The Eastern Liturgy: Christmas Joy

Christ is born! Tell forth His fame!

Christ from heaven! His love proclaim!

Christ on earth! Exalt His name!

Sing to the Lord, O world, with exultation!

Break forth with glad thanksgiving, every nation!

For He has triumphed gloriously!

Man in God’s own likeness made,

Man by Satan’s lies betrayed,

Man by sting of death dismayed,

Banished from hope of life and of salvation,

By Christ today is made a new creation:

For He has triumphed gloriously!

God the Maker, when His foe

Dragged us down to death and woe,

Bowed the heavens and came below,

And in the Virgin womb His palace making

Became true man, our human nature taking:

For He has triumphed gloriously!

Christ the Wisdom, Word and Might,

God and Son and Light of light,

Concealed in Mary from sight

Of worldly monarch and demonic spirit,

Was born on earth, that we might heaven inherit:

And He has triumphed gloriously!

Cosmas the Melodist

Canon for Christmas Day[1]

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you, all my readers! I pray you have a blessed time together with family and friends, reflecting on the Light of Light who indeed is our Lord. Praising Him together with all of the saints of His wondrous reality as the Theanthropos, the Godman (who was first the Godbaby) for us. What a blessed Hope and glorious Appearing we have to look forward to, but only because He first appeared as the most infamous babes of all, wrapped in swaddling cloths; away in the manger.

Joy to the World!

[1] Nick Needham, 2000 Years of Christ’s Power: Volume 2: The Middle Ages (Scotland, UK: Christian Focus Publications Ltd., 2016), 142-43.

I’m an old man. Just turned 49 yesterday (the 4th). The last year of my 40s. AARP is just around the corner.

The following is a post I wrote quite a few years ago where I reflect on the implications of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is both devotional, personal, and a little academic in orientation; but I think it’s fitting for today. Christ is risen!

I really struggled with a false sense of guilt and condemnation for particular sins from my past for years upon years. The enemy of my soul kept me living under ‘a yoke of bondage’ that Jesus said I ‘would be free indeed’ from. The Lord did not leave me as an orphan though, by the Spirit he ministered to me through a sort of rigorous exercise of training me to think rightly about reality as declared in the evangel of His life as borne witness to in Holy Scripture. After many years of anxiety and depression, particularly stemming from living under this false yoke of condemnation the Lord used the reality of creation and recreation to bring the freedom that I so desperately desired. I am sure that I am not alone in this walk, and so I thought I would share a little bit of how this ‘training’ from the Lord looks; at least the way it looks for me.

As I just intimated a doctrine of creation and recreation, along with God’s sovereign providential care of all reality, played the required roles for me to finally see that I truly was and am free (for God and others). As already noted this sort of education from God was motivated by a crisis—we might refer to it as a theology of crisis—a crisis that brought the realization home that I did not have the resources in myself to bring the freedom that God alone could bring.[1] So how does this relate to God being Creator; and not just in an intellectual sense, but how does that reality relate to these real life spiritual issues in a existential felt manner?

In order to help explain what I’m attempting to detail let me offer a very brief definition of the theological concept creatio ex nihilo (‘creation out of nothing’). Keith Ward offers this definition:

Creatio ex nihilo (Latin for “creation from nothing”) refers to the view that the universe, the whole of space-time, is created by a free act of God out of nothing, and not either out of some preexisting material or out of the divine substance itself. This view was widely, though not universally, accepted in the early Christian Church, and was formally defined as dogma by the fourth Lateran Council in 1215. Creatio ex nihilo is now almost universally accepted by Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Indian theism generally holds that the universe is substantially one with God, though it is usually still thought of as a free and unconstrained act of God.[2]

There are many important theological implications we could explore simply based upon this brief definition, but for our purposes I wanted to inject this definition into this discussion to elevate the idea that God is the Creator, and thus all of creation is contingent upon his Word. It was this idea that God started to use in my life, years ago, before I ever had any understanding of ‘creation out of nothing’, that I could have freedom from my past. This concept, before I knew the theological parlance was captured for me in this Bible verse, “³And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high….” (Heb. 1.3). Interesting how even in this verse the concept of being purified from sins and God’s ‘upholding all things by the word of His power’ are connected. It was this connection that God used to bring freedom for me. The lesson took many years, and was full of ‘anfechtung’ (trial-tribulation). The Lord allowed me to existentially feel the weight of what this world might look like without him as the One holding it together. It is very hard for me to verbalize the sense that I experienced, but it was as if I was questioning all of reality; even physical reality. I would look out at the world and based upon the sort of nihilistic logic that had infiltrated my mind (as a Christian!) over the years I would have this excruciating condition of feeling the transitoriness of all of reality. It was living in this reality, accompanied by ‘intellectual doubts’ (not spiritual) about God’s existence, that of course!, threw me into great pits of despondency and despair. But it was also through this that my perception of reality was transferred from one contingent upon my word—and this world system’s word—to God’s Word. It was this process, ironically, that allowed me to finally understand that “If God is for us, who is against us? ³² He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?³³ Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies; ³⁴ who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.” (Rom. 8.31–32) Again, like with the Hebrews passage, we see here in Paul’s theology that a connection is made between freedom from condemnation and the creational reality of God’s Word; except here what is emphasized is not creation in general, but creation in particular as that is particularized in the re-creation of God in Jesus Christ’s resurrection. Once I’d been schooled enough with the reality that ‘reality’ is God’s reality based alone upon his given and sustaining Word; once I could ‘feel’ that weight, not just intellectually, but spiritually-affectively, the resurrection and re-creation therein had the real life impact I personally needed to be ‘free’ and stand fast in the freedom that the Son said I would be free within (Jn. 8.36); his freedom in the re-creation; the resurrection; the new creation; the new humanity that is his for us.

So I had this doctrine of creation out of nothing in place, in a ‘felt’ way; with the emphasis being upon the reality that God alone holds all of reality together. It was within this conceptual frame that the doctrine of re-creation and resurrection came alive for me; in an existential-spiritual-felt and lived sense. This is why Karl Barth’s doctrine of resurrection has resonated with me so deeply. It is tied into the type of ‘primordial’ thinking that creatio ex nihilo operates from—as part and parcel of God’s upholding Word—and then explicates that from within a theology of God’s Word wherein the primacy of Christ’s life is understood as the telos the fulcrum of what created reality is all about. Robert Dale Dawson really helped me to appreciate this sort of connection between creation out of nothing and Barth’s doctrine of re-creation as he wrote this:

A large number of analyses come up short by dwelling upon the historical question, often falsely construing Barth’s inversion of the order of the historical enterprise and the resurrection of Jesus as an aspect of his historical skepticism. For Barth the resurrection of Jesus is not a datum of the sort to be analyzed and understood, by other data, by means of historical critical science. While a real event within the nexus of space and time the resurrection is also the event of the creation of new time and space. Such an event can only be described as an act of God; that is an otherwise impossible event. The event of the resurrection of Jesus is that of the creation of the conditions of the possibility for all other events, and as such it cannot be accounted for in terms considered appropriate for all other events. This is not the expression of an historical skeptic, but of one who is convinced of the primordiality of the resurrection as the singular history-making, yet history-delimiting, act of God.[3]

Threading out the academic technicalities (that are important in their original context), and focusing on the concepts that serve our purposes, what I draw from this is the significance of what Dawson identifies in Barth’s theology as ‘the primordiality of the resurrection as the singular history-making, yet history-delimiting, act of God.’ Can you see how all of this might provide the sort of apocalyptic freedom we are in need of in order to live the sort of ‘free’ life that God wants us to before him? It does seem rather mechanical and academic; I agree. Let me try to summarize and draw together the themes I’ve been attempting to highlight in order to provide you with a maybe-way forward in your own spiritual walk and life as a Christian.

The Conclusion. It is actually rather basic, but deeply profound; at least for me. What is required is that we ask for eyes of faith to see what God sees in Christ. He will school us in his ways as we seek him first in the Scripture’s reality in Christ. He will work things into our lives that will shorn away the accretions of the ‘worldly-system-wisdom’ with his wisdom; the wisdom of the cross. He will allow you to ‘feel’ the existential weight of his life, and the reality that that upholds, and within this, this apocalyptic reality of his in-breaking life into ours, the reality that the God who could rightly condemn us has broken into the surly contingencies of our sinful lives and become the ‘Judge, judged.’ If the God who holds all reality together by the Word of his power in Jesus Christ invades this world in the Son, takes his just condemnation of our sins (no matter what they are!) upon himself for us, puts that death to death in his death on the cross, and then re-creates all of reality in his resurrection; then there remains no space for condemnation. The One who could condemn me stands in the way and has eliminated the sphere for condemnation insofar that he has re-created a world wherein only his righteousness reigns and dwells in his enfleshed life for us in his Son, Jesus Christ. What I just noted is the key to grasp. There is another world in Christ; a world accessible by the eyes of faith, provided by the eyes of Christ, in his vicarious humanity which we are enlivened into by the Holy Spirit. This is the real reality that Christians live in and from; and it is this reality that I cling to whenever the enemy of my soul wants to bring me into a life of bondage that belongs to the world that he is king over; a world that is dead and no longer real by virtue of the reality of God’s new world re-created and realized in the primacy of Jesus Christ.

I hope this small reflection might help provide some liberation for some of you out there as well. I realize this all might seem pretty academic, but I don’t really see things that way; I’m hoping you’ll see as a result of this post why I don’t see things in terms of the ‘academic.’ I think good theology, whether people think it is “academic” or not can begin to see that at spiritual levels these ideas can have real life impact and consequences, and that God can use them for the good; he did so, and continues to work this way for me. Just recently, as recent as yesterday, the devil tried to bring me back into a sense of false condemnation and guilt, and I found relief in the very ideas I’ve just outlined. The process, in the head, can be somewhat mechanistic, when working through things this way, but, at least for me, it is what is required for to live a life of freedom that God wants me to live in and from his Son, and my Savior, Jesus Christ. Soli Deo Gloria.

[1] This might also explain why I have so much resonance with Karl Barth’s theology. Early on Barth was known as a theologian of crisis. Martin Luther’s theology was spawned by deep angst, and his theology is often related to what is known in German as Anfechtung (trial/tribulation). This is why I have found these theologians, among others, as some of my most insightful teachers; they understand that the ‘wisdom of the cross’, that a theologia crucis and a theologia resurrectionis are the key components for knowing God and making him known to others. This is where God meets us; it’s where he knows we must be met if we are going to meet him.

[2] Keith Ward, Creatio Ex Nihilo (Encyclopedia.com), accessed 05-18-2018.

[3] Robert Dale Dawson, The Resurrection in Karl Barth (UK/USA: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2007), 13.

Recycling a post that is probably around seventeen years old now.

Holy Saturday is the time that the “Western Church,” Protestants included (well some), contemplate the moment between the death and resurrection of Jesus. It is the contemplation of the burial in 1 Corinthians 15:3, 4:

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4. that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,

What a time to contemplate the time between the now and the not yet. This time between Christ’s cross and humiliation of unspeakable depths, and the glory of His coming resurrection and ascension; analogically represent the time we inhabit now. We currently wait to fully realize the glory that Jesus has shared with the Father before the world began. And like the Apostles, Disciples, and hopefuls who followed Jesus to the cross, during this time of Jesus’ silence we can despair, be full of fear, angst, anxiousness, so on and so forth. We often wonder is this it? We face circumstances that seem overwhelming, that seem to eclipse and overcome the life of Christ . . . that make it seem as if Christ stayed in the grave. As Christians in this big world, some-times like the disciples of Christ (during this time in history), we can cower behind locked doors, scratch our heads, and wonder, “what now?”

If only the disciples would have remembered, and put 2 + 2 together, what Jesus had said to them in the past (easy for me to say):

As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus instructed them, ‘Don’t tell anyone what you have seen, until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.’  Matthew 17:9

Maybe their despair, their bewilderment, would be turned to joy. Maybe their burden would have been light. Maybe they would have been grieving as ones with real hope. But they forgot, at that moment of time they became so gripped with fear they could not really function (at least some of them, His closest). Even though we know the story, because we can read about it at one sitting, don’t we live like Jesus’ end was the grave? We fall into caverns of unbelief that seem to eclipse and overshadow what we know to be true. If only we would remember the hope, the hope that Jesus spoke of in Matthew 17, and the hope that was realized in Matthew 28:1-10.

As we look forward to Sunday, lets not grow weary by the unanswered questions and grief of Saturday. Instead of forgetting what Jesus has said about the resurrection (i.e. His second advent), let’s glory in advance, in anticipation of the glory that will be revealed in us, as we are hidden in Christ. While we live in Saturday, in anticipation, let’s rest with Jesus, let’s, with Jesus say: ” . . . Father, into your hands I commit my spirit (Lk 23:46).”

I think the best thing about this analogy, of “Holy Saturday,” is that it breaks down at a point. We don’t despair as if there is no resurrection, in fact as Christians we have been brought into the heavenly places with Christ (cf. Eph. 1), now; we have intimate union with Him now (cf. I Cor. 6:17); we have been given the Holy Spirit now (cf. Jn 14–16); and a whole array of distinguishing factors from those disciples of the first century. So take heart, don’t forget, this Holy Saturday, Jesus’ words of glory in humility:

I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.  John 16:33

Death has no ultimate power in the Kingdom of God in Christ. Where’s your sting, death? Jesus came looking for you; found you; and put you to death with His resurrection. Go to hell, death! Χριστός ανέστη! This is the Good News, the Evangel, the kerygma that the Christian reality is contingent upon. As the Apostle Paul once said, ‘if Christ be not risen, we are of all people most to be pitied.’ But He is risen; risen indeed! This is our hope; this is the only hope this fallen and ruptured world has. This strange Easter morning Christians stand united in the koinonia of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; we do this only because Christ is risen. He transcends the walls we sheltered by, the walls of our homes this COVID – 19 morning, and unites us as one body as we, as those with the Spirit, are in union with Christ (unio cum Christo). Our fellowship isn’t contingent upon our gathering together in physical assembly, even though it is a blessed event to participate in. Our fellowship is contingent upon the eternal fellowship always already shared in and among the interpenetrating life of our triune God. It is in their fellowship that Christians have fellowship one with the other; it is through the Holy Spirit’s recreative work, as He has bound us to that in the resurrected humanity of Jesus Christ, wherein we find our rest and fellowship this Easter morning. May we understand this reality this morning, and every morning to come. May we finally participate in this fellowship, with the living God in Jesus Christ, no longer simply by faith, but by the sight of Christ for us. May we experience this great Easter reality in beatific vision with all the saints once and for all; in a place where there is no more sickness, disease, or death.

Now the first day of the week Mary Magdalene went to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. 2 Then she ran and came to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid Him.” 3 Peter therefore went out, and the other disciple, and were going to the tomb. 4 So they both ran together, and the other disciple outran Peter and came to the tomb first. 5 And he, stooping down and looking in, saw the linen cloths lying there; yet he did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb; and he saw the linen cloths lying there, 7 and the handkerchief that had been around His head, not lying with the linen cloths, but folded together in a place by itself. 8 Then the other disciple, who came to the tomb first, went in also; and he saw and believed. 9 For as yet they did not know the Scripture, that He must rise again from the dead. 10 Then the disciples went away again to their own homes. 11 But Mary stood outside by the tomb weeping, and as she wept she stooped down and looked into the tomb. 12 And she saw two angels in white sitting, one at the head and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain. 13 Then they said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him.” 14 Now when she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, and did not know that it was Jesus. 15 Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” She, supposing Him to be the gardener, said to Him, “Sir, if You have carried Him away, tell me where You have laid Him, and I will take Him away.” 16 Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to Him, “Rabboni!” (which is to say, Teacher). 17 Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to Me, for I have not yet ascended to My Father; but go to My brethren and say to them, ‘I am ascending to My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God.’ ” 18 Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord, and that He had spoken these things to her. –John 20:1-18

Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed!!

What a strange season of human history, and yet not one that wasn’t anticipated by this Holy Week. Indeed, the occasion of this Holy Week circumscribes this seeming season of fear and panic by the hope that God stooped down and became human in Christ for us. On this Sunday, Palm Sunday, we remember the day that Jesus finally allowed Himself to be recognized, by the masses, as the King of Israel; the promised Messiah; the son of David; as King of kings and Lord of lords. How did he do that? Not with pomp and bombastic egoism, but upon a lowly donkey; just as He was ushered into this world through a donkey ride, in Mary’s womb, so He was ushered into His time of Passion upon an unbecoming donkey. This is the character of the living and Holy God on display for all to see; He is so humble, loving, and full of grace that He is willing to make Himself vulnerable to the point of being seen as a mere (even crazy) man. But this is the character of the Christian God, and there ought to be no mistaking that just because He is willing to make Himself this vulnerable for us, likewise, it is His willing that controls the narrative of His reality for us. If He did not love us as much as ‘He loves Himself’ (to press a TF Torrance anecdote), He would never had shown up; He would have left us in our sins, only to dissolve into the oblivion our sins have set in motion vis-à-vis God.

