A Social Network Christmas

Enlightenment Freedom vs Covenantal Freedom

When Christians talk about sex, it sounds like they are against freedom.

Enter the man of the hour Dr Brueggemann, who says we need to

distinguish between Enlightenment freedom, which means 'I'm not accountable to anybody', and Covenantal freedom, which means 'I'm situated in a neighbourhood and my freedom is defined in relationship to the neighbours'.

The Christian story of sex is not rooted in command or control; it is rooted in community. Community gives birth to sex, sex gives birth to community...quite literally. Therefore to think our sex lives are our own is to begin down the path of self-destruction. As we have discovered, Enlightenment freedom -- the freedom of autonomy -- is the pathway to lonliness. It is into this lonliness that the Christian narrative as it relates to sex should sound not like oppressive legislation, but like good news.

Why, then, do we seem to always make it sound like oppressive legislation!? The gospel isn't merely good news about our eternal destiny. It is good news that has profoundly positive effects on our sex lives in the present. We need not apologise for them.

A Nanosecond With Jesus

Walter Brueggemann on the church's (ab/non-)use of the Old Testament:

the church...under the pressure of reductionist fundamentalism has wanted to reduce the whole Bible to a nanosecond with Jesus, and if you can do that then you can get rid of almost everything costly and everything important.

To Be Truly Human

From a comment by Daniel Kirk in his post on Christology in Luke:

...I think that one of the more significant things we find in the Jesus of the Gospels is what it means to be truly human. Too often, in my experience, when folks start finding divinity in the Gospels that becomes an explanation for why Jesus can do what he does (heal, exorcise, etc.)–and why we, in turn, can’t. But if all of it is a big picture of what it means to be truly human, as God’s children, then the family of God on earth has just such a high calling and stunning responsibility.

If this is true, might it be a good enough reason to continue using the word "incarnation" in reference to the church and its mission, despite the fair warnings of Creideamh? Incarnation, after all, is about becoming truly human -- something the church and the world is called to be.

Belief

So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.

- Author of Hebrews

Everything starts with belief and if you don't believe you might as well not play...

- Robin van Persie

A Theology Out Of Footnotes

From a Christian perspective, then, Old Testament theology is a truncated exercise, but a defensible one. In contrast, New Testament theology seems not only a truncated exercise, but also an indefensible one. It deconstructs. One of the New Testament’s own convictions is that the Old Testament is part of the Scriptures (indeed, is the Scriptures), give or take some questions about its boundaries, and that the Old Testament provides the theological framework within which Jesus needs to be understood. The New Testament is then a series of Christian and ecclesial footnotes to the Old Testament, and one cannot produce a theology out of footnotes.

There may be a hint of bias in Old Testament scholar John Goldinagay's words, but the man has a point. Nevertheless, there are four books in the New Testament that stand as a stumbling block. The irony is that they are probably the four books most overlooked when it comes to developing what might be considered a "New Testament theology". They are of course Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Footnotes they are not.

That being said, the Gospels might arguably feel more at home in the OT rather than the NT. What do you reckon? Would that transform our reading of the Bible, perhaps helping to bridge the gap between the testaments? Do pipe up, so I can call the people of NIV before it's too late!

How You Play the Game

When learning a new game, a guy I know does not ask, How do you play? He asks, How do you win? The definitive question of a results oriented culture. What matters is not how you play the game, but whether you win or lose.

I had the pleasure of watching El Clasico a week ago, accompanied by two Barcelona fans and a Real Madrid fan. This was a club game that the world was watching, and it didn't disappoint. To sum up, Barcelona were breathtakingly good. As one writer described it, they not only had the ball on a string, but the had the Madrid players on strings too, so in control were the Catalans. 5-0 was the final score, but after the game my Madrid amigo was defiant that this isn't the end, and that we should wait and see who gets the trophy in the end.

I think such comments reflect not only a misunderstanding about football, but a misunderstanding about life.

