Monthly Archives: July 2019

Speaking OF God Rather Than ABOUT, Speaking OF the Text Rather Than ABOUT: Josh Harris and the Classical Calvinists as a Case Study

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I just recently had interaction with some classical Calvinists, once again. The topic was Josh Harris and his ‘apostatizing,’ from the faith of Christ. The claim was made that Harris was unregenerate all along: “It’s sobering that an unregenerate pastor could give God’s people great insights into the Scripture without knowing the God of the Scriptures. It’s also sobering to think that many who were with the Apostles turned away from the Gospel preached by the Apostles (2 Tim. 4:10).”[1] But at this moment I am less interested in discussing Harris, and am more focused on the hermeneutical theory to arrive at the exegetical conclusion that someone like Harris was unregenerate all along. My interlocutor references 2 Tim, but more apropos, and what I think is informing even more didactically is 1 John 2:18-19, which reads: “18 Children, it is the last hour, and just as you have heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have arisen, by which we know that it is the last hour. 19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us. But they went out[, in order that it might be shown that all of them are not of us.” This represents hard teaching, which 2 Tim. is illustrative of rather than a direct teaching. But this issue, again, points up, in my view, a prior commitment to a particular theological or dogmatic construct which is used to artificially arrive at exegetical conclusions that aren’t as ‘objectively’ present in the [con]text as it might seem. Categorically we might affirm the idea, in a de jure fashion, that there are people who fabricate an appearance of salvation in order to reach certain social statuses, and other achievements; whatever vanity might drive those. But just because there are a sampling of people who meet this criteria, as laid out in passages like 1 John and 2 Timothy, does not necessarily mean at a de facto level that all people who “deny the faith,” are not ‘regenerate,’ per se. In other words, it would be wrong to simply read passages like 2 Tim. and 1 Jn. and presume that all people, at a prima facie level, simply fit that category in a reduced way. And this gets us into the issue of theological exegesis.

All people do theological exegesis when they read Holy Scripture; even atheists. If Kant has taught us anything, he has taught us that we are captive to our own enculturation and location; as such, we need to be critically aware of this, and understand how that impacts our interpretation of the biblical text. This is where many classical Calvinists, and many others (myself included) fall prey to the idea that their ‘confessions, creeds, and catechisms,’ represent some sort of objective standard by which the “most faithful” reading of Scripture can be gained in codified fashion. With this belief in hand, the classical Calvinist (just picking on them for this post) feels free to dogmatically assert that someone like Harris was never regenerate to begin with; and this having less to do with the biblical texts, and more to do with the metaphysics and doctrinal material that stands behind their reading of the text. For example, in the history of interpretation, classical Calvinists have concepts like ‘temporary faith’ and ‘experimental predestinarianism’ at play. Temporary faith (which Calvin ironically also held to) is the idea that someone can look, sound, and smell like one of the elect, but in the end never really were to begin with. We can see how this might superficially correlate with a passage like 1 Jn. 2. Conversely, experimental predestinarianism maintains that a person might indeed have only a temporary non-efficacious faith, and as such the proof in the pudding will be to see if they actually and finally persevere to the end. If not, they never were one of the elect, and thus never were “of us.” With these doctrinal loci in play the classical Calvinist will dogmatically read these into passages like we’ve had reference to, and arrive at conclusions that the text itself, in contextual array, may well not be teaching whatsoever.

All of the aforementioned noted to get us into a discussion about how our engagement of Holy Scripture always entails a level of subjectivity that cannot simply be surpassed by assertion. In order to push into this further I wanted to refer to David Congdon’s treatment of Rudolf Bultmann, and how Bultmann confronts the faulty notion of catechetical objectivity as that implicates our interpretation of the biblical text. Congdon writes:

Bultmann’s response is one he would continue to give throughout the entirety of his career: such an approach is simply impossible. “Every exegesis, as something undertaken by a subject, is subjective.” The claim by these forms of modern exegesis to have overcome subjectivity by way of a fixed method is simply a “new subjectivism,” for the chosen method is always the “perspective that follows from the underlying interpretation of human existence.” The very selection and execution of a method is a subjective act, involving specific judgments and contextual presuppositions. For that reason “there is no neutral exegesis.” The modern pursuit of a purely nonsubjective interpretation is an act of “self-delusion,” for “the interpretation [Auslegung] of the text always goes hand in hand with the self-interpretation [Selbstauslegung] of the exegete.” To interpret the text is to interpret oneself, or rather, to find oneself interpreted by another.

Here we have the hermeneutical equivalent of Bultmann’s theological-epistemological claim, also published in 1925, that “talking of God, if it were possible, would necessarily be at the same time a talking of oneself.” In the same way that there can be no meaningful talk about God, so there can be no meaningful talk about the text. Talking about each is the delusional attempt to confine either God or the text to a purportedly objective and neutral method. Instead, one can only meaningfully talk of God and of the text, which means there has to be a genuine encounter in each case, one in which the human subject participates in the reality of the subject matter. The pursuit of neutrality is the truly pernicious form of subjectivism, for there the human subject is in full control of the text that denies the text’s capacity to speak to us with authority. For this reason “exegesis must be explicitly guided by the question of self-interpretation, if it does not want to fall into subjectivism.”[2]

In order to engage Scripture under the terms outlined for us by Congdon, vis-à-vis Bultmann, requires that the interpreter live in a mode of vulnerability and humility before the living God with trust that God truly speaks and has the pneumatic capacity to confront us in all of our vainglorious certainty about just how things are. The moral of Congdon’s development is ‘the question of self-interpretation,’ this is a matter of being self-critical and understanding that we never approach the text of Scripture from a neutral standpoint. In the case of the Harris and classical Calvinist example, the reality is that the classical Calvinist exegete ends up reading an a priori theological construct onto the text of Scripture with the result leading to a view that absolutely damns Harris (and others like Harris) to an eternal hell. But maybe the classical Calvinist should move slower. If we are being self-critical interpreters, do these texts operate from an inner-theological thrust that necessarily leads the exegete to the classical Calvinist conclusion about Josh Harris? Is it possible that the collectively formed confessions and creeds appealed to by such interpreters are so mired in the subjectivities of their drafters that the text of Scripture ends up being sublated by the culturally inspired intellectual mores of their day?

These are deep matters. But the basic point should be to highlight the fact that we all bring theological constructs to the exegesis of Holy Scripture. The question remains: which constructs are most organically proximate to the Gospel reality? Which constructs are most open to recognizing that God still speaks; that He didn’t stop doing that in 16th and 17th century Western Europe? These are important questions. There are important questions to ask of Bultmann’s thinking as well. That will have to wait for another day.

[1] Anonymous Facebook Source.

[2] David W. Congdon, The Mission Of Demythologizing: Rudolf Bultmann’s Dialectical Theology (Minneapolis: Fortess Press, 2015), 716-17.

 

Engaging with Analytic Theology Once More

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This is going to be short, but I wanted to briefly follow up on my last post. I offered an engagement with an analytic theological thinker named Ryan Wellington. In my engagement I hadn’t fully finished reading his essay; I have since. I am not fully persuaded of his argument in regard to the propositional nature of revelation; even though I think Revelation entails propositions. But beyond that, and more generally, I want to register my thoughts on Analytic Theology as a project and intellectual program. I had a significant exchange with my friend, Andrew Torrance, on Twitter, in regard to the value of Analytic Theology (or not). Torrance is right in the hub of a significant movement of what has come to be known as Analytic Theology; he works among others like his father, Alan, and then his colleague, Oliver Crisp. Torrance helped me to see his vision of what analytic theology entails, particularly for him. Indeed, Andrew has recently published an essay on that vision which you read here. Andrew’s theological dispositions are in alignment with mine, in many ways. He is a Kierkegaard scholar, and could broadly be pin-pointed as ‘Barthian’ in orientation (if not Torrancean 😉 ). His desire, as I can tell, is to make use of the tradition of rigor that analytic Philosophy has worked with traditionally. And beyond that he seeks to foster a relationship between systematic theologians and analytic philosophers that can be seen as an interdisciplinarian endeavor with the hopes of mutually enriching both sides of that equation. The “enrichment” could be known as ‘Analytic Theology.’

With the above noted, I want to register that I remain skeptical of the analytic theology project. I remain skeptical because I believe that the form of theologizing the Christian theologian engages in impacts the material messaging that is produced by deploying whatever form. In the case of analytic theology the sought after form is to deploy the rigor and insights of analytic philosophers in order to explicate the Christian Dogma for the Church. But in my view analytic philosophy is not simply a formal project, but as apiece, it entails material ideation that is not neutral vis-à-vis Sacra Doctrina (as Thomas might say it). I think in contrast to analytic philosophy the kerygma or Gospel itself comes with its own sort of rigor and definitional elegance, such that if the theologian sits immersed under its pressure that they will arrive at a sui generis style of communication that is correlative to the Gospel itself. When the theologian sits under the pressurized weight of God’s glory revealed in the Gospel, ever afresh and anew, what they come to produce is a ratio that can be just as precise as the analytic theologian purports to be, but precise in such a way that the form itself is deeply doxological and dialogical, even devotional in orientation. I think the literature of the Church is rife with examples of the sort of kerygmatic rigor I am referring to.

Since I am out of time I will have to leave it here. Don’t get me wrong, I fully respect many in the analytic theology movement, but I remain skeptical because I think there are better ways and a better form towards being Christianly rigorous in the theological endeavor. And at a personal level: when I read analytic theology I don’t walk away from that experience feeling ‘edified,’ instead I walk away with this sort of sense that the form of the theology I just read coopted the message it is supposedly seeking to explicate with rigor. And this is why I see form and material as mutually implicating in the theological task. I know Andrew T disagrees with me on this, but this is where I currently stand.

Engaging With Some Analytic Theology: Ryan Wellington’s Argument for Divine Revelation as Propositional

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The following comes from a paper Ryan Wellington recently published through the Journal of Analytic Theology, his essay is titled: Divine Revelation as Propositional. Typically, as an after Barth thinker I am repulsed by emphasizing revelation as propositional; instead, I like to emphasize revelation as personal. But Wellington parses his development on revelation in such a way that he understands revelation as propositional from within what he identifies as acquaintance knowledge. As such Wellington argues the following thesis (and more, but not less): “Divine revelation, as I will argue, cannot be merely propositional if, by it, we are to have acquaintance with the persons of God. Instead, I agree with Wahlberg (2014, 41) that Divine revelation is nothing less than propositional, and as my thesis for this paper, I will defend the idea that the propositional model of Divine revelation deserves renewed attention.”[1] When I initially read the title, particularly as that is situated in a journal called Journal of Analytic Theology, I presumed that Wellington would be arguing for a theory of revelation that was necessarily at odds with the conception of personalist revelation that I am most prone towards. I have not yet finished the essay in full, so my move to laud Wellington’s argument, or least certain lineaments might be premature; but in keeping with the trajectory of his essay thus far, it would be surprising to me if my current impression proves errant. That said, let’s read along with Wellington, and engage with what I take to be at least laudable; if not from a purely analytic mode of engagement. Wellington writes (in extenso):

Second, it would seem that through Divine revelation we come to an acquaintance knowledge of God whereby we know Him intimately; thus, it would seem that acquaintance knowledge is a good candidate for a complete account of knowledge of Divine revelation. However, I think that such an account would be incomplete: although acquaintance knowledge is distinct from propositional knowledge, it seems to me that knowledge by acquaintance of persons (in whatever way one is acquainted with persons through a public means instead of by a private means) is mediated by propositional knowledge. One does not sufficiently possess acquaintance knowledge of another person through public means except by possessing propositional knowledge of that person (e.g., where they are from, what their values and preferences are, what habits they have, what their occupation is, who their friends are, what they possess, what they have said or done, how they have said or done something). Taken in this sense acquaintance knowledge, although distinct from propositional knowledge, supervenes on propositional knowledge.

In this way, knowledge of God by Divine revelation may—and ought—to become an acquaintance knowledge of God, but the type of knowledge of Divine revelation that yields acquaintance knowledge is propositional knowledge. Along a similar line of reasoning, Lamont (2004, 13) writes, “We do not have a self-disclosure of God in revelation instead of a communication of knowledge. Rather it is in part through a communication of knowledge that God’s self-disclosure takes place.” With similar reasoning Abraham (1981, 80) writes:

If God were to communicate certain propositions to an individual then that in itself would normally entail that God has revealed something of himself. Thus if God were to say “I am faithful to my covenant with my people Israel,” this would reveal something about God himself. It is misguided, therefore, to insist that any revelation made by asserting propositions somehow contradicts the claim that the content of revelation is God himself. Indeed such verbal revelation is crucial to our understanding of God.

This emphasis on propositions as a vehicle for God’s self-disclosure is the substance of what I meant in the introduction of this paper by the idea that Divine revelation is not less than propositional: that this propositional revelation is meant to fundamentally unite the human person to God in a disclosure of God that offers a higher kind of knowledge than that of propositional knowledge—an acquaintance knowledge from propositional knowledge. Thus we might say that the propositional model of revelation is the foundation of Divine revelation but that “revelation is a broader concept than divine speaking” (Lamont, 2004, 5).

In this way, Divine revelation offers propositions, but it offers more than just propositions, particularly in cases of manifestational revelation whereby we are even more apt to acquaintance knowledge (Wahlberg 2014):

Revelation is an epistemic concept: it has to do with knowledge, and knowledge is, or involves, a propositional attitude (an attitude toward a proposition). Propositions, therefore, necessarily figure in both propositional and manifestational revelation. God, or any agent, cannot make knowledge of some reality available to a subject except by making knowledge of some proposition available. So even though manifestational revelation does not essentially involve propositions known by the revealer, it still essentially involves propositions as the entities revealed. . . .  In manifestational revelation, therefore, the entities revealed can (and often do) include more than just propositions, while in nonmanifestational revelation they include only propositions. If God appears to a person in a mystical experience, or as the incarnate Son of God in Palestine two thousand years ago (which would be examples of manifestational revelation), then God reveals both some proposition about himself (propositions, as we remember, figure necessarily in any kind of revelation), but also something that is not a proposition, namely God himself (30-31). . . .  [R]evelation indeed is more than a transmission of information. The crucial point is that it cannot be less (41).

In a similar way, St. Thomas Aquinas (ST IIa-IIæ. q.1. a.2. ad.2.) writes that “the act of the believer does not terminate in a proposition, but in a thing.” This is such that God’s revelation always consists in—but offers more than—propositional content. This propositional content is, itself, not the object of the revelation but the threshold that we cross to enter into acquaintance. The object of the revelation—that to which the propositions refer—is God. Thus, by the propositions of revelation we develop acquaintance with God, and this knowledge by acquaintance is itself distinct from propositional knowledge. It “is non-propositional and . . . is not reducible to knowledge that” even though it arises from or accompanies (in the case of manifestational revelation) propositional knowledge (Stump 2010, 51). As Lamont (1996, 407) writes, “Divine revelation is not primarily a set of first aid instructions for dealing with sin, or a set of directions that tell us how to find our way to God.” Instead, it is a means of bringing “us into a personal relationship with Christ. It does contain some first aid instructions and directions, but these are all based on this personal relationship, and presuppose it.” Wahlberg (2014, 14–15) seems to agree here as well:

I do not think that revelation is only, or principally, about grasping propositions. I think that revelation is mainly about getting to know a person, Jesus Christ. Furthermore, I believe that coming to know Christ through revelation requires a graced transformation, which is effected by participation in the sacramental life of the church. Revelation, therefore, involves much more than divinely asserted propositions.[2]

In keeping with Wellington’s intention to prove the soundness of his thesis, that revelation is not less than propositional, he emphasizes the role that propositions mediate as a sort of epistemic bridge between the revelation and revelator. If we were to leave things here I would have found his argument unacceptable. But Wellington doesn’t leave it here, and as we have seen, situates propositional knowledge of God, within a broader category called acquaintance knowledge; and to further specify acquaintance knowledge he qualifies further by distinguishing between manifestational and non-manifestational acquaintance knowledge. For the Christian conception of God, Wellington seems to locate all knowledge of God within acquaintance knowledge as a prius. In other words, Wellington understands that in order for propositions to have referential meaning they must first be grounded in a manifestational mode of God’s acquaintance with the recipients of His Self-manifestation. Even though Wellington seems to be arguing that propositions serve in an epistemically instrumental mode vis-à-vis the broader category of acquaintance, he is not also arguing that revelation can be reduced to propositions themselves; instead, that propositions only have in-formational force insofar as those first come through a participatory involvement with God among those who have become acquainted with Him.

Insofar as I understand Wellingtons’ argument thus far, I don’t think I have a problem with it. Of course, you can see how I am emphasizing the acquaintance structure of knowledge of God. I might be reading my own theological disposition into that, and emphasizing it in a way that belies Wellingtons’ whole argument. Even so, I have no problem affirming the notion that propositions serve as instrumental means whereby God’s voice in Christ comes to make meaning-ful sense; but only insofar that these signs/propositions (signum) find their ultimate reality (res) in the living reality of the mysterium Trinitatis (so the personal and confrontational ground, of course!).

My fear is that if we were to reduce knowledge of God to propositions, as the lead, that might reduce our relationship or acquaintance with God to a structurally linguistic reality that denudes the personal notes that I think our mystical union with God imbibes. If we see propositional knowledge of God as a predicate of God’s speech for us in and through His accommodating humiliation towards us in the Christ, then I am fine with that. As long as we emphasize the instrumental and yet seemingly necessary role that propositions, as informers, play in the process of us coming to know God personally; in meaningful and effervescent ways. I probably wouldn’t argue for the propositional revelational model, per se, but I can see some value in the way Wellington is seemingly arguing for it.

 

 

[1] R.A. Wellington, “Divine Revelation as Propositional,” Journal of Analytic Theology, Vol. 7, June 2019: 156-77. Accessed 07-24-2019.

[2] Ibid.

The Problem of God, Evil, Cancer and My Nurse

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It is just over nine years ago now that I was laid up in my hospital bed at OHSU in Portland, OR; I was being treated for an incurable, rare, and highly aggressive cancer known as Desmoplastic Small Round Cell Tumor sarcoma (DSRCT). The prognosis of this particular cancer is almost always imminent death (within two years of being diagnosed); there is no actual protocol or treatment for this cancer, so they often use a closely related protocol that is used for Ewing’s sarcoma. I was enduring this treatment with hopes of debulking my tumor (and lymph node) enough to make my tumor operable. It was in the early stages of this treatment that I was assigned a young nurse who would administer my chemo-cocktail every now and cycle. She was an upbeat person, and took special care of me. She noticed that I had my Bible next to my bed, and that I was often reading it; she said she believed in ‘the power of positive thinking,’ and that she encouraged patients to find that positivity from whatever source they could. This was dissatisfying to me, and my wife (who sat with me through it all). So, I told her I wasn’t attempting to wish myself better, but that I was entrusting myself to the living God who had risen in Jesus Christ for me and the world. She said she had problems with believing in a God who would allow someone like me, and so many of her other patients in the cancer ward, to suffer the ravages of cancer that she was surrounded by each and every day. She asked me how I and my wife could continue to believe in a God who ostensibly has the power to heal people, or not allow such sicknesses at all, and then doesn’t in fact heal or prevent such things. My response was that He already has come and healed the world from it all, even from death. That we simply must walk by faith rather than sight in the current moment, and know that God is drawing people to Himself in the midst of all the pain and suffering that WE have brought upon the world through our choice to go our way rather than God’s (as first initiated by our parents Adam and Eve). I told her that even though God didn’t cause all the sin and suffering in the world, but that we did; I told her that because He is a gracious and loving God, He freely chose to enter into that world for us, assume our humanity, and take all of that pain and evil with Him to the cross. I told her that He killed all of that evil and heinousness, and that the capstone of that is that He didn’t stay dead but that He rose again. That He ascended to the right hand of the Father, and from thence He always lives to make intercession for all those who will inherit eternal life. I told her that this is how I continued to believe in this God; the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. She took it all in, and we didn’t see her again tell another two cycles later. Next time I saw her I asked her if she had considered what we had talked about. She said she did, and that she could now believe in this God, and in fact did.

Some philosophers and theologians speak of Theodicy (the supposed problem of God and evil). But there is no problem, not for God. The problem is from our below perspective, and our false expectations for God to operate per our terms that we project upon the concept of God we think ought to be rather than actually is. God doesn’t answer to our questions. Instead He presents us with the questions that we ought to ask of Him, and in those questions He has provided the answer He has decided for us in Christ. We walk by faith not sight when we allow God to be the all in all; when we submit to His No to our sin, and then His Yes to our justification in and through the accomplishment of that through the assumed flesh of Jesus Christ for us. At the end of the day this is the reality that will prevail; the glory of God will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.

An Anatomy of Unbelief in the Physical/Literal Resurrection of Jesus Christ: Engaging With the “Logic” of Bultmann’s [and Congdon’s] Rejection of the Cosmogony of Holy Scripture

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Here I want to address the anatomy of Rudolf Bultmann’s unbelief in the historicity and physical/literal/bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. So, I will share a lengthy quote from David Congdon on Bultmann’s thought, in this regard, and then provide my commentary latterly.

The political dimension of Bultmann’s hermeneutical program is only one aspect, albeit a crucial and often-overlooked one. Given its importance to Bultmann, we also need to address the question of natural science. The cultural world-pictures the kerygma traverses in its ongoing movement through history include, among other things, cosmological assumptions. In other words, a Weltbild involves presuppositions about not only the kind of God who acts in the world but also the kind of world in which God acts. Bultmann signals this at the very beginning of his Entmythologisierungsvortrag, where he presents as a key mark of the mythical Weltbild the idea that the world consists of “three stories,” with earth in the middle, heaven above, and the underworld below. It is at this same level of cultural Weltbild or “social imaginary” that Bultmann places the modern scientific method, within which we live. In contrast to the mythical Weltbild, “in this modern world-picture the link between cause and effect is fundamental.” Bultmann’s cultural context presupposes “a closed interdependent nexus [Wirkungs-zusammenhang] in which individual events are connected by the succession of cause and effect. Miracles, in the sense of publicly visible and objectifiable occurrences, belong to a foreign cultural context that no longer obtains in modernity. Deconstantinizing therefore entails the radical differentiation of the kerygma from the cosmological assumptions of the ancient world and the translation of the kerygma into new contexts operating under new cosmological-scientific norms.

As scandalous as it may sound, Bultmann’s rejection of all supernaturalism, including the literal interpretation of the resurrection as a physical occurrence, is actually in service of the missionary truth of the gospel. Gerhard Ebeling spells out the logic of Bultmann’s move in his own dogmatic inquiry into this issue. The traditional notion of resurrection makes use of “apocalyptic modes of thinking” and “apocalyptic conceptual elements” that belong to an “apocalyptic world-picture,” and “we cannot assume that the apocalyptic thought-forms are a world-picture we could readily make our own.” The notion of the resurrection of the dead “belongs to a world that has become strange [fremd] to us,” indeed, to “a world-picture that has become obsolete.” We need not get into the details of the debate over apocalyptic. The point here is simply that to make the traditional notion of resurrection a sine qua non of genuine Christian faith is to conflate the kerygma with an alien cultural thought-form and thus to replace “a liberating experience of faith” with “an oppressive law of faith.” Faith in Christ cannot be bound to antiquated or alien cosmologies, even if the translations of the kerygma into those alien contexts are entirely valid and remain a valuable witness for contemporary communities of faith. It is both possible and necessary for the church to carry out translations of the kerygma into a modern context in which the scientific norms of the day render impossible the ancient apocalyptic Weltbild, at least in its literal, mythological form, just as our context today renders impossible ancient cosmology, biology, and the like. We no longer accept antiquated accounts of the planetary system or human reproduction, for example, nor should we.[1]

What to say?

17 For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to proclaim the gospel, not with clever speech, lest the cross of Christ be emptied. 18 For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written,“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,and the intelligence of the intelligent I will confound.”20 Where is the wise person? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom did not know God, God was pleased through the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe. 22 For indeed, Jews ask for sign miracles and Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a cause for stumbling, but to the Gentiles foolishness, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. –I Corinthians 1.17-25

12 Now if Christ is preached as raised up from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, Christ has not been raised either. 14 But if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is in vain. 15 And also we are found to be false witnesses of God, because we testified against God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if after all, then, the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, Christ has not been raised either. 17 But if Christ has not been raised, your faith is empty; you are still in your sins. 18 And as a further result, those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19 If we have put our hope in Christ in this life only, we are of all people most pitiable. –I Corinthians 15.12-19

There is no compelling reason to follow Bultmann’s line of reasoning. He is responding to his own German contextual problematics, and attempting to work within ad hoc conditions that the reality of Holy Scripture and the Holy Life of the Triune God know nothing about; except in condemnation at the cross of Christ.

Yet, Bultmann (and Congdon following) unfortunately presume that to ‘go back’ to an alien Weltbild or ‘world-picture’ is a move of intellectual sacrifice (sacrificium intellectus) that any modern person simply won’t commit themselves to. It is this sort of evolutionary progressive and linear understanding of historical intellectual development that Bultmann, Congdon et al have unnecessarily committed themselves to, and that has led them to think the 20th and 21st century thinkers simply can no longer abide by the strange and “antiquated” world of the ancients. But what is rather strange to me is the notion that just because there was a certain phenomenological understanding of the cosmos in “biblical times” that we must necessarily, according to Bultmann’s logic, throw the belief in the resurrection out with that cosmogony in toto. I am unclear why this is necessary. What if the cosmology and the “apocalyptical” view of the world in say Second Temple Judaism, and even more anciently, is more advanced than the modern understanding of the world? What if the modern understanding of the world is antiquated by the heavenly realities of God’s more advanced ways of working such that the “fullness of time” (cf. Gal 4) which He choose to advent within represents a more accurate way of understanding His ways than modern ways do?

Bultmann’s understanding of things is overly-simplistic and even naïve as it is captured by a sort of positivistic rationalism that is enslaved to the optics of the modern day. All one must do to undercut the whole of Bultmann’s project is reject his premise that the modern categories of thought are the canonically correct ones, and instead presume that the ones that Holy Scripture presumes upon are the correct ones. Further, it is just as easily possible for the kerygmatic reality of the Gospel to even fit into the modern categories, insofar as those are reified by the more primal apocalyptic realities that are revealed in and through the history and epistemic delimiting reality of the literal-physical resurrection of the God-man, Jesus Christ. In other words, even as modern people, it is possible to ‘filter’ modern intellectual developments in and through a Christ-conditioned lens that does not submit the reality of the biblical cosmology to the ambit of the modern immanentization of all things. Karl Barth, in contrast to Bultmann, represents a modern who does not fall prey to the sort of naïve approach that Bultmann ends up giving into. Barth works from what he calls a second naïveté, in regard to ‘critical scholarship.’ Yet, within this he does not give away the [Holy] Ghost when it comes to the miraculous workings of God; indeed he revels in them to a point that even bothers certain scholastics.

As a matter of historical and theological-intellectual understanding, reading about Bultmann’s theology (all 800pp of it!) is an interesting reading project. But it boggles the mind, when someone reads about his theology, why that someone would also feel compelled to simply sign onto Bultmann’s premises; at least if you are a biblically formed Christian. There is no compelling reason to accept the premise that the modern is the most advanced form of understanding how things are in the world. This represents a petitio principii that makes the critical thinker wonder why anyone would want to privilege this intellectual paradigm over the biblically given one; the latter paradigm is one that presents the bodily resurrection of Christ as the sine qua non of all that is real and powerful and hopeful in the world, of what makes Christianity stand or fall.

 

 

[1] David W. Congdon, The Mission Of Demythologizing: Rudolf Bultmann’s Dialectical Theology (Minneapolis: Fortess Press, 2015), 661-63.

On Being a GENUINE Protestant Christian

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It strikes me as completely petitio principii (circular) to simply presume that the Great Tradition of the Church just is caused by God’s design. It is a total adjunct of natural theology to maintain that we, even collectively, can simply scan the contours of ecclesial history and identify what counts as orthodox, and what doesn’t; and then use what we count as orthodox to relegate anything we deem outside of ‘orthodoxy’ as heretical or heterodox. I write and think as a Protestant, a Free Church Protestant (FCP). Even if I wasn’t an FCP, just being a mere Protestant ought to fortify the thinker from simply affirming something as orthodox because ‘the Church’ says so. But this is what we continue to get as the mantra from evangelical and Reformed (and Lutheran) theologians. I’m sorry, but I can’t get over this.

I’m a “Bible believing Christian,” who sees value in the doctrinal contours presented by the church catholic. Along with Barth I even see a Chalcedonian pattern that ought to be paradigmatically followed in the ordering of our theological inklings. But it is a pattern that I see; it isn’t an absolute frame whereby I adjudge this ‘in’ and that ‘out,’ per se. There, of course, is a standard for determining what is in and what is out, but it isn’t ultimately Church tradition; for the Protestant it is Holy Scripture—but not Holy Scripture that is sublated by the Church’s tradition. The Protestant, like myself, is committed to what the Reformed refer to as the Protestant ‘Scripture principle.’ Yet, even those committed to this, or sola Scriptura, often qualify it to the point that in order to ensure they are understood to be ‘catholic,’ that they end up hijacking Scripture’s authority and embassy by using the categories presented by The Great Tradition as their biblical exegetical lenses. The result is that we are really given a reading of Scripture whose esse (being) is the Church’s magisterium and the tradition that that is.

As an alternative, and what I take to be a genuinely Protestant doctrine of authority, for those committed de jure to the Scripture principle, I believe we ought to see Scripture’s esse, or reality grounded in Christ alone (solus Christus). If we don’t intentionally, and RADICALLY, make this move then all we are left with is what we see unfolding currently in so much of the theological environs of ‘conservative’ Protestant existence today. As an illustration, just go onto conservative theological social media (Twitter and Facebook come to mind), and see how many of the folks there are committed to some form of Thomism. Thomism has become the Tridentine Church’s (post-Trent) mode for doing all things theological. And yet we can equally say that this mode has been just as entrenched, ever since the 16th and 17th centuries of Post Reformation Reformed orthodox development, for the Protestant churches. This is what being ‘recovered’ currently. But I would argue that this whole movement, particularly as that was given impetus in the 16th and 17th centuries, belies the very intent of the Lutherian and Calvinian (et al) Reformation to begin with. Luther in particular, even while constructively deploying certain Aristotelian categories, completely rejected the Thomist or Aristotelian theology of his day. Some point out that Luther only rejected what he understood of Aristotle and Thomas in order to marginalize my point, but the reality remains that Luther fundamentally saw the Pure Being theology of the Church at odds with the Faith of Christ as presented on the pages of the NT. And yet people continuously ignore this fact, and rush headlong into the Catholic faith; even as Protestants. They aren’t reforming anything, they are only submitting to the power of the river Tiber and drowning in its Thomist eddies and Papal undercurrents.

More importantly, what I am really at a loss over is what I was mentioning at the beginning of this post. In order to take advantage of some of the important doctrinal patterns that have developed over the centuries doesn’t mean that the person attempting to take this advantage must swallow the whole ball of wax! A person can constructively skiff these patterns as they see those emerging from the reality of Christ revealed or not. A person does not have to be a Thomist or Scotist (or even a Palamite) in order to find helpful conceptual theological matter that might be present in even some of those patterns. But it seems to me that people are conflating catholicity with identification with this sort of Church Tradition; that one must be Aristotelian or ‘speculative’ or of the negative way in order to be a catholic thinker. And yet all of this seems oh so AD HOC! Protestants, or what I take to be genuinely Protestant, don’t read God’s face off of the developments of natural history; even if that takes place in the Church. Protestant’s know their Shepherd’s voice because their Shepherd is their life; their Shepherd is their brother and Savior, Jesus Christ. As such the Protestant knows that they have a direct and unmediated line between themselves and God, who is their Father by the adoption of Grace. Protestants don’t have a speculative relationship in regard to knowing Who their God is, they know Him concretely and relationally in and through Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is their mediator, and through participation and union with Him the Protestant comes to have a theological slab illumined for them that does not require the sort of speculative meandering that Tridentine theology requires.

I submit that in order to be genuinely Protestant in theological orientation, the Christian must forgo commitment to the sort of speculative theology that is being recovered by so many today in the Protestant churches (as part of a long line with Protestantism). I submit that in order to be Protestant one must be radically committed to Holy Scripture’s authority and her reality in Jesus Christ. I submit that in order to be Protestant the Christian’s whole frame of reference must be shaped by the regula fidei, who I, in a reified sense, take to be Jesus Christ directly (not mediately through the Church). I submit that in order to be Protestant the disciple must repudiate all forms of natural theology, and rely solely on the apocalyptic and in-breaking of God’s life in the risen Christ as that comes to be known by the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit as attested by Holy Scripture. To be genuinely Protestant, as a theological thinker, I submit that we must operate as confessional agents who reject all forms of apology as the basis for the theological task. To be a genuine Protestant thinker I submit that we have no other tradition but Christ, who in fact turns out to not be a tradition at all; but a person! If you attempted to place what I’m saying in the history of Christian ideas it would be in the spirit of the via moderna, but I won’t explain that now.

Theology as Christology: Theology Ought to be Based on an Analogy of Faith Rather than Being

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There is an ancient way, even a via antiqua for doing theology in the history of the Church. This fact is undeniable, and is something to praise the Lord for. But this doesn’t mean that this ancient way is the absolute and Divinely sanctioned way for doing theology. Some refer to ‘the Great Tradition of the Church’ (particularly in the West), and/or the Consensus Patrum of the Church (mostly in the East). What is being referred to are the identifiable doctrinal contours of the Church that are said to coalesce the orthodox among all traditions that make up the historic Church catholic (whether that be Orthodox, Catholic, or Protestant). The Church catholic and the Great Tradition or Consensus Patrum are often thought together, such that anything that falls out of these ‘ancient’ ways are thought, at best, to be heterodox; if  not heretical. But for the Protestant the criterion for determining ‘catholicity’ is not ultimately the councils, confessions, and creeds that make up the Great Tradition of the Church; instead, for the Protestant it is the Word of God, and a robust theology of the Word by which we come to conclude whether a doctrine is catholic (universal) or not.

With the above noted, I want to get into what has become a pet-theological-project of mine. That is engaging with the issue of knowledge of God. This locus implicates how we think of the Great Tradition of the Church, and what theological method was used, by and large, to arrive at its various theological conclusions. But what I have in mind doesn’t undercut, per se, the intent of the Great Tradition; rather, it reifies it through a radical or robust theology of the Word. By now I am sure you know what I am referring to, or rather who: Karl Barth’s theological alternative to what has come to be called the analogia entis (analogy of being), particularly among the Thomist Roman Catholics, but also as that has been imbibed by contemporary Protestant Reformed theologians, which is known as the analogia fidei. Barth’s analogy of faith seeks to definitively pronounce the only way a genuine knowledge of God can obtain. He argues against Catholic forms of the ‘entis,’ by forcefully pointing out how the analogia entis, in his mind (and mine), ends up projecting creaturely modes of intellection onto transcendent and Divine reality. David Congdon writes of Barth’s critique thusly: “Barth means that metaphysics is a projection of the phenomenal onto the divine, and thus a confusion of immanence and transcendence.”[1] Barth sees a common bond between the ancient way, as developed in the scholastic theologies of both the Catholics and the Protestants, and what eventually flowered into what came to be known as ‘Liberal theology,’ most notably associated with Friedrich Schleiermacher and the tradition he spawned. Barth sees an anthropological starting point among all theological parties herein, and as such seeks to despoil this hallowed ground by offering an alternative way towards knowing God that is principially grounded in God’s explicit Self-revelation (Deus revelatus) of Himself in the special face of Jesus Christ. Barth’s analogy of faith is decidedly grounded in a patently revealed theology, rather than in the speculative theology of the ancient way currently being retrieved by many Protestant Reformed theologians in the Western Church.

Congdon offers an excellent summary of what Barth’s doctrine on analogy of faith entails, and how it is intended to dagger the analogy of being, and natural theology more broadly, with the blade of a theological frame that starts in Christ rather than in an abstract humanity and knowledge of God therefrom.

By the time he reached his mature dogmatics, however, Barth had crystallized his criticism as a protest against what he described as the analogia entis, or thinking about God in abstracto. The metaphysical concept of God is abstract in that it describes God in terms derived from general categories and having general validity, that is, in terms not derived from the particular event of God’s self-communication. Speaking about God in abstracto (according to the analogia entis) occurs whenever creation functions effectively as the norm for theological speech. This occurs principally in the employment of what Barth elsewhere identifies as the Dionysian via triplex, which attempts to derive conceptual categories for God from those that pertain to the world, whether through causal derivation, negation, or infinite elevation.[2]

In footnotes Congdon elaborates further on what Barth’s critique is getting at, and what its reference entail in regard to historical antecedents.

Barth explicitly equates the terms in abstracto and analogia entis when he says that to speak of God in abstracto is to claim that “God is knowable—knowable even without God’s revelation,” which means that one “acknowledges an analogy between God and humanity and therefore one point at which God is knowable even without God’s revelation: the analogy of being [Analogie des Seienden], namely, the analogia entis, the idea of being, in which God and humanity are in all cases comprehended together” (KD 2.1:88–89/81). In this context Barth has Roman Catholic theology in view. The subsequent part-volume on the doctrine of election levels the same charge of in abstracto God-talk against Protestant orthodoxy’s concept of the decretum absolutum. The common ground is the attempt to speak about the creator by first looking to the creature. See KD 2.2:46–53/44-50.[3]

Further:

The via triplex bases knowledge of God on any of the following three ways: (1) via causalitatis (way of causality), in which one begins with a creaturely reality and then posits a supernatural cause (God as first cause); (2) via negationis or via remotionis (way of negation or remotion), in which one begins with a human attribute and then negates it (God as infinite or impassible); and (3) via eminentiae (way of transcendence), whereby one begins with a human attribute and then raises it to the level of infinite perfection (God as omnipotent or omniscient). See Barth’s discussion of this in KD 2.1:389-91/346-48.[4]

Congdon expands further, as he more broadly places Barth’s critique into a critique of theologia naturalis or natural theology:

Barth’s comprehensive concept for the above is “natural theology” (theologia naturalis), a term he applies to both liberalism and scholasticism. In one fine-print passage he connects the two genetically by arguing that it was the very methodology of Protestant orthodoxy that led to the rise of modern liberalism, precisely because, as the “scientific consciousness after the Renaissance” demanded, the true object of theology (i.e., God) was “moved from a transcendence [Jenseits] that was genuinely opposite from the place of humanity into the sphere of humanity itself.” The loss of a genuinely transcendent god is manifest not only in orthodoxy’s talk of God ad intra above and without God’s economic actions ad extra but equally in liberalism’s talk of God in terms of human experience. From Barth’s perspective both modes of theology are determined by a general anthropological starting point and are for that reason inappropriate forms of analogous God-talk.[5]

Understand the significance of this, and you will understand my whole theological mode! This cannot be overstated enough; I find the analogy of being and natural theology to be the most fundamental point of departure we might find when thinking about what defines good theology from bad theology. This is not to say that theology done under the pressure of the analogy of being hasn’t generated any good theology, but it is to say, for my money, that as a theological prolegomena or way for doing good theology it does not provide one.

As a Protestant Christian it is exceedingly hard for me to understand how what Barth is after isn’t simply the intuitive approach. I do not understand these sorts of artificial divides that people present between theologies done under certain periods of time; as if the more ancient just is the Great Tradition in static and absolute terms, and the more modern, insofar that it might demur from the ancient, is heterodox or heretical. The theologian is interested in translating the kerygma in such a way that the pressures it works from are not determined by period-conditioned realities, per se, but rather by the weight of God’s glory in the face of Jesus Christ. And yet, most simply respond to critiques like Barth’s by superficially slumping back into a supposed ancient way, and never actually offer rejoinders to Barth; other than asserting, ‘oh, haha, you must be a Barthian,’ or some such nonsense. And this is why I remain ultimately dissatisfied with the theology that is mostly being done by evangelicals today. There is this attitude, which is just noted, but then there is also a posture of just ‘receiving’ a static body of tradition that has no dynamism or life to it by definition. And the only life it does have is based in the speculation of their masters, and their own wits, which really only gets them as far as their collectively bounded frontal lobes. We can construct conceptions of God all day long; we can tie those to a supposed established hierarchy of theological and intellectual development without end; but if those conceptions are not ultimately and principally based in God’s own Self-revealed knowledge of Himself; then all we end up with is an idol no different than Aaron’s Golden-Calf.

The Deus ex Machina of evangelical Protestantism will continue, and it will blithely continue on without so much of an acknowledgement of a ‘Barthian tradition.’ But it will do so to its own eternal loss. Not in the sense that justification before God is not present, but in the sense that sanctification and discipleship will be severely quenched; to the point that spiritual growth will be stunted by devotion to a conception of God that falls short by not adhering to a Self-given notion of the living God. This is why I take this so seriously. It is not merely an academic exercise to consider these things, but one that impinges on our daily Christian lives. If we get God wrong we get everything following wrong. Our knowledge of God is to be a growing and lively thing, not one settled down in a static body of knowledge that requires constant apology and assertion in order maintain its viability. Barth’s tradition, I’d argue, offers a way towards a knowledge of God that is not ultimately contingent upon Barth’s period, but instead the lively reality of the risen Christ who is present in all the centuries and millennia time immemorial. Solus Christus

[1] David W. Congdon, The Mission Of Demythologizing: Rudolf Bultmann’s Dialectical Theology (Minneapolis: Fortess Press, 2015), 621 n. 128.

[2] Ibid., 622.

[3] Ibid., n. 130.

[4] Ibid., n. 131.

[5] Ibid., 623.

On Being a Broken Christian

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These will just be some introductory comments On Being a Broken Christian. Where to start, really? But I wanted to simply address an underlying problem, as I see it, attending the evangelical churches in the main. Most commonly the doctrine of perfectionism is associated with Wesleyan or Methodist Perfectionism. R.C. Sproul[1] writes of perfectionism:

An ancient heresy of the distinction between two types of Christians, carnal and Spirit-filled, is the heresy of perfectionism. Perfectionism teaches that there is a class of Christians who achieve moral perfection in this life. To be sure, credit is given to the Holy Spirit as the agent who brings total victory over sin to the Christian. But there is a kind of elitism in perfectionism, a feeling that those who have achieved perfection are somehow greater than other Christians. The “perfect” ones do not officially—take credit for their state, but smugness and pride have a way of creeping in.[2]

This points up a particular and absolute form of ‘perfectionism.’ What I am hoping to engage with is a broader species of this seriously deleterious form of thinking on the Christian life. I see perfectionism as a logical conclusion to what I am really after, which is a focus on performance based Christianity. Going forward I plan on writing further on these themes in more detail. But what I want to at least identify for us here is the hope I find in Scripture in regard to broken people; broken Christians.

The locus classicus passage that comes to mind is Jesus’s story of the self-righteous Pharisee and the self-effacing and repentant Publican. Jesus details it for us this way:

9 And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others:10 Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican.11 The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.12 I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.13 And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted. (KJV)

The Pharisee, in the New Testament, is the classic type-caste of what a performance based Christianity might look like. As Jesus says elsewhere, ‘they are whitewashed tombs with dead man’s bones inside.’ This is what I think has become pervasive in so many evangelical churches, to the point that I can hardly stomach attending. It is the whole structure of this sort of Christianity that parallels what Jesus condemns. And it is true, people are well-meaning in these structures; but at the end of the day, good intentions are not able to bear the weight of God’s holiness. One problem I see associated with this style of what some have called ‘moralistic therapeutic deist’ Christianity, is that there is this prevalence to think that the Christian must have it all together prior to being able to ‘do ministry.’ But this kicks against Christ’s life itself. Jesus was despised, and ugly by superficial worldly standards. Jesus was constantly broken and broke, wandering around from this quarter of Israel to the other seeking somewhere to lay His head.

This brings us to the Publican. This was the character that Jesus found ennobling. It is the Christian who recognizes their broken state; not just intellectually, but in current and ongoing daily life circumstances. These are the people Jesus thinks characterize His Kingdom come. People who have thorns in the flesh; people who are poor and destitute; people who are beaten for His names sake; people who live in a constant battle with drug, sex, gambling, power, and other addictions. These are the people Jesus came to seek and save. It is in our weaknesses that God’s strength in the resurrected Christ is made ‘perfect.’ Jesus, in His humanity, understood that He ec-statically received His life as gift from the Father by the creativity and anointing of the Holy Spirit. It is when we are in like state as Christ, in a humiliated status that we are most prone to look elsewhere for a ground of life other than ourselves. We may well have brought the humbling circumstances of life by our own stupid choices, but in God’s Grace in Christ He wants to meet us right there and manifest His Life and Strength for us.

Jesus offered, and continues to offer an upside down version of the current world system. His Kingdom is one that is populated by the broken and vagrant among us; those who are sick and dying in need of a Savior. Jesus is uninterested in a performance based Christianity that attempts to place a veneer of white teeth and bronzed skin in the forefront. Jesus confronts and contradicts that; He contravenes and interdicts that by the incarnation itself. The Incarnation of God reflects the character God exalts. It is a character that does not think robbery of God is something to be grasped. It is a character that is not self-concerned, but instead is self-given. And among us sinners, it is a character that even in the midst of our stupid and un-contrite life choices, God is happy to meet us there; over and over again; seventy times seven. God has not called us to live a life of small-talk and happy-faces. He has called us to Himself from right where we are in our unaccomplished and filthy unvarnished statuses. It is here His strength is made perfect; not by might, nor by power, but by His Spirit.

This is just an off-the-cuff post that I will follow up with others in days to come.

 

[1] I only refer to Sproul because he was one of the first that came up on a Google search. I actually think that the form of Calvinism that Sproul was a proponent of helps to foster, ironically, a form of perfectionism that plagues so much of Western Christendom. But that will have to be saved for another post.

[2] R.C. Sproul, “The Heresy of Perfectionism,” accessed 07-11-2019.

The Depth of Sin

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10 As it is written:“There is no one righteous, not even one;11there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God.12 All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.” 13 “Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.” “The poison of vipers is on their lips.”14“Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.” 15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood;16 ruin and misery mark their ways,17 and the way of peace they do not know.” 18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” –Romans 3.10-18

There is a pervasive belief in the churches that the reality noted by the Apostle Paul (under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit) isn’t quite as drastic as it sounds. But if you read it in the Greek, you’ll understand the translation is just the same. In other words, there is no waffle-room on what is communicated here. It is straightforward and unambiguous. But we don’t like to think of ourselves this way. We like to maintain the pedestrian idea that people, in the main, are generally ‘good,’ it’s just that there are some rotten apples out there. We aren’t good in any way, though. Jesus said in Mark that ‘God alone is good’; we aren’t God; therefore we are not good. If human beings are born outside of a right relationship with God, who alone is Holy, then we are in the state that Paul describes. We don’t even have the capacity in ourselves to seek after God. If it wasn’t for God’s free choice to seek after, and find us in the humanity of Jesus Christ we’d die in our sins with no remedy; and God would still be just.

It is important to think about the depth of our sinful status from the only source that genuinely provides knowledge of God and self; from Jesus Christ. As such, we are not in a position to actually know what God alone knows about us. We are reliant on what He chooses to reveal to us in Christ. This holds true for ascertaining the depth of our sinful state. We can infer from what it took for God to reach into our hearts, and redeem us, just how deep our desperately evil and wicked hearts run. When it takes the Triune God, the God who spoke the heavens and the earth into existence, the God who continuously holds the cosmos together by the Word of His Power, to assume human flesh and die on the cross; we know that we are dealing with something more pernicious than we can even begin to fathom. The depth of our sin is as deep as God become flesh and shedding His own blood on a Roman cross for us. This should cause us to shudder, not rationalize; or to lull ourselves into a fantasy that we aren’t really that bad—“I mean look at Joe-Bob, now he’s bad!” We will only understand the depth of our sin insofar as we look at Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. If we attempt to compare ourselves against others or if we lazily come to think that our experience of sin isn’t all that bad; we will most surely fool ourselves into a sin of idolatry that denudes the cross of Jesus Christ of its actual power in our lives. We need to come to appreciate just how sinful we are, and this doesn’t come from the Law, but, ironically it comes from the Gospel. This is what I am arguing; that the Gospel, that God’s Word of Grace for us in Jesus Christ reveals to us just how reprobate and depraved we actually are in ourselves.

I could get us into some historical discussion by referring to Augustine and Pelagius; or Luther and the Papacy; or Calvin and Pighius; or Barth and Schleiermacher. But I want to keep this as straightforward as possible. What I am hoping to press home is just how wicked we actually are. The Church has seemingly fallen into the devil’s trap of compromising on just how radical the Gospel message is. I write all of this based on a scientific study I have been conducting over the last 45 years. I’ve come to see patterns of sin in my heart, patterns of activity that assure me that I am really and ravenously sinful. I have a rippling impulse that runs through my veins that compels me to sin. Thank God I have the Spirit of Christ who, over against this impulse, has recreated me in the new and singular humanity of Jesus Christ; such that I can engage in warfare with the sinful orientation I continue to live with (simul justus et peccator). Because of God’s choice to assume my depraved humanity, I have now become a slave of righteousness and co-heir with Jesus Christ; and have been given the Spirit by whom I cry out ‘Abba Father.’ But even with all of this I continue to have this strong urge to sin; and I often do sin.

There is more going on than just me though. We are in a battle, as the Apostle Paul also says: “. . . our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” This devilish reality, the reality of satan seeks to manipulate our fallen and remaining natures to thwart the work of God in our lives; the work of God in the world and cosmos. But even though he desires to sift us like wheat, the Son has prayed for us; we have this great and enduring hope. Even so, if we are not vigilant in recognizing our foes we will fall prey to a lackadaisical attitude that leads us to think that we aren’t really all that bad. We must remain vigilant and prayerful before the Father; asking Him to keep us close to Him. It is only in this ‘closeness,’ again, that the darkness of our fallen souls can remain open to the overwhelming Light of Christ. Indeed, being vigilant requires the resurrection energy of Jesus Christ. Without that our sinful selves will simply reassert themselves and attempt to thwart the work of God in our lives; in the world.

