Doxology seems to be a good place to start an account of prayer because it is the eschatological picture of prayer. It is the task of the creature as a creature to glorify God; and so it will be in the end, in the final gathering around the throne. This is not merely to please God’s own vanity, but because it is the right purpose of the creature and brings the greatest dignity to the creature. This is the picture of Revelation with its numerous hymns.
But certainly, praise pleases God. In Hebrews 13:15 we read: Through him, then, let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name. There is no sense in which, of course, this praise of God is justifying. It is not the performance of a condition. It is only ‘through him’ that this ‘pleasing’ of God is enabled. But it is the case that in him the sinful human being is enabled to get on with the task of living out the call of human beings to please him. It pleases God in that the creature is praising him: not that he needs to know the information contained in the doxology, or craves compliments, but rather that he craves the worship of his people.
That it pleases God makes praise an inescapably aesthetic act. As a form of words, praise elicits from creatures their creativity and imagination. Praise is not the rapid and efficient transferral of information – rather it exists for the enjoyment of the recipient. Praise involves detailing and cataloguing the praiseworthy features of the person involved. It takes time. The setting of praise to music is not accidental. Praise is, then, sacrificial in that involves the time and the creativity of the praiser.
Praise is a theological act, because right praise involves a true doctrine of God. It involves recalling God’s characteristics revealed in his great acts. The Psalms frequently rehearse Israel’s history and infer from these encounters with Yhwh his praiseworthy characteristics. In the NT, it is not surprising that praise becomes thoroughly Christological in content. Christian praise recalls and rehearses the particular and decisive work of God in Christ. The great examples are of course the Philippian and Colossian hymns. The chorus of praise is led by Christ (Heb 2:12) but also has Christ as its object.
Declaring the praises of God has a missionary dimension as well (1 Peter 2:9-10). It is part of the mediatorial calling of the church that they are to amplify the praise of God in the hearing of the nations. But this is not to reduce the praise of God merely to a horizontal act for the benefit of humans. It is, miraculously, in Christ, something we can do for God.
Showing posts with label The Christian Life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Christian Life. Show all posts
Saturday, August 08, 2009
Thursday, July 09, 2009
The Christian Life: Hearing
For if you ask a Christian what the work is by which he becomes worthy of the name “Christian”, he will be able to give absolutely no other answer than that it is the hearing of the Word of God, that is, faith. Therefore, the ears alone are the organ of a Christian, for he is justified and declared to be a Christian, not by the works of any member, but because of faith.
Martin Luther, (Luther’s Works, vol 29, p. 224)
Hearing indeed comes only through the Word of Christ...the Apostle here (i.e. in Rom 10:16-17) emphasizes the fact that he is speaking of a Word which no one can comprehend. It can be apprehended only hearing it in true faith.
Martin Luther (Commentary on Romans, Kregel Publications, p. 152)
It is by a divine call, that sinners are made partakers of the benefits of redemption. And the influence of the Spirit by which they are translated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God’s dear Son, is a vocation, or effectual calling.
Charles Hodge (Systematic Theology, vol II., p. 640)
Hearing
The Christian life begins, and endures, insofar as the Christian is called by and hears the Word of God and responds in faith – itself a work of the Holy Spirit.
1. ‘Come, follow me’
Jesus called his disciples: ‘come, follow me’. And hearing his call, they left what they were doing and followed him. Hearing is the first act of the Christian life because the Christian life is a life that corresponds to the call of God in Christ. Discipleship is a metaphor for the Christian life because it indicates a type of pedagogy: hearing which results in following – and thus more hearing. And discipleship as a term reminds us of the voice of God that we have heard in Christ, his Word: This is my son, whom I love… listen to him (Mk 9:7). The word of God flourishes and produces fruit because it is planted in responsive and fruitful soil. However, Jesus teaches in parables ‘so that they may be…ever hearing but never understanding’. His teaching conceals as it reveals, obscures as it clarifies. Some hear, but do not respond. How is this possible?
2. ‘My sheep hear my voice’
Israel were the people who were called, and who followed the voice of Yhwh out of Egypt. The preaching of Deuteronomy marks them out as a hearing nation: ‘Hear, O Israel’. Yahweh is the Shepherd. To follow his guidance meant survival for Israel, the sheep. In John 10:1-21, Jesus picks up the ancient and messianic image of the sheep and shepherd. The sheep recognize the voice of the shepherd. Already there is in the true sheep an instinct to respond to this, their shepherd. That is: the doctrine of election is in view in the Christian life – the hearing of the elect is a mark of their election in Christ.
