drulogion

A Life Spent Waiting (Advent Series, Part 4)

2011-12-18T20:47:00.001-05:00

We have dedicated this series to the memory of those who waited on the Lord. We considered Zechariah, Mary, and Simeon, each of whom entered a time of waiting. Some waited better than others, but they all waited for the right thing: God himself. Let us take this fourth and final Sunday in Advent to consider one more waiter: Anna.

It is fitting that we conclude with Anna, for of all these waiters she is the one who waited the longest. According to Luke, she was "very old" (2:36). She spent between fifty and sixty years as a widow, waiting on God in the temple. Anna's was a life spent waiting.

Consider this life spent waiting. She could easily feel spent, useless, forgotten. She was surely tempted to become bitter, angry, or simply paralyzed. Is a life spent waiting a life well spent?

Many of us spend our lives waiting. Waiting for the next thing: to succeed, to graduate, to get a job, to mature, to have children, etc. And it is easy to feel spent, useless, forgotten--tempted to become bitter, angry, or simply paralyzed. Is a life spent waiting a life well spent?

Others of us spend our lives hurrying. We believe that spending a life waiting is not a life well spent, and so we rush through life. It is the same struggle as those who wait: the fear of being spent, useless, forgotten. It's just a different coping strategy. Is a life spent hurrying any better spent than a life spent waiting?

But consider again Anna. In her we see and hear the good news that a life spent waiting on God is a life well spent.

Note well: not just any waiting, but waiting on God. Some of us wait because injustice blocks our way. Not all waiting is right. Some of us need to hear the good news that now is our moment for action--that God is calling us to resist those who make us wait for their gain. But all of us are called to wait on God. Only then, when the time is right, will we know we are acting in good faith.

Not only did Anna wait on the right thing (i.e., God); she also waited on God well. In fact, she waited on God the best of all our characters in this series. Consider how well she waited on God.

First of all, she waited on God the longest. The text goes out of its way to indicate her age. There may be some symbolic significance to these numbers, but at the very least they highlight the length of time she spent waiting. Hers was a life spent waiting. And since she was waiting on God, her life was well spent.

Second, she worshipped while she waited. She "never left the temple but worshipped night and day, fasting and praying" (v. 37). She knew that waiting well does not mean simply going about her business till God does his thing. No! Waiting well is an active practice of hastening the Lord's coming by seeking him worship. Worship is not only thanking God for what he has done but also anticipating God for what he is about to do. Waiting and worship belong together. A life spent waiting in a posture of worship is a life well spent.

Finally, she testified to what she saw. She waited a long time, and so when the fulfillment came she burst forth with thanksgiving to God and proclamation to others: "Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem" (v. 38). Unlike Mary, who "cherished these things in her heart" (waiting to tell Luke many years later), Anna joined the Shepherds in proclaiming the good news of the coming the Lord immediately. She waited till the time was right. But when it was, boy did she let loose. Her testimony was greater because she waited for it. She understood fulfillment because she understand the waiting that necessarily precedes it. These words of testimony at the close of her life render the whole of her life as a testimony to the faithfulness of God. A life spent waiting for an opportunity to testify is a life well spent.

More could be said about Anna. And much more could be said about the theme of waiting. More Christmas characters could be added to the mix. And many more characters from the whole of Scripture could be considered. But my hope is that you might this season embrace the occasions of waiting in your life as opportunities to answer to call to wait on the Lord. May these lives spent waiting inspire you to wait well, to find a manner of waiting that brings joy both to you and the Lord. At the very least, may you join Israel and the Church in the great act of waiting on the Messiah's coming. For a life spent waiting on God is a life well spent.

Waiting with God (Advent Series, Part 3)

2011-12-11T15:04:00.000-05:00

[Cross listed at the Seminary's blog]

This advent series has focused on the act of waiting. I have been asking what it means to wait well. The most important thing about waiting is the one for whom we wait. If we wait for God, then we are waiting for the right thing. Just simply waiting does not necessarily have any inherent value.

But how we wait matters too. In the first installment of this series, we saw that Zechariah waited for the right thing (i.e., God), but did not wait well. Last week, we saw how Mary not only waited for the right thing, but also waited in the right way.

However, one might wonder if Mary waited well because she did not have to wait long. How hard is it for a young girl to consent to the Lord. She has not waited long enough to have tasted disappointment. Zechariah had been waiting a long time. No wonder he demanded assurance. He didn't want to get his hopes up, just for the to be dashed like they have so many times before.

Is waiting well simply something the young and naive can do? Must the old and mature merely wait for the Lord with begrudging obedience?

As we read on in Luke, we encounter two more people who waited on the Lord, both of whom were old: Simeon and Anna. And each one waited well. They demonstrate that a life spent waiting well is a life well sent.

Let's take a look at Simeon this week, saving Anna for next week.

In the brief story of Simeon, we catch a glimpse of one who waited well. Again, the crucial factor is the object of his waiting: "He was waiting for the consolation of Israel" (Luke 2:25). Note that he was waiting for the saving action of God, not merely for himself, but for all of Israel. Simeon waiting for the right thing.

But Simeon also waited well. The text goes on to say that "the Holy Spirit was upon him" (v. 26). Waiting was not an empty activity. He was filled with the Spirit even as he waited for the fulfillment of the promise. Even in his waiting, God was present to him. Simeon not only waited for God; he waited with God.

Such a manner of waiting makes all the difference. For one who waited on the Lord without waiting with the Lord can so easily become confused, anxious, bitter, and/or afraid, so that even when the promise is fulfilled they might miss it. We see in the story of Simeon how waiting in the Spirit makes all the difference. A life spent waiting for God with God is a life well sent.

First, we see that Simeon is open to the Spirit's revelation. "It has been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord's Messiah" (v. 26). One must wait on God to hear from him. One who waits for God with God is open to hear the Word of God.

Second, we see that Simeon is sensitive to the Spirit's movement. "Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts" just in time to see Mary and Joseph bring in the child Jesus (v. 27). To see the promise he had to be in the right place in the right time. The Spirit guided him there, and he was apparently waiting calmly enough to sense the Spirit's movement. One who waits for God with God is sensitive to the Spirit's movement.

Third, we see that Simeon is ready to praise God. "Simeon took [Jesus] in his arms and praised God, saying… you now dismiss your servant in peace, for my eyes have seen your salvation!" (v. 28-30). By his long anticipation of the saving work of God, Simeon stored up his praise. He knew what he was looking for, and so knew what to do once he saw it. One who waits for God with God is ready to praise God.

Fourth, we see that Simeon is ready to bless others. "Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother…" (v. 34). He does not get to directly participate in the great events to come. But he indirectly serves God's larger purpose by speaking a word of blessing to the right person and the right time. He spent his life waiting, and so has nothing left to give but his blessing. But that is enough, for his purpose was to deliver this Spirit-inspired blessing. One who waits for God with God is ready to bless others.

If you in a hurry, running from your past and rushing to create your own future, then see in Simeon the promise that a life spent waiting is a life well spent. And if you find yourself already in a state of waiting, embrace it as a calling from God. Either way, be sure it is in fact God you are waiting for. And seek to wait well, like Simeon, who waited for God with God, i.e., in the power of the Holy Spirit. Let your moments of waiting be an opportunity to hear God's voice, be moved by his Spirit, to ready yourself to praise God and bless others. For a life spent waiting well is a life well spent.

Waiting Well (Advent Series, Part 2)

2011-12-05T08:39:00.000-05:00

[Cross listed at the Seminary blog.]

The call of Advent is to wait. This is a call we all need to hear. For those of us who do not wait on God must repent of our attempts to create our own future. Those of us who already wait on God must learn how to wait well, i.e., in joyful obedience rather than angry bitterness. And we all must learn to wait not just for ourselves but truly to wait on God.

The question of this series as introduced Click last week is What does it mean to wait on God? This question has two aspects: (1) for whom we are waiting and (2) how can we wait well. Last week we considered Zechariah, who waited for the right thing (i.e., God) but did not wait well (i.e., in his doubt he demanded assurances). This week we consider Mary, who not only waiting on God but seems to wait well. Let's take a look at Luke 1 and consider how Mary waited.

As I read this passage with the theme of waiting in mind, three things jump out at me. The first is that while we wait it is okay to be troubled and confused. When God sends Gabriel to her, Mary is greatly troubled by his words. Interestingly, his words are of divine favor and presence. Though in hindsight these are obviously positive words, Mary was surprised by them. She did not know what they meant. Gabriel lets her know that she will be with child, and she is further confused: "How will this be, since I am a virgin?" Recall the contrast with Zechariah: they both have their doubts, but whereas he asked for gurantees, Mary simply asked to see the plans. It seems to me that there is nothing wrong with Mary (or Zechariah's) confusion and fear. They are surmountable obstacles to the work of God, not sins against God. When we wait on God, it is okay to be troubled and confused. Waiting can be troubling and confusing. Share your troubles with the Lord. Ask him questions in your confusion. Just don't stop waiting.

The second thing that jumps out at me is that Mary consents to waiting out her identity. At the end of her conversation with Gabriel, she declares, "I am the Lord's servant. May it be to me as you have said." A lot is made of her consent in the second clause, and rightly so. But it is easy to miss the first clause: "I am the Lord's servant." Her consent to the Lord's will is rooted in her identity as the Lord's servant. What is a servant? One who waits on another. Hence the term "waiter" for one who serves you dinner. To be the Lord's servant is to be one who waits on the Lord. Mary consents to the Lord's promised action because she is one who waits on Lord. When we are called to wait, let us wait because it is who we are. Waiting need not be a burden--one more moralistic duty. Waiting can be simply an expression of who we are, or at least who we are becoming. When the Lord asks you to wait on him, to wait for him to do something he plans to do through you, you may wait with joy because you are already a servant of the Lord. He is just giving you a chance to do your thing. While you wait for an opportunity to consent, say: "I am a servant of the Lord. May it be to me whatever he may say."

The third and last thing that jumps out at me is that Mary waits with others who wait well. Immediately after hearing this news, Mary hurries down to Judea to visit her cousin Elizabeth. There is much that goes on in this famous scene. But there is a little fact that is easy to miss, on which I want to dwell. At the end of this scene, it says that Mary stayed with Elizabeth for about three months. Now this might seem a random fact, except that earlier the text notes that Gabriel spoke to Mary about six months after he prophesied the birth of John the Baptist. In other words, Mary stayed with Elizabeth for the duration of her pregnancy! Now this is not particularly out of the ordinary. It is the sort of thing family members do. And Mary had her own reasons for slipping away for a bit, given what was happening in her life. But I think it worth noting that Mary immediately began to wait with others who wait well. Waiting can be very lonely. But Mary knew she was not the only one who was waiting on the Lord. She joined another who waiter, one who had waited a much longer time than her. Mary had a lot to learn about waiting on the Lord. She may have declared that she was the Lord's servant, but that doesn't mean she knows what that looks like. So she waited with others who wait well. Let this be both a promise and a command to us. When we are called to wait, we are free to wait with others; we needn't wait alone. When we are called to wait, we are called to join others who wait on the Lord--especially those who we know wait well.

Waiting for God (Advent Series, Part 1)

2011-11-27T14:37:00.000-05:00

Cross-posted at Wesley Seminary at IWU blog: http://wp.me/pvkT5-fQ

I hate waiting. I especially don't like waiting in lines. That's why I avoid Black Friday. I don't care how great the deals are--they aren't worth the lines.

Perhaps you feel the same way. You might not mind lines, but you probably can't stand some sort of waiting. Our modern culture forms us for immediacy, and so waiting is perceived as aberrant. Waiting is out of step, out of date, out of touch. Waiting is so last year.

I suppose this is why the modern church's experimentation with Advent is so awkward. Advent is a time to celebrate waiting. During Advent we are called to remember what it meant for Israel to await the first coming of Christ, and learn from Israel how to wait for Christ's second coming. But is waiting really something worth remembering, let alone celebrating? Is it not a condition to be avoided, a problem to be solved? We don't really wait during Advent. We rush, we hurry, we eat, we plan. But we don't wait. Or at least we don't wait well.

This Advent I invite you to wait with me. This is the first in a series of four Advent posts, each of which will explore what it means to wait. I am going to try to overcome my distaste for waiting. I am going to try to identify what makes waiting good and explore how to wait well. Please join me in searching the Scriptures for guidance on what to wait for and how to wait well.

Let us begin with the story of a man who was waiting for the right thing, but who did not wait well.

The man's name was Zechariah. He was a priest. He and his wife were very old. But they were also infertile. So they had been waiting a long, long time for a child.

At this point in the story they were both waiting well. The Scripture says they were upright in God's sight and that they followed all of God's commandments. They were waiting for the blessing of God, but they were not waiting to obey God. They knew that while we wait, we can still obey. The Scriptures also say that they had been praying to God, asking for a son. They knew that the best thing to do while waiting is praying. So while they waited, the obeyed God and prayed to God.

So, at the beginning of the story, Zechariah was waiting for God, and he was waiting well.

One day, while it was his group's turn to serve in the temple, the lot fell to him to burn incense. While waiting for the incense to burn, the angel of the Lord appeared. It turns out Zechariah was waiting in the right place at the right time! The angel told Zechariah that his prayer had been heard: Elizabeth will bear a child! And not only that: he will be great, for he will bring many people back to God, preparing the way of the Lord!

But here is where Zechariah's waiting went awry...

Zechariah asked the angel, "How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in year."

It is clear from the text that this was not a good question. The angel strikes him mute because of it. But what's wrong with this question? It seems a perfectly reasonable point to highlight the fact that his age is a significant obstacle to the fulfillment of this prophecy. Not to get ahead of ourselves, but Mary points out a similar obstacle (namely, her virginity) to a similar prophecy to the same angel, yet she is favored by God and blessed by all generations. What gives?

I think it helps to contrast their two questions -- a contrast which the text invites with its juxtaposition of two similar stories. Both identify an obstacle to the angelic promise. But the questions differ ever so slightly. Mary asks, "How can this be?" whereas Zechariah asks, "How can I be sure of this?" Mary believes the promise; she just wonders how it will happen. Zechariah wants to believe the promise, but he asks for a sign to shore up his faith. He asks for some assurances, so that he doesn't get his hopes up. Mary asks how God will work. Zechariah asks whether God will work.

This is our constant temptation when waiting on God. We ask for a sign. We ask God to make waiting easier by giving us assurances that we do not wait in vain. We are willing to wait, but we want the waiting to be a little easier. Now God gives signs from time to time. In fact, Gabriel offers the case of Elizabeth as a sign to Mary that nothing is impossible for God. But demanding a sign from God is a different matter. When we demand signs and assurances while we wait, we are not waiting well. We may be waiting for the right thing but we are not waiting in the right way. Zechariah waited on God, but he did not wait well.

Moralizing moment: don't demand signs! It just makes this worse! He looses his voice and so is barred from sharing the prophetic promise with others. Zechariah is a warning to us of the consequences of not waiting well: when we try to make waiting easier, it just gets harder.

The grace in this story, however, is that Zechariah still received the promise. God did not take it away from him -- for to do so would be to take something away from Israel. God had a bigger plan in place. But Zechariah was kept from sharing the prophecy with others. Unlike Mary, who signs her song before her promise is fulfilled, Zechariah has to wait to sign his song. But he still got to sing!

If you have demanded a sign, if your waiting has gotten worse not better, God still has something for you. The most important thing about waiting is for whom we wait. We wait for God, for his will and his blessing. When we wait for God, waiting is worthwhile. What makes waiting good is when its object is God. Zechariah got this most important thing right.

Of all the many things we await this Advent, be sure you are waiting for God above all else. We will explore in the next few posts how to wait well. We will see some other figures in Scripture who waited better than Zechariah. But at the very least we can join Zechariah in waiting for the right thing. When we wait for God, our waiting is worthwhile.