I am not sure I am really getting across the sense of urgency I am hoping to with this. As Calvin has said ‘our hearts are like idol factories’ (my paraphrase); apart from union and participation with the humanity of Jesus Christ we are doomed to a failed life even as Christians. It is possible to fail grievously as Christians, and insofar as we are not in the fight, so to speak, we most definitely will be swallowed up by this world and culture. This culture has collapsed what it perceives as divinity into itself (Gen 3). It seductively invites us to its banqueting table. Based upon the status of the churches, particularly in North America and the Western world, it seems all too clear to me that, by and large, the churches have not been vigilant. I am not naively attempting to pretend that the Church will attain perfection on this side of beatific vision. But I am urging us onto the love and good works of aiming for the perfection and holiness that God has called us to in the revelation of Jesus Christ. We are in a battle; we are called soldiers for Christ for a reason. The ancient church understood the Church on earth as ‘the Church Militant’ (juxtaposed with the Church Triumphant in eternity) because they knew that the personal devil would like nothing more but to snuff out the Holy Work of God on the face of the redeemed creation. They knew that God considers humans as His ‘very good work,’ and that satan would like nothing better but to wreck this for God. So, they understood that this necessarily entails a spiritual warfare of the sort that will cost us our very lives as we fight for what lasts rather than what is burned up (i.e. satan’s fate).

Our primary tool for engaging in this battle is the ‘sword of the Spirit,’ or the Word of God. We see Jesus in Matthew 4, as he recapitulates Israel’s wandering wilderness experience, defeating the devil by using Holy Scripture with its contextual force. If Jesus used Scripture to destroy the inklings of the evil one, how much more ought we see our need to do so! This requires a prayerful approach to the Word of God; one that will make Scripture memorable and powerful insofar as we come to see its instrumental power as that finds its ultimate reality in Jesus Christ. If we read Scripture prayerfully (i.e. dialogically), and understand it within that sort of filial relationship with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we will be positioned in such a way that Scripture simply becomes a weapon of preemption more of reaction. In other words, if Scripture becomes so internalized in our lives that it becomes the genuine love language we come to communicate with God through, we will have the weapons of our warfare at hand moment by moment. Indeed, these weapons will be so indwelt with the Power of God, that the enemy won’t have a chance at toppling the work that God has begun in us in Christ; we will truly be working out our salvation with fear and trembling at the feet of God’s Holy Word. Let’s be Bible reading zealots for the Kingdom of Christ. Herein the power of God will know no boundaries; indeed He will abound as a well spring unto eternal life in our daily lives. The gates of hell will not prevail, not because of us but because of God’s Word, Jesus Christ. We can participate in His Word as Christians, or not. If we don’t joyfully participate we will continuously experience defeat and be vanquished in our daily lives; saved, but as by fire. There is victory coming, the parousia of God is ever at hand, constantly in-breaking into our lives and this broader world; but can we see it, can we ‘feel’ it? If we are to see and experience God’s Power and work in our lives and the world, we must be attuned to Him. This tuning into God’s life for the world, for us, comes as we indwell Holy Scripture; you see Holy Scripture has its very reality and being in Jesus Christ. This is the holy ground God has provided for us to meet and sup with Him over and again. Will there actually be faith on earth when He comes again though? I don’t know.

 

Miscellanies on How Academic Theology Keeps Us Close to God: And Christian Discipleship

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I read academic theology mostly because it is the medium that keeps me closest to God; other than a voracious commitment to reading large quantities of Holy Scripture. So, it hits me strange when I hear people claim, in my low Free church location, that academic theology is dry, arid, and doesn’t really hit home with the real needs of the people in the churches. This is strange to me, as I think to myself in that moment, because I’ve always figured that I am one of the many; I am one of “the people” in the Church. Because of this, and when confronted with this sentiment, it makes me wonder why if academic theology (so called) can have the benefit it does for me, why it can’t have a similar benefit for every Christian? I am not special; I am a justified sinner like the rest of us. I am prone to wander, as that ole’ time hymn so rightly lyricizes for us. What helps me be less prone is to constantly WORK at staying ‘in step with the Spirit.’ I take it that because Jesus has raised up teachers for His Church’s edification (cf. Eph 4), that these teachers and teachings are gifts to the Church; and gifts with the goal of building us up rather than tearing us down. As the case may be, and it may, academic theology, at least for me, typically contains a rigor and order that this world system just can’t muster; as such it has the capacity to feed my soul and form my spirit that orders its way to and from the eternal and Triune Life of the Living God. I live in a chaotic world, and I feel that pressure every day. It is only as I feed my soul with well ordered thinking, an order that comes directly from paying close attention to the in-breaking and apocalyptic reality of the Gospel, that I find solace and peace of heart.

But even greater than the aforementioned, the sort of theology that I find most life-giving is indeed the sort that is grounded fulsomely in the Gospel reality itself. Meaning, that the best theology is of the sort, in my view, that is grounded in the concrete and historical Yes of God for us in Jesus Christ. Herein is the wisdom of God. You see, I don’t live in some sort of Gnostic-Holy Land, where I find my source of life and energy by ruminating on abstract and speculative ideas. Nein! I am a flesh and blood human being who is simul justus et peccator, and I fail at life moment by moment. As such I need God’s wisdom to confront me afresh and anew every moment of every day; outwith this confrontation, and joyful encounter, I simply fall off into a woeful mire of despair and depression. And when I fall off into this land of wane and woe, it is on this plane that I engage in my most egregious sins before God. So, good theology for me, is a theology that meets me in the existential day to day and elevates me out of the muck of the mundane and energizes me with new creation life of enchantment with and praise of the mysterium Trinitatis (mysterious Trinity). It as I get lost in this sort of theological life that I start to sense the power and freedom that the Son of God said He has placed me into (cf. Jn 8.32).

This is good theology. Theology that meets each of us in our most dire moments, often what we’ve come to consider as the mundane of day to day. Good theology gets down into the blood and dirt of our lives and recreates it anew and afresh in and through the risen humanity of Jesus Christ. But in this recreation we are like Israel, a newborn baby wrapped-up in the bloody afterbirth of our sinful inception; it requires God to pick us up, wash us off, and declare what is new and holy about us in Christ. It is in this ongoing process—mortification and vivification—that we actually feel the growing pains of this new birth as we are constantly being given over to both the life and death of Christ in us that our mortal bodies might be enlivened with the life of God in Christ with us. But herein is the daily struggle. Prior to this we had no experience of this, we had no ‘struggle.’ We may have had a secular struggle that we ourselves had constructed based upon conditions and pressures that this world system has set forth; ones based upon self-projected and incurved ends. But prior to the new birth in Christ we had never experienced this battle between the ‘flesh’ and the Spirit of Christ in us. Herein good theology is that which comes to us and succors us unto the womb of God wherein He is explained to us over and again by His Self-explanation for us in the dearly beloved Son, sweet Jesus.

But if we are not WORKING at this relationship with God, if we are not availing ourselves of the teachers He has provided for the upbuilding of His Church; then we genuinely will live in a mundane world denuded of any sort of ultimate significance other than what we existentially attempt to construct ourselves (which at the end of the day is idolatry). This is what continues to plague the evangelical churches, in my opinion. People have become too satisfied with a church culture that is based upon cultural platitudes baptized as ‘good theology.’ As such, people do not have the critical apparatus to actually recognize the holy from the profane; how can they? If the holy has been conflated with the profane precisely because people aren’t putting in the WORK, then this sort of confrontation with God cannot actually occur. This is the hard truth of the Christian life. We are called to deny ourselves, take up our crosses, and follow Christ. Instead the majority of pastors out there have been inculcated into a church culture ‘out there’ that has sold its soul for a pottage of entrepreneurship and upward mobility. If the church’s primary theologian is caught up with visions of doing ‘real ministry’ that have no basis in the theologian putting in the WORK, then how in the world are the people in the churches supposed to ever be discipled in the ways of Good Theology?