Category: Text(s) of Scripture

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The New Testament and the Mission of God: Part II

In my Reading the New Testament Missionally class at Biblical Seminary, our final project was to write a paper on this topic: “Explain the mission of God in the Bible as you understand it on the basis of the New Testament. Who or what is sent by whom, as a result of what causes, and to achieve what ends? What are the main implications of this divine missional story for your life and for the life of the Christian church in the early 21st century?”

Here is Part II of my effort.

My statement of mission is this: The mission of God is to be God for the world God created. God is “God for the world God created” by the desire of the Father, the sending and suffering of the Son, and the ministry of the Spirit. The mission of the Church is to incarnate God’s life in the world in anticipation of the age to come, when God will be all in all.


II. The Fall; or, The Great Turning

In the five or six-act structure of recent narrative theology, the second act is the pathetic crisis of the Fall.[1] As the curtain rises on this second Act, God has created the world as “good,” and has installed human beings, the man and the woman, as his vice-regents over creation, in the “garden” of Eden.[2] The man and the woman appear to have everything they need for fellowship with each other and with God.[3] The man and the woman, however, rebel against God’s command and eat of the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”[4] They are cast out of the garden, the ground and humanity are cursed, and the way back into the garden is barred by angelic beings “and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.”[5]

The prefatory hymn of John 1 does not refer directly to this “Fall” event, but simply assumes the current state of “darkness.”[6] Paul, however, connects Adam’s sin to the “death” of all humanity and to the “groaning” of all creation.[7] For Paul, Adam, the sinner, is the prototypical “first” humanity, while Christ, the perfect redeemer, is the prototypical “second” humanity.

The Fall is the lynchpin of classical Augustinian theology. For much of Christian history, it was assumed that this was a “literal” event in human history – that the first two human beings, Adam and Eve, lived in a paradisiacal state from which they “fell.”[8] If the Western Patristic or Scholastic Catholic divines or Reformers were to speak in terms of the “mission of God,” they would have construed it as a mission to restore the paradise lost by Adam’s sin.[9]

By the nineteenth century, however, it had already begun to become evident that the Biblical story of the “Fall” cannot be simply and literally historical. Today, it has become clear beyond any reasonable doubt that the created world, including human beings, developed through an evolutionary process that involved billions of years of struggle and death.[10] Narrative theology, for all its merits, simply sidesteps this problem. What can we make of the dramatic hinge of the “Fall” in a post-scientific age? How should the information we are able to glean about the created world influence the story we tell?

This is an enormous question, which cannot be resolved within the scope of this paper, and probably cannot be definitively resolved at all.[11] I’d like to suggest, however, that the “Fall” cannot be understood as somehow temporarily thwarting God’s original purposes for creation. Rather, the “Fall” represents a misdirection of human will and desire that God had already taken account of when He created the universe, the consequences of which God Himself entered into through the cross.

God evidently designed a dynamic process of physical death and decay into the fabric of the created order as a means of producing life. There is no possibility of the creation we enjoy today without an unimaginably deep history of evolutionary change. And there is no evolutionary change – no possibility of “life” as we know it – without entropy and death. The physical constraints human beings face, therefore, are not the proximate result of “Adam’s” sin, but rather are a necessary function of the created world. In this sense, the creation itself, before humanity comes onto the scene, already bore a “cruciform” shape.[12]

But humans are more than physical beings.[13] Apparently we are the only creatures on the earth who possess the “spiritual” capacity to relate to God, to each other, and to the created world itself, in a manner somehow analogous to the relationality of God.[14] We alone are created in God’s image.[15] The primordial human rebellion against God – the “Fall” – represents our existential experience of the brokenness of this relationality as well as an ontological fissure that somehow transcends the empirically observable universe. We know that in some sense we are unique, that in some sense we are “free,” that in some sense we are made for union with God, each other, and the world. We sense that our lives should reflect the mutuality, coinherence and perichoretic fellowship of God’s Triune life, from which we were born. Yet we each experience the pain and loneliness of desires that are turned in on ourselves and away from God, others and the world. To be left to ourselves, alone, is the heart of what it means to be “fallen.”[16]

If the term “Fall” were not so entrenched, I might prefer a narrative header such as “The Great Turning.” In fact, I think this is consistent with some Eastern Patristic and contemporary Eastern Orthodox thought about sin and the Fall. In On the Incarnation, for example, Ireneaus envisioned pre-Fall Adam as inherently mortal, and Athanasius pictured Adam and the entire pre-lapsarian creation as an infant that needed to grow and develop. [17] Contemporary Orthodox theology likewise understands original sin less as an Augustinian inherited depravity and more as a continuing misdirection of the will.[18]

God created human beings with a capacity to orient their relational capacities towards God, the each other, and the creation. Humans were made to participate in the life of God. But we turned and turn, primordially and individually, in a different direction, inwards, into our selves, and away from God. The “mission” of God is to draw us back towards Himself, back into His life, and thereby to “complete” – in some sense with us and through us as well as in us and upon us – the work and mandate of creation.[19] God accomplishes this mission through His own suffering in the crucifixion of the incarnate Son, in His recreation of all things, begun with the Resurrection of the incarnate Son, and in his final victory over evil and injustice, revealed fully at the Son’s return.[20] In this way, the “mission” of God is a mission “for the world” – the second major phrase in my definition.

[1] See Craig G. Bartholomew and Michael Goheen, The Drama of Scripture (Baker Academic 2004), at p. 27.

[2] Gen. 1-2.

[3] This is symbolized beautifully in Gen. 2:25: “The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.”

[4] Gen. 2:15-17.

[5] Gen. 3:22-24.

[6] John 1:5.

[7] Romans 5:12-20; 1 Corinthians 15:12-26.

[8] See, e.g., Milton’s classic allegory Paradise Lost.

[9] The Eastern tradition does not, in contrast, tend to speak in such terms. See James R. Payton, Light from the Christian East: An Introduction to the Orthodox Tradition (IVP Academic 2007). In many ways, the Eastern tradition’s notion that humanity has become misdirected and must be directed back towards union with God (“theosis”) informs the re-reading of the Western tradition that I am to some extent attempting in this paper.

[10] For a general discussion of the scientific evidence, see Darrell Falk, Coming to Peace With Science: Bridging the World Between Faith and Biology (InterVarsity Press 2004); Francis Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (Free Press 2007).

[11] For a discussion of some of the issues, see R.J. Berry and T.A. Noble, Darwin, Creation and the Fall: Theological Challenges (InterVarsity Press 2009).

[12] See George L. Murphy, The Cosmos in Light of the Cross (Continuum 2003).

[13] For a discussion of theological anthropology and the problem of the “mind” or the “soul,” see David W. Opderbeck, A Critically Realist Theology of Law, Neurobiology and the Soul, Social Science Research Network Working Paper, available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1594907.

[14] Many animals possess significant capacities for empathy and relationality, but there seems to be something unique about human beings in this regard. See Wentzel Van Huyssteen, Alone in the World?: Human Uniqueness in Science and Theology (Eerdmans 2006).

[15] Gen. 1;2.

[16] I am obviously drawing here on the Barthian and “neo-orthodox” tradition concerning the human condition and the “fall.” See, e.g., Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation (Westminster John Knox 1996). At this point in my thinking about this question, however, I would depart from neo-orthodoxy by suggesting that the “Fall” must have been a “real” primordial event. My sense of hermeneutical consistency and the integrity of my broadly Reformed theological outlook seem to require a “historical” fall with ontological consequences of some sort. But perhaps the “flaming sword flashing back and forth” that guards the “garden” represents an epistemological as well as an existential barrier against recovering the history “behind” the Gen. 1-4 narratives. For a preliminary effort to sketch out a “realist” view of the fall that is also scientifically literate, see my essay A Historical Adam? on the BioLogos website, available at http://biologos.org/blog/a-historical-adam/.