Barth on Hegel: An Unfinished Collection of Quotes

2011-07-05T15:20:00.001-04:00

Introduction

"Why did Hegel not become for the Protestant world something similar to what Thomas Aquinas was for Roman Catholicism?" (370)

"Is it not in Hegel that the man who is free from all the ties of tradition and from all conflict with tradition, who rejoices equally in reason and in history ... has for the first time achieved complete, clear, and certain self-awareness?" (371)

"In turning away from Hegel the age acknowledged that, having reached the summit of its desires and achievements, it was dissatisfied with itsef, that this was after all not what it had intended." (374)

"It was only in the course of centuries that Thomas Aquinas acquired the position at present accorded him in the Roman Catholic world. It may be that the dawn of the true age of Hegel is still something that will take place in the future." (376)

I. Hegel's Philosophy of Self-Confidence

"It was in him to ridicule the demand for a theory of knowledge by saying there was as much in it as the demand of the Gascon who did not want to go into the water before he could swin. The interests of the theory of knowledge, he said, were best served in the act of a truly rational knowledge." (379)

"Hegel's direct, independent linking-up with the Enlightenment was done in this way: the confidence in the right and power of rational thought was naive, untested and therefore unsecured, stuck fast in half-truths and open to all kinds of counter-blows. Hegel called this confidence in the right and power of rational thought to self-awareness, worked out and defended its deepest truth vis-a-vis its own weaknesses as vis-a-vis its attackers, and in so doing exalted it from the level of a one-sided view of the world to a comprehensive world principle." (380)

"And this makes for the peculiar momentum of Hegel's philosophy of self-confidence; it does not allow itelf to be surpassed in cold-blooded rationalizing by any worldling, nor in any depth of feeling by the most pious. It is Titanism to the highest degree and at the same time to the highest degree humility. The self-confidence it proclaims and to which it summons is at once and as such confidence in God." (381)

All quotes taken from Karl Barth, Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century (Eerdmans, 2002).

To Hell and Back: The Ascension of Our Lord (Easter, Day 40)

2011-06-02T06:55:00.011-04:00

So, my hopes and dreams for writing a blog post everyday for forty days between Easter and Ascension didn't exactly work out as planned. I kept a weekly blog for a few years and then I quit for a couple years, so trying to get back into by blogging by doing it daily was a bit of an overcommitment! Oh well. Let me at least bring this series to a close with a Day 40 reflection on the Ascension.

The Apostles' Creed has a nice symmetry to it with regard to the death and resurrection of Jesus:

He ... was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended into hell.
On the third day he rose again from the dead.
He ascended into heaven.

The pivotal event in the story of Jesus -- and therefore the pivotal event in the story of God with us -- is his death and resurrection. This pivotal event is a genuine event, i.e., a movement, a history, a happening. Hence it is twofold in structure: first he died, then he rose.

Furthermore, each of these two moments in the story of Jesus is itself a movement, a history, a happening. Hence each has its own twofold structure: he died and so descended into hell, then he rose and so ascended into heaven. The death and resurrection of Jesus both involve a movement with a direction. His death is aimed toward hell. And his resurrection is aimed toward heaven.

The point of this line of thought is that Christ's ascension relates to his resurrection as his descent into hell relates to his crucifixion.

crucifixion : descent :: resurrection : ascension

So, then, let's ask how this analogous relationship might illuminate the event of ascension.

At its most straightforward level, the descent and the ascent of Christ both answer a spatial question. Where did Christ "go" after his death? Well, wherever dead people usually go, i.e., Sheol, the dead, hades, hell, etc. And where did Christ "go" after his resurrection? Well, wherever one goes to be in living fellowship with God, since that's the point of resurrection. Hence it fits that the descent and ascent of Christ each involve spatial terms in the creed: He descended into hell; he ascended into heaven.

However, we must acknowledge that hell and heaven are not "places" the way my office and my house are places, i.e., they cannot be located on a map. This is not to deny that they are real spaces, but to affirm the unique character of their spatial reality. "Hell" and "heaven" name the two final forms of creaturely relation to God. "Hell" names a final relation to God as one who is absent, one who has abandoned us. "Heaven" names a final relation to God as one who is present, one who has welcomed us into living fellowship with him.

Note well: these are final forms of relating to God, not just ways of relating to God in general. Certainly one can speak of hellish and heavenly forms of everyday existence by way of analogy. But it is insufficient to say that hell and heaven only name ways of being in the present without any reference to our final destiny before God.

Why does this affirmation matter? Because Christ's ascension into heaven is not about absence but presence! We all too often regard the ascension as initiating a time of Christ's absence. But absence and abandonment is the meaning of hell, not heaven. Treating the ascension as simply the removal of Jesus is to put him back into hell. The point of Christ's ascension is not his absence from us but his presence with God. And since he's one of us, he shares with us his fellowship with God. We are welcome at the great banquet of God because the one who eats with sinners now sits at the right hand of God the Father almighty. The ascension does not mean Christ has abandoned us to go hang out with his Father alone. Christ's ascension means that he has come home to his Father's house and that we have been invited to join the party rather than pout in the field.

So, the next time you partake in the means of Christ's promised presence (the preaching of the Word, the breaking of bread, fellowship with believers, serving the poor and persecuted, etc.), do not think of these means as substitutes for an absent Lord. See and hear in them the promise of the risen and ascended Christ: "Lo, I am with you always."

Any thoughts?

God the Creator, God the Resurrector - Part Two (Easter, Day 25)

2011-05-18T12:55:00.003-04:00

Earlier this week I noted that I've been thinking about creation and its relationship to resurrection. My claim is that, according to the New Testament witness, faith in God the Creator is bound up with faith in God the Resurrector. I already discussed this claim with reference to Romans 4:17. I'd like to continue to reflect on it with reference to Colossians 1:15-20:

“He is the image of the invisible God,

the firstborn of all creation…

He is also the head of the body, the church;

the beginning and firstborn from among the dead…” (Colossians 1:15, 18a)

The parallelism of this passage is so striking to me. There are two ways of thinking of Jesus as the Son of God. The first is that he is the first of all God's children in general, i.e., his creatures. Prior to creating all that he creates, God first had his Son. And so he is the firstborn (prototokos) of all creation, the elder brother to all creation. Now Col. 1:15 on its own won't get one beyond the Son as highest creature. But even if we need to say more than this, we must not cease saying this too. Jesus Christ is the prototokos of all creation, and as such is its prototype.

The second is that he is the first of all God's children in particular, i.e., his church. Prior to constituting the church, God first raised his Son Jesus from the dead. And so Christ is the firstborn (prototokos) from among the dead, the elder brother to all those who will be raised at the end of time. Now Col. 1:18 doesn't tie up all the loose ends. And it certainly doesn't conceptualize the relationship between these parallel appellations. But it seems appropriate to suggest that Jesus Christ, the double prototokos, is the prototype of both the first creation and the final creation. Therefore, to know what it means to be truly human, we may and must look to the risen Christ. That's the implication of the claim that faith in God the Creator is bound up with faith in God the Resurrector.

Any thoughts?

God the Creator, God the Resurrector (Easter, Day 23)

2011-05-16T11:53:00.003-04:00

I've been thinking about creation lately. I just posted why that's so over at the seminary's blog. Check it out. But there's also a connection with the theme of my current series commemorating the Forty Days after Easter.

According to the New Testament witness, faith in God as Creator is bound up with faith in God as Resurrector.

There are two passages that stand out in this regard: Romans 4:17 and Colossians 1:15-20. I'll discuss Romans today and Colossians tomorrow.

Romans 4:17 speaks of Abraham's faith in "the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not." Now, in the near context, this is speaking of God's capacity to fulfill his promise of a son even through a barren woman. But in it's wider context it points to God as the one who raises the dead, i.e., "gives life to the dead." The resurrection of Jesus comes up later in the passage, so we're not just filling gaps here. Then, in an even wider context, it points to God as the one who creates out of nothing, i.e., "calling into being things that were not." Here we are filling in gaps, but the witness of Scripture as a whole points in this direction. What is so striking is that, once we put it all together, we have a picture of God who doesn't just happen to create and happen to resurrect, but that the one God is the Creator and the Resurrector for one and the same reason, i.e., to keep his promises!

Any thoughts?

[To be continued...]

Forgiven Sins, Restored Fellowship (Easter, Day 17)

2011-05-10T16:33:00.003-04:00

It is a commonplace to point out the contrast between Peter's triple denial and Jesus's triple restoration in the form of the question, Do you love me? What I'm thinking about today is the cosmic context in which this very personal event takes place: i.e., that Peter denies Jesus during his passion, and that Jesus restores Peter during the forty days. It seems to me that this suggestions something about the meaning of the cross-and-resurrection as the one twofold event of God's reconciliation of the world to himself.

It seems to me that both the words of Jesus ("forgive them for they know not what they do" etc.) and the teachings of the apostles ("he died for our sins" etc.) confirms the notion that forgiveness was actualized in the cross of Christ. As a fan of the resurrection, I understand the temptation of those who might recoil from this cross-centered "atonement" theory. But it seems to make sense to me, so I'm not going to give up on it just yet.

Hence the sin of Peter, his denial, is in a certain sense already forgiven on the cross. But he doesn't know it yet, and so it does not yet make a difference in his life.

For what we do not yet have in the cross of Christ is a restored fellowship with God. The barrier to fellowship, i.e., our sin, has been removed. Hence the cross is the decisive event, the turning point in the story of God. But the aim or purpose of removing our iniquities is to welcome us into fellowship with God.

And this restoration takes place in Christ's resurrection.

Objectively, Jesus is our elder brother, the firstborn from the dead, whom the Father has welcomed into eternal living fellowship by raising him from the dead. Subjectively, Jesus comes to his own, breaks bread with them, and welcomes them into his fellowship so and also into fellowship with his eternal Father. He comes to Peter, puts the question of love to him, and commissions him for his missionary task. He restores fellowship with Peter, and sends him to the ends of the earth as an ambassador of the reconciliation achieved in the cross-and-resurrection of Jesus.

So, in a word, God forgives our sins in the cross of Christ and restores us to fellowship in the resurrection of Christ.

Perhaps too clean and simple. But I think that gets at least some of what needs to be said about the good news of the forty days!

Any thoughts?

Strength for Today, Hope for Tomorrow (Easter, Day 16)

2011-05-09T16:46:00.003-04:00

Easter is an event about Jesus. But it is also an event about us. This twofold refrain has rung out throughout this series, and is repeatedly attested in the words and deeds of Christians. Easter includes both faith in Jesus and hope for us and our world.

I want to keep reflecting on the connection between Easter faith and Easter hope. I pointed out earlier that Easter faith in Jesus's resurrection points not only to a past event but has present and future dimensions. Jesus not only was raised but is risen and lives eternally. In the same way, Easter hope in our resurrection is not just directed to a future event but also a present reality. Yes, the resurrection will happen to us at the End, just as it happened to Jesus at Easter. But we already live in the presence of the risen, living Jesus. He is with us.

The power by which the risen Jesus is present is the Holy Spirit. As Romans 8:11 puts it, not only will God the Father raise us by the same Spirit by whom he rose Jesus, but already that same Spirit dwells within us now!

So, it is not just a sentimentality to say "Strength for today, bright hope for tomorrow." The two go together in the New Testament. They must properly distinguished, ordered, and unified. And they must be grounded in the Easter event that is prior to, above, and beyond our own personal needs and desires. But, with all that said, Easter hope really does speak to the power of the Spirit in and among us now. That should give us not only hope that endures but hope that strengthens.

Any thoughts?

We too shall be raised (Easter, Day 12)

2011-05-05T20:13:00.003-04:00

It is standard Easter fare to point out that our hope for resurrection is tied up with the resurrection of Jesus Christ. If that is so, then it seems to me that more sustained reflection on the original Easter event might have something to say about us and our destiny too.

For example, I said earlier that, in the first instance, the Son only receives new life from his Father. Jesus Christ was raised by God the Father. If our resurrection hope is tied up with his resurrection, then it seems that, in the first instance, we will receive our new life from God. In other words, our final resurrection will be an act of God upon us, an act of sheer grace.

At a minimum, this qualifies our talk of human persons as in some sense naturally immortal. We tend to think of life-after-death as a foregone conclusion, with the only question being where each of us will end up. But the grammar of grace indicates that immortal life is itself a gift to be received rather than a possession to be taken for granted.

It seems to me that this adjustment in our conversation about human personhood and human destiny would have some significant impact on how we live our lives, especially with reference to how we face death. I'd love to explore those with you in the comments, or perhaps in further posts. For now I will just leave you with the thought: if even Jesus was the one who received his resurrection life, then who are we to think that our resurrection is an inevitability or personal possession. It is a gift. Our hope for it is secure in Jesus. But it is nevertheless hope, and so is the openness to receive rather than the certainty of possession.

Any thoughts?

Raised for our Justification (Easter, Day 10)

2011-05-02T20:08:00.003-04:00

The resurrection happened. It was an event concerning Jesus. I've been exploring this lately by reflecting on the language of the Easter gospel and what it implies about the subject of the Easter event.

But Easter is not a spectator sport. The resurrection of Jesus Christ took place for us! So let's take a moment and reflect on what the resurrection means for us.

When reflecting on Easter's significance, there are two tendencies of which we must beware.

The first tendency is to say that, since our reconciliation was accomplished on the cross, the resurrection has no saving significance. It is perhaps the revelation of Christ's identity, an inevitability on account of his deity, the transition to the Spirit's work of applying salvation to us, etc. But it cannot be a saving event because that was completed on Good Friday.

The second tendency, at least in our time, emerges primarily as a reaction to the first tendency, which has been so dominant in the Western Christian tradition. This second tendency is to divide up the work of salvation so that the cross accomplishes one thing and the resurrection another. In order to emphasize the saving significance of Easter, this approach downplays the finished character of Christ's death.

I have deep sympathy with both of these approaches.

The first rightly emphasizes that in some sense our reconciliation with God was accomplished in the life of the incarnate Son, which was fulfilled in his death on the cross. As we have already discussed, in the first instance the resurrection is not a work performed by the incarnate Son, but a work performed on him by God the Father. So Easter is not just one more miracle, the last in a series of saving works. It is the sequel to his finished life.

The second rightly emphasizes that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is a saving event. The New Testament is emphatic about this from beginning to end. To empty the resurrection of its saving significance in order to "protect" the finished work of the cross is a fundamental error, and wreaks havoc on our biblical interpretation. If we can end the story on Good Friday and be perfectly satisfied, then something is terribly wrong. Something must be done to articulate the saving significance of Easter.

I have no quick fix to this dilemma. But I do have a brief thought that may speak to it. And it comes from a striking little verse at the end of Romans 4: "He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification" (Rom 4:25).

Here the death and resurrection of Jesus seem to be placed together as one saving event with two sides. And the two sides are not two "halves," so that each does 50% of the work of salvation, accomplishing two different things that together make up a composite work. No! The two together accomplish one thing, i.e., the justification of sinners.

How are the two sides related? It seems to be that there is a "negative" side and a "positive" side to the justification of sinners accomplished in Jesus Christ. The negative side is Christ's death: "He was delivered over to death for our sins..." The positive side is Christ's resurrection: "...and was raised to life for our justification." These are not two different works, but the negative and positive sides of one powerful work of salvation.

The analogy that comes to mind is a battery. A battery has positive and negative poles, both of which are necessary to conduct electricity. It's not that you get half the power if you touch one. You got to have both. They each perform different functions within one act of conducting electricity. The analogy breaks down quickly, but you get the idea.

These 40 days I commend you to rob neither the cross nor the resurrection of their saving significance, but see both as two sides of the one event of God's justification of sinners!

Any thoughts?

The "Livingness" of Jesus (Easter, Day 9)

2011-05-02T07:00:00.006-04:00

As I suggested last week, there seem to be three different ways of bringing to speech what happened at Easter: (1) Jesus was raised, (2) Jesus has/is risen, and (3) Jesus is alive.

