Category Archives: Spiritual Warfare

Standing with the Biblical Prophets: In Kerygmatic Unity

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6 Let nobody deceive you with empty words, for because of these things God’s wrath comes on the sons of disobedience. 7 Therefore do not be sharers with them, 8 for you were at one time darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live like children of light— 9 for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness, and truth— 10 trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord. 11 Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but ratherexpose them. 12 For the things they do in secret are shameful even to mention. 13 But all things being exposed by the light are made visible. 14 For everything made visible is light, and for this reason it says:

“Awake, O sleeper!
Rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you!” –Ephesians 5.6-14

I shared the following on my FaceBook feed earlier. It reflects things that are swirling in and around my head/heart. It is rather difficult for me to grasp how so many Christians are so lost in the maze of the so-called culture wars. None of what we’re experiencing right now has much to do with that charade; that is a side-show intended on keeping people divided. Unfortunately, Christians reflect the broader culture so much, we end up divided along the same fault lines as is the world. Personally, as a Christian, the sort of Christianity I intend on following, everything is about the truth. I’m not a skeptic like Pilate who lives under the relativism of: “what is Truth?” No, I am a person of the Way, TRUTH, and Life in Jesus Christ. As such, I am uninterested in being trapped-in by a group-identity, save the communio sanctorum as that is concretely established in Christ’s mediatorial humanity, and realized in the koinonia He has shared with the Father and by the Holy Spirit since time in eternity. What I am saying is this: I came to walk with Christ, and continue to, through radical and even apocalyptic crises in my life; I came to know Christ, as a man, just as I did as a boy: as the One who is Lord. I am subservient to no group; I am ready and willing to be considered a fool over and over again because of the truth; and all of this is so because my life is hid in Christ, as if in the very womb of Triune plenitude. If this sounds melodramatic to you, then you’re unaware of just how dramatic the life of God really is. So, I leave you with the following:  

This really isn’t about progressives versus conservatives. It is about a spiritual battle that transcends such categories. What’s at stake isn’t whether Trump gets 4 more years, but whether or not a greater darkness takes hold of the world than heretofore. There seems to be lots of muddled confusion among Christians in regard to political action, on all sides. We aren’t fighting for Trump, per se, the fight has to do with re-establishing an order that is closer to the light rather than further from it. What is going on in the world is a macro-struggle, that prior to Trump’s arrival, was working and moving forward unabated. Trump simply is not with and part of the plan, and as such is a literal monkey-wrench they don’t want. He is like a zapper that has drawn out all the bugs and crawlers that would’ve preferred to stay in the shadows but must now expose themselves for their survival. If you think that what I am saying here is a conspiracy theory, you are not paying attention. If you think Christians shouldn’t involve themselves with being informed about such particularities, and that we should simply be involved in superficially engaging with IDEALISTIC issues (you know like the term systemic or structural signifies), then you’ve lost the ball.

I do agree, the Christian’s primary job is to bear witness to Jesus Christ through proclaiming the Good News of the coming Kingdom, and the Kingdom come. But that proclamation has implications, it has a domain; and within its domain it exposes the darkness with the Light. Not in an abstract way, but in a concrete way. Concrete in the sense that the idealism so-called Critical Theory (CT / CrT) exposes us to does not touch; in fact it only helps to create an abstract battle with no concrete event-horizons wherein the people can know if the “battle” has been won or not.

Just speaking freely.

“Beware, Assyria, the club I use to vent my anger, a cudgel with which I angrily punish. 6 I sent him against a godless nation, I ordered him to attack the people with whom I was angry, to take plunder and to carry away loot, to trample them down like dirt in the streets. 7 But he does not agree with this; his mind does not reason this way, for his goal is to destroy, and to eliminate many nations. 8 Indeed, he says: ‘Are not my officials all kings? 9 Is not Calneh like Carchemish? Hamath like Arpad? Samaria like Damascus? 10 I overpowered kingdoms ruled by idols, whose carved images were more impressive than Jerusalem’s or Samaria’s. 11 As I have done to Samaria and its idols, so I will do to Jerusalem and its idols.” 12 But when the Lord finishes judging Mount Zion and Jerusalem, then he will punish the king of Assyria for what he has proudly planned and for the arrogant attitude he displays. –Isaiah 10.5-12

Luther as Hercules: American Evangelicals, Conspiracy Theories and End Times

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I just watched a video produced by a former seminary prof of mine, who specializes in the theology of culture, Dr. Paul Metzger. The video features a discussion with Dr. Greg Camp and professor, Jon Morehead, and the topic is: American evangelicals, conspiracy theory and its connection to end times eschatological speculations and fervor (or fever). In all honesty, for any of us who have been more intimately associated with so-called conspiracy theorism, it wasn’t all that informative. Although it does get into the origins of the illuminati in the late 19th century, in America, and then how that has blossomed into 21st century iterations; that represented a helpful sketch of the historical sourcing that so-called conspiracy theorism is funded by. But then it tails off into a passive anti-Trump advertisement, as Trumpism is tied into Qanon and other so-called conspiracy theories afoot.

But I want to get beyond that, a bit. Some of my readers, I’m sure, are concerned with my apparent turn to the sort of conspiracy theorism I have been referring to above. I want to provide some perspective on that. The reality is that in the history there have been actual CONSPIRACIES that have engulfed humanity into the most destructive vicissitudes imaginable (the easiest and closest reference that comes to mind, of course, is Nazi Germany). I do grant, of course, that there are actual and real conspiracy theories, but those are often deployed as deflections which serve as subterfuge, in the sense that it makes it almost impossible to disentangle the theory from the actual conspiracy; especially when media, of any type, gets involved in the fomentation of these things.

But this is exactly what, I would contend, folks committed to anti-conspiracy theorism, in the name of sobriety and institutional identity, overlook too hastily. They fail to recognize that there are real, even satanic (because us Christians still believe that the devil and his minions are real and active in this present ‘evil age’) conspiracies that the ‘world system’ is embroiled in. And precisely because we are Christians, we ought to see these things framed within the apocalyptic framing that Scripture, and even more importantly, as Scripture attests to its reality, Jesus did. There are identifiable conspiracies, and conspirators active in the world today, and they are of their father the devil. Often folks like my former professor, and the guests he had on his production, want to keep things much too abstract (that’s I how read them). They prefer to operate with an abstract notion of evil that is operative in the world, thus it allows us to keep things more intellectually manageable in regard to how we approach these things (i.e. in dispassionate and ‘academic’ ways). In other words, there almost seems to be this sense that the mode I am referring to is okay with thinking of evil as a globular mass ‘out there,’ but when others attempt to make that too personal and particular, when we start giving names, and identifying movements, it is just at this moment that the descriptor “conspiracy theory” becomes the handy way out.

Ever since my first real introduction to Martin Luther in Reformation Theology class in seminary by my former prof (and I’ll still claim him as my current mentor), Ron Frost, I was hooked (maybe this is because of my Scandinavian heritage, I don’t know)! Luther, was a theologian who had grist in his theology, the sort that produced his famous theologia crucis (theology of the cross). Luther, the son of a miner, was a ‘man of the earth,’ we might think of someone like Esau, in terms of earthiness, or of St. Peter; at least these are the sorts of personages who come to mind when I think of Luther. Psychologically and spiritually, Luther had a deep sense of his utter need for God; which of course propelled him into his protesting work against the Papacy. Luther, as Heiko Oberman so eloquently describes him, was ‘a man between God and the devil,’ as such, Luther had a sense of God’s apocalyptic presence and even doom. He found relief, from the doom part of that, personally, through his solifidian (‘faith alone’) breakthrough. Once this relief came, he came to see the papacy, and the pope himself, as the literal and personal Antichrist (some Lutherans today, like the Wisconsin Synod, an offshoot of the Missouri Synod, still understand the office of the pope to be representative of the Antichrist). My point: if Luther was present today, if he operated with this same sort of zeal, and was willing to openly call out the pope as the Antichrist, he would be considered a conspiracy theorist himself. Notice the historical mode surrounding Luther, and how Luther saw himself vis-à-vis the pope during his time, as described by David Whitford:

In 1522, the dramatic woodcut, attributed to Hans Hoblein, depicting Martin Luther as the Hercules Germanicus firs appeared . . . . The woodcut was part of early pro-Luther propaganda. Dangling from Luther’s nose hangs the pope. Screaming in Luther’s mighty grasp is the inquisitor Jakob von Hochstraten. Lying at Luther’s feet are the decapitated Hydra of scholastic miscellany: Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William of Okham, Aristotle, Nicholas Lyra, and Peter Lombard. The Hydra, of course, was only one of the first tests Hercules would face. Other more terrible tests awaited him. Hercules final test was to face Cerberus, “a monster not to be overcome and that may not be described, [who] eats raw flesh, the brazen-voiced hound of Hades.” So too, Luther came to feel that he would have to vanquish not only the scholastic Hydra, but his own hound of Hades. In 1520, Luther came to believe that he involved in an apocalyptic struggle against the Antichrist himself: the pope.[1]

If the Christian, I contend, is living with a sense of God’s immediacy, particularly as that is ‘felt’ through the theology of the cross, they will live with the sort of abandon and apocalyptic energy that Luther (and the Apostle Paul) did. Even if we’re ‘planting trees’ in the process, we will not be afraid to live lives that are framed by the scandalous nature of particularity. This does not mean we must, at the same time, engage in the sort of sacrificium intellectus that real conspiracy theorists often do. But it does mean that there ought to be a willingness to attempt the discernment and disentanglement of things that ‘institutional discernment’ typically fails at. Luther, while initially, attempting to work within the institution, was so driven by the all compelling light of Christ that shown upon him in his Augustinian monkery, and freed him, that he finally was cast out of the institution because of his willingness to be the “Church’s” idiot.

I am willing to be considered the Church’s idiot, if it means an openness to view things that contravenes ‘conventional’ discernment tablets. In that process I will, to a degree, slide too far down one side of the pendulum, this way, or that way, but there must be, in my view, a willingness to think beyond the so-called sobriety of the “peers.” Luther was willing to call the pope the personal Antichrist. Today that would be akin to seeing Obama or Trump as the Messiah, literally. But it was Luther’s willingness to be considered a fool for the Gospel, and often that led him into being a fool simply for himself, that he was willing to take these theopolitical stands. I’ve been told by a few people I know, PhDs in theology, that I have ‘lost my mind’ because of the particular conspiracies that I think are real; but so be it. I stand coram Deo (before God), and so do you!

 

[1] David M. Whitford, “The Papal Antichrist: And the Underappreciated Influence of Lorenzo Valla,” Renaissance Quarterly, (Volume 61: Number 1), Spring 2008:26.

On the Destroyer

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The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. John 10.10a

Do you look around at the world, and read it through this Dominical teaching of our Lord Jesus? I do. I have experienced this destruction both personally and at large (as I observe the world “out there”). I’m not really sure if most Christian people at a concrete level read the world this way anymore; I’m afraid most Christians, even Christians who affirm the reality of spiritual entities like the devil and his minions, have been taken over by the materialist consumerism the Western world is shaped by. And yet this is the reality according to Jesus. The ‘thief’ is not satisfied unless he can steal, kill, and destroy; this destruction is all around us. Oh yes, we have normalized, functionalized, and sanctified much of this havoc, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is indeed destructive and deleterious just the same.

When I look out at the socio-political landscape currently all I see is the devil’s imprints all over it. The world has been set on fire by lies, deception, death, and destruction, and yet somehow we bear up under it, even as Christians, as if this is just the norm of history that we must flow along with. We simply bow down to the idea that history is this great dialectic of transformation and deification wherein we are sacramentalized and given the grace of the material world insofar as that has been conquered and manipulated by the scientists and their technology. The technology is the Great Hope; the ‘magic’ being used to transport the human species from our past glory to a new glory of overcoming the material world; making the material world our sanctuary for human flourishing; and the end for all that is holy. Typically such mastery and worship of the material world, if we were to frame it ‘spiritually,’ would be understood as occultic. In biblical history it would be Baal worship, with Moloch worship on its heels. And yet this is where we are, primarily, in the world today. The Enlightenment was a demonic coup wherein the angel of light tricked humanity into thinking it had evolved beyond its primitive ancestors, thus becoming like gods, through material mastery, and techno actualization, resulting in a telos wherein the human spirit has become the Holy Spirit.

All I am trying to do with this post is to ‘re-enchant’ our spiritual imaginaries in such a way that they are clicking with the imaginary and reality that Jesus provided us with in His Self-revelation of the triune God, and the world this God sustains by the Word of His Power. It is a complex world that He alone is prime over and for. In this world, there is a serpentine slitherer who is seeking to destroy the very very good re-creation of God in Jesus Christ. Of course he has failed, but with the wake God has allowed him to have, in this ‘current evil age,’ he and his cohort are attempting to reverse what Jesus the Viktor has won in the resurrection. But this is the world the Christian inhabits. It is a world where apocalyptic struggle is being executed in such way that if the Christian does not have their biblical spectacles on they will completely misread the spiritually feral nature of the whole happening. We shouldn’t read things, politically, as if those are ethereal and abstract from what I am referring to; indeed, the Kingdom of Christ is a full-bodied and embodied/physical reality; the resurrection says so. As such, insofar as the Enemy seeks to thwart the Kingdom of Christ by mimicking it in his own dark and dilettante way, he too seeks to penetrate physical realities and engineer them in such a way that they might appear to be fully under his control. As we look out at the world, because of the swath God has given the loser devil in this in-between time, it might look like to us, and to him, like he is winning; but the Lion of the Tribe of Judah has already said: NEIN.

