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person--though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. [8] But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. [9] Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. [10] For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. [11] But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Prayer:
Most merciful and just God, we praise you for being a God of mercy and thank you for showing your mercy to us even while we were still sinners. In your son Jesus Christ you have shown your love for us, saving us from the threat of wrath and reconciling us to you as your dearly loved children. Through his death we have been reconciled and through his life we will be saved. Lord, teach us this hour to boast in you and you alone. Teach us through your son's example to act justly and to love mercy and walk humbly with you. Equip us with knowledge and wisdom so that we may speak your word of reconciliation and do your work of reconciliation. We eagerly anticipate what you will teach us as we converse with your servant Anselm, relying on your Spirit to guide us into all truth. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

When I was 11 years old, I drove my mom's Honda Accord through our garage door. A few months earlier my dad had taught me how to start a car, and so my folks would let me start it when I was waiting for them in the morning before school or after church while they talked to their friends. The car needed to warm up, especially during the winter. You'd start it and it would be all revved up for a few minutes and then eventual drop to a normal idle. So I thought I was really helping out by starting it, even though I suspect they were just trying to get me off their backs. One morning I thought I would help my mom out even more by putting the car in gear. Needless to say, I had no idea a car in reverse would just go without pressing the gas, but it did. And unfortunately this particular morning I apparently forgot to open the garage door, and so the neighors saw a 4-door maroon sedan crash through our garage door that morning, eventually coming to a screaching halt in the middle of the road.

Now the crash woke my father, who ran out terrified. That was his first response: fear. But fear quickly turned to a combination of disbelief and anger that I had done such a thing. There was no immediate consequence, other than showing up a little late to school. But eventually my father approached me with a plan: I would work so many hours of new duties and projects around the house to help pay for the new garage door. The amount of hours seemed astronomical to me, an impression I imprudently shared with my parents. They explained to me that my hours of work did not come close to paying for the new door. In fact, they did the math and showed me I was theoretically getting paid $60 per hour. My folks had required a justifiable payment from me which I could not pay in full, and so they found a way for me to learn a lesson about responsibility and restitution even while they foot the bill.

This is my story. But you all have stories like these. Stories of the strange interplay of justice and mercy. And many of you have heard these stories in sermons as a way of illustrating the saving significance of Jesus's death. These stories of justice and mercy highlight a certain line of soteriological thinking, embedded in refrains such as "Jesus died for your sins," "Jesus took my sins away," "Jesus was punished in our place," and "Jesus paid it all."

Our task today is twofold. First, I want to show you where this line of thinking comes from. Out of respect for Anselm, we must acknowledge this deep influence he has had on Western Christian soteriology even today. And out of respect for other streams and movements within Christianity, we must acknowledge that this is not the only way of thinking about salvation in Christ, but rather a particular formulation with its own particular genesis and development.

Second, I want you to see that much of what passes for a representation of this line of thinking today is a distortion of a rich tradition, even as we learn to acknowledge the problems inherent in this tradition. Earlier this week, my brother-in-law saw me reading Anselm on the shuttle. He asked me what my take on Anselm was. I said, "He's not as bad as everyone says he is, but there certainly are some problems." My hope is that those of you who have acquired a prejudice against Anselm and all he represents will begin to respect and even enjoy him, while those of you who consider yourselves champions of Anselmic soteriology will take pause and engage in some self-criticism.

To achieve these ends, let's engage in an analysis of Anselm's Cur Deus Homo, deploying the skills you have been honing in your weekly papers. In order to get a sense of the big picture, I'll organize my analytical commentary today around a narrative analysis of the text. Instead of just walking you through this rather long text, I have asked, "What story is Anselm telling us?" This is a good question to ask, provided one's reconstruction of the narrative is and remains rooted in the text itself and that one's reconstruction does not over-determine the interpretation of the text. With this big picture narrative in front of us, we will be able to engage in a conceptual analysis of selected passages along the way. Also, and especially in our discussion of the later stages of the story, we will seek to open ourselves up to be formed spiritually by the text. We'll do this by means of a rhetorical analysis, asking: "What is Anselm trying to do to us?" So, we begin with a narrative analysis to provide an overall structure within which we will also engage in conceptual and rhetorical modes of analysis. The pay off for employing these modes of analysis in tandem with each other is not only a deeper understanding of the text but also a deeper understanding of the God of whom the text speaks. Specifically, the honor of God, the justice and mercy of God, and the beauty of God will all come to the fore at key intervals within our commentary. So, without further ado, let's get into it.

In order to get a bird's eye view, let's transpose Anselm's argument into a story. Three basic elements of a story are character, setting and plot.
Who are the characters in Anselm's story?
• God.
• Angels, both good and bad (fallen).
• The Devil, chief among the fallen angels.
• Humans.
• Christ, the God-human.

Where does the story take place?
• Heaven, God's created abode where Christ and the Angels come from and where humans are destined to enjoy eternal happiness
• Earth, where both the fall and the incarnation take place.

What is the plot? Here we need to take a little more time. Remember Freytag's five stages of drama from high school English lit? Exposition, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action, Denouement. Let's use those stages to get a skeleton of the story before us, and then walk through each of stage in order to engage in a closer analysis.

1. Exposition: Humans are created for immortal happiness.
2. Rising Action: Humans fail to give honor to God but can’t repay it.
3. Climax: Christ, the God-human, dies to pay humanity's debt.
4. Falling Action: Christ gives his reward to humans, who imitate him in humble obedience.
5. Denouement: Humans enter the heavenly city, restoring order to the cosmos and enjoying divine blessedness forever.

Okay, with that in front of us, let's go through the story step-by-step, stopping along the way to assess the coherence of the narrative, clarify the concepts of the argument, and open ourselves up to the formative influence of the God of whom Anselm speaks.

1. Exposition: Humans are created for immortal happiness.

In the opening scenes of a dramatic narrative, the characters are introduced. God populates heaven and earth with angels and humans in proper proportion and harmony with each other and God. God as creator deserves the honor of his creatures, expressed through absolute obedience to his will. Such honor and obedience is not demanded arbitrarily, but precisely as the means to human happiness (II.1). Humans are destined for immortality, but their immortality is not guaranteed; they are able to die (I.18). They must persist in choosing the good to achieve true immortality, being not able to die, and so enjoy God's blessedness forever. Note the opening note of beauty, order, and harmony. Following the tradition, the beginning and end rhyme for Anselm. The beauty, order and harmony of the cosmos in relation to God and to itself is the goal that drives the narrative. This is easy to lose track off when we get into the ugliness of sin and atonement (note: the ugliness of the latter is only apparent). This is one of the benefits of narrative analysis: it keeps our mind on the big picture in the context of which we should understand the details, many of which are troubling at first glance and even at second glance. Well, on to those juicy details.

2. Rising Action: Humans fail to give honor to God and cannot repay it.

The exposition concludes with the inciting action: the first humans fall from grace by not giving God his due. The bad angels fall as well, but that's not the main line of the narrative. Although under the devil's influence, humans are culpable for dishonoring God. Now Anselm goes out of his way to say that God's honor cannot in fact be besmirched (I.15), as his honor is a se and immutable [review these terms]. But the revelation of God's honor on the world's stage can be besmirched. And this is not just a problem of appearances, because so dishonoring God wreaks havoc on the created order. And as Anselm repeatedly reminds us, God does not let anything go unregulated in his kingdom (I.12). So God must restore his honor on earth.

How does God restore his honor? Per his custom, Anselm lays out a couple options for rational consideration. Either (a) God can annihilate humans, (b) God can punish humans, or (c) humans can repay the debt of honor owed to God. So: (a) annihilation, (b) punishment, or (c) satisfaction. Now it is not hard to see the influence of Anselm's sociopolitical context here. In the context of medieval feudalism, the vassal owes honor to the lord of the realm. A lord cannot simply overlook a snub or insult from a vassal, because the security of the whole hierarchical system would be undermined. And so the lord would either punish the vassal or the vassal would find a way to make it up to the lord through assorted acts of devotion.

But here is where the analogy breaks down. For, contrary to many of his critics, Anselm does not paint God as a demanding thug consumed with his reputation. Rather, God's concern for his honor is good for us. The restoration of God's honor is the means by which human happiness is restored. This can be seen in the way Anselm sets aside option (a) annihilation. Anselm argues that if God annihilated his creatures then they would have been created to no avail. But God created humans with a purpose: namely, to attain blessed happiness in the vision of God (II.1, II.4). This reasoning is important because it reveals that Anselm is not solely concerned with the restoration of God's honor; he is also deeply concerned with the restoration of humanity to its destined happiness in God. So the divine dilemma is not only self-referential but concerns us and our well-being.