[17] See supra Note 15.

[18] See supra Note 25.

[19] This description of the “mission” of God also obviously resonates with Eastern Orthodox theology, particularly with the notion of theosis. See supra Note 25.

[20] I am drawing here from Jurgen Moltmann, The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology (Fortress Press 1993). Bryan Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat also draw heavily on the suffering of God in relation to the mission of God and the praxis of the Church in Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire (IVP Academic 2004). The possibility of Divine passibility and suffering, of course, is a controversial one in contemporary theology, as it seems to run afoul of orthodoxy with respect to Divine impassibility and simplicity. See, e.g., Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite, at pp. 155-168. At this point in my own reflection and study, I confess that I am not yet fully able to navigate these difficult waters. I do agree with Hart that “[a] God who can become, who can acquire determinations, who has his future as potential and realizes his future through ‘dramatic self-transcendence,’ is not God but a god, a mere supreme being; and regarding the gods, Christianity has always quite properly been identified as atheism.” Ibid., at p. 166. I also like Hart’s manner of turning Divine impassibility into something of awe and beauty: “God’s impassibility is the utter fullness of an infinite dynamism, the absolutely complete and replete generation of the Son and procession of the Spirit from the Father, the infinite ‘drama’ of God’s joyous act of self-outpouring — which is his being as God.” Ibid. at p. 167. For this reason, I say that God’s “mission” is to “be” God, and not to “become” God.

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Spirituality Text(s) of Scripture Theology

Text(s) of Scripture: Word and Walk

This is the next entry in the Text(s) of Scripture series with yours truly and Thomas.  Our text this go-round is 1 John 2:4-11:

We can be sure we know him if we obey is commands.  The man who says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him.  But if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him.  This is how we know we are in him:  Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.

Dear friends, I am not writing you a new command but an old one, which you have had since the beginning.  This old command is the message you have heard.  Yet I am writing you a new command:  its truth is seen in him and you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.

Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness.  Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble.  But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness; he does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded him.

 Thomas:

 This passage makes apparent that the Word is not fulfilled until it is obeyed.  That is why prophecy is only cautionary and rhetoric if it is not fulfilled.  When prophecy is fulfilled, the words achieve their full purpose and meaning.  We should view the words of Christ in the same way: that God’s love is not made complete in us until we obey his words.

Obedience has often been maligned for being “works” or “the law” or false “justification.”  True obedience is not like this.  As John writes, obedience is a journey or pilgrimage: “whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.”  Obedience is staying on the right path, the path we are on because of faith as well.  Faith and obedience need each other to survive and grow—the “law” or “works,” in their sparsest and cruelest followings, do not need faith.  Obedience is finding the old within the new, as Jesus himself was the new covenant that fulfills and surpasses the old covenant.  This obedience to the Word, to Christ, is not a woeful and bleak struggle against the flesh—it is a purifying pilgrimage that sees the light at the end of the tunnel.  Often when the “struggle against the flesh” is framed in conversation the struggle is made out to be futile.  We never seem to be able to win out over it.  That is the narrow-minded and short-sightedness of viewing obedience as only “works.”  When we have faith and works, we can trust that though we struggle, and sometimes struggle mightily, we can rejoice “because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.”  The Word is the light that shines on our faith-journey.  Our obedience to the Word of Christ is the calling we all follow faithfully as we pilgrimage to the place where the true light is already shining. 

