"Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. For indeed He does not give aid to angels, but He does give aid to the seed to Abraham. Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people." (Heb. 2:14-17)
Seems like this is a key atonement passage. Here, we have shades of substitution, Christus Victor, and the exemplary theories of the atonement.
Showing posts with label theology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label theology. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Atonement Theories
Friday, February 04, 2011
The Dangerous God of the Future
"The biblical God is not eternally himself in that he persistently instantiates a beginning in which he already is all that he ever will be; he is eternally himself in that he unrestrictedly anticipates an end in which he will be all he ever could be.
. . .
Thus the revelatory content of the Exodus was not mere escape from the Egyptian past but the future that the escape opened: 'You have seen ... how I ... brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be ...' And this was a true, that is, risky, future: in Israel's memory, Exodus was inseparable from forty years' wandering in the desert, in which the Lord figures as the dangerous leader of a journey whose final end was geographically chancy and temporally unknown, and whose possibility depended every morning on the Lord's new mercy.
. . .
Gods who identity lies in the persistence of a beginning are cultivated because in them we are secure against the threatening future. The gods of the nations are guarantors of continuity and return, against the daily threat to fragile established order; indeed, they are Continuity and Return. The Lord's meaning for Israel is the opposite: the archetypically established order of Egypt was the very damnation from which the Lord released her into being, and what she thereby entered was the insecurity of the desert. Her God is not salvific because he defends against the future but because he poses it."
-Robert Jenson, Systematic Theology Vol. 1, 66-67.
Tuesday, February 01, 2011
Bible First
"We teach first the Bible and then the confessions, the Bible because it is God speaking to his people, and the confessions because they are the church speaking to God, answering his Word."
-Donald Van Dyken, Rediscovering Catechism, 56.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Christ and Nothing
If you have never read David Bentley Hart's essay "Christ and Nothing," you need to.
Here it is: http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles2/HartChrist.shtml
And now you have no excuses.
Thursday, July 09, 2009
Pascal on Happiness
"All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves." -- Blaise Pascal
(Cited in Desiring God by John Piper, P. 19)
Thursday, January 08, 2009
An Environmental Parable
The Kingdom of God is like water on concrete. At first glance it seems that concrete and asphalt ought to have the upper hand. Water, at least in small portions, cannot overcome the pavement. But water does it's work quietly. It runs along casually finding the cracks and crevices and weak spots in cement, and the Spirit of God blows his fierce frosty air over the waters causing them to freeze and expand, and the concrete cannot withstand the pressure. Asphalt crumbles, pavement cracks and breaks apart, potholes appear, and hard heart after hard heart is burst into pieces by the water and the Spirit.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Wright on Pentecost, Scripture Reading, and Sacrament
A few excerpts from N.T. Wright's Simply Christian:
"The fulfillment of the Torah by the Spirit is one of the main themes underlying the spectacular description in Acts 2, or the day of Pentecost itself. To this day, Pentecost is observed in Judaism as the feast of the giving of the Law. First comes Passover, the day when the Israelites leave their Egyptian slavery behind for good. Off they go through the desert, and fifty days later they reach Mount Sinai. Moses goes up the mountain and comes down with the Law, the tablets of the covenant, God's gift to his people of the way of life by which they will be able to demonstrate that they are really his people.
This is the picture we ought to have in mind as we read Acts 2. The previous Passover, Jesus had died and been raised, opening the way out of slavery, the way to forgiveness and a new start for the whole world -- especially for all those who follow him. Now, fifty days later, Jesus has been taken into 'heaven,' into God's dimension of reality; but, like Moses, he comes down again to ratify the renewed covenant and to provide the way of life, written not on stone but in human hearts, by which Jesus's followers may gratefully demonstrate that they really are his people." (132-133)
On reading Scripture in worship:
"Reading scripture in worship is, first and foremost, the central way of celebrating who God is and what he's done.
Let me put it like this. The room I am sitting in at the moment has quite small windows. If I stand at the other side of the room, I can see only a little of what is outside -- part of the house opposite, and a tiny bit of sky. But if I go up close to the window, I can see trees, fields, animals, the sea, the hills in the distance.
It sometimes feels as though two or three short biblical readings are rather like the windows seen from the other side of the room. We can't see very much through them. But as we get to know the Bible better, we get close and closer to the windows (as it were), so that, without the windows having gotten any bigger, we can glimpse the entire sweep of the biblical countryside." (150-151)
On the sacrament:
"Like the children of Israel still in the wilderness, tasting food which the spies had brought back from their secret trip to the Promised Land, in the bread-breaking we are tasting God's new creation -- the new creation whose prototype and origin is Jesus himself." (154)
"...[T]here has been endless confusion over the relationship between the bread-breaking service and the sacrifice offered by Jesus on the cross. Catholics have usually said they were one and the same, to which Protestants have replied that Catholic interpretation looks like an attempt to repeat something which was done once and once only, and can never be done again. Protestants have usually said that the bread-breaking service is a different sacrifice to the one offered by Jesus -- they see it as a "sacrifice of praise" offered by the worshippers -- to which Catholics have responded that the Protestant interpretation looks like an attempt to add something to the already complete offering of Jesus, which (they say) becomes "sacramentally" present in the bread and the wine." (156)
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
NT Wright and the Imago Dei
N.T. Wright points out that in the ancient world, and even in parts of the modern world, rulers often "set up statues of themselves in prominent places, not so much in their own home territory (where everyone knew who they were and recognized that they were in charge), but in foreign or far-flung dominions... For an emperor, the point of placing an image of yourself in the subject territory was that the subjects in that country would be reminded that you were their ruler, and would conduct themselves accordingly." (Simply Christian, 37)
While clearly the instinct to set up image-reminders in foreign jurisdictions comes from God himself, the point is worth remembering. People, as icons of the God of heaven, should be constant reminders to us to conduct ourselves according to the justice of the God of heaven. The Trinity has been pleased to fill this world with living pictures, breathing images of himself in order to remind us that he is King of this world.