Having set aside the annihilation option, the only remaining options are punishment or satisfaction. Punishment versus satisfaction. That's the basic dilemma that drives the first book of Anselm's Cur Deus Homo. [Note: not penal substitution; cf. Hieb] Since this is a crucial conceptual pair, let's take a closer look at a particular passage. Turn with me to book I, chapter 11.
- question: logic of forgiveness
- sin = not giving God his due (i.e., injustice)
- debt = absolute submission to God's will
- sinner's debt: repay honor ... with interest! (restitution)

That's our problem. But now let's view this problem from God's perspective. Turn the page to the next chapter (I.12):
- divine forgiveness is not by mercy alone
- because of divine righteousness, sin is either punished or satisfied.
- the means of forgiveness must befit God's nature, which is just
So God must either punish or be repaid on account of his justice. Unregulated forgiveness is not an option. Now this may seem strange to your ears because you have heard that God loves you unconditionally. But the language of satisfaction as internal to the process of forgiveness would be familiar to Anselm's readers. The term “satisfaction” in fact comes from the practice of penance. The three acts of the penitent: contrition, confession, satisfaction. The act of the priest as God's representative: absolution. So satisfaction was seen as a natural part of the process of absolution or forgiveness.

But this sacramental background to satisfactionary thinking is not the whole story. For the sacramental system of penance itself rests, at least in Anselm's mind, on the doctrine of God. The reason that satisfaction is internal to forgiveness is because God is a just God. Now Anselm could affirm the grain of truth in the statement that God loves us unconditionally, inasmuch as the just requirements of the law are not imposed on God from without. But Anselm would argue that there are restraints that are internal to God's own nature. What is "necessary" for God is only what befits his consistent character (1.12; II.5). The one God is both merciful and just (I.24; II.20). So, unlike human judges, God need not and cannot choose between mercy and justice when God forgives. Divine forgiveness must be both merciful and just, or it is it not divine forgiveness. One of the ironies of the Anselmic tradition is the tendency to pit God's mercy and justice against one another, when Anselm's whole point is that they go together. There is a divine dilemma, but it's not between mercy and justice, but between punishment and satisfaction. Anselm's point is the God seeks a just means of satisfaction so that we might be shown mercy.

Shifting gears back from a conceptual to a narrative mode of analysis, we can see that this divine dilemma supplies the tension or rising action of the second act of the drama of salvation. The tension rises in Anselm's account by showing the impossibility of humans paying God back for their sin of dishonor (I.19-25). Unlike offences on the creaturely plane, a single act of disobedience to God is of cosmic proportion, on account of God's infinite worth. So nothing we can give God is sufficient to pay the debt we owe. Unless some alternative means of recompense presents itself, the only option left is punishment, which in this case means death and therefore the loss of eternal blessedness. The last portion of Book I is designed to let us hang for a little while in this suspense. Anselm is not only setting up for his argument in Book II, but also getting us to take a serious look at the problem that we have got ourselves into. By what means can we be saved? There seems to be no way out. Punishment awaits us. Who can save us? Enter the God-human, whose action constitutes the climax or turning point of the story.

3. Climax / Turning Point: Christ, the God-human dies to pay humanity's debt.

Look at II.6 with me for a moment: "If, therefore, as is agreed, it is necessary that the heavenly city should have its full complement made up from members of the human race, and this cannot be the case if the recompense of which we have spoken is not paid, which no one can pay except God, and no one ought to pay except man: it is necessary that a God-Man should pay it." Salvation comes through recompense, paying humanity's debt to God. Only a human ought to pay. But on account of the enormity of the debt, only God has the infinite worth at his disposal to pay it. And so the only means of recompense is a mediator who is both God and human.

In Anselm's narrative, the cross is the turning point. He talks a lot about the incarnation, and that's because he is trying to prove that the incarnation is the necessary precondition for the cross. But Christ's ontological constitution is not itself saving, as it was for, say, Gregory of Nyssa. Rather, Christ's ontological constitution makes him to be the kind of person who can save us through his death as a distinct act. [This is the crucial difference between D-soteriologies and A-soteriologies, despite the many motifs (restoration, imitation, etc.) they may share.] How does Christ's death save us? By sharing in our humanity, Christ is able to die. By sharing in God's divinity, Christ is unable to sin and so does not strictly have to die. On account of the infinite worth of this one divine-human person, the giving up of himself in death is a sufficient recompense for any and all dishonor shown to God. In other words, Jesus paid it all.

Now we need to stop here to assess what Anselm has accomplished. First of all, he has presented a masterful argument for the coherence of Chalcedonian Christology with the larger body of Christian thought (cf. I.8; II.7). He has shown that the incarnation is not some sort of oddity attached to the Christian faith, but a logically necessary belief for those who believe everything else Christianity teaches. [FQI] Of course, the irony is that he has turned the doctrinal tradition on its head by arguing from his own idiosyncratic soteriology to the dogmatically secured doctrine of the incarnation. He thereby gives the impression that his soteriology is more dogmatically secure than Chalcedonian Christology, when the reality is opposite. Now I say "impression," because in the context of Anselm's procedure of faith seeking understanding no one doctrine forms the foundation for all the others. Rather, this is a coherence argument. But the impression is nevertheless there. I, for one, find the argument to be both powerful and beautiful, so much so that it lends credence to his soteriology. But we must be careful to not grant it dogmatic status too quickly.

In the process of making this masterful argument, he has made two major shifts in the way the story of redemption is told: one regarding the characters and the other regarding the plot. Regarding the characters, he has found a way to sideline the devil's role in the story. The devil is still there, but his role is significantly diminished. This move is not an accident, but a direct though respectful critique of Augustine. Augustine and other patristic theologians would also say that in the death of Christ God rendered a payment. But they understood this payment as a ransom, with the devil as its recipient. Anselm says No to this whole way of thinking, because it gives the devil too much authority and turns redemption into a gladiator game. Instead, the payment is an act of devotion and obedience, with God as its recipient (I.7; II.19). The positive consequence of this shift is that the mythological cosmic battle with the devil is de-centered so that the moral encounter between God and humanity may take center stage. The negative consequence is that dual protagonists in this story (God and humanity) are at the same time the antagonists, God in terms of his wrath and humanity in terms of its sin. This is one of those points where the tradition flowing from Anselm becomes so easily distorted, painting God as a bloodthirsty tyrant who thinks being human is a capital crime. I believe these distortions can be overcome, but it requires considerable care and constructive energy.

Regarding the plot, by making the cross (as a distinct act apart from the incarnation) the climax of the story, Anselm managed to forget the resurrection. Now observing what is missing is always a tricky endeavor. I've encouraged my preceptees to beware of arguments from silence. Why? Because Cur Deus Homo is not the only treatise Anselm wrote, and so he may say much about the resurrection elsewhere (in documents either extant or lost, or in his undocumented preaching and teaching). Furthermore, noting a missing element in a text does not imply that the person does not believe in it, but only that it performs no function in the text at hand. Lastly, an argument from silence places on the one making it a heavy burden of proof to demonstrate that the missing element should be there. With these caveats in place, however, we can justifiably ask: Whatever happened to the resurrection? If atonement is finished on the cross, what is the purpose of the resurrection? Now many answers have been provided to this question throughout the development of second millennium Western Christian theology. But the fact that it even needs to be asked shows that Anselmic soteriology can be fully formulated without reference to the resurrection. I, for one, consider this a problem. [And in the interest of full disclosure, my dissertation research is focused on the doctrine of resurrection in conversation with the modern Anselm, Karl Barth].

Okay, enough assessment. Back to the story.

4. Falling Action: Christ gives his reward to humans, who imitate him in humble obedience.

Although Anselm does not spend much time explicitly addressing the here and now appropriation of salvation, he does directly address the effects of the climactic action of Christ in terms of reward and imitation in book II, chapter 19. Here's a revealing quote: "On whom is it more appropriate to bestow the reward and recompense for his death than on those for whose salvation, as the logic of truth teaches us, he made himself a man, and for whom, as we have said, he set an example, by his death, of dying for the sake of righteousness? For they will be imitators of him in vain, if they are not to be sharers in his reward" (II.19). Since Christ's life is of infinite worth, he not only can give up his life to God the father as a recompense on our behalf but also is in no need of a reward from God the father for this great act of self-sacrifice. And so the reward of eternal blessedness, which Christ deserves but does not need, is shared with his human brothers and sisters. But with which of his many brothers and sisters is this reward shared? Well, obviously those who are like him, those who imitate him in his love for justice.

Cast in the light of this concluding call to imitate Christ, the whole of Cur Deus Homo can be read as a description of divine pedagogy: the life and death of the God-human teaches us how to live. Why did God become human? The answer is not only "to die for our sins," but also "to teach us how to live." In Christ God has taught us to be merciful in our execution of justice and just in our acts of mercy. In Christ God has taught us to obey him in all things whatever the circumstance. In Christ God has taught us to live righteously not for the sake of reward but out of sheer love for God. In Christ God has taught us to give of our own self for others. Now all the proper caveats need to be introduced here: we are not God, and so we cannot punish sinners justly, demand infinite restitution for dishonor, subsist in two natures, die for the sins of the world, or give and receive honor within a communion of three persons in one being. [Note: response to 'divine child abuse' line of criticism]. Anselm introduces such caveats from time to time (e.g., I.12). But the caveats are not the point. The point is that in Christ God has introduced us to his character and calls us to "Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God (Eph 5:1-2). May it be so with us.

