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Does Mercy Seat Work for You?

January 21, 2012 in Bible Thoughts with 10 Comments

How do we understand what Jesus is on the cross?

Romans 3:25 speaks of Jesus as a hilasterion. This is translated in some versions as “sacrifice of atonement,” in others as “a propitiation,” and now the CEB is translating it, “the place of sacrifice where mercy is found.”

The word is used in the LXX (Greek translation of the Old Testament) to refer both to the sacrifice of atonement and to the “mercy seat” inside the holy of holies. So what I’d like to hear from you is whether this “mercy seat” idea works for you as a reading of Rom 3:25. Does it make sense in the verse? Can you see how it’d work? Thoughts?

Here’s the passage:

All have sinned and fall short of God’s glory, but all are treated as righteous freely by his grace because of a ransom that was paid by Christ Jesus. Through his faithfulness, God displayed Jesus as the place of sacrifice where mercy is found by means of his blood. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness in passing over sins that happened before, during the time of God’s patient tolerance. (Rom 3:23-26, CEB)

Homebrewed Podast

January 20, 2012 in Bible Thoughts, blogging, SBL with 0 Comments

During SBL, I had the honor and privilege of doing a recording with the good folks at Homebrewed Christianity, Mark Scandrette, and Philip Clayton before a live studio audience at chez Scandrette. This was, in actuality, the fulfillment of a dream, as I had long hoped to bring my homebrewed beer with me to record a session of Homebrewed Christianity with Tripp, Chad, and Bo.

That discussion is now posted over at Homebrewed Christianity (which you should be subscribed to through iTunes anyway).

Take a listen, relax, and have a homebrew.

Knowing One Particular God

January 20, 2012 in Barth Dogmatics Reading, Bible Thoughts with 5 Comments

Is there some idea of “knowing” that simply have to fill with the right, God-given content, in order to understand how we know God?

Is there some idea of “being” or essence that we simply have to fill with the right, God-given content, in order to understand the God who is?

Do we begin with knowledge and being to know the God who truly is?

When we think about who God is as Lord, Creator, Redeemer, and Reconciler, do we reason upward from our general ideas to a God who is Lord, Creator, Redeemer, and Reconciler because he is such notions of ours writ large?

No, Barth will argue throughout the first part of his discussion of “The Readiness of God” (Church Dogmatics §26.1). We do not have general categories which God fills in a bigger way, and thereby conforms to humanity’s innate ideas. We know the true God as this God is revealed in Scripture. God is known as all these things: Lord, Creator, Redeemer, and Reconciler altogether–so that knowledge of the true God depends on what I would call here the story to which God has bound Godself as primary actor, not simply human notions of what someone called god should do.

In fact, Barth wants to push it back farther than this and to say that it’s not merely our ideas of Lordship, Creation, and the like that are derivative from God’s revelation of who God truly is.

The very idea, and long-standing philosophical problem, of God’s very knowability, is dependent on a prior action of God as well. We can know God because God is actually known and has actually chosen to make himself known. We can know the truth of who God is because God “is” before we are, and this truth of himself is known: Father to Son and Son to Father by the Spirit.

Knowledge of God is, then, an act of grace in which God makes Himself known. This means that it is not an act of nature, in which people might simply reason their way to true knowledge of the true God.

That last piece, an argument against natural theology, takes up a great deal of Barth’s energies as the chapter moves on.

I confess to finding myself torn here. As someone who deals with the deeply contextualized, historically situated texts of the Bible, I stumble over the idea that our images and metaphors for God are revealed rather than varied human expressions of various people in various times and cultures. Note well! I do believe that God reveals and speaks through the images–but that this revelation is known and understood and used because it carries certain preexisting connotative freight for the first hearers.

But on the other hand, I appreciate Barth’s insistence that we not affirm some “god” in general in vain hopes that someone serving such a being will one day attain to faith in the Christian God in particular. This skepticism of natural theology, not only in its validity but also in its purported pastoral value, is well grounded.

