Tag Archive - Acts

At Work in Your Midst

December 14, 2011 in Bible Thoughts with 10 Comments

Ever pray for God to be at work in a situation, in a place, in a relationship, in a church?

I’m pretty sure I have. And it never much occurred to me that I might be doing something exceedingly dangerous. It was reflecting on “atonement” in the Luke-Acts that made me think twice.

I remember being taken aback my first semester of my PhD program when people were off-handedly talking about Luke not having an atonement theology. But as I started to dig in I saw the point: Luke seems to have purposely eliminated Mark’s ransom saying. It may be replaced by the saying about coming to serve at table. And, if Bart Ehrman is right, Luke may have eliminated the sacrificial overtones of the last supper.

The cross serves a different kind of purpose in Luke: it makes the Jewish people, in particular, realize that they need God’s forgiveness (rather than making such forgiveness possible).

But then, that brings us up to the problem: the reason they should see they need forgiveness is that God was at work in their world–and they didn’t see it.

Worse, they didn’t merely miss seeing it, they actively worked against it. They opposed the one through whom God was at work, actively and powerfully.

And here is where I circle back to my question: are we really sure we want God to be at work in our midst? What if he is, and we miss it? What if he is, and we actively oppose it?

If the ministry of Jesus shows us anything, it is that the people who should have the clearest vision–both because of their knowledge of scripture and the ways of God and because of their proximity to God’s work–are the ones who oppose the work of God most vehemently.

Yes, of course, I want God at work.

But we should be as diligent in praying for eyes to see and celebrate that God at work as invoking the action in the first place.

Can’t God Just Forgive?

November 14, 2011 in Bible Thoughts with 16 Comments

When people wrestle with atonement theology (i.e., how does the cross, in particular, bring about forgiveness of sins), the objection to atonement theology as a whole is sometimes voiced: why can’t God just forgive? Does God really need some sort of payment?

On the one hand, yes, God can do whatever God wants. This is possible.

On the other hand, we develop our understanding of how the cross works ex post facto. We’re not setting up parameters that have to be met, but trying to understand the biblical witness about how the death of Jesus did, in fact, function. We have books like Hebrews that say things like, “You could almost say that without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” We have the language of Jesus’ death as atoning sacrifice.

So atonement theology is our attempt to make sense of what did happen, not to set requirements on God.

But there’s another piece of the biblical puzzle as well. That piece is Luke-Acts.

Luke seems to go out of his way to mute the idea that Jesus’ death is somehow a ransom or payment for sins. You know that, “Son of Man didn’t come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many” saying? It’s replaced by the son of man being among his people as one who serves the table.

Look at the sermons in Acts. Here, of all places, we should get a clear exposition of the purpose of the cross. And we do! But its focused purpose is to fulfill the scripture about Israel rejecting its own Messiah, so that Israel will see that they, as much as the Gentiles, stand in need of the forgiveness of God.

God forgives.

God isn’t paid.

Sin isn’t covered.

Blood doesn’t cleanse.

Canonically, this is not enough. There is more to be said, other developments of the significance of Jesus’ death that need to be incorporated into a fully developed understanding of the atonement.

But here’s the question: is this atonement-free forgiveness a viable starting point for us to take with people who find the idea of God needing payment to be barbaric, weird, etc.? Can we set aside the other angles on Jesus’ death and cultivate a Lukan theology of the God who forgives, and who is at work in the world through Christ and the Spirit, as the gospel with which we begin?

Discuss.

The One Gospel?

September 6, 2011 in Bible Thoughts with 14 Comments

I’ve recently been reading Scot McKnight’s The King Jesus Gospel, a book that has me digging around in some familiar territory of where the Rule of Faith fits into the Christian narrative, how well it represents the biblical story, etc.

In dealing with “gospel,” McKnight starts with 1 Cor 15: “Jesus died for our sins according to the scriptures, was buried, was raised on the third day according to the scriptures; then he appeared…”

Paul claims that this is the one gospel that everyone proclaims.

