What does the New Testament say about false teachers?

The term 'false teacher' is thrown around with some (gay?) abandon. It is increasingly the case that this term is used to describe any Christian or putative Christian whose teaching differs from mine – or, I say with all seriousness, to describe someone whose work I don't understand and haven't read at any depth. But what does the NT actually say about who 'false teachers' are and what should be done about them? Because the term sounds like it is biblical one, it is important that those who use it use it biblically, true?

So I have made a small investigation. Truth is, the term 'false teacher' hardly appears, though 'false teaching/doctrine' does and 'false prophet' certainly does.

In Matthew 7:15-16 Jesus warns the 'new Israel' against the infiltration of false prophets among them:
¹⁵ "Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. ¹⁶ By their fruit you will recognize them.

He doesn't tell them what the false prophets will teach, but he does say to them that they will be recognized by their fruit. What is their fruit? Is it what they teach? Or the immorality of their behavior? Jesus does not specify, other than to say that we will be able to recognize them as false by what they produce – and that they are doomed to destruction.

In Matthew 24:24 Jesus teaches that in the end times many false Christs will arise along with false prophets. There will be declarations of the appearance of Christ that are false accompanied by great displays of miraculous power in order to deceive people.

In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul admits that if Christ is not raised he would indeed be a false witness about God – it is clearly an essential and decisive truth about God that is at stake for him and that would make him a false witness if it failed.

In 2 Cor 11 it is the false super apostles, who preach a faith of glory and not of suffering weakness. These guys are motivated by greed, power and vanity – and it is quite clear to Paul that they are feigning their role as apostles of Christ. There is no hint of honest error in what Paul's opponents are accused of.

In Galatians 2:4 Paul speaks of false brothers who have spied on the freedom of the Galatians. Of course, in Galatians, Paul's gospel and Paul's commission to preach it to the Gentiles itself is at issue, and he is very strong in his repudiation of those who have compromised its integrity by their behavior.

In 1 Timothy 1, Paul urges Timothy to be firm with certain men who are teaching falsely out of their ignorance:

³ As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain men not to teach false doctrines any longer ⁴ nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. These promote controversies rather than God's work-- which is by faith. ⁵ The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith….⁷ They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they so confidently affirm.

False teaching in good faith can be dealt with firmly but restoratively. After all, as Paul says of himself: ¹³ Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief.

Later in the same letter Paul asks to Timothy once again to be firm with those who teach false doctrines (not 'false teacher', note)

³ If anyone teaches false doctrines and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching, ⁴ he is conceited and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions ⁵ and constant friction between men of corrupt mind, who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain. ⁶ But godliness with contentment is great gain.

That is to say: if the one who teaches falsely won't listen to rebuke – well, watch how the consequences are destructive of community. Watch how constant friction circles about this person. And notice again – Paul has reason to think financial gain is on the horizon of those teachers in question. The content of the false teaching in 1 Timothy seems to be 'myths and genealogies': a devotion to the obscure and useless knowledge that is of benefit to no-one but of interest to many.

IN 2 Peter we read:

But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. ² Many will follow their shameful ways and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. ³ In their greed these teachers will exploit you with stories they have made up. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping…

Once more – these are people – ex-Christians no less - who really want to make money out of the religion business. Just as Israel was infected by smooth talking false prophets, so the false teachers of the coming time will be in the church. Their teaching? A denial of the sovereign Lord who bought them! There seems however to be an immoral content to the teaching of these false prophets – as Peter goes on, it seems that debauchery is the result of what they teach: ¹⁸ For they mouth empty, boastful words and, by appealing to the lustful desires of sinful human nature, they entice people who are just escaping from those who live in error.

It is quite specific: these false teachers are open in the immorality and in their lust for sex and money. In Jude, while 'false teaching' isn't mentioned per se, it is the case that the church is likewise infected by divisive and argumentative types who are also openly immoral – who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.

In I John 4:1ff we are told that many false prophets have gone out into the world, and that they are to be recognized by their denial of Jesus' coming in the flesh.