Those were my impressions of these 30ish pages. You?

Colossians Questions & Giveaway

January 19, 2012 in Bible Thoughts, blogging, Book Reviews with 31 Comments

I have some books to give away.

I’d also like some help.

Put the two together, and here’s your chance to help humanity and, possibly, nab yourself a book.

First, how can you help humanity?

I am writing study notes on Colossians for a Study Bible. As a NT Prof, I have my ideas about what I’d like to comment on, what I think is important.

But most people who will be using the Study Bible won’t be academics, and will bring different questions. So here’s what I’d like from you: Look over Colossians, in the Common English Bible if possible, and tell me: if you were reading through Colossians, either on your own or with a Bible study group, what passage, word, idea, verse, etc. would you want a study note on? Is there a confusing idea or word you’d like explained? Any piece of theological awesomeness you’d want to make sure everyone was dialed into?

Leave a comment below and let me know what you’d want to know if you were reading through Colossians.

I am also taking this opportunity to give away a few books. Suggest a passage for me to comment on, and you could win big!

Here’s what you do:

(1) Tell me a verse or two you’d like comment on if you were reading Colossians in a Study Bible.
(2) Next Friday I’ll randomly choose three winners.
(3) These three books will be distributed to those upon whom providence smiles:

So, let me know: what would you like to know about Colossians from your study Bible?

Living the Impossible Dream

January 18, 2012 in Bible Thoughts with 5 Comments

I’m getting ready to teach Romans again. No, I’ve not yet repented of the idea that the resurrection of Jesus is the most important theme in the letter. But in my recalcitrance, I continue to find, as well, the call to live our the impossible dream. For all that we approach Romans for its theological interest, Paul’s interest lies in mixing the cement by which the scattered and divided Christian communities might be held together.

In a letter full of great “therefore” moments, none is so great as when Paul says, “Therefore, accept one another–Just as Christ has accepted you, to the glory of God!” (Rom 15:7).

Why tell an elaborate story of the resurrected Christ as the culmination of the story of Israel? Why insist that faithful living is through the power of this Jesus’ resurrection at work in the world through the same Spirit who gave this Jesus life? Why argue that proclaiming this Lord to the Gentiles will result in the belief of until-now-unbelieving Jews?

The resurrected Lord is Lord over all, the agent of God’s faithfulness to not only Israel but the whole world:

I’m saying that Christ became a servant of those who are circumcised for the sake of God’s truth, in order to confirm the promises given to the ancestors, and so that the Gentiles could glorify God for his mercy. (Rom 15:8-9, CEB)

One of the reasons I am passionate about a narrative approach to scripture, and why I’ve written on a “storied approach” to Paul, is tied to this mandate that we purse the impossible unity that should characterize us as God’s people in Christ.

When we talk systematic theology, we have language at the ready to distinguish us from those with whom we disagree. This is fine, it’s what systematic theology does. It’s what dogma does more generally.

But when we engage the biblical texts using narrative categories, we find ourselves on different ground. Suddenly, a Presbyterian, a Methodist, and an Anglican are standing together as they articulate the most fundamental dynamics in Paul’s letters. A new set of glasses is employed, a story is seen, and we see it together.

When we define ourselves by the story of the God of Israel at work to redeem the world through the reconciling life, death, and resurrection of Christ, we have created a new venue for unity around a holistic gospel, a story with all-encompassing ramifications.

Why agitate for a narrative theology?

Because we need to have our minds transformed again, so that we can reimagine not only what the work of God in Christ is, in itself, but who we are and whom we are with when we occupy that reconciled space in Christ.

Jesus Conference in October

January 17, 2012 in Bible Thoughts, Conferences with 1 Comment

Mark your calendars for this great opportunity coming next fall.

October 4 & 5, Lincoln Christian University will be hosting a conference on the Third Quest for the Historical Jesus.