I am writing this as a personal pep-talk. These are the sorts of thoughts running through my mind as we continue to experience the Twilight Zone we are currently inhabiting. Jesus is King.

I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly. John 10.10b

If Christ’s Vicarious Humanity Doesn’t Matter, Nobody’s Does: The Centraldogma of Prayer

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This will be a post that will off-put some of my readers, but so be it. Some have complained to me via comments, and email, that they aren’t a fan of my “politics,” and recent political posts; they simply prefer my stuff on theology. Apparently, folks have failed to understand that theology and politics go hand-in-hand; they do all throughout the Bible, and therefore, any theologian worth their salt will read these things together as well. Remember, Jesus is King of kings, and Lord of lords; that sounds pretty political to me! What is going on in the world currently is abnormal, and yet evangelical leaders, and other Christian leaders seemingly are attempting to operate as if we are in a turbulent, but yet, status quo moment where we ought to operate with the usual optics that evangelical leaders offer in times of national and global crises. That’s not my read of things, not at all! Clearly, we don’t know when Christ is coming again; but He said to live in a mode of WATCHFULNESS (cf. Mk 13)! With the events currently unfolding in the world, if the Christian’s watchfulness antennas aren’t up, then maybe the Christian ought to check their spiritual pulse. This might sound harsh, but I am sincerely baffled at the state of the evangelical churches right now.

The rest of this post, maybe abruptly, relative to my introduction here, will be about the spiritual attack the satan launched against Jesus Christ as He became human to bring ultimate reconciliation between God and humanity in His consubstantial person as both God and human pro nobis. I will highlight, through reference to Thomas Torrance’s thinking, how the role of prayer ought to function in the midst of the onslaught of satan, as satan attempts to thwart the plans of God; first in the incarnation, and then in echo of that, in our lives and world as we find our lives in participatio Christi (participation with Christ). Whether people recognize it or not we are in a spiritual battle, and the hater of our souls is in an all-out blitzkrieg to destroy all that is sacred and pure.

 13 And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs coming out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. 14 For they are spirits of demons, performing signs, which go out to the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty. –Revelation 16:13-14

As I reflect on what is occurring in the world, the above passage keeps popping into my mind for some reason. It feels like we’re in a moment like this; as if ‘unclean spirits’ have been released from the abyss and are attempting to destroy this world as an affront to the God who holds it together by the Word of His Power. These spirits have seemingly cast a great delusion on the masses, even seemingly, taking hold of many Christians. The only way to be an ‘overcomer’ in this sort of battle is to be in a dialogical or prayer-bond with the living God. The Son of Man knew this; as His co-heirs we ought to know this. Prayer keeps our focus on the only One who can intervene and bring life rather than death. Here is how Torrance explicates this with reference to the incarnation, and how the Son of Man bore up under the wicked onslaught that unleashed as a counter-assault to the coming of God to the world in Christ:

(ii) The attack by the powers of evil on the bond of prayer between Jesus and the Father

But now let us look at the prayer life of Jesus from a slightly different point of view, from the point of view of the attack upon it by all the powers of evil. Jesus Christ the perfect communion between God and man was actualised, not only through the incarnation of the Word of God in this man, but through the obedient reliance of this man upon God the Father. In that double movement of God’s faithful seeking and assuming of man back again into fellowship, and of man’s faithful return in Christ to God and complete dependence upon Him, the holy and loving will of God for humanity was realised in the midst of its isolation and estrangement. The bond between God and man is recreated and actualised in the midst of our humanity in the very life lived by Jesus and signalised so fully by his life of prayer. Therefore all the powers of evil launched their attack upon Jesus; fearful temptations and assaults fell upon him, all in order to isolate him from God, to break the bond of fellowship between them, to snap the life of prayer and obedient clinging to the heavenly Father; to destroy the life of obedience to God’s will and word, and so to make impossible any meeting between God and man in Jesus ; to destroy the ground of reconciliation, to disrupt the foundation for atonement being laid in the obedient and prayerful life of the Son of Man.

Against all that fearful temptation in which all the hosts of darkness were mustered against him, Jesus resorted to prayer and unswervingly held fast to God the Father throughout it all. That holding fast to God in prayer, that battle against the powers of darkness doing their utmost to isolate him from God, and so to isolate man from God for ever, the fearful struggles of prayer with strong crying and tears, ‘not my will but thine be done’, all that belongs to the innermost heart of the reconciling and atoning life of Jesus reaching from the very beginning to the very end, and increasing in its unbelievable intensity right up to the cross. ‘Father into thy hands I commit my spirit.’[1]

The evil forces present at Christ’s coming, are present now. I remain baffled, to be honest, at the lack of appreciation of this, which I have seen particularly in the so-called thought leaders of the Christian church. I hear a lot about social justice, critical race theory, Liberation theology, so on and so forth; but I hear almost nothing, except crickets, when it comes to the idea that in fact ‘we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities and powers’ of this ‘present evil age.’ Because we ostensibly are unable to discern this as Christians, we are allowing the deceiver to thrust us into an artificial division between us and our black brothers and sisters. This division, in the blood of Christ, in the resurrected and new humanity of Jesus Christ, in His Triumphal Victory for all humanity, in His vicarious humanity (what TFT just referred us to) has re-conciled all of humanity to God; of all colors, tribes, tongues, and nations. This is the premise of the incarnation that the devil fought so hard to destroy as he came against the Son of Man; and it is the same premise the devil still desires to destroy, in and through an artificial division that the cross of Jesus Christ, the wisdom of the living and triune God, has utterly vanquished into the abyss of hell. Jesus was not ignorant of the enemy’s devices; remember when He said this:

25 But Jesus knew their thoughts, and said to them: “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand. 26 If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand? 27 And if I cast out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore they shall be your judges. 28 But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you. 29 Or how can one enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man? And then he will plunder his house. 30 He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters abroad. –Matthew 12:25-30

If Jesus knew this, then why wouldn’t we as His co-heirs? Just because the world, the media tells us blacks and whites are divided does not mean we are; the devil brings division, the Son of Man brings unity in His Gosepeled Life for us. As Christians we are to bear witness to this reality, not give into an artificial lie that we need to somehow bring reconciliation to systemic injustices that no longer exist in the very power of God. If this is not our starting point, if the logic of God’s grace in the incarnation, actualized in the resurrection of Christ is not our major premise, then there can be no lasting reconciliation between any of us. But we are reconciled one with the other in Christ. If we cannot identify with the broken life of Christ, if we cannot see Him as primary, and understand that if His humanity doesn’t matter: then nobody’s humanity will matter; because there will be none!

And if we aren’t in a constant dialogue of prayer with God, participating in the priestly and intercessory ministry of Jesus Christ (cf. Heb. 7:25), then we will be deceived by the satan and give into his divisive lies that will indeed conquer, at least in the immediate, the efforts that the death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ has already wrought. But we only ontically stand in this reality insofar as we are in constant con-versation with the living and triune God; as we participate with and are partakers of the divine nature in and through the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. Take our eye off this all-important reality of praying without ceasing, and we will be divided and destroyed. Jesus knew this, and as His brothers and sisters, through our adoption in His filial relationship with the Father by the Holy Spirit, we ought to know this and stand in this reality as well. Yes, as we move into this, the onslaught continues, but we are bonded into the very life of the everlasting and immortal God. Maranatha

[1] Thomas F. Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ, edited by Robert T. Walker (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic, 2008), 118-19.

The ‘Nothingness’ of Chaos and the Victory of God’s Yes: With Application to the Great Panic of COVID19

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Mark Lindsay offers a wonderful treatment of evil or das Nichtige or ‘nothingness’ in the theology of Karl Barth. I want to catch up with him in the midst of that treatment, and read along with him as he describes an implication of Barth’s thinking on evil and sin in the world. But I want to do this in a particular context, with the hopes of drawing out a certain application with reference to the current unparalleled and seismic upheaval we are currently seeing unfold before us in the COVID19 Panic. Let’s catch up with Lindsay, read along with him for a moment, and then attempt to distill and apply Barth’s doctrine of nothingness and evil in the world to our current catastrophe.

The second corollary is that, as the enemy of divine grace, Nothingness is primarily an assault upon God, with humanity as only the secondary target. Again, this is in contrast to Schleiermacher’s doctrine, according to which the sovereignty of God elevates Him above all violations. For Barth, however, the conflict with Nothingness is primarily and properly God’s own affair. Nothingness is the assault of the nonwilled reality against the elected creation. As such, it represents an attack not only upon God’s created covenantal partner but also and primarily upon God’s decision to elect and, therefore, on God Himself. In CD II/2, Barth makes clear that, in pre-temporal eternity, God is an electing God. “[I]n the act of love which determines His whole being God elects.” Moreover, the act of election “is not one moment with others in the prophetic and apostolic testimony”, but, enclosed “within the testimony of God to Himself, it is the moment which is the substance and basis of all other moments in that testimony.” This being the case, the violation by Nothingness of the act and decision of election is as such a violation of God. This means that God, in faithfulness to His covenant, must take up the battle against Nothingness. He must be “the Adversary of the adversary”, otherwise He would not be true, either to His covenant partner or to Himself. As Barth puts it,

We have not to forget the covenant, mercy and faithfulness of God, nor should we overlook the fact that God did not will to be God for His own sake alone, but that as the Creator He also became the covenant Partner of His creature, entering into a relationship with it in which He wills to be directly and [primarily] involved in all that concerns it…[This] means that whatever concerns and affects the creature concerns and affects Himself, not indirectly but directly, not subsequently and incidentally but primarily and supremely. Why is this so? Because, having created the creature, He has pledged His faithfulness to it. The threat of nothingness to the creature’s salvation is primarily and supremely an assault upon His own majesty.

Barth is not thereby implying that God Himself is essentially threatened and corrupted by Nothingness, as humanity is. The counterpart of humanity’s vulnerability to the power of das Nichtige, which we have already seen, is that we must not overestimate its power in relation to God. Indeed, if its power should be rated “as high as possible in relation to ourselves”, it must be rated “as low as possible in relation to God.” Nevertheless, God is not unmoved by radical evil. On behalf of His creation – which, in its encounter with Nothingness can only show itself to be the impotent victim of suffering – God opposes, confronts and victoriously crushes His graceless adversary. As may be expected from such a consistently Christocentric theologian, the locus of this triumph over evil is the incarnation or, more specifically, the cross and resurrection of Christ.

At this place, we must qualify our earlier comment that God is not threatened by Nothingness. In the incarnation, God Himself becomes a creature and thus takes upon Himself the creature’s sin, guilt and misery. In “what befalls this man God pronounces His No to the bitter end.” The entire fury of Nothingness – and of God’s wrath directed towards it – falls upon Christ “in all its dreadful fulness…” Precisely, however, because this man is also God, “Nothingness could not master this victim.” It had power over the creature. It could contradict and oppose it and break down its defences. It could make it its slave and instrument and therefore its victim. But it was impotent against the God who humbled Himself, and Himself became a creature, and thus exposed Himself to its power and resisted it.

By confronting and decisively triumphing over Nothingness in Jesus Christ, God has relegated it to the past. In the light of the cross and the empty tomb, “there is no sense in which it can be affirmed that nothingness has any objective existence…” Barth rejects outright the suggestion that radical evil exists in the form of an eternal antithesis. On the contrary, he insists that it has no perpetuity. It is neither created by God, nor maintained in a covenantal relationship with Him. Thus, “we should not get involved in the logical dialectic that if God loves, elects and affirms eternally he must also hate and therefore reject and negate eternally. There is nothing to make God’s activity on the left hand as necessary and perpetual as His activity on the right.” Nothingness has been brought to its end, no longer having even the transient and temporary existence it once had. On this note of “cosmic optimism”, Barth concludes his presentation of his doctrine.[1]

There are complexities—like Barth’s doctrine of election—that we will not have time to unpack here. But hopefully, you, the readers are able to at least see how asymmetrical this warfare is between God’s holiness in Christ for us, and His [last] enemy, which is: death (or nothingness or das Nichtige). The bottom line is this: for Barth, according to Lindsay, evil operates in a sort of Athanasian key. It is a non-reality reality that parasitically seeks to dissolve the very Good of God’s triune Life into nothingness. Because, for Barth, God has freely elected to not be God without us, but with us [Immanuel], when the non-graced side of contingent reality (or nothingness, or evil), along with its nothingness minions, like the satan or the demons represent (the principalities and powers in Paul’s Colossae theology), attempt to ‘kill, still, and destroy’ God’s creaturely reality (namely: us / humanity), this attack is an attack on the very Who of who God is. Barth is careful to retain the Creator/creature distinction in this framework, just as he has, as George Hunsinger identifies it, a ‘Chalcedonian Pattern’ shaping his theology; but it is highly significant, in Barthian theology, to realize that God humbled Himself for us, in keeping with His Who character, that He might exalt humanity unto Himself in the resurrected and recreated humanity He assumed for us in the incarnation. This is significant, for Barth, just because, as we have been considering, in God’s Freedom, once again, for God to be God in His new creation, it means that He will not do that without us; this is God’s Grace, and represents the Divine No, and ultimate dissolution of what already is nothing in God’s Kingdom: evil and death. It is because God has so identified Himself with us in Christ, that we, the creatures are assured of being on the Yes side of God’s indestructible eternally triune Life.