To sum up:

1. 'false teacher' itself is a rare terminology, only occurring in 2 Peter – though there it is given an extensive exposition.
   
2. false prophets/teachers are not usually thought to be sincere, since the NT authors hold them to be motivated on the one hand by profit and on the other hand by lust.
   
3. the content of false teaching in the NT is often a Christological issue – the incarnation, for example, of the Lordship of Christ.
   
4. it is also libertarian in character – advocating grace as an excuse for licence.
   
5. false teachers are divisive and argumentative, especially over trivialities, like genealogies and myths. The trivialities prove a distraction to the feeble. One of the worst results of their teaching is the division they cause in the church.
   
6. those who teach falsely may at first be rebuked and corrected with forbearance. It is possible to teach falsehood without being (technical term) a 'false teacher'.
   
7. the NT authors reassure (and warn) Christians that unrepentant teachers are doomed to an extra-hot end.
   

SO: The NT alerts Christians to the ongoing presence of teaching that will a) compromise the divinity and/or humanity of Christ, for the purpose of b) promoting division amongst Christians and licentious behavior.

 

Ursula Le Guin on fiction:

 

The only truth I can understand or express is, logically defined, a lie. Psychologically defined, a symbol. Aesthetically defined, a metaphor....

I am not predicting, or prescribing. I am describing. I am describing certain aspects of psychological reality in the novelist's way, which is by inventing elaborately circumstantial lies.

In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we're done with it, we may find- if it's a good novel – that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have been changed a little...

The artist deals with what cannot be said in words. The artist whose medium is fiction does this in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words...

Lots to ponder!

Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness

At Michael Paget's recommendation I have been reading Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness. Sci-fi has never been my bag, but it has to be said that some fairly amazing working out of the themes of human existence occurs in sci-fi writing. Think of Margaret Attwood's The Handmaid's Tale, or Bladerunner (based on Philip K Dick's work), or William Gibson's Necromancer.

In The Left Hand of Darkness, a lone emissary from Earth travels to the planet 'Winter' on which people exist who have no gender except at certain regular time, the kemmering, in which they can be either male or female.

...Anyone can turn his hand to anything This sounds very simple, but its psychological effects are incalculable...Burden and privilege are shared out pretty equally; everybody has the smae risk to run or choice to make. Therefore nobody here is quite so free as a free male anywhere else. ...There is no unconsenting sex, and no rape....there is no division of humanity into strong and weak halves, protective/protected, dominant/submissive, owner/chattel, active/passive. In fact the whole tendency to dualism that pervades human thinking may be found to be lessened, or changed, on Winter.

It is not quite a recipe for utopia, however. The narrator-envoy finds himself in a labor camp where prisoner's are chemically castrated. He observes:

They were without shame and without desire, like the angels. But it is not human to be without shame and without desire.

 

 

 

Full-text notes and pedagogical practice

I am a theological lecturer. I believe in the content of my course material.

Since I have returned to teaching, I have had repeated requests from students for full-text notes of my lectures.

I have refused these requests, on the grounds that I do use a text-book and allocate set-readings, and that my lecture 'notes' are not of publishable standard. The notes are actually for me, as a prompt to my oral delivery of the course content.

Futhermore, I think giving out a set of full-text notes is not that way I want to teach. I think it encourages 'bulimic learning' - the rote learning of information for an exam which is quickly forgotten. I would like to encourage what they call 'deep learning' - and to regard the lecture itself as not an injection of information but an educational experience.

Am I missing something?

Theology of the Human Being course 2010

This is a draft of a draft of a proposed Masters course on theological anthropology.... see what you think.
The rationale is that it is meant to engage both theological and non-theological voices and draw out a theological reading of scripture. The cases of torture at Abu Ghraib invites consideration of the human person in many contexts, since it was an attempt to strip certain human beings in terms of their gender, religion, culture, the image of their bodies, and their liberty. Not only that, but contemporary discourses about human rights circulate around this incident too. A theological analysis is not far away either - the cross of Christ is a similar incident, yet it is held to be a great human victory - or the inauguration of a new humanity...

What a Piece of Work is Man: A Theological Investigation into the Human Condition

1. Abu Ghraib and the Disappearance of Man
readings from M. Foucault Discipline & Punish

W. Cavanaugh Torture & Eucharist
Tertullian On the Spectacles
excerpts from Luther
Scripture text: 2 Corinthians 3-4

2. Born Free? Erasmus & Luther and Human Servitude
Luther & Erasmus texts
John Carroll The Wreck of Western Culture
Galatians

Philemon


3. Radiant Hair: Human Gender and the Glory of God
Luce Irigary This Sex That is Not One
Simone de Beauvoir The Second Sex

1 Corinthians 11

Genesis narratives

Song of Songs


4. Homo Laborans: The Human Task
Miroslav Volf A Theology of Work
Hannah Arendt The Human Condition
Ecclesiastes


5. After Humankind? White Teeth and the Human Future
Zadie Smith White Teeth
Michel Houllebecq Atomised
Donna Harroway FutureMouse
Moltmann The Coming of God
1 Corinthians 15

Revelation




6. The Gift of Speech
Habermas?
Alister McFadyen The Call to Personhood
Vanhoozer

Psalm 119


7. My Family and Other Animals
R. Gaita The Philosopher’s Dog

C. Darwin Origin of the Species
from Barth, CD. III
Gregory of Nyssa
Job; Genesis 6-9

8. Realising the Authentic Self with Charles Taylor and Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Charles Taylor Sources of the Self, The Ethics of Authenticity
Bonhoeffer Letter and Papers from Prison, Ethics

John 4


9. The Human Being on Trial: Temptation and Identity
Paul Ricoeur Oneself as Another
Bonhoeffer Temptation
Hebrews 4-5
Gethesamane, Wilderness narratives


10. Social Being, Human Rights and Violence
Cain & Abel; Revelation; Deuteronomy
Ellul The Meaning of the City
Volf Exclusion and Embrace
Rene Girard

11. Homo Adorans: The Religious Being
Hans urs von Balthasar Theological Anthropology

Proverbs; Acts 17


12. The Problem of Human Evil

Dostoyevksy, The Brothers Karamazov

McFadyen, Bound to Sin

Jenson, The Gravity of Sin

Romans

13. Memory, Imagination and the Inner Self
Augustine Confessions
Volf Memory

14. Martyrdom as a Type of Authentic Human Existence

In praise of academic administration

In my days as a postgraduate student one of the things I enjoyed not being a part of most was the process of academic administration - the meetings and chores that inevitably crowd into an academic teacher's life and prevent him/her from doing what he/she feels called to do - teach students, research, publish and so on. Academics often wish they could be freed from the grind of admin in order to do the real thing.

Today was the marathon meeting of our academic year at Moore, the famous post-exams 'Board of Studies' meeting. It is 8 hours of hard slog, for the most part. Meditating on the process when I was supposed to be thinking about something else, I realised that the nexus between academic administration and academic knowledge (in the best sense) is tighter than it feels. It just isn't true that they have nothing to do with each other. Governing the process of teaching and learning depends heavily on - and in turn informs - teaching and learning itself. The ordering of education is in itself educative. While the process can be more or less pleasurable, it is still part of the business of academic thought to which academics are called.

The history of the university depended on this observation: that knowledge was united and its various parts ordered to one another in a certain way was at the heart of the medieval university. And theology, of all the disciplines, held the honoured place - 'the queen of sciences'. The university, as much by its structures and by its location and communal disciplines as by its curriculum, upheld and reinforced a view of knowledge.

It doesn't make it more pleasant, but hopefully makes it feel more purposeful!

On Rowan Williams here in Australia

On Rowan Williams is available here in Australia - at the legendary Moore Books.

It contains essays by Andrew Cameron, Greg Clarke, Matheson Russell, Byron Smith, Ben Myers, Rhys Bezzant, Tom Frame, and Andrew Moody. .

Oh, and me.

Intro is by Oliver O'Donovan

From the blurb:

Theologian, poet, public intellectual, and clergyman, Rowan Williams is one of the leading lights of contemporary British theology. He has published over twenty books and one hundred scholarly essays in a distinguished career as an academic theologian that culminated in his appointment as Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Oxford University. Williams left this post to serve in the Anglican Church, first as Bishop of Monmouth, then Archbishop of Wales, before finally being enthroned in 2003 as the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury.In this collection of essays, a talented younger generation of Australian theologians critically analyzes the themes that bind together Williams' theology. These sympathetic yet probing essays traverse the full breadth of Williams' work, from his studies on Arius, the Desert Fathers, Hegel, and Trinitarian theology to his more pastoral writings on spirituality, sexuality, politics, and the Anglican Church.

Calvin on Biblical interpretation

Calvin's letter to Simon Grynaeus, which opens his Romans Commentary ought to be a must read for all Protestant exegetes. His explains here his preference for 'lucid brevity' in commentary – because his task is to unfold the mind of the author as much as possible. But then he recognizes that commentators, even good ones, differ and have always have differed. This is not because the text is problematic, but rather because human beings have been limited by God – even the ones guided by the Holy Spirit. Here is what he writes:

God has never so blessed His servants that they each possessed full and perfect knowledge of every part of their subject. It is clear that His purpose in so limiting our knowledge was first that we should be kept humble, and also that we should continue to have dealings with our fellows. Even though it were otherwise highly desirable, we are not to look in the present life for lasting agreement among us on the exposition of passages of scripture. When, therefore, we depart from the views of our predecessors, we are not to be stimulated by any passion for innovation, impelled by any desire to slander others, aroused by any hatred, or prompted by any ambition. Necessity alone is to compel us, and we are to have no other object than that of doing good.

Pannenberg on Anthropology

Christian theology has been suspected of being just a form of anthropology since the 19^th Century, and the work of Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzche and so on. The danger is that God may be indeed eliminated from the study of theology! This was Barth's great worry, of course, and the root of his insistence that theology not be translated into anthropological terms. He was adamant that this not be the case: and critical of those theologians who he saw as collaborating in the anthropological reduction of theology.

Wolfhart Pannenberg, however , refuses to accept that theology can be cordoned off from other sorts of human knowledge. Or at least, it is a matter of theology's own self-authenticity that it not do so: it cannot park itself off the highways of human reason in a quiet little driveway and remain anything other than superstition. He writes:

If it can be shown that religion is simply a product of the human imagination and an expression of a human self-alienation, the roots of which are analyzed in a critical approach to religion, then religious faith and especially Christianity with its tradition and message will lose any claim to universal credibility in the life of the modern age. The Christian faith must then accept being lumped together with any and every form of superstition.

Without a sound claim to universal validity Christians cannot maintain a conviction of the truth of their faith and message. For a 'truth' that would be simply my truth and would not at least claim to be universal and valid for every human being could not remain true even for me. This consideration explains why Christian cannot but try to defend the claim of their faith to be true. It also explains why in the modern age they must conduct this defence on the terrain of the interpretation of human existence and in a debate over whether religion is an indispensable component of humanness or, on the contrary, contributes to alienate human beings from themselves. (Anthropology in Theological Perspective, p. 15)

Pannenberg argues that there isn't an option for Christian theology: it must

begin …reflection with a recognition of the fundamental importance of anthropology for all modern thought and for any present-day claim of universal validity for religious statements. Otherwise they will, even if unintentionally, play into the hands of their atheistic critics, who reduce religion and theology to anthropology, that is, to human assumptions and illusions. By narrowly focusing on the question of human salvation, theologians have undoubtedly forgotten in great measure that the Godness of God and not human religious experience must have first place in theology.

He goes on:

Theologians will be able to defend the truth precisely of their talk about God only if they first respond to the atheistic critique of religion on the terrain of anthropology. Otherwise all their assertions, however impressive, about the primacy of the Godness of God will remain purely subjective assurances without any serious claim to universal validity. p. 16

He maintains, furthermore, that rejecting this anthropological ground is in fact conceding the ground to anthropological suppositions – by reducing theology to mere subjectivity.

Which way are evangelicals going to swing on this?

Contextualisation, and so on.

I am always surprised by the naive but belligerent talk one hears from evangelicals who are disdainful of "contextualisation'' - usually with an equally vehement contempt for ''hermeneutics".

I understand the fear. The craven accommodation of the gospel to the fads and fashions of the time is appalling to see. Even now, the fad of the 1980s to have 'perspectival' theologies - black theology, lesbian theology, latino theology and whatever - looks simply laughable. Why did anyone ever take that seriously?

But the alternative is to be blind to our own context, and to our own (sinful and human) propensity to distort things. The Bible needs to be interpreted ever anew, not because it isn't clear or effective or coherent, but because we tend to get it wrong. Faithfulness to the original demands not parroting it but hearing it again as fresh for today and today's people. To borrow an analogy from bible translation: ''dynamic equivalence'' is the most authentic and faithful means of transmission!

Daniel Treier on the Theological Interpretation of Scripture

Daniel Treier's stimulating book Introducing Theological Interpretation of Scripture serves as a kind of companion to the Dictionary of Theological Interpretation of the Bible. Treier's claim is that there has been in the past two decades a movement towards the recovery of a hermeneutics that is properly theological. This movement, which is fascinating in its ecumenical breadth, respects the unity of the Scriptures and the wisdom of the great interpreters of the past. I say ecumenical breadth because it appears that Roman Catholic, Lutheran, conservative evangelical and reformed thinkers have simultaneously made a discovery/recovery of this kind of interpretation.

Some samples from Treier:

From the ancient masters we can recover a way of integrating Scripture study with piety that has been virtually lost in much of late modern Western culture. We can also learn to read the Bible as Christ-centred in a way that makes possible spiritual participation in the realities of which Scripture speaks. Moreover, we can imitate reading for application with theological, not just narrowly exegetical, guidance and restraint. p. 54

Theology is the practice of all Christian people growing in their knowledge of God amidst their various life activities and church practices. The academic discipline of theology is not entirely separate from, or more important than, ordinary Christian growth in biblical discernment. Rather, professional theologians ought to pursue the same practices as lay Christians but with different intensities of inquiry, amounts of time and levels of expertise. p. 188

The Christian Life – too urgent to rush?

Christians are, I think, living a life somewhere between the lateness and urgency of the hour ('the time is short') and the long view of time that comes from worship of the God for whom a day and a thousand years aren't very different. I think it is the latter that conditions the former: that is, the 'urgency' of living in the last times is not a frantic rush but a realisation that only good things are worth doing. It is the kind of urgency that comes from knowing our 'times are in your hands'.

The Christian attitude to time is marked by 'patient endurance'. It is more a five-day Test than Twenty-20; more gourmet meal with mature cheese and vintage wine than McDonalds; more epic than haiku; more stone than weatherboard; more Mahler than Kylie; more ocean liner than speed boat. It is more family than business. Christians don't respond rapidly to social change, on principle – and thank goodness.

So why is church life so busy? Why do ministers collapse under the burdens of the work, too exhausted to think? Why do run so many events but see so little of one another?

F. LeRon Shults on fear in theological education...

LeRon Shults' book Reforming Anthropology is by turns enriching and annoying. Shults does not write lucidly I have to say; and like many American writers he seems to have to quote or cite everybody. But he is full of insight, too, including a chapter on 'relationality and pedagogical practice', where he writes:

I suggest that the ultimate remedy to the repression that keeps seminarians from transformational learning is to fear the only One worth fearing, so that they can overcome the fears of this world. For truly transformational learning to occur in seminarians, it is crucial for us to provide an integrative environment in which they see their intellectual task (theological exploration) as inherently connected to their relation to God (spiritual and personal formation) and to their ministry with the people of God (transformational leadership). p. 67

He argues that theological education should, of all studies, be an aesthetic exercise:

The aesthetic dimension in theological learning includes the pleasure and pain of the learner's life story, one's systemic and sensible relations to community, one's emotive and optative investment in the whole history of humanity, and of course one's experience of God. p. 69

It is fear, the psychologists tell us, that keeps us from learning. But the theological response to this is not the removal of fear, but the changing of fear's object. This is the conquering of other fears by fear of God. Fearing God in fact is the purest of fears, and is 'the beginning of wisdom': it is the purest pedagogical principle! Therefore, theological education ought to cultivate the fear of the Lord. Shults writes:

Human love of God includes the element of fear but it is transformed infinitely into the terrific delight of worship, not merely a worship that is ritualistically compartmentalized, but a doxological way of living in relation to the Holy that constitutes the whole of one's identity in the lived world. p. 74.

Wow.

On Rowan Williams is available!

The collection of essays by a group of Australian Anglican theologians edited by Matheson Russell is now available.

Is Church Politics possible?

Like many Christians, I feel ambivalent about church politics. Church politics is, of course, reported in the NT - think of the council of Jerusalem! As a human reality, the church on earth needs - and indeed is called - to order and govern its mutual life in accordance with its discipleship, to decide and affirm right doctrine, to manage common resources, and to make space for the exercise of right authority. To say otherwise is to have an over-spiritualised ecclesiology. Even the most free of free churches has to agree with this. Anarchy is not in any sense properly Christian. On the other hand, church politics as we experience it, in denominations or congregations, can be exceedingly unpleasant and a travesty of the gospel. It is possible to make it better? Here are some principles:



1 - the process is as important as the outcome. If God is truly sovereign in the church as he is in the world, then it is not necessary to use means that are not his means. His means might not be politically expedient or efficient. That means that love has a priority over outcomes.

2 - give reasons for your position that you believe, and not just reasons that are likely to persuade. Being Christian, we believe certain things about speech and its integrity to speakers. It is impossible to carry on a genuine disagreement with the possibility of mutual enrichment and edification if people are arguing merely in order to manipulate those voting. If you speak in this way, then I can not actually speak to you.

3 - seek more mutual accountability, not less. That is, the ordering of church life ought to have a realistic doctrine of sanctification. The child abuse scandals have taught us that 'trust me' isn't enough - there was a naivety about the extent to which the Christian is progressing in sanctification. Now most churches have all sorts of accountability structures in place in this area. Why not extend this to other areas of church life too? It is boring and painful, but isn't it actually right?

4 - respect the process. manipulating the process demeans the process. The law is an ass if it is treated like an ass... Church laws exist as an expression of mutual purpose and accountability. If the words and intentions of the framers of laws are twisted, then the law no longer protects the fellowship of believers. If no-one can trust anyone else, then we might as well be in the NSW state parliament. Which, if you don't know, is bad.

5 - protect ourselves from groupthink. People would much rather leave the messy business of church politics to others. It is hard work to think through church life at an organisational and theological level, and what is more, most people actually don't like conflict and would prefer to avoid it. We would much rather just do what the agenda says we ought to do and live harmoniously. This pattern does not lead to wise or mature church-political processes. Those entrusted with decision-making ought to be diligent, or give up their votes to someone else.

6 - practice agreeable disagreement. That is, it ought to be possible to strongly disagree without casting doubt on the other person's salvation. And the 'winners' in any decision ought to seek reconciliation if necessary with the 'losers' - indeed, it is their responsibility to do so. Don't label those you disagree with as defensive. Also: understanding and agreement are not the same...I can actually understand you and still not agree with you. Please don't keep shouting!

7 - take the long view. Christians understand history in a particular way. We don't need to rush! Theological and ecclesiastical discernment takes time - sometimes generations. Patience practiced in church politics means that sometimes thirty years thinking about a particular issue isn't enough.

8 - don't pretend that political acts are somehow not political. There's nothing wrong with them being political. The processes of lobbying and grouping together to urge for change are not in themselves wrong. On the contrary, they are perfectly appropriate to an exercise of church government. What really stinks is when someone exercises or achieves political power in a church context and calls it something else - spiritualises it so that it doesn't appear to have all the supposedly grubby aspects of politics. If we can call it 'politics', then when can judge it for what it is. Indaba groups are not somehow more spiritual or less political that a synodical style with parliamentary rules! They are just different.

any other ideas?

A YOU review

Mark Barry reviews YOU here.

The poor, and so on

It is easy to be glib and romantic about the poor, disadvantaged and socially outcast from the theological ivory tower. In principle - and it's more than a principle - yes, it is disgraceful that churches perpetuate the social alienation of the economically disadvantaged, the unemployed and so on. James tells us to show the poor man to the pride of place, and so we should.


The reality of life for church communities is that overcoming the factors which cause social exclusion is far more complicated. Economic disadvantage is (in the welfare state) rarely just economic disadvantage; social exclusion is rarely just social exclusion. These things often come with a raft of other problems. In my pastoral experience I have encountered some people who, while wanting to members of the church community, were really, really difficult, for whatever reason. They came with alarming or disturbing or deeply unpleasant personality traits. (Sometimes this was the result of a mental illness, though not always; and, it must be said there are those with mental illnesses who do not exhibit these anti-social behaviour patterns.) There were those who frightened off other church members, or who were inappropriately attentive to members of the opposite sex. There were those who told lies and took advantage of the charity of the church - in one case, to the tune of several hundreds of dollars. There were those who feigned serious illness in order to get attention.

And, anti-social behaviour, it turns out, is well named: people like this can drain the resources of a community and sap its growth. As a young pastor, several times I poured my heart into people who were difficult, trusting that my naive trust would be rewarded. It rarely was, I have to say (not with any bitterness).

So what is the way forward? How does the community of God's people take seriously the teaching of the NT and yet do so with wisdom? How have others - especially in inner city ministries - dealt with this issue?

Which Theologians would have made good bloggers?

Which theologians would have been successful bloggers? Or, which theologians do you reckon would have had blogs if they had been available at the time?

Luther - the pamphleteer and controversialist in Luther would have been attracted to the medium of blogging. He was a master disseminator of his own ideas using the printing press. His colourful language would have got him a seat in Australian parliaments. And he was quick on his feet. Perhaps verbosity would have got in his way.

Newman - A controversialist too, but with an acid tongue and an piercing application of sarcasm when needed. Aren't the 'Tracts for the Times' really just blog entries?

Augustine - a more ponderous thinker and not equipped for the brevity necessary for good blogging perhaps: but quite the controversialist and up for a good argument. You certainly wouldn't have wanted Augustine lobbing comments on your blog!

Tertullian - a master of Latin style, an orator and a lawyer. Great with the extended metaphor, and the wry observation. A little mad - it helps!

Broughton Knox - our local Aussie theologian never wrote much, but had a flair for the compact observation, the scribbled down note, the timely saying. Also a noted controversialist in the vein of a Luther. His piece on nude sunbathing in (I think) the Selected Works Vol 1 is a blog entry pure and simple!

Any others?

Francis Watson and interpretative practice…

An interpretative practice working within the world of the text may offer many insightful observations about the workings of that world. But it will tell us nothing at all about the one thing that actually matters, the relation of that imagined world to reality. If it wishes to engage responsibly in theological construction, biblical interpretation must there abandon the myth of the self-enclosed text and learn to correlate the text with the reality to which it bears witness, understanding the text as located primarily within the church which is itself located within the world. Interpretation must take the more demanding but also more rewarding way of seeking to discern the truth mediated in the texts of holy scripture. And it must not be deterred by the skepticism that such a project is sure to evoke.

                            Francis Watson, Text, Church and World p. 293

 

The temptation for conservative interpreters has been to cordon off the scriptures from the more ornery questions of its existence in the world – the questions that historians might ask, for example. However, (and I am sure Watson would agree), the text has something to say about the world which changes it. If the text is in the world, then it is also true that the world is in the (this) text. Can both be held without compromise?

YOU at Good Book Co!

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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!

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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."