With a lineup of guests that includes Dale Allison, Mark Goodacre, Scot McKnight, and Loren Stuckenbruck, among others, this is a truly unique opportunity to explore various factors at play in on-going quest for the historical Jesus.

Also: there are student scholarships available to help defray the cost of attending the conference. Check out details here.

Freedom from Sin

January 17, 2012 in Bible Thoughts with 4 Comments

When the Bible talks about the work of Jesus, it uses an abundance of metaphors.

We sometimes get ourselves stuck. We have an idea of what it means to confess that Jesus “died for our sins,” and we bring this idea with us wherever we go. Often in the world of Western Christianity the idea that Jesus died for our sins brings to mind the idea of legal infraction, a penalty that has to be paid for breaking the law.

But the idea of legal infraction is often not present. Yes, there is sin; yes, Jesus dies for this sin; and yes, there is forgiveness. But it can be imagined in other ways as well.

In Colossians 1, we read this description of salvation:

He made it so you could take part in the inheritance, in light granted to God’s holy people. 13 He rescued us from the control of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son he loves. 14 He set us free through the Son and forgave our sins. (CEB)

The metaphors in vv. 13-14 have to do, not with guilt but rather with slavery.

Image: David Castillo Dominici / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Freedom here is not freedom from guilt or punishment. It is freedom from a controlling power, from “darkness.” The solution to a problem of slavery is liberation. The kingdom transfer laid out here–form darkness to the Son–is a transfer from a domain of slavery to a domain of freedom.

Entailed in this transfer is “forgiveness of sins.” Where does that play into the slavery metaphor?

Perhaps the sort of enslavement that we should envision is the slavery of debt. This metaphor is taken up in 2:14:

He destroyed the record of the debt we owed, with its requirements that worked against us. He canceled it by nailing it to the cross. (CEB)

The work of Christ in bringing forgiveness is cancelling debt. That debt was, or lent, its enslaving power to those who controlled us and made us hostile to God. And thus Paul can continue, after claiming that the debt certificate was nailed to the cross:

When he disarmed the rulers and authorities, he exposed them to public disgrace by leading them in a triumphal parade. (Col 2:15, CEB)

With the death and resurrection of Jesus, the authorities and powers that were created through and for the sake of the Son are disarmed and subjected to him again. In forgiving our debts, Jesus opens the door for the Father to transfer us from the kingdom that is hostile into the reconciled, cosmic space that Jesus created afresh through his death and resurrection.

The work of the cross is not one in which “freedom” becomes a next calling after God has “forgiven” us in a court of law. The act of salvation itself is a transfer from one lord to another Lord, from one kingdom to another Kingdom.

Debt is forgiven.

And we are free.

Jesus or God?

January 14, 2012 in Bible Thoughts, Jesus Have I Loved with 11 Comments

In yesterday’ stop along the Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul? blog tour, Jim West demurred over my articulation of the ministry of Jesus. This seemed like a good, old-fashioned substantive disagreement, or at least, a place where sounding the note with the right emphasis might be important.

On p. 100 of JHILBP, I say, “Jesus came… to form that family of God around himself.” To which Jim replies:

Jesus doesn’t seek to form anything around himself- he seeks to form a people of God around God, the Father. Kirk’s (apparently Barthian) Christocentrism has led him astray. Jesus was theocentric to the core. His will was to do the will of the Father. Nothing less, and nothing more. For Jesus, it wasn’t about Jesus. It was about the Father.

Let’s get the important stuff out of the way first: Jim is the third person ever, and the third person in the past week, to call me a Barthian and/or Neo-Orthodox. You will forever be on the top three list in applying the label to me! Well done!

The difficulty in responding to the paragraph is that I don’t want to say that Jim’s wrong, that it’s not about God but rather about Jesus. However, what I want to say is that the way in which Jesus’ ministry is about God is by being about Jesus.

