Jurgen Moltmann – The Crucified God

Jurgen Moltmann's The Crucified God is an attempt to come at Christian theology in a manner different to his previous work Theology of Hope, with the accent now on the cross of the risen Christ rather than the resurrection of the crucified Messiah. This is not a regressive step, he says, but an examination of the reverse side of the theology of hope (p.5). Methodologically he appeals to Adorno and Horkheimer's 'negative dialectic' because "[U]nless it apprehends the pain of the negative, Christian hope cannot be realistic and liberating" (p.5). The perspective of the problem of theodicy is thus prominent, together with the motif of the loving solidarity of God with the suffering of the world. His trinitarianism is a dominant strand of the work, and central to his explanation of the cross. The voluntary fellow-suffering of God on the cross with those who suffer godforsakeness is the key to Moltmann's theologia crucis. Everywhere is his admirable concern to articulate the faith in terms that make practical sense in the bloody twentieth century. As he says of his own experience of returning to the lecture halls after three years as a POW: "[A] theology which did not speak of God in the sight of the one who was abandoned and crucified would have had nothing to say to us then" (p. 1)

Chapter Six of The Crucified God is explained as an attempt to develop the consequences of the theology of the crucified Christ for the concept of God - that is to say, an attempt to understand God in light of the godforsakeness of Jesus on the cross (p. 200). In particular, Moltmann wishes to chart a course between modern existentialist atheism on the one hand, and traditional Christian theism on the other. Moltmann argues that traditional explanations of the cross have been restricted to soteriological questions, and have not pushed forward to ask the explicitly theo-logical question, "What does the cross of Jesus mean for God himself?" (p.201). He critiques the tendency to speak of a "death of God" even in Rahner and Barth, and insists that the answer to this question must be trinitarian - Jesus' death must be understood rather as a death in God (p.207).

The tradition of philosophical theism is then subjected to a thorough examination with Martin Luther enlisted as an ally. The theologia crucis means a new epistemology, a "crucifying form of knowledge", contrary to human pride. Metaphysics of the Greek strain cannot stand in the face of this cross of Christ - the theistic concept of the God who cannot suffer, the God who is pure causality, is incompatible with a Christian understanding of reality. In fact, it is necessary to speak of a "history of God" which the cross reveals. Atheism, too, has been an unbelief of the theists' God, not the crucified God. Moltmann hopes that if metaphysical theism disappears, then protest atheism will also die. This is because the crucial problem for the protest atheist is not God's existence, but his righteousness. Thus Moltmann's key strategy contra atheism is a theodicy. God must be understood as the suffering God in the suffering of Christ and the one who utters the cry of dereliction.

Moltmann now examines traditional christology and finds in the doctrine of Christ's two natures a possible docetism. He carefully examines the early church statements against Arianism, monophysitism and the via negativa. What is needed is a christological doctrine of the trinity (p.235), and western Christianity, as Rahner has noted, has been more monotheistic than truly trinitarian. Importantly, God's being and God's acts cannot be separated. The cross - God's act - is essential to who God is - trinity. But further, on the cross the Father delivered up the willing Son, and so suffers the death of the Son. This voluntary act on the part of God is solidarity with the godforsaken world. Even in this point of separation the Son and the Father are united in their love for the world. The trinity is not a closed circle, but an open embrace of the world in its godforsakeness. God becomes not other-worldly, but this-worldly (p.252). The problem of suffering is not "solved"; rather it is met by God's voluntary and loving suffering in identification with the world. This is to be the praxis of the church also. Moltmann also wants to speak of a trinitarian history of God, rooted in his exegesis of 1 Corinthians 15:28. Further, he wishes to propose that Christ does not face redundancy in the eschaton. In fact, the Sonship of the Son is consummated in the handing over of the kingdom.

One can see how Moltmann develops his Christian panentheism from such beginnings. The suffering of God means that man is taken up, whole and entire, into the life of God. Not only is God in the world: his embrace is so strong that the world is in God. Ultimately, God is in Auschwitz and Auschwitz is taken up into God, and this is grounds for an extraordinary hope.

Moltmann's theodicy is the great strength of this work, in that it directly engages the protest atheism of the mid twentieth century without negating the powerful emotional impact of its claims. We are returned to the cross as the heart of the Christian message repeatedly - it is no accident that Luther features so strongly and so positively in these pages. Further, the rigour of his penetrating search for the implications of the cross for God himself has led him rightly to the trinity, and stands as a rebuke to the western tradition for neglecting this understanding of God for so long. The atonement is necessarily a trinitarian event/process. The sense of God identifying with human beings in Christ is also very strong. Moltmann develops a theology of the atonement with a cosmic scope, and does not fall into the trap of individualising the work of the cross.

We might complain that Moltmann's doctrine of God suffers from an overdose of Hegelianism, by presenting the history of the world as God's history, the process by which he realizes himself. By rejecting impassiblity and divine aseity, does he allow a compromise of God's freedom? This having been said, is God still as impersonal as he ever was under the scholastics? Further, the God presented here seems almost dependent on, or at least intrinsically tied to, the world. His is a vulnerable God. Moltmann's trinitarian reflection leaves him open to the charge of tritheism - however, he more than responds to such a charge in The Trinity and the Kingdom of God; and he is recapturing a biblical emphasis, after all.

While the cosmic vision of Moltmann's theologia crucis is admirable, it says almost nothing about individual salvation - in fact, it almost non-soteriological. He describes God's judgement in the terms of the "giving up" of human beings to their godlessness, as in Rom 1 (p.242). The atonement is achieved not by any substitutionary work of Christ but by his identifying with human beings in their lostness, by solidarity with them. In the end, his panentheism leads him to a universalist model; and the preaching of the cross becomes a following of God's example in identifying with the lost and godforsaken.

One last quibble is with his lack of exegetical foundation at points, and a tendency (that I have noted in Moltmann's other writings) to recycle a few favourite passages (such as I Cor 15 and Rom 8, crucial though they may be).

Calvin, hermeneutics and history…

On the final page of his authoritative work The Unaccommodated Calvin, Richard A. Muller writes: 'A clever theologian can accommodate Calvin to nearly any agenda; a faithful theologian – and a good historian – will seek to listen to Calvin, not to use him.' Professor Muller's warning is salutary, not the least in the area of Calvin's hermeneutics. If anything, there has been since the 1960s a revival in interest in Calvin's interpretation of scripture, and an unseemly rush to appropriate or 'accommodate' him to new hermeneutical models. In the light of the slow dismemberment of the text of the Bible by scholars who hunkered around it like vultures pecking at a carcass, what else was to be done? The problem is that while this clinging to our forebear is driven by motives that are indubitably noble, it is by no means clear that Calvin has been listened to, and not used.

That is all very easy to say. The honest truth is that it is by no means obvious that listening to Calvin on the matter of hermeneutics is possible five centuries after his birth. The providential unity of the historical and Christological senses of scripture is no longer a assumption with which the contemporary interpreter can proceed. Stephen Edmondson voices the disquiet:

'These developments over the last four centuries have shut off any direct appropriation of Calvin's scriptural hermeneutic for contemporary interpreters concerned with the historical sense of the text. …it is problematic at this point to offer an historical reading of Scripture that is either unitive or generally theological, much less one that roots the unity of the narrative in a robust Christology. Calvin's history, then, is not our history.'

On the one hand, Calvin posited a single divine authorship to the Scriptures that was evidenced in its unity of voice and continuity of narrative; and that the text was a direct description of what actually happened in history. In direct and mutually-informing relationship with it, on the other hand, he held to a Christological theology of providence – the divine will shaped the events of history such that Christ was their consummation. If, first, the text could be shown to be not a united text but a plurality of competing texts, with an at best uncertain relationship to what actually happened in history, and second, if the view of the divine superintendence of historical events could be challenged and even discredited, then Calvin's reading of scripture could be made to look very odd indeed. Both of these were held to have occurred by the beginning of the nineteenth century; and so Calvin's narrative reading of scripture was 'eclipsed'.

[to be continued...]

Volf, new identity and the power of promises

The making of new identity in Christ and the effect of believing in promises have been themes in Volf's work since Exclusion and Embrace. No surprise to hear him saying these things in his book on Memory:

This new identity – not humanly acquired but divinely bestowed, even in the midst of our ruin – helps to heal wounded selves. We remember wrongs suffered as people with identities defined by God, not by wrongdoers' evil deeds and their echo in our memory. True, sometimes that echo is so powerful that it drowns out all other voices. Still behind the unbearable noise of wrongdoing suffered, we can hear in faith the divinely composed music of our true identity... p. 80

And then:

In the Christian view of life...future possibilities do not grow simply out of the actuality of the past and present...instead of arising simply from what was or what is, the future comes the realm of what is not yet...In Jesus Christ, God has promised to every human being a new horizon of possibilities – a new life into which each of us is called to grow in our own way and ultimately a new world freed from all enmity, a world of love. To be a Christian means that new possibilities are defined by that promise, not by any past experience, however devastating. If the traumatized believe the promise – if they live into the promise, even if they are tempted at first to mock it – they will...enter a world 'marked by a genuinely open future that they could not have imagined in the living death of the old world they have constructed for themselves... P. 82

Theological Anthropology – reading list?