I very much like this as a summary of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

But at the risk of embracing a “hermeneutic of suspicion,” I also want to suggest that every time someone claims, “This is what everyone has always said,” they are engaging in a polemical framing of their own claims that probably deserves at least a little bit of nuance, and perhaps considerable qualification.

This is not to deny that 1 Cor 15 is a great summary of the gospel, but it is to suggest that there is no single telling of the gospel that is always proclaimed every time.

We could attack this from a couple of different angles.

First, within Paul himself there is some variation. In Gal 3 Paul writes, “Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham saying, ‘All the nations will be blessed in you.’”

The blessing of Abraham for the gentiles is the gospel. The nations being wrapped up in the faith of Abraham and promise of God is the gospel. Interestingly, there is almost no resurrection in Galatians.

Then, we might go to Acts. Acts does not offer us a theology of Jesus “dying for our sins” in its sermons. In fact, Acts contains a sermon in which the crucifixion isn’t mentioned at all (Acts 17). These sermons see the crucifixion bringing such guilt upon Israel as to demonstrate that Israel is as much in need of forgiveness as the nations.

Or, we might go to Jesus. And here’s where I wish McKnight had gone a different direction. To take Mark as an example, Jesus goes out proclaiming the gospel: “Repent, for the reign of God has drawn near!” The advent of the kingdom of God is itself the good news.

Not merely the death of Jesus (Mark 8-16) but the life as well (Mark 1-8) is good news. When Jesus casts out demons–this is enacting the gospel. When Jesus feeds the 5,000–this is enacting the gospel.

There are ways to connect this life of Jesus in the Gospels with the continuing life of the resurrected Jesus in Paul’s letters, but even at the basic level of “gospel,” we have a broad, rich picture in the NT.

So what do we have to say if we are to claim that we proclaim the good news? And should we be suspicious whenever someone tells us that this is what people have always confessed as Christians?

Was It Not Necessary for the Messiah?

November 26, 2010 in Bible Thoughts with 3 Comments

A week ago, Tom Wright and Mike Bird waxed quite eloquent about the need to begin holding together the kingdom of God and the crucifixion of Jesus. How do Mark 14-15 hold together with Mark 1-13? Or, perhaps more helpfully, how does the wonder-working Messiah of Mark 1-8 fit together with the Jerusalem-bound Son of Man of Mark 9-15?

I wonder if one reason we haven’t quite gotten hold of this yet has to do with our unwillingness to be guided by the sermons in Acts? Or, perhaps better put, our failure to listen to these sermons a bit more on their own terms.

I think of Acts 2, where Peter is proclaiming the good news in the immediate wake of the reception of the Spirit. Here I think that some recent efforts by my good friends at Duke to read the sermon as a testimony to Jesus’ preexistence and/or identity with YHWH of the Old Testament has obscured the thrust of the sermon.

“Jesus was a man witnessed to by God.” These are Peter’s words in Acts 2:22. Jesus did signs and wonders. The point, too often missed, is that these signs are indicators that Israel’s God is at work through this human. Here we get a summary of the kingdom of God drawing near: it happens when God works through a king to bring about God’s will on earth.

As the sermon unfolds, Peter turns more specifically to the cross and resurrection. Not reflecting on the cross as a saving event so much, Peter turns to the resurrection as another sign that God is setting aside and approving Jesus as the lord over all things. David prophesied the resurrection of Jesus, and this is how Jesus comes to sit on David’s throne.

Because Jesus is now enthroned at God’s right hand, he can do for the church what God had done for him: give the Spirit so as to bring about powerful signs and wonders, putting on display that Jesus is in fact the king who is lord over all. This enthronement is the making of Jesus king and lord—the consummation of what was begun on earth (2:36).

The same dynamics are at work in Peter’s sermon to Cornelius.

Jesus’ life of wonder-working begins when Jesus is anointed (Christened, we might say) by God with the Spirit. He does wonders showing that, though a human, God is with him. As the lord anointed by God, Jesus overcomes the lordship of the devil (Acts 10:36-38).

Having been crucified, God raised Jesus up and appoints him to be judge of all things, offering forgiveness of sins through him.