As we reflect upon the depth dimension of Palm Sunday, and this Holy Week in particular, we ought to find great comfort in knowing that this is not something that happened in abstraction from what the world is currently facing. This plague, COVID – 19, has unleashed a depth of fear of panic upon this world that is hard to quantify. I’d like to suggest that a positive that this virus has injected into the world, is that it reminds everyone that they are but mortals; that they will indeed die someday. This is one of the effects my cancer (DSRCT) had upon me. My cancer was incurable, and thus unless God miraculously intervened, it would have been terminal (statistically). More collectively, for those in the world who have felt, maybe, immortal, up until this point, this virus can be a great gift; that is if it is understood from within the cross of Jesus Christ. As Peter and Isaiah press ‘by Christ’s strips are we healed.’ In other words, Christ’s life for us, as God’s Bread of Life for us, within its brokenness, their comes new life; a new creation. As Christ actively gave His life up for us, as He passively, like a lamb to be slaughtered, silently gave His life for us; through this cracked shell, the Light of God shown through, and in this light, in the resurrection, God’s power was unleashed anew and afresh with the result that no lame virus could threaten His Kingdom; or those participant in it, by the grace of adoption, in and through the vicarious humanity and God’s Yes in Jesus Christ. You see, this resurrection power is operative in our lives, in this world system, even now; as the Apostle Paul asserts: “today is the Day of salvation!” This is the hope of Palm Sunday.

If you are feeling afraid, panicky, depressed, and uncertain of the future; take heart, Jesus has overcome the world. If the cold you have, the allergies you are suffering with, or even if you are battling through the coronavirus currently, if any of these things, and all of the attendant fallout, is causing you abysmal fear and anxiety; know that the reality of Palm Sunday, the reality of King Jesus has swept in through the breath of the Holy Spirit, and made all things new. If death could not hold Jesus down, and if we were in Christ, as all humanity was (and is!) [cf. Rom 6], then death cannot hold us down. The Lamb of God slain before the foundation of the world [selah] broke into our fallen humanity, and created a new thing. This is the hope that Palm Sunday introduces us to. Place your hope in the stripes of Jesus Christ’s tattered body for you, you will not be disappointed this Palm Sunday if you do; for our God does not disappoint. This is the hope I am looking to currently.

Certainly, I have been experiencing my own fears and anxieties because of this lame virus. I don’t want to die; I didn’t want to die when I had cancer; and I don’t want to die now; indeed, I never want to die! I wasn’t created to die, I was created to live eternally within the womb of the triune God; within the fellowship of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; and so, I will (and do). This is where I am attempting to rest during this Holy Week; and every week. Jesus’s life story isn’t simply a “Bible story” back then; the story of Christ’s life back then, is His story for us now. This is true because He lives; because He is risen; because He is risen indeed! Christ’s life offers living bread from heaven for the world. This is my hope this Holy Week. The policies, the stimuluses, the scientists, and the world leaders are not my hope during this time of panic and fear; the risen Christ, and His power therefrom is my hope. Not that He doesn’t bring healing and work through the broken structures and peoples of the world, but they aren’t the hope; He is! This is what I am letting Palm Sunday do to me; I am letting it reiterate, once again, that Jesus is Lord and King, and I am not. I only say this by the faith of Christ, because in my flesh I am overwhelmed with fear and trembling at the prospects facing this world system. Love you, Lord Jesus. Please come, and come quickly! Not by might, nor by power, but by Your Spirit; saith You, Lord!

Recycling a post that is probably around thirteen years old now.