Jesus is the one in and through whom God’s kingdom is dawning in the world. Jesus is the King of God’s coming Kingdom (at least as that story is told in the Gospels).

Let’s bring this down to the ground level of the Biblical stories.

Jim rightly says that Jesus comes to do the will of the Father (John 6:38; cf. 4:34). But Jesus then turns, in chapter 6 of John, and immediately says, “This is the will of my Father: that everyone who looks to the son and believes in him will have eternal life” (6:40). The way in which people on earth faithfully respond to God is by faithfully responding to Jesus.

This is what I mean by Jesus coming to form a community around himself–to reject Jesus is to reject the Father, to accept Jesus is to accept the Father. This, in contrast to either everyone already being part of the people of God, in contrast to people being delineated the people of God simply by keeping Torah and faithfully worshiping according to the OT prescriptions, and in contrast to Jesus simply saying that the previously given covenant is sufficient to delineate God’s people.

Similarly, in a passage I discuss more than once in my book, Jesus says, in a statement that would seem to be to Jim’s point, “whoever does God’s will is my mother, sister, and brother” (Mark 3:34, CEB).

But how are these people worthy of the approval as those who “do God’s will”?

“Looking around at those seated around him in a circle, he said, ‘Look, here are my mother and my brothers’” (Mark 3:34, CEB).

Sitting at Jesus’ feet, following Jesus, puts one within the will of God. Jesus does form a community around himself. Following him becomes the defining marker of the people of God. Yes, it is the people of God, the Father, who are formed; yes, it is the will of God, the Father, that is done. But it is done by following Jesus.

It wasn’t about Jesus?

No, this we cannot say. Jesus places himself in the middle of everything–”Whoever hears these words of mine and does them…” (Matt 7); “Whoever is ashamed of me in this wicked and perverse generation…” (Mk 8); “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me…” (Lk 4); “He came to his own… To all who received him, to all who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God (Jn 4).

Though each Gospel tells its own story of Jesus, each agrees on this: Jesus is the way to the Father, the one in and through whom the people of God is being reformed. It is, of course, about God, because “whoever has seen me has seen the Father,” says Jesus in John. Or, “Jesus was a man, testified to by God,” says Peter in Acts.

So while I don’t want to disagree with Jim that this mission is about the Father, I can’t see how the Gospel narratives allow for this mission to be about the Father without it being also about the son.

Missional Institutions?

January 13, 2012 in Bible Thoughts with 6 Comments

An idea has been rumbling around, if ill-formed, in my mind for the past couple of months.

There we were, seminary professors, church pastors, and Christian leader types, having some pretty awesome and fun and challenging conversation about the missional calling of the church. And something about the setting, the gathering of folks I was truly honored to be on stage with, made me wonder if we were the group of people whom folks should be listening to about the church in mission.

Hold that thought. We’ll come back to it.

Yesterday’s stop on the blog tour raised questions about how definitive cruciformity is of our Christian calling. The fact of the matter is (moving on from yesterday’s conversations) that my attempts at fidelity to Jesus very rarely, if ever, look like the cross. Many folks have influential positions and large followings–they have power. Well… I guess I might say, we have power, to a certain extent.

And as I reflected on this yesterday, I wrestled with the impossible possibility of cruciformity being institutionalized. Self-giving, self-sacrifice, death–these are not the principles of faithful administration of a large organization.

Let’s see if we can put these things together.

During the Newbigin conversation, N. T. Wright brought up the need for the church to speak truth to power, to which Pamela Wilhelms replied, “We can’t do that because we are power–or at least, dependent on it.” Our churches, our denominations, our seminaries are funded by the very power dollars that everyone complains about getting the free ride during the financial crisis; the 1% underwrite the very possibility of our having such a meeting, of churches sustained to the extent that we can have large buildings, multiple persons on staff, heavy educational requirements, and the like.

