Interpretive Strategies

That the act of interpretation is inextricable from the social context of the interpreter is never more evident than when Jesus's sayings to and about the rich are expounded in churches in the West. When those who have are implored to give what they have to those who have not, we take this to mean that those who have are to offer up their possessions to Christ and proclaim that everything they have belongs to Christ. To expect anything else of those who have would be unreasonable, even immoral. After all, if those who have give everything away then what's left for them? In the zero-sum game of life those who have see no reason to switch places with those who have not.

But Luke will not let us get away with our cunning interpretive strategies. Notice the parallel between Luke 18:22 and Acts 4:34-5:

Luke 18.22: "Sell everything that you own and distribute it to the poor"

Acts 4.34-5 [those who owned land or houses] sold [them] ... [and the proceeds] were distributed to each according to his need.

Selling and distributing among the needy was not a unique, one-off mandate given to the rich young ruler. Luke presents this solidarity with the poor as a constituent of the early church. Furthermore, the early church here acts as both the faithful interpreter of Luke's story of the rich young ruler and as the judge over our unfaithful interpretations.

Out Of The Mouth of Babes

After hearing this story on Sunday, I thought I'd open up a guest spot to my sister (who got an A1 in English, you know). She has a blog of her own (that you can check out here), which is all about her three little boys, and which, sadly from my point of view, can be much more theologically profound than this one. Perhaps that explains the following...


Luke. Our middle child. The second born. Our thinker. His wheels are constantly turning. Always processing something. It's one of those things I don't remember doing as a child. I don't have all these snapshot memories of times when I was thinking. Yet it is one of the things that I probably did most. All inside my little skull. Assimilating my life as it came to me. Imagine watching life from 3 feet. No cynical cloud or pre-disposed dislike. No wound or emotional scar to form your opinion. It must be very freeing.

So here's the brown-eyed boy. Lying in his bed telling his Daddy how much he loves him and how great he is! (He's great for the feel good stuff....) He then muses.....'There are two Gods, aren't there?....Jesus and God the Father' and Ryan explains....'Am...well, no...there is one God.... Jesus is God...and God the Father is God...they are just the same God and...am'....ahh....the awkwardness when you feel stumped and are trying not to show it. Nervous cough and well....Luke is always right. This is one of his many lovely traits! So he insisted in no uncertain terms....'NO...there ARE two Gods'.....Ryan explained again, said the I love yous and goodnight.....

Next day. Beautiful day and we are enjoying it outside on our blanket. Luke is sprawled with his hands behind his head watching the clouds roll by. 'Mammy, you know what.....'....'What Luke?'.....expecting to be told about how fast Opel cars are...but instead...'You know what.....Jesus IS God the Father'.......

What do you say?! Your three year old is grappling with the Trinity. Do I grab a clover and go all St Patrick on him. Do I break it down and pretend I fully and completely understand the mysterious God in Three Person thing....simple....straightforward thing that it is....??!....Type it into Google and hope for the best?! Nah....

I just asked him if he wanted more juice......

Theology and three-year-olds. He is clearly a genius! He then went and pooped. Right in the middle of the backyard grass, naturally.

Lovely....

Lost and Found

In each of my Luke-Acts assignments there is a devotional part at the end, where you are given a couple of passages from Scripture to read, describe, and learn from. Here is one such devotional study (it won't necessarily read like a blog entry, but at this stage it's the best I can do):

Luke 15:1-10

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, "This man receives sinners and eats with them."

So he told them this parable: "What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.' Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

"Or what woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and seek diligently until she finds it? And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.' Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents."


In this passage we find Jesus teaching two sets of people - tax collectors and sinners, and Pharisees and scribes. The former group were gathered around Jesus, eager to hear what He had to say. The latter group were indignant at this, grumbling amongst themselves because “This man receives sinners and eats with them” (15:2). In response to these murmurings Jesus told three parables, two of which are found in the passage in question.

The first has to do with a man losing one of his hundred sheep, and going out to look for it. Jesus’ rhetorical question implies that this would be common practice in the day (15:4). When the man finds the sheep he brings it home and rejoices with his friends. The message on Jesus’ lips is that so it is in heaven when a lost sinner repents. The second parable has the same point, except this time the story is based on a woman who is searching for a missing coin. She sweeps the whole house until she finds it, and when she does there is much rejoicing.