It's also worth pointing out that the image of God in people means that on a fundamental level, people are like God. And of course that has been distorted and bent in various ways through sin, but it's still there all the same. In some sense, every human being should remind us of the Father, Son, and Spirit.
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Original (Voluntary Moral Depravity) Sin?
Finney explains the basic outline of the gospel he preached: "I insisted upon the voluntary moral depravity of the unconverted, and the unalterable necessity of a radical change of heart by the Holy Spirit and by means of the truth." (66)
Finney's Feeling of Justification
Charles Finney (1792-1875) on experiencing justification by faith:
"I arose upon my knees in the bed and wept aloud with joy, and remained for some time too much overwhelmed with the baptism of the Spirit to do anything but pour out my soul to God... In this state I was taught the doctrine of justification by faith as a present experience. That doctrine had never taken possession of my mind. I had never viewed it distinctly as a fundamental doctrine of the Gospel... I could see that the moment I believed, while up in the woods, all sense of condemnation had entirely dropped out of my mind, and that from that moment, I could not feel a sense of guilt or condemnation by any effort I could make. My sense of guilt was gone, my sins were gone, and I do not think I felt any more sense of guilt than if I never had sinned. This was just the revelation I needed. I felt myself justified by faith, and, so far as I could see, I was in a state in which I did not sin. Instead of feeling that I was sinning all the time, my heart was so full of love that it overflowed. My cup ran over with blessing and with love. I could not feel that I was sinning against God, nor could I recover the least sense of guilt for my past sins. Of this experience of justification I said nothing to anybody at the time." (The Autobiography of Charles G. Finney, 24-25)
Without completely dismissing the tremendous emotional relief of forgiveness and reconciliation with God, it's hard to miss the foundational role of feelings, senses, experience, emotion, etc. One wonders if he ever *felt* unjustified later.
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Life is for Worship
J. Douma, in his Ten Commandments, says that life must be understood fundamentally as for praise. Yahweh brough Israel out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage in order that she might worship him at the holy mountain. Pharaoh's genocidal dealings with Israel were not merely wicked in themselves, they were actions which resulted in fewer Israelites to worship Yahweh. Life is for worship. Living is for praise. Thus the psalmist, "I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord,” and “Will the dust praise you? Will it declare your truth? (Ps. 118:17, 30:9). Or, “all my bones shall say, “Lord, who is like you…?” (Ps. 35:10). Murder is not merely taking the life of a human being; murder is destroying one who has the ability and calling to worship the God of the universe, to declare his wonders, to sing his praise. To (unlawfully) take human life is to rob God of worship and potential praise.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
God Became a Zygote
John Jefferson Davis, in his book Evangelical Ethics, points out that the incarnation of Jesus Christ has an important role to play in affirming the value of human life (p. 158). He points out that the Creed places the beginning of the life of Christ not at birth but when "he was conceived by the Holy Spirit." Likewise, he references Hebrews 2:17 which applies the efficacy of the incarnation to the fact that “in all things He had to be made like his brethren.” Many of the early Church fathers understood the significance of this in terms of their Christology. The early maxim was 'whatever is not assumed is not healed.' Thus, God became a zygote in order to heal all zygotes. God became a morula to heal all morulas. God became a blastocyst to heal all blastocysts. God became an embryo to heal all embryos. God became a fetus to heal all fetuses. God took upon himself the entirety of human nature from conception on. God became human to heal humanity. Thus, abortion, at any stage of pregancy, is an implicit attack on the incarnation.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Aquinas on Being
Thomas Aquinas, in his explanation of his doctrine of Analogy in Summa Contra Gentiles I.28, points out that "perfection" must be understood at least somewhat differently when applied to God than when applied to creatures. Yet, he recognizes that Jesus calls his disciples to nevertheless aim to close that gap (Mt. 5:48). Thomas says that the fundamental divide between how we would use the word perfect differently between God and creation is found in the fact of creation. Existence is itself the most foundational prerequisite for perfection, and because God has always, eternally existed (as opposed to all other things which had a beginning), He is by definition "most perfect."
I was initially a little skeptical about this description of God as "most perfect." Was he trying to put God and creation on some kind of continuum? But as I considered what Thomas is up to, it rather appears that he is trying to figure out how and in what ways creatures are like their Creator. He seems to conclude that the act of creation is where we find the first likeness of creation to its Creator. Because God created the world from nothing and thereby brought being from non-being, he has in the most basic sense made the world to be just as he is from all eternity. The gift of being is fundamentally a sort of likeness that all of creation has with God who always and eternally exists.
Thomas knows that in order for language to work it must find its origin and meaning ultimately in the person and life of God. Creation must be like God in various ways in order for words to have meaning. And he recognizes that in the most fundamental sense, a leaf is like God because it exists just like God exists. It participates in the life of the Triune God if only as a result of the Word of God which spoke and pushed certain nutrients up through the veins of a particular Oak tree and eventually burst out of some happy petiole on the end of some branch waving at the world. Existence is itself a wonderful gift, and it is the gift of being, tasting if only briefly what God knows in eternity.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
My Father
I'm sure this has been noticed many times before, but it occurs to me that a man going around calling God his Father in Israel had to have been considered to be making an implicit (or explicit) claim to be Israel's king. The covenant that God made with David was the explicit promise of God saying, "I will be his father and he shall be my son..." (2 Sam. 7:14). Later, the Psalmist envisions this reality in the inauguration of the king of Israel (Ps. 2:7), and according to Ps. 89, to be the son of God, to be the firstborn of Yahweh, is to be the highest of all the kings of the earth (89:26). I've noted before that the title "son of God" was not first and foremost a claim to deity but had all of the OT weight of the callings of Adam, Israel, Solomon, all come to fulfillment in the true Son. But it goes the other way too of course. When Jesus calls God 'my father' and teaches his disciples to pray 'our father', he is speaking as though he is the son of David, the king of Israel and the king over all the kings of the earth. Likewise, for disciples of Jesus to pray 'our father' is implicitly to claim to be royalty; it is to claim to be sons of David, a nation of kings who rule over all the other kings of the earth.
Monday, October 08, 2007
Faith and Union with the Trinity
One of the complaints of FV critics is that 'Union with Christ' puts the cart before the horse. If we posit Union with Christ as the center and justification, sanctification, etc. flow from that central covenantal/mystical union then, they say, God is having fellowship with sinners. How can a just God join himself to sin? How can a righteous and holy God have a relationship with the unclean, the unrighteous? These critics march their Ordo Salutis out and point triumphantly to the doctrine of justification and say looky here, mister FV Guy, quit messing with the truth. You've gotta be justified first then you can be joined to Christ. This is where sanctification comes. And of course, this "then" is only logically speaking and not (I hope)an actual stopwatch sort of formulation. This sounds all high and pious and holy: who could deny that?
Yet there is a problem. How is one justified? By faith alone, of course. And where did that faith come from. It's a gift of God, so that no one can boast. Right. So God, in his infinite kindness effectually calls sinners, enlivens them, regenerates them, and gives them this brand new present called faith which enables them to call on the Lord Jesus for mercy, salvation, and grace. In other words, in order for anyone to be saved they must be drawn to the Father, by the Spirit, through the Son. Whenever anyone is justified they have always already been brought into the fellowship of the Trinity. Otherwise, we end up with something other than the historic, Reformed doctrine of justification. Where did that faith come from? The fact that joe-filthy-sinner suddenly looks down and sees his filthy rags exchanged for the righteousness of Christ is always due to having been brought into the family of God, the fellowship of the Trinity, through being united to Christ.
Does this mean that the good, holy, and righteousous God has fellowship with sinners? Absolutely. Does this mean that sinners are united to Christ by grace? Absolutely. Does this mean that there is a moment when God has fellowship with sinners apart from Christ? Absolutely not. This is not a description of a temporal chemical reaction. This is the description of how God does what he does. It's all of grace, it's all of kindness, and undeserved mercy. This means that union with Christ is the center of that kindness, and justification, sanctification, and all the benefits of Christ flow from that central act of grace and only because of the righteous life, death, resurrection, and ascension of the Righteous One.
One last illustration of this is found in the historic symbols of the Church. We do not say "I believe that there is one God..." We always confess the faith saying, "I believe in one God...," "I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ," "I believe in the Holy Spirit..." And this linguistic point is more clear in the original language and somewhat obscured by the ubiquity of the use of the word "in" in modern parlance. But the point is that with the historic church, we perform the action of believing and utilize the instrument of faith from within God, from within the One Creator God, the One Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. Faith is the result of being raised from the death of sin, and there is only one life outside of that death. There is only one way to be alive in this universe. There is only one Life to be joined to. To be made alive means to be joined to the life breath of the Trinity.
It would not have done for Adam to have claimed that he was righteous before the Spirit of God was breathed into his nostrils. Neither of course would it makes sense to say that he became righteous at some point after he was alive either. The point is that when people are made alive, they live. When Adam became a living being, he was a righteous living being. Likewise, when we are re-created, reborn, re-generated to new life in Christ, we live through the power of the Spirit, we believe with the strength of the Spirit, we have faith and are justified through the life-giving power the Spirit, through the work of Christ, all to the praise and glory of God the Father.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Why I Won’t Convert Part 3 or Doing the Dishes: The Ancient Catholic Faith
One of the common claims of “converts” to Rome and Constantinople is that they were seeking real unity. They wanted perhaps the unity of the universal church in all of the world, the unity of worship practice, the unity of authority in the bishops (and/or the pope), the unity of history, the unity of tradition, and perhaps others.
