Month: June 2010

Categories
Theological Hermeneutics Theology

Jesus, Paul and the Mission of God — Part II

III. The Mission of Jesus: Restoration and Prolepsis

A. Jesus in Narratival Perspective

If the story of creation from the Divine perspective is one of Trinitarian love, the story of creation from the human perspective is one of rebellion and death. Some narratival approaches to the Bible suggest that the diversity of the scriptural canon frames an overarching, unifying narrative of creation, fall, complication, cross, and consummation.[1] This is a helpful approach, which enables us to understand that Jesus’ mission during his first advent represented a sort of climax in the drama of redemption.

This narratival structure views the drama of redemption from the human perspective: how do we find ourselves in the current broken mess of the world, and how can this mess be fixed? Jesus is the answer to these questions, which burn through the pages of the Hebrew Bible. After humanity’s fall into sin, God takes the initiative to “clothe” the man and the woman.[2] He continues to pursue and preserve humanity in the covenant with Noah, and He calls a particular people to experience and spread His righteous fellowship in the covenants with Abraham and David.

By the close of the Hebrew Bible, however, God’s chosen people, His putative agents of redemption, have rebelled against God and have suffered the judgment of defeat and exile at the hands of Assyria and Babylon. The holy city of Jerusalem and its Temple, the place of God’s presence, have been destroyed. When the exiles are permitted to return to Jerusalem, the hope of Israel’s prophets turns towards a deliverer, a Messiah, who will restore the nation and the Temple.

During the “intertestamental” period, the hope of restoration becomes ever more pregnant as the remnant of Israel experiences Greek and Roman rule. The Roman puppet ruler Herod rebuilds a magnificent Temple in Jerusalem, but for many zealous Jews, this represents an abominable counterfeit of God’s holy purposes. Some of these Jews, including the Maccabees, attempt military rebellion, only to be crushed by Rome. Others, particularly the Pharisees, attempt to practice holiness within the daily context of Roman oppression, while yet others, such as the Essenes, withdraw into chiliastic communes; and still others, particularly the Sadducees, attempt to reach some accommodation to Hellenistic culture. Jesus steps into this milieu of “restoration eschatology” and both fulfills and upsets this hope. In this sense, we can say that the mission of Jesus is to inaugurate the Kingdom of God by restoring God’s reign over humanity through a people called to be God’s own holy people. N.T. Wright and others have helpfully situated Jesus’ frequent teaching about the “Kingdom of God” within this framework of the Second Temple Jewish hope of restoration.[3] Jesus, however, reframes Second Temple restoration eschatology by suggesting that the hope of redemption will extend beyond the Jewish people and that the power of redemption lies in his own person rather than in a revitalized Temple.

These themes are particularly poignant in the events and teachings of Matthew 20-24. In the parables of the laborers in the vineyard and the marriage feast, Jesus suggests that the Kingdom of God relates to a person’s disposition towards God and results from God’s broad and generous grace, rather than deriving primarily from a national identity. In Matthew 21, Jesus is hailed as a Messiah, consistent with restorationist expectations, but his action of “cleansing” the Temple is an unexpected symbol of the Kingdom’s extension to the “outer courts” of the Gentiles. In Matthew 24, Jesus somewhat obliquely predicts the destruction of Jerusalem, which eventually occurred in A.D. 70 under the Roman Emperor Titus.

The synoptic Gospels each in their own way conclude with the theme that will be picked up in Paul’s epistles: not the restoration of the Temple, but the death and resurrection of Jesus, represent the inauguration of the hoped-for “age to come.”

B. An Excursus on Proleptic Eschatology and the Drama of Scripture

In my view, the five or six-act narratival structure of the Bible, with the death and resurrection of Jesus as a climactic point in the story, is helpful, but ultimately insufficient. From the divine perspective, the story of redemption proceeds proleptically. For God, the story in a sense starts at the end and is told backwards. The “sixth” act of the drama, that of consummation, was God’s purpose from “before the foundation of the world.”[4] The “new heavens and new earth” and “new Jerusalem” of Revelation 21 are not things God improvised in order to fix a mistake. The heavenly city is rather the telos of which Eden, the Tabernacle, the Temple, and the Church are beginnings.[5] If we fail to emphasize the “divine,” proleptic side of the Biblical narrative, I fear that we lose something important about the Trinitarian shape of the missio Dei.

[1] See N.T. Wright, Paul in Fresh Perspective (Fortress Press 2005) and The New Testament and the People of God (SPCK 1992); Craig G. Bartholomew and Michael W. Goheen, The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story (Baker Academic 2004).

[2] Gen. 3:21.

[3] See, e.g., N.T. Wright, Paul in Fresh Perspective (Fortress Press 2005).

[4] Eph. 1:4.

[5] For more on the notion of proleptic eschatology, see, e.g., Jugen Moltmann, Theology of Hope (Fortress Press ed. 1993); Stanley Grenz and John Franke, Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context (Westminster John Knox 2001). Some of the early Eastern Patristic sources, particularly Irenaeus, also offer helpful teleological correctives to the Western theology in this regard. See Gustav Wingren, Man and Incarnation: A Study in the Biblical Theology of Ireneaus (Wipf & Stock 2004).

Categories
Science & Technology Theological Hermeneutics Theology

Jesus, Paul, and the Mission of God — Part 1

Here is some material from a paper I had to write in my Reading the New Testament Missionally class. The subject of the paper is “How do you understand the mission of Jesus in his historical context and the relationship of Jesus’ mission to the mission of Paul and the early church?”

I. Introduction

The mission of Jesus, Paul, and the early church are about the same thing: God’s eschatological redemption of the world. Each of these actors play different, but complementary, roles in God’s mission.

II. Background: the Mission of God

Before we consider the specific mission of Jesus, Paul, and the early church, we must first briefly explore the missio Dei in which these actors participate.

Often we think of God’s mission in the world as one of rescue or repair. In this view, the original good creation was God’s “Plan A,” and human sin required a “Plan B,” the sending of Christ to save a few from judgment. This view of God’s plan for creation is profoundly mistaken. Jesus said that God loved him “before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24), and texts such as Ephesians 1:4 tell us that God “chose us in [Christ] before the foundation of the world. . . .” God’s redemptive mission in Christ and in the Church, then, was “Plan A.” Redemption was God’s plan from eternity past.

The story of God’s mission is ultimately the story of the eternal life of the Triune God.[1] As David Bosh notes, “[m]ission [is] understood as being derived from the very nature of God. It [is] thus put in the context of the doctrine of the Trinity, not of ecclesiology or soteriology.”[2] Creation results from the abundance and generosity of the perichoretic fellowship of Father, Son and Spirit.

The God who created knew beforehand that the creation would experience human sin and suffering, and that His act of creation therefore would also entail an act of sending and redemption. We cannot know for certain why God chose to create in light of this knowledge. Perhaps St. Augustine was right — perhaps this is the best of all possible worlds, and it is better for God to have created, with the result of some ultimate good, than not to have created at all.[3] Or perhaps Augustine’s classical theodicy should be tempered with the fact that God Himself enters into the suffering of creation through the cross.[4]

The problem of evil and the theodicy of creation remain mysteries.[5] A Trinitarian theology of creation and mission, however, provides a helpful glimpse into these often overwhelming existential questions. The immanent Trinity — the inner-Trinitarian relations of the Divine Persons — is also the economic Trinity — the actions of the Divine Persons with respect to creation and redemption.[6] God’s mission in creation is the extension of the shalom of the perichoretic Trinitarian dance to all of creation.

[1] In fact, if we were to follow the “Plan B” logic through the entire Biblical narrative, we would presently be in something like “Plan I,” which would encompass creation, fall, flood, Babel, Israel under Moses, Israel under the judges, Israel under the kings, and Israel in exile. It would seem that God continually engages in failed experiments, which would leave little hope for the success of the “Church Age” or even for the return of Christ.

[2] David Bosh, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Orbis 1991).

[3] See, e.g., Augustine’s exploration of this theme in The City of God.

[4] See Jurgen Moltmann, The Crucified God: the Cross of Christ as the Foundation of Criticism and Christian Theology (Fortress Press 1993).

[5] For an excellent exploration of the problem of evil, see Nigel Goring Wright, A Theology of the Dark Side (InterVarsity 2003). Nigel Wright leans towards Karl Barth’s understanding of “evil” as “nothingness,” which seems fruitful to me.

