the Spirit

When you think of developing a understanding of Scripture, the discipline of Bibliology if you will, do think of it as a subset of Pneumatology (study of the Holy Spirit)?

Do you think of the Bible as the Spirit’s book?

views of the cross 3

If I were going to pull as many of the threads of how we understand the cross together it would be something like the following.

YHWH God created the cosmos as his temple/palace.  He then set humanity in his temple/palace as his image (idol), to function as his representative, embodying something of his character/being.  Humanity, choosing to make something other than God their primary love, fell into sin and evil and was exiled.

God choose a certain people on earth to remake in his image, desiring to bless (heal and restore) the entire creation through them.  The formative experience of this people, the Exodus, is full of creation imagery (a churning sea, light in the darkness, wind [spirit] blowing over the waters).  The Exodus is new creation, creation of God’s people.  (More could be said about how the seven stemmed candelabra/book of the law functions as the tree of life, knowledge of good and evil, creating a new humanity, etc).

God enters into covenant with His people and takes them to a land of milk and honey (return to Eden?  once again, like A & E, His people has a choice to follow Him or not, live in a blessed land, with his presence [tabernacle], with the threat of exile if they turn from Him).  He has brought his people out from slavery, oppression by an alien power (key metaphors to be picked up in N.T.).  God clearly delineates what will occur to His people if they abandon Him and violate the covenant, they will return to the suffering of Egypt, Exile (Deut. 28:59 – 61)!

Jump to Isaiah.  The people have violated the covenant.  They have worshiped idols, becoming like what they worship (blind, deaf, and dumb language), and hence have become ethically bankrupt.  The sufferings of Egypt (Deut. 28:59 – 61), Exile, now are to fall upon them (notice Is. 1:5-7 connecting rebellion, sickness suffering language recalling the plagues in Egypt which God threatened the Israelites with in Deut 28, and the physical destruction of the land accompanying real Exile).

The hope is that by righteously and patiently enduring the sufferings they will be forgiven.  But Isaiah 40-55 paints a picture of a people in Exile who continue to have hard hearts and now the hope shifts to a one (the servant) who will stand in solidarity with Israel, represent Israel, bear the covenant curses patiently and righteously himself thereby inaugurating the new exodus and new creation (Is. 52:13 – 53:12).

I see the New Testament picking up and running with all these threads.  In forming his band of disciples Jesus reconstitutes Israel around Himself.  On the cross Jesus bears the covenant curses meant for Israel.  As the perfectly righteous, perfectly patient God-man he is able to suffer the covenant curses so that those who unite themselves to Israel as reconstituted around him are forgiven.  Who is Israel?  Those who unite themselves with Jesus.  Those are the ones who no longer suffer the curses of breaking the covenant (I think at this point we can understand the broken covenant to apply to all people Jew and Gentile, considering that all people fall short of their vocation as divine Image bearers of God).

Here the N.T. picks up all kinds of sacrificial language to describe what was taking place.  Hebrews describes Jesus as both the sacrifice and the high priest who offers the sacrifice.  John the Baptist calls Jesus the lamb who takes away the sin of the world.  Both Paul and the Apostle John call Jesus an atoning sacrifice.  By righteously bearing the consequences of of our sin Jesus makes a way into forgiveness if we unite ourselves to Him.  Now on the day of the Lord, in the great Law Court of the universe, those who are united to Jesus will be justified (law term for declared right).  This eschatalogical reality is ours to live in here and now.

It seems that hear is where the Christus Victor/Battlefield imagery fits in so well.  All who sin are slaves to sin (= slavery in Egypt?).  The wages sin pays out for being its slave is death.  Before salvation, all humanity are in the world (humanity organized without God [=Egypt?]).  Satan is the ruler of the world (=Pharoah?) and the world is governed by principalities and powers.  These are the enemies of humankind, sin, death, Satan, the world, the powers.  The lynch pin of their power seems to me to be sin itself.

If somehow sin could be dealt with, death would no longer be an enemy, we would be free and no longer slaves to sin, we would be free of the world, and Satan would no longer have accusations to hold against us.

This is exactly what happens.  Sin, death, Satan, the world, are defeated, we are set free, because of sacrificial work of Jesus.

Victory is secured, but its not through some cosmic boxing match, nor is it deceiving Satan to think Jesus was merely human and trading him for the souls of humankind (Gregory of Nyssa), but its when we unite ourselves to Christ and he bears the covenant curses for us.

There is so much more to be said.  We now have reconciliation with God.  But also with one another.  God is creating one unified people for Himself.  In fact, through His restored/renewed Image Bearers He intends to restore/renew ihs cosmic temple/palace (all Creation).