But what I don’t get is why they had to “convert” to get any of those things. Actually, I would insist that I already have them all right now, and I’m still a Presbyterian.
St. Paul says: “I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.” (Eph. 4:1-6)
As sure as there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father of us all, there is only one Church. The unity of that one church rests in “bearing with one another in love” and preserving it through the “bond of peace.” It simply is not true that this unity is found in one person apart from Jesus Christ. It does not say that this unity is based on letterhead, a central office, or some other human invention. It says that this unity exists in the fact that God is one, that there is one faith, and one baptism. I’m very sorry that various individuals have divided over the centuries. I’m sorry Paul and Barnabas did it in Acts 15, and I’m sorry that Leo IX and the Patriarch of Constantinople (and the incompetent messenger of the Pope) had their falling out in the 11th century. And yes, I’m sorry that Luther and Leo X couldn’t have kept on better terms. But divisions between individuals do not in fact divide Christ, anymore than they actually divide the Holy Trinity. They are ugly blemishes, signs of remaining sin, and inconsistent with the confession and sacramental union of the church, but in fact when Joe Christian gets up the next morning his duty is to love God and neighbor. That is the unity of the one church. As far as I’m concerned, as far as it depends upon me, I’m in full communion with the universal church.
But what is particularly annoying is that the other thing that many “converts” are after is disunity. They are trying to divide the body of Christ. They want to disassociate themselves with lots of stuff they don’t approve of. They do not want to be united to flaky Charismatics. They do not want to be associated with cranky southern Presbyterians. They do not want to be connected to homosexual bishops, praise choruses, doctrinal ignorance, biblical illiteracy, petty divisiveness, and a whole host of other ugly stains that are currently defacing the dress of the bride of Christ.
But the fact of the matter is that they have merely run around the house and haven’t really left the building. Sorry, friends, you still have brothers and sisters doing stupid things. Your “conversion” got you no closer to heaven and no further from hell.
But what’s at the heart of this is a false notion of unity. I insist that unity is not and cannot ultimately be grounded in the letterhead of some church in Italy or the Patriarch of Constantinople. All unity has its roots in the doctrine of the Trinity. Unity is personal. The “oneness” of the Church is to mirror the oneness of the Father and the Son and the Spirit. The unity of the Trinity is the archetype of all real unity. For all the yammering about unity in the “person” of the Bishop or the Pope or the Archimandrite of Buffalo, the refusal to love and honor the person standing right in front of them is nothing but ideological idolatry.
Unity is personal, organic, and ultimately consists in the communion of the Godhead through the Holy Spirit. This personal unity is one of love, loyalty, and sacrifice. That is what we see in the Godhead. The Father does not ask the Son about his paperwork. He doesn’t ask about the pedigree of his ordination, whether he has the right letters before or after his name. The Father and the Son love one another and are bound together in the unity and loyalty of the Spirit.
It is that same Spirit which the apostle Paul insists binds the church together. The same principle of unity which binds the Trinity together is the principle of unity in the church.
In Holy Baptism, you put on Christ, you were united to his person through the Holy Spirit, you were anointed with His Spirit and called upon to be Christ to the world. This is the renewal of the image of God in humanity, and this means that if you want unity, if you want one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church, it’s standing right in front of you. It’s the widow who lives upstairs, it’s the neglected government school kids running around on your street, it’s the prisoners in your county jail, and it’s the jerk who keeps parking in your space at work.
Jesus has harsh words for those who refused to see him in the sick, the naked, the hungry, and the imprisoned. ‘In as much as you did not do it unto the least of these, you did not do unto me. Depart from me, you workers of iniquity.’ I fear that many, caught in the grip of an idea, in the name of unity, are doing nothing more than busying themselves with stupid controversies in order to ignore the Christ standing right in front of them. And they have the audacity to claim they are seeking unity. I don’t buy it. They're nothing but sectarian anabaptists with icons.
You want to show me the catholic faith? You want to impress me with an ancient and glorious tradition? Why don’t you go find a widow to care for, an orphan in distress. Or, even better, maybe you have a wife or a few small children begging for some attention, some love, some discipline. Maybe you should send your mother some flowers, write your father a letter bestowing honor upon him. Wash some feet, do some dishes, take out the garbage, take up your cross: that’s the ancient catholic faith. That’s the unity of the Trinity, the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace.
And let me just add a final note for anyone who may read this who is Roman Catholic or Orthodox. I would encourage you to do the same: Love God, love your neighbor, and please take no offense at all the new baptists running around in your church.
Why I Won't Convert Part 2
I posted this a while back and then this a few days after that, but apparently it's necessary to go over this issue a bit more.
The most important reasons for not converting to Rome or Constantinople or Atlanta or Houston or Moscow have nothing to do with icons, apostolic succession, sacraments, or liturgy. The reason you shouldn't convert is because you are required by God to love your neighbor as yourself. John says, 'how can you say that you love God whom you have not seen if do not love your neighbor whom you have seen?'