5. Denouement: Humans enter the heavenly city, restoring order to the cosmos and enjoying divine blessedness forever.

In the final stage of a comedic drama, we find the protagonist in a situation as good as, if not better than, where they started. Humans are in a sense restored, but not in the sense of a do-over (and so with the potential of falling again) but in the sense of finally reaching the destiny for which God created them. What is this destiny? To be forever happy in the enjoyment of God. It is impossible for a sinner to enter into happiness, both because of the affront to God's honor within the created order and because the debt owed to God would spoil the enjoyment of God. So the recompense paid by the God-human is the means by which this barrier is removed. But salvation is completed not in the removal of the barrier but in arriving at the goal.

Having come to the end of the plot, you can see how the "death of Christ" and "going to heaven" are so closely tied in contemporary preaching and evangelism. But the reduction of salvation to these two foci is a distortion of Anselm's intentions, even if he left the door wide open to it. Anselm understands the salvation of humanity as instrumental to God's restoration of the cosmos. He makes this point by means of his claim that the number of restored humans makes up for the number of the fallen angels. The excursus on angels (I.16-18) is not irrelevant to his soteriology, and the conclusions of that section reappear at crucial moments (e.g., II.6). In sending Christ to atone for our sins, God is restoring order to the universe. So the restoration motif provides the context for Anselm's atonement-driven soteriology. Losing sight of this will inevitably lead to a reductionistic "die and go to heaven" understanding of salvation.

As we come to the end of the story, we see that it rhymes with the beginning. The original beauty, order and harmony of the cosmos are restored. With this goal in mind, everything else takes on a different hue. The work of God in Christ is the rational and just means by which the wise God skillfully orchestrates the masterpiece of his creation. The human works of humble obedience bring us into harmony with Christ as his imitators and into harmony with God's good creation. By our little acts of submission to God we are "maintaining the beauty of the universe" (I.15). And even the work of theology because an aesthetic exercise. As Anselm explains in the opening lines of this treatise, Christians seek to perceive the logical coherence of Christian doctrines, the "utility and beauty of its logic," "in order that they may take delight in the understanding and contemplation of the things which they believe" (I.1). This aesthetic appreciation for Christian doctrine is not only enjoyable in itself but also useful for training us to be "ready always to give satisfaction to all who ask the reason for the hope that is in us [I Pet 3:15]" (I.1). May our time spent wrestling with Anselm today help you to catch a glimpse of the beauty and utility of theology.

Any thoughts?

Bibliography

Aulen, Gustaf. Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of the Atonement. New York: Macmillan, 1969.

Balthasar, Hans Urs von. Theo-Drama. Vol. IV. Ignatius Press, 1994. Cf. ch. 3, esp. pp. 255-261.

Browning, Don S. Atonement and Psychotherapy. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1966. Cf. ch. 3.

Charry, Ellen. By the Renewing of Your Minds. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Cf. ch. 7, esp. 168-172.

Eckardt, Burnell F. Anselm and Luther on the Atonement: Was it "Necessary"? San Francisco: Mellen Research University Press, 1992.

Fortin, John R., ed., Saint Anselm: His Origins and Influence. Lewiston, N.Y. : E. Mellen Press, 2001. Cf. esp. chs. 1, 4, 6.

Heyer, George S. "St. Anselm on the Harmony Between God's Mercy and God's Justice," in The Heritage of Christian Thought, eds. R. E. Cushman and E. Grislis. New York: Harper & Row. Pp. 31-40.

Murphy, Jeffrie G. and Hampton, Jean. Forgiveness and Mercy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Steindl, Helmut. Genugtuung: Biblisches Versöhnungsdenken, eine Quelle für Anselms Stisfaktionstheorie? Freiburg, Switzerland: Universitätsverlag, 1989. An English-language book review by Colin Gunton can be found in Journal of Theological Studies 43:1 (Apr 1992), pp. 283-286.

Williams, George Huntston. Anselm: Communion and Atonement. Saint Louis, MO: Concordia, 1960.

N. T. Wright's Suprised By Hope (Part Four)

2008-10-01T14:15:00.005-04:00

At the end of the second part of Surprised by Hope, Wright turns his attention to the personal dimension of Christian hope. Here he addresses the New Testament teachings on bodily resurrection of individuals at the coming of Jesus (ch. 10) as well as the question of an intermediate state and the final destiny of the damned (ch. 11). I have a brief comment on each of these chapters.

The material in chapter 10 is pretty straightforward and quite helpful. I recommend that chapter alone as an excellent treatment of personal Christian hope. I just want to comment on one particular exegetical move Wright makes that I find fruitful. He argues that the "spiritual body" of 1 Cor 15 does not imply a spirit/body dualism but rather that the resurrected human body will be animated by God's Spirit. The contrast is not between two types of bodies but the between two animating principles, and he offers grammatical support for this. So the risen body will be one driven by God's Spirit rather than the flesh (i.e., fallen powers). If accurate, I think this is a helpful and fruitful approach. Although it fits Wright's tendency to emphasize the note of continuity with the created order, this view helps affirm the bodily character of resurrection without avoiding "spiritual" categories when talking about future hope. And it is fruitful because it grounds this new bodily life in the activity of God's Spirit, thereby providing raw material for developing a more thoroughly trinitarian account of Christian hope. In fact, the whole of Part II of Surprised by Hope can be organized under a trinitarian rubric: the cosmic dimension as the confirmation of God the Father's good creation, the central figure of Jesus Christ as the Son of God coming in glory, and the personal dimension of resurrection as the outpouring of the Spirit of life on all flesh. (In the interest of full disclosure, I should admit that this re-framing of the material brings it closer to the form of my recent catechetical reflections on eschatology.) Anyway, that's just a riff off Wright in order to tease out the dogmatic detail of his argument.

Regarding chapter 11, I must register a bit of a complaint. Although his critique of purgatory is strong and his argument on behalf of God's justice is a helpful response to critics of eternal damnation, his use creative imagination appears in the wrong place. He is decidedly uncreative and unimaginative in his description of the intermediate state, while he is overly creative and overly imaginative in his speculations regarding the fate of the damned. Regarding the intermediate state, he does an excellent job undermining traditional problematic concepts of purgatory and paradise. But when he comes to his own position, he ends up in the same place, speaking of disembodied human identities subsisting in God's presence for the meantime. His view does not seem to be fundamentally different than the alternatives he rejects. It is rather just a tinkering with the details. What he needs is to apply his creative imagination (displaced elsewhere!) to explore what kind of "existence" and "identity" we might have between our death and our final resurrection. Do time and space really operate in the same way here as the do in other discourses? Could it be that the dead have an immediate experience of their future resurrection? Could it be that the whole notion of an intermediate state can be overcome with some creative thinking in light of Easter and New Creation? Again, Wright's emphasis on the continuity of creation (in this case, it's temporal categories) limits his openness to the otherness and newness of our future hope.

This lack of creativity can be set in stark contrast with the creative imagination he employs to speculate about the kind of sub-human existence the damned might have unto eternity. I think he is right to avoid falling into the trap of too easily emptying hell in order to make God look good. But such a stance does not require that one comes up with a speculative model of hellish existence that befits God's justice. This just seems to me to be a misplaced use of imagination. Where was this imagination when trying to wrestle with the pressing practical issue of "where we go when we die"? It seems to me that the intermediate state requires the best creativity to overcome confusion, while the threat of hell should remain a dull point, warning us simply to avoid going there and not consuming our speculative energies. That's how I would prioritize the matter at least.

Well, these are just some explorations and some picky things about chapters 10-11 of Surprised By Hope. The book as it stands is on the right track and remains a strong defense of the bodily resurrection of Jesus and its implications for our own bodily future. Next week we will turn with Wright to discuss what this all means for the present.

Any thoughts?

Does Wright's exegesis of 1 Cor 15 work?
What are some of the implications of our resurrected bodies being wholly animated by God's Spirit?
What do you think of Wright's speculations concerning hell? Am I right to identify a misplaced use of creative imagination?