This is Acts. So it not doubt reflects better how we might begin to hold together Luke’s understanding of the connection between cross and life of Jesus than Matthew or Mark’s.

But the answer is surprisingly simple: the reign that Jesus began to exercise on earth is the reign to which God has enthroned him at the resurrection.

The same God who was at work in Jesus during his life on earth has raised Jesus to new life at God’s right hand.

The same God who christened Jesus with the Spirit has enabled Jesus to send forth the Spirit on his followers.

So when Jesus confronts the men on the road to Emmaus and says, “Was it not necessary for the Messiah to suffer and enter into his glory?” we have Luke’s encapsulation of the entirety of his story. To understand that Jesus on earth is the Messiah, the human being who rules the world on behalf of Israel’s God, is to understand that his reign on earth is penultimate and must be consummated by a heavenly enthronement.

And this is why the final instructions in Luke come when Jesus opens the minds of his disciples to understand that the Messiah must suffer, rise on the third day, and then send forth messengers to proclaim forgiveness to all nations—not because there is no gospel before the death, but because Jesus as Messiah on earth is prelude to Jesus the enthroned Messiah who defines the life of God’s people.

Me, says Jesus

November 17, 2010 in Bible Thoughts with 8 Comments

Any time I read the story of Paul’s encounter with Jesus in Acts 9 I am struck by the question: “Saul, why are you persecuting me?”

Not, “Why are you persecuting my people?”

Not, “Why are you persecuting the church?”

Not, “Why are you persecuting them?”

But, “Why are you persecuting me?”

This identification of Jesus with the early church is communicated using a variety of metaphors. John uses the vine-branch metaphor, Paul uses the body image (though I’m not sure “metaphor” is exactly the right word).

The title of Acts is often rendered, “The Acts of the Apostles,” though the first couple verses indicate that the story is actually the continuing acts of Jesus (finishing what he had started during his time on earth). But the point seems to be that to say one is to say the other. The Acts of the Apostles, or, better, the Acts of the church, are the continuing acts of Jesus, and the continuing acts of Jesus are the acts of the church.

This unity is one of the theological underpinnings for the Christological readings of the OT that I advocated yesterday.

As I said in a comment there, the church does read the psalms as though these are our words, but the reason why we can do so, the reason why this is a true use to put them to, is often because they are true of Jesus first.

The “me” Jesus defends in Acts 9 is the persecuted Christ, the righteous sufferer whom God delivered from the shackles of death. (Cf. 80% of the Psalter.) When we pray these as Christians, we pray these as people (a) for whom these songs became ours when we were joined to Jesus; (b) who in being joined to Jesus are joined to the person who was literally delivered from the figural fates of death articulated by the suffering kings (often) in these psalms, and (c) who have hope for the psalm’s successful resolution because of our own being joined to Jesus in his death and resurrection.

Done right, a Christological reimagining of the psalms does not separate us from them, but actually makes it clear why they are true for us despite the fact that they speak of persons, hopes, and dreams that otherwise would remain forever removed in an ancient place and time.

Anderson Reviews Rowe

February 12, 2010 in Book Reviews with 0 Comments

At First Things, Gary Anderson (OT Prof at Notre Dame) gives a glowing review of Kavin Rowe’s, World Upside Down.

Euangelion Interview with Kavin Rowe

February 10, 2010 in Interviews with 1 Comment

A couple weeks ago I ran through C. Kavin Rowe‘s World Upside Down (part 1, part 2).

A friend just pointed out to me that Kavin was interviewed on Euangelion blog back in August. It’s a good read!

World Upside Down (part 2)

January 27, 2010 in Book Reviews with 4 Comments

Continuing our review of C. Kavin Rowe’s World Upside Down, we come to the synthetic chapter (chapter 4, where he works through a narrative in tension between the church being a catalyst for instability and its innocence in Roman court) followed by a final chapter that works out the theological implications of the study.

Chapter 4 bears the title of the book, “World Upside Down,” and uses the Jewish charges against the Pauline mission in Acts 17 as its springboard. He traces three interrelated characteristics of the early church: they proclaim Jesus as universal king; this, in turn, sets the church on a universal mission; and that mission is generative of communities that are, in some sense, set apart from their surrounding cultures.