If we lose our way, as the person who hates their brother does, we will find darkness precisely because we have strayed from the path of our pilgrimage.  We have no longer been obedient to the race we have been called to run, to borrow from Paul.  This is why viewing obedience not as “works” but as walking in the footsteps of Christ makes sense of the grim outlook of John’s example here.  If we step off the path and are no longer obedient, and the more we are disobedient and venture further and further from the narrow road we have been called to travel on, we loose sight of the Light of the Word and become lost in the darkness.  Like a traveler who becomes lost in the wilderness, or a horse who ventures off the path in the night, we may suddenly find ourselves in the impenetrable darkness of this world.  We should fear for our selves and our soul, but we should never fear that Christ has abandoned us.  His Word is written on his followers’ hearts, and those who have lost there way should repent and begin to follow his commandments.  When we follow his commandments, we will find the darkness of our surroundings and our soul begin to fade, as the darkness fades at dawn, and the Light of Christ the eternal Word will guide us back onto the pilgrim’s path.

Dave:  

I want to focus on the connection between obeying God’s “word” and “walk[ing] as Jesus did.”  We sometimes focus so much on the “word” as a set of commands and restrictions that we forget Jesus is the incarnate “Word.”  You can’t imitate the “walk” of a written word.  

Written words can offer instruction, guidelines, and rules useful to a practice.  I’ve read lots of things about playing guitar — the rules of music theory, things to avoid or to do (“use the back of your picking hand thumb to produce pinched harmonics…”), stories of other players’ successes and failures.  But with any difficult technique, at some point I need someone to show me how it’s done.  Then I need to just do it, to get it into my own hands and fingers until it becomes automatic.

So it is, I think, with following Jesus.  The written words of scripture are transformative.  They begin to seep into our ways of thinking about what life is for and how it should be lived.  But the words aren’t given for their own sake, and they aren’t given alone.  The walk of Jesus, his way of dealing with people, his way of relating to the Father, his strength in temptation, his heartbreak over evil and suffering, his sacrificial death, is there for us to observe as well.   So “word” is only really “Word” in us when our “walk” starts to look like our Rabbi’s.

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Text(s) of Scripture Theology

Text(s) of Scripture

This is another entry in our Text(s) of Scripture series.  Our text is Luke 1:1-4:

Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.

Thom: Eyewitness is immensely important to the creation and explanation of our Scriptures.  If may people have seen something, something must have happened, to paraphrase N.T. Wright.  What David touches on with the term certainty I will not tackle here, other than to say that as someone who looks at linguistics/literature/philosophy/theology in a postmodern or postfoundational way, I try to think of certainty as a glass half full instead of a glass half empty.  To allude to David’s own blog, we see through a glass darkly—the importance being that we see amazing things, not that sometimes they are obscure or blurry.

The Scriptures are an amazing storybook, a chronicled, multi-genre attempt at telling and retelling the wonderful story of God.  This is what Luke is doing here, as he has gone to investigate, articulate, meditate, and create the story of God.

Luke created his gospel.  He did it with the help of the Holy Spirit, the breath of God, but Luke was in control.  He took up the pen, he investigated, he meditated, and then he made an orderly account for all lovers of God to enjoy.  The key here is “orderly,” for it denotes the creational aspect of “good news” making.  Luke is the writer, who with the help of a brooding Spirit, (re-)creates the Word.  Gospel writing is right out of Genesis, as John alludes to in the introduction of his Gospel.  The Holy Spirit is hovering over Luke’s writing as he forms it to be the beginning, the Word. 

We are all servents of the Word.  We enter into the economy of God with some certainty, much certainty even, yet there comes a time when we doubt or have much doubt.  Then what may help us in times of darkness but the light of Christ, the Word, the spoken Story of the cosmos.  Luke retells that story, not that we should “know” it academically, as is the status quo of Christendom today.  Luke wants us to do something different with our knowledge.  He wants us to follow in his footsteps and become storytellers ourselves.  Just as the accounts of our Scriptures were handed down to us by those who from the first eyewitnesses and servants of the Word, so we too should take Luke’s accounts and hand them down ourselves through service, worship, and sacrament.   We are all co-tellers and co-hearers of God’s story.  We truly stand in a long line of believers, playing an immense game of Telephone.  Except this time the message is not garbled.  It comes out clean, pure, and true.  Listen to it, the words handed down to Luke, who now hands them to us, and you will know that it is good.

He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

David: This passage is very interesting and important for the relationship between the Bible and epistemology.  Luke’s use of the word “certainty” here serves as a touchstone for many who argue that the Bible serves as a source of objective, unerring certainty for human knowledge claims.  Many emerging / postmodern / missional Christians, in contrast, are uncomfortable with, if not sometimes hostile to, any claims to objective certainty, as well as to an understanding of the Bible that makes the Bible primarily a source of objectively certain propositional statements.

I believe this is an important question for nurturing the faith of young people in the Church and for presenting the faith to those outside the Church in our pluralistic world.  I hope I can do a longer series of posts on this, but for now, here is my summary.

In a nutshell, I think this passage establishes the Gospel of Luke, and at least the synoptic Gospels generally, as testimonial witnesses that secure the experience of faith in Christ.  I do not, however,  think this passage bears all the weight that some conservative evangelicals might want to place on it.  I say this for two key reasons:  (1) the Lukan passage does not itself suggest that it applies outside the context of the particular contents of the Gospel of Luke as communicated to Theophilus; (2) the Lukan passage, though strong in its language, must be understood in its literary context as the formal greeting of a Hellenistic text addressed to a patron; (3) other epistemological passages in scripture stress the provisional and limited nature of human knowledge even when enlightened by the gospel (e.g., many of the Psalms, Ecclesiastes, 1 Cor. 13:12); and (4) yet other epistemological passages in scripture stress that the ultimate ground of certainty / assurance is the testimony of the Holy Spirit, not an external criterion of truthfulness.

At the same time, contrary perhaps to some voices in the emerging church movement, I do think this passage suggest an important “objective” testimonial role for the Gospels and for scripture in general.  Without the Lukan witness to the fact that scripture encodes the community’s testimonial witness about Jesus, it is too easy for our faith to become merely existential.  The super-existentialism of Schleiermacher, I think, is a key element in “liberal” theology’s eventual serious problems with even central affirmations of the faith, such as the uniqueness of Christ.  Faith is existential in that the primary witness to faith is the testimony of the Holy Spirit, but this faith is not merely ephemeral – it is grounded, anchored, or made secure (terms that reflect the root meaning of the Greek word asphelia that is translated “certainty”) in the recorded testimony of scripture, particularly the apostolic testimony about Jesus.  The scriptural witness here, I think, plays a confirmatory, solidifying role, which differs from but compliments the initiating, primary role played by the Holy Spirit.

A little excursus:  It’s interesting to note Luke’s other use of the word translated “certainty” in the NIV, asphelia, in Acts 5:23.  It refers to the doors of a jail in which the apostles were held being “securely” locked.  The word is also used in the LXX, sometimes to refer to physical “safety” (Deut. 12:10), “security” for a debt (e.g. Prov. 11:15), or “sound” or secure judgment (Prov. 8:14).  As a lawyer, the LXX usage in Prov. 11:15 intrigues me.  Posting security for a debt does not create the debt.  The debt is created through some primary relationship between the creditor and debtor (for example, a contract to pay a certain amount at a future date for services rendered).  Posting security ensures that the debt will be satisfied – if the debtor does not pay, the creditor may exercise its right to obtain the value of the security interest.  The security interest gives the creditor assurance that it can enter into the transaction with the debtor without losing its investment.   In a somewhat analogous way, I see the deposit of faith instantiated in the relationship between the believer and God, through Christ, initiated and guaranteed by the Holy Spirit, with scripture as the stable instrument recorded to secure the relationship. 

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Text(s) of Scripture Theology

Text(s) of Scripture: Psalm 18:31

This is the third in the “Text(s) of Scripture” series between Thomas and yours truly.

Our present text is Psalm 18:31:

As for God, his way is perfect;
the word of the LORD is flawless.
He is a shield
for all who take refuge in him.