N. T. Wright's Suprised By Hope (Part Three)

2008-09-24T16:28:00.008-04:00

Having sketched the cosmic context of God's future plan, N. T. Wright turns his attention to the central role of Jesus in this plan. He dedicates three chapters to Jesus as the central figure of new creation: the first on his ascension into heaven (ch. 7), the second on his return (ch. 8), and the third on his role as judge (ch. 9). In this post I will focus on Wright's understanding of the parousia of Jesus Christ, which comes to the fore in chapter 8. However, we will consider chapter 7 as well, because, as we shall see, his understanding of the parousia relates to his understanding of the ascension. I'll say at the start that while I agree with Wright's main point that Jesus returns to stay not to take us away, his understanding of the parousia is inadequate. Specifically, his view defines Christ's parousia in exclusively future terms and consequently construes Christ's ascension in terms of absence. By way of contrast to Wright's view, I'll briefly present an alternative construction of the parousia drawn from the later theology of Karl Barth. But first, let's get Wright's position before us.

How does N. T. Wright define the New Testament concept of parousia? Although this one Greek term does not carry all the conceptual freight that some think it does, parousia is a key term for describing the future of Jesus Christ. This technical term "is usually translated 'coming,' but literally it means 'presence'--that is, presence as opposed to absence" (128). The term had two major uses in Greco-Roman culture: (1) supernatural presence, such as "the mysterious presence of a god or divinity," and (2) royal presence, such as "when a person of high rank makes a visit to a subject" (pg. 129). Early Christian expectation of the paraousia of Jesus revolted against Greco-Roman imperial presumption. By so co-opting the concept of parousia, the early Christians give us a glimpse into the character of Jesus' return: namely, that he will come again not to take us away but to stay, transforming us and reigning with us forever in his transformed world. And so the parousia of Jesus, in conjunction with the other terms often found in its close proximity, refers to the royal appearance of Jesus when he comes again to stay.

Now the general trend of this position is right. It counters the world-denying mistakes of rapture theology without abandoning the personal return of Jesus Christ. And it keeps in view the crucially future dimension of the parousia of Jesus Christ. However, Wright so exclusively links the concept of parousia with this future dimension that he construes the meantime in terms of absence. His use of the language of "absence" is not just to explain the basic terminological sense of parousia (as quoted above). He is making a theological claim: "When we put together that big picture [ch. 6] with what we've said in the previous chapter about the ascension of Jesus [ch. 7], what do we get? Why, of course, the personal presence of Jesus, as opposed to his current absence" (123, emphasis original). According to Wright, if Jesus's future relation with us is one of presence, then Jesus's present relation with us must be one of absence. It is not a coincidence that he refers to his chapter on the ascension here, which, despite its helpful insights regarding heaven as the "control-room" of earth, ultimately defines Jesus's ascension in terms of his absence from the church and the world. Now surely there is some sense in which Jesus is absent from us in the time between the times. But in my view there must be a way of understanding the future parousia of Jesus that does view Jesus as strictly absent from the church and the world in the present. Fortunately, such an alternative can be found in the later theology of Karl Barth.

In a sub-section entitled "The Promise of the Spirit" (Church Dogmatics, Volume 4, Part 3, §69.4), Karl Barth explores what he calls the threefold parousia of Jesus Christ. The context of these reflections is important to note: Barth is arguing that Jesus Christ in his resurrection supplies his own transition from his atoning and revealing life-history to its effects and consequences in our sphere. The central claim in this argument is that universal revelation is objectively accomplished in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Barth is aware that such a claim is audacious, and makes one wonder why the world doesn't simply comes to its end on Easter morning. In order to answer this question, Barth appeals to the three forms of the parousia that he argues makes sense of the complex temporal dynamics of the New Testament.

Parousia in its most basic sense means effectual presence, used to speak of the visitation of God to his people in judgment and grace. When predicated of Jesus Christ, it refers to the coming again of the one who came before. The first coming again of Jesus is quite obviously his being raised from the dead. And so Easter is the first form of the parousia. It is the primal and basic form of Christ's effectual presence. But it is only the first form. For it points forward to the final return of Christ, the final or "third" form of the parousia. Between the primal and final forms of the parousia, we find not empty space-and-time but the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, which is the second or intermediary form of the parousia. Jesus Christ wills that there will be a time between the times, not as a delay of his parousia but to give time and space for his people to go to the ends of the earth, working alongside him as bearers of the promise of the Spirit. So there are three forms of the one parousia of Jesus Christ: the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, the outpouring of the Spirit, and the final return of Christ.

The point of all this for our purposes here is that none of these forms should be seen as less than the others. Each form of the parousia has the same content: the personal and powerful presence of Jesus Christ. And so the time between the times, the missional space opened up between the dawn of new creation on Easter morning and the consummation of all things at the final return of Jesus Christ, must not be construed as a time of absence. Such an absence too quickly invites the church or some other human venture to fill in the gap left by Jesus. Wright is right to not strictly identify the risen Jesus with the church, but such a proper distinction between Head and Body can be maintained without appeal to the absence of Jesus. Jesus is present with his church in the outpouring of the Spirit. This is the second or intermediate form of his parousia. It cannot be collapsed into the first form, for we do not walk with Jesus now the same way as the apostles did during the 40 days. Nor can it be equated with the final form, for we are not yet like him for we do not see him as he truly is. But in all its distinction, the form of his parousia with us today is real, personal, and, most importantly, sufficient for the gift and task of Christian mission to which we are called.

Any thoughts?

How do you understand the parousia of Jesus?
Is Wright's general point (that Jesus comes not to take us away but to stay) a helpful one?
Does my critique of Wright hit a nerve, or miss the point?
What do you think of Barth's threefold parousia? Does it account for the temporal dynamics of the New Testament as he claims? What problems are there in his position?
In what sense does the ascension of Jesus entail his absence? In what sense does it commence a different kind of presence?
Just for fun: What was Jesus' relation to his apostolic community in the ten days between the ascension and pentecost? [This is a speculative but perhaps revealing question]

N. T. Wright's Suprised By Hope (Part Two)

2008-09-17T06:38:00.010-04:00

Last week we discussed the structure of the first part of Wright's new book Surprised By Hope and the historical argument concerning the resurrection of Jesus found there. Having introduced his readers to hope-in-person as he stepped forward on Easter, Wright turns to our future hope in the second part of the book. This part moves in three steps: (1) the cosmic dimension of future hope [ch. 5-6], (2) the central figure of new creation [ch. 7-9], and (3) the personal dimension of redemption [ch. 10-11]. In this series, we'll spend a week on each of theses steps, starting with the first this week.

Wright makes a good case for starting with cosmic rather than personal hope. We have a tendency to make the future all about me. Now there is hope for my personal life and identity, but that hope must be located within a larger vision. In fact, some of the mistakes made regarding personal hope (e.g., forgetful of the body) are more easily remedies when one begins with the big picture (e.g., space, time and matter). So I think it is helpful that Wright starts here.

But I will raise a concern: the central figure of Jesus and his return as the risen Lord should not be controlled by a concept of cosmic hope already constructed before turning to him. The future of Jesus Christ is the key to the future of the world. In Jesus Christ the cosmic and the personal meet. So despite the wisdom of moving from the cosmic to the personal, there is a risk of turning Jesus into the prime instance of hope and thereby obscuring that he instigates hope. For example, Wright refers to the personal presence of Jesus as "the other vital element of the New Testament picture of God's ultimate future" (108). Jesus is certainly vital to Christian hope, but he is not just an element alongside others. Wright acknowledges this problem at certain points and makes clear statements concerning Jesus's centrality in the coming kingdom. But the structure of his presentation and the general trend of his thought placing the accent on the cosmic dimension as the determinative context for understanding Christian hope. This fits with Wright's overall tendency to emphasize continuity over discontinuity in his understanding of history and eschatology.

Having raised this concern, I want to say that Wright has some wonderful insights on the cosmic dimension of Christian hope. After addressing the debate between optimism and despair in chapter 5, Wright succinctly presents the fundamental structures of hope and the biblical images or themes of hope in chapter 6.

The three fundamental structures of hope are

The goodness of creation,
The nature of evil as real but not created by God, and
The plan of redemption as re-creation.

The biblical six images or themes of hope are

Seedtime and Harvest [1 Cor 15],
The Victorious Battle [1 Cor 15],
Citizens of Heaven, Colonizing Earth [Php 3:20-21],
God will be all in all [1 Cor 15:28],
New birth [Rom 8], and
The marriage of heaven and earth [Rev 21-22].

Since Wright is already summarizing his own previous work in this chapter, it would be unwise to attempt a summary. Instead, I'll just highlight my favorite one: "citizens of heaven, colonizing earth." This section is both classic Wright in its style of argument and a helpful alternative to the reduction of Christian hope to 'going to heaven.' Let me just quote this passage (pg. 100-101) at length and let you consider it for yourself.

...[W]e look across to another royal image, found in Philippians 3:20-21. It is very close in theme to I Corinthians 15, quoting in fact at a crucial point from the same psalm (Psalm 8), emphasizing Jesus's authority over all other powers.