Let's treat that third one today, but without leaving behind the previous two. In fact, we'll see that this third way helps to fill out and clarify the meaning and purpose of the raising and rising of Jesus.

(3) Jesus is alive.

If find it intriguing that the New Testament does not only use cognates of "resurrection" (i.e., raised, risen) to express the Easter gospel. From time to time it also says that Jesus is alive. Whereas the other ways of speaking are verbs, this one is a noun. It is the result of being raised from the dead, i.e., to be alive again. It is the direction of his rising, i.e., he arose unto new life.

Hence it fills out the content of the Easter event.

As we saw, the raising of Jesus by God the Father and Jesus own rising were two ways of speaking of the same event. God raised Jesus; Jesus arose. The first speaks to the initiating act of Easter, whereas the second speaks to an ongoing reality. But the resurrection also has a future: the eternal life of Jesus Christ. The trajectory, telos and goal of the Easter event is that Jesus would be alive forevermore. So, whereas raising and rising point back to his death (i.e., raised/arose from the dead), being alive points forward to his future (i.e., eternal life). On account of his resurrection, the future of Jesus Christ is life.

This not only fills out the content of the Easter event, but also fills out our understanding of the subject of the Easter event.

Who acts in Christ's resurrection?

Our first answer was that God the Father raised Jesus from the dead. The initiating act of Easter, i.e., the raising of Jesus, is appropriately attributed to God the Father.

Our second answer was that Jesus rose from the dead. Jesus is not only the object of resurrection, but also its subject. As the Father raises him, the Son also rises.

Now a third answer must be added: Jesus was, is and will be alive in the Spirit. The Spirit gives life to the Son, and the Son gives his Spirit of life to us!

In the New Testament, the Spirit is consistently associated with the concept of life (John 6, Rom 8, 1 Cor 15, 2 Cor 3, Gal 6). The Church has enshrined this association in her creeds: "I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life." Christian piety takes this language for granted: we talk of life in the Spirit, etc. And there's just a commonsensical connection, i.e., that which is spirited is lively, and that which is dead lacks spirit. So the Easter livingness of Jesus is aptly attributed to the Spirit.

But this third answer requires that we restate our first two answers. For just as the livingness of Jesus fills out the content of his raising/rising, so the life-giving Spirit fills out the subject of this act.

So, again, who acts in Christ's resurrection?

First of all, God the Father raised Jesus by the Spirit. "The Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is in you" (Rom 8:11a). The initiating act of Easter, i.e., the raising of Jesus, is enacted by God the Father through the Holy Spirit. The life-giving Spirit is not only the result but also the means of the Father's act of raising. The Spirit is the one by whom the Father raised the Son.

Secondly, Jesus rose from the dead by the Spirit. "Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom" (2 Cor 3:17). The Spirit is the freedom, power, and authority of the Son to arise. (Note: this is how I would interpret John 10:18.) The Spirit is the very livingness in which Jesus arose from the dead.

Now we have come full circle. We have discussed the three ways of speaking the Easter gospel: Jesus was raised, Jesus has risen, and Jesus is alive. And we have seen how these three ways correlate with a threefold way of speaking of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In a word, the God of Easter is the triune God.

Any thoughts?

The "Rising" of Jesus (Easter, Day 6)

2011-04-29T10:22:00.003-04:00

As I said yesterday, there seem to be three different ways of saying what happened on Easter morning: (1) Jesus was raised, (2) Jesus has/is risen, and (3) Jesus is alive.

Let's talk about the second one today, keeping in mind that Jesus was raised by God the Father, and that we will have more to say later about Jesus being alive.

(2) Jesus has/is risen.

Jesus not only was raised by God the Father but also arises. He himself rose from the grave, and so he is risen. Talk of Jesus' risenness is especially prominent the Gospels, where angels and apostles declare, "He is risen." Here's some quick thoughts:

First of all, I find it interesting that the rising of Jesus can be found both in the past and present tense. Jesus rose and Jesus is risen. It also appears in the perfect tense: he has risen. This combines both senses, i.e., he arose (past event) with the result that he is risen (present state).

I think this is important, because Easter is not just a past event but also a present reality. The Resurrection is both historical and personal; it happened and it is. Unlike Lazarus, who was raised only to die again, Jesus arose and is risen. Resurrection does not just something that happened to him resulting in a temporary condition. It is now his eternal identity: Jesus is the risen one. As Jesus himself puts it, "I am the resurrection and the life."

Now it must be said that Jesus's rising is not a different thing altogether from the raising of Jesus. To raise and to rise are two verbs whose content is nearly identical. The only difference is that the former is a transitive verb while the latter is intransitive. You can't just say "x raises" without a y who is being raised. But you can say "y rises" and have a complete sentence.

So, the raising and rising of Jesus are two different ways of speaking of one and the same event, i.e., the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

It think this helps us get at the question raised by the previous post. In what sense was Jesus the acting subject of his resurrection? When we think of resurrection as a singular moment, then we must think of God the Father acting upon the Son. Yet Easter is not just a singular moment, but a movement with a purpose and result, i.e., that Jesus is risen. So the Father initiates the resurrection, but he does not act without his Son (for they are one!). The Son also rises. As the Father raised him, he arose. And he is risen as the one who the Father raised.

Any thoughts?

The "Raising" of Jesus (Easter, Day 5)

2011-04-28T17:06:00.003-04:00

From my reading of the New Testament, there seem to be three different terms used to speak of what happened on Easter morning: (1) Jesus was raised, (2) Jesus has/is risen, and (3) Jesus is alive.

Let's talk about the first one today. Stay tuned for the rest!

(1) Jesus was raised.

The raising of Jesus is especially dominant Acts, though it occurs quite a bit in Paul's letters too. The turning point of each of Peter's and Paul's sermons is that "God raised this Jesus from the dead." Here's two quick thoughts and question.

First, note that this way of speaking is consistently put in the past tense. This fits its context in Acts, where the apostles are recounting the events concerning Jesus. One could say, "Jesus is raised." Perhaps there are instances in the NT that I've missed. Please point them out to me. But it is certainly not the dominant pattern. And I think there's a reason, i.e., the raising of Jesus is an event in the past, something that happened at a specific time and place.

Furthermore, it something that happened to Jesus. Which brings us to my second point.

In the first instance, the resurrection is not an act performed by Jesus, but an act performed on Jesus. To raise is a transitive verb, i.e., one that requires an object. You can just say "x raised." You gotta say "x raised y." Hence the recurring phrase, "God raised Jesus." The passive construction also works: "Jesus was raised." But here the subject of the act is implied, i.e., Jesus was raised by God. Sometimes the subject is supplied, and often further specified as God the Father.

This way of speaking the Easter gospel raises a theological question: if God raised Jesus, but Jesus is God, then shouldn't we also say Jesus raised himself? There are hints of such reflexive constructions in the New Testament (esp. in John), though they are by no means dominant. This way of speaking, however, has became quite central in the Christian tradition, and for good reason (i.e., the deity of Jesus and the unity of God).

My question is whether this reflective construction obscures the theological payoff of the NT's talk of raising: that Jesus Christ died and then was raised by another, i.e., his Father. Jesus Christ in his divine-human unity was dead, and afterwards was raised by God the Father, and act which he received by did not directly perform. In other words, the initiative of the Easter event lies wholly with God the Father. When we speak of the initiating moment of Easter, i.e., when we speak in the past tense, we must speak of the Father acting upon the Son. How to make this point without denying the deity of Christ or the unity of God is not easy. But I think it's a point that needs to be made.

Any thoughts?

Recognizing Jesus (Easter, Day 4)

2011-04-27T16:14:00.003-04:00

I find it striking that people in the NT often don't immediately recognize the risen Jesus. Does he look different or something? Is it because of unbelief (i.e., you can only recognize what you think is possible)? Is it something else? Is it just a peculiar feature of the narratives and we should leave it at that?

This recurring pattern seems to suggest that Jesus hides his identity until he wills to manifest himself. The language in Luke 24:16 implies this: "their eyes were kept from recognizing him." It is as though Jesus, who quite clearly wills to be known, does not always will to be known immediately.

As the risen Lord he has every right to do this. I am just wondering why he does it. Maybe there is no rhyme or reason to it. But if there is, it is certainly worth inquiring. If not, we will not have wasted our time as reflecting on his actions can bring us closer to him.

One way to get at the reason for this delayed recognition is to note the ways in which people do not recognize him. Consider the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus.

First, he speaks. He asks them a question.

But they do not recognize him by his voice.

Second, he speaks again. After listening to them share the rumor of his missing body, he rebukes them and begins to teach them, walking through the whole bible and its witness concerning the Messiah.

But they do not recognize him by his teaching.

Third, he speaks a third time. He offers a blessing for their bread, breaks it, and offers it to them. In other words, he prays for dinner and passes the serving plate.

But now they recognize him. They recognize him by his meal.

Now we can overplay this. But it seems to me that Luke is inviting us to see a recapitulation of the Lord's Supper, which was itself the fulfillment of Jesus' table fellowship with sinners, tax collectors, disciples, etc. In his ever-renewed fellowship with us around his table, the risen Jesus is recognized.

We recognize the risen Jesus by his meal.

This is good news! Why? Because the forty days came to a close. Upon his ascension, we for a time do not directly hear his voice and teachings. We continue to hear his voice through the mediation of his Spirit. We can hear and read his teachings through the Spirit-inspired mediation of the apostolic witnesses. And we can recognize his presence in his meal. But these are all indirect forms of communication. They are not direct and immediate, but indirect and mediated.

Perhaps this has troubled you. Perhaps you wished you could walk and talk with Jesus during his forty days. If only we had an immediate encounter with the risen Jesus, then we could believe, be bold, be transformed, etc.

But the good news is that we do not need a direct encounter to recognize Jesus. He can be really and truly known in his chosen intermediary forms. The road to Emmaus story shows that even a direct encounter with the risen Jesus is no guarantee that we will recognize him and so enter into genuine fellowship with him. Even they had to really on a indirect mode of communication: his breaking of bread and sharing it, and thereby reestablishing his table-fellowship with them.

The original forty days were unquestionably an amazing time. It is an utterly unique stretch of time: definitive, unrepeatable, glorious. But we should not think of the time we are now in as a time of absence. For during those forty days, Jesus shows his people that they do not need his direct and immediate presence to recognize him, know him, fellowship with him and declare him to the ends of the earth. His indirect fellowship with us through the Spirit, the church, and the sacraments is sufficient. We do not settle for this as a lesser form of presence, for even the disciples who walked and talked with him did not recognize him without his act of self-mediation at the table. The presence we have today is just as genuine, real, and powerful as what they experiences there and then. It is different in form. But it is the same Jesus.

May you recognize Jesus today in and through his appointed means.

"Blessed are those who mourn..." (Easter, Day 3)

2011-04-26T13:44:00.004-04:00

Easter is a time of joy. He is risen! Alleluia!

But we must admit that not all are joyful on Easter morn. The joy of Easter does not grasp them. And some who were joyful this Sunday are so no longer, as we returned to business as usual. The joy of Easter doesn't always stick.

This condition is not to be dismissed. The problem is not just joyless people. We must ask hard questions about the form of our Easter proclamation. We must ask whether our Easter talk is more than talk, but the gospel and its power to save.

Easter joy is too often experienced in a vacuum. For many of us, life is good. So Easter is just a little bit better. Perhaps the best. But still just on a continuum of the good life we define it.

For others, life is not so good. But we've learned to say that it is good despite our circumstances, for he is risen. That's faithful thing to say. But I it's not enough, for the Easter message is really for us and our lives. It is true. But it must come to us to be true for us.

For Easter joy to grasp us and stay with us, it must meet us in our mourning.

According to John's gospel, the first witness of the risen Jesus was in mourning (20:11). Some angels asked why she was weeping. Interestingly, she doesn't say she's weeping because Jesus died. She says she's sad because Jesus' dead body has gone missing: "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him" (20:13). Surely she was mourning his death too, but I find it striking that she weeps because she's lost her Lord.

I doubt she's the only who can find the Lord.

Then she turns around (note: with the tomb behind her!) and sees Jesus, though she does not recognize him. She asks if he took the body (note: the answer is yes! cf. John 10:18) and, if so, if she could have it (note: the answer is no, see below). But not until he speaks her name does she recognize him. Jesus knows his sheep by name, and Jesus' sheep know his voice.

Jesus comes to those who mourn.

Peter ran. He got to see inside an empty tomb.

John ran too. He saw some folded linens and was to the first to believe.

Mary wept. And she got to see Jesus.

Jesus comes to those who mourn.

"Blessed are those who mourn..."

You know how the rest goes: "for they shall be comforted." I find it striking, however, that Jesus does not comfort Mary. He's actually quite curt with her: "Don't hold on to me." He did take his body, but she can't have it. She seeks the comfort that comes from holding on to Jesus. She came to the tomb to hold on to him in his death. And now she wants to hold on to him in his resurrection. But Jesus says, "Don't hold on to me." He is not willing to be an object she can control, i.e., an idol. For he is a subject, a person, a living being who acts and who calls us to act. Jesus is alive.

But Jesus doesn't ignore her. He doesn't disregard her mourning. He calls her out of mourning and into his service: "Go and tell my brothers!"

Blessed are the who morn, for they shall be ... sent!

The joyful message of Easter may not comfort you in the way you seek to be comforted. But it does call you. You are called--in the midst of your mourning, then out of your mourning and to other who mourn.

And the message with which you are entrusted is a message of comfort: "Go and tell my brothers, 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'" The joy of Easter is that in the risen Christ we have God as our Father. The one who is by nature the Son of God makes us God's children by grace. We are adopted in him. The one who sits at the Father's right hand is our brother. He is the firstborn from the dead, and so we may be bold before the Father. We can seek the comfort we need in the name of Jesus Christ. That's the joy of Easter.

Easter, Day 2 (The Forty Days Series)

2011-04-25T09:22:00.004-04:00

Why is it that low-church protestants can commemorate 40 days of Lent with a straight face, but not the 40 days of Easter?

I don't know the answer to this question. My hunch is that it is because we understand the crucifixion but not the resurrection. We believe Christ was raised from the dead. If you deny it, you are in trouble. Many of us even think you could prove it like any other historical event.

But we don't spend much time seeking to understand it.

Thankfully, we are not alone in believing but not understanding. The disciples were in the same boat:

Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead. Then the disciples went back to where they were staying. (John 20:8-10)

Even those who saw the empty tomb didn't really grasp what was going on. They bought it, but they didn't get it. They believed but did not yet understand.

The empty tomb is an indispensable sign that evokes our faith in the truth of Christ's resurrection. But in itself it does not manifest the meaning of Christ's resurrection.

What does?

The manifestation of the risen Christ himself. When he appears, the disciples not only believe but begin to understand. In fact, he manifests himself again and again over a period of forty days, during which the disciples' eyes were opened: "Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures" (Luke 24:45). Luke indicates that the 40 days were a time not only of "convincing proofs that he was alive" (Acts 1:3) but also of "spoke about the kingdom of God" (Luke ).

The 40 days of Easter are time for faith that seeks understanding.

Join me every day for the next 40 days. I'll post some thoughts on the meaning of our Easter faith.

I've been thinking about … Resurrection!

2011-04-11T09:00:00.001-04:00

I've got a new post up at the Seminary's blog. Here's an excerpt to wet your appetite:

I've been thinking about …

Resurrection!

I know, I know. It's not Easter yet. But I think about what I think about. Those of you who know me know I think about the resurrection a lot: I preach about it regularly it's a recurring theme in my writing, and it's the topic of my dissertation (personal indulgence alert: which I defend this Tuesday). But I've just been bombarded by resurrection talk lately. Allow me to relay three such instances. They sparked some truthful and useful reflections for me, especially concerning the delicate interplay between past, present and future in resurrection faith. Perhaps these will spark something in you as well.