Thom:

This God—his way is perfect;
   the word of the LORD proves true;
   he is a shield for all those who take refuge in him.
  
“Prove It!”

That’s what a nine year old says to another nine year old when a boast has been made or a bluff is waiting to be called.  Even if something is proven, the person who is right still might need to take refuge from the more powerful or the bully.  Spun out into a cosmic game of good versus evil, where spears are being thrown at harp players and prophetic words seem weak when confronted with the sword, proving right over might seems impossible.

In this psalm of David, he is declaring once again that the word of the LORD proves itself true, because it has been witnessed in his own life.  He has seen God’s prophecy and law prove its worthiness and perfection.  He has seen his life spared. He has seen the wisdom of the Proverbs play itself out in real life.  He has heard God’s true prophets say “this is the word of the LORD” and then seen the fulfillment of this word.

God’s word is his covenant to us.  It is his agreement, his oath, his desire, focus, and pleasure.  He speaks and the earth shakes.  He speaks and Creation becomes.  He delights in the fulfillment of his Word, the heirs of his coming kingdom. 

Christians live on the dawn of the last days.  We have seen the light cusp the horizon, and we prepare for the sunrise.  But it hasn’t come yet.

But it has!  Christ is risen each Easter morn, in each soul that follows his way, in each mouth that is fed, heart warmed, cold body clothed, and orphan adopted.  His Word, though tempted and suffering, even death on a cross, has been proven.  It was the same in the time of David.  It will be the same forevermore, until the Kingdom dawns.

Dave:

What does it mean that the “word of the Lord is flawless?”  I think this is a kind of relational, experiential term:  God’s ways are perfect and his “word” is “tested” or “tried and true” — a more accurate translation of the Hebrew here than “flawless” (the Hebrew root refers to the purification and smelting of precious metals). 

David here is referring specifically to the benefits of keeping the Torah, the Law.  He claims in verses 18-24, for example, that

For I have kept the ways of the LORD,
         And have not wickedly departed from my God. 
 For all His ordinances were before me,
         And I did not put away His statutes from me. 
  I was also blameless with Him,
         And I kept myself from my iniquity.
Therefore the LORD has recompensed me according to my righteousness,
         According to the cleanness of my hands in His eyes.

David celebrates his fidelity to Torah and attributes his success over his enemies to superior keeping of Torah.  In fact, this Psalm is recorded essentially verbatim in 2 Samuel 22, after David has consolidated his rule over Israel after bloody conflict with Saul and civil war against his own son, Absalom.

David’s claim to be “blameless,” however, is something of a rhetorical and literary device.  In fact, David repeatedly violated God’s law in serious ways.  Absalom was the son of David’s unlawful tryst with Bathsheba, which David tried to cover up through the murder of Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah (2 Samuel 11-12).  As another example, David took a census of Israel, which he later acknowledged to be sinful, and which resulted in a judgment of pestilence against Israel (this census was sinful probably because it involved increased taxation, conscription and forced labor) (2 Sam. 24).  David, who ultimately repents for his violations of the Law, is “blameless” only in comparison to those who disregard the Law entirely.

The claim here, then, is that those who follow God’s ways will not be disappointed.  There is also an implied lesson, I think, that when we fail to follow God’s ways we should turn back to Him and that He will receive us.

God’s “word” — His Law — His definition of the “good life” — is “tried and true.”  Many heroes of the faith — even highly flawed heroes such as David — have listened to God’s word and have found God to be faithful.  And many others have obstinately turned aside from God’s ways, to their ultimate destruction.

So is this passage a proof text for a particular doctrine of scripture?  Yes and no, I think.  Yes, in that God’s precepts and commands, which fundamentally concern appropriate respect for God, self, and others, always lead to a “true” life for those who follow them.  No, I humbly submit, in that it isn’t really connected to our modern meticulously phrased, logically systematic statements about how the human and divine aspects of scripture as a whole relate to each other in general, or about how scripture “measures up” to modern ideas of historiography.