Philippi was a Roman colony. Augustus had settled his veterans there after the battles of Philippi (42 B.C.) and Actium (31 B.C.). Not all the residents of Philippi were Roman citizens, but all knew what citizenship meant. The point of creating colonies was twofold. First, it was aimed at extending Roman influence around the Mediterranean world, creating cells and networks of people loyal to Caesar in the wider culture. Second, it was one way of avoiding the problems of overcrowding in the capital itself. The emperor certainly did not want retired soldiers, with time (and blood) on their hands, hanging around Rome ready to cause trouble. Much better for them to be establishing farms and businesses elsewhere.

So when Paul says, "We are citizens of heaven," he doesn't at all mean that when we're done with this life we'll be going off to live in heaven. What he means is that the savior, the Lord, Jesus the King--all of those were of course imperial titles--will comes from heaven to earth, to change the present situation and state of his people. The key word here is transform: "He will transform our present humble bodies to be like his glorious body." Jesus will not declare that present physicallity is reduntant and can be scrapped. Nor will he simply improve it, perhaps by speeding up its evolutionary cycle. In a great act of power--the same power that accomplished Jesus's own resurrection, as Paul says in Ephesians 1:19-20--he will change the present body into the one that corresponds in kind to his own as part of his work of bringing all things into subjection to himself. Philippians 3, hough it is primarily speaking of human resurrection, indicates that this will take place within the context of God's victorious transformation of the whole cosmos.

Any thoughts?

Do you agree that it is a good idea to move from the cosmic to the personal when discussion future hope?
Is this movement of thought a logically necessary one? Or is this move a response to the contingent fact of modern individualism?
What do you think of Wright's exegesis of Philippians 3:20-21? Does it make grammatical and historical sense?
Is Wright's re-direction of the meaning of heavenly citizenship helpful for understanding Christian hope?
What is the benefit of displacing going to heaven with coming from heaven? What is the cost?

N. T. Wright's Suprised By Hope (Part One)

2008-09-10T11:03:00.008-04:00

Over the next few weeks I am going to share some thoughts on N. T. Wright's new book Surprised By Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. The rationale for this series is rooted in three factors: (1) my current research focus is Christ's resurrection and this book has much to say on the matter, (2) I am using it as a textbook in a course I am teaching this semester at SCC, and (3) a friend recommended it saying it's "the best book of '08." Regarding the third factor, I'll let you be the judge regarding the truth of such a claim. As for me, I at least agree that it is among the best books to come out this year, not because of its originality but because in it Wright draws together a number of key arguments found throughout his work and presents them in a concise and clear manner. This week I will highlight the key moves he makes in Part One of Surprised By Hope, which briefly presents the main contours of the argument of his 800-page tome The Resurrection of the Son of God, then raise some questions for discussion.

Wright's argument goes something like this. At the time of Jesus, there was a clear spectrum of options concerning human fate after death. The spectrum ran from the Greco-Roman one-way street, in which post-mortem bodily existence was neither promised nor desired, to the Jewish hope of a general resurrection at the fulfillment of history. Early Christian hope fell decidedly on the Jewish end of the spectrum, yet with a number of major modifications centered around the belief that God raised Jesus ahead of the rest. After so locating early Christian hope, Wright asks after the best possible explanation of such a belief. He contends that the best possible explanation of the rise of early Christianity is that God did in fact raise Jesus from the dead.

The last step is the most important and the most complex, so let me lay it out it greater detail. Wright argues that the twin elements of the Easter narratives (the meetings and the empty tomb) are each necessary conditions for belief in Jesus' resurrection while neither alone is a sufficient condition for such a belief. The meetings without the empty tomb could be explained as mere apparitions; the empty tomb without the meetings could be explained by a stolen body. The two together provide a sufficient explanation for the rise of Christian belief in Jesus' resurrection and are themselves best explained by the fact of Jesus' resurrection. Wright rehearses a number of other explanations to show that they are all less coherent the belief that Jesus was in fact raised. Of course, believing that a dead man was raised from the dead is a claim of world-view shaking proportions, challenging even the presuppositions upon which historical arguments (like the one rehearsed above) are made. In light of this, Wright concedes that his argument functions negatively: clearing the ground of alternative explanations, exposing their skeptical bias, and thereby pointing readers toward a whole new way of thinking rooted in the surprising fact that God raised Jesus from the dead. Within these limits, however, Wright contends that he has made a strong historical argument for the probability of Jesus' resurrection from the dead.

So there it is, Wright's argument in a nutshell. Although he ends there in Resurrection of the Son of God, in the context of Surprised by Hope this argument is just setting the stage by introducing the central character of Christian hope: the risen Jesus. We'll move on to the implications of Easter for Christian hope in the following weeks. But for now, let's consider this argument on its own terms by raising a series of questions:

Is Wright's spectrum of options concerning human fate after death accurate?
Can early Christian belief be located on the spectrum as a "modification" of Jewish belief? Or is there a more significant break?
Is asking after the best possible explanation of the rise of Christian belief in resurrection the best possible procedure? Does this put the cart (belief) before the horse (resurrection)?
Do you agree that both the meetings and the empty tomb are necessary conditions for belief in Jesus' resurrection? What are the consequences of removing one or the other?
Do you agree that neither the meetings nor the empty tomb are sufficient conditions for belief in Jesus' resurrection? Could a case be made for resurrection belief on the basis of one alone?
Does conceding the purely negative function of his argument undermine the weight of his argument?
Does conceding the purely negative function of his argument adequately address the problem of faith and history?
Is the question of belief in Jesus' resurrection the same as the question of belief in the risen Jesus?
What does Jesus' resurrection tell us about Jesus?
What does Jesus' resurrection tell us about God?

Any thoughts?
_

Review of Stephen D. Wigley, Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar: A Critical Engagement

2008-09-03T14:03:00.004-04:00

Here's an excerpt from a new book review, the full version of which can be found on the Center for Barth Studies website.

Stephen D. Wigley, Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar: A Critical Engagement (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2007), 178 + xiv. $144.00

Toward the end of his life, Hans Urs von Balthasar said of his multi-volume trilogy, “I wrote it all for Barth – to convert him.” Stephen Wigley’s new book can be read as an exposition of this revealing statement. Wigley’s central claim is that Balthasar’s critical engagement with Barth shaped the deep structure of his trilogy. Barth is not merely one interlocutor among others for Balthasar, but rather is the key to understanding the whole of his theology. Although this is not a particularly original or controversial thesis, the enduring significance of Barth for Balthasar’s theological project is all too often forgotten or suppressed. So Wigley’s book contributes to the ongoing appropriation of Balthasar’s legacy by keeping his conversation with Barth in the foreground.

Wigley advances his argument by first discussing Balthasar’s book on Barth, followed by an overview of Balthasar’s trilogy that highlights the presence of Barth as the key conversation partner. This method has the advantage of showcasing the breadth of Balthasar’s engagement with Barth, as opposed to many previous studies that compare the two figures on a selected topic. Unfortunately, given the vastness of Balthasar’s output, this method consistently lends itself to mere summary even when the arguments call for closer examination. Wigley repeatedly acknowledges the limitation of such summarizing, but does not take any significant steps to mitigate its effects. Nevertheless, Wigley makes some crucial claims worthy of attention. I will identify and discuss three such claims, and then offer some more general criticisms of the book.

Druchesis X: The Ten Commandments

2008-08-27T12:04:00.002-04:00

Druchesis X: The Ten Commandments
(Lectures 11-12)

[Note: This material will be divided over two weeks in the course I am preparing for this fall. But in order to finish by the end of summer, I'm lumping my reflections on the Ten Commandments into one big blog post, just as we did with the Lord's Prayer last week. Stay tuned next week for the first installment of a new series on the resurrection, which will include conversations with N. T. Wright's new book, Surprised by Hope]

What do we do now? In light of where we have come from and where we are going, how should we then live? Though we have not ignored matters of practical living in this series, it is now high time to take these questions head on. In order to so, we will keep following the catechetical tradition by reflecting on the Ten Commandments. Memorizing the Ten Commandments is standard catechetical practice in most Christian communities, whether they call it "catechesis" or not. Seeking to understand them and live by them is near the heart of Christian living. So a little reflection on the "ten words" is a worthwhile endeavor.

By choosing to place the Decalogue at the end of our series, we have sided with a particular tradition of catechetical reflection. Not all catechesis moves in the order that we have chosen. Perhaps more famously, Martin Luther's Catechisms (both Large and Small) place the Ten Commandments at the beginning. Now a lot can be said in favor of Luther's ordering, not the least of which is that teaching children to share instead of steal simply comes first as a matter of course. But we have chosen to treat the Decalogue at the end of our reflections in order to locate Christian behavior within its proper context. God's commands are not spoken to us in a vacuum, but within the context of his story with us. God does not say, "If you do these things, then I will be your God and you will be my people." Rather, God says, "I have made myself your God and you my people, therefore do these things." It is significant that the Decalogue is prefaced by God's revealing statement: "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery" (Ex 20:2). This reminds the hearers of God's past acts of covenant faithfulness and gestures at the promise of future acts of deliverance. God's covenant is the context of God's commandment. And so we accordingly began with our faith in God's covenantal history with us and our hope in God's purposive future for us before turning to our love of God and neighbor in obedience to God's concrete command to us.