Madrid may well win the title at the end of the season, but nobody watches football so that they can see a large cup being passed from a suited gentleman to a sweaty football player. We watch football, as a typical Arsenal fan said, for the moments of delight that flicker our way every now and then. If Barcelona celebrated like they won the league last week, it's because the joy they felt was on a par with if not greater than they joy experienced had they just completed a league triumph. That's how much style means to them. Winning will get you on the history books; style will get you into stories that will be passed on for generations.

Can I relate this to Christianity? You bet I can!

Salvation as we conceive it has become the answer to the question, How do I win? We don't care about the present moments of beauty and faithfulness and love, forgetting the reality that it is such things that will echo through the ages. We're like my Madrid-supporting friend, consoling ourselves with the thought that we'll end up winning the big prize eventually therefore the present moment is of little worth.

The Bible flips this on its head. We're told that precisely because of the grand future that awaits us -- i.e. resurrection bodies restored to the image of Christ -- our present moments of beauty, faithfulness and love are not in vain. This is like telling Barcelona that right now they are playing the football of the future, the kind of football that will last through the ages, the kind of football that will triumph over Jose Mourinho's dark arts once and for all.

Good news, eh?

Nothing Comes Easy

Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded?
- Paul of Tarsus

The problem with Christ's kind of love is that it hurts. Often times it seems wasteful and foolish, but the mysterious truth is that it is the only kind of love that will last. The invitation to take up our crosses is not so much about enduring hardhips like illness or poverty with the knowledge that one day such things will be no more. The invitation is an invitation to love people now in the way that we will love them in the age to come.

I want an easy Christianity, an easy love. But as my old friend Mr Beaver might reply, "Easy? Who said anything about easy? Of course it isn't easy. But it's good." If you read nothing else this weekend, read the following extract from William Willimon's book Who Will Be Saved? In it he describes the surprising "grain of the universe".

Jesus' love is what Jesus commands, something enabled by who he is. He expended everything. He laid down his life for a bunch of stupid, wayward sheep, friends who were also his betrayers.

In so doing, Jesus was not simply being a great ethical teacher; one is impressed by the impracticality of what Jesus commands. If you give everything you've got to the poor, eventually you will have nothing to give. And how does self-giving better the lot of the poor after they have consumed everything that you have given? Will such liberality only produce character flaws in the poor? If you so thoughtlessly give to the needs of others in this way, you will eventually be used by others who will take advantage of you. Taken to the extreme, it could lead to your death.

But then Jesus says that this is exactly where this should lead.

The New Additon

I reference my "former teacher" a lot, especially now that I'm in Bible College and I want to appear to know more than I do. Have a theology-based conversation with me and by sentence three I'll have probably said, "My former teacher used to say that..." 

By "my former teacher" I mean to refer to one Dr Arden Autry, with whom I metaphorically walked the road to Emmaus as he opened to Scriptures to me for a whole year. His classes were the embodiment of what I wrote about yesterday. Nobody left the classroom without being formed ever-so-slightly more into the image of Christ. If you wanted a simple piece of encouragement to help you make sense of the life of faith, Arden would provide it. If you wanted a discussion on Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics, Arden would provide it, though probably not until either break time or the end of class.

I learned many things from Arden during my year of biblical studies, but perhaps I learned nothing more important than how it is a Christian ought to know things: with humility, grace, and, if necessary, firm conviction (a half-hour debate with a man about the resurrection of Jesus was a particular highlight of mine from the year).

I write all this because my former teacher has been persuaded to start a blog! Perhaps he has become too embarrassed at the half-truths that his former student is spouting across the internet and now intends to the right the wrongs. Whatever the reason, this is good news. The address is askingarden.blogspot.com. I'll let you decide whether that reads Ask In Garden, A Skin Garden, or Asking Arden.

Go ahead and begin reading here. I'm not exactly sure what the contents will be, but I am very sure that all of it will be worthy of your time.