[6] For a discussion of this formulation, referred to as “Rahner’s Rule” after Catholic theologian Karl Rahner, see Stanley Grenz, Rediscovering the Triune God (Fortress Press 2004).

Categories
Science and Religion

Rachel Evans on the Gordon BioLogos Conference

Here’s a nice summary from Rachel Evans about the recent BioLogos faith-and-science conference at Gordon College.

Categories
Law and Policy

Evangelical Support for Immigration Reform Growing

A good article in The Christian Century about growing evangelical support for immigration reform.

Categories
Law and Policy

New Article on Antitrust and Patent Law

Just in time for summer beach reading, here is my latest legal academic article, Rational Antitrust Policy and Reverse Payment Settlements in Hatch-Waxman Patent Litigation, 98 Geo. L.J. 1303 (2010).

Categories
Humor

My Son the Party Animal

This is an excerpt from my son’s school report about his 12th birthday party. Hmmm. Somehow dad got the bum deal here.

For the rest of the night we either played X-box or just talked. Soon we got tired and watched television. One by one people fell asleep and it was only me, Kyle and Adam left awake. Eventually the three of us got tired and we agreed to fall asleep at the same time.

In the middle of the night I got sick and threw up. My dad came down and cleaned it. In the morning I felt great and none of my friends even knew. It was a fun party.

Categories
Law and Policy Spirituality

Travis Greene on Patriotism in Church

I posted my Memorial Day reflection on Jesus Creed, and got this comment from Travis Greene, which I think is awesome:

I wonder if those who are able, according to them, to easily hold patriotism and faith together without idolatry would do us weaker folks, whose consciences are troubled by this particular meat we see as sacrificed to idols, the favor of not singing loud songs in praise of America during church. You may be easily able to pledge allegiance to a nation but keep God first. You may be able to have a flag above the altar and remember which is more important. But it sickens me, and I know I’m not alone, and I wonder if for reasons of mission, ecclesiology, and simple compassion, you could just let this go.

Categories
Spirituality

Churches and July 4

There’s a good discussion going on at Jesus Creed on how churches should handle July 4.  It’s interesting and encouraging to see how some of the pastor-commenters wrestle with the fact that July 4 falls on a Sunday this year.  The sentiment seems to be that some kind of recognition is appropriate, but that the dangers of idolatry and triumphalism are real.

Categories
Spirituality

Pruning the Vines

Below is a wonderful video I found on a winemaking site called Crushnet.  I used it recently to facilitate a discussion of Jesus’ parable of the vine.  Two things struck me:  (1) pruning is the most important part of growing wine grapes; and (2) the pruning and growing seasons take up much of the years’ work before any fruit is ready for harvest.

Categories
Law and Policy Religious Legal Theory Spirituality

Christians and Memorial Day

I enjoy Memorial Day. As an American, it feels right to remember and celebrate the sacrifices of our soldiers. As a Christian, however, I feel ambivalent about this kind of celebration. Pageantry, uniforms, parades, and the rhetoric of civil virtue — all of these things are seductive. It is so easy to fall into idolatry, to equate my polis with the City of God.

I wonder whether any Christians cheered during Titus’ triumphal procession through Rome in 71 A.D., after his armies had destroyed Jerusalem. Here is how the Jewish historian Josephus described it:

Now it is impossible to describe the multitude of the shows as they deserve, and the magnificence of them all; such indeed as a man could not easily think of as performed, either by the labor of workmen, or the variety of riches, or the rarities of nature; for almost all such curiosities as the most happy men ever get by piece-meal were here one heaped on another, and those both admirable and costly in their nature; and all brought together on that day demonstrated the vastness of the dominions of the Romans; for there was here to be seen a mighty quantity of silver, and gold, and ivory, contrived into all sorts of things, and did not appear as carried along in pompous show only, but, as a man may say, running along like a river.

Among the spoils Titus carried into Rome were the treasures of the Second Jewish Temple:

But for those that were taken in the temple of Jerusalem, they made the greatest figure of them all; that is, the golden table, of the weight of many talents; the candlestick also, that was made of gold, though its construction were now changed from that which we made use of; for its middle shaft was fixed upon a basis, and the small branches were produced out of it to a great length, having the likeness of a trident in their position, and had every one a socket made of brass for a lamp at the tops of them. These lamps were in number seven, and represented the dignity of the number seven among the Jews; and the last of all the spoils, was carried the Law of the Jews. After these spoils passed by a great many men, carrying the images of Victory, whose structure was entirely either of ivory or of gold. After which Vespasian marched in the first place, and Titus followed him; Domitian also rode along with them, and made a glorious appearance, and rode on a horse that was worthy of admiration.