By so contextualizing the command of God, we immediately run into a problem: if Jesus has fulfilled the covenant, then why do we who have faith in him have to bother with the commandments of the "old" covenant. Now I must concede that the relation between the laws of the nation of Israel and the ethical guidelines of the Christian community is notoriously complex. I cannot pretend to resolve it here. But I can offer this rather simple observation: if God's promises to bless the nations through Israel are not abolished but fulfilled in Jesus Christ, then the gentiles who follow Jesus are invited as guests in the house of Israel to learn from his people how to live. In other words, we may not have to obey the law, but we get to obey the law. What was once far off is now brought close to us in Christ by the Spirit.

The catechetical tradition of the church has concretized this positive relationship between the law and the gospel by coordinating the ten commandments with the so-called greatest commandment. When asked what the greatest commandment was, Jesus gave a twofold answer: love God with your all and love your neighbor as your self. The twofold structure to Jesus's love command corresponds nicely with the apparent twofold structure of the ten commandments, traditionally referred to as the "two tables of the law." According to Exodus, the ten commandments were inscribed by the finger of God on two tablets (cf. Ex 31:38 and pars). Although it is not clear which commands were on which tablet, later tradition identified the first four commands concerning worship of God as the "first table of the law," and the remaining six commands concerning relations with neighbors as the "second table of the law." We will follow the tradition in our division of the material. So, without further ado, let's turn to the first table of the law and so to the first commandment.

The First Table of the Law: Love of God
The First Commandment
You shall have no other gods before me

The first command is the most fundamental of all the commands. One might obey the rest with relative success and still betray God's covenant by having other gods. One might be a virtuous pagan, but at the end of the day a pagan is still a pagan. God requires singular loyalty from his people. God is faithful to his people and expects the same in return. The attribute of divine faithfulness is the theological presupposition of the first commandment. This Hebrew term for this attribute is hesed often translated "mercy" or "loving kindness," both of which are accurate but obscure the covenental connotation of the term. For God to have hesed is for God to be faithful to the covenant he made with his people. The story and promise of God's faithfulness to his people provides the covenantal context of the command to be faithful to him in return.

In that same story, God's people are repeatedly shown to be unfaithful. It should be no surprise, then, this command takes a negative form: "you shall not." In fact, most of the ten commandments are negative in form. There is a reason for this, and it is not just to make us feel bad. God's commands are primarily negative because the positive conditions for following them have already been supplied unilaterally by him. God in his grace has established a covenant with an unlikely people. God is faithful to his people. That is the most important positive fulfillment of the law. His people are simply told not to drop the ball from their side.

However, the fact that God supplies the positive conditions of covenant faithfulness does not mean that there is not a positive form of this command. In Deuteronomy, the centerpiece of the law is God's positive command to "love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength" (Deut 6:5). It is this commandment that Jesus identifies at the greatest. The positive form of the command reminds us that mere avoidance of paganism is not enough. One must also dedicate one's self wholly to God. In fact, it is the positive form of the command that helps us to discern its opposite. What does it mean to have other gods before the Lord your God? As Luther famously put it, to have a god is to have anything on which your heart depends entirely. Whatever you cling to, that is your god. And so we all of us -- pagans, agnostics and believers -- are susceptible to cling to people and things and ideas rather than the one true God. Nobody is free from this temptation, and nothing is free from acting as our god. Clinging to any such gods is ruled out by the first commandment. And, in its positive form, clinging to the one true God is called forth from God's people.

The Second Commandment
You shall not make for yourself an idol

It is arguable that by obeying the first commandment one necessarily obeys the remaining commandments of the first table of the law. Love the Lord your God and thereby fulfill all the law and the prophets. This is certainly true, but it is only true in a certain respect. It is true that genuine love of God seeks to embody its love in proper worship. In that respect, sheer love of God is enough. But we must also consider that love is not just an internal feeling but always takes concrete form in external actions. We rightly doubt the integrity of one who says they love someone whom they treat poorly. To say "I love you" and not show it is meaningless. In a certain respect, love is the actions that communicate love. So to appeal to the certainly true statement that the law of love fulfills the whole law in order to skirt the concrete form of love is to undermine the point of the statement. Just as God's love of us is not just an amorphous feeling but a concrete action of covenant faithfulness, so too our love of God is a concrete action. Our hesed of God must correspond to God's hesed of us.

This is where the next three commandments come in. The first is the command to neither make nor worship idols. Given the necessity of concrete forms of love, it is no wonder that the first and second commandments are sometimes conflated in the Christian tradition. To this day, not all Christian traditions follow the same numbering of the decalogue. Some combine the first two, splitting the last two in half in order to still get the number ten. Some reformation traditions adjusted this numbering, both as a result of a renewed interest in the Hebrew language and in order to support protestant iconoclasm by highlighting the commandment against images. Scholarly consensus confirms the distinction between the command to have no other gods and the command to eschew idolatry, and so we have followed the traditions whose numbering reflects this distinction. This choice is doubly helpful. On the one hand, it frees one to exposit the first commandment in broad terms of covenant faithfulness to God, which can take a myriad of forms. On the other hand, it directs one's attention to the very specific sin of idolatry, which played such an important role in God's story with his people.

Idolatry means worshipping images, substituting a creature for the creator. We can of course speak of idolatry metaphorically, in the sense of anything that competes with the worship of the true God. In fact, we were doing just that in our exposition of the first commandment in terms of singular faithfulness to God. But the metaphorical widening of the concept of idolatry should not obscure its concrete meaning. This is especially important in light of the temptation to use images in the worship of the true God. One might intend to express their obedience to the first commandment through the worship of an image of the true God. Israel's first great sin in the wilderness was the fashioning of a golden calf, which they worshipped as the Lord who brought them out of Egypt. But God requires his people not only to forsake all other gods but also to forsake the use of idols even in their worship of him. Such extremity is not arbitrary but befits the character of God, who, as the commandment says, is a jealous God (vs. 5-6). Jealousy is an appropriate attribute for a God who acts in history by choosing a people. God's jealousy is the burning of his love for his people, the punishing and rewarding activity by which God displays his covenant faithfulness. Just as divine faithfulness is the theological presupposition of the first commandment, so divine jealous is the theological presupposition of the second commandment.

Obedience to this command comes to fullest expression in Israel's Temple: in the central room, precisely where one would expect a sculptured image of a god, there is an empty seat. God is present without the presence of idols. In fact, God is only present in the absence of idols, as the prophets continually remind the people. The prophets were thereby enforcing the bottom line of the second commandment: let nothing stand in the way your worship of the true God.

Now the Christian tradition rightly hits a snag here. Do we not worship Jesus as the only Son of God? And cannot he as the incarnate one be imaged? Debate over the use of images in worship, referred to as the iconoclastic controversy, raged in the early Byzantine period. In fact, the seventh and final ecumenical council was convened to settle this very issue (Nicaea 787). This council should not be perceived as a break from the earlier, more "theological" councils. Rather, the question of icons was a continuation of the Christological debates and developments of the earlier centuries. The defenders of icons appealed to the two natures of Christ: Jesus as God is the proper object of worship; Jesus as human is capable of being imaged; therefore, images of Jesus may be used in worship. By these and other arguments, the defenders of icons won the debate at the council, though the controversy reemerged later both in the East and the West. The Western debate exploded during the reformation, which focused on images of saints. Whatever one's stance on the use of images generally, one ought to seriously consider affirming the Christological insight of the seventh ecumenical council. No one has ever seen God, except the the only begotten son of God, who is the full expression of God, the exact representation of his being. To bow down in worship before Jesus is not idolatry. Whether an image of Jesus is necessary or permissible can be debated in practice, but that Jesus is the image of God must never be denied by Christians. Such a denial would be blasphemous, which brings us to the third commandment.

The Third Commandment
You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain

We have already spoken of the name of God when we exposited the first petition of the Lord's Prayer: "Hallowed be thy name." So we need not linger here long. All we need to do here is lift up the scope of the negation and draw out the positive implication.