The fact of the matter is that most people who end up "converting" do not do it because they have been actively involved in hospitality, serving at the local soup kitchen, evangelizing their neighbors, and volunteering any extra time they have to assist the deacons at Church. People who convert are not generally busy giving themselves away. People who are taking up their cross daily, people who are dying to themselves, don't have time to ask stupid questions like, "Am I really in a true church?"
Who is your neighbor? What's his/her name? How many children do they have? Where do they work? What are their hopes and dreams? What are their needs? If you're having trouble sleeping at night because you think there mightof, shouldof, maybe ought-to-of been a processional, robes, incense, a bishop with a big hat, or some such nonsense, you don't understand the gospel. You're busy tithing all manner of mint and dill, and you haven't even begun to understand the weightier matters of the law which are justice and mercy and faith.
People need to realize that the weightier matters of the law are not apostolic succession, old liturgies, or paedocommunion. Love you neighbor and stop your whining. Take up your cross and learn how to die. Stop bowing down to that idol in the mirror.
Monday, September 10, 2007
The Firstborn Son
Buried in the notes below in the outline from my sermon this last week, is the observation that the priesthood is based on the concept of the "firstborn son." Israel is called Yahweh's firstborn son and because Pharaoh refuses to release him, Yahweh strikes down Pharaoh's firstborn son. Based on this tenth plague and the Passover event, God claims all of the firstborn males of both man and animal in all Israel. They are all to be consecrated, made holy to him, because he passed over them and slayed the firstborn of Egypt. Later, in Numbers, God explains that instead of taking the firstborn of Israel, he is going to take the tribe of Levi to be the ministers of his house. Thus the priesthood is based upon the consecration of the firstborn of Israel which (in turn) is based upon the fact that Israel as a nation is Yahweh's firstborn son.
This helps make sense of the fact that Yahweh calls Israel a kingdom of priests and a holy nation in Exodus 19. Since the whole nation is God's firstborn son, the whole nation is a priestly people, a holy nation.
But I think this "firstborn" business actually reveals a great deal about what it means to be a priestly people. In the ancient world and in Scripture, the firstborn son was shown a great deal of attention, care, and finally bestowed with a double portion of his father's inheritance. So often, we just assume that ancient people were weird. "They just did those sorts of things," and we think nothing more about it. Or we say, "yeah, in the old days it was important to keep up the family name," but that's only half true.
Actually, the idea was that the firstborn son was the one that was given the task of carrying on the mission of the father's house. The firstborn son was shown so much attention, so much care because it rested upon his shoulders to continue what the father had started and what his father before him had done, and his father before him, and so on. The reason the firstborn son was shown such attention and care is not because God sanctioned favoritism, but because every wise father, boss, pastor, coach, etc. knows that in order to pass on certain skills, abilities, and priorities, time must be spent with the heir. It was never meant to be a sort of favoritism; it was meant to be the opportunity for the father to pass on his mission and work to the son. The firstborn son was bequeathed the great responsibility of keeping up and advancing the house of his father. And the double portion of inheritance was the material means of carrying that mission out, not to mention caring for the father and mother in their old age.
Thus when it came to Israel being called Yahweh's firstborn, this was the immediate call of Israel to begin training under Yahweh's care, to begin training to join the Father's mission and to take up that mantle on behalf of the Father. Thus, for Pharaoh to deny Yahweh's request to allow his son freedom to serve him, was for Pharaoh to threaten the house of Yahweh. It was not merely an assault on Israel but an assault on Yahweh, the Father of Israel. It was to denounce and dishonor the mission of Yahweh in the world.
For Israel to be called out of Egypt as the firstborn son of Yahweh, was for Israel to be called up for training in the house of Yahweh. And this is exactly what the book of Exodus is about. Following the giving of the law, Exodus 25 begins the instructions for building God's house. The book of Exodus is about what it means to be the firstborn son, and in particular, the firstborn son of Yahweh. But this also means that the call to be God's firstborn son was not divine favoritism; it was God's way of showing the world what his mission is in the world. The firstborn son was no better than the other sons (other nations), but in order for the Father to pass that mission on successfully, it was necessary for one son (Israel) to be shown that special care, attention, etc., so that the firstborn son might have all the resources necessary to take up the responsibility of carrying on the mission of his father's house in and for the world.
From this angle, it is clear what priests are called to do. To be a priest or to be a priestly people is to be trained in the ways of the household of the father in order that when the son comes of age, he might take on the mission of the father and work in the world on behalf of the Father. Of course for Israel this meant that He (Israel) was called to a ministry of reconciliation with the nations. Israel was called to teach the nations, serve the nations, and eventually, call the nations to join Israel at the table in their Father's house.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Thoughts on the Glory of God and the Atonement (Or, What About the Trinity?)
Several key Christian doctrines rest upon the idea of some sort of necessity bound into the person of God. For example, it is commonly stated that the sovereignty of God in the salvation of individuals is necessary in order to preserve the glory of God. Men like John Piper have emphasized the pervasive theme of the glory of God throughout Scripture and recognize that this is the driving force behind the actions of God. Piper has the famous line that says (roughly) God is most glorified when we are most satisfied in him; this is nothing more than a restatement of the first question/answer in the Westminster Shorter Catechism which states that man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. But what is God's chief end? Piper says that God's chief end is to glorify himself and enjoy himself forever. Thus, it is necessary for God to act in Providence and the Salvation of his people in a way that maximizes his own glory.