Application

How might the above consideration apply to the current panic, and unprecedented global upheaval we are currently seeing unfold before our eyes as the ostensible result of COVID19? Clearly, there has been upheaval, chaos, and conflagration the world over throughout the annuls of world history. Wars and rumors of wars; famines and destitution; pandemics, plagues, and paranoia have swept through the landscape like a scorched earth since the Great Lapse of Adam and Eve ‘in the beginning.’ What has sustained humanity through all of these tumultuous seasons of waning and wallowing?

The answer to this, should be clear by now: it is God’s Yes, and His decisive No in His Yes, to the das Nichtige that seeks to kill and destroy all that is good and holy in the world; all that has been taken up into God’s humanity for us in Jesus Christ (cf. Rom 8.18ff). It is this eternal reality, the ‘Lamb slain before the foundations of the world,’ that sustains this seemingly fluttering and futile earth-system. The Life in this world is not contingent upon this world, but the One who sustains it moment-by-moment through the Word of His power; who is the risen Christ! This is the victorious reality that cedes the nothingness that would desire to assume the life of God as its own; on its own non-terms, and anti-Christ ways.

When I look out at the chaos, fear, pain, and suffering this teetering world is currently experiencing; when I am tempted to fling myself into the nothingness and das Nichtige that seeks to dissolve God’s life, and make it its own; I fall back, moment-by-moment, into the reality that nothingness stands no chance against the everythingess of God’s triune and eternal Life. This is the hope that the Christian has in this world. And no matter what the exterior circumstances nothingness seeks to throw at us, as Christians, even in our own angst and experience of this nothingness, we of all people can bear witness to the fact that we know that we and all humanity can participate in the extra life of God for us in Jesus Christ. We can bear witness, even when ‘we have the sentence of death written upon us,’ to the reality that ‘we know the One who raises the dead.’ Isn’t this what the world is fearful of, and panicking over? Isn’t it ultimately fearful of having its current experience of life and satisfaction snuffed out? We can bear witness to the world, no matter how deep the terror of nothingness might seem, that there is a something reality that has penetrated nothingness and turned it on its head. We can give the world Hope, as they see that operative in our lives; as they see the Holy Spirit bearing witness that God is love, and that He has demonstrated that by taking nothingness to the cross of Christ and resurrecting a new day for all who will. Soli Deo Gloria

 

[1] Mark R. Lindsay, Barth, Israel, and Jesus: Karl Barth’s Theology of Israel (UK/USA: Ashgate Publishing, 2007), 48-52. Also see Lindsay’s Pdf of his whole chapter where this long quote is taken from entitled: Nothingness Revisited: Karl Barth’s Radical Evil in the Wake of the Holocaust. In the book version that I’ve been reading Lindsay has the pertinent sections from Barth’s CD bracketed throughout for the reader’s reference. In the essay form he has all of the CD references footnoted; the reader will want to refer to his essay which I have linked here if they want to follow up further in Barth’s Church Dogmatics.

The One Word of God Stands Against the Impotent Power of Hell: Jesus is King of kings / Lord of lords

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The time: WW2. The place: Nazi Germany. The figurehead of the whole demonic nightmare: Adolf Hitler. Place these realities into conflict with the Word of God, and those submitted to it, like Karl Barth, Dietrich Bonhoeffer et al., and we get a confession or declaration like Barmen, of the so-called German Confessing Church. Barth essentially penned it, along with Bonhoeffer. Barth refers to it, in this German context, in his Church Dogmatics II/1 §26, 171. As typical he has a long small print section on this that is lovely to behold; it is impassioning to read; like fire to my bones. In nuce, Barth boils down all that happened as a result of the satanic attacked spawned by the heathen of the Reich, and identifies that the only bulwark left standing, after natural theology had been repented of by the Confessing Church, was the ‘one Word of God.’ Let me share a bit from the small print, and then meet you on the other side:

But it was a witness. It was obliged to notice what was going to be seen on this occasion—that Satan had fallen from heaven like lightning and that the Lord is mighty over all gods. What it noticed on this occasion was the fact of the unique validity of Jesus Christ as the Word of God spoken to us for life and death. The repudiation of natural theology was only the self-evident reverse side of this notice. It has no independent significance. It affirms only that there is no other help—that is, in temptation—when it is a question of the being or not being of the Church. What helps, when every other helper fails, is only the miracle, power and comfort of the one Word of God. The Confessional Church began to live at the hand of this notice and at its hand it lives to this day. And it is this notice which it has to exhibit to other Churches as the testimony which it has received and which is now laid upon it as a commission. It will be lost if it forgets this testimony, or no longer understands it, or not longer takes it seriously; the power against which it stands is too great for it to meet it otherwise than with the weapon of this testimony. But it will also be lost if it does not understand and keep to the fact that this testimony is not entrusted to it simply for its own use, but at the same time as a message for the world-wide Church. And it may well be decisive for other Churches in the world, for their existence as the one, ecumenical Church of Jesus Christ, whether they on their side are able to hear and willing to accept the message of the Confessional Church in Germany.[1]

I felt compelled to share this because it seems to me that the Confessing Church, wherever she might be found today, is under assault in untold ways. Whether it be the seeker sensitive evangelical churches attempting to be ‘relevant’ to the broader culture; or the straight up ravenously militant atheists making in-roads into the lives and minds of many of those caught up in the former; or the post-secular assault on the culture at large, which penetrates the walls of the churches on so many variant levels; no matter what the beach-head might be, as Barth rightly notes in his own German/Swiss context, the forces of hell itself will stop at no end to destroy all that is holy and pure. Satan himself would like nothing else but to snuff out a whole generation, a whole society of people who find their daily bread from the ‘one Word of God.’ Maybe you haven’t noticed, but the North American evangelical churches, and those in the West, in general, are under this heavy assault.

What Barth is identifying is that even in the worst of assaults, whether they be genocidal, like the Reich’s or Planned Parenthood’s, is that after all has burned away, the living Word of God will ‘endure forever’ and remain standing. Once the Christian can recognize this, not just as an external intellectualism, but once they feel this deep down in the deepest part of their soul, they have something substantial and real to live in and from. This is what happened to the Confessional Church of Germany back then, and because of their enduring witness to the Word of God, it ought to happen to us now. The Word of God does not change, and remains the same: yesterday, today, and forever (Hb 13.8) As Christians, those who stand on the Word of God alone (sola Scriptura), of all people we ought to be able to recognize that we are involved in a spiritual battle with the demons and the lowly brow-beaten devil who make up the kingdom of darkness. Because we stand on the Word of God, and walk from its illuminative reality who is Jesus Christ, we also discern that this spiritual battle with the principalities and powers are not off in some ethereal realm of make-believe, but that these powers have penetrated the very foundations of the earthly powers and elites among us (I typically think of the globalists when I think this way). These powers will stop at no end. They went as far as bringing the son of Man to the cross of Calvary; only to have the power of God’s Word unleashed on them in the resurrected and glorified flesh of Jesus Christ.