First, avoidance of curse words is necessary but not sufficient. Now it is true that the later Jewish tradition had chosen to avoid entirely speaking the revealed name of God. This is why YHWH was given alternative vowel points in the Masoretic Text and mispronounced "Jehovah" by English translators. Such absolute prohibition was the better part of wisdom, but as Jesus's teachings on oaths shows, sheer avoidance of the divine name will not do. Obedience to the third commandment requires that we eschew all misuse of the Lord's name. That means we must not appeal to religious language as a means to advance our own ends. Religious justification of back room deals, power grabs, and holy wars is a great affront to God and a bad witness to him before a watching world. But misuse of the name not only applies to the dragging God's name through the mud, but also to the presumption to attach God's name to even our best ideals and practices. Such presumption is essence of vanity. And before you interpret this exposition of the commandment merely in terms of a principled separation of church and state, remember that the Lord's name can be and regularly is misused in a religious context. Nowhere else are we more tempted to take the Lord's name in vain than in the church, where we loosely throw around God's name and hide behind pious reference to the Lord to get what we want.

Does this mean we should avoid God-talk entirely? Absolutely not. The positive implication of the third commandment is not disuse but proper use of the Lord's name. The love the Lord your God with your all means to use the name of the Lord your God with reverence and joy. We must revere the name, not by tip toeing around it but by reserving it for proclamation and prayer, speaking to others about the greatness of God and speaking to God with thanksgiving and petition. In other words, we should tell the story of God instead of co-opting God to advance our own plots. To call on the name of the Lord, both in times of blessing and in times of trouble, is the positive fulfillment of the third commandment. "Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you and you will honor me" (Psalm 50:15).

The Fourth Commandment
Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy

With the fourth commandment we turn from hallowing God's name to hallowing his day. Interestingly, this is the first of the two commandments that are phrased positively. Although the prohibition against work on the sabbath are also given, they do not get the first word. Rather, the positive imperatives to remember and to sanctify are given prominence. In this case, remembering means being conscientious enough to attend to the temporal rhythms God has given to his people. Sanctifying, as always, means to set apart, to make this day different than the others. Specifically, this day is made different through rest. Work defines the life and times of a community. Regular rest sets concrete limits one's work and its capacity to define the meaning of life. Sabbath-keeping identifies a community as God's people. It is no coincidence that the fourth commandment makes reference to the creation story. Busy people must be reminded that God the creator sustains his creation even when we cease our work. In other words, the world will not fall apart if you take a day off. You are not the creator; God is. Sabbath-keeping is an expression of trust in God and his provision for us beyond the fruit of our labors.

But sabbath-keeping is not only an expression of trust, but also an expression of love. By resting on the sabbath we join God in a shared time of rest. Not only can we rest because God still works, but also we are invited to rest with God. Thus is it not without reason that the Christian tradition connected sabbath-keeping to its own day of worship. The sabbath is the seventh day of the week, whereas Christians worship on the first day of the week to remember the resurrection of Jesus. So there is no strict equivalence between rest on the sabbath and worship on the Lord's Day. But the connection between the two is sensible and appropriate, provided one does not conflate the two and thereby create confusion, as so often happens. I can think of so many times when arguments over what was an appropriate activity on a Sunday afternoon suffered from the confusion of the mandate to rest and the invitation to worship. We may and must heed both, but how they are related and what that looks like can take many forms. So the church must learn to have an openness about the specifics of sabbath-keeping, even as it must re-learn to joyfully obey the fourth commandment.

The Second Table of the Law: Love of Neighbor
With the fifth commandment we come to the second table of the law, and so turn our attention to love of neighbor. This shift in focus is not a separation. Just as love of God and love of neighbor are not separated in the ten commandments, so they remain united in Jesus's teaching. As Jesus puts it, "And the second is like the first..." The two go together. Love of God without love of neighbor is empty; love of neighbor without love of God is blind.

Nevertheless, there is a shift in focus from sustaining a proper covenantal relationship with God to sustaining the moral fabric of the community. God is not left behind, for all of these commands are followed out of obedience to God and for his glory. But explicit reference to God does disappear. In fact, parallels to these sorts of commands can be found in many if not most cultures. They certainly have parallels in the ancient near eastern cultures that surrounded Israel. So the second table of the law cannot be treated as though it contained absolutely unique legal insights.

However, Christian reflection on and obedience to the second table of the law is refracted through the unique lens of Jesus Christ. Although we certainly heed these prohibitions as would anyone who seeks the collective good of a society, we also hear in them the voice of our Lord to go the extra mile. We seek not only to avoid murder, adultery and theft, but seek to cultivate peace, faithfulness and generosity. In other words, we seek to love our neighbor as ourself. One could successfully heed the prohibitions by withdrawing one's self from the community, and thereby fall short of loving one's neighbor, which requires interaction and engagement. One could even heed these prohibitions in community, but limit the scope of application only to my community and therefore obey them only as an expression of self-love. One of the themes of Jesus's teaching is the re-definition of "neighbor" to include outsiders and even enemies. In fact, such inclusion of enemies is at the heart of the gospel, and so it should come as no surprise that the ethical life of the community created by the gospel would be shaped by enemy-love. This ever-widening scope of love comes out clearly by expositing the second table of the law not only in its negative form but also by drawing out the positive implication of each command. Such will be our procedure here.

The Fifth Commandment
Shame vs. Honor

The first commandment of the second table of the law is to honor one's parents. That family comes first should come as no surprise, for the family is the basic unit of society. This does not mean the church ought to sentimentalize the family or that today's "family values" have some kind of revealed status. The very notion of a mobile nuclear family is quite foreign to the ancient tribal culture in which the fifth commandment was first spoken and obeyed. But the fact remains that families -- in the more stripped-down obvious sense of the word -- form the core web of relationships through which first participate in communal life. It is with one's parents, siblings and other household members that one learns to sustain community by eschewing violence, theft, lies, etc. So it fits that the first and most basic form of neighbor-love is to bring honor to one's family.

Now we mentioned earlier that we would exposit both the negative and positive aspects of each command. But unlike the remaining commands, the fifth command is already phrased positively. And also unlike the remaining commands, it is with reference to the negative aspect that consideration of the gospel's ethical demands comes in. We are commanded to honor our parents and by implication we are prohibited from shaming our parents. Yet shame is precisely what Jesus repeatedly brings on his family and repeatedly calls others to do. He places the choice before would-be disciples: either follow him immediately and wholly or take care of your family and its needs and reputation. These are certainly "hard sayings" and ought not be used to abuse people. However, they do display how Christ relativizes family ties. The family is not dismantled by Jesus, but the absoluteness of its demands are. The relative good of sustaining good family relations and reputations can be sought, but to act solely out the interest of my blood relations comes into direct conflict with Jesus's radical redefinition of neighbor. We need not set out to bring shame on our family, but picking up our crosses and following Jesus will often do so. The end game, of course, is not that we would trade our family for him, but that all, including our own family members, would be incorporated into the new family formed in Christ. And so with this end in veiw, we can rest assured that the greatest honor one can give his or her family is to follow Jesus.

The Sixth Commandment
Violence vs. Shalom

Although the family is the basic unit of every society, the prohibition against murder is the basic law of every society. Historically, the move to civil life is signalled by the abandonement of vendetta cycle and the development of public means to settle disputes without recourse to privately executed violence. Only by eschewing murder can we live together, prosper, and grow as a community. Of course, civil societies remain quite violent, as the society itself is invested with the authority to take life. And so the distinction between killing and murder is operative here. The ancient Israelites knew of this distinction and could express it in the Hebrew language. The sixth commandment prohibits murder, not killing. This is not meant to excuse violence but to put it in its place.

The positive form of the sixth commandment is peace, in the full biblical sense of the word. The Hebrew word shalom means much more than the absence of violence. One could avoid armed conflict and still fall short of shalom. Shalom is abundant life, the fulfillment of the blessing promised in God's covenant with his people. Shalom is fulfilled in Jesus Christ and will be revealed when he returns in glory. In the meantime, shalom breaks in from time to time. Christians ought to be on the vanguard of shalom wherever and whenever it breaks in. In concrete terms, that means going the extra mile and turning the other cheek. Whether the non-violent practices Jesus calls from his disciples imply a negative prohibition on all violence is an age-old debate worthy of attention. All that needs to be said here is that God is ushering in a kingdom of peace and life, and so Christian reflection on the just use of force should take into account the where the story is heading, both in choosing whose side to take in a conflict and how one goes about defend their cause.

The Seventh Commandment
Adultery vs. Faithfulness

The prohibition against murder gets a civil society up and running, but the prohibition against adultery is crucial for sustaining economic life. I use the term "economy" both with reference to its root meaning "household" and for it current fiscal connotations. In societies both ancient and modern, adultery is expensive. It costs to much and is a drain on individual families and the society at large. And I'm not just taking about the emotional costs. Adultery adds new relational bonds to already existing ones and therefore drains the resources from a family. Divorce as an apparent alternative to adultery either throws the woman into poverty and prostitution, as in ancient societies, or feeds the blackhole of legal beuaracuries, as in modern societies. Adultery is too expensive to be worth it in the end. Most societies figure this out and prudently prohibit it. The loosening of such restraints is certainly not a sign of progress, but of regress.