The subjective theories come in here.  God’s love is revealed to us in Christ.  But this rests on the objective action of Christ voluntarily bearing the punishment of sin.  Jesus is a moral example to us.  But once again this rests on the objective work of the cross.   Both these, in turn, tie back into Jesus as the one who fully emobied what it means to bear the Imago Dei.  By being conformed to His image his followers enter into their vocation as divine Image Bearers in this world.

How is this all accomplished in people today?  The Spirit.  Just like Creation originally, just like the wind blowing over the waters at the Exodus, just like what the prophets said one day would be coming, the Spirit, God Himself, now lives inside those united to Christ.  New Creation!  New Exodus!  Forgiveness!  Justification!  Freedom!  And not for us as individuals, Jesus is reconstituting a nation, a people, united by His one Spirit.  We are part of community being saved.  And all this is the desire of the Father.  The Creator who loved humankind so much as to save when they could not save themselves.  Its not the story of an angry Father and a merciful Son, but of a Triune God who characterized by a holy love and a loving holiness.

Anyways, much, much more could be said.  Like I said, an inexhaustible mystery.  May we continue to press into together.

views of the cross 2, caveats

I wanted to go back to the views of the cross conversation and put up a few more thoughts to see what everyone had to say about it.

I believe the cross is mystery.  But I think there is two ways we can understand mystery, one is impenetrable mystery and the other is inexhaustible mystery.  If the cross were impenetrable mystery we really could no nothing about how it worked and any attempt to understand it would be in error.  But I see the cross as inexhaustible mystery, that is, we do have the ability to understand it, but will never reach its end/fully grasp it.  It is a mystery we may press in to, gaining further clarity, but knowing that we will never fully understand, have a handle on, God on a cross.   With that, we press in.

Earlier I wrote about how views of the cross can generally be broken down into objective views and subjective views.  The objective views take place outside of human beings.  Generally the objective views either have the action of the cross terminating on God (restoring his honor, satisfying his wrath, etc) or on Satan (paying him a ransom to purchase human beings).  The subjective views deal with what takes place inside of humans (the cross impresses upon people God’s love for them, the cross gives an example to people on how to live morally).

Now as mentioned earlier, the Classical View/Christus Victor/Ransom Theory (this family of theories are those terminating on Satan, using primarily battlefield imagery, defeating Satan in some was) was the view that held sway within the church until around the 12th century when Anselm and Abelard proposed new understandings of the cross.  We ought to give careful attention to any view held by the church for so long, but I don’t believe we out to uncritically accept it.  Interestingly, no view of the atonement, including this one, was ever laid down as the orthodox position in the many ecumenical councils in the first 1000 years of the church.  In fact, the atonement never received the detailed theological attention that other issues (the Trinity, the incarnation) received, mainly due to the fact that the atonement was not an area heresy grew up around like it did around these others issues.  So I press into the cross knowing that I operate out of my own protestant/evangelical tradition, carefully listening to an even broader historical orthodox Christian tradition, but holding both up against the canon (the norming norm) of scripture.

new class

I’m just cracking my next class for the summer, Systematic Theology C.  It will explore the Holy Spirit, the Church, and the Last Things.  It should be good. Here’s something the grabbed my attention on the Holy Spirit as I read today.

When the work of the Holy Spirit is forgotten or suppressed, the power of God is apt to be understood as distant, hierarchical, and coercive; Christocentric faith deteriorates into Christomonism; the authority of Scripture becomes heteronomous; the church is seen as a rigid power structure in which come members rule over others; and the sacraments degenerate into almost magical rites under the control of a clerical elite.

-From Faith Seeking Understanding by Daniel L. Migliore

i didn’t think i liked poetry

and then I picked up Love’s Immensity by Scott Cairns the other day from the Regent Library.  In it he takes selections from the writings of godly men and women thoughout Church history, retranslates them and sets them in verse.  Its brilliant.

Check out a poem from the collection here.

views of the cross

Views of the atonement generally break down into two camps, objective views and subjective views.  The objective views either aim at God (Penal Substitution, Satisfaction, Governmental, etc), or aim at Satan, Death, Powers (Christus Victor or the Classical View). The subjective views aim at humans and what takes place inside a person upon viewing the Cross (e.g. Jesus becomes our moral example, the inspiring revelation of God’s love, etc.).

A few of the lesser subscribed to theories were new to me, the Governmental Theory and the Vicarious Penitence Theory (although I recall C.S. Lewis arguing something like this in Mere Christianity). The mainstream theories, Moral Example, Penal Substitution, and the Classical View, I was more familiar with.