So here’s where I was sitting somewhat uncomfortably, and would love some discussion with you: to what extent can those of us who work within, depend upon, and serve through large Christian organizations speak meaningfully about “the mission of God”?

Are we free enough from the needs of self-preservation to tell the church that the mission of God is a holistic, cosmic mission of reconciliation that the church is too small to contain?

Are we free enough from the power of wealth to speak the prophetic word that, at times, needs to be spoken when an economic system becomes a source of injustice? or a hindrance to justice more generally?

Does the fact that are already filled, already rich, already kings (to paraphrase Paul’s mockery of the non-cruciform Corinthians in 1 Cor 4) render our voice mute when it comes to awakening people to the call of the mission of God?

Resurrection by Crucifixion

January 12, 2012 in Academia, Bible Thoughts, Church, Jesus Have I Loved with 6 Comments

Today’s post is prompted by a confluence of two streams: teaching in the Corinthian correspondence and AKMA’s thoughts in review of my chapter on ethics, “Living the Jesus Narrative.” The question these two have raised to my mind is, “What does the in-breaking of resurrection into this life look like [according to Paul]?”

In both Thessalonians and Corinthians Paul uses language to speak of the reception of the gospel, the effect of his ministry, that seems to be anything but cruciform. When the gospel comes through Paul, it arrives with “power and Spirit” (1 Cor 2:4; 1 Thess 1:5). Paul can speak of the signs of a true apostle accompanying him: signs, wonders, and miracles (2:12).

Paradoxically, however, this power is shown to be God’s power precisely because it comes in the midst of suffering:

We know this because our good news didn’t come to you just in speech but also with power and the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction. You know as well as we do what kind of people we were when we were with you, which was for your sake. You became imitators of us and of the Lord when you accepted the message that came from the Holy Spirit with joy in spite of great suffering. (1 Thess 1:5-6, CEB)

How do you know that this joy, power, and Spirit are genuinely from God? Because they come in spite of your own suffering, says Paul; because they come despite the powerlessness of the messenger, and because in coming through such suffering they cohere with the gospel of Christ crucified.

I stood in front of you with weakness, fear, and a lot of shaking. My message and my preaching weren’t presented with convincing wise words but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power. I did this so that your faith might not depend on the wisdom of people but on the power of God. (1 Cor 2:3-5, CEB)

Resurrection looks like the power of God being made known through, and in the midst of, the weakness, suffering, and persecution that are the embodiment of the cross. More particularly, Paul’s vision of resurrection life now seems to be most sharply in focus when he speaks of his own suffering bringing life, by the Spirit, to others: “We always carry about the dying of Jesus in our mortal flesh so that the life of Jesus also may be made known in us.. So, death works in us, but life in you.”

As the self-giving Christ brings life to the cosmos, so the self-giving Christians bring life to those to whom they speak.

AKMA pushes me on some important questions that I feel I have no good answers to. How do we do ministry like this? For one thing, cruciformity cannot be institutionalized. It is the antithesis of the institution, which must always live, at least in part, to perpetuate itself.

What happens if a good and lowly sufferer does well? What if her church takes off? What if she gets a PhD? What if, horror of horrors, her book sells?! What if we are filled? What if we are already rich? What if we have become kings–while the apostles are being exhibited last of all as people condemned to death?

I don’t have a clear or easy answer.

I suppose that persons more godly than myself can make myriad small decisions to embrace the way of the cross such that their success continues to be a manifestation of the power of God.

I know of a couple of godly, exceptional NT scholars who have made some self-sacrificial decisions in terms of career and public visibility in order to care for ailing family members. From the midst of their self-giving so that others might live, beauty and strength shines forth.

I know teachers who aren’t great communicators (cf. 1 Cor 2:1-5), but whose life and message transform the students who come across their paths.

That’s a start.

Akma has more questions, challenging questions on his page today. I’m guessing he wants to go some other directions with resurrection. I have a few more places I’d like to go with it as well. Maybe later…

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