But this is what we ought to be discerning as we walk in this world. It should all be under the backdrop of the ‘heavenly’ and apocalyptic battle that is occurring as depicted in the book of Revelation. It doesn’t matter what epoch of world history we inhabit; whether that be premodern, modern, or post-modern: the Word of God, like a stone, crushes all counterforces it encounters, and out of the rubble recreates what the devil had hoped would be the end of God’s Kingdom and the rise of his. Let’s walk with the same passion as Barth was emblazoned with as he confronted the forces of the diabolical Hitlerian regime with the all-powerful (pantocrator) and mighty Word of God. This world, this very cosmos and all it contains, seen and unseen, belongs to the Lamb of God slain before the foundations of the world. This is the Word of God, and Holy Scripture as its living witness, and as evangelical confessing Christians we need to be about proclaiming the unvanquished and victorious kerygmatic reality that the Son of Man has come and He is taking no prisoners; He’s here to liberate the world, and squash the puny machinations of our mortal enemy, satan and death. ἐν Χριστῷ!

[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics II/1 The Doctrine of God: Study Edition (London: T&T Clark, 2009), 171.

Confronting Monuments and Institutions Made in the Name of Christ: Ecstatic Life V Insular Life

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5 Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, 7 but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross…. 17 Yes, and if I am being poured out as a drink offering on the sacrifice and service of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all. –Philippians 2.5-8; 17

I want to take the ecstatic life of God noted in the above passage, and apply it to a discussion about what I will call the insular life. Right away you might notice the contrasting nature of the sorts of ‘lives’ I will be referring to. I take this issue to be at the very base of the Christian existence. As such, it requires further development and sobriety of thought; hopefully this brief excursus achieves some level of that.

So, I have introduced two terms—‘ecstatic life’ and ‘insular life’—ecstatic life is the sort of life that defines God’s life in Christ for us. In other words, Jesus’s humanity is a life that He is constantly given as the Son of God. It is not something He possesses, per se, but something He constantly, by the work of the Holy Spirit, is given, as He has chosen this givenness for us. What this implies for the way of the Christian, as they find their life in participation and union with Christ, is one that is always already shaped by looking away from ourselves, and to God who gives us life. It is a life, like the triune life, that is shaped by ‘in-relation-to-the-other-and-for-the-other.’

Contrariwise, the insular life is one that only operates for the self. As Luther might say it in soteriological terms homo in se incurvatus (the incurved in oneself human). This is in contest with the ecstatic life, and one that can only be cured by the ecstatic life. The insular life is in bondage to itself; it is a self-possessed demonic chaos that nihilistically seeks and asserts its self to an eternal destruction. It requires a life from outside of itself, an ‘alien-righteousness’ to invade it ‘from above’ and set it free from its inveterate desire to self-destruct. The irony of the insular life is that even when it has been set free by the ecstatic life and vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ, it continues to desire itself. Again, referring to Luther, he identified this schizoid type of existence as simul justus et peccator (‘simultaneously justified and sinner’). The Apostle Paul identifies this human duplex in warfare terms: ‘For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish’ (Gal 5.17).

We have a struggle, when we refer to ecstatic life and insular life, in biblical terms, between the Spirit anointed humanity we have been brought into in and through union with Christ versus the insular life which is of the seed of the first Adam who Christ put to death in ultimate ways. No matter what our station in life, priest, pastor, professor, physicist, pharmacist, philanthropist, pilot, or plebian we are all prone to fall back into the dead self-affirming way known as the insular life. Indeed, we might even build whole cathedrals, sub-cultures, halls, cliques, so on and so forth that institutionalize the insular life, and do it in the name of the ecstatic life. In other words, the insular life does not want to go away easy. Even though it has been put to death, as Paul says further ‘The last enemy that will be destroyed is death.’[1] This ‘enemy,’ this insular life, seeks to seduce us into thinking that it is actually the ecstatic life after all. As such, many partakers of the ecstatic life have fallen prey to this seduction, and in the name of ecstatic life, have constructed monuments that, at the end of the day, like the ‘Last Day,’ are actually idols made in the image of residual insular life still that is simultaneously present in the lives of those who are partakers of the ecstatic life.

It seems like I am speaking in code, a bit. But hopefully what I am attempting to impress is impressive enough. What I am really hoping to get across is the point that being a Christian requires dogged vigilance to be for Christ rather than against Christ every second of every day. This requires energy and endurance that we do not have in ourselves. So, I am calling the Christian to a ‘Lord-have-mercy’ (Kyrie eleison) existence wherein we are in prayerful moment by moment contact and posture with the God who is Life in and from Himself; the Life from whom we receive life (so ecstatic life). I am afraid positions, statures, and postures in the Christian world seduce people into thinking that they are in fact living in and from the ecstatic life as the mode of their daily lives when in fact they really aren’t. I’m afraid we have institutionalized things, even good things, like churches, seminaries, the ‘Christian intellectual life,’ so on and so forth in ways that are more in step with the insular life rather than the ecstatic life. As Thomas Torrance has noted we need to be in a constant posture of ‘repentant thinking’ before God, and simply ask Him moment by moment to keep us ‘in step with the Spirit’ rather than in step with the ‘enemy-life’ that is the insular life. Kyrie eleison

[1] I Corinthians 15.26 (NKJV).

Is The devil a Real and Active Agent? Some Engagement With The Question, and Reference to Schleiermacher

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Is the Devil real; some refer to this as: is the Devil personal? Yes, I personally think the Devil is real. I can only arrive at this conclusion based upon the Dominical affirmation and teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is important, I think, because the biblical reality not only asserts that this is the case, but it frames the ‘spiritual battle’ Jesus Christ undertook, and the same battle that his church continues to undertake, as the church militant, in such terms that are clear that our battle is not ‘against flesh and blood, but against the rulers and powers and principalities’ that inhabit the ‘air’ as it were (read the whole Epistle to the Ephesians). None of this is to mention, of course, the most pivotal section of scripture in the whole of the Bible (it could be argued) in regard to the Fall. Genesis:

3 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

We have other references in the Old Testament that refer to the ‘spiritual battle’, particularly in Daniel 10; note:

12 Then he continued, “Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them. 13 But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, because I was detained there with the king of Persia. 14 Now I have come to explain to you what will happen to your people in the future, for the vision concerns a time yet to come.”. . . 20 So he said, “Do you know why I have come to you? Soon I will return to fight against the prince of Persia, and when I go, the prince of Greece will come; 21 but first I will tell you what is written in the Book of Truth. (No one supports me against them except Michael, your prince.)

And then of course the infamous battle that Jesus had with the Devil in the wilderness (a recapitulation of Israel’s sojourn in the wilderness) in Matthew (and the Synoptic attestation):

4 Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3 The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” 4 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 6 “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:“‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”7 Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 9 “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”10 Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’”11 Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.