(1) A student in the Seminary's Worship course selected the following topic for her Integration Paper: "What acts of worship/sacraments ought to be performed for the dying/dead?" What a great topic! Together we built a bibliography that engages the relevant biblical texts, the history of last rites and other acts associated, and theological debates over immortality of the soul and resurrection of the body. Especially intriguing were the biblical text she selected: Ezekiel 37:13, John 5:28, Romans 8:38-39 and 2 Corinthians 5:8. All of the NT texts, but especially John 5:28, speak of resurrection as both a future hope and a present reality. Yes, Jesus Christ was raised at Easter. And yes, we will be raised at the End. But in the meantime resurrection life is at work among us. Our future is already present, for Christ himself is present. So resurrection hope is not just hope deferred, but a new way of perceiving and living in the present!

(2) Last Thursday I went to a concert with Nate Lamb, my friend, fellow music-lover and seminary recruiter extraordinaire. The artist's music and lyrics were just resurrection-saturated...

For more, click here to visit the seminary's blog.

18 Theses on Eschatology (so far)

2011-03-29T20:17:00.011-04:00

I've been tweeting out Theses on Eschatology this week. Here's the first 18. If you want read these and other thoughts as they come, click here:

Thesis #1: The leading motif of a Christian eschatology ought to be the parousia of Jesus Christ.

Thesis #2: Eschatologies that are overdetermined by concepts of divine justice or love and/or human destiny or decision are sub-Christian.

Thesis #3: The telos of God's love/justice and humanity's decision/destiny occur in the one God-human, Jesus, and so are known only in him.

Thesis #4: The telos of Jesus Christ in his divine-human unity is his living presence as the one who died and rose for us.

Thesis #5: In the first instance, the telos of Jesus' life is his death. The one who will return at the end is the one who died for us.

Thesis #6: But Jesus' death was not his final end. He also rose from the dead. So the one who will return at the end already LIVES for us!

Thesis #7: Therefore the one who died (#5) and rose (#6) for us not only will be present at the end but is already present with us now.

Thesis #8: Eschatology is not futurology. It is knowledge of the risen Christ who was and is and will be present (i.e., parousia, cf. #1).

Thesis #9: Eschatology is possible ONLY if the Jesus who will return at the end is the SAME as the one who came before and is present now.

Thesis #10: JESUS IS RISEN! So resurrection hope conditions all eschatological concepts--immortality, the soul, judgment, heaven, eternity, etc.

Thesis #11: Hope for the resurrection of the dead embraces the individual, communal, and cosmic dimensions of Christian hope.

Thesis #12: Christians aren't obligated to believe in the immortality of the soul.

Thesis #13: Christian are permitted to believe in the immortality of the soul as long as it does not render resurrection hope superfluous.

Thesis #14: Immortality of the soul is not the object of hope. It's just a theory that addresses questions raised by resurrection hope.

Thesis #15: Only the living God is by nature immortal. Human immortality is a gift, given for the sake of fellowship with the risen Christ

Thesis #16: Since for living beings death and time are existentially intertwined, immortality is functionally synonymous with eternal life.

Thesis #17: Eternal life IS fellowship with the risen Christ in his self-attestation. Eternal life is therefore irreducibly social.

Thesis #18: Sociality is mediated bodily, so resurrected bodies are indispensable to eternal life.

I've been thinking about...

2011-03-21T20:29:00.002-04:00

Check out my lastest post at the Seminary's blog.

Here's a preview:

The individual and the community.
The topic was inspired by some reading, some conversation, and a student’s integration paper.
The reading came from my favorite theologian, Karl Barth, who, after making a strong case for the priority of the community in the Christian life, turned around — in his typically dialectical fashion — to make a very strong case for the significance of the individual standing before God (cf. CD II/2, §35.1). An emphasis on the Christian community must not result in an overcompensation that forgets the freedom and responsibility of the individual before God. There’s a sort of modern collectivism (which Barth witnessed firsthand in Naziism) that is a sort of demonic inversion of modern individualism. In our zeal for the church as community we mustn’t overreact, constructing a communitarian ideology that crushes the individual.
The conversation was with some colleagues discussing the costs and benefits of infant baptism...

Click here for the rest.

New Post @ the Seminary's Blog: Developing Ecclesiologists

2010-09-19T17:50:00.005-04:00

I've got a new post up at the Seminary's Blog. Here's an excerpt to wet your whistle:

One time I asked Russ Gunsalus -- one of the founding wizards of our new seminary -- how he describes himself. He said that he was an ecclesiologist. Although it was new term for me, I've come to appreciate it greatly and use it extensively. I've realized that "ecclesiologist" is not just a way of speaking about the peculiarities of Russ Gunsalus--though he certainly is peculiar! Rather, it is way of describing all of us at Wesley Seminary @ IWU, professors and students alike. We are all aspiring ecclesiologists. I've come to see that developing ecclesiologists is a core curricular aim of a seminary. The aim of this post is to develop the meaning and significance of this claim.

What does it mean to be an ecclesiologist? At first glance, it simply means an expert in ecclesiology, i.e., the study of the church. But that way of defining it implies a narrowness that couldn't be further from the truth. An ecclesiologist is one who is competent in the disciplines necessary for reflection on the practice of church leadership. One could be a church leader without also being an ecclesiologist. In fact, each student at Wesley is already at church leader. But by choosing to enroll in seminary they are implicitly asserting that there's more to ministry that just doing. They are expressing their desire to reflecton what they do--to make sense of the complexities of church practice by questioning it, developing it, expanding it and integrating it. They are stepping out in the hope that such reflection will strengthen, deepen and lengthen their ministries. They aspire to be not only effective but also reflective church leaders...

Want more? Click here.

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?

Druchesis IX: The Lord's Prayer

2008-08-20T09:50:00.001-04:00

[Note: This material will be divided over two weeks in the course I am preparing for this fall. But since I need to get done by the end of summer, I'm lumping my reflections on the Lord's Prayer into one big blog post. I will do the same for the Ten Commandments next week.]

Over the last eight weeks we have shared reflections on Christian faith as it comes to expression in the Apostles' Creed. This week we turn our attention to Christian hope as it comes to expression in the Lord's Prayer. This not only follows the traditional pattern of catechetical instruction, but also flows from the final words of the creed. The first and second article of the creed have a predominantly backward-looking orientation, as they narrate the mighty acts of God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ. The third article of the Creed, however, is consumed with the forward-looking works of the Spirit: the life of the church and the life of the world to come -- ecclesiology and eschatology. At the center of the life of the church is the practice of prayer. And the focus of prayer is the future: asking God to act for his ends and for our good. Prayer is hope in practice. So ecclesiology and eschatology pave the way for reflection on prayer.

Prayer is human words addressed to God. There are many kinds of prayer, each of which can take a multitude of forms. The two most basic types of prayer are praise and petition. There are other important types, such as confession, contemplation and lament. But these are two are the most basic. As we say in Sunday School, "Does anyone have any praises or prayer requests?"

The creed is proclamation: human words about God addressed to other humans. But the creed is also praise: human words addressed to God in gratitude for who he is and what he has done. Praise is saying "Thanks" to God. The creed is such a word of thanks and praise. It is a doxology to God. Thus we have been exploring prayer-as-praise all along.

Now we are turning to prayer-as-petition: making requests to God. Petition is saying "Please" to God. The shift from praise to petition brings with it a certain openness, a loosening of restraints. That is not to say the creed is oppressive, for it points to the source of true freedom. But the creed is concerned with ortho-doxy: right praise. We try our best to line up our words of praise to God with the story of God. Such "lining up" is a sign of faithfulness. Accordingly, praise is consumed with its object: God.

When we turn to petition, however, the door is flung wide open for our own subjective needs and desires. Petitionary prayer is open and free. It is far less concerned with rightness and faithfulness. It is far more concerned with honesty and forthrightness. In petitionary prayer, we express to God our hopes and dreams.

However, this does not mean we don't need guidance. For hope too is consumed with its object, though in a different way than faith. Genuine hope in God includes not only the desire for God to meet our needs but also the desire for God to achieve his own ends. By placing our hopes in God we make God our hope, thereby opening ourselves up to his hopes for us. How can we ensure that our petitionary prayer opens us up to God? There are no guarantees, but there is guidance. The Bible not only tells us the story of God, but also tells us how to pray. The Bible is full of stories, poems and teachings related to petitionary prayer. Although we can and should draw on all these, there is no better place to start our search for guidance than with Jesus's teaching on petitionary prayer. The central character in the story of God with us took the time to teach us how to pray. What better place to start than with the Lord's Prayer?

In the Lord's Prayer, we find Jesus's most concise yet comprehensive instructions on prayer. It is therefore worthy of our sustained attention, both to help us understand better what we mean when we recite it and to draw on its guidance as we craft our own words of prayer. The Lord's Prayer appears in both Matthew 6 and Luke 11. In our reflections, we will follow the traditional liturgical form that synthesizes the phrasing of each, though we will attend to matters of difference as needed. The traditional form is structured as follows: an invocation, six petitions, and a doxology. The six petitions can be easily divided into two halves: the first three concerning God ("your"), the second three concerning us ("our"). We will reflect on the invocation and the first three petitions this week, leaving the remaining petitions and the doxology for next week.

Our Father, who art in Heaven

Jesus teaches his disciples to address God as Father. We have already discussed the fatherhood of God, both as an analogy for describing God's character and an identification of the first person of the trinity. Although by the end of the creed we had learned to address our praise to the Father and the Son together with the Holy Spirit, in the Lord's Prayer we are taught to address the Father. This fact ought not be dismissed as sub-trinitarian. For, although we may prayerfully address each and all of the persons of the trinity, we address God primarily as Father. Why? Because the Father is the source of divinity, the one from whom the Son generates and Spirit proceeds, and thus the one from whom we ask for all that we need. Because the incarnate Son is the risen Lord Jesus who as a human being addresses his Father in prayer and invites us to join our voices with his. Because the Spirit is the love who eternally unites Father and Son in their giving and requesting and so in him we are freed to make our requests to God. So, in addressing God as Father, we are caught up in the fellowship of the triune God. In the Lord's Prayer, we address the God who is in heaven.

Hallowed be Your Name

The Lord's Prayer begins its petitions with the holiness of God. Because we address the true God, the God who is in heaven, we are humbled by his holiness: his otherness, his superiority over us and his difference from us. We are like Isaiah before the throne of the Holy One of Israel. We must be cleansed of our unclean lips so that we may hear and perhaps join the angels as they cry, "Holy, Holy, Holy." But the Lord's Prayer does not merely ask us to praise God for his holiness. It also calls us to petition the Lord to hallow his name, to keep and make his name holy. We are asking God to sanctify: to set apart himself as the creator and to set apart his creatures to worship him and him alone as creator. We are asking, "God, please keep being holy and ensure that your world treats you as holy."

Specifically, we are asking God to sanctify his name: the divine name revealed to Moses through the burning bush, the name that the Israelites were commanded not to take in vain, the name that took up residence in the Temple at Jerusalem, the name that God sought to protect through his prophets. God's name is his very own self as he relates to his people. It is God's mode of introduction, by which initiates a relationship with his people, through whom he spreads his reputation to the ends of the earth. So the first petition is not concerned with God's holiness as an abstract attribute, but rather with God's holiness as he enters into relations with his less-than-holy creatures. When we pray "Hallowed by your name," we are asking, "God, please protect your reputation." In so praying, we adopt God's own zeal for his name as our own driving passion. Negatively, that means we submit ourselves to discipline for the ways in which we have undermined his reputation. Positively, that means we begin share God's desire for the world: that it would know and hallow his name.

Your Kingdom Come

The second petition moves from God's name to God's kingdom. We ask, "Your kingdom come." Since it hits on some crucial themes, let's linger here a bit and ask three questions corresponding to the three terms in this petition.

First, whose kingdom are we asking to come? It's God's kingdom! Not the world's kingdom. Not our kingdom. Not some truncated divine kingdom of our imagination. Your kingdom come. It is because of our continuing desire to seek our own kingdoms that we must be taught by Jesus how to pray for God's kingdom. As you ask God for his kingdom to come, ask yourself: "In what ways do I try to seek my own kingdom? In what ways do I co-opt God's kingdom for my own purposes?" These are good diagnostic questions, both to root out distractions and to keep in mind that it God's kingdom, not ours or anyone else's, that we seek.

Secondly, what kind of kingdom are we asking to come? What is the kingdom? The text does not give us much here. We could treat the next line as parallel and thus an indicator of the meaning: God's kingdom is wherever God's will is done. Although not false, such a move too quickly conflates the petitions together, and doesn't yield all too much anyway. Thankfully, the kingdom of God is a big theme in the New Testament, so we are not left to our devices. It is the content of Jesus' preaching, his parables express what it is like, it is present in his person and work, and it is the driving expectation of his apostles and evangelists. We have already addressed the kingdom initially within the context of the eschatological portions of the creed. Here we need only to think through its significance for the life of prayer.

As we survey the Biblical material on the kingdom, certain themes emerge which ought to shape our prayer. Specifically, the kingdom consistently means God vindicating his people and taking the side of the oppressed. God's kingdom turns everything up-side-down. Yet even this consistent vindication of the underdogs of history is consistently full of surprises. How God's justice is achieved and the form it will take is hard to predict and impossible to control. The implication for praying the second petition is that we should consistently cry out to God on behalf of the needy of this world. That means making ourselves aware of who the underdogs are, and taking their side in prayer and therefore also in society. Yet at the same time we must remain open to the surprising means by which God might answer our prayer.

Lastly, we must ask when does the kingdom come? On the one hand, the idea of God's kingdom is spatial. It is the domain or reach of God's reign, where a fallen world operates in conformity with God's character and purpose. On the other hand, the idea of God's kingdom is temporal: it is something future, something which is to come. Thy kingdom come. We wait for it. We look for it. We anticipate it. It comes like a thief in the night, an unannounced apocalyptic event. Yet the timing of the kingdom is not only future. It is also spoken of as a present reality. The kingdom of God is among you. It is advancing. It is here. So the kingdom is both already here and not yet here.

We have already addressed this temporal tension before in relation to eschatology. All we need to do here is think through this already-but-not-yet dynamic of the kingdom from the perspective of prayer. On the one hand, we must not dismiss the kingdom as if it were a distant future reality that has no relevance for today. The kingdom is not just some big divine intervention that we should "leave to God" while we do our own thing now. If so, then we would not be instructed by Jesus to pray for it. We should be passionately looking for signs of the kingdom and waiting on the in-breaking the kingdom. In other words, we should earnestly pray that God's kingdom would come.

On the other hand, we must not try to control the kingdom as if it were already completely here in some manageable form. The kingdom is not the church, the world, the state, the family or another other member of creation as is. The kingdom is new creation, something beyond and above our creaturely control. So we must pray for it. We should be zealously looking through the present signs of the kingdom for the radical transformation to which they point. In other words, we should earnestly pray that God's kingdom would come.

Your Will Be Done

In the third petition, we pray for God's will. Now this is a place where we need guidance even more than with the previous petitions. Just as with God's kingdom, we are told by Jesus to prayer for God's will. Many of us may not struggle with the pretension of making God's kingdom into ours, but certainly all of us struggle with the temptation to bend God's will in service of our own.

But here a difficulty immediately emerges: Are we not also to petition God for our will? Are we not to make our needs and desires known to God? Does not God care about our will too?

In order to address this theological problem head on, let's employ a different interpretive strategy. With the second petition, we follow our common method of meditating on each word in order unpack its significance. With the third petition, let's use a comparative method: bringing in some related texts to see how they bear on the topic. Let's take two texts from the Gospels, each of which point in seemingly opposite directions:

In the all three synoptic gospels, Jesus prays in the garden before his arrest: "Not my will, but yours be done" (Mt 26:39; Mk 14:36; Lk 22:42). In the Gospel of John, Jesus instructions he disciples in his farewell discourse: "Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it" and "the Father will give it to you" (John 14:14; 16:23). Here we have set alongside each other two trajectories, both of which appear near the climax of Jesus's mission. On the one hand, we have the resignation of human will to God's will, based on a contrast between divine and human willing. On the other hand, we have the response of God's will to human will, based on a promise of the divine willing to satisfy human willing. How might we reconcile these two trajectories that flow out of the simple prayer for God's will to be done?