Another example of this sort of necessity in God can be seen in the doctrine of the Atonement. Certainly this is related to Piper's point, but in the doctrine of the Atonement it is insisted that sin has damaged the honor of God. If sin were to go unpunished, it would be at the expense of God's honor, and therefore it is necessary for God's wrath to be satisfied on the cross, to fully pay the price of man's sin. Thus, given sin, the cross was the only way for God to deal with sin; to do anything short of the cross would compromise his glory and thus compromise his very being and nature which God cannot do.
While I fully affirm and warmly receive these doctrines, this sort of rhetoric nevertheless strike me as a little odd. First, I'm honestly not sure how the glory or honor of God creates necessity. True, the absolute holiness, glory, and honor of God are central to his character, his person, etc. So, yes, there is a sense in which God must "be true" to those things, but I'm not sure where the hook is that the idea of "necessity" can get hung on. Why must God defend himself? How is God bound to a modus operandi of self-preservation? It seems that it is actually "self-preservation" which ends up becoming the controlling factor. That is, the "necessity" is not really grounded in the glory or honor of God, it is instead grounded in this other, not-so-often-mentioned controlling attribute of God called "self-preservation." And to follow the usual systematic formulation, this attribute of self-preservation would seem to be one of those incommunicable attributes, a characteristic of God which is not shared with humanity, and one which we are actually called to utterly renounce (according to the pattern of the cross). It seems very strange to make the foundational characteristic and attribute of God one which humanity is called upon to completely forsake and renounce.
Secondly, while the honor and glory of God are certainly pervasive themes in Scripture, it just sounds strange to put things in the way Piper and others put it. On the surface the rhetoric sounds pious and high-minded, but it really sounds like God is a tyrant and glory-monger. Of course, the Pipers of the world insist that because God is God, he is therefore due all glory and all praise. And it is a rhetorically defensible position ("Are you saying God doesn't deserve all glory and honor?").
I have great appreciation for what Piper and others have done in the church, and I have fond memories of being very edified by Desiring God. But what I would suggest or offer is that both of these areas (the glory of God in salvation and the preservation of God's honor in the atonement, and perhaps others) would benefit greatly from more emphasis on the doctrine of the Trinity.
It seems to me to be far more persuasive and explanatory to explain the "glory of God" as the Father glorifying the Son and the Spirit, the Son glorifying the Father and the Spirit, and the Spirit giving back all glory to the Father and the Son. And this mutual glory-giving and honor-giving is the eternal friendship and communion of the One Eternal God. This bond, this relationship, this COVENANT is where the necessity comes from. The persons of the Trinity are so passionate (to use one of Piper's favorite words) for each other that they jealously defend one another. Thus when Adam sinned against the Father who created the world and disobeyed his Word, it was the Spirit who came to call Adam to account (Gen. 3:8), defending the glory and the honor of the Father and the Son. Because Adam's sin grieved the Spirit which had been breathed into Adam for life and righteousness, the Father and the Son determined to avenge the honor and the glory of the Spirit. I suspect that the history of Israel might be told somewhat along these lines, showing the persons of the Trinity defending one another, seeking the glory of the others, ultimately culminating in the person and work of Jesus Christ. It is after all the Father and the Spirit glorifying the Son in the baptism of Jesus and at his transfiguration. It is the Son who is seeking the glory of the Father in his sufferings and resurrection and the same Son who glorifies the Spirit by sending him into the Church. Thus the cross, and the Atonement in general, is the persons of the Trinity at work restoring the glory and the honor of one another.
The Father and the Spirit send the Son into the world in the incarnation to defend the glory of the Son (witness the baptism, transfiguration, resurrection, and ascension). It is the Son who defends the honor and glory of the Father and the Spirit by offering himself up and accepting the justice of the Father on the cross (due to man for his sin). The Spirit vindicates the honor and glory of the Son (and the Father) by raising the Son from the dead. The Father and the Son vindicate the honor and glory of the Spirit by sending the Spirit back into the world into the new humanity in the Church. And so on.
All of this preserves the basic point of Piper and others who want to see some sort of necessity in the grace of salvation and a substitutionary atonement. It just seems like we display that necessity better in terms of the trinitarian relationship. The glory and honor of God is not about a hermit-deity up in the clouds scraping and demanding more glory and bashing the hell out of an innocent man on a cross because his creatures offended his pride. Rather, it is the eternally jealous love of the Father, Son and Spirit at work defending the honor and glory of the other persons which is displayed in the Incarnation and Atonement and likewise it is this same "necessity" at work in the saving of individuals. The reason all glory must be given to God in the salvation of individuals is because that is how the Trinity works. The Spirit is at work in the world to give all glory to the Father and the Son. And when an individual becomes aware of this mission of the Spirit (conversion), and comes to be united to the Son, he joins in giving glory to the Father and the Son, and the Father and the Son in turn direct their attention back on the Spirit, teaching the individual that it was all the work of the Spirit, and the Spirit says it was all the Son, and the Son says it was all the wisdom of the Father, and so on and so on. It is all about the glory of God; it is all about the honor of God. But this God is the eternal and all glorious Trinity, Father, Son, and Spirit eternally committed to giving themselves up for one another.