If we didn’t have the Old Testament witnesses the New Testament account of Jesus’s battle wouldn’t make sense, for one thing. For another thing what we do have in the ‘spiritual battle’ that Jesus undertook in the wilderness and the victory he won (think Irenaeus and recapitulation as far as hermeneutical and soteriological method) is not ‘parabolic’ in literary form but historical prose; in other words its intention is to detail a concrete event with theological depth per the reality of the euaggelion, per the Gospel reality that Jesus is in the incarnation. In other words, the reality of the Devil to this account in Matthew (and Mark) is just as central to the canonical narrative as is Genesis 3 with our first introduction to the Devil. There is a continuity of salvation-history in regard to the character and function of the Devil from the first Adam to the second Adam (to pick up on the Pauline motif cf. Rom. 5), and his role in introducing humanity to an evil that he had already partaken of. This is not to suggest that the Devil is evil, like in a Manichean or dualist sense, or that he helps explain the origin of evil—this would only exceed the bounds and thrust us into a mode of speculation that we dare not engage in as those committed to a revelational theology—but it is to recognize through attention to the textual development that the Devil ought to be understood in a realist and at least ontological sense insofar as he has agency and volition in his textuality.

In short, the text, I contend, wants us to believe that the Devil is a real entity who is maliciously oriented against God and his purposes in Jesus Christ. The text wants us to think that the Devil wants to undo what God has done, and is doing in and through the resurrection power of the risen Christ in the human and created order in general. The text, as we think this canonically, wants us to think that the Devil is real; has agency, ‘prowls around like a roaring lion’; is leader of a cohort that has been made a public spectacle of at the cross of Christ; is ‘accuser of the brethren’ cast down from heaven in warfare with the heavenly host, that soon, along with the rest of death will be put under the Christ’s foot once and for all never to be heard of again. In other words, the text wants us to think that the Devil, with all his ‘being’ wants to destroy the good and very good creation and recreation of God in Jesus Christ; not to mention all of those who are participants in Christ’s life by the Spirit.

I write all of the above to get to Friedrich Schleiermacher; just who you were waiting for! Most evangelical and Reformed Christians couldn’t give two cents for what Schleiermacher thinks; I get that. Nevertheless, I think it is interesting, if not important, to understand where someone as giant and genius as Schleiermacher stood on such things. His theology of the devil is actually pretty scant, and as he notes (as you will see) unnecessary for a Christian theology. Clearly he reflects the ‘enlightened’ thinking of his times, and presupposes upon the developing ‘higher criticism’ of his day. You will see this reflected in what he has to say about the non-importance of the devil relative to scriptural teaching and Christian living. As you read him along with me here, what I opened up with above will become clear; you will see why I wrote what I did in anticipation of what Schleiermacher thinks. He writes:

Thus, even if only a few scriptural passages treat of the devil, or even if all the passages actually cited here and those otherwise still reputable for the purpose treat the devil, all grounds for taking up this notion as an enduring component in our presentation of Christian faith-doctrine would be lacking to us. Accordingly, all grounds would also be lacking for defining the notion so much more closely that everything that is ascribed to the devil could also really be considered together. This is so, for in Christ and his disciples this notion was not used as one that would be derived from the Sacred Scriptures of the old covenant, nor even as on that would be acquired from divine revelation by any pathway whatsoever. Rather, it arose from the common life of that time, thus in the same way in which it more or less arises in all of us, despite our complete ignorance as to the existence of such a being. Moreover, that wherefrom we are to be redeemed remains the same, whether the devil exists or not, and that whereby we are redeemed also remains the same. Thus, the very question concerning the existence of the devil is also no question for Christian theology at all. Rather, it is a cosmological question, in the broadest sense of the word, exactly the same as that concerning the nature of the firmament and of heavenly bodies. Moreover, in a presentation of faith-doctrine we actually have just as little to affirm as to deny on this topic, and likewise we can just as little be required to hold a dispute over that notion in a presentation of faith-doctrine as to provide a grounding for it. What the biblical deposit shows is nothing more than that the notion was a confluence of two or three very different components among the Jewish people themselves. The first component is the servant of God who locates the whereabouts of wickedness, and who has a certain rank and work among the other angels, but of whom there can be no talk of being cast out from being near God. The other main component is the basically evil being of oriental dualism, modified in such a way that the Jews alone would have been in a position to adopt the new version.[1]

Schleiermacher, clearly, was under the influence of his times; as such the Bible was undergoing a radical displacement in regard to being a trustworthy gateway into the strange world operative under the strictures of supernatural reality, as he attempted to theologize.

There are many today, Christians even, who have little time to ponder whether or not the devil is real; many believe we have enough concrete expressions of evil, systemically and personally, to take up our time and attention. But according to the brief survey of Scripture I offered previously, this is errant. The Bible, contra Schleiermacher wants us to think that we are engaged in a real life battle with a ‘personal’ satan who seeks to not only destroy our souls, but the souls of every person for whom Christ died; and along with that the rest of creation as that is tied to our stewardship.

From a personal perspective I have experienced all types of spiritual warfare, in fact I’ve experienced some right now as I’ve come to type this post. I’ve had encounters with tangible contact points with the kingdom of darkness, been exposed to people who are demon-possessed, and confronted such realities in the name of the living Christ. This is why this is important; because it’s a real life struggle that each of us as soldiers of Christ faces on a daily basis. Maybe one positive point we could take from Schleiermacher, in a recontextualized way, is that we don’t want to give the devil too much of our time and focus; but along with the Apostle Paul we don’t want to be ‘ignorant of his devices’ or reality either!

Further, I wouldn’t want to close this post without noting that the ‘spiritual’, just as the resurrection of Christ illustrates, is disembodied, per se. In other words, even though the devil is a ‘spirity’ entity (as are his cohorts) does not mean, as we can infer from Scripture, that his means are always or mostly of the so called ‘paranormal’ sort. Typically, especially in the Western enclave, his most heinous manifestations of evil are very material in orientation. We see this extended into space and time in terms of economic, sexual, physical forms of violence and abuse; in systemic and structural ways. But we ought to remember, nonetheless, that standing behind such ‘beastly’ action is indeed the kingdom of darkness in all its grossness. Devil be damned!

10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11 Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. 12 For 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. –Ephesians 6.10-12

3 For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. 4 The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. 6 And we will be ready to punish every act of disobedience, once your obedience is complete. –II Corinthians 10.3-6

[1] Friedrich Schleiermacher, Christian Faith Volume One, trans. by Terrence N. Tice, Catherine L Kelsey, and Edwina Lawler (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2016), 242-43.