Now both of these aspects must be retained within Christian prayer for God's will. On the one hand, the resignation trajectory rightly identifies the element of struggle in prayer. There is a distinct tradition in Scripture of wrestling with God. In fact, this is where the lament and complaint find their place in Christian prayer. Genuine prayer is a struggle. On the other hand, the response trajectory rightly points to the element of blessing in prayer. God really does love us and wishes to shower us with blessings. There is a distinct tradition in Scripture of God giving unmerited rewards to those who ask, seek and knock. Both struggle and blessing are a part of Christian prayer, and to ignore either is a mistake.

However, either trajectory followed exclusively and to the extreme results in a distortion of prayer. The resignation trajectory places God and humanity in a false conflict, portraying God as a capricious God who would never want to give his children what they want. The response trajectory places God at the service of humanity, portraying God as a great Santa Clause in the sky to whom we send our wish-list prayers. Both fail as an exclusive picture of prayer to the extent that both conceive of divine and human willing in competitive terms. Either God or humanity get there way.

The clue to how these trajectories come together in the third petition of the Lord's Prayer is the rhythmic little phrase Jesus adds: "on earth as it is in heaven." How is God's will done in heaven? Simply put, with joyful obedience. The saints in glory do the will of God both out of resignation to his desires and because they want to. Prayer in heaven is neither a demoralizing conflict nor as a presumptive demand, but a free partnership with God. Jesus teaches us to pray like that now! He calls us to pray like God's children. He calls us to pray like saints, for that is who we truly are. To be a saint, to be sanctified, is to not only do the will of God but to want to do the will of God. It is the alignment of our will with God's will. It is this kind of alignment that forms the context in which both the resignation trajectory and the response trajectory must be interpreted. Only a will that submits to God fully can say, not my will but yours be done. Only a will that shares God's desires can pray "in Jesus's name" with integrity. We are called to pray that God's will would be done on earth as it is in heaven. Let us joyfully and obediently pray that joyful obedience would be found on God's earth.

Our Daily Bread

With the fourth petition we turn to the second half of the Lord's Prayer. The shift in focus is signaled by the pronouns: after three petitions using the second person singular ("your") referring to God, we encounter a series of petitions using the first person plural ("our" and "us") referring to us. Although we must learn to start our prayer with God purposes, Jesus also invites us to bring our own needs to God in prayer. The first of these needs is the most basic: our daily bread.

Bread is a basic human need. It may not be an exciting food, but it is the dietary staple of many societies, and certainly the near eastern agrarian society in which Jesus taught. The fact that we put things on it or put it with other things just shows how basic it is. Bread goes with everything. Bread is life.

Now we shouldn't obsess to much about bread in particular. It is not as though those who live in agricultural systems without bread as its basic component are left out of this prayer. For, as we all assume without thinking much about it, "bread" is used her to figuratively refer to all sustenance. Bread is a synecdoche for food. Jesus teaches us to ask God for food. Without food, we cannot live. We are asking God for our most fundamental concern: that we would live. We not only thank God for every breath we take, but ask God to keep giving us breath by providing us with the sustenance of survival. To petition for bread is to petition for life. To ask for bread is to ask for freedom from death.

It is therefore not inconsequential that Jesus begins with bread. When it comes to our needs, the most fundamental need is life. All the remaining requests presuppose that we are alive. As we turn to the remaining requests, we move on up Maslov's hierarchy of needs. If we don't get our life-bread, the rest doesn't really apply. Dead people don't ask for forgiveness. Dead people don't ask for deliverance. Surely God can forgive and deliver the dead. But they are not in a position to ask him. So life is humanity's bottom line, and so bread is our first petition.

Before turning to those remaining petitions, we should comment on the adjective "daily" that is attached to the bread for which we ask. Now the Greek word in the original is notoriously difficult to translate. It appears to have been coined by early Christian preachers, perhaps to translate into Greek an Aramaic phrase that went back to Jesus and the early Christian community in Palestine. "Daily" is an appropriate translation, but it obscures the sense of sufficiency implied by the term. We are taught to ask for enough bread: not too little so as to starve, but not too much so as to spoil. It could even be translated "tomorrow," as in "give us today enough bread for tomorrow," which is of course exactly how the daily labor cycle in an agrarian society works. That's the full sense of daily bread.

This theme of just-enough-bread not only reinforces the "means of survival" meaning of the fourth petition sketched above, but also implies an allusion to the manna given in the desert to the people Israel. A strange bread-like substance fell on the wanderers each day, but they were told to only take enough for one day or it would spoil. In other words, they were taught to take only their daily bread. Whether this connection was intended by Jesus, the early Christian preachers, and/or the Gospel-writers is difficult to decide. But there is a long Christian tradition of allegorical interpretation that seeks to make these sorts of connections in Scripture. Contrary to what some suggest, allegory is not just a license to interpret however one desires, though there were certainly abuses in this direction. The point of allegory is to show for the deep unity of Scripture and especially the unity of the Old and New Testaments. The search for allegorical connections does not replace the literal sense, but draws on it to highlight pervasive themes in Scripture.

In the case of the fourth petition, the literal (ad litteratum means "to the letter") sense of bread is food. The allegorical sense is the bread of heaven, a theme which ties together the manna of the Old Testament and Jesus as the bread of life. The fathers of late antiquity added two further "spiritual" senses: the tropological and the anagogical. The tropological sense is the moral sense, the personal virtues called forth from the reader by the text. The tropological sense of bread is the word of God, for man does not live by bread alone. The anagogical sense is the eschatological sense, the ultimate future hope revealed by the text. The tropological sense of bread is the great marriage feast of the Lamb, of which a sign and foretaste comes in the bread and cup of the Lord's Supper.

And so with the bread of the fourth petition we can see exemplified the practice of the "fourfold sense" of Scripture. Now you may or may not be in to this sort of interpretive endeavor. However, an initiation into the Christian tradition without it would pass over a deeply influential practice of the church. This is not to say there are not good reasons to question its value. In the case of the fourth petition, such spiritualizing can easily forget the crucial literal sense of praying for our basic needs and so ignore the many hungry stomachs of this world on whose behalf we must pray. We are taught to pray for our daily bread, not just my daily bread. Perhaps the spiritual senses of Scripture bring a text like this to life for you, but that does mitigate the fact that there are many for whom the literal sense of this petition is a life-or-death request. So even as we explore the rich world of allegorical interpretation, we must never forget the basic needs of ourselves and our near and far neighbors.

Forgive us our Debts

After addressing the most pressing need for today, the Lord's Prayer turns one of the more complex needs of daily life: debt. In today's borrowing and lending economy, we know a lot about debt. And when things goes wrong, we know how oppressive the chains of debt can be. However, most modern societies no longer have debtor's prisons and indentured servitude. So, even though we understand difficulties of debt, it is not nearly a big of a threat as it has been historically. This is important to remember, because Jesus is teaching his disciples to pray for the very concrete complexities of debt. Is there a spiritual sense to this petition? Absolutely. Our debt to God is the one absolute debt we owe. But that does not rule out our shared concern over the relative debts we owe one another. As can be seen from Jesus's numerous teachings on money, debt concerned him. It got to him. And so he taught his disciples to take up that concern and make it theirs.

Of course, all this talk of debts may be throwing some of you off a bit. Isn't it trespasses? Well, that is the language of the traditional Anglican prayer book, and so has become familiar to many English-speaking Christians. But it does not have strong support in the original Lord's Prayer texts, so it is probably better to go with debts. The advantage of debt-language is its wider meaning. The fifth petition is not concerned narrowly with the moral category of trespasses, but includes the concern for financial woes. Furthermore, as we expand to the spiritual sense of debts, we are being taught to ask for forgiveness not only for how we have wronged God and one another but also for what we owe God and one another. Debt-language has a much wider application and so is relevant to all of us, all the time.

What do we owe God? Everything. God the Father Almighty is the creator of heaven and earth. That means everything. So we have God to thank for everything we have, including our own selves. And we have God to ask for everything that we will have. In other words, we owe God everything. In the fifth petition, we come before our heavenly Father and ask, "Please, don't make me pay back so great a debt. I don't have the resources. Let this one slide. Tear up the I.O.U. Forgive us our debts."

Although debt language is wider than the moral category of trespasses, it does not exclude but includes issues of morality. The New Testament and the Christian tradition mix financial and moral metaphors all the time. Just think of phrases like "debt of sin" or concepts such as "imputed righteousness." So in the fifth petition, Jesus teaches us to ask God to cancel the debt of sin we owe to him and one another. And Jesus himself has answered this prayer in his life and death, and as the risen Lord speaks the word of forgiveness to us through his Spirit. In light of this good news, the Christian prays that simply prayer, "Lord, have mercy on me, a poor sinner" and joins the church in praying, "Forgive us our debts."

Yet the fifth petition does not end there. It adds a subordinate clause signaled by the little word "as." Father, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debts. This as-clause adds a caveat to the request for forgiveness. The meaning of the word "as" is ambiguous here. Is it a condition: forgive us if we forgive others? Or is it a consequence: forgive us so that we can forgive others? Although one can debate the grammar of the text, I do not think we are forced to choose between the two theologically. The point is the correspondence between God's forgiveness of us and our forgiveness of others. The two actions go together. Clearly an ontological priority must be given to the former: God's forgiveness is initiated eternally by his grace and executed in Christ while we were still sinners. But the chronological relation in our own experience is not predictable. Some of us may need to learn to forgive others in order to accept that we too are forgiven by God, while others of us may need to be assured of God's forgiveness before we can be freed to forgive others. The point in either case is that the heart of Christian ethics is that we forgive us others as God forgave us (Col 3:13; Eph 4:23). As the parable of the unmerciful servant illustrates, God's forgiveness is a great unmerited gift to us, which both permits and demands that we forgive the debts of others (Matt 28:21-35). The bumper sticker gets it half-right: "Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven." It's just missing the as-clause: "as we forgive others." Yes, Christians aren't perfect: they might cut you off. But Christians are called to live a life worthy of the gospel: when you cut them off, they must not hold it against you. Christians are not just forgiven, but also forgiving, for they are the ones who pray "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors."

Deliver us from the Evil One

Whereas the fifth petition asks for freedom from past obligations of debt, the sixth and final petition asks for freedom from future encounters with the devil. Here the hope-character of the Lord's Prayer returns in full force -- not in the cosmic terms of the coming kingdom of God, but in the personal terms of temptation and deliverance. Jesus teaches us to ask God to please keep us from temptation and deliver us from the tempter.

Now there are a couple of things to notice here. First of all, I have chosen to treat the last two clauses as one petition and not two. Although I am not alone in this, their is no consensus in the catechetical tradition on this matter. Most famously, Luther distinguished these two petitions, so that all tolled there are seven petitions in his exposition of the Lord's Prayer. The reason of have chosen to combine them is not to de-emphasize them or just to have an even number. Rather, it is because the two go so naturally together as contrasting aspects of one request for salvation, signaled by the conjunction "but." The first aspect is preventative: we ask our heavenly father to prevent temptation. Lord, do not lead us into temptation. The second aspects is interventionist: we ask our heavenly father to intervene on our behalf when we do face temptation. Lord, do deliver us from the evil one. Do not lead; but rather, deliver. The two together form one prayer: "Lord, save us!"

The second thing to notice is that from which we are delivered: not evil, but the evil one. The traditional liturgical form of the Lord's Prayer speaks in the abstract terms of "evil." Although a possible translation, the original Matthean text speaks of evil in personal terms: the evil one. The reason to go with the more personal language is to counter the tendency in our time to speak too abstractly and therefore vaguely of evil. Now there are good reasons to not speak in personal terms about evil. Evil is not personal in the same way you and I are, and certainly not in the way that God is personal. Evil is the anti-thesis of true personhood. The evil one is a parody of God's triune personhood, seeking power in a self-aggrandizing rather than self-giving way. The evil one's "personality" is self-enclosed and destructive and therefore falls short of the true personhood of God and the human personhood to which we are called. Evil is the privation of good -- its absence or twisting. And so the evil one is the privation of personhood.

But it is precisely as a parody of the triune God that we can and must speak of evil in personal terms. Evil is not only the sum total of moral wrongness nor even the powerful forces behind all evils, but at bottom is the accuser, the biblical sah-tan, the one who makes the case against us, the one who laughs at us in our misfortune and failure, the one over whom God has triumphed in Jesus Christ. Despite the potential embarrassment and abuse of such "mythological" language, Christians speak of evil in personal terms. When we cry out to God for deliverance, we ask to be delivered from the evil one -- the devil, satan, beelzebub and his demons. Christians take the evil one seriously, precisely because God has taken him seriously -- so seriously that he has faced him off in person and defeated him on his own turf. In light of the death-blow already struck against the evil one in the death and resurrection of Jesus, we pray with confidence and hope to God the Father: deliver us from the evil one!

For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever. Amen.

Having asked God to feed us, forgive us, and deliver us, the Lord's Prayer turns its attention back on God. The pronouns shift back from "our" to "your," yet not to make one last petition on God's behalf but to speak a word of praise, a doxology. Now it is worth noting that this doxology is not in the original versions of the Lord's Prayer found in the gospels. It did, however, make its way into the church's liturgical use of the prayer very early, as evidenced by its inclusion in the Didache's version of the Lord's Prayer. Although it is not original, it is an unobtrusive addition that employs typical early Christian doxological language and fits the themes of the prayer quite well. It therefore serves as a reminder of where our focus ought to be: on God. By praising God for his kingdom we remind ourselves whose kingdom it is we seek. By acknowledging God's power we remind ourselves to submit to his will. By giving God the glory we remind ourselves to hallow his name. So the emphasis here is not on the three terms but on the pronoun. Next time you pray the Lord's Prayer whether in public or private, try placing the accent on "thine" or "your," just as a reminder of who it is to whom we prayer and in whom we place our hopes. "For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen."

Any thoughts?

Did you follow the transition from faith as expressed in the Apostles' Creed to hope as expressed in the Lord's Prayer? Or were the connections made the beginning of this lecture obscure to you?
How do you balance praise and petition in your own prayer life? Is "balance" even a value here? What other types of prayer are there, and how do they relate to these two basic types?
What is the best use of Scriptural guidance for prayer? Should we pray the very words of Scripture? Do they only provide principles for prayer? How do you draw on Scripture in your prayer life?
Are you more inclined towards prepared prayers or extemporaneous prayer? Can arguments be made for one or the other? Or is it just a matter of preference?
Do you consider it appropriate to locate the Lord's Prayer within a trinitarian context as I have done? What benefits does this bring? What drawbacks does it have?
What does it look like to hallow God's name?
Does our prayer hasten this kingdom's coming? Can we do anything for the kingdom? Do we just ask and wait? Do we even need to ask? What role do we play in the coming of the kingdom?
How do you balance praying for your own will and wrestling with God over his? Do find yourself leaning one way or the other? What steps can blessing-seekers take to become God-wrestlers, and vice-versa? In what ways can we learn to pray both joyfully and obediently?
What would happen if we not only thanked God for our meals but also asked God for our meals? Would it change the way we look at food?
What are the benefits of allegorical interpretation? What are the costs?
What sorts of things can be included under the umbrella of "debt?" Is it helpful to use this wider category? Is something lost by abandoning the more strictly moral category of "trespasses?"
Do you agree that the last two lines of the Lord's Prayer are really one petition? Can you make a case why or why not? What difference does it make for the interpretation of that portion of the prayer?
Ought we to speak of evil in personal terms? What are the advantages? What are the disadvantages?