The stakes are even higher for the people of God, who are called to be a light to the nations, bearing witness to God's faithfulness. Although the fifth and sixth commandments are basic for community life, the seventh commandment gets to the heart of Christian living before a watching world. The positive form of the seventh commandment is the call to faithfulness, which corresponds to the faithfulness of and to God with which the decalogue begins. A faithful spouse images God's faithfulness to his people. Throughout Scripture, God consistently uses the imagery of spousal faithfulness and adultery to reveal his covenant and character. This pattern is continued in the New Testament in terms of Christ and his church, of which marriage between a man and a woman is a great "mystery" or "sacrament." Christians are positively called to live lives of marital faithfulness as signs of God's faithfulness. And this call is extended to all Christians, as those who do enter into marriage covenant are equally responsible to bear witness to God's faithfulness by their chastity. Again, as with the sixth commandment, the positive form of the command is not necessarily absolute in character. So we can debate the appropriate conditions for separation and divorce. But all such discussion should take place within the context of the call to be faithful to one another as God has been faithful to us.

The Eighth Commandment
Theft vs. Generosity

Obviously, a society cannot function without respect for people's stuff. If you take my stuff, then I won't have what I need and will likely take someone else's stuff, and then before you know it a society spins out of control. From a certain point of view, the prohibition against stealing is just an extention of the logic of the prohibition against murder beyond the body to one's possessions. Although in some sense I am my body, in another sense I have my body. It is my most prized possession, and to murder me is to steal my body from me. This is reflected in our language: "He took her life." The rest of my possessions are extensions of my body: the food by which I sustain my life, the shelter by which I protect my body, etc. To steal my possessions is an afront to my bodily life, my existence in its spatial dimension. Ask anyone who has had their house robbed and they will tell you that they feel violated. Respecting one another's space and stuff is crucial for healthy communal life.

But respecting other's stuff and protecting mine is not enough. In fact, if only the negative aspect of this command is obeyed, one can easily become a vicious person: withdrawn, miserly, and possessive. The positive import of the eighth commandment is not "the right to private property," but the call to generosity. When children grab at other toys, we do not simply tell them to respect other kid's stuff, but to share. Jesus put this call to generosity bluntly. The rich young man who had obeyed all the commandments including this one was told by Jesus to sell all he had and give it to the poor. It is good not to steal; it is better to give. In fact, generosity is the most potent means of preventing theft. If we do all we can to support those in need, then we help to remove the conditions under which theft becomes necessary. These conditions will never be fully remove until the great shalom of the coming kingdom, but that it no reason to be conduits of grace and peace in the meantime. Generosity is the concrete form of that grace and peace which we are called to give our neighbor.

The Ninth Commandment
Falsehood vs. Truthfulness

The civility sustained by the previous prohibitions is quickly undermined without a just public forum for settling disputes. Instead of reclaiming one's honor through revenge, one seeks the mediation of third parties. In the life and times of ancient Isreal, disputes were settled by the elders of the community who sat at the gates of the cities. Hence the prophetic call to "establish justice in the gate." Prophets, priest and kings also participated in the ancient justice system. But the whole process of third-party mediation is spoiled by those who bear false witness. Justice that is bought is not true justice. The original judicial context of the ninth commandment cannot be ignored. Certainly a wider prohibition on lying can be teased out, but the focus here is the strict prohibition of purgery. Those who purger themselves undermine justice, which is the very means by which a civil society is sustained. Falsehood destroys community.

The positive aspect of this commandment is initially quite obvious: tell the truth. Both in the courts and in life in general, bear true witness. Tell the story the way it happened. Tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Be forthright with your friends and enemies. Let your yes be yes and your no, no. Cultivating the virtue of truthfulness and the art of speaking the truth in love enables all other communal virtues to flourish. This whole line of thinking is true and good, but this is one more twist that a Christian must introduce here. The language of "witness" in the New Testament and in Christian theology moves beyond the courtroom and becomes a rich metaphor for the word and deed of Chrisitan ministry. "You will be my witnesses to the ends of the earth." For Christians, the call to bear true witness brings with it not only the general virtue of truthfulness but also the particular task of telling the gospel story, of sharing one's testimony to the work of God in Christ. Without abandoning one's communal duties and virtues, the ultimate fulfillment of the ninth commandment is evangelism.

The Tenth Commandment
Coventeousness vs. Contentment

With the tenth and final commandment we return to matters of the heart. The concrete forms of the command to love God in the first table of the law were preceded by the general command to have no other gods before him. The concrete forms of the command to love your neighbor in the second table of the law are completed by the general command not to covet. Just as unfaithfulness is the root of all failures to love the Lord your God with your all, so coveteousness is the root of all failures to love your neighbor as yourself. When love of self triumphs over love of neighbor, there you have coveteousness. We do not wish our neighbor well, but want what they have. And so we reach out to grab it, and thereby break one or more of the other commandments of the second table. The decalogue displays its deep wisdom in not only prohibiting violence, adultery, theft and falsehood, but also forbidding the root cause of these violations of community. The tenth commandment explicitly forbids the covetiousness that leads to adultery (by referencing the neighbor's wife) and theft (by referencing the neighbor's house, servants, animals, etc.). But we all no that much murder comes from envious rage and that much false witness is a result of bribery. And so nearly all the commandments of the second table have their root cause in coveteousness.

The focus on root causes is a theme in Jesus's own teaching and commentary on the law. In the so-called antitheses of the sermon on the mount, Jesus contrasts mere avoidance of sin with actively rooting out the causes of sin (Matthew 5). This trajectory within Jesus's teaching can be read as an re-interpretation of the whole law through the lens of the tenth commandmnet. It is not insignificant that the language of "neighbor" so dear to Jesus appears explicitly for the first time in the tenth commandment. For he we get to the heart of neighbor love. It is no coincidence that Jesus's taught more against worrying than any other topic, for contentment is the road to rooting out the destructive forces of coveteousness. The opposite of coveteousness is contentment: taking joy in what I do have rather than keeping up with the Joneses. Just as covetesounss leads to the destruction of community, so contentment leads to the flourishing of community. If I am content and not worried about tomorrow, then I will not only avoid theft but generously give of my resources to others. If I am content with my relationships, then I will not only avoid adultery but also be faithful to my spouse with joy. If I am content with my status, I will not only not be tempted by bribery to perjure myself but also be forthright about who I am and what I have. If I am content with my life, I will not only quell the rage that leads to murder but also begin to experience shalom in my own life. Contentment roots out vice that destroys community and implants virtue that sustains community. And so contentment is the heart of neighbor love.

Conclusion:
"And the Greatest of these is Love."
We have chosen to end this series of catechetical reflections with the our love of God and neighbor as it comes to expression in our joyful obedience to the ten commandments. Such a choice is not meant to merely "tack on" some practical, ethical implications onto the work of theology. Rather, we have ended here because we this is the end for which God made us. God made us to love him and love one another. Love is where the whole story is headed. The postive picture of community painted in the ten commandments is a foretaste of the kingdom of God. The coming kingdom will be a time and place of worship, rest, honor, shalom, fellowship, grace, truth and joy. We are called to live in light of where we are going. The just shall live by faith: on the basis of what God has done for us in Christ. And we are justified in hope: praying for and waiting on the hope set before us. Between faith and hope is love, by which we have fellowship with God and each other. Faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love. For when the kingdom comes, faith will become sight and hope will be satisfied. But love remains. Love never fails. Begin to live a life of love, joyfully obeying the law of law and thereby fulfill all the law and prophets. Become now who you will be revealed to be in Christ when he returns. Love the Lord your God with your all and love your neighbor as yourself, and thereby become a foretaste and sign of the coming kingdom of God.

Any thoughts?

What do you think is the proper function of Israelite law within the Christian community?
What advantage is there to coordinating the two tables of the law to the twofold love commandment of Jesus? What disadvantages does this traditional procedure bring with it?
What sorts of things, people, and ideas function as gods today? What does it look like to turn from them?
To what extent does the prohibition against idolatry apply to the use of images in worship? Should there be no images at all? Or just certain ones? Or may they only be used in certain ways? What do you think?
What contemporary examples of co-opting the Lord's name come to mind?
How do you practice sabbath-keeping in your life? What suggestions do you have for relating worship and rest? What unique challenges to ministers have relating sabbath-keeping to worship responsibilities?
What is the relationship between the general laws of a civil society and the particular ethical guidelines of the Christian community?
What does it look like to bring honor to your family? In what sense does this entail obedience to parents?
How can we spread shalom today? What does that look like?
Do you agree that marital faithfulness is a central sign of divine faithfulness? Is this a sufficient theological reason for avoid adultery? What does this imply for divorce?
What are some concrete expressions of generosity and truthfulness that going the extra mile beyond avoidance of theft and lying?
Although they are matters of the heart, what concrete steps can one take to root out coveteousness and cultivate contentment?