There is another attribute in the Godhead which creates the necessity to protect and defend the glory of God. But that attribute is not self-preservation. Rather, it is just the opposite. It is the attribute of love: self-denying, self-giving, self-sacrificing love. It is the attribute of love that the persons of the Trinity have for one another that demands justice, glory, and honor for the other persons of the Trinity. And of course this love is an attribute that we are called to share in, to imitate, and it is the glory of God to invite us into it. Thus, Piper is right: the chief end of man is the glory of God AND the chief end of God is the glory of God.
Let me just add as an addendum that Piper and others may in fact be emphasizing these things too. I have only read Desiring God and heard a couple of other distillations of his work in various presentations and such. If that is the case, I'm thankful and wish someone would point me to the goods.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
The Vision of God by Vladimir Lossky
Note: This summer I have the privilege of conducting an independent study with Dr. Hughes Oliphant Old, professor of reformed liturgics at Erskine Theological Seminary who also used to lecture at Princeton Theological Seminary. As part of that study, I have been reading a number of books related to our studies of Christian worship. I will attempt to post my summaries of those books as I complete them. Here is the third.
The Vision of God by Vladimir Lossky
Vladimir Lossky’s The Vision of God is an intriguing historical study concerning how a number of church fathers, leading up through the Byzantine tradition, have sought to reconcile the complete “otherness” and incomprehensibility of God in his essence with the promise and hope of in some sense seeing, comprehending, and even partaking of that “divinity.” Lossky notes that by “vision of God” we mean “theology” in its most basic sense: that is, knowing God.
Lossky begins by noting this great mystery and question in Scripture, the promise that at some point the people of God shall “see him as he is” (1 Jn. 3:2) coupled with the statements that God has not been seen at any time (Jn. 4:12) nor can he be seen (1 Tim. 6:16). There are various ways of tackling this tension. Some have differentiated between the present unperfected state and the final glorified, beatific state. Others insist that a distinction must be made between God’s essence and his “energies,” distinguishing that aspect of God which truly is unknowable and that which may be revealed and partaken of by creatures. At the heart of this conversation are of course questions of ontology and epistemology, basic presuppositions concerning being and knowing. And this, Lossky maintains, is central to why many more recent western theologians (16th and 17th century theologians and their successors) have misunderstood the Byzantine tradition on this subject. Working from a late medieval scholastic framework, these later theologians see the denial of a “vision of God” in his essence in the early eastern Fathers culminating in Gregory Palamas (1296-1359) as an incomprehensible error, particularly as the western tradition had formulated a very favorable affirmation of the possibility and hope of seeing God. Lossky suggests that this misjudgment is rooted in a clash of philosophies and terminology as well as an unwillingness to give charitable readings to theologians in a different tradition on a difficult subject matter.
From this introduction, Lossky proceeds through a brief sketch of the biblical data relevant to the question of a “vision of God.” Clearly such an idea is prevalent throughout the Scriptures. From the reoccurring “angel of Yahweh” or “angel of the Presence” to the experiences and aspirations of Moses and Job there is a clear expectation and understanding that while such an experience might be frightful it is one to be desired and one which human creatures are in some sense capable of. Lossky finishes this section noting that one of the important New Testament texts is found in 1 Corinthians 13 where the context concerns Paul’s theology of love. Here, the apostle insists upon a right relationship between love and knowledge, maintaining that the former is a necessary prerequisite for the latter. And therefore the statement concerning our “face to face” knowing and the promise that “I shall know just as I also am known” (13:12) must be understood in the context of this love-based knowing. Lossky says, “An object is known; this is an imperfect knowledge in which there is no reciprocity; where there is reciprocity of knowledge, knowledge signifies a relationship between persons, it is determined by [agape]” (p. 31).
At this point, Lossky begins his historical overview, summoning up a number of witnesses for examination to consider the views on “vision theology.” He begins with several early church fathers (prior to Byzantine theology proper) and then traces significant themes up through the centuries. St. Theophilus of Antioch (late 2nd century), writing from such an early period, is not working with a highly developed terminology to describe what he means. Nevertheless, Lossky suggests that Theophilus puts most of his emphasis on the eschatological reality of a vision of God, that is, at the resurrection the Christian will experience a manifestation of God “to the extent that he has become worthy of seeing Him.” However, while there is no “direct vision” yet, Theophilus does acknowledge the present/historical manifestation of God in creation and particularly in and through the Son and the Holy Spirit. St. Irenaeus of Lyon writing around the same time, follows Theophilus by emphasizing the present revelation of the unknowable nature of God in the Incarnation. He says, “The Father is the invisible nature of the Son, while the Son is the visible nature of the Father” (p. 36). Irenaeus develops this in a distinctly Trinitarian direction: There is a “prophetic vision” of God through the Holy Spirit re-establishing the image of God in mankind, there is the “vision of adoption” which the Son secures, and finally a “vision of the Father” which will occur at the resurrection. This final vision Irenaeus seems to suggest is causally related to the life of the resurrection. What formerly humans could not see will now become the very source of the incorruptible life. This Trinitarian vision is a process of increasing “participation” in the life of God which Irenaeus traces through the Old Testament economies through the Incarnation and projects forward to the consummation of all things which continues this growing vision of God which bestows more and more of the incorruptible life upon humanity. For Irenaeus, this participation in God is the ontological basis of all being.