For all the excitement of Titus’ memorial parade, it must have been a frightening and sad day for Roman Christians, most of whom likely would still have thought of themselves as Jews. Indeed, the Biblical book of Revelation reflects Christian attitudes towards the Roman polis of this time:

After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven. He had great authority, and the earth was illuminated by his splendor. With a mighty voice he shouted:

“Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great!
She has become a home for demons
and a haunt for every evil spirit,
a haunt for every unclean and detestable bird.
For all the nations have drunk
the maddening wine of her adulteries.
The kings of the earth committed adultery with her,
and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries.”

Then I heard another voice from heaven say:
“Come out of her, my people,
so that you will not share in her sins,
so that you will not receive any of her plagues;
for her sins are piled up to heaven,
and God has remembered her crimes.
Give back to her as she has given;
pay her back double for what she has done.
Mix her a double portion from her own cup.
Give her as much torture and grief
as the glory and luxury she gave herself.

In her heart she boasts,’I sit as queen; I am not a widow,and I will never mourn.’
Therefore in one day her plagues will overtake her:
death, mourning and famine.
She will be consumed by fire,
for mighty is the Lord God who judges her. (Rev. 18:1-8)

Why are things so different for American Christians? Here are some snapshots of Church groups marching in the Hawthorne, New Jersey Memorial Day parade. The first two show the representatives of the local Catholic parish:

The next is from a Reformed church:

Here is the Episcopal parish:

And a nondenominational evangelical church:

It’s interesting to note how each of these local church bodies expressed their differing relationships to culture through these marchers.  The Catholic entry was old-school Northeast Italian Catholic:  American civil religion as generational heritage.  The Reformed church’s float offered an integration of the cross and the flag:  American civil religion as common grace.  The Episcopal church knit together themes of peace, prayer, flags, and troops:  American aging hippie counterculture meets civil religion.  And the independent evangelical church advertised its gospel outreach through “vacation Bible school” (complete with a web address):  American consumer culture meets civil religion.

In contrast with Revelation 18’s sentiments towards Rome, the fact that such a variety of Christian congregations all participated without irony in a parade honoring armies and wars seems striking.  Of course, there are two thousand years of history between John’s Apocalypse and Memorial Day 2010.  The Constantinian Settlement, Christendom, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the close connection between Protestant Christianity and the founding of the United States, all help explain the difference:  America in 2010 is not first century Rome, and our wars are not Rome’s wars.

And yet….  Has every American war been manifestly just, a clear defense of ordinary, peaceful people against oppression? Certainly not. Even if we concede that the “just war” criteria are universally valid (a concession I’m not prepared to make in light of other alternatives, such as the “just peacemaking” approach), many American military conflicts fail that test. It’s painful to remember that so much of United States territory was taken from Mexico and from native peoples by illegitimate force. World War I, in retrospect, seems like a pointless waste of millions of lives, fueled by stupidity and pride. The conflicts in Korea and Vietnam remain controversial, and there seem to be very strong arguments that the present Iraq War was initiated on false pretenses and contrary to international law. Even the American Revolution appears ambiguous when judged by “just war” standards. Would the Church today sanction violent revolution over unfair taxation? I hope not, given the ludicrous amount of property taxes we pay in New Jersey.

World War II, the “good war,” seems like the only modern American conflict that clearly was just in its inception. But even with the good war, there is the problem of how the fighting was carried out. The fire bombing of Germany and Japan, and of course the atomic bomb, introduce grave moral ambiguities into the story of the greatest generation.

So, I celebrate Memorial Day.  I sincerely salute the veterans as they march or drive by my lawn chair.  I eat hamburgers and drink iced tea.  I remember the truth that “greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”  (John 15:13).  I give thanks to God for freedoms of religion, assembly and speech, and for the prosperity of economic freedoms.  But I wonder whether our religion has become perhaps just a bit too civil in the face of war.