Holy Saturday is the time that the “Western Church,” Protestants included (well some), contemplate the moment between the death and resurrection of Jesus. It is the contemplation of the burial in 1 Corinthians 15:3, 4:

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4. that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,

What a time to contemplate the time between the now and the not yet. This time between Christ’s cross and humiliation of unspeakable depths, and the glory of His coming resurrection and ascension; analogically represent the time we inhabit now. We currently wait to fully realize the glory that Jesus has shared with the Father before the world began. And like the Apostles, Disciples, and hopefuls who followed Jesus to the cross, during this time of Jesus’ silence we can despair, be full of fear, angst, anxiousness, so on and so forth. We often wonder is this it? We face circumstances that seem overwhelming, that seem to eclipse and overcome the life of Christ . . . that make it seem as if Christ stayed in the grave. As Christians in this big world, some-times like the disciples of Christ (during this time in history), we can cower behind locked doors, scratch our heads, and wonder, “what now?”

If only the disciples would have remembered, and put 2 + 2 together, what Jesus had said to them in the past (easy for me to say):

As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus instructed them, ‘Don’t tell anyone what you have seen, until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.’  Matthew 17:9

Maybe their despair, their bewilderment, would be turned to joy. Maybe their burden would have been light. Maybe they would have been grieving as ones with real hope. But they forgot, at that moment of time they became so gripped with fear they could not really function (at least some of them, His closest). Even though we know the story, because we can read about it at one sitting, don’t we live like Jesus’ end was the grave? We fall into caverns of unbelief that seem to eclipse and overshadow what we know to be true. If only we would remember the hope, the hope that Jesus spoke of in Matthew 17, and the hope that was realized in Matthew 28:1-10.

As we look forward to Sunday, lets not grow weary by the unanswered questions and grief of Saturday. Instead of forgetting what Jesus has said about the resurrection (i.e. His second advent), let’s glory in advance, in anticipation of the glory that will be revealed in us, as we are hidden in Christ. While we live in Saturday, in anticipation, let’s rest with Jesus, let’s, with Jesus say: ” . . . Father, into your hands I commit my spirit (Lk 23:46).”

I think the best thing about this analogy, of “Holy Saturday,” is that it breaks down at a point. We don’t despair as if there is no resurrection, in fact as Christians we have been brought into the heavenly places with Christ (cf. Eph. 1), now; we have intimate union with Him now (cf. I Cor. 6:17); we have been given the Holy Spirit now (cf. Jn 14–16); and a whole array of distinguishing factors from those disciples of the first century. So take heart, don’t forget, this Holy Saturday, Jesus’ words of glory in humility:

I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.  John 16:33

Missio Dei, is a Christmas theme. ‘Mission of God’ has a variegated pedigree, as a theological and conceptual apparatus. People like John Flett, more recently, have published on this locus; in Flett’s case in his book Witness of God (which I haven’t read yet). Some want to reduce its modern emphasis to Barth’s theology, but as I understand Flett’s thesis, we are better off by uncoupling this concept from Barth, and instead allow it to be a concept that we bring into critical discussion with Barth’s theology, and its trinitarian character as a whole. But beyond the more technical intricacies of this concept, I simply wanted to lift it up as a pregnant Christmas concept.

The naked picture this locus evokes in my mind’s eye is of God’s election to not be God without us, thus with us (and Immanuel) in Christ. The Incarnation is all about God’s Grace, and free choice to elevate us to where He has always already been as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Christmas is about God enfleshing Himself, entering the squalid state fallen humanity inhabits; and by His inhabitation in our status as broken creatures, He recreates a new humanity just at the point that he assumes our humanity. This is something people in the church need to be more cognizant of; there needs to be a greater recognition of the fact that Easter and Christmas, Atonement and Incarnation are of a piece. Atonement starts, as TF Torrance and Barth emphasize (along with Athanasius et al), just at the point that the eternal Son becomes human; becomes Jesus. The cross represents a climax of what began in the manger, but without the manger, and the flesh that God put on therein, the cross, of course!, has no meaning.

The Missio Dei, is about God’s apocalyptic life; His life for us in the baby face of Jesus. It is through His invasion of our alien humanity that Christmas comes to have contextual meaning; where we can genuinely amen that little anecdote of: Jesus is the Reason for the Season. Christmas has to do with God’s Trinitarian life just as this Life has chosen in its plenitude to make His procession in origin of relation as Father, Son, and Spirit, the ground of His mission to be for us and not against us. Christmas time is a ‘theology proper’ holiday; one that is decisively about worship of the living God who always has been in resplendent aseity and inner-joy.