What I was most enriched by, I think, is by the way these theories hang together in the Scriptures. In my study, and with the help of Millard Erickson in particular, I found that instead of being alternative competing interpretations of the Cross these were instead different facets of the same reality. In fact one understands any given view better by affirming the other views, not by repudiating them.

The Penal Substitution Theory, seems to me, to stand somewhere near the center or root of what took place on the cross. By itself it does not offer a complete picture of what took place in Jesus’ crucifixion. Without it, the other theories are much more difficult to make sense of. As Erickson describes for example concerning the Moral Example Theory, if a fireman rushes into a burning house to save a parent’s child, saving the child but dying in the process, one witnesses a powerful and inspiring moral example. But if a fireman simply rushes into a burning house to save no one, simply because, and dies in the process, one isn’t offered a powerful moral example but an example of foolishness. It is the objective reality of penal substitution which supports and fills out the reality of Christ as a moral example to us. Christ dies for people, not rashly, but for the objective purpose of bearing their sin, becoming a curse, so that they may be reconciled to God. But likewise, the objective reality of Christ’s penal substitution is inadequately understood if the subjective elements such as Christ as a moral example are not embraced.

Likewise, the Classical View rests securely upon the foundation of penal substitution. If Christ defeated Satan but did not cancel the legal liability humans face for their sin, then Satan still has grounds to accuse those who trust God. But if we understand the power of Satan to come from the fact that we stand guilty, in our justification Satan is truly defeated not once, but for all time. Personally I’m curious about exploring further connections of the relationship between the Classical View and the Penal Substitution Theory.

In what ways might the Classical View align with a New Exodus understanding of the Cross? For instance, Israel was dramatically taken of of Egypt by God, the evil power over Israel was defeated, and then God spent the next 40 years getting the Egypt out of Israel. In the New Testament we find a people similarly afflicted with a deep sin nature (the Egypt within) and an external power over them (the Egypt without), the world (humanity organized against God, or as some might say, the anti-kingdom). The world itself is ruled by Satan and governed by the Powers. Jesus, by taking Sin and the Curse upon himself, frees his people from the bondage of these, defeating the power of sin in their lives, Satan’s rule over them, the world’s control of them, and the ability of the Powers to define them. But it seems to me that like the Classical View, an emphasis on Christ inaugurating a New Exodus also needs to be informed by an understanding of Christ functioning as humanity’s objective substitution.

What do you think?

Imago Dei

J.I. Packer, in our Systematic Theology B course, defines the Imago Dei in three respects, structurally, functionally, and relationally.
I find Packer’s threefold understanding of very enriching. It seems to me that all three elements, function, relationship, and structure, are vital to understanding the human person.

For a long time I was under the impression that humans are only in God’s image structurally. I thought of this in terms of rationality, morality, and will. I think there is a lot of truth to this view and historically the church has promoted something like this view the most. Genesis 1:1 – 25, preceding the verse declaring human’s to be in God’s image, does present a view of God who is creative, rational, orderly, and who is self determining. It seems very reasonable to understand these values as part of the Image of God in humankind. Scripture is also emphatic that morality is an indispensable aspect of God’s character and something humans uniquely share with God over against the animals He created.

But then I was doing some research for Genesis 1 and came across the IVP Bible background commentary’s description of Genesis 1:26 – 27. It said that the language used in these verses is that same as that for an idol of a deity. In fact, in the ancient near east a deity’s work was thought to be accomplished through the idol. “In similar ways the governing work of God was seen to be accomplished by people.” Wow! I had never realized this before. Inherent in the idea of Imago Dei is that we are meant to reflect God’s glory to creation and represent him in this world through our actions. I find this to be a tremendously dignifying understanding. To be God’s representative in shaping, ordering, and acting in this world, what honor.

Finally, since I have been at Regent a fuller understanding of the relational aspect of the Imago Dei has dawned me. Their are two aspects that have come together for me. First comes from the doctrine of the Trinity and how relationality is fundamental to who God is. He is not an autonomous individual. Within Him is community, relationship. Relationality is fundamental to Ultimate Reality. Second, I have grown in my understanding in how vital relationships are to humans being human. We understand ourselves through relationships. We define ourselves through relationships. As the African saying Rod Wilson likes to quote goes, “I am because you are, if you are not, I cannot be.” The individualism I had soaked up from the latent Enlightenment worldview still present in our world began to be purged away for the myth it is. Relationship is fundamental to being human because that is how we were created, because it is fundamental to who God is.

All three seem to me vital to understanding who humans are were created to be, in some ways continue to be, and hope to one day fully be.

more sin

“Much of what Christians call ‘sin’ is simply a natural human response to poor environments, economic oppression or lack of education. A reversal of these conditions wherever they are found, is the answer to humanity’s problems.” Respond to this statement.

It seems to me that there is a great deal of truth in this statement.  I worry that in often, in Christianity’s rush to condemn the error in statement’s such as the one above we miss out on the truth it carries.

Much of what we call sin is simply a natural human response to poor environments, economic oppression or lack of education.  If one understands the the current natural state of humanity to include a inward sinful disposition (I do differentiate between the natural state we were created to live in and the state we naturally find ourselves in now) much of what we call sin is a natural reaction to these situations.  When we see the rates of spousal abuse by those who saw their father abuse their mother we need to realize that this is a natural (e.g. in line with humanity’s current nature) reaction.  Likewise when those who are born into economically and socially oppressive situations resort to violence we again see natural  reactions to evil situations.

Now, this does not place the ultimate locus of sin in systems or structures, that ultimate locus is in human hearts.  But it does recognize the power of sin to work within systems to perpetuate more evil than any given individual, or even than the sum total of all the individual personal sinful actions.  When Scripture speaks of the world, ruled by Satan, and the powers, one gets a sense for the way the distortions brought into this world through the sin of humankind have gained a life of their own, perpetuating evil that no single individual wills to occur.

Perhaps another way to say it is that while the ultimate fountain head of sin is in the human heart (our control center), all its symptoms are by no means confined to the human heart.  Sin brings distortion, dysfunction, deception, and domination into human beings’ relationship with God, themselves, one another, and creation.  The addressing of the root of sin in a given individual’s life does not undue the damage done to these relationships.  The patterns, the systems, these must themselves be addressed and redeemed.  They too must be sanctified.

As Walter Wink says, “Human misery is caused by institutions, but these institutions are maintained by human beings.  We are made evil by our institutions, yes; but our institutions are also made evil by us.”  Yes we must name the locus of sin in this world as the human heart.  But we must realize that evil takes on a life of its own as it were, and that Christ’s call on us is not merely to save souls, but to redeem all Creation, forgiving, judging, and transforming in all the realm’s of human life.

the measure of sin

How do we get a handle on the magnitude of sin in humanity?  Is it through the law?  Or through the cross?

“Who has truly pondered the weight of sin?

The one who has truly pondered the weight of the cross.”

-Anslem (1033 – 1109)

thinking, willing, feeling

The other day my professor offered these three categories and suggested that most of us tend towards one of the three as the dominant way of being.  Not only that but he suggested that our families and churches likewise operate in ways that emphasize one of these aspects as the primary way to be human.

He has us consider our families of origin and draw three circles, one for thinking, one for willing, one for feeling, in a way that represented what was communicated in one’s family about being human.  We also went on to do the same for our churches.  What does the preaching aim at?  Getting one to change behavior?  Getting one to know the right things?  Evoking emotions?  What does the worship aim at?  In what direction does the denomination or tradition lean?

If we affirm that all three are vital aspects of what it means to be human, all three are affected by sin, then all three are being redeemed and ought to be thought of as such.  The elevation of any one of these and the ignoring of the others is dangerous to our development as persons.  We are not merely brains, we are not merely our choices, we are not merely a bundle of feelings, we are holistic selves, ensouled bodies or embodied souls, of which thinking, feeling and willing are key dimensions and all three are in need of healing and redemption.

story

Earlier I wrote about the place of narrative in Christian worship. If that was of interest to you, you ought to check out what Gabe has recently written on the relationship between God, Scripture, our lives and story.

What is basically wrong with humanity?

I’ve been reading on the topic of sin and evil lately for a paper I’m going to do in my theology class.  You might think its a depressing topic, but I’ve found it, well, life affirming to study.  There is something about facing up to how things really are that allows us to think honestly about how things could be better.  In the words of Scott Peck, “Health is a commitment to reality, not a lack of pain.”

Right now what I’ve found most interesting is some of the feminist critiques of mainstream Christian theology regarding sin.  For most of Christian history (particularly post-Augustine), pride (self worship) has been seen as the root of sin.  Several feminist theologians in the 20th century have argued, however, that while pride may have historically been the root of sin for men, many women sin through avoiding self assertion, “hiding”, refusing to exercise freedom and self-hood.  By telling women that pride is truly the root of sin for all humans, it only further perpetuates the sin of self-abnegation.  Women, they argue, are not merely victims however, “but insofar as women accept this status for its rewards and welcome relief from the burden of freedom, they are guilty of complicity in their own oppression; they sin (Judith Plaskow).”  Or from Daphne Hampson, the primary task of men is to find themselves in relationship, while the primary task for women is to find themselves in relationship.