This whole thing has created a tremendous disruption in all of our lives. I am referring to COVID, the “Protests,” the subsequent economic destruction and ruin, and the ‘civil war’ currently underway in our country (and all across the globe, respectively). In an effort to process all of this I have taken to social media, along with the rest of the world, in order to let the world know what I think about it all. This is cathartic, to a degree, but after awhile it starts to rub raw on the heart and mind. That’s the point I am at currently. I believe there is a paradigmatic shift unfolding, or an attempt, at what some would call a revolution to destroy the normal American way of life, and the Western life in general, and replace it with some sort of Utopia that apparently looks like CHAZ or CHOP (whatever your flavor is). Personally, I do believe there are global players involved in all of this, and would like nothing else but to enact the long-held goal of the infamous New World Order (NWO). Clearly, it is hard to know all the details of what all of this entails; but if the person is open, and paying attention, there is a general pattern of contours that seem to provide the greatest explanatory power in regard to what appears to be an absolute meltdown of all things that used to be considered normal life. Because it is seemingly impossible to escape all-of-these-goings-on (the people in masks won’t let me forget), as a Christian, and a theologian, I am faced with an ostensible dilemma. How am I to relate the kerygmatic reality of Jesus Christ to all the chaos and absolute disorder on display right now?

I have also noticed, and maybe you have to, and maybe you’re prone to this yourself, that many Christians, the thinking types, have seemingly hidden themselves in the towers of theology they have come to know as their familiar way of life. And maybe this is just a social media phenomena, and not genuinely representative of how these Christians are dealing with all of this. As an alternative to this, some of these same folks seem to be endorsing the meta-narrative of the age right now about systemic racism, and other supposed social ills; and then using critical race theory, and endorsing the neo-Marxist themes of Liberation Theology in order to address what they’ve been told (by critical race theory, and the media) is the problem with the world. In other words, it seems as if many of these types of Christians, thinking as they are, have been able to somehow make their theology propers to jive with ideologies that you wouldn’t think would be the case (given these ideologies’ juxtaposition with the Gospel and all it implies about reality). I don’t think this seeming dissonance (at least for me) is able to happen by accident. You see, I think that, ironically, it is because these Christians have such an ‘othered’ focus conception of God’s transcendence, one based in a heavy apophaticism and negative theology, one based on speculation and discursive reflection, that on the one hand it is possible for them to continue doing their academic or even ‘scholastic’ theology over here, and on the other hand, appropriate social constructs bedded in a horizontal age that presumes a capacity that really only God has. Of course, these Christians would deny that my claim is so, but it’s hard to understand how this isn’t so. I’m simply observing the actions, and the whence from where they make their arguments and make their stands.

So, because I’m unwilling to go this way, I must have another way. For me this way must be strictly staurological; in other words, it must be grounded in the cruciform Life of the triune God in Jesus Christ for us (pro nobis). It must grounded in the God who is in Himself, of His own free and gracious choosing, to not be God without us. It must be grounded in the elected humanity of God in Jesus Christ; indeed, as Barth has rightly said: ‘the very sum of the Gospel.’

The doctrine of election is the sum of the Gospel because of all words that can be said or heard it is the best: that God elects man; that God is for man too the One who loves in freedom. It is grounded in the knowledge of Jesus Christ because He is both the electing God and the elected man in One. It is part of the doctrine of God because originally God’s election of man is a predestination not merely of man but of Himself. Its function is to bear basic testimony to eternal, free and unchanging grace as the beginning of all the ways and works of God.[1]

You might be noticing what I am getting at now. Rather than having a God who is transcendent in a ‘pure being’ sort of way, the Gospel, one that is cruciform in shape, has an understanding of the transcendent God as we meet Him in the grist of this world; in the skin of a particular man from Nazareth named, Jesus Christ. As we meet God in this man, in Jesus Christ, it isn’t that we aren’t introduced to a God who isn’t transcendent; it is, instead, that we are introduced to a God whose transcendence is shaped by a gracious willingness and freedom, a character that constantly comes down to us, that we might constantly be elevated afresh and anew to Him, in and through the Spirit’s resurrecting power to make all things new. But it is this notion of God’s transcendence, one that has eternally chosen to become human, one who will eternally bear the marks of the cross in His body, that I look to in order to ground the way I attempt to think about the outrageous happenings this world system is currently enduring. Having a conception of God, from the cross of Christ, disallows me to retreat into a conclave that is compartmentalized from the happenings of this world order (or disorder, as the case may be). This is not to say that there is no rest and times of refreshment to be had in our participation with Christ, in the triune life, it is just that this participatio is always already one that freely chooses to be in and for this world in a way that reflects His Ways and not mine; not ours.

In this, I find refuge to be for this world, in a way that does not collapse itself into the world system, that does not attempt to find ‘critical’ tools from this world system; but instead has the capacity to bear witness to this world, of another world, the heavenly city, come down in Jesus Christ. I have tools in and from the power of the Gospel Hisself, ones that are personally oriented, without analogy, ones that are sui generis, and that simply trust that God’s action in Christ, in His death, burial, resurrection, and ascension is what this broken world needs in order to become un-broken. What this means for me is that I don’t have this sort of dualistic rupture between a transcendent God, philosophically conceived, and how that God might relate to the world based upon my own powers to discover and thus prescribe ways forward that in fact are not from God but from my own powers to discover. This is why Christians who are prone to wander this way, to seek refuge in ‘critical’ tools have space to operate this way; and at the same time presume upon an “orthodox” doctrine of God. This has been their method from the start: i.e. to think God, not first nor slavishly from God’s election to be for us as revealed in the incarnation and cross of Jesus Christ, but instead to methodologically think God from an un-graced [pure] nature, in the name of this God, and then grammarize Him in such a way that He is concordant with what we have negatively discovered of Him by contrasting Him with our finitude (analogia entis). This method carries through, you see; don’t you? If we can think God this way, we can surely discover other things in nature. We can develop systems of justice, and identify critical analytic tools and ideologies that are simply inherent to our natured natures. The epistemic ground is not in God’s ontology, but in ours; an abstract humanity based on a concept of election that is not grounded in the God-man, Jesus Christ, but God’s ad hoc choice of particular individuals per the absolutum decretum.

I just threw a bunch of deep and even technical points of theology out, in the above paragraph, that I don’t have time to develop further here. But suffice it to say: Our doctrines of God matter, and how we think God, and where we think we think Him from has all sorts of real life consequences; including the way we engage with politics, and the BS that the world throws up at us in ways that seem like an outright demonic onslaught. If our resource for countering these things are in critical tools that we have discovered, as corollary with the way we have come to ‘discover’ what God is, by our own ‘essential’ powers, then we are going to be up “shit’s creek” (please pardon my language, I don’t normally cuss, but the times seem to call for it more and more these days). Our only hope is if we find resource in the sui generis life of God for us in the Gospel; you know, the ‘POWER OF God,’ and stuff. More to say, always more to say, but this is enough for now. Maranatha

[1] Barth, CD II/2:1.