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.

Safe? Politic? Popular?

January 16, 2012 in Culture, History with 4 Comments

This quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. is my favorite of the many that have been floating around the interwebs today:

On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, “Is it safe?” Expediency asks the question, “Is it politic?” And Vanity comes along and asks the question, “Is it popular?” But Conscience asks the question “Is it right?” And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right. I believe today that there is a need for all people of good will to come together with a massive act of conscience and say in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “We ain’t goin’ study war no more.” This is the challenge facing modern man. (“Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution,” 31 March 1968)

Today, I am thankful that MLKJ was an 8.

Women in the Story of God

January 16, 2012 in blogging, Book Reviews, Jesus Have I Loved with 2 Comments

Today begins week 2 of the “Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul?” blog tour. If you haven’t already, make sure you head over to the blog tour website and enter to win the Paul book package from Baker!

The chapter under discussion to day is, “Women in the Story of God.”

Julie Clawson engages and critiques the chapter at One Hand Clapping. She raises some important concerns about the chapter from the perspective of feminist theology and the reality of what women have experienced in the church.

Andrew Perriman at p.ost engages the chapter in conversation with his own understanding of what apocalyptic means and how that transforms our understanding of the story of God.

Each reviewer has the kind of substantive engagement and substantive concern that can lead to productive conversation. Check out the posts, and join in unfolding discussions in the comments!

And, of course, if you’ve not yet gotten your hands on the book, your hour has come…

“Racism” in First Grade

January 16, 2012 in Culture with 14 Comments

Today I took little dude to a 5-year-old birthday party. Most of the kids in his pre-K class were there. About twelve to fifteen adults were native Spanish speakers; three of us were white; two were African American.

At the same time, Laura was on birthday party duty with CM, attending the festivities for a classmate. The 7-year-olds were supervised by a room full of about 50% white, and 50% Middle Eastern, Latino/a, and African American.

Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

In our San Francisco world, “normal” means racially mixed company.

Perhaps this feeds my dissatisfaction with CM coming home from first grade on Friday all prepped for MLKJ day with a new vocabulary word: “racism.”

It’s not that the topic isn’t important. It’s not that MLKJ Day isn’t a crucial time to talk about issues of race and the struggles our country has had and continues to have. But I wonder if MLKJ’s memory might not be better honored by my first-grader celebrating the diversity that she lives in every day (her class is, at most, 1/3 white) rather than giving her a category for people whose destructive prejudice have marred, and continue to mar, the social fabric of our country?

So that’s my honest question for debate as we honor the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. today: is his memory best honored by teaching our young children about the full darkness of racism upon which King shone his light? or is it better honored by celebrating with our young children the reality that he saw and that they are, in many ways, living into?

I am aware that questions of race strike deeply at the heart of many people’s identity. So please be aware of that and, as you my awesome readers often do so well here, let’s make sure we keep the conversation civil and constructive even if/as we disagree.

Fearing and Loving the Covenant God

January 15, 2012 in Barth Dogmatics Reading with 2 Comments

Can we truly know God? If so, what does such knowledge entail? How can the God who is wholly Other make Himself known to creatures? If we were to know this infinite God, as finite creatures, what would such knowledge look like?

Karl Barth claims that it would be an involved knowledge, a true knowledge, and a knowledge that is nonetheless shrouded in mystery.

Knowledge of God is self-involving. To know God is to love God. This is not the knowing of propositions, but the knowledge of faith and love. We know God as we trust what we have heard in the proclamation of the word.

But with “love,” Barth also insists that true knowledge entails fear of the Lord. Yes, perfect love casts out fear–of judgement. But there is an otherness of God that is embraced, and an appropriate response of fear, that comes when we truly know the true God.

It seems that the point to which Barth is perhaps most eager to arrive, however, has to do with how God can possibly become a true object of our knowledge. Here, he turns to the Trinity.

God does not become known and knowable after there are people to know God. God is eternally known and knowable because the Father knows the Son and the Son knows the Father (through the Spirit? or does the Spirit know, too?).

Human knowledge is true, if limited. God has revealed Himself as this God whom God knows himself to be.

Although the Trinity can never be a philosophical answer to the problem of the knowledge of God, it is one that coheres within the Christian claim about God’s identity, and the nature of God’s self-revelation.

Happy Anniblogary to Me

January 15, 2012 in blogging with 6 Comments

Image: Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Storied Theology turns 2 today. Thanks for making this a great forum for engagement, conversation, and all things narrative theology.

With the exception of the 4 month hiatus between Sibboleth (may it rest in peace) and Storied Theology, I’ve been blogging for 7 years. Thanks for coming along for the ride!

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…

Blog Tour, Day 3

January 11, 2012 in Book Reviews, Jesus Have I Loved with 0 Comments

Today, the Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul? Blog Tour goes to the Matrix and Missional land, with a review of ch. 3, “Christianity as Community.”

Think that Paul’s idea of Christianity is, basically, getting you, yourself, and you right before God? Think again…

James McGrath’s thoughts are here.

Look for Jamie Arpin-Ricci’s at missional.ca.

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