Rowe argues that the charges brought against the Christians accurately reflect Luke’s theological assessment of the early Christian movement: “these men who have turned the world upside down have come here, too…. They are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, proclaiming that there is another King, Jesus.” He maintains that there are three points aimed at one overarching charge of sedition: “by proclaiming another king, the Christians act against the decrees of Caesar and thereby turn the world upside down” (95-96).

Rowe goes on to say that “Jesus is king” is a confession that sets up a rival to Caesar. Moreover, Jesus’ kingship is embodied in a this-worldly transformation: it impacts the world within which we live. The force of Jesus as rival to Caesar is underscored by Luke’s use of κύριος as a title for each (106). A rivalry is created: Christians must deny what Caesar claims for himself and hence his authority on earth. Jesus comes to establish a rival peace as a rival king by rival means (in particular, suffering and death, 115).

Finally, it must be remembered that it is Jesus’ resurrection that is the impetus for mission: Jesus as Lord of all is the reason that a mission that extends to all generates communities to the ends of the Roman empire. (Some of my readers will be surprised not at all by the fact that this portion of my book has lots of “Yes!” in the margin.)

The final chapter draws some theological conclusions. It is no accident, Rowe claims,  that when a whole set of practices constitutive of pagan culture are called into question (such as sacrifice, magic, temple-based economics) that the culture is confronted with possible collapse (146). “To see the potential of the Christian mission for cultural demise is to read it rightly. Indeed, this is but the flip side of the reality that God’s identity receives new cultural explication in the formation of a community whose moral or metaphysical order requires and alternative way of life” (146).

In Luke’s telling of the story, the formation of alternative communities, with alternative cultures, is inseparable from the reality of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead to be lord over all. Moreover, the existence of such communities, with their alternative forms of life, become the context within which the truth can be spoken and known (161). Thus, the Christian claims are “madness”–but only to those without eyes to see (162).

But this inability of the outsider to see is one part of a story told for the purpose of demonstrating the inherent necessity of Christian mission. All, even Rome, need conversion so as to understand the true story of Jesus. This, though, is not a coercive narrative, for “Acts narrates the life of the Christian mission as the embodied pattern of Jesus’s own life… Put succinctly, according to Acts, the missio Dei has a christological norm” (173).

The final part of the final chapter, where the missional implications of the Christian message are explored, are worth their weight in gold. Rowe has written a bold piece of theology.

Of course, I do have a couple of quibbles, and since I don’t want you to think that either my free book or my friendship with an author has overmuch colored my opinion, I offer a disagreement for your consideration. I am not as persuaded as the author that “Lord” (κύριος) is a cipher for the God of Israel, such that calling Jesus lord equates him ontologically with God–Jesus is God of all if Lord of all. Rowe references some of his earlier work, in which he has argued that the use of κύριος language in Joel, quoted in Acts 2, identifies Jesus with the God of Israel.

To my reading of Acts 2, this imports too much into the text that stands in tension with the actual things Peter says about Jesus and God. Jesus was a man testified to by God through signs and wonders. The distinction is important. Moreover, I notice Rowe saying that the resurrection confirmed or affirmed Jesus as lord, but Peter in Acts 2 (like Matthew 28 and Romans 1, etc.) that at the resurrection God made (ἐποίησεν) Jesus Lord and Messiah. Something happened to Jesus at the resurrection, he became something he was not before–he was made Lord of all, his name became the name by which salvation is made known.

But this disagreement, I think, detracts little from the meat of the work, which offers a bold new thesis on the purpose of Acts and will surely provide fodder for considerable debate in the future. (For example: at an SBL book review session in Atlanta…)

What I like most about this book is how it moves from historical exegesis to theological imperative, angling itself against the idea that we read disinterestedly, and uncovering false visions of “inclusiveness” that have no room for the sorts of sweeping claims made by the early church. The theology, in particular, merits sustained attention.

Disclaimer: Like every academic who reviews a book for a journal or online venue, I received a complimentary copy of Word Upside Down from Oxford University Press.