The parables of Jesus are generally said to have one main message, but in this instance I think there are several points of contact and therefore several messages to take from these parables, especially given the context (Jesus was teaching both sinners and Pharisees it seems). For me, the message which comes through has to do with the person of Jesus. The Pharisees and scribes complained about “this man” who treated sinners so favourably. Jesus’ parables can be seen as a defence of His character and an insight into His heart; and consequently, an insight into the heart of God.

In both of these parables, the compassion and love which Jesus has for sinners shines through. Jesus doesn’t tell of a man waiting for his sheep to find its own way home. Nor does the lost coin just present itself to the woman. The one who lost his precious object diligently searches “until he finds it” (15:4, 8). No stone is left unturned; no blade of grass goes unsearched. A lamp is lit and shines into all the dark corners until the lost item is found.

So it is with Jesus. He “receives sinners and eats with them” because they are the ones He came to save. As He said earlier, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick” (Lk. 5:31). But rather than making them come to Him, He reaches out to them; He searches for them until He finds them. His sinlessness and holiness do not force Him to remain aloof, distant from those He is so unlike. He can act towards the lost with holy love, shining His light in the dark places in order that those who were lost in darkness can be found.

Later on in Luke, Jesus gives one of several mission statements. He says that “The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (19:10)*. It’s important that I don’t overlook this seeking aspect to Jesus’ salvation. I was not saved because I came to God, said the right things, and therefore He had no choice but to declare me “justified”. God’s salvation is not contained in a box, and he who finds the box wins the prize. God is a seeking God, and His heart is for sinners like me. His salvation spreads out across the world, proclaimed to men and women through the Gospel of grace. Our God is not a passive God, but an active one; a God who seeks out the lost. Jesus said that “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (Jn. 14:9). As such, there are few passages in Scripture which give us as clear an insight to the heart of God than this series of parables in Luke 15. For me, they completely disrupt any false ideas I have of God, and any false ideas I have of myself. When I contemplate the holiness of God and my own sinfulness, I am left astounded by the heart of Jesus on display here, which is the heart of God Himself. A part of me dares not think it true, and yet a part of me knows that if this is not God’s heart then there is no hope for people like me, who require nothing less and nothing more than divine grace in order to be saved. Being a recipient of this grace, I am to carry it forth to the world around me, because this is the message the world needs to hear.


* There is another mission statement which is intrinsically linked with the above, and which I didn't mention. That statement is "For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many" (Matt. 20:28; Mk. 10:45). God's activity in seeking out sinners is complimented and completed in God's activity in saving sinners, namely through the cross of Christ.

Bus Drivers Are Jerks

I just spent a little over 12 hours in Dublin between yesterday and today, half of which I slept through. Considering I took a 4 hour bus ride there and back, that may sound like folly, madness, idiocy. However, once you've seen Sun Kil Moon play live, then you'll understand.

As an avid fan I was going into the gig with a mixture of excitement and caution. I just wasn't sure what their live sound would be like, because a lot of their songs have reasonably complex arrangements, with guitar over-dubs galore. However, by the end of the second song I was just blown away. They started with a low key version of Glenn Tipton, and followed that up with a Red House Painters favourite of mine, Make Like Paper. The crunching electric guitars were in full swing, as were the several-minutes-long solos, and it all came together perfectly for what was probably about 10 minutes of pure audio bliss. So yeah, Make Like Paper was definitely the highlight in a show full of highs.

They did a few other 'big songs', such as River, Tonight The Sky and Duk Koo Kim, all of which were brilliantly executed. Since most readers probably don't know many of these songs (not for lack of trying on my part), I'll stop talking about them any second now, but suffice to say you're missing out on one of the hidden gems of our generation if you have yet to give Sun Kil Moon a proper chance.

I managed to actually rope three other people to come along with me, which was great. Three ex-Encounter heads at that, which was doubly great - Ellisha, Keith and Luke. I knew Luke was coming a while back, but Keith and Ellisha were latecomers, buying their tickets an hour before the gig.

Much to Keith's disappointment, Sun Kil Moon were not a Korean band, but he didn't let that setback spoil his night, and unless he was lying to me (and he better not have been lying to me, his disciple of all people), he seemed to think highly of Mark Kozelek's latest project.

Luke and Ellisha seemed to enjoy it too, which was nice, although to be honest I really didn't care whether they did or not. No I'm just kidding. I did care. My taste in music is like my baby. If you don't like it, then I may just not invite you to my birthday. That's how personal I take it, so it was good that they at least pretended to like it, even if they weren't fans.

It was of course great to catch up with these fine people too. I hadn't seen them in probably close to two months, so some hang-out time was definitely the order of the day.

On a slightly different note, I did have a few strange/annoying experiences on the trip, which started from the very beginning. I went to get the Bus Eireann bus to Dublin outside the college, but when I got on, the bus driver told me to get the bus behind him, for reasons that still baffle me. I mean his bus was almost empty, so it's not like he couldn't squeeze me in. He did say the bus behind was a non-stop bus, so maybe he thought I'd prefer that one, but since when have bus drivers been a people to look out for the comfort of others? There are exception of course, but as a rule of thumb, all bus drivers are grade A jerks. This I learned at a young age, and it's a statement that continues to be true with every passing bus journey.

Anyway, I did as the bus driver said and waited for the non-stop bus. However, as I stuck out my arm to wave it down, the non-stop bus lived up to its reputation and (not surprisingly now that I've had time to think about it) didn't stop. In fact the bus driver didn't even have the decency to look me in the eye as he drove past. Maybe not seeing the look of contempt on would-be passengers faces helps him sleep at night.

Needless to say, I was very put out. I actually had to walk around for a bit and compose myself, because I was just incredibly ticked off. I started getting paranoid, thinking that this was all a big conspiracy on the part of the bus drivers. As if they had planned this at the station.

"All right. I'll pull in and tell him to get the next bus, and you just zoom on by and pretend to not even notice him. Got it? Oh and remember, if you do have to pick someone up and they give you a 20 euro note, make sure you look at them as if they just insulted your mother and sister. Then give them the change, but act as if it's the most painful, difficult, and time consuming thing you've ever had to do, and that if they make you do it again you may just kill them."

Anyway, I calmed down and got the City Link bus soon after, which probably arrived in Dublin earlier than the Bus Eireann bus ironically enough.

My other weird experience was having a man squeeze soap onto my hands in a very tiny and otherwise unassuming bathroom, and hand me some paper towels after had I washed them (that kind of sounds like a prison story, doesn't it?). I've never had that happen to me in a bathroom before, and quite frankly I hope it never happens again. Some men were actually just not bothering to wash their hands in order to avoid him, but almost in a trance-like state I went through the whole procedure, and came out the other side a slightly emasculated and confused man. Some man time with Keith and Luke cured that right up though, so I'm back to normal again.

I did tip the guy 50c though, which I consider to be a very generous tip given the service on offer. I mean he basically spared me the trouble of applying a small amount of pressure to a soap dispenser, and helped me avoid the less than arduous task of raising my hands to pick out a paper towel. These are things I really don't mind doing on my own. In fact I rather like doing them on my own, unaided by strange men bearing soap and paper towels. I guess I just like my trips to the bathroom to be as private as possible. That said however, had he offered to clean the toilet seat for me before I used it, then we'd be in business. I'm talking 2 euro minimum for that kind of service. Which reminds me - who are these people that don't clean up after themselves? They're ruining it for the rest of us, because there's no way I'm cleaning up something that isn't mine. Anyway, I better stop before this post stoops any lower.

Good times in Dublin, Sun Kil Moon are the greatest band ever. That's about all you need to know.

A Peaceable Christmas: Only The Beginning

In Luke's Christmas narrative, angels announce peace on earth. In Matthew's Christmas narrative, the king of the Jews slaughters children in Bethleham in order to do away with Jesus. The violence of humanity is confronted by the peace of God, but the violence does not disappear. Rather, it intensifies. Perhaps this gets us to a meaning of Jesus's mission statement that he came not to bring peace, but a sword. He knew that his way, his politics, would not simply cause enemies to disarm themselves, turning their swords into plowshares. Instead, his way was a threat to enemy authority and rule, and the only way they knew to deal with threats was death. Violence is the empire's weapon, death is the empire's solution.

At Christmas there is an attempt on Jesus's life. It might seem a somewhat crude question, but it just occurred to me -  if Jesus were killed in Herod's Christmas massacre, would his death have had the same effects as the death he suffered in his thirties? Judging by the Apostle's Creed we might posit that it would have -- though we would have to substitute 'Pontius Pilate' for 'Herod the Great' -- but surely not. Surely Christmas wasn't enough. Surely the death of God incarnate wasn't enough. (There's a sentence to quote out of context if you want to get me in hot water!)

The fact that Jesus was spared by God at Christmas is a sign that Christmas is only the beginning of the story of God's peace on earth. It is only a hint of what is to come. In Matthew and Luke's narratives, it is hinted that the powers that be will not be pleased with what God is up to. He will not support their violence, as well intentioned as it might be. He will not sanctify it. He will not justify it. He will grieve it:

And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, "Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes."

Christmas is not the good news of a new metaphysics. Incarnation does not name a static reality that is salvific in and of itself. It names the story of God with us in this particular way, in this particular child who would grow up to be a king unlike all the other kings of all the other nations. Incarnation names the story of the things of God that alone can make for peace: Love of enemies, refusal to repay evil with evil, forgiveness of our debtors, dinner with strangers.

Ultimately, Incarnation names the passion narrative, the definitive confrontation between our violence and God's peace. God will not support our violence. He will not sanctify it. He will not justify it. He will weep over it, but not only that - He will forgive it, because He justifies by resurrection the One who,

"when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed."

Connections

I have three drawings done by my middle nephew -- now almost 5 years old -- and given to me for my 25th birthday. The first is a monster, the second is a lion, and the third is, well, probably another monster. Luke was the artist, after all, and monsters are his specialty. The drawings consist mainly of haphazard squiggles, though there is always a central component which differentiates one work from the other. The first monster has his sharp teeth, the lion has his mane, and the other monster has his big mouth.

I imagine if I showed Luke the drawings even today he would be embarrassed by them. He is only 8 months older than he was at their conception, but his talent has no doubt developed, and his monsters and lions have probably gained all sorts of new features that he can weave together. And in ten years' time he will not even remember the kind of art he was commissioned to do for my birthday by his patron and mother. He most likely won't believe that the drawings I now have in my room are his own. He will show me the incredible monster that he just drew for his art class, and it will bear practically no resemblance to his earlier work.

But the earlier work is still his. It represents the best of what he could do at the time. He will have learned to do more skillful work, yet he could never have learned without the work which he may one day look at with embarrassment, disbelief, or laughter. The connection, the dependence of the future on the past, isn't obvious, but it's there. This he must also learn.

Me too.

Congruence with the Gospels

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. - Galatians 4:4-5

N.T. Wright on Paul's "gospel" and its congruence with the Gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke and John:

...once we reinstate the Pauline emphasis, there is far less of a strange break between Paul’s ‘gospel’ and the written ‘gospels’ than there is if we suppose the former to be the announcement of a new, non-historical, way of being religious, or of finding a non-historical salvation, and the latter to represent a failure of nerve, an attempt to ground the supposedly ahistorical gospel in history after all. If we take Paul’s ‘gospel’ to denote the announcement that the true God has acted in fulfilment of his promises, sending the Messiah to die and be raised, and so ushering in the new world order in which the false gods are confronted and confounded and their adherents summoned to a new and liberating allegiance, then we may realise that that description would do fairly well for Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as well, for all their obvious differences from one another and from Paul. Mark’s Jesus (‘the time is fulfilled; the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe the gospel’) is quite at home with Paul (‘when the time had fully come, God sent forth his son…’).

Listen First to Moses and the Prophets

The resurrection of Jesus will remain a mute, uninterpretable puzzle unless it is placed firmly within the Old Testament story of Israel. The disciples on the way to Emmaus had already heard it reported that Jesus was alive, but because they didn't know how to locate that report within Israel's story, it seemed like a curious and meaningless claim. Their incomprehension, I think, prefigures the interpretive helplessness of late modern readers and it exemplifies the grimly ironic dictum with which Luke's parable of the rich man and Lazarus concludes: "If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead."

That is our plight today. And I'm speaking not only of a post-Christian, pluralistic culture that doesn't know the Scriptures - I'm speaking also of the Church. For much of the Church today, Moses and the prophets belong to a closed and unknown book.

The good news of Luke 24, however, is that the story doesn't end in incomprehension and hermeneutical failure, because the one who rose from the dead teaches us anew how to listen to Moses and the prophets.

- Richard B. Hays 

As Churches across the globe prepare to speak of resurrection, perhaps in this time between Friday and Sunday it would be prudent and nourishing to listen first to Moses and the prophets. The resurrection of Jesus is not only the beginning of a new history but the climax of an old history. A pressing task within evangelical kerygma and scholarship is helpfully exploring the tension between "Jesus's gospel" and "Paul's gospel". The key to fruitful exploration (and therefore to a faithful evangel) is listening to Moses and the prophets afresh. For as Jesus heralded Moses and the prophets as a witness to his death and resurrection, so Paul also puts them on the stand: "But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it..."

The resurrection is a "witnessed to" event. The apostles witnessed to it, and the Church today lives as a witness to it. But, as Hays brings to our remembrance, there is a third witness - Moses and the prophets. We leave this testimony unheard to our peril, for if we do not listen to Moses and the prophets then neither will we be convinced should someone rise from the dead.

How To Read: Jesus the Spirit-filled Jew

Jesus was (and is?) a Jew. As Christopher Wright points out in Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament, that’s the first thing we learn about him in the New Testament. Therefore the first thing to note about Jesus as interpreter of Scripture is that he interpreted it as a Jew, and a Jew (though certainly a controversial one) he remained throughout his life.

As much as we’d like a timeless, generic, non-Jewish Jesus, we simply don’t get him if we take the gospels seriously. Instead, we have a Jesus who had his foreskin removed eight days after being born and was brought up in accordance with the Law of the Lord. And despite popular presentations of him resembling a 70’s progressive rock band member, he quite possibly looked something not altogether unlike this:

A first-century Palestinian man's mugshot

A Jew through and through. I think that’s worth keeping in mind during the course of this journey into unknown territory.

The second thing to keep in mind comes immediately before we get our first Old Testament quotation from the lips of Jesus. Luke tells us in chapter 4 of his gospel that Jesus was “full of the Holy Spirit” as he was led into the wilderness to be tempted. It is therefore vitally important to highlight that the gospels (especially Luke) don’t present Jesus as a lone interpreter, gaining insight through his own ingenuity. According to the gospels, the spirit of god was powerfully present with him, authorising him at every turn and making that connection between him and god.

If nothing else, for Jesus, reading and interpreting Scripture was a triune experience. Even as son, he fully relied on the words of the father made alive by the spirit. Therefore in order to read, interpret and apply Scripture the way Jesus did, being “filled with the spirit” is a prerequisite. But is it a realistic one?

I think so. The Book of Acts mentions the phrase “filled with the Spirit” numerous times, and never does it seem like less of a filling than that which Jesus enjoyed. The same connection between Jesus and the father was available to the early church, and is available to us too.

To drag Paul into the equation, it is the spirit of god that knows the mind of god. Implicit in this statement is the reality that an un-spiritual (or un-spirit-filled) reading of Scripture does not reveal the mind of god. Word and spirit must be conjoined if the text is to come to life and god is to be known.

Merely quoting Scripture was not what Jesus was doing during his dialogue with the satan at the end of his wilderness wanderings. Undergirding his use of Scripture was a present experience of god’s empowering presence.

What might such a spirit-filled reading of Scripture look like? How do we know we’re on the right track? The answers to these questions is what I hope we'll stumble across along this quest.

The Gospel in the Gospels

All four gospels devote ample space to the crucifixion of Jesus, yet ‘atonement theology’ does not appear to be the major focus. There are hints and allusions, of course, but nothing quite as explicit or as universal as some passages from Paul’s epistles. And this in spite of the four gospels being written after Paul’s most robust letters.

One would expect Matthew, Mark, Luke and John to have engaged in a little historical revisionism. After all, they were probably writing for people who had heard Paul’s teaching either directly or indirectly, so a theological-heavy interpretation of Jesus’s death would have been well understood by the earliest gospel readers. What was the gospel, after all, if it was not a theology of Christ crucified that was good news?

Yet as I said already, this we don’t get. What we get instead are stories aimed not at merely shaping our theology, but at shaping our lives.

It seems the earliest churches had a particular focus, a telos they were headed towards - conformity to the image of Christ. To become a Christian was to start on this "process of being conformed to the image of Christ for the sake of others" (Mulholland).

No doubt the following question haunted the early church just as it haunts us today: What does it look like to look like Jesus? The value system of the 1st century was probably very similar to our own, with power, wealth, and prestige all being sought after religiously. A passage contained in all three synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) illustrates this.

A dispute breaks out amongst the disciples as regards who is the greatest. Who will wield the most power in the kingdom? Who will have the authority and the prestige? Jesus answers them in an earth-shattering way. He knows the value system of the present regime, but this value system is to be turned on its head. “Whoever would be great among you must be your servant,” says Jesus, “and whoever would be first among you must be slave to all”. We then get a statement which in isolation looks like straight-up atonement theology, but in the context of the gospel narrative is nothing less than a call to Christlikeness, which is a call to cruciformity: “For the son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many”.

This is not only an example of Jesus’s understanding of his own death, but it is his understanding of the life to which his followers are called. “Imitate me”, says Jesus. The lengthy passion narratives give a paradigm for what such imitation entails - non-retaliation in the face of abuse, silence in the face of mockery, forgiveness in the face of sin.

The call to Christlikeness does not take the form of an exhaustive list of dos and don’ts. Most of the time we are not told what the right thing to do is in a given scenario. If you think the Christian life consists of following a set list of abstract rules, you are mistaken. In Christ, the law became a story. The word became a fleshly narrative, and dwelt among us. But it dwelt among us not as one to be served, but as one who serves. All four gospels tell this story in great detail. Why? Because it makes for nice bedtime reading? Because we need to know the correct information if we are to be saved? No. The story is told because the community of faith has been called to continue the narrative begun in Christ. The goal of the Christian life is for Jesus’s story to become our story. This doesn’t happen by dutifully obeying a list of commands in our own power, but by creatively incarnating Jesus’s story in our daily lives by the power of the Spirit. The details will look different in each of our lives, but the form will always be the same: it will be the form of a cross.

The four gospel writers knew well the significance of the cross not just as salvation history, but as salvation present and future. A closer look at Paul might yield a similar conclusion. This, after all, is the same Paul who could earnestly desire

…that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death…

Deeply De-Christian

I was tagged by someone who Jamie Redknapp might call a top, top Irish theo-blogger -- Zoomtard -- on a blogging meme which posed the following task:

List 5 doctrines that are taught within the Christian church that you believe to be deeply de-Christian.

I most likely haven’t followed all of the rules, but here is my humble interpretation and response to the challenge:

1. The Holy Spirit is taught about mainly in silences, which is deeply de-Christian. As God’s empowering presence in our world he (or she, perhaps?) is ignored to our shame. Luke (author of roughly a quarter of our New Testament) had much to say about the Holy Spirit, the beloved disciple John had much to say about the Holy Spirit, Paul had much to say about the Holy Spirit, and that most ignored Christian teacher, Jesus, had much to say about the Holy Spirit. Why don’t we?

2. The idea of “once saved always saved”. Were it so, the NT surely wouldn’t have as much to say about persevering, enduring, and remaining faithful to the end as it so clearly does, nor would it talk of being cut off from the vine or being blotted out of the Book of Life.

3. The notion of a Platonic salvation, where the chief end of man is to be a disembodied soul floating on the clouds of eternal bliss. Christians should not be in the business of abandoning a sinking ship (and calling others to do likewise), but rather aiding, through the power of the Spirit, in the renewal of what was once called “very good” by someone who knew what he was talking about.

4. The doctrine that God accepts us as we are. Before you form a village posse intent on lynching me, consider this passage, quoted from the Book of Proverbs in the epistles of Peter and James - “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble”. Did Jesus die for the proud? Absolutely. But the grace born out of that sacrifice flows to those who are humble enough to receive it. How humble? Humble enough to know we need it, I suggest. How often do our Sunday services bid us to humble ourselves before we worship God in song and in the proclamation of his word? Sometimes I think we’ve created for ourselves an unholy god who is far removed from the One experienced as being so majestic and awesome by our ancestors in the faith.

5. I think the word “faith” has been, for all intents and purposes, butchered. Do we really have any idea what it means anymore? Judging by the way it is predominantly taught, you could be forgiven for thinking it has to do with mere mental assent. “Faith in Jesus” becomes the equivalent of getting 100 per cent in a Christology 101 multiple choice exam. Or else it is talked about as being a once off decision, as opposed to a way of life. We are called not to think by faith, but to live by faith. Perhaps if we let that sink into our hearts we will begin to understand the interrelationship between faith and good deeds in fresh ways, because here is one place where I think the church’s doctrine has failed miserably.

Here’s the tricky part: tagging 5 people who will want to keep the ball rolling.

I’ll go for Paul Clarke, Ellisha King, Luke Johnson, Elaine Wilbur (whose post can be displayed here if she feels it’s too irrelevant for her own blog, which I think it just might be) and Dr Arden Autry (who doesn’t yet have a blog, but whose depth of insight demands that he should).

Two Models

There is an article in Christianity Today on what is seen as two models of atonement theory -- Christus Victor and Substitution -- competing for top billing in evangelicalism. The author, Mark Galli, has witnessed a trend amongst (post)modern evangelