I have a new guest post up on Biologos: “A ‘Historical’ Adam?” It is my very halting and preliminary attempt to sketch out a “middle ground” position on an issue in the faith-science conversation that can be very challenging for evangelicals.
On Scot McKnight’s Jesus Creed blog, we’ve been discussing Brian McLaren’s latest book, particularly Brian’s construction of what he calls the “soul sort” narrative. I have a post on that over at Jesus Creed. Take a look.
Our “thought” for the day is an image. This is a picture I took of a 17th Century Spanish painting that hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. BTW, walking through the Met’s Medieval and Renaissance Art collections can be a neat spiritual exercise because so much of the art from those periods focuses on Christ.
I appreciate this image because of its realism and power. It is painted on a large wooden panel and hangs high overhead in the museum. To me, it conveys the brutal reality of Christ’s passion, as well as the universality of Christ’s suffering. It’s size and scope, with the sagging, distended posture of Christ’s body, communicate to me that the weight of all the suffering in the world is falling onto the broken body of Jesus. At first blush, this seems a strange jumping-off point for “hopeful” thoughts. Take a moment, however, to allow this image to sink in as you return to our reading for the week in Colossians 2. How does the physicality of the cross communicate hope to you in the midst of your own suffering?
Our theme for this coming Sunday is Hope and the Cross. How did the cross, a symbol of shame, become a symbol of hope? We’ll discuss how various theories of the “atonement” – satisfaction, Christus Victor, and moral example — complement each other and offer hope against the power of sin.
As reading for this week, I’d like us to focus on Colossians 2. Take a few moments each day to read through this chapter of scripture. By way of some background on this chapter, the teachings that were troubling the Christians to whom Paul writes this letter probably were “Gnostic.” The Gnostics taught that Jesus was not really God incarnate, because they believed physical matter was essentially evil. They taught that Jesus’ body was a sort of illusion or phantom and that his death on the cross therefore was in a sense not “real.” They further taught that only a few people with secret, insider knowledge, usually involving mystical signs or words, would be saved, and that they were in a position to pass along that secret knowledge, which they had learned privately from Jesus. Think a bit about how this background informs the concepts of “fullness,” “headship,” and “life” that Paul uses in this chapter.
Another interesting bit of background is Paul’s use of the terms “power” and “authority.” This also relates to his refutation of the Gnostics, who claimed to possess special power derived from their insider knowledge. It is also a broader reference to the eschatological themes in Paul’s theology and elsewhere in the New Testament. A first century reader familiar with Jewish apocalyptic literature would recognize a political reference in Paul’s use of these terms. The Roman powers claimed the very authority of the gods. Paul’s references to “power” and “authority” here, then, relate to the entire range of political-spiritual-social forces that could threaten to disrupt the hope of God’s people.
After you read this passage each day, take a little time to meditate (think intently and prayerfully upon) these phrases that appear in the chapter:
“fullness in Christ”
“Christ, who is the head over every power and authority”
“alive with Christ”
“disarmed”
“triumphing over them by the cross.”
As you read, pray, and meditate on these scriptures, what does the Holy Spirit convey to you about the nature of the cross of Christ in relation to “hope?”
As long as we see Christian hope in terms of “going to heaven,” of a salvation that is essentially away from this world, the two questions are bound to appear as unrelated. Indeed, some insist angrily that to ask the second one at all is to ignore the first one, which is the really important one. This in turn makes some others get angry when people talk of resurrection, as if this might draw attention away from the really important and pressing matters of contemporary social concern. But the Christian hope is for God’s new creation, for “new heavens and the new earth,” and if that hope has already come to life in Jesus of Nazareth, then there is every reason to join the two questions together. And if that is so, we find that answering the one is also answering the other. I find that to many — not least, many Christians — all this comes as a surprise: both that the Christian hope is surprisingly different from what they had assumed and that this same hope offers a coherent and energizing basis for work in today’s world.
N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church
On Euangelion, Mike Bird writes about the “end” of Reformed evangelical Biblical scholarship. Mike is keen observer, and this is a sobering post. For those who aren’t up on these things, the venerable Bruce Waltke resigned from Reformed Theological Seminary after a dust-up over his video on faith and science was posted on BioLogos (the video has since been removed). In Mike Bird’s words, the “trend is what I simply have to call a Fundamentalist Resurgence in what were once historical Evangelical Denominations and Institutions.”
Mike is absolutely right, I think, in this assessment: “The job of Christian professors is not to tell the laity what they want to hear (whether that’s on healthcare or science or Bible versions), but to assist students, pastors, and churches to have a “faith seeking understanding” and to help bridge the academy and church divide.”
Unfortunately, as Mike notes, in some institutions it seems that the only approach to Biblical scholarship involves “bowing before Systematic and Historical Theologians and allowing them to dictate the proper relationship of Ancient Near Eastern literature to the Old Testament, to determine the limitations of Science for explaining Creation narratives, to establish the proper meaning of Semitic and oriental languages, to legislate the sources and authorship and date of all Old Testament writings, and to state the proper significance of archaeological evidence relating to biblical places and persons.”
Mike asks, rhetorically and literally: “who wants to do that?”
I just realized that I have been blogging here at Through a Glass Darkly since at least 2004. I say “at least” because my archives don’t seem to have my very first-ever blog post, which I remember vividly. Wow. Six years, I’ve been blogging about theology and culture.
From St. Isaac of Syria, a Christian monk who lived in the 7th Century:
No one has understanding if he is not humble, and he who lacks humility is devoid of understanding.
No one is humble if he is not at peace, and he who is not at peace is not humble. And no one is at peace without rejoicing.
In all the paths on which people journey in this world they will find no peace until they draw near to the hope which is in God.
The heart finds no peace from toil and from stumbling-blocks until it is brought close to hope — which makes it peaceful and pours joy into it.
This is what the venerable and holy lips of our Lord said: ‘Come unto me all who are weary and heave laden, and I will give you rest.’
Draw near, he says, to hope in me; desist from the many ways and you will find rest from labor and fear.
Starting this Sunday, I’ll be teaching a six-week course titled “Hope in a Troubled World” at 9:00 a.m. at my home church, Cornerstone Christian Church. Here’s the info:
Hope in a Troubled World
Summary
We live in a world that seems to be falling apart. The rise of terrorism, the earthquake in Haiti, poverty, AIDS, corruption, war, the breakup of families, lingering illness, the loss of a loved one – these and many other tragic circumstances can cause us to wonder how we can dare hope for something better.
Yet the scriptures tell us that “faith, hope and love” are the basic virtues that characterize life in Christ (1. Cor. 13:13). What is Christian hope, and how does it connect to the other cardinal virtues of faith and love?
This study will reflect both a theological and spiritual exploration of the theme of hope. We’ll dig into the theme of “hope” in the scriptures and in the great statements of Christian faith from past ages in order to establish a theological perspective on hope. We’ll also engage with Christian writers, poets, philosophers and others who will help direct our spiritual perspectives towards enjoying and living out the hope we have in Christ.
Text
Our primary text will be the Bible.
We’ll also explore portions of the following books (these are not required reading, but you may find it edifying to read one or more of these): NT Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (Harper One 2008); Richard Bauckham and Trevor Hart, Hope Against Hope: Christian Eschatology at the Turn of the Millennium (Eerdmans 1999); Jurgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope (Fortress Press 1993); Blaise Pascal, Pensees (various editions); Augustine, City of God (various editions), Confessions (various editions); C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (various editions), A Grief Observed (various editions), The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (various editions), The Last Battle (various editions); Hans Boersma, Violence, Hospitality, and the Cross: Reappropriating the Atonement Tradition (Baker Academic 2006); Belden Lane, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality (Oxford Univ. Press 1998); Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace (Zondervan 2006).
Schedule
Week 1: The Hope of the World. What does scripture say about the human condition? What does it mean to be separated from God? What is the story of God’s pursuit of relationship with us? We’ll set the stage for our conversations by framing the Bible’s grand narrative of creation, fall, and the hope of redemption.
Week 2: Hope and the Cross. How did the cross, a symbol of shame, become a symbol of hope? We’ll discuss how various theories of the “atonement” – satisfaction, Christus Victor, and moral example — complement each other and offer hope against the power of sin.
Week 3: Hope in Loss. Can we find hope in the losses of life? We’ll discuss Biblical themes and images of comfort, solace, trial, testing, and perseverance in the face of suffering. We’ll also examine how God participated in our suffering and loss through the incarnation of Christ.
Week 4: Hopeful Desire. What is your greatest hope? What does it mean to love God with “all your heart, all strength, all your soul, and all your mind” (Luke 10:27)? The Bible and the Christian tradition have much to say about the ordering of our desires, the true meaning of hope, and the link between hope, faith, and love.
Week 5: Abiding Hope. Where does hope reside? The Bible uses the metaphors of “abiding” in Christ and of Christ being the “vine” in which our lives should be rooted. These pictures teach us about hope in seasons of growing as well as seasons of waiting.
Week 6: Hope in the End. The line between hope and despair intersects the present at the point of our beliefs about the future. What will the future bring? Will hope be left behind? We’ll conclude our study by examining “eschatology” – the “last things.” We will see that although the Biblical imagery of judgment is dark, the final word in scripture is one of hope: that God will put an end to the ravages of sin so that the desire of all creation for peace can be realized.