3. ‘Faith comes from hearing’: Martin Luther and the hearing Christian
Faith itself arises from hearing – hearing the gospel (Rom 10:16). Faith in this way has its own basis in the promises of God. For Luther, the emphasis on the hearing of the gospel – the powerful Word – was illustration of the passivity of the believer. Faith is only a weak, passive response, but since what it responds to is so mighty, it is powerful to save. The preaching of the gospel is the intensification of the divine call to all creation – it is the way God has chosen to bring his people to himself. Notice Ephesians 1:13-14. And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession-- to the praise of his glory.
4. ‘The call’ in Reformed theology
Reformed theologians have distinguished between the ‘internal’ or ‘efficacious’ call and the ‘external call’, to explain the way in which only some individuals respond to the universal gospel of Christ. While the gospel is a call addressed to all humankind, it is also the means by which God gathers his chosen people. The inward teaching of the Spirit is necessary in addition to the declaration of the truth to give it effect. And this further explains how faith may be ‘not of yourselves, but a gift of God’ (Eph 2:10). The language of calling or vocation, klhsij, is especially applied in the NT to the believers: ‘those who are called’ (Rom 1:7, 1 Cor 1:2, 24). The great sequence of divine actions in Rom 8:30 shows how election precedes calling: those whom he predestined, he also called; those whom he called, he also justified. By speaking thus of the internal call Reformed theologians such as Bavinck and Hodge hope to distinguish their position from the Lutheran, Methodist and Roman Catholic, who in their various ways teach that there is something by nature – however small - in a person that predisposes them to respond to the call.
5. The call to personhood
The Christian life is a hearing life – but then the true human life was a matter of vocation, too. That human life always was given in response to a divine call reminds us that the Christian is only becoming more truly a human. ‘Personhood is a vocation’ as Kevin Vanhoozer says. To be human is to be summonsed to glorify God in or created life – this is the ‘chief end of man’. The first human beings were called into a life together with God and each other in the created world. Jesus Christ lives out this vocation and embodies it: he is both the Word of God, the divine communication AND the model and properly representative human response to that Word. This life is what it means to depend utterly on the Word. The gospel of Jesus Christ ‘summons the self to its proper vocation – faithful speech agency… (Vanhoozer).
6. The practices of hearing
…you have opened my ears… (Psalm 40:6). What does it mean to ‘have the ears to hear’? The theological ear needs to be trained. If the word of God to us is a word about our utter dependence on God in our fallen-ness and in our creatureliness, then hearing it is dependent on us being made in the image of his Son and being enabled by his Spirit to respond rightly. The Christian life continues as a life dependent on and nourished by hearing. ‘Man shall not live by bread alone’. The OT shows Israel committed to a life of memorizing, revering and reciting the word of God. The Christian life is in this sense no different. Scriptural study is its sine qua non, because in Scripture, by his Spirit God continues to speak to us today. Luther described the threefold process of listening to the voice of God as oratio (prayer), meditatio (meditation on the text), and tentatio (agonizing struggle). Psalm 119 is the model text in this regard!
Further reading
Stephen H. Webb The Divine Voice – Christian Proclamation and the Theology of Sound, Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2004
Kevin J. Vanhoozer ‘Human Being: Individual and Social’ in The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine, ed. C.E.Gunton, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, 158-188
Monday, July 06, 2009
Christian Life Reading List
The possibilities for reading in this particular part of the course (that I am teaching on The Christian Life here at Moore) are enormously varied. This is because the division between ‘academic’ theological works and ‘spiritual classics’ is necessarily blurred more than at other points on the course. The key thing is to get reading- and thinking! Hopefully, this little list will help.
Reformed
It would be great to revisit Calvin’s masterful treatment in Book III of the Institutes – especially looking at how he treats topics like Prayer and Faith. From there, it would be good to dip into a major systematic theologian in the Calvinist tradition: someone like Charles Hodge or (my favourite) Hermann Bavinck. Look first at the table of contents. How do they organise their material? What are they communicating by the placement of the material on sanctification in this place, in this order? What do they say about prayer and the sovereignty of God, if anything? John Owen has much to contribute in his works Sin & Temptation: The Challenge to Personal Godliness and Spiritual-Mindedness. You will get a chance to read Jonathan Edwards’ The Religious Affections in 4th year, but Edwards is a hugely influential figure in the Reformed tradition of the thinking about the Christian life even to this day (John Piper is very very Edwardsian!). Karl Barth was also a Reformed thinker, and engaged critically with the tradition of Calvin. Read from his Church Dogmatics, IV.iv, , pp. 3-40 and the brilliant piece on Faith, Prayer and Obedience from III.iii, 239-288. Kevin Vanhoozer’s The Drama of Doctrine has some very exciting material on the Christian life – but use the indexes to find it. Finally, there’s Bruce Demarest’s work The Cross and Salvation – for a contemporary, textbooky approach.
‘Spiritual Classics’
As pastors, we neglect these to our peril – since they are often read by those whom we are seeking to teach. It is hard to go past Augustine’s Confessions for an earlier work – although the Sayings of the Desert Fathers give you something quite different. For the middle ages, you could read Bernard of Clairvaux’s On the Love of God. He was an abbot who had a huge influence of Calvin, believe it or not. You could read Thomas a Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ – a massively influential book even today. Teresa of Avila was a Spanish nun and mystic, and her book The Interior Castle you could easily dip into and be surprised by. On the Protestant side, you can’t go past The Pilgrim’s Progress. Or John Piper’s Desiring God. My own personal favourite is Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship. The trick with these works is to read with theological eyes well open.
Other traditions
It would be important to engage in some way with John Wesley – such a huge figure for the evangelicalism that has come after him, and in many ways the forerunner of the contemporary charismatic movement. He wrote enormous amounts of material – his sermons and other papers are easily available. You could trace the way in which he was influenced by the Moravian Brethren, and especially the pietism of Count Zinzendorf. Like Wesley, he is more interesting to read about than to read, and his influence has been transmitted through hymns as well as sermons and other writings.
It is fascinating to see what Roman Catholicism is doing too. Of course, the Eucharist looms large in the thinking of theologians on that side of the fence. You could dip into Hans Küng’s On Being a Christian ¬– he sounds strangely Protestant at times!
And finally...
David Peterson’s book Possessed by God is, for my money, the gold standard on sanctification from a biblical theological point of view.
Reformed
It would be great to revisit Calvin’s masterful treatment in Book III of the Institutes – especially looking at how he treats topics like Prayer and Faith. From there, it would be good to dip into a major systematic theologian in the Calvinist tradition: someone like Charles Hodge or (my favourite) Hermann Bavinck. Look first at the table of contents. How do they organise their material? What are they communicating by the placement of the material on sanctification in this place, in this order? What do they say about prayer and the sovereignty of God, if anything? John Owen has much to contribute in his works Sin & Temptation: The Challenge to Personal Godliness and Spiritual-Mindedness. You will get a chance to read Jonathan Edwards’ The Religious Affections in 4th year, but Edwards is a hugely influential figure in the Reformed tradition of the thinking about the Christian life even to this day (John Piper is very very Edwardsian!). Karl Barth was also a Reformed thinker, and engaged critically with the tradition of Calvin. Read from his Church Dogmatics, IV.iv, , pp. 3-40 and the brilliant piece on Faith, Prayer and Obedience from III.iii, 239-288. Kevin Vanhoozer’s The Drama of Doctrine has some very exciting material on the Christian life – but use the indexes to find it. Finally, there’s Bruce Demarest’s work The Cross and Salvation – for a contemporary, textbooky approach.
‘Spiritual Classics’
As pastors, we neglect these to our peril – since they are often read by those whom we are seeking to teach. It is hard to go past Augustine’s Confessions for an earlier work – although the Sayings of the Desert Fathers give you something quite different. For the middle ages, you could read Bernard of Clairvaux’s On the Love of God. He was an abbot who had a huge influence of Calvin, believe it or not. You could read Thomas a Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ – a massively influential book even today. Teresa of Avila was a Spanish nun and mystic, and her book The Interior Castle you could easily dip into and be surprised by. On the Protestant side, you can’t go past The Pilgrim’s Progress. Or John Piper’s Desiring God. My own personal favourite is Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship. The trick with these works is to read with theological eyes well open.
Other traditions
It would be important to engage in some way with John Wesley – such a huge figure for the evangelicalism that has come after him, and in many ways the forerunner of the contemporary charismatic movement. He wrote enormous amounts of material – his sermons and other papers are easily available. You could trace the way in which he was influenced by the Moravian Brethren, and especially the pietism of Count Zinzendorf. Like Wesley, he is more interesting to read about than to read, and his influence has been transmitted through hymns as well as sermons and other writings.
It is fascinating to see what Roman Catholicism is doing too. Of course, the Eucharist looms large in the thinking of theologians on that side of the fence. You could dip into Hans Küng’s On Being a Christian ¬– he sounds strangely Protestant at times!
And finally...
David Peterson’s book Possessed by God is, for my money, the gold standard on sanctification from a biblical theological point of view.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
The Riddle of Christian Subjectivity (and my 1000th post!)