Theology Done in Lieu of Communio Sanctorum: God’s Life as Sufficiency for Doing an “Isolated” Theology

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Theology for the Christian is done best communio sanctorum, in the communion of the saints. I’ve noticed that not being surrounded by the community on a daily basis—like when I was in Bible College and Seminary—makes it much harder to signify my own theological ideas. In other words, as I go to work each day in the secular market-place, surrounded by and large by pagans, surrounded by people who couldn’t give a rat’s butt about the living God, let alone the more technical theological reflection that ensues for the Christian, it becomes really hard to sustain intentional and self-reflective thought about the finer points of Christian Dogmatic loci. Unfortunately, as corollary to this, this sort of pervasive ‘unbelief’ (that makes it hard to sustain theological reflection at signifactory levels) is present in many and most evangelical (and probably mainline) churches. What I am lamenting is that it takes serious dedication and obedience to be immersed in the Christian heart/mind. What I am noting is that fellowship is a necessary and component part for the theological process. Even so, there are many of us who lack this sort of necessary community on a daily basis; as such, we are required to forge relationships where we can (for me this has become a virtual exercise), and attempt to find signification for our theological ideas therein. The bottom line is that theological development cannot be an isolated monologue that one has to their inner-selves. By God’s grace He is able to meet us where we are in our various theological isolations; ones presented to us by our various life circumstances and situations. He is able to amplify His presence for us in intense ways, such that the community needed—in lieu of its more “ideal” presence in Christian fellowship—is provided for in the milieu of His multiplied life as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Even if the circumstances of life have a delimiting effect on the ideal components for theological development—humanly speaking—in God’s grace of sufficiency He is able to give us the illuminatory that the thirsty soul desires in its seemingly squalid and languorous locations.

Being Studious So We Know What and Who the Gospel Is: ‘The Weapons of Our Warfare Are Mighty’

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In light of tragedy I often hear pastors and teachers in our 21st century context downplay the Gospel; as if the Gospel ultimately is indeed some sort of insurance policy, but at the end of each day does not have the resource to confront the types of tragedies we are faced with on a daily basis as Christians. As if the Gospel itself is not effulgent with the life of very God of very God. Maybe one reason Christians think of the Gospel in these terms—in domesticated and muted terms—is because they have failed to appreciate that understanding the Gospel requires rigor and work. In other words, we live in a fallen state (still!), and as a result even though salvation is by grace alone understanding what grace alone entails requires great depths of work and study. Maybe pastors and teachers gut the Gospel the way they do, particularly in light of travail and torment in people’s lives, because they are simply lazy; as are most in the church. Maybe the Gospel actually is the power of God, and not in some mystical sense, just as the Apostle Paul has asserted (by the Spirit!). Maybe the Gospel has the resource to actually make the crooked straight even in the in-between we currently inhabit, and we ought to entrust ourselves to it (Him) more rather than less. Maybe if we committed to exerting the necessary energy of putting the work in we’d have a greater depth understanding of the Gospel and see it for what it actually is, and for what it actually has the capacity to accomplish in us and for us.

The late John Webster offers a challenging word on this front as he develops his theme on theological theology. He confronts the sin of laziness, and underscores how important it is for Christians to be studious in regard to gaining proper understanding of the fullness attendant with the Gospel. Webster ties study of the Gospel (he calls this theology) into ends and purposes; and notes the impact that the end has on purpose. But more than that, as noted, he wants to impress how if the Christian is to appreciate what they actually have in the Gospel they need to work and be studious. He writes:

Christian theology pursues scientific ends, that is, the acquisition of that knowledge of its matter which is proper to creatures, in accordance with its cognitive principles. Pursuit of scientific ends is an element of the fulfillment of our intellectual nature, and is a creaturely good. Human creatures are by nature studious. We have an appetite to acquire knowledge beyond what is necessary for the immediate fulfillment of our animal nature, and we possess intellectual powers which we apply to satisfy this appetite. Well-ordered, temperate studiousness is not self-derived or wholly spontaneous; it is creaturely, the exercise of powers which have been given and which are moved, preserved and fortified by a movement beyond themselves. Studiousness is the arduous application of these powers; it is not indolent or casual, but concentrated, determined, painstaking and resistant to premature termination.

All theological activity requires this kind of purposive pursuit of scientific ends: revelation awakens theological science. It is through study that God becomes actually intelligible, and defects in the acquisition and exercise of studiousness threaten the attainment of other ends in theology. However, pursuit of scientific ends is instrumental and interim: necessary, but not sufficient or final. Forgetfulness of the instrumental status of scientific ends arises from disordered intention: our purposes for this activity fail to coincide with its intrinsic ends, and excessive devotion to scientific ends inhibits attainment of the true ends of theological intelligence. Much harm to theology is done by this disordered purpose. Theology’s object becomes one which is ours to appropriate or master by scientia; its cognitive principles become naturalized; the dependence of theology on divine instruction is neglected. Some kinds of institutional setting in which theology is undertaken may provide opportunities for such distortions to flourish, but their chief cause is the crookedness and futility of our intellectual nature after the fall. Only with the restoration and regeneration of that nature can our purposes be taught to direct themselves to fitting ends; theology will be theological as it is caught up in this renewal.[1]

It is important to identify, as Webster does, the internal battle we all are facing as Christians. The struggle is indeed real, and we should not be naïve to this as Christian warriors. We are enveloped in the very life of the living God in Christ, and in this envelopment we have been given the mind and heart of Christ. This is where we have the ‘renewal’ to do genuinely theological theology. Meaning: this is where we have the ability to grow deep into the reality of the pleroma (fullness) of the Gospel. Webster’s points are well taken; sin retards our desire, even as Christians, especially as Christians to seek God while he might be found call upon him while he is near. But we must not give into the baser desires of the old nature that continues to seek to assert itself where it has been crushed like the serpent’s head that it is.

In an even more applied sense: as we continue to mourn the loss of Pastor Andrew I fear that Christians won’t allow this tragedy to forge them into the steely new creations they have been made in and through their gracious union with Jesus Christ. As Christians we are in a spiritual battle, and the means of our battle, the weapons of our warfare are not fleshly but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds. But what does this really mean? Is this some sort of mystical appeal that we simply live ethereally into as a New Ager does in their transcendental reflections? No. The weapons of our warfare are exactly what Webster was referring to; it entails work and being studious around the Gospel; around growing into the grace and knowledge of God in Jesus Christ and who he is for us as he is eternally in himself. If we fail to sharpen these weapons, which requires labor, we will indeed reduce the Gospel to some sort of shallow insurance policy shorn of the very power of God that it actually is. Armed with such a Gospel we will remain impotent, and the attacks of the evil one will land hard and furious; we won’t know what hit us till we are on the brink of destruction (even as Christians).

As a brother in Christ I implore you, at the very least, to daily take up your Bible and read it; internalize it. More, I implore you to read sound theology, and learn the tools that will allow you to interpret Scripture in depth ways. The end is to know and love God; the purposes of our activity are to be shaped by this end. If so, if we take this to heart we will be constrained by the love of Christ (the end), and motivated in the proper ways toward reaching the end of who we are in Jesus Christ.

[1] John Webster, God Without Measure: Working Papers In Christian Theology: Volume 1: God And The Works Of God (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015), 219-20.