World Upside Down (Part 1)

January 26, 2010 in Book Reviews with 2 Comments

Last week I read C. Kavin Rowe’s World Upside Down and wanted to say a few things about it here. As I indicated in my brief mention of the book last week, the book is a great “fit” for the Storied Theology theme that I hope somehow will (loosely) hold my blog together.

Rowe declares that it’s high time to reassess the notion that Acts is written, in large part, as political apologia, storying the compatablity between Rome and the church. And yet, he does not want us to fall off the horse on the other side, either, and turn Acts into a tract for political liberation through resistance movements.

Instead, Acts is “a highly charged and theologically sophisticated political document that aims at nothing less than the construction of an alternative total way of life–a comprehensive pattern of being–one that runs counter to the life-patterns of the Graeco-Roman world.” It is thus “a culture-forming narrative” (4).

The book is structured so as to, first, give attention to the collisions between Acts and pagan culture. In chapter 2, “Collision,” Rowe highlights the ways in which the narrative of Acts serves to undermine the reading which assumes that the church is not a threat to the Roman culture. The “new cultural reality” established by the church means that the sorts of uprisings we see in Lystra, Philipi, Athens, and Ephesus are not narrated simply to be dismissed, but are indicative of the impact of an alternative reality bumping up against “business as usual” in the pagan world. In this chapter, the exposition of Paul’s encounter with the philosphers on Mars Hill and the uprising in Ephesus are particularly instructive.

The next chapter gives attention to the passages that play well for the traditional reading of Acts. In particular, this chapter, “Dikaios,” chronicles Paul’s trials and vindication before the Roman authorities. This chapter is particularly instructive in the ways that it leads us through the story of Acts as a developing narrative. The trial scenes are not only to be read one by one, but in order, with an eye toward a development in Rome’s response to Paul. Ultimately, Paul’s vindication at the hands of the Romans becomes a tacit confirmation of the “otherness” of the church and its mission–the Romans do not have the epistemological tools to understand the gospel. The resurrection inaugurates a new reality that they cannot grasp.

One of the strengths of Rowe’s approach is that it enables us to step back and see yet another way that Acts depicts the early church as embodying the ministry of Jesus: as he was one in whom the Romans found no guilt, and even at the end pronounced dikaios, just, at his moment of death, and yet was opposed by those who would not accept the transformation of their vision of the kingdom of God, so also goes the church. Yes, Jesus does something new and subversive, but it’s not directly oppositional or antagonistic or seen to be a threat by the Romans (who don’t understand it at all).

In running through some of Rowe’s arguments with a friend who’s working on Acts, he’s wondered if looking to Rome isn’t looking too far afield. Is the purpose of Acts to be found more close to home, in the tensions between the early church and non-Christian Judaism (or even all types of Judaism including the conservative Torah-keeping Judaism with which the non-Jewish church struggles so much)? That’s a question worth pressing further.

Next time I’ll talk about the chapter where Kavin presents his suggestion for reading in light of the tension between collision and innocence and where he goes with the theological implications of his work.

World Upside Down by Kavin Rowe

January 21, 2010 in Book Reviews with 1 Comment

What does narrative theology look like?

What might it look like to take rigorous historical critical scholarship (or believing criticism) and not stop with exegetical details but move into rich theological exposition?

It looks like this:

I just finished this book a few minutes ago, and the culminating chapter, with its theological reflections, is strewn with marginal comments such as “Yes!” “Yes!”, a bit of “*”, and lots of “YES!”

This book works through the Gentile mission, in particular, in the Book of Acts. It strives to come up with a paradigm for understanding both that the gospel generates social upheaval and that the early Christian movement is proclaimed not worthy of death by the Romans.

I’ll work my way through the book, maybe starting tomorrow, but wanted to give you a heads up and a chance to check it out of your library, try to swing a review copy, talk your librarian into buying it, or shell out 50 bucks for your own copy.

[As required by federal law I hereby inform you that mine is a gratis copy from OUP. Yet I consider it my academic responsibility to give honest reviews, even of books I receive for free.]