Next, Lossky examines early Alexandrian theology as represented by Clement, Origen, and Athanasius. Here, Lossky notes that these theologians were heavily influenced by Platonic and Gnostic thought. They were certainly able to resist full capitulation to the Hellenistic milieu, but rather than “Christianizing Hellenistic spirituality [as they hoped], Clement and Origen almost succeeded in spiritualizing Christianity” (p. 68). Their emphasis was heavily trained on the intellectual faculties of meditation and contemplation which ultimately resulted in what one writer described as a “super-intellectualistic mysticism” (p. 47). While Athanasius would do much better, recalling the Irenaean emphasis of participation, and recognizing this in the life of the church, he would nevertheless still describe this participation in terms of being raised “beyond all sensible things,” ceaseless contemplation, and other descriptions which strongly remind readers of his forbearers.
The Cappodocians, facing the challenge of Arianism and (its extreme proponents) the “Anomoeans,” insisted on defining the essence or ousia of God in terms of the Trinity. This meant distinguishing between the outward acts, energies, operations, or names of God from God’s essence. Thus contemplation of God and participation in deity became explicitly Trinitarian, contemplation of the persons and participation in the communion of the Trinity. But where Origen and Clement and (to some extent) Athanasius assumed a Platonic cosmology and ontology, the Cappodocian fathers spoke of that which transcends creation as God himself, the communion of the Trinity (instead of some sort of disembodied, spiritual-mental existence). Furthermore, the knowledge of God is transcended to become love of the persons of the Trinity, a personalism has developed which on the one hand still sounds somewhat esoteric and mystical and yet on the other hand clearly shows the potential for more.
In the Syro-Palestinians and Cyril of Jerusalem we find another interesting Christological emphasis and trend in theology. Where many of the previous theologians have stressed the elevation and transcendence necessary for humanity to have a vision of God, to participate in the divine life, these theologians placed greater stress on the incarnation and the revelation of God in the humanity of Christ. The incarnation became central to understanding how humanity might have intimate communion with the Trinity. Just as God became man, filling (and fulfilling) a human body with the life of the Trinity (and the Son in particular), so too every human has the capability of being filled with the divine life and brought into the intimacy of the Trinity. Therefore having the Holy Spirit indwell humans is to have the life of Christ indwelling. This being the case and Christ being the revelation of the glory and beauty and life of the Trinity, humans filled with this same Spirit are made partakers of the divine life.
Following these developments, Lossky surveys several ascetics, a couple of whom follow in the Origenistic “intellectual mysticism” paths while at least one, St. Diadochus of Photice, sought a better way. Diadochus uses a great deal of mystical sounding vocabulary, but what differentiates him from the others is his distinction between essence and energies and his stress on the revelation of God being found in the incarnation and the Son. But Lossky argues that it is finally in the St. Dionysus the Areopagite and Maximus the Confessor of the sixth century where Origen (and Platonism) is left behind. In these two theologians the distinction between essence and energies is maintained but in addition, the physicality of humanity and creation is reclaimed from the spiritualism of Origen. Again looking to the incarnation as a model, the attributes or energies of God (his “names” as some refer to them) are, by grace, bestowed upon humans much like the hypostatic union of the natures in Christ. In this perochoretic union of divine and human natures, the intelligible and sensible faculties, both body and soul are no longer opposed but reunited and united in persons to commune with the Triune persons of the Godhead.
This study finally comes to a climax with chapters devoted to St. John Damascene (and Byzantine spirituality in general) and St. Gregory Palamas. In John Damascene we see again the distinction between the essence and outward attributes of God, and he points out the pneumatological dimensions of human participation in God. The transfiguration of Christ is pointed to as a revelation not of something new but rather of that which was always true but veiled to the eyes of most. Thus it is the Holy Spirit who fills humans and reveals to their eyes the Incarnate Son as the revelation of the Trinity. This united contemplation (of heart and mind, body and soul) has been the emphasis of Hesychasm, a particular method of prayer in the East which is often criticized by the West. While Lossky seeks to defend the Hesychasts from their critics, his main intent seems to be to show how many of these same theologians grounded this “vision of God” in the liturgical life of the Church. This grace and the gift of the Holy Spirit were seen to be available to all through baptism (p. 148) and central to the prayers of the people of God. Ultimately, according to Lossky, Palamas’ naysayers have re-embraced Origen’s Platonism (p. 156) where they (Palamas’ critics) have made grace an avenue, a habitus which leads them down a path. Fundamentally, Lossky says the disagreement over the “vision of God” is based upon the understanding of the “nature of grace” (p. 156). For Palamas and many of his Eastern predecessors, grace is not the possibility or potential for communion with God; grace is the presence of God in and with us (p. 166).
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