Who is the Christian?
In what, of what, does the Christian life properly consist? If we have given an Augustinian and Reformed, and so Pauline, account of the depravity and death-ward-ness of human nature apart from grace, and then if we have given complete supremacy and initiative to God in the reconciliation of human beings to himself, then in what sense has the Christian any life left to live that may properly be called theirs? In what sense can we understand that the Christian is an acting subject, a person with a task to do which is properly his or her own, and a unique and distinctive voice with words to say that are not merely a piece of ventriloquism on behalf of God, and an individuality? Is the Christian still so corrupt, so shot through with sin, that they cannot properly be called the agent of any good whatsoever? Furthermore, if ‘it is no longer I that liveth, but Christ that liveth in me’ (Gal 2:20) – if even my identity, myself as an ‘I’ wanes, while he waxes – then have ‘I’ not utterly dissolved? Am I not in fact a non-entity? If faith means the giving up of any claim I might have had at asserting myself as a someone before God (coram Deo) – self-justifying, in other words - and receiving instead the life that emanates from Jesus as a gift, justified by grace, through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, then in what sense am I still an ‘I’? If even faith is ‘the gift of God...so that no-one can boast’ (Eph 2:8-9), then how is it that this faith, which must surely involve my will and affections, is really mine? Is the freedom for which Christ set me free (Gal 5:1) really no freedom at all, because I am in no sense the agent of my own actions?
And yet of course, if we read the New Testament we find that, yes, the Christian is enabled to step out on the journey. The blind see, the deaf hear, and the lame leap for joy. The dim eyes, the stopped-up ears, the withered and useless legs – these are now used for seeing, hearing and leaping. The creature who is faithless, and false, and even aptly described as dead in sin, is now faithful, and true, and alive to God. She who was unable to respond, now responds. She who was active only in wickedness is now an agent of righteousness. She now labours not in vain (1 Cor 15:58) – not merely as the conduit or channel for some divine will, but as a free subject whose will is co-ordinated to the divine will.
We have then not available to us the option of denying the reality of Christian agency and identity. These, if we are to read the Bible, are givens. But so is the priority of God in redemption from beginning to end. We cannot either consider a co-operative model in which man on his own strength completes an action initiated by God, or replicates in his own life the model given to him by God in Jesus Christ. These explanations are on every side altogether too tidy.
In what, of what, does the Christian life properly consist? If we have given an Augustinian and Reformed, and so Pauline, account of the depravity and death-ward-ness of human nature apart from grace, and then if we have given complete supremacy and initiative to God in the reconciliation of human beings to himself, then in what sense has the Christian any life left to live that may properly be called theirs? In what sense can we understand that the Christian is an acting subject, a person with a task to do which is properly his or her own, and a unique and distinctive voice with words to say that are not merely a piece of ventriloquism on behalf of God, and an individuality? Is the Christian still so corrupt, so shot through with sin, that they cannot properly be called the agent of any good whatsoever? Furthermore, if ‘it is no longer I that liveth, but Christ that liveth in me’ (Gal 2:20) – if even my identity, myself as an ‘I’ wanes, while he waxes – then have ‘I’ not utterly dissolved? Am I not in fact a non-entity? If faith means the giving up of any claim I might have had at asserting myself as a someone before God (coram Deo) – self-justifying, in other words - and receiving instead the life that emanates from Jesus as a gift, justified by grace, through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, then in what sense am I still an ‘I’? If even faith is ‘the gift of God...so that no-one can boast’ (Eph 2:8-9), then how is it that this faith, which must surely involve my will and affections, is really mine? Is the freedom for which Christ set me free (Gal 5:1) really no freedom at all, because I am in no sense the agent of my own actions?
And yet of course, if we read the New Testament we find that, yes, the Christian is enabled to step out on the journey. The blind see, the deaf hear, and the lame leap for joy. The dim eyes, the stopped-up ears, the withered and useless legs – these are now used for seeing, hearing and leaping. The creature who is faithless, and false, and even aptly described as dead in sin, is now faithful, and true, and alive to God. She who was unable to respond, now responds. She who was active only in wickedness is now an agent of righteousness. She now labours not in vain (1 Cor 15:58) – not merely as the conduit or channel for some divine will, but as a free subject whose will is co-ordinated to the divine will.
We have then not available to us the option of denying the reality of Christian agency and identity. These, if we are to read the Bible, are givens. But so is the priority of God in redemption from beginning to end. We cannot either consider a co-operative model in which man on his own strength completes an action initiated by God, or replicates in his own life the model given to him by God in Jesus Christ. These explanations are on every side altogether too tidy.
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