Druchesis VIII: The Kingdom

2008-08-13T11:39:00.000-04:00

Introduction: The Kingdom of God
And now we come to the end. Not the end of our series, since we will next discuss the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments in accordance with the catechetical tradition. And not the end of the story, for the good news of the gospel is that the end is just the beginning. Rather, we come to the end of God: the end for which God created the world. At the conclusion of the creed we speak of the fulfillment of God's purposes, God's "end" in the teleological sense of the word. And so we come to eschatology: the doctrine of last things.

The term "eschatology" can be a bit misleading, for talk of "last things" seems to locate these things as merely the last in series of similar things. But nothing could be further from the truth, for these things are not "things" like other things that just happen to come last. These things are final consummation of God's own purposes, the culmination of creation and redemption. These things are the fullness of all things, a fullness initiated and achieved and revealed by God himself. And so eschatology does not engage in "futurology," wherein we predict facts about the future in order to generate beliefs akin to the beliefs so far expresses in the creed. Rather, eschatology is theology, a form of God-talk. Specifically, it is theological teleology: reflection on God's own purposes revealed in Jesus Christ and promised in the Holy Spirit. So it does not speak last things as much as it speaks of the Last One: God himself from the perspective of his final purposes.

The category around which we can best organize reflection on God's purposes is the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is a (if not the) pervasive theme in Scripture. It is the expectation of Israel, the content of Jesus's preaching and activity, and the driving hope of the Christian community. Kingdom-language has a comprehensiveness to it that avoids exclusively futuristic talk of last things. Kingdom-language teaches us to think eschatologically not only about eschatology itself but also about all theological topics -- seeing all things from the perspective of God's coming reign. In fact, we have been thinking this way all along in this series, for we have spoken of faith in terms of the story of God with us. God's story is not a pointless meandering adventure but a purposeful narrative with a beginning, middle and end. The mission of God with us has a purpose. The Father sends his Son in the power of the Spirit in order that all things might be reconciled to him and in him. So missional narrative theology, at least of the sort exemplified in this series, is eschatological theology. It is theological thinking that takes its bearings from God's kingdom purposes.

So, if the kingdom is the key to theology in general and eschatology in particular, what is it? What is the kingdom of God? Well, there are a lot of ways to define the kingdom of God: it is God's realm, God's effective presence, God's people in submission to him, God's own heavenly space, etc. Although strict definitions are seldom helpful in crucial theological matters, a strict definition of God's kingdom is particular difficult to come by. Why? Because God's kingdom is by definition undefinable. As Jesus's kingdom parables attest, God's kingdom is unpredictable. It is full of surprises. This is precisely because it is God's kingdom: the fulfillment of his work of creation and redemption and therefore the surplus beyond what is inherent in the created order. The kingdom is the transcendent purpose of God for his world. And so it exceeds expectations and detailed descriptions. That is why a strict definition is not the way to go.

Does this mean we have nothing to say about the kingdom? Certainly not! We can still point to the kingdom. We can pick it out. How? Well, instead of a strict definition of what the kingdom is, we can begin to understand the kingdom in terms of what it is not. Now I don't mean just saying a bunch of stuff it isn't. Saying the kingdom of God is not a banana, though accurate, doesn't reveal much. Rather, I am suggesting that we gesture at the kingdom by speaking of in terms of its relations. You may recall this is how we speak of the trinitarian persons: they are identified by their opposing relations. An analogous procedure may be helpful here. In the case of the kingdom, we pick it out by its relation to the church and to the world.

On the one hand, the kingdom is not the church. The kingdom cannot be equated with the church. The church seeks to live in light of the kingdom, but it is not itself God's kingdom. The kingdom is more than the church: God has more in store for the world than it merely joining the church. The kingdom cannot be sacralized. We often forget this, thinking that building the church simply is building the kingdom. But it is never that simple. Remember Alfred Loisy's famous quote from last week : "Jesus preached the kingdom, but the church came instead." We already pointed out one of the layers of irony in this quote. Another of those layers is the blunt reminder for the church to preach not itself but the kingdom of God. In other words, the kingdom is not the church.

On the other hand, the kingdom is not the world. The kingdom cannot be equated with the world as it is, or even the best parts of the world. The world is waiting for the in-breaking of God's kingdom, and there are certainly signs of the kingdom popping up in the world outside the walls of the church. But the kingdom is more than the world: God has more in store for the world than simply sustaining its best features. God's kingdom will transform this world, and so transcends this world. The kingdom cannot be secularized. Even as the church becomes more missional by learning to look beyond its own institutional life for the work of God in this world, it must not become so enamored with the world so as to think that the kingdom is the world. God's hope for the world surpasses even the world's own best hopes. The kingdom is not the world.

Having picked out God's kingdom in relation to the church and the world, we can begin to fill out our picture of God's kingdom. We will draw our content from the promises of God confirmed by and revealed in the resurrection of Jesus. We will structure this content around the language of the classic creeds: the kingdom is "the life of the world to come," "the resurrection of the body," and "the life everlasting." In other words, the kingdom of God is (1) New Creation, (2) Resurrection, and (3) Eternal Life.

(1) New Creation
The kingdom of God is the re-creation of the world. It is thus analogous to the creative work of God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. The kingdom of God is the new heavens and the new earth. It is new creation. Now the language of new creation is unfortunately not found in the Apostles' Creed, but it is implied in the last line of the Nicene Creed: "the life of the world to come." The reference to "world" (Greek: cosmos) gives us a sense of the big picture. We begin with this cosmic dimension in order to place our talk of personal destiny in its proper context. Christian hope is not just about individual life-after-death. Although it is included within eschatology, my individual destiny is not the whole story or even the central point. When personal hope is made the central point, eschatology all too easily becomes escapism. Rather, our personal hope fits within the larger story of God. The kingdom of God is the renewal of all things, the marriage of heaven and earth, the fulfillment of God's creative purposes. The kingdom of God does not replace but transforms God's good creation. This promise of transformation is revealed by Jesus, whose creatureliness is affirmed in his resurrection from the dead. And so here at the end we confirm what we have said from the beginning: that creation and redemption are positively related. Redemption is the fulfillment of creation. Redemption is new creation.

By affirming the positive relationship between creation and redemption, we run immediately into a problem. How does this transformation occur? Is it a gradual sort of thing, or does it happen all at once? Or, to put the question in eschatological terms, when does this transformation occur? Has it already begun, or is it still to come? There is certainly Scriptural evidence in favor of both sides. The kingdom comes like a thief in the knight, yet it also works like yeast in the dough. The kingdom is to come, yet is it already advancing violently.

What shall we do with this temporal tension in the New Testament? Some have tried to resolve it one way or the other. On one end of the spectrum, Johannes Weiss and Albert Schweitzer famously spoke of a thoroughgoing eschatology, found especially in the teachings of the historical Jesus. This meant that the kingdom was for Jesus absolutely future, so that any talk of a present kingdom in the New Testament were later developments designed to deal with the disappointment surrounding Jesus's death and/or his delay in returning. Though Schweitzer considered this feature problematic, some theologians (such as Rudolf Bultmann and the early Karl Barth) attempted to make use of this perspective in their theology. The emphasis here is on the discontinuity between creation and redemption: God will redeem creation by his own radically new act. The advantage here is the critical limit set on all idolatrous claims to build the kingdom today. The disadvantage is that this view tends to empty history of its significance.

On the other end of the spectrum, C. H. Dodd famously spoke of a realized eschatology, in which the kingdom has already come. After the death and resurrection of Jesus, all things are fulfilled, including Jesus's own prophetic predictions. All that is left is the proclamation and expansion of this kingdom. Such an approach is often adopted by theologians to support either a high view of the church or a secularized kingdom-building work in the world. The emphasis is on the continuity between creation and redemption: God is redeeming creation in and through his creatures. The advantage here is the seriousness with which it takes the presence of the kingdom in Jesus Christ the King. The disadvantage is the temptation to co-opt the kingdom for our own ends, as well as the deeply problematic fact that the world remains quite rebellious against God's reign.

An attempt at mediation within this old debate was supplied by Oscar Cullmann. He recommended the notion of an inaugurated eschatology. The kingdom has already but not yet come. It has already burst onto the scene in Jesus Christ, the turning point of history. And yet it awaits its final consummation at the end of all things. Although seemingly obvious, this view provides a conceptuality for keeping alive the temporal tension of Scripture.

This tension is expressed profoundly in Jesus' preaching: "The Kingdom of God is at hand." What does "at hand" mean? Does it mean it's here? Or does it mean it is coming? The answer is, "Yes." It's both here and still to come. This tension is held together in the very person of Jesus Christ, who as the incarnate Son of God fully embodies God's kingdom and invites his human brothers and sisters to participate in his kingdom, an incorporation which awaits its final consummation at the resurrection of the dead.

However, it is worth noting that merely saying "both/and" will not do as a theological procedure. One must think carefully about how to relate both aspects, in this case the presence and the future of the coming kingdom of God, and within that temporal dynamic the continuity and discontinuity between creation and redemption. One should keep alive this Scriptural tension, but do so in a way that upholds the values found in the more extreme positions identified above. Extreme positions uncover deep insights that must be taken on board by any worthwhile mediating position. That's good advice in general, and is particularly important when discussing God's kingdom, for the kingdom is radically new and yet precisely as new it is the very fulfillment of God's creation. Nothing holds this tension of discontinuity and continuity together better than the promise of resurrection, to which we now turn.

(2) Resurrection
The kingdom of God is the resurrection of the dead. It is thus analogous to the Father's raising of his son Jesus from the dead. Easter is the inauguration of the kingdom. In the bodily resurrection of Jesus we have a clear instance both of the surpassing of creation's own possibilities and God's re-affirmation of creation. In the resurrection of Jesus, God confirms his promise to not give up on his creation by giving to it something brand new. And so the continuity and discontinuity of creation and redemption are held together in Christ.

However, the risen Christ is more than an instance of our future hope. He is its basis. Only on the basis of the revelation of the crucified Jesus as the risen Lord do we have hope for our own resurrection from the dead. Following Paul's imagery: the risen Christ is the first-fruits, of which the resurrection of the dead is the harvest. Or, to follow another of Paul's image-sets: Jesus Christ is the firstborn from the dead, so many other sons and daughters will be revealed at the coming of God's kingdom. The bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead fills Christian eschatology with a specific content and secure hope, which far exceed any vague wish for life-after-death.

In fact, as N. T. Wright succinctly puts it, Christian hope in resurrection is decidedly not about life after death, but rather about life after life-after-death. We know this is so because Jesus did not simply "die and go to heaven," but was crucified, dead and buried, and on the third day rose again from the dead. He then ascended into heaven and has promised to return from there -- not to take us to heaven, but to bring heaven to earth. The king will bring the fullness of his kingdom here. The New Jerusalem will descend to earth, and we will reign with Christ forever. In order to be in such eternal fellowship with the risen son, human beings will be given new, resurrected bodies. These bodies will be different than the ones we are currently used to (discontinuity), yet these bodies will still be bodies (continuity). God in Christ has not given up on space, time and matter. God is so firmly pro-creation that he will not even leave it to its own "natural" end in decay and death. God puts death to death in the death of Christ, so that in him we might be raised from the dead.

All this talk of a future resurrection from the dead raises the question of an intermediate state. What happens in the meantime, between our death and resurrection? Where do we go when we die? This is the place where the immortality of the soul fits in. The belief that humans have a non-material identifying substance called a "soul" that survives one's natural death is not the same as belief in the resurrection of the dead. You can't turn "resurrection" into a code-word for the immorality of the soul. Immortality of the soul is not the centerpiece of Christian hope; resurrection of the body is.

However, theories about the souls can be helpful for imagining the intermediate state between death and resurrection. Such theories are not required by Christian faith, but neither are they strictly ruled out by it. Some suggest that resurrection faith is incompatible with belief in immortality, often in justifiable opposition to the bad habit in the Christian tradition of overplaying immortality at the expense of resurrection. But abuse does not bar use. Many of the greatest thinkers in the Christian tradition have displayed the compatibility of resurrection and immortality. The key is to relentlessly subordinate all theoretical talk of an immortal soul to the sure faith in the resurrection of the dead. The idea of the immortality of the soul is only a theory to explain the intermediate state, and that's all it is. As such, immortality is a function of resurrection.

Two implications follow from this. First, immortality is not a natural attribute of the soul. Only God is immortal. Humans may have been created for immortality, but they were not created with immortality. Human immortality is a gift from God, and it ultimately comes in the form of a renewed bodily life at the resurrection. Any "immortality" prior to the resurrection is a temporary holding pattern, the preservation of our identity by God.

Second, whatever the soul is, it must not be thought of in abstraction from the body. The "soul" is simply a way of gesturing at the difference between a living body and a corpse. Soul means life. So we must not think of the intermediate state in terms of souls running around and doing things, as if our story just keeps on rolling. No, our life is hid with Christ in God. Whether God preserves our life-history only in his mind or also by means of a temporary form of bodily existence, we don't really know. The point is that an immortal soul awaiting the resurrection of the dead is not a ghost or an angel who might visit earth or meddle in its affairs. The human person, however preserved by God, awaits the breath of new life into a new bodily existence on the day of the Lord's return. And with the mention of the breath of new life, we come to our final point.

(3) Eternal Life
The kingdom of God is the giving of eternal life. It is thus analogous to the pouring out of the Holy Spirit onto the church at Pentecost. Actually, in light of the forward-looking orientation of the Spirit's work, the analogy runs the other way: the outpouring of the Spirit on the disciples is analogous to the outpouring of the Spirit on all flesh. The indwelling of the Spirit is the foretaste and foreshadowing of the Spirit's gift of everlasting life to those risen in Christ. As Paul puts it, the Spirit is the down-payment of things to come. The Spirit fills and guides us now, but he will be the driving principle of our lives in the kingdom. So the resurrection of our bodies will not be just one last miracle to display the omnipotence of God, but is the indispensable means to the end of enjoying eternal fellowship with the risen Christ.

This living fellowship with Christ by the Spirit marks the completion of our sanctification. According to the various Christian traditions, this completion is referred to as glorification, the beatific vision, or deification. Although each term understands eternal life differently, all of them contain the crucial element of seeing. The crucial distinction between now and then is the means by which we are sanctified: it is no longer by faith, but by sight. "We shall be like him because we shall see him as he truly is" (1 Jn 3:2). In the kingdom we will share in God's eternal life because Jesus will be revealed. It is thus no coincidence that the last book of the Bible is called Revelation, for it is by revelation that God achieves the completion of his work in us.

But does completion mean conclusion? Does eternal life mean the story is simply over? Is the coming kingdom a denouement that just goes on and on and on? In other words, will heaven be boring? This is a common question, and one can see why it arises. But it betrays a misunderstanding both of God's future and ours. On the one hand, an eternity spent worshipping God will not be boring because of the inexhaustible riches of God's triune life. Maybe church is boring, but God isn't. God will never run out of aspects of his identity and character to reveal to us in spirit and in truth. On the other hand, worship in the kingdom will be expressed not only in our absolute love of God but also in our relative love of one another. The twofold love command will still apply in the kingdom, the only difference is that it will always be obeyed. So in the kingdom we are not envoloped back into God but rather we have fellowship with God in his outward movement among his people. As the vision of both Ezekiel and John attest, the river in the New Jerusalem flows out of the city. The only difference is that in John's New Jerusalem, the river does not flow out of the temple for there is no temple. "I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple" (Rev 21:22). There is no separate place for worship because in the kingdom we will worship God as we walk outward with him toward our fellow creatures. It is for this kingdom that we pray, "Come, Lord Jesus. Come."

Any thoughts?

Do you agree that the kingdom of God is the best category around which to organize eschatological reflection? Why or why not?
Is it a good thing to distinguish the kingdom from the church and from the world? What happens when the kingdom is too closely identified with either?
When thinking about God's new creation, do you tend to emphasize discontinuity or continuity? Do you have a reason for your tendency? How can these best be held together without making recourse to a simplistic both/and appeal?
If Jesus is the basis of our future hope, what other implications does his resurection have for eschatological reflection?
Do Christians tend to conflate resurrection of the body and immortality of the soul? What happens when we do this? Do we have to chose between them? Or are they compatible, perhaps in the way I have sketched or in some other way?
Have you every asked or been asked to question, "Will heaven be boring?" How have you answered this question? How will you answer this question in the future?

Druchesis VII: The Church

2008-08-07T14:57:00.006-04:00

Introduction: The Church as an Object of Belief?

And now we come to the church. The creed has been speaking of the identity and activity of God the Father, his son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, and then all of the sudden turns its attention to us. Of course, the church has been the elephant in the room all along, for it is the church who believes, promulgating creeds and developing doctrines in order to regulate its witness in the world and worship of the triune God. The church is the believing subject of the creed. That is why it is so odd to turn our attention to the church, because now we are treating the church an object of belief: I believe in the Holy Catholic Church. Is the church really an object belief alongside the triune God?

The answer to this question as stated is no. The church is not an object of belief in the same way as God is. Here is a good place to recall the three senses of faith outlined in the first week of this series. In terms of faith as trust, we do not put our trust in the church. We do not cling to the church in life and death. Such a posture is reserved for God and God alone. Trusting in the church alongside God is an act of idolatry.

In terms of faith as fidelity, however, we are called to be faithful to the church. The church is precisely the context in which we embody our fidelity to God. But even here there is a distinction, for our faithfulness to the church is a means, albeit a necessary one, toward the end of faithfulness to God. So the church is an object of faithfulness, not alongside but along the way to God.

In terms of faith as belief, assenting to propositions, we certainly do believe certain things about the church. The creed attaches adjectives to the church, which implies we believe these adjectives aptly describe the church. But such beliefs do not have the same status or significance as our beliefs about God. The church is not the central character in the story; God is. This does not mean the church is dispensable. It just means the church is not the same sort of thing as God is. The point is that beliefs about the church do not supply the center of gravity around which all other beliefs are organized. Quite the opposite is true. Beliefs about the triune God condition beliefs about the church.

This broader theological context is crucial not only to block ecclesial arrogance but also to properly uphold the crucial place of the church in the story of God. Too often the church is dismissed as an unnecessary appendage to the gospel. You have heard it said, "I'm spiritual, not religious." Perhaps you have said it yourself. Placing the church in its broader theological context, "putting the church in its place" so to speak, is the best response to this endemic problem. We've been doing this all along in this series, but let's make the connections explicit with three brief statements.

(1) The Father elects the church. The God of the Bible is a God who chooses a people. This doesn't mean God doesn't love all people. But God spreads his universal love through particular communities. God is the God of history and therefore works in and through particularity. This does not cease with Christ, but is intensified in him and then bursts out through the church whom he sends out into the world. Which brings us to the second point

(2) The Son institutes the church. Alfred Loisy once said, "Jesus preached the kingdom, but the church came instead." Now he meant that with several layers of irony, but at least one level the proper response is, "That's exactly what Jesus wanted!" Jesus preached the kingdom and he sent his disciples preach that same kingdom, of which he is the king. The church was not an accident but at the heart of Jesus's own mission. Nothing speaks more to his intention to establish a community than the institution of the Lord's Supper, giving his disciples a concrete practice to continue after his death and resurrection. The many promises giving to the community so gathered points to Jesus's ecclesial intentions. The mention of promise brings us to our last point.

(3) The Spirit constitutes the church. Jesus promised that the Father would send another comforter, who would be poured out on his disciples to equip them for mission. At Pentecost, the Spirit of the risen Lord Jesus who had ascended to the right hand of the Father descended upon his disciples. In so doing, the Spirit constituted the church. The church has its being in its act of mission. The church's mission is not a bonus activity appended to its self-enclosed communal being. The church exists as the sent community. So the outpouring of the Spirit is not reserved for a special functions or functionaries of the church, but constitutes the church as the community sent for the sake of the world.

Within this context and under these conditions, we can and should join our voice with the church in proclaiming our beliefs about the church. Theological reflection on these beliefs (called "ecclesiology") traditionally takes its cue from the adjectives attached to the church in the creed. Let's follow the tradition's lead and organize our discussion of the church around the so-called "Notes of the Church."

The Notes of the Church
The "notes" of the church are those attributes that the creed predicates of the church. The Apostles' Creed declares two such notes, "I believe in the Holy Catholic church." The Nicene-Constinopolitan Creed expands this to four: "One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church." Now the problem we immediate run into is that these notes are often regarded as criteria for finding the true church. They function a checklist for church shopping. But so treating the notes of the church sets one up for disappointment. What church has all these notes? What local church is truly catholic? What denomination is truly one? What tradition is thoroughly apostolic? What community is genuinely holy?

Now there are lots of clever ways of construing these notes to avoid disappointment. For instance, one might say that these are attributes of the invisible church. Now the notion of the invisible church is a necessary one. The true church of Jesus Christ cannot be strictly equated with one or many visible institutions. On the one hand, the church is less than visible church, for ecclesial institutions are mixed bodies, full of those who are not genuine Christians. On the other hand, the church is more than the visible church, for there are genuine disciples of Christ who have been estranged from the institutional church. So there is a place for talk of the "invisible" church.

But we must be very careful here, because such invisibility can be an escape for the very concrete calling to which the church is called. The invisibility of the church can be used to justify schismatic departure from the church or apathetic maintenance of the church's failed institutions. After acknowledging the theological function of the invisible church, we should turn our attention solely to the visible church. In what sense to the notes of the church apply to the visible Christian community?

Since we have already proposed that the Spirit-constituted church has her being in her act of mission, the notes cannot be regarded as static attributes of the church. They cannot describe the being of the church abstracted from here forward-moving activity in the power of the Spirit. The notes do not point up to an invisible church, nor do they point in to self-enclosed well-ordered community, nor do they even point back to some pristine church of the apostles. The notes point forward and outward to the church's mission for the sake of the world in light of the coming kingdom of God. Such a missional account of the church requires that we turn the Nicene notes of the church on their head, beginning with the last one first.

The church is apostolic. Apostolicity should be understood according to its root meaning as “sent-ness" (the Greek word apostello means "to send"). The point is neither apostolic teaching (Protestant) or apostolic succession (Catholic), but the continuity of the apostolic mission to the nations. The true church is the one that is being sent into the world.

The church is catholic. The church is sent to the whole world (kata holos means "according to the whole"). So catholicity should be understood in terms of the global reach of the church. Catholicity should not be seen as some sort of achieved consensus, but rather a sought-after scope. The true church is the church that is spread throughout the world.

The church is holy. In a missional context, holiness must be in terms of hospitality. Just as the heavenly sends the gift of rain on both the righteous and the unrighteous, so the church is also to love both its friends and enemies (Mt 5:43-48). Holiness is not a statically perfect subject, but an outward-motion toward a complete object: the world. Holiness defined as hospitality is the natural result of missional apostolicity and global catholicity. The encounter with the global other in mission leads to hospitable perfect love.

The church is one. The oneness of the church must be located within God's reconciliation of the world to himself through the church’s ministry of reconciliation. Unity is therefore not a given but a gift. Yes, the visible unity of the church is to be desired, and its absence is tragic. But church unity is not an end in itself, but is intended to serve the church’s mission within the context of the ever-increasing unity of all creation. It is no coincidence that the modern ecumenical movement began on the mission field. The early ecumenists saw that unity could serve mission. But just like the previous notes, unity is only found as its flows from the mission of the church. Missional apostolicity leads to global catholicity, which in turn breads hospitable holiness, preparing the way for reconciling unity.

Now, does all this future-oriented talk get the visible churches off the hook? If the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church is out in front of us, then can local churches, denominations, and the global Christian community simply rest easy and say, "We're on a journey. God's still working on us." Such an attitude is opposed to the intention of a missional ecclesiology. But to block such an unintended consequence, some kind of standards must be set. Although the notes cannot function as a criterion for finding the true church, there must be some criterion by which communities can be judged to be genuinely ecclesial communities. What makes a church a church? This is where the reformation tradition of the "marks of the church" comes in.

The Marks of the Church
During the ecclesiological revolution that came to be known as the Reformation, the various protestant groups were compelled to defend themselves against the charge of schism. The general response was to develop a doctrine of the marks of the church whereby one can identify the true church from the false church. The marks of the church where not meant as a church-shopping list but a church-staying list, a means of justifying participation in communities estranged from the Roman Catholic Church. The practical function of the marks of the church is not to have impossibly high standards but to have a clear low-water mark: if a community falls below this line, one is free to break fellowship without being a schismatic church-divider or shallow church-hopper.

Now there is no revealed list of marks, but various lists have been proposed. Martin Bucer, the leader of the reformation in the city of Strausbourg, recommended three marks of the church: church is wherever the pure word of God is preached, the sacraments are rightly administered, and discipline is properly executed. Because of the perceived abuses of the radical reformers in their emphasis on and application of church discipline, many magisterial reformers (such as John Calvin) dropped discipline as a mark of the church in favor of the twofold pattern of word and sacrament. The debate concerning two or three marks re-emerged a century later during the Puritan controversy in England. The Puritans pushed for the return of discipline as the third mark of the church, and on its basis began to question the authority of the Anglican Church. Through the influence of his Puritan heritage, John Wesley affirmed the third mark and the churches that developed out of the Methodist revival include the third mark in their constitutional documents, many of which are not inconsequentially named “The Discipline.” Denominations with roots in the Evangelical revivals in which the Methodists took part tend to also affirm this third mark in one way or another.

Now this historical excursus not only helps you see some of the options for constructing the marks of the church, but also encourages you to see the importance of concrete practices for the church. The church is identified by her actions, not by her abstracts ideas or her amorphous feelings. The church has its being in its act of mission to the world, which takes concrete form in her proclamation, worship and discipleship. Just as the triune God is identified by his narrative, so also the church is identified by her narrative. This is so because the church is personal -- not a triune person, but a person created in the image of God. Scripture speaks of the church in personal terms: the church is the people of God, the body of Christ, the bride of Christ, etc. These personal categories speaks of the church not only as a community of like minded individuals, but a communion of persons and so a communal person, who communes with the triune God as she participates in God's mission in the world. The mention of communion brings us to the next line in the creed.

The Communion of Saints
The next two lines of the Apostles' Creed is not new topics but further specifications of the work of the Spirit in the church. We not only believe in the holy catholic church, but also in the communion of saints. What does this phrase mean? Well, it initially referred to faithful who have died and are no longer with us. The church believes that it communes with not only with fellow Christians of today but also with fellow Christians of yesterday. As the church proclaims the gospel, she carries forward the mission of the apostles. As the church gathers for worship, she joins the praises of the great cloud of witnesses who have gone before her. The communion of saints therefore speaks to the historical continuity of the Christian community throughout time. But this continuity is not conceived in solely institutional terms, but in personal categories. The church is the communion of the faithful with Christ and one another as we walk together as one person with one purpose. In other words, the church is the body of Christ.

The reference to communion rightfully brings with it the connotation of the Lord's Supper, also called communion, eucharist, mass, etc. We have already mentioned the Lord's Supper as a sign of Jesus's institution of the church. The language of "institution" in face comes from the Lord's Supper liturgy, which speaks of the "words of institution." The double meaning of all these words is purposeful, because it points to this meal as the means by which the church is gathered and equipped for her service in the world. It is the practice by which she hears and proclaims the gospel not only with audible words but with visible objects and actions. It is Jesus's own chosen object-lesson, symbolizing his broken body and shed blood. Such visible words in the church are referred to as sacraments. Whether one has or even needs a particular theory for what makes this meal special, the point is that the church is not alone in her mission, but is fed by her Lord and has fellowship at his table with him and with one another. Even as he sends us out into the world, he gives us the promise of his perpetual presence (Mt. 28:20-21). The sign of this presence, the visible pointer to the deep truth of the communion of saints, is the Lord's Supper.

The mention of saints of course brings up the question of sainthood. Is there a special category of Christians called "Saints." One can see how such a category emerged. If we believe that the church here on earth communes with those who have gone before, then it is easy to start thinking about specific dead Christians. The first that comes to mind are the martyrs, those who died for their faith. The martyrs were held in high regard from the very beginning, as can be seen already in the Book of Revelation. Such special regard was then easily transfered to other exemplary Christians. Then distinctions start to be made between "saints" who go directly to "heaven" and those "souls" who must by "purged" of their sinfulness before coming into the presence of God. It is important to see the sensibleness of this train of thought, even if one has good reasons not to go down this road. One need not disparage the many exemplary Christians who have gone before us in order to avoid the abuses that such a train of thought has produced.

At the end of the day, however, one must remember that in the New Testament all Christians are addressed as "saints," even those confused and conflicted Corinthians. Christians are by definition saints because the Holy Spirit sanctifies the church. Here we must make reference to the doctrine of sanctification. God desires a holy people. And so God sets apart a people for his own purposes, God cleanses his people from their sins, and God fills his people with the power to live a new life for him. Sanctification is the work of God. It is a gift -- the gift of the Holy Spirit. Christians together seek to live a holy life, set apart for God's use. They do so not in their own power but by the power of God. God is faithful, and he will do it.

The Forgiveness of Sins
After speaking of the heights of the church's missionary purpose and communal sanctification, the creed reminds of where we come from and where we return again and again: that we were and are sinners in need of forgiveness by a gracious God. We are not only communing saints but forgiven sinners. This is not meant to bring us down a notch, but to call forth our thanks and praise. We must be forever thankful that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us; that God did not hold our sins against us but reconcile us to him in his son; that God had mercy on me, a sinner. With this word of thanks we come to the doctrine of justification.

Now we have already spoke of the basis of God's justification of sinners when we spoke of the cross of Christ. So we need not linger long here. But it is important to not only speak of forgiveness there and then, but also here and now. There is a traditional distinction made between redemption accomplished for us in Christ and redemption applied to us by the Holy Spirit. Whether the distinction itself is helpful or not, I'll let you be the judge. The point is that the forgiveness given in Jesus's death really comes to us by the power of his Spirit. We can be assured of our forgiveness of sins, and walk in the freedom that this brings. This freedom is not to be abused, because it is a freedom with a purpose, freedom for new life in Christ. This is why it helps to speak of our being sanctified for the mission of the church first before turning back to the word of forgiveness. But nevertheless this word of freedom must be spoken and never left behind.

Just as the communion of saints has a visible sign, so too the forgiveness of sinners has a visible sign: baptism. The Nicene Creed makes this connection explicit: "We believe in one baptism for the forgiveness of sin." Baptism visually portrays the death of the old life and the beginning of the new, the cleansing of the flesh and outpouring of the Spirit. It the rite of initiation into the church and thus a sign of conversion to the gospel and its proclamation. In baptism one both hears the gospel spoken to oneself and is called to speak the gospel to others. As such it is the ordination of all Christians to the ministry of reconciliation. That is not to deny that there may be special functionaries within the church's life and that special rites may be instituted to set apart these people for service. But all such rites are subordinated to the common baptismal calling of all Christians to preach the gospel of forgiveness out of thankfulness that they too are sinners saved by grace.

Any thoughts?

To what extent is it apporpriate to develop a doctrine of the church?
Does the larger theological context sketched above help address the problem of dismissing the church, at least on an intellectual level? What else can be done to respond to this problem? Is it even a problem?
Do you agree that the church has its being in its act of mission? Does such a priveledging of mission in ecclesiology have some drawbacks? What other concepts might function better at the center of ecclesiology?
Does my idiosyncratic presentation of the notes of the church connect with you? Why or why not?
What kinds of "marks" do people implicit use to evaluate particular Christian communities? How should the marks of the church function? What do you believe are the marks of the church?
What does a belief in the communion of saints entail? What does it not entail?
What does sanctification in the context of the church look like?
Do the Lord's Supper and Baptism succeed as signs of the communion of saints and forgiveness of sins? Should their "success" even be evaluated, and if so, how? If they fail, what other signs are available to point to these truths?

Druchesis VI: The Holy Spirit

2008-07-30T21:54:00.003-04:00

This week we reach the third section within our series of reflections on the Apostles' Creed. The first three posts concerned the first article of the creed, as we considered our faith in God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. The last two weeks were dedicated to the second article of the creed concerning Jesus Christ in his identity and saving significance. The next three posts concern the Holy Spirit, his own special role in God's story with us, and the anticipated completion of that story.

This week we focus on the first phrase of the third article of the creed: "I believe in the Holy Spirit." And so we come to pneumatology, or Spirit-talk. But here we hit a snag, for there is not much Spirit-talk in the creed. "I believe in the Holy Spirit." That's it. That's not a lot to work with. Although we've seen in this series how theologians can squeeze a lot of content out of a few words, we have to admit that talk of the Spirit in the Apostles' Creed is pretty thin. Unlike God the Father, who is praised for his attribute of almightiness and his activity of creation, and unlike Jesus Christ, who is confessed with honorific titles and whose story is told in detail, the Holy Spirit is simply acknowledged before moving on to other things like church, sacraments, forgiveness, etc. The Spirit seems to get short shrift. The Apostles' Creed ought not be singled out here, for such Spirit-forgetfulness is endemic, especially in the Western church. Not that the Spirit never makes an appearance, for outbreaks of exuberant Spirit-talk regularly occur. But such exuberant promotion of the Spirit is in fact a function of our pneumatological deficit, which invites an oscillation between Spirit-forgetfulness and Spirit-enthusiasm.

Now before we get too critical, we should remember that when we move from confession of faith in the Holy Spirit to what we believe about church, sacraments, forgiveness, resurrection and eternal life, we are not in fact "moving on." These are the works of the Spirit, his own identifying narrative, his saving significance for us. That's how the Spirit works -- in and among us. So he can be hard to pick out for direct reflection. The Spirit blows where he wills. But this quite true reminder is no excuse for forgetting to attend to the Holy Spirit in his unique identity. Who is the Holy Spirit? What is the Spirit like? How does the Spirit relate to God the Father and his son Jesus Christ?

In order to answer these sorts of questions, we need to be guided by the thicker talk of the Spirit found in the Nicene Creed. Just as with our reflections on the identity of Jesus we found it helpful draw on the results of that great council, so with our reflections on the identity of the Spirit we return again for guidance from Nicaea. Unfortunately, the original Nicene Creed from 325 does not fare much better than the Apostles' Creed (which shows how easy it is to ignore the Spirit). But this lacuna was filled a generation later at the first Council of Constantinople in 381, which produced what is now commonly called the "Nicene Creed" (a.k.a., the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed). Constantinople both solidified the orthodoxy of the Nicene declarations concerning Son and extended parallel declarations to the Spirit. The first phrase of the third article of the Nicene Creed goes like this:

And [we believe] in the Holy Spirit,
the Lord and Giver of Life,
who proceeds from the Father,
who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified,
who spoke through the prophets.

We will organize our reflections around these five lines.

1. "And we believe in the Holy Spirit"

Here we find again that little word "and." Just as the "and" at the head of the second article signaled that faith in God the Father must be paired with faith in Jesus his Son, so this second "and" demands that our faith in God and Christ must be completed by our faith in the Holy Spirit. This is crucial, for we seldom think of the Holy Spirit as an object of faith. It's not that Christians don't believe the Spirit exists (ala the first sense of faith: belief), but rather that the Spirit is not often treated as a person (ala the second sense of faith: trust). Spirit-talk is often more akin to attribute talk: "God, send us your power, give us your grace, pour out your spirit." The Spirit in our everyday language is more of a thing than a person -- a divine thing for sure, but still something less than personal.

This impersonal manner of speaking is not inappropriate. It is in fact a very biblical way of speaking. The Spirit is the power by which God's people say and do things he asks of them. It is by the Spirit that we believe in God the Father and in his Son Jesus Christ. All this stuff we have been confessing in the creed is made possible by the Spirit. As Paul puts it, "Only by the Spirit can one say Jesus is Lord." So the Holy Spirit is in the first instance the means by which we believe.

But we can't stop there, for the Christian church from early on and with little fanfare took another step. Christians began to regard the Holy Spirit as an object of faith. We not only believe by the Spirit, but also in the Spirit. In so doing, the church speaks of the Spirit in personal terms. He is not just a thing about which we believe, but a person in whom we believe. He is not just a thing we may ask for, but a person to whom we may address our requests. He is not just the object of actions (e.g., "God poured out his spirit"), but the subject of actions (e.g., "The Spirit sanctified them"). The Holy Spirit is a person.

Once the Spirit begins to be spoken of in personal terms, we run up against the question of his identity. Who is this Spirit? How do we distinguish this Spirit from all the other spirits we may encounter? Well, we might first identify the Spirit as the spirit of the church. The Holy Spirit is the personified team spirit of the church of Jesus Christ. Now such an answer has a grain of truth, and we will come back to it next week when we speak directly of the church. Yet it is insufficient in itself, for the spirit is not the church, full stop. The church has many other spirits animating it, such as the unholy spirits of its many members and the spirits of the age that so often invade her. No, there must be a more definite way by which the Spirit is identified not only in and with the church but also over against it. The Spirit must be the Holy Spirit.

This more definite way is supplied by asking an alternative question: Whose Spirit is this? The possessive relative pronoun is not meant to revert back to impersonal Spirit-talk. Rather, it is to identify the Spirit by his relations. As we have seen in the case of God the Father and God the Son, there is nothing impersonal about being identified by one's relations. Quite the opposite. At least for the Christian God, persons are always and primarily identified by relations. One could even say persons are their relations. And there are those in the Christian tradition who have said such things, such as Thomas Aquinas, who said it both carefully and thoroughly. So, God the Father is the Father because he is the Father of the Son. And the Son is the Son because he is the Son of the Father. This much we have already stated. So also the Spirit is the Spirit because he is the Spirit of the Father and of the Son.

In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit is quite clearly both the Spirit of the Father and of the Son. He is both the Spirit of God the Father and the Spirit of the Lord Jesus (Paul). He is both the promise of the Father and the one who Jesus pours out (Acts). He is both sent by the Father and breathed by the Son (John). Or, to tie all these relations together in one complex sentence: "the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is in you" (Rom 8:11). The Holy Spirit is the common Spirit of God the Father and God the Son, whom God shares with us and by whom we are drawn to God.

2. "The Lord and Giver of Life"

Having identified the person of the Holy Spirit by his relationship to the Father and the Son, we return to the question of his divinity. I say "return," because when we initially spoke of the Spirit, we spoke of him as an attribute of God, the mode of God's empowerment, a gift given by God. And so his divinity was not really questioned. Of course the Spirit of God is divine, just as the power of God and the grace of God are divine. But once we begin to speak of the Spirit in personal terms, the question of his divinity immediately arises. Is this third person truly God? Is the Spirit of God also God the Spirit? Is there room enough in God not only for a Father and a Son, but also a Spirit?

Well, once this question was put to the church, she very quickly said Yes. There were certainly objectors. But the argument was won pretty quickly. Perhaps too quickly, given the trouble the church has had since in clarifying its teaching on the Spirit. The proclamation of the Spirit's divinity is expressed nicely by the second line of third article of the Nicene Creed: He is "the Lord and Giver of Life." Those are two terms within theological discourse that may only be predicated of God. God and God alone is the Lord and Life-Giver. Not only is Jesus Lord, but so is his Spirit. Not only is God the Father Almighty the Creator (a.k.a., Giver of Life), but so is his Spirit. The Spirit is the Sovereign Lord and the Life-giving Creator. In other words, the Spirit is God.

Although these appellations are code-names for divinity, they are carefully chosen to be refracted in light of the unique personal activity of the Spirit. To get at this unique lordly and life-giving activity, let's take our cue from Paul in 2 Corinthians 3. In the course of defending his ministry, Paul speaks of the life-giving Spirit of Christ in contrast to the death-dealing letter of the old covenant. After speaking distinctly of the ministry of the Spirit and the unveiling of the Lord Jesus, Paul declares: "Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom" (2 Cor 3:17). Here the Lord and the Spirit are identified ("is") and distinguished ("of") in such a way that Jesus' Lordship in and as the Spirit does not bind us but frees us. By the Spirit, who is the Lord and is of the Lord, we are freed. What are we freed from? The letter which kills. In other words, from death. To be freed from death is to be given life. The Spirit by whom the Father freed Jesus from the dead is the Spirit who frees us from death. This is the Spirit of the living God, the Spirit of resurrection, the Spirit of new creation. God is Spirit, which means God as Spirit is free -- free from the chains of death, free from arbitrary restraints, free to be our Lord, free to adopt us as children and share his freedom with us. The Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, is the Spirit of freedom. So the titles "Lord" and "Life-giver" indicate both the Spirit's divinity and the Spirit's way of being divine, his unique personal activity of liberation. The Holy Spirit is the Lord and Giver of Life.

3. "Who proceeds from the Father"

We must, however, return to the question of the Spirit's divinity a second time in order to sharpen the question. Up to this point, much of what we have said could be said of a quasi-divine intermediary being. The Spirit's role in Scripture is so clearly one of mediation, that it is easy to think of the Spirit as a sort of super-angel, God's primary agent of interaction with his world. If this were so, the Spirit would certainly be God-like and worthy of respect. Yet, if this were so, the Spirit would not be truly God. To be truly God, the Spirit must be God as God is God. For the Spirit to be truly divine, the Spirit must be God himself, God as he relates to himself, God in eternity. Is the Spirit God in eternity?

The Council of Constantinople answered this question in the affirmative. It confessed that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. Just as the Son is truly God because he eternally generates from the Father, so the Spirit is truly God because he eternally proceeds from the Father. Now "procession" may sound like a technical term, but it is simply the noun form of the verb "comes forth." In Scripture, Jesus says that the Father will "send" the Spirit, who will "come forth" from the Father to his disciples (cf. John 16). What the fathers of the council wished to say was that this coming forth of the Spirit in time has as its ground a coming forth in eternity, and eternal procession of the Spirit from the Father. This distinction between the eternal procession and the temporal mission of the Spirit parallels the distinction between the eternal generation and the temporal mission of the Son. Each in his own way relates to God the Father eternally, and we know this because each is sent to us by God the Father in time. The divine missions reveal the divine relations. The personal distinctions in God's story with us correspond to and are rooted in personal distinctions within God's own eternal life.

Now let's us conclude with two briefer points, each of which turns in a slightly more practical direction.

4. "Who with the Father and the Son together
is worshiped and glorified"

If the Spirit is an eternal divine person, then he is a proper object of worship. He is not only to be believed in, but also worshiped. It is worthy of note that the worship of the Spirit sparked the controversy that eventually led to the Council of Constantinople. Although the person of the Spirit can sometimes be a bit slippery in the New Testament, his presence in its many doxologies alongside the Father and Son is thoroughly anchored. Paul's blessings often take on a trinitarian structure, and Matthew's baptismal formula is unmistakably triadic. These doxological references to the Spirit flowed naturally into the worship life of the early church. Many of the arguments for the divinity of the Spirit emerged in order to defend this practice against its critics. The fathers argued that the Spirit is not just honored but truly worshiped, not alone but together with the Father and the Son. The phrase "together with" points to the doctrine of perichoresis, the mutual indwelling of the persons of the trinity. The fullness of the Father dwells within the Son and the Spirit. The Father and the Son mutually glorify one another throughout eternity (cf. John 17). The mutual glory of the Father and the Son dwells fully in the Spirit, and so the worship due the Father and the Son may and must also be given to the Spirit.

The practical important of the doctrine of the Spirit's divinity in particular and the doctrine of the Trinity in general is a summons to worship God in his triunity. Orthodoxy means, in the first instance, "right praise." So my advice to those who doubt the doctrine of the trinity is to begin to worship and glorify the Father and the Son together with the Spirit. Try it and see if it seems appropriate to you. My advice to those who are confused by the doctrine of the trinity is to pray to the Father with the Son in the power of the Spirit. Try it and see if the logic of their relations comes into view. My advice to those find the doctrine of the trinity irrelevant is to let the grammar of the trinity guide your proclamation and praise. Try it and see if makes any difference for you, even if its just a word here or there.

5. "Who spoke through the prophets"

Having moved from the mission of the Spirit in time to the procession of the Spirit in eternity, the creed turns its attention back to the Spirit's activity in history with the phrase "who spoke through the prophets," and thereby terminates its direct talk of the Spirit. Such a "coming back down to earth" is appropriate, for all that talk of eternal procession and mutual indwelling is not a speculative end in itself, but rather a necessary means to a very practical end. The eternal procession of the Spirit within God's own triune life assures us that the Spirit's work among us is trustworthy. The Spirit who speaks to us can be trusted to speak the very mind of God, for he is God. The Spirit searches the deep things of God. The Spirit who testifies with our spirit that we are God's children is not just any spirit but the very Spirit of God. The Spirit of adoption is God's own Spirit, by which we cry Abba Father. God's eternal Spirit gives us confidence to speak the word of God, to say that Jesus is God's only Son and our Lord, that we are his brothers and sisters and so therefore sons and daughters of God the Father Almighty. The assurance of faith is the gift of the Holy Spirit--God's gift of himself to us.

How does the Spirit so testify? How does the Spirit assure us that we are children of God? By speaking through the prophets. Here is the right place to speak of the inspiration of Holy Scripture. Although we have been using the Bible all along as the source and norm of our knowledge of God, we chose not to speak of its inspiration earlier in order to avoid the impression that an inspired text provides some kind of foundation on which theology builds its towers. Theology does not build on Scripture, it lives by Scripture. So here, in the third article of the creed wherein we speak of the life-giving power of the Spirit, is the right place to talk about the inspiration of Holy Scripture.

The holiness of scripture is grounded in the holiness of the Spirit who inspires it. God the Father set apart the writings of the Bible to bear witness to his Son Jesus Christ by the power of his Spirit. All scripture is God-breathed, inspirated, equipped for its task so that it will not return void. This extends not only to the prophets of Old Testament but also the apostles of the New. In a different but related way, the Spirit illumines the Christian to believe and understand and apply the Bible today. The import of inspiration is that we must always contend with both the Word and the Spirit. The Spirit never blows without using his concrete inspired Word. Yet the Word never speaks without the empowerment of the Spirit.

Practically speaking, what does this mean for us? On the one hand, we ought to test the spirits against the written word to see if they are of God. In light of the eternal relation between the Spirit and the Son and Father, we should expect the Spirit to reveal today in a way consistent with the way he has revealed in the past. The Spirit is not predictable, but he is faithful. On the other hand, we ought to be filled with the Spirit as we read and hear the written word. We must listen to the written word of God always and only by the power of the Spirit. The Spirit guides all genuine reading of Scripture. As one medieval monk put it, we cannot understand the Word of God if we are not filled by the Spirit who inspired it.

Any thoughts?

What are some of the causes of our Spirit-forgetfulness?
What are the limitations of speaking of the Holy Spirit in personal terms? Does understanding triune persons in terms of their relations help or hurt the matter?
Is it right to think of the Spirit's Lordship and Life-giving power in terms of divine freedom? What are some other ways of refracting these divine code-names in light of the unique personal activity of the Spirit?
Is the doctrine of the eternal procession of the Spirit a necessary one? What problematic avenues of reflection does it wisely seal off? What problems to it create?
How do you speak of the person of the Spirit in your own life? Do you address the Spirit in prayer and praise?
Any thoughts on the place of the inspiration of scripture within the context of the Spirit's unique role in the story of God with us? Was this the right place to bring it up? If not, when should it come up?