I am compiling a bibliography for a Master's level course on Theological Anthropology for 2010. Any suggestions of items that ought to be on the list?

Love covers a multitude of sins

Miroslav Volf just does not know how to write dull books. His book The End of Memory is a stimulating discussion of memory and forgiveness. And it asks the very good question – how will the past, much of it evil and painful, be remembered in the age to come? How will God mend what is unmendable because it has happened and so cannot unhappen? Love, after all, 'keeps no record of wrongs'. Is the divine love in some way forgetful? How can love 'cover a multitude of sins' without somehow looking past them? (1 Peter 4:8)

Volf says: '…truthful memory does not have to be indelible memory. The purpose of truthful memory is not simply to name acts of injustice, and certainly not to hold an unalterable past forever fixed in the forefront of a person's mind. Instead, the highest aim of lovingly truthful memory seeks to bring about the repentance, forgiveness and transformation of wrongdoers, and reconciliation between wrongdoers and their victims. When these goals are achieved, memory can let go of offenses without ceasing to be truthful. For then remembering truthfully will have reached its ultimate goal in the unhindered love of neighbour'. (p. 65)

Paul Helm and Calvin’s Ideas

I have been reading Paul Helm's excellent John Calvin's Ideas in preparation for an essay that I am writing - for a collection to be published in celebration of Calvin's 500^th birthday next year.

Helm shows, in his opening chapter "God in Se and Quoad Nos" that Calvin's thought shows continuity with that of Aquinas – more than commonly assumed. Calvin's famous ranting against speculation, Helm claims, was as a recognition of the division of labour between philosophers and theologians. He was perfectly prepared to admit speculative questions in their place.

For Helm it is important to show that Calvin's approach to the divine essence is 'consistent with and indeed requires a robust metaphysical theism'. And so:

In both Aquinas and Calvin some of the human language about God is univocal, but it is couched mainly in negative terms. But apart from this …'negative core', all other language about God is analogical or accommodated language, with elements of univocity but also with elements of equivocity. Modern discussion recognizes that we readily employ metaphors, similes, and analogies when talking about God; nevertheless, it takes there to be a univocal core that is usually much more extensive than that envisaged by Aquinas or Calvin, for it embraces the entire concept of God…

Helm complains that modern theologians are far too ready to draw analogy between nature and the divine character. So, for example, the change we observe in nature is in no way for Calvin and Aquinas a flouting of God's immutability. 'Part of what a negative, reserved theological approach to divine goodness and immutability implies is that we cannot draw valid conclusions about God's character either a priori or a posteriori. But if God has, by revelation, said that he wills to do such-and-such, then such-and-such either cannot be evil or it cannot be willed as evil by God; and if he has said in unconditional terms that he will do so-and-so, then he cannot not do so-and-so.'

 

Quite!

You for the Brits

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YOU is available!

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Evangelicals and Barth

Two books have recently appeared on the relationship between Barth and evangelicals. One is Engaging with Barth, featuring a piece by Moore College's own Mark Thompson. Another is Karl Barth and Evangelical Theology. Oliver Crisp and Henri Blocher appear in both volumes!

In both books, fair and critical engagement - sometimes sternly critical - is the theme. This is quite an interesting turn: a generation ago, 'Barthian' was a swear word in some evangelical circles. Hopefully, now that this is no longer the case, we can do without the label and enjoy some fruitful reading of Barth's work, without signing off on everything he says.

In KB&ET, Kevin Vanhoozer's essay 'A Person of the Book? Barth on Biblical Authority and Interpretation' is a particular stand out, not least for the history of Barth-reception among evangelicals. He explores the frequently expressed accusation that Barth views Scripture as a book that becomes rather than is already God's word. Using terms drawn from Speech-Act Theory to show how the Bible both is and becomes God's Word, he concludes:

...evangelicals and Barth can agree, at the very least, that the Bible is a central ingredient in the economy of God's self-communication. As to ontology, Scripture is divine-human communicative action: the Bible has its being in its locutions and illocutions, yet the Bible becomes what it is when the illuminating Spirit ministers those locutions and illocutions in order to bring about the divinely intended perlocutionary effects. p. 59

Torrance on Ascension

TF Torrance makes a great point about the ascension as really being an intermission between the first and second coming. The two parousias are really the same parousia in two phases... Here's what he says:

The ascension of Christ thus introduces, as it were, an eschatological pause in the heart of the parousia which makes it possible for us to speak of a first advent and a second or final advent of Christ. By withdrawing his bodily presence from contact and sight, that is from historical contact and observation, the ascended Christ holds apart his first advent from his final advent, distinguishing the first advent as his advent in great humility and abasement, and pointing ahead to his final advent in great glory and power, when the eschatological pause will be brought to an end, and we shall see him as we are seen by him... Space, Time and Resurrection, p. 145

 

Vanhoozer on Barth and Evangelicals

Vanhoozer wonders whether he has found a point at which evangelicals can reach somewhat of a rapprochement with Karl Barth, after decades of trench warfare:

...evangelicals and Barth can agree, at the very least, that the Bible is a central ingredient in the economy of God's self-communication. As to ontology, Scripture is divine-human communicative action: the Bible has its being in its locutions and illocutions, yet the Bible becomes what it is when the illuminating Spirit ministers those locutions and illocutions in order to bring about the divinely intended perlocutionary effects. 'A Person of the Book? Barth on Biblical Authority and Interpretation' in Karl Barth and Evangelical Theology p. 59

Packer on the failure of contemporary evangelical dogmatics

Since the age of rationalism in the eighteenth century, and of Schleiermacher in the nineteenth century, and more particularly since the work of Kähler, Barth, and Bultmann in the twentieth century, the relation between hermeneutics and biblical authority, and the meaning of each concept in the light of the other, have been constant preoccupations, and the mere mention, with Bultmann, of thinkers like Fuchs and Ebeling will assure us that this state of affairs is likely to continue for some time to come. Now, if we are going to join in this debate to any purpose, we must address ourselves seriously to the problem round which it revolves; otherwise, nothing we say will appear to be ad rem. One reason why the theology of men like Barth, Bultmann, and Tillich (to say nothing of J. A. T. Robinson!) has rung a bell in modern Protestant discussion, in a way no contemporary evangelical dogmatics has done, is that their systems are explicitly conceived and set forth as answers to the hermeneutical question - the question, that is, of how the real and essential message of the Bible may be grasped by the man of today. One reason why evangelical theology fails to impress other Protestants as having more than a tangential relevance to the ongoing theological debate of which we have spoken is that it does not appear to them to have tuned in on this wavelength of interest. That the interest itself is a proper one for evangelicals will not be denied, and it is not to our advantage when we appear to be neglecting it.

 

Interesting stuff! Written in 1975 but still a challenge.

Irenaeus on the Atonement

The most important work of Irenaeus was his Adversus Haereses, written in Greek and translated into Latin. We have already had the chance to speak of his distinctive doctrine of recapitulation. Christ comes to undo the damage done to humanity by Adam. Taking Romans 5 as his starting-point, he speaks of Christ reversing the disobedience which took place on the tree by that obedience which was accomplished on a tree. Jesus both sums up and restores humanity. Two elements of his atonement theology are noteworthy:

1 – he speaks of the atonement as a ransom paid to persuade the devil to release those he holds in bondage.

The Word of God, mighty in all things, and not lacking in His justice, acted justly even against the Apostasy itself, redeeming from it those things which are not His own, not by force, as the Apostasy gained possession of us at the beginning, insatiably seizing what was not its own, but by persuasion, even as it was fit that God should by persuasion and without employing force receive what He wished; so that neither the law of justice should be broken, not the ancient creation of God perish. (V.1.1)

2 – he speaks of the necessity of both divine and human natures in Christ in order to effect an atonement.

He united therefore, as we said before, man to God. For unless man had vanquished the adversary of man, the enemy would not have been justly vanquished; and again, unless God had granted us salvation we should not have had it securely, and unless man had been united to God, he could not have been a partaker of incorruption. (III.18.7)

Calvin does atonement – Institutes II.16

Strange to say, many of the complaints about Calvin's doctrine of the atonement are actually pre-empted in his writing on it in the Institutes. So, for example, he establishes that God's wrath and God's love are not incompatible; and that the willing obedience of the Son is involved (not the abused innocent child of modern caricature).

Two nice sections from him:

 

This is our acquittal: the guilt that held us liable for punishment has been transferred to the head of the Son of God. We must above all remember this substitution, lest we tremble and remain anxious throughout life – as if God's righteous vengeance, which the Son of God has taken upon himself, still hung over us. Institutes II.16.v

Later, commenting on the cry of dereliction, he writes:

...we do not suggest that God was ever inimical or angry toward him. How could he be angry toward his beloved Son...? How could Christ by his intercession appease the Father toward others, if he were himself hateful to God? This is what we are saying: he bore the weight of divine severity, since he was 'stricken and afflicted' by God's hand and experienced all the signs of a wrathful and avenging God. II.16.xi

Schleiermacher on the Atonement

Influenced by the philosophy of Aristotle and Immanuel Kant, Schleiermacher was ordained in the German Reformed Church in 1794. He defined religion as the “feeling of absolute dependence”, Christianity being the highest although not the only true religion. His thoughts on the atonement of Christ are found in The Christian Faith, p. 100-105.

Schleiermacher reacted against the rationalism of the Enlightenment and argued that religion was a matter of the heart, not the head. He speaks of God as the object of our sense of god-consciousness, yet with almost no stress on his personal nature. Sin is spoken of as the struggle between man’s lower consciousness, the natural impulses belonging to this life of senses, and his god-consciousness.

Under this scheme, redemption becomes the liberation of our god-consciousness from its oppression by our lower consciousness. This is accomplished not by the substitutionary sacrifice of the God-man, but by Jesus the archetypal man. Jesus was the man who embodied this god-consciousness. He was not supernatural but his example transcends common humanity.
The Redeemer them is like all men in virtue of the identity of human nature, but distinguished from them all by the constant potency of his god-consciousness, which was a veritable existence of God in Him.

Though enormously influential, Schleiermacher’s view is biblically inadequate, not distinctively Christian and depends in fact on a kind of pantheism. Talk of forgiveness of sins is quite remote to Schleiermacher...

Barth on the atonement

Barth's extended discussion of "atonement" or "reconciliation" is all the more remarkable given the thoroughly liberal cast of his education. The central section in his Church Dogmatics IV.1 is entitled "The Judge Judged in Our Place". The entire section is imbued with the language of guilt, judgement and forgiveness. On the cross we see God exercising a rightful judgement on sinful humanity. The cross itself exposes human self-delusions: that human beings want to be their own judges.

For Barth, the cross of Christ represents the locus in which the righteous judge makes known his judgement of sinful humanity and simultaneously takes that judgement upon himself:

What took place is that the Son of God fulfilled the righteous judgement on us human beings by himself taking our place as a human being and in our place undergoing the judgement under which we had passed…Because God willed to execute his judgement on us in his Son, it all took place in his person, as his accusation and condemnation and destruction. He judged, and it was the judge who was judged, who allowed himself to be judged…Why did God become a human being? So that God as a human being might do and accomplish and achieve and complete all this for us wrongdoers, in order that in this way there might be brought about by him our reconciliation with him, and our conversion to him.

This is strongly substitutionary of course. God exercises his righteous judgement by exposing our sin, by taking it upon himself, and thus by neutralising its power.

Moltmann and the Atonement

Theodicy in one sense drives Moltmann's doctrine of the atonement. Our theology of the atonement (he says) should in some sense justify God if it is to have any relevance in a post-Auschwitz world:

To return today to the theology of the cross means avoiding one-sided presentations of it in its tradition, and comprehending the crucified Christ in the light and context of his resurrection, and therefore of freedom and hope.

To take up the theology of the cross today is to o beyond the limits of the doctrine of salvation and to inquire into the revolution needed in the concept of God. Who is God in the cross of Christ who is abandoned by God?

To take the theology of the cross further at the present day means to go beyond a concern for personal salvation and to inquire about the liberation of man and his new relationship to the reality of the demonic crisis in his society. Who is the true man in the sight of the Son of Man who was rejected and rose again in the freedom of God?

Finally to realise the theology of the cross at the present day is to take seriously the claims of Reformation theology to criticize and reform and to develop it beyond a criticism of the church into a criticism of society. What does it mean to recall the God who was crucified in a society whose official creed is optimism. and which is knee-deep in blood? (The Crucified God, p.4)

Moltmann argues that it is the cross which puts God right in the midst of suffering, indeed the atonement is primarily an event in the Trinitarian history of God. On the cross both the Father and the Son suffer (God is at enmity with God) in a way that brings solidarity with the oppressed and victims of suffering in our world. Moltmann's version of the atonement is powerful and strikingly relevant. You could almost call The Crucified God an evangelistic work. The cruci-centric emphasis of his work is admirable; and he takes seriously the Godward aspect of the atonement. Perhaps we could quibble that he neglects various NT emphases and is selective in his treatment of the texts (neglecting Romans 5, 2 Corinthians 5 and 1 John 2 for example). Further, we need to ask whether Moltmann has presented more an identification of God with suffering rather than an atonement per se. And yet Moltmann's presentation, despite these shortcomings, is a breathtaking account of the cross for our bloody times.

Christus Victor: the lie exposed

The victory on the cross was against a force whose primary tactic is that of the lie. Jesus submits to the lie – the old lie – and so exposes it to the truth. In the wilderness and in Gethsemane, he refuses the temptations of the Satan to follow an alternate path. He combats the lies of Satan with truth-telling. It is almost as if, on the cross, Jesus allows the lie an apparent victory, but by the manner of his dying, shows how corrupt it always was. He also exposes the untruth of the human conspiracy against him. Against his accusers, he is actually proved innocent.


Is this, properly speaking, a victory? I think it ought to be construed as such... Jesus himself speaks about binding up Satan (Mark 3). Satan is the primeval liar, the 'Father of lies'. To defeat him is to expose his lies to the truth - to unmask him. John 8 is a fascinating interchange in which Jesus links these themes, and also indicates that his cross ('when you have lifted up the son of Man') will be the moment of his vindication and triumph.

One of the points I have been trying to make (in Doc 2) is that the use of these metaphors for the atonement radically changes our whole perspective on the original terms. If 'this is victory' as the song says, then it says a lot about how God wins victories. Truth-telling is ultimately the way to defeat the chief of liars...

Right but Repulsive?

At various times debates on this blog and elsewhere have focussed on the issue of the rudeness or otherwise of evangelical speech. Rudeness has its advocates, it has to be said. I remain unconvinced. Stephen Holmes puts it thus:

...it is vital that we (evangelicals) do not become like Cromwell's followers as they are described in the classic humorous telling of English history 1066 and All That...There, Sellar and Yeatman describe the roundheads as 'right but repulsive'. This has been a constant danger for us evangelicals. We know that we hold to the truth about Jesus, and so we can sometimes become smug or aggressive or unpleasant towards those who do not understand the truth. But the truth about the Saviour Jesus is never unpleasant or repulsive; it is beautiful, winsome and attractive, alluring and arresting. And so must our theology- and particularly our preaching – be beautiful, winsome, and alluring and the rest. We are called to live in cheerful, self-deprecating hopefulness. Zealous for truth, yes, but always remembering that God can look after his own interests and doesn't really need our help...

...truth matters, but truth without love is so far from anything Christian that it has ceased to be truth. Christian theologians can never be 'right but repulsive': if they are repulsive, they are so far from Jesus and his gospel as to be just plain wrong. p. 10-11

I guess you have to allow room for the fact that people find the truth offensive because it convicts them. But it is the truth that is offensive, not the truth-speaker...

Penal Substitution and Polemics

 

One of the things I noticed during my time in England is the way in which English evangelicals cannot stop alluding to and referencing the work of Jesus in terms of the penal substitutionary model. Even when a text does not teach this view of the atonement, they will tend to smuggle it in somehow – which is not a problem necessarily: preachers ought to show how texts connect with the whole of theology. The PSA has been a matter of great controversy amongst English evangelicals of late, and I couldn't help thinking that there was some over-reacting going both ways. That is, the depictions of the PSA by the opponents (Chalke and Mann, Joel Green) were pathetic caricatures of PSA as it is explained by the likes of Stott and Packer. But, then again, if the emphasis in hymns, preaching, service leading and prayers is anything to go by, then this model of the atonement, whatever one might say about its centrality and indispensability, was being over-emphasised to the point of cliché.

And what is more, a point of intra-church dispute has an effect on evangelism. One of the reasons that the critics of PSA have come forward is their concern that this depiction of the atonement has lost traction in terms of mission; that it was nonsensical and irrelevant in terms of contemporary western (and other cultures). The response? Well, conservatives ONLY evangelise in terms of PSA – figuring I guess that the manifest errors of our critics mean that the opposite of what they say must be all the more true.

So, I was intrigued to read this in Packer's essay 'What did the cross achieve?' -

…constricted in interest by the preoccupations of controversy, and absorbed in the task of proclaiming the one vital truth about the cross which others disregarded or denied, 'upholders of the penal theory have sometimes so stressed the thought that Christ bore our penalty that they have found room for nothing else. Rarely have they in theory denied the value of other theories, but sometimes they have in practice ignored them.(citing Leon Morris). p. 26

My experience indicates that this tendency is still in evidence, alas…

BB Warfield, from The Person and Work of Christ

 

It is absurd we are told – nay wicked – blasphemous with awful blasphemy – to speak of propitiating such a God as this, of reconciling Him, of making satisfaction to Him. Love needs no satisfying..

Well certainly, God is Love. And we praise Him that we have better authority for telling our souls this glorious truth than the passionate assertion of these somewhat crass theorizers. God is Love! But it does not in the least follow that He is nothing but love. God is Love: but Love is not God and the formula 'Love' must therefore ever be inadequate to express God. (p. 384)

God is Love does not, as Warfield explains, negate the need for an atonement which references both human sin and the divine wrath against it... In fact, I would go so far to say, that the love and the wrath are not contrary or alternate impulses within the divine personality, but are coherently connected within it. As Warfield puts it, (and couldn't he write some prose!):

The love of God cannot be apprehended in its length and breadth and height and depth – all of which pass knowledge – save as it is apprehended as the love of a God who turns from the sight of sin with inexpressible abhorrence, and burns against it with unquenchable indignation. (p. 386)

However hard a circle this may be to square, the gospel of the cross of Christ demands it...

Barrett on love, and other things

CK Barrett comments on 1 Corinthians 13

We see but 'through a glass darkly':

Even in the Gospel man does not fully know God, and he ought not to deceive himself into thinking that he does; but God knows him, and this is the all-important truth, for when God knows, recognizes, man, he acts on our behalf...Man's knowledge is not only dependent on God's gracious initiative, it is at best partial.

But that, of course, doesn't reckon with faith, hope and love, which overcome imperfect knowledge. Barrett makes the interesting point that love is superior to faith and hope because God himself never needs to have faith or hope: these are human responses to divine words and acts. It is otherwise with love:

Love is an activity, the essential activity, of God himself, and when men love either him or their fellow-men they are doing (however imperfectly) what God does. (p. 311)

Leon Morris - The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross

Leon Morris's work is of ongoing service to evangelical theology, though he wrote his best stuff in the 1960s or even earlier. Meticulous, diligent, unpolemical, he was not cowed by the latest scholarly opinion delivered down from on great height by the likes of C.H. Dodd and co, but rather got to work again on the text of scripture: what does it actually say? In The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross (1955) he insisted that the biblical metaphor of 'blood' was more often used in reference to violent death than to 'life' (as had been suggested). He defended the idea of propitiation 'because there is a tendency to think that those scholars who have equated the Greek term with expiation have said the last word...the Bible has a great deal to say about the wrath of God, and ...it leaves us in no doubt as to the fact that, although God is a God of love, yet He does not regard sin complacently, as something which does not matter greatly. On the contrary, sin calls forth the implacable hostility of His holy nature, and until something is done about it this puts the sinner in an unenviable position...' (p. 277) Furthermore, he defends the idea of substitution as thoroughly biblical and demanded by the major biblical atonement metaphor. Substitution when we speak of Christ's death, as Morris puts it, 'is not the substitution of a casual stranger, but of one who stands in the closest possible relationship with those for whom He died.' (p. 279)

Stephen Holmes on Penal Substition

Some great stuff from The Wondrous Cross:

...we should not try to understand the cross of Christ through thinking about sacrifice, or love, or anything else in the world; rather, we should understand sacrifice, and love, and every other human reality by thinking about the cross of Christ. And if we take the view that only one of the stories of salvation is true, we end up denying this. (p. 78)

It seems to me that the key insight of any account of penal subsitution is precisely this: God takes the due punishment on himself...We cannot tell stories about an angry God and a loving saviour without being false to the Scripture and the gospel. The story that must be told is that punishment is due, and that the holy loving God takes it upon himself. (p. 95)

In being born as one of us, in baptism in the Jordan, in being made sin for us, God the Son identifies with us, so much so that, without injustice, he may bear our guilt and we may enjoy his blessedness. It is a marvellous exchange, which we cannot explain fully, but which we can begin to glimpse the possibility of. (p. 98)

Pneumatikon in 1 Cor 12:1

What are the 'spirituals' that Paul is talking about in 1 Cor 12? Usually the translators expand the word as 'spiritual gifts' (ie, NIV): but the 'gifts' is implied, and since what follows is actually about the unity of the believers in the spirit and the single source of the different gifts... well, it seems peremportory to translate this word 'spiritual gifts' in my view... the charismata come in further down the paragraph, as a matter of fact.

JI Packer on the atonement

Packer's classic 1973 essay 'What did the cross achieve?' is a terrific corrective to what he calls 'rationalistic' versions of atonement theology of both conservative and non-conservative types. Some of the most interesting stuff comes at the beginning of the essay when he puts out some methodological insights...

Thus:

Here as elsewhere methodological rationalism became in the seventeenth century a worm in the Reformed bud, leading in the next two centuries to a large-scale withering of its theological flower. p. 5

Packer asks 'what sort of knowledge of God's actuon in Christ's death may we have?' (p. 6)

The answer.. is faith-knowledge: by faith we know that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. Yes, indeed, but what sort of knowledge is faith-knowledge? It is a kind of knowledge of which God is both giver and content. It is a Spirit-given acquaintance with divine realities, given through acquaintance with God's word. ....it is a unique kind of knowledge which, though real, is not full; it is knowledge of what is discernible within a circle of light against the background of a larger darkness; it is, in short, knowledge of a mystery, the mystery of the living God at work.

the theological significance of the life of Jesus Christ

Given the fact of the incarnation, what is the theological significance of the life of Jesus Christ? Is his life merely a prelude to his passion?

“How can anyone say that the rest of Jesus’ life is not substantially for our redemption? In that case what would be its significance? A mere superfluous narrative?" (K.Barth Dogmatics in Outline p.101)

“It is curious that evangelicals often link the substitutionary act of Christ only with his death, and not with his incarnate person and life – that is dynamite for them! They thereby undermine the radical nature of substitution, what the New Testament calls katallage, Christ in our place and Christ for us in every respect. (T.F.Torrance Preaching Christ Today: The Gospel and Scientific Thinking p.30)

“We affirm that Christ’s saving work included both his life and his death o our behalf. We declare that faith in the perfect obedience of Christ by which he fulfilled all the demands of the Law of God on our behalf is essential to the Gospel. We deny that out salvation was achieved merely or exclusively by the death of Christ without reference to his life of perfect righteousness.” (The Committee for Evangelical Unity in the Gospel incl. Packer, Carson, Sproul, Woodbridge, Christianity Today 43, 1999)

Marr on Henson

I have now read David Marr's book The Henson Case. As always, Marr shows his gift for lucid narrative and readable prose - the gift which makes him one of Australia's best journalists. Having read quite a lot of his work, I am familiar with his techniques of scene-setting and so on now - it is amusing to see them coming! But they work.

A couple of things are interesting: one is that the Henson case was by and large not driven by religious groups but by an almost entirely secular form of outrage. Marr tries to say that is the 'old Christian fear of nakedness', and he mentions the police commissioner's faith at key points. But he fails to mention that other protagonists in the story - who take as far as Marr is concerned more positive roles in it - have religious convictions too. Malcolm Turnbull comes rather well.

But it is true that the moral panic about the depiction of children in art has not come from the traditional sort of moral crusader - your Rev Fred Nile, or a bishop or two. It comes from somewhere else. I am still trying to grasp where.

The book is rather light on analysis and strong on narrative. We never find what Marr himself really thinks about the art works themselves... though he does admit that many of Henson's own fans find these images disturbing and ambiguous. But one moment of insight that Marr comes to is this:

One wet afternoon in Canberra a senior policeman put into words something I'd never quite grasped: that Australians are not satisfied with just expressing disapproval. We want action. The law, he said, sorts art, film and books into three categories: those free to be published; those that need to be classified; and those that must be prosecuted. But Australians tend to jumble the categories. When we disapprove of something we want governments to leap into action. Many who deeply disliked the Henson picture weren't content to express their disapproval and leave it at that. They want something done about them. What made the Henson case rare in the history of these rows was that familiar demands for action so swiftly collapsed. The politicians were brought to order by their own officials...Australia seems caught in these confusions: of personal taste with public danger; of passionate difference and pleas f0r punishment; of decent concern and bullying restrictions. p. 135

I think at this point I concur. It comes from a sense of moral dispowerment - that there is no way to speak effectively into the public sphere about this deep sense of unease that many of us felt at Henson's art (and having glimpsed some of the photos in Marr's book my sense of unease is confirmed). Partly, secular liberalism is itself to blame for this disempowerment, because it challenges many of these expressions of moral sentiment as illegitimate for public discussion; and because it has promoted instead a 'what works for you' ethic which satisfies no-one, actually. The resort to law, or at least to tabloid media, is a mark of our immaturity as a culture: that we can't actually decide together that (say) Henson's art does not contribute positively to our society and is deeply insensitive to the context in which we live, and just ignore him.

Notes on The Bill Henson Case

 

For overseas readers, Australia has been the scene of a controversy over the public display of the works of artist Bill Henson. His photographs depict pubescent boys and girls (some as young as 12) in various states of undress. These are 'arty': that is, it is quite clear that Henson is not producing what would normally be called 'pornography'. The context is different, and he is a recognised artist. However, the media and the public and some politicians have been outraged by various details of the case. Henson's paintings were even at one stage confiscated by the police! (I hasten to add I haven't seen the full photographs, not the least because I don't want to look at them on the internet!)

Well known anti-censorship campaigner David Marr has rushed into print with a book on the case, which I shall be endeavouring to read as soon as I can. He opines in the Sydney Morning Herald here. His tone is relentlessly superior, of course; but then he is also right to expose the way a kind of blind outrage has played a large part in the controversy. Not to mention the way in which politicians have jumped in to condemn Henson with a feigned indignation.

But I can't help feeling that Marr is blind to the depth of feeling surrounding this case in the general public. Our bodies and our sexuality is precious, and we human beings are vulnerable. It is a truism to say that the adolescent is especially vulnerable. We perhaps have freedoms to choose what we see, but we also ought to exercise our right to restraint. And we ought to exercise that right from time to time as a community: it just won't do to keep repeating individualist mantras here. Sometimes we ought to feel free as a community to say that our commonly-held standards have been transgressed – there is no need to feel anti-intellectual or philistine about that. Members of the community have no greater right to transgress our commonly agreed norms just because they claim to do so as high-brow and sophisticated artists than do pornographers.

A few years ago I was invited to be on a panel discussing the film Romance which was being shown after the OFLC had originally banned it. It introduced by Margaret Pomeranz with a kind of 60s defiant liberal speech about how this moment was a significant victory for freedom of speech. I think actually banning the film was counter-productive – more people saw it because it had been banned than would have otherwise. My one thought on seeing the film however was that 'the emperor has no clothes': it just wasn't a very good film, for all the pious liberal clap-trap that proceeded it. It was a movie that as a mature society we could have decided was deeply degrading.

What I think a Christian has to add to this discussion is an insight into human nature. I know that my human nature is divided against itself. I think this is true of every instance of human nature (bar one). I know that, while I am able to articulate good things, and that I am able to say what is right and wrong at a pinch, that I still do and think and say the wrong thing. I know that part of doing the right thing is avoiding temptation as much as possible – and the law can help me here. I know that if I can get away with something or do something in secret, I will be tempted to try it - at least once. At the same time, I know that this will be detrimental to my spiritual and personal well-being.

David Marr might be able to look at pictures of naked young boys and not feel himself compromised, or stand back and aside from the sexuality on view. If so, then I applaud him for his maturity and his ability to switch of the part of him that responds darkly to these images. I don't think I could do the same looking at naked girls: and, the thing is, I don't think I am alone in this. I would rather not have these images on my mind, and I would rather these images were not on the minds of others in the community. I think his trust in human nature is naive.

Perhaps banning the works is the right response: I usually tend to think censorship is not good, just from a pragmatic point of view. But in this case, I would see nothing wrong with a considered response from the appropriate people acting on the community's behalf which decided to carefully classify and restrict (at least) or even ban the works in question. This is what the OFLC does, and does with wide community acceptance.

Older Triplex Munus post, for interest

http://mpjensen.blogspot.com/2007/01/words-of-jesus-in-red.html

Biblical 'data'... no more!

Every now and again I catch myself using the language of 'biblical data'. That is, I suggest that some or other conclusion can be drawn 'from the biblical data'.

I think this language, while not strictly speaking wrong, is badly misleading. And I hereby resolve not to use it!

How come? Well, 'data' is a word that comes to us from the world of scientific empiricism. It implies a set of raw, uncollated information that lies dormant until the scientist can put into some sort of order and therefore draw conclusions. Or, 'data' is a list of entries of unfiltered informationinto a computer programme which then has operations performed on it to turn it into something meaningful.

The Scriptures are not in this sense 'data'; nor is the theologian in the position of the scientist or the computer. There two particularly important reasons (at least) why this is the case:

a) the Scriptures are writings which already have a large degree of interpretational activity going on within them. The writers of the Bible are not presenting to us 'just the facts': they are unafraid to admit that this is their 'spin' on things.

b) the language of 'data' prevents us from seeing the sequential, historical nature of the Scriptures. Each piece of scriptural 'data' is not of equivalent standing to the next. It has its place in the testimony of the scriptures to the God of Abraham who is also the God of Jesus Christ.

Martyrdom, discipleship and the triplex munus

I wrote something a while back on this here.

As Christ's body, the church continues or extends his work - so the prophetic/priestly/kingly classification is still useful. Though, it must be said, they need careful exposition in terms of mission.

Bavinck on the munus triplex

Some stirring Dutch stuff:

"…Christ, both as the Son and as the image of God, for himself and also as our mediator and saviour, had to bear all three offices. He had to be a prophet to know and to disclose the truth of God; a priest, to devote himself to God and, in our place, to offer himself up to God; a king, to govern and protect us according to God’s will. To teach, to reconcile, and to lead; to instruct, to acquire and to apply salvation; wisdom, righteousness, and redemption; truth, love, and power – all three are essential to the completeness of our salvation. In Christ’s God-to-humanity relation, he is a prophet; in his humanity-to-God relation he is a priest; in his headship over all humanity he is a king. Rationalism acknowledges only his prophetic office; mysticism only his priestly office; millennialism only his royal office. But Scripture, consistently and simultaneously attributing all three offices to him, describes him as our chief prophet, our only [high] priest, and our eternal king. Though a king, he rules not by the sword but by his Word and spirit. He is a prophet, but his word is power and really happens. He is a priest but lives by dying, conquers by suffering, and is all-powerful by his love. He is always all these things in conjunction, never the one without the other: mighty in speech and action as a king and full of grace and truth in his royal rule."

Some Thesis 'bits'

Just so I can have something here for people when they say 'what did you say in your thesis', here are some sentences which sum it up well:



"Christian discipleship means giving one's self over to a divine designation, even if that means suffering and death."



"Christian martyrdom is merely the working out in a particular circumstance of the identity in which individual Christians participate."



"...no account of identity can be theologically adequate that does not acknowledge the crucial significance of temptation ... and providence."



"The crowning of martyrs is...a divine rather than a human business."



"The focus in Christian martyrdom is...on the vindication, rather than the innocence, of the martyr."



"...the act of renunciation is performed as a witness to, and in imitation of, Christ; and thus involves the martyr in a close identification of himself with this other self, emerging fro his union with Christ."



"In a critical gesture, then, the self-as-martyr testifies to the provisionality of human systems of security relative to divine providence."



"Truth and love are the non-negotiables, not pain."



"...martyrdom is not merely a stance of eternal dissidence; it is a witness to the rule of God in Christ."



"...the followers of Christ are authorised to manifest his powerful and universala rule by means of communicative and persuasive acts of witness."

Eusebius on the Three Offices

Now, Eusebius is not everybody's favourite theologian/church historian. He is widely regarded as an Arian, and in cahoots with the Emperor Constantine - a little too sycophantic to worldly power perhaps? The idea of the 'three offices of Christ' comes from a person who had a rather ready eye for formal and hierarchical arrangements. Nevertheless, as you can see below, he is determined to ground Christology in the whole Bible, and the 'three offices' helps him to do that with quite a degree of explanatory power. The meaning and significance of Christ lies in the history of Israel which prefigures him:

Eusebius H.E. 1.iii

Chapter III. The Name Jesus and Also the Name Christ Were Known from the Beginning, and Were Honoured by the Inspired Prophets.

"1 It is now the proper place to show that the very name Jesus and also the name Christ were honoured by the ancient prophets beloved of God.
2 Moses was the first 2 to make known the name of Christ as a name especially august and glorious. When he delivered types and symbols of heavenly things, and mysterious images, in accordance with the oracle which said to him, "Look that thou make all things according to the pattern which was shown thee in the mount," he consecrated a man high priest of God, in so far as that was possible, and him he called Christ. And thus to this dignity of the high priesthood, which in his opinion surpassed the most honourable position among men, he attached for the sake of honour and glory the name of Christ.
3 He knew so well that in Christ was something divine. And the same one foreseeing, under the influence of the divine Spirit, the name Jesus, dignified it also with a certain distinguished privilege. For the name of Jesus, which had never been uttered among men before the time of Moses, he applied first and only to the one who he knew would receive after his death, again as a type and symbol, the supreme command.
4His successor, therefore, who had not hitherto borne the name Jesus, but had been called by another name, Auses, which had been given him by his parents, he now called Jesus, bestowing the name upon him as a gift of honour, far greater than any kingly diadem. For Jesus himself, the son of Nave, bore a resemblance to our Saviour in the fact that he alone, after Moses and after the completion of the symbolical worship which had been transmitted by him, succeeded to the government of the true and pure religion.
5 Thus Moses bestowed the name of our Saviour, Jesus Christ, as a mark of the highest honor, upon the two men who in his time surpassed all the rest of the people in virtue and glory; namely, upon the high priest and upon his own successor in the government.
6 And the prophets that came after also clearly foretold Christ by name, predicting at the same time the plots which the Jewish people would form against him, and the calling of the nations through him. Jeremiah, for instance, speaks as follows: "The Spirit before our face, Christ the Lord, was taken in their destructions; of whom we said, under his shadow we shall live among the nations." And David, in perplexity, says, "Why did the nations rage and the people imagine vain things? The kings of the earth set themselves in array, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ"; to which he adds, in the person of Christ himself, "The Lord said unto me, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I will give thee the nations for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession."
7 And not only those who were honoured with the high priesthood, and who for the sake of the symbol were anointed with especially prepared oil, were adorned with the name of Christ among the Hebrews, but also the kings whom the prophets anointed under the influence of the divine Spirit, and thus constituted, as it were, typical Christs. For they also bore in their own persons types of the royal and sovereign power of the true and only Christ, the divine Word who ruleth over all.
8 And we have been told also that certain of the prophets themselves became, by the act of anointing, Christs in type, so that all these have reference to the true Christ, the divinely inspired and heavenly Word, who is the only high priest of all, and the only King of every creature, and the Father's only supreme prophet of prophets.
9 And a proof of this is that no one of those who were of old symbolically anointed, whether priests, or kings, or prophets, possessed so great a power of inspired virtue as was exhibited by our Saviour and Lord Jesus, the true and only Christ.
10 None of them at least, however superior in dignity and honour they may have been for many generations among their own people, ever gave to their followers the name of Christians from their own typical name of Christ. Neither was divine honour ever rendered to any one of them by their subjects; nor after their death was the disposition of their followers such that they were ready to die for the one whom they honoured. And never did so great a commotion arise among all the nations of the earth in respect to any one of that age; for the mere symbol could not act with such power among them as the truth itself which was exhibited by our Saviour.
11 He, although he received no symbols and types of high priesthood from any one, although he was not born of a race of priests, although he was not elevated to a kingdom by military guards, although he was not a prophet like those of old, although he obtained no honour nor pre-eminence among the Jews, nevertheless was adorned by the Father with all, if not with the symbols, yet with the truth itself.
12 And therefore, although he did not possess like honours with those whom we have mentioned, he is called Christ more than all of them. And as himself the true and only Christ of God, he has filled the whole earth with the truly august and sacred name of Christians, committing to his followers no longer types and images, but the uncovered virtues themselves, and a heavenly life in the very doctrines of truth.
13 And he was not anointed with oil prepared from material substances, but, as befits divinity, with the divine Spirit himself, by participation in the unbegotten deity of the Father. And this is taught also again by Isaiah, who exclaims, as if in the person of Christ himself, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; therefore hath he anointed me. He hath sent me to preach the Gospel to the poor, to proclaim deliverance to captives, and recovery of sight to the blind."
14 And not only Isaiah, but also David addresses him, saying, "Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever. A sceptre of equity is the sceptre of thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness and hast hated iniquity. Therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows." Here the Scripture calls him God in the first verse, in the second it honours him with a royal sceptre.
15 Then a little farther on, after the divine and royal power, it represents him in the third place as having become Christ, being anointed not with oil made of material substances, but with the divine oil of gladness. It thus indicates his especial honour, far superior to and different from that of those who, as types, were of old anointed in a more material way.
16 And elsewhere the same writer speaks of him as follows: "The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool"; and, "Out of the womb, before the morning star, have I begotten thee. The Lord hath sworn and he will not repent. Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedec."
17 But this Melchizedec is introduced in the Holy Scriptures as a priest of the most high God, not consecrated by any anointing oil, especially prepared, and not even belonging by descent to the priesthood of the Jews. Wherefore after his order, but not after the order of the others, who received symbols and types, was our Saviour proclaimed, with an appeal to an oath, Christ and priest.
18 History, therefore, does not relate that he was anointed corporeally by the Jews, nor that he belonged to the lineage of priests, but that he came into existence from God himself before the morning star, that is before the organization of the world, and that he obtained an immortal and undecaying priesthood for eternal ages.
19 But it is a great and convincing proof of his incorporeal and divine unction that he alone of all those who have ever existed is even to the present day called Christ by all men throughout the world, and is confessed and witnessed to under this name, and is commemorated both by Greeks and Barbarians and even to this day is honoured as a King by his followers throughout the world, and is admired as more than a prophet, and is glorified as the true and only high priest of God. And besides all this, as the pre-existent Word of God, called into being before all ages, he has received august honour from the Father, and is worshiped as God.
20 But most wonderful of all is the fact that we who have consecrated ourselves to him, honour him not only with our voices and with the sound of words, but also with complete elevation of soul, so that we choose to give testimony unto him rather than to preserve our own lives.
21 I have of necessity prefaced my history with these matters in order that no one, judging from the date of his incarnation, may think that our Saviour and Lord Jesus, the Christ, has but recently come into being. "

Barth: 'Jesus Christ the Mediator'

In a brilliant few pages from CD IV/1 (pp. 122-128), Karl Barth identifies the problem with the traditional way in which theology has treated the 'person' of Christ as a separate item to the 'work' of Christ:

This schematism seems logically very illuminating, and didactically useful. At a first galnce it may even seem unavoidable...Yet it is not really calculated to enable us to expound the actual subject-matter...

He goes on to complain that the NT never has a 'Christology' as such set apart or abstracted from what Christ did among men and women. So, he goes on:

We hasten to explain that the being of Jesus Christ, the unity of being of the living God and this living God and this living man, takes place in the vent of the concrete existence of this man. It is abeing, but a being in a history. The gracious God is in this history, so is reconciled man, so are both in their unity. And what takes place in this history, and therefore in the being of Jesus Christ as such is atonement. Jesus Christ is not what He is - very God, very man, very God-man - in order as such to mean and do and accomplish something else which is atonement. But His being as God and man and God-man consists in the completed act of the reconciliation of man with God.

The climax of his argument? His being as his One is His history and His history is this His being.

It's a great point. But perhaps he has been too harsh: of necessity theology makes distinctions but that doesn't imply separations. It treats ideas in their turn, because it is just hard for most of us to think of more than one thing at once!

The Triplex Munus - Christ's Threefold Office

John Calvin in the Institutes II.xv.1:

Therefore, in order that faith may find a firm basis for salvation in Christ, and thus rest in him, this principle must be laid down: the office enjoined upon Christ by the Father consists of three parts. For he was given to be prophet, king and priest.

This is the famous triplex munus, the 'threefold office' of Christ, which has been used by Reformed theologians ever since as a way of describing and classifying Christ's work. Like Calvin's three uses of the law, it has the status of a powerful description of the way scripture hangs together, though it does not arise from an explicitly scriptural use. And that is what makes it a useful piece of theological thinking, so long as its provisionality is recognised. As is quite common, Calvin himself was not the orginator of the triplex munus - but he is its most prominent exponent.


Richardson & Bowden comment:

This (ie, triplex munus) has the advantage of bringing together three important strands of the biblical tradition. It does, however, tend to break up the unity of soteriology, choosing three categories at the expense of others (e.g. shepherd, saviour and servant), and scarcely takes adequate account of the extent to which the OT categories are transformed through Christ – their fulfilment is also in an important respect their abolition.

– A New Dictionary of Christian Theology, ed. Alan Richardson, John Bowden



Abolition? Hmm...

Warfield on the call of the example of Christ

Here's BB Warfield, the Princeton great, in full flight on the example of Christ and its call on his disciples:

He did not cultivate self, even His divine self: He took no account of self. He was not led by His divine impulse out of the world, driven back into the recesses of His own sould to brood morbidly over His own needs, until to gain His own seemed worth all sacrifice to Him. He was led by His love for others into the wolrd, to forget Himself in the needs of others, to sacrifice slef once for all upon the altar of sympathy. Self-sacrifice brough Christ into the wolrd. And self-sacrifice will lead us, His followers, not away from but into the midst of men. Wherever men suffer, there will we be to comfort. Wherever men strive, there will we be to help. Wherever men fail, there will we be to uplift. Wherever me succeed, there will we be to rejoice. Self-sacrifice means not indifference to our times and our fellows: it means absorption in them.

B.B. Warfield, The Person and Work of Christ, p. 574

Christ 'for me'

I am starting with Yr 2 Doctrine Moore Theological College tomorrow on a part of the course entitled 'The Person and Work of Christ'. I thought I'd get a famous piece of Bonhoeffer into circulation - this from his 1933 Christology lectures. You have to remember the political circumstances, of course:


"Christ is Christ not as Christ in himself, but in his relation to me. His being Christ is his being 'pro me'. This being 'pro me' is in turn not meant to be understood as an effect which emanates from him, or as an accident; it is meant to be understood as the essence, as the being of the person himself. This personal nucleus itself is the 'pro me'. That Christ is 'pro me' is not an historical or an ontical statement, but an ontological one. That is, Christ can never be thoughtof in his being in himself, but only in his relationshop to me. That in turn menas that Christ can only be conceived of existentially, viz. in the community... It is not only useless to meditate on a Christ in himself, but even godless."

So: Christ cannot besomething or someone remote from us or he is not Christ... The very nature of Christ's mission (check Peter's declaration of Jesus' title) is for others in a suffering way.

Basics of Verbal Aspect

One of my new colleagues, Dr Con Campbell has just published his new book Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek .

I am looking forward to hearing more about why Con reckons verbal aspect makes such a difference. This is how he reads the current consensus in linguistics:

• aspect is more important than tense and must be reckoned with
• aspect holds the key to understanding the Greek verbal system
• There are at least two aspects in Greek: perfective and imperfective
• Debate about aspect must come to some kind of resolution as quickly as possible
• Greek grammars and NT commentaries need to update and come to grips with the new playing field
• Responsible exegesis of the Greek text must incorporate aspectual sensitivity

Unresolved, however, are the matters of temporality and tense, and the issue of the number of aspects.

What the best college teachers do

Well we have arrived in sunny Sydney. For those not in the know, I am about to resume teaching Doctrine at Moore Theological College here in Sydney. Having now travelled to and fro upon the earth, I remain convinced that, pound for pound, it is a world-class college in which to pursue training for ministry. Working among these colleagues is a amazing privilege. But teaching such students is sublime - they want to learn! Crazy, huh?

So, in preparation, I have been reading up on pedagogy. The most inspiring book I have found to date is Ken Bain's What the Best College Teachers Do . It is a good book because it focuses not on classroom techniques but on the attitudes that great teachers have towards the process of learning. The insights of the book are numerous: for example, that students are less motivated to learn by extrinsic factors such as exams and assessments and most motivated to learn when the intrinsic value of the subject is itself the motivation.

That is not to say that these educators settle for a kind of 'learning for learning's sake' philosophy: not at all. They are also concerned to connect what the teach to 'real' life.

Furthermore:

Highly effective teachers design better learning experiences for their students in part because they conceive of teaching as fostering learning. Everything they do stems from their strong concern for and understanding of the development of the students. They follow few traditions blindly and recognise when change in the conventional course is both necessary and possible. (p. 67)

Innovation, but not for its own sake, in other words.

I also like what he has to say about what great teachers expect from students. They expect that every student can learn - they don't foster elitism, nor do they seek popularity by making the course 'soft'. Neither do they think they are setting a high standard merely because they pile on the work.

The Theological Interpretation of Scripture

I am interested in compiling a reading list of works to do with 'theological interpretation of Scripture. It is a growing field of theological investigation. What's exciting about it is that biblical studies and systematic theology are ending their turf war over who can and can't read scripture.

Can you add to this list? (Francis Watson's works are an obvious addition).


Scripture's Doctrine and Theology's Bible: Howthe New Testament Shapes Christian Dogmatics ed Marcus Bockmeuhl

Introducing Theological Interpretation of Scripture: Recovering a Christian Practice by Daniel Treier

The Theological Interpretation of Scripture: Classic and Contemporary Readings ed Stephen Fowl

Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible ed Kevin Vanhoozer

Pommies

My good friend Sam gave me a fascinating book called Pommies - England Cricket though an Australian Lens.

It is an analysis of why the English game continues to fail at the elite level despite its massive player pool and the ardent following of millions of fans. And the author lays the blame squarely at the feet of the 18 counties who engineer the administration of the game for their own interest. They run the game not in the interest of the public, but as a private members club. So, they sold the TV rights to a pay-TV operator for a truckload of money that was then siphoned off to the counties (who cannot pay their own way because no-one wants to watch them play). They continue to play international matches in venues that seat less that 25,000 people, driving ticket prices up and thereby excluding ethnic minorities - who LOVE their cricket - from the game. Whenever change is mooted, 'tradition' is cited as a counter-argument. What the book makes apparent is that 'tradition' is really only code for 'self-interest'. The huge number of cricket fans who are not members of the MCC cannot get in to the ground to see a Test Match and now cannot see the game on TV either. And the national team continues to falter in performance.

Of course, I was fascinated to compare the C of E, with which there are many parallels. The C of E is theoretically run for the benefit of the entire nation. But because in fact it is run as a private members club, the property and resources of the church in fact are being used for the benefit of those who are members. And the fewer of those there are, the nicer it is for those who remain. And a far amount of theological reasoning and invented traditionalism is produced to bolster this special interest. 'The parish system' is one such tradition, whereby the boundaries of the parish are seen as sacrosanct and unviolable borders on the basis of some reference to the incarnation (John Milbank keeps saying this for some weird reason). Parishes which ARE doing a good job at connecting to the community are penalised and the funds distributed to failing parishes with incomptent and disinterested clergy (Granted, some of this is funding parishes in poorer areas: but certainly not all). Bishops aren't interested in changing a system that serves their interests very well - after all, it elected them! And the people of England continue to be completely alienated from the church whose mission it is to serve them.

But the C of E is an easy target... I think all church institutions - even Australian ones! - could ask the questions - 'is tradition really just being used to mask self-interest?' 'whose interest is actually being served by the status quo?' 'how much subsidy is being given to bolster, not the needy, but the mediocre (whose mediocrity is actually a spiritual disease)?' 'Is this institution being run for the benefit of members, or for the benefit of the community'?

Lucky it wasn't based on looks, eh?

woohoooooooooooo!

The Viva went .....


well!
Thanks to those who prayed.

My Charles Taylor article in SCE

The December issue of Studies in Christian Ethics is out, and with it my article entitled:

" ‘In Spirit and In Truth’ - Can Charles Taylor help the Woman at the Well find her authentic self? "

Studies in Christian Ethics 2008 21: 325-341.

If you would like to read a copy, let me know (with your email address, if I don't already have it) and I can send you one. Or at least the first 25 of you.

Here's the challenge

In the Sydney Morning Herald today:

Did it occur to anyone that the decline in people reading the Bible might have something to do with it being a lousy read ("Confession: fewer know their Bible", September 10)?
The Bible says lots of things, few of them clearly, all of them open to different interpretations, and many of them irrelevant to a post-industrial world. Add to this that it is a series of compounded translations many times removed from the original, and no doubt some translations have been corrupted through the ages by self-interested power-mongers.

Ian Waters Surry Hills

And here's Greg Clarke weighing in.

Viva

My Viva is tomorrow.

Yes, that's right, I am having a viva for a thesis on martyrdom on September 11. Someone thinks this is funny, no doubt!

Slavoj Zizek - On Violence

In trying to think about divine violence lately I disovered Slavoj Zizek's latest offering, Violence: Six Sideways Reflections.

As always, it is a brilliant roller-coaster ride of a book. Zizerk skewers all kinds of lazy thinking in Western culture. He has a severe critique of religion and theism, but he also says this:

Science and religion have changed places: today, science provides the security religion once guaranteed. In a curious inversion, religion is one of the possible place fro which one can deploy critical doubts about today's society. It has become one of the sites of resistance. p. 70

Possibly, but Zizek also argues that only atheists can be truly ethical, because only an atheist will do something because it is right, rather than because it pleases the deity, or to earn a reward. This is an old critique which actually has its basis within the Christian tradition itself (see the 17th century Quietists, for example).

Driscoll's three questions

‘What do people want to have more than anything else?’
‘What are people most afraid of?’
‘What do people make sacrifices for?’

Great questions to ask...

Churchman - Equality

Oh, and in other news, I notice the second in my 'The Christian Revolution' series has been published in the latest edition of the Churchman 122/3 "The Christian Revolution: 2. Equality".

Mission and Theology

I posted this back in 2006 - but I think it is relevant to the Driscoll discussion, so I'll give it another run:

In his (in other ways very annoying) book Recovering the Scandal of the Cross Joel Green asks what I think is very good question: what would happen if theology took the mission of the church seriously?

It’s a good question because it inverts our expectations. We ordinarily imagine that mission ought to take theology seriously: if only we get our thinking about mission right, we say, then we will mission more effectively. We believe I guess in a priority of theory over praxis. The problem with this view is ineffectiveness: revivals are not usually begun in the academy, you may have noticed. There is a tendency for theory to be closed to the questions people are actually asking; to be abstract and unrelated. There is a resulting insensitivity to the different cultural contexts in which mission takes place.

On the other hand, I guess there are some of you who can already sense the artificiality of this: you have already been out there presenting the gospel and living it, and seeing lives changed and people won for Christ. Having to come and sit and think about it seems quite futile: it’s already going on! The problem with this view, I suggest respectfully, is pragmatism. Pragmatism means that we become like advertisers hawking products: we will do anything for a sale, including distort the message out of shape, perhaps casting aside or hiding uncomfortable parts of the scriptural teaching in order to fit in with the culture of context. Perhaps, rather than be insensitive, we may even accommodate our culture so that we lose our Christian distinctiveness.
This is why Green’s question is a good one: because theology needs to realize the urgency of mission! Theology must not be indulgent or merely speculative. It bears the responsibility of explaining a gospel which is for everyone to everyone. And on the hand, those engaged in mission have the weighty responsibility of speaking and acting in and with truth. Mission needs to heed the voice of theology!

And so, from both perspectives, there needs to be a turn back to the sources of theology in the scriptures. Mission must remain faithful to its source in scripture or it will be unable to address cultures - it will only reflect them. If theology takes the mission seriously, not only could theology be forced to rediscover its own deep scriptural resources, so also mission could be reinvigorated by the work done in the thinking about it. We need to trust our Bibles perhaps more than we do: there is more in them of more universal relevance than perhaps we realize. We need to trust perhaps less our ability to read cultures: remember this is a notoriously difficult art. Paul’s method in Corinth is perhaps instructive: he determined not give the Jews the miraculous signs they claimed, not the Greeks the sophistry they demanded: but determined to know nothing among them but Christ crucified no matter how culturally insensitive this may have seemed.

Driscoll skewers Sydney

Reports have filtered back to me about Mark Driscoll's session with Sydney ministers at St Andrew's Cathedral. Sounds like potent stuff. Mike Jolly reports here on the 18 points of critique Driscoll levelled at us. Hearing criticism is a great opportunity of course, and it will be interesting to see how the debate goes from here. I don't buy the whole Driscoll schtick, but, boy, he has courage.

From my point of view, the most interesting and telling of the critiques was no. 13: "There us a lack of missiologists. Your theologians are poor missiologists. You need more missiologists that evaluate culture and be missiologically aware."

Ouch. But, yes: I think that it is imperative that theology and missiology relate themselves better. Not of course so that missiology completely overwhelms theology, but so that theology is actually true to its own evangelical nature. There's work to do...

Christian God not an introvert

John Webster's essay on aseity is one of the highlights of the Engaging the Doctrine of God collection. This caught my eye:

‘…it [aseity] indicates that God’s originality and fullness constitute the ground of his self-communication. He is one who, out of nothing other than his own self-sufficiency, brings creatures into being, sustains and reconciles them, and brings them perfection in fellowship with himself’. (p. 108)

That is, God's self-sufficient and self-determining nature is of the kind that is the basis for his great acts of creation and redemption - his determination to have others and to dwell with them. No introvert, this God.

Engaging the Doctrine of God

The doctrine of God it seems to me is an increasingly contested and increasingly important area of dogmatics. Actually, that seems like a silly thing to say - isn't it always?

A great collection of essays has been released, edited by Bruce McCormack, under the title Engaging the Doctrine of God. What I have read so far has been of very high standard - stimulating and very interesting.

Particular high on my list are the essays by John Webster and Henri Blocher, followed by an excellent one by Don Carson on 'The Wrath of God'. McCormack, as the editor of the book has allowed himself twice the room of everyone else, and I haven't yet tackled his piece. NT Wright has a piece, though it is rather light on footnotes and sounds very derivative of his other stuff - not a fresh piece of research it seems to me.

What is interesting is that there is a tension between those authors who are committed to classical theism (Helm, Crisp, Carson) and those who want to modify it without falling into open theism (McCormack, Blocher, Stephen Williams). And, as always, Barth is the point of depature...

The theological task

Alistair McFadyen (I have been re-reading his work for reasons that will become apparent after September 11 ;-) ) writes this of the theological task:

The theological task...has two poles: to understand and critically reflect upon Christian doctrine, tradition and history on the one hand, and the social, cultural and intellectual world in which we are living on the other. Christian reality is always nbound up with its social world, and that is one very important reason why, even when the theologian is attending to the understanding of faith through its past, theology should always involved critical reflection on the wolrds of which the Church is and has been a part. These are not two tasks but dual elements of a single task... (The Call to Personhood, p. 10-11).

I think this is one way of saying that theology has a missionary calling.

The 'family' - a sketch

Just a sketch...

The family:


consists of two types of bond -
1 - the 'natural' bond (parent-child, sibling), and
2 - the promise bond (ie, marriage, adoption)


A third type of bond is that which occurs when two people are linked through a third person: so, for instance, my mother-in-law and me. Never promised anything towards her, nor she me, but, through my wife, there is a bond. There is a mediating relationship of promise that makes it a bond. However, these are often (as with step-children) a tricky relationship, because they have neither blood nor promise. (I am not speaking personally - my mother-in-law was delightful). Witness what happens in the case of divorce: the in-laws are left in an awkward position, with the mediating relationship removed, even though they may feel quite affectionate towards one another. Or, the mediating relationship becomes the shared children/grandchildren, which, I suppose is a 'natural' bond.

The family is also: a group which, at least ordinarily contains more than one generation and is at least in principle inclusive of both genders. Thus it says something about our vulnerability and diversity as human persons, and our need for mutual assistance and multiple points of view. Also, families are built because human beings are vulnerable to the ravages of time...families allow for the preservation and development of traditions, cultures, habits, ways of life, and the securing and stewarding of resources.

Its purposes/functions? = protection, security, growth and education, companionship, sharing of pleasures and pains.

SO, can there be a 'defective' family? where there is a relationship lacking one of the types of bond, there is a 'defective' family, though there still may be the functions of a family being carried out. An orphanage, for example. You and your flatmates. A de facto relationship may imitate this bond - and there may private undertakings and promises which seal the relationship - but there is the risk of invalidation in the lack of a formal commitment from the partners.

On the Family - 4

Question 9 Do you believe Australia's low attendance to Church in comparison with our population has contributed to our 'family values' and if so, why?

Our church attendance is low compared to a country like South Africa or the USA, but higher than Britain's and certainly higher than most countries in mainland Europe. Decline in church attendance has been parallel with decline in all kinds of social involvement since the 1960s - decline in political party membership, sports clubs, RSL clubs, newspaper readership, scouting groups and so on. So we perhaps shouldn't read this shift as merely a religious one - it has a broader social context. Australians have a great suspicion of authorities and institutions, which I share. And many Australians came to the country in the first place to begin a new life away from these things. So, the mainline churches have never had quite the moral authority that they have had even in the UK.

It is still the case that upwards of 50% of Aussies still maintain that they have an affiliation with a church - so there is still a strong if residual connection to the churches present it must be said. On the whole, even though they aren't great church attenders, Australians stick to a very Christian-influenced view of what family life should look like ideally. We are very socially conservative, something you tend to forget if you live in the inner west of Sydney as I have most of my life! It interests me that Kevin Rudd was very firm that he was not about to liberalise Australias policies on gay 'marriage' for example... and that this made him electable.

As an afterthought, I am not sure that the US, with its very high church attendance rates, shows an appreciable difference in family values in terms of statistics! Their abortion rate is very high, for example.

Question10 How useful do you believe discussing family values and morals are in Church?

Well, as always, it depends what you mean. If the church forgets its message is one of forgiveness and redemption, and falls for the trap of trumpeting moral values all the time, then it is a disaster. It just confirms people in their complacent self-righteousness, or reminds them of how far short they have fallen. But if, as fellow forgiven sinners, we seek to help one another carry the burden of living lives with one another - having and raising children, seeking to live pure and faithful lives, supporting single and married people - the discussing these matters is extremely useful. It is addressing difficult matters that most of us have to confront sometime or other. For example: what do the infertile couple do? Should they have IVF - and what should they do with the embryos they don't use? Where can the single mum find support for herself and her kids? Is it possible to remain faithful to the same person for a lifetime - and if so, how? What if I fail? Churches have to, and are, talking about all those things because they are the stuff of life. Sometimes they get the tone wrong, as it turns out. Sometimes people hear them through their previous negative encounters with churhces and church people, and this makes for hurt and misunderstanding. But church have a responsibility to keep discussing these things together.

2 Sermons on love

The God who is Love

Loving the God who is Love

On the Family 3

Question 7 How do you believe another seven sins, added by the Vatican, will benefit 'family values', if at all?

No, not really. I think it will be profoundly irrelevant.

Question 8 What is the Church doing to encourage parishioners to attend Church and follow the moral family values of the Christian faith?

I must add that I don't speak for something called 'the Church', but as member of A church which is in league with many others. Different churches are doing many different things to encourage people to come, and not just attend church, but join the family. So, for example, services are much more relaxed and informal on the whole than they used to be. Also, we recognise that people from a diversity of life stages will be coming to church and we try hard to welcome them - by having excellent children's programmes, for example. The aim is not to have people follow the 'moral family values'. Christians don't preach any such thing. The Christian gospel is about becoming a disciple of Jesus: which means belonging to him, and trying to be like him and follow his teachings. This of course has its ramifications for our family lives, as it does for all other aspects of our lives. Different churches that I am aware of are running groups for divorcees, as well as marriage courses, pre-marriage courses and parenting classes.

On the family - 2

Question 6 What do you believe are some of the shifts in family values since you have
become a parent while adhering to the Anglican moral code?

Well, I am not quite sure what the question is trying to get at... but I have noticed that people in the community are crying out for guidance as to how to be good parents. Parenting is an enormously fraught business, and it makes us extremely vulnerable in a lot of ways. I am amazed at the quality and the passion of discussion in magazines like 'Sydney's Child'. What I have noticed too is that while people might have a personal morality which is quite libertarian and agnostic, they are sending their kids to church schools in droves. They are somehow not happy with their kids being taught liberal values in the state system. I am not sure they are 100% signed up to what Christian and church schools are offering, but they can see that having 'Christian values' is a lot better than what the state systems are offering.

I have noticed that some parents are afraid to discipline their children at all for fear of crushing the spirit and expressive creativity of the child. We are not, I would have thought, strict parents: we don't smack our children, for example. And I am all for encouraging creativity and spontaneity in children, and allowing them to enjoy themselves. But we have encountered parents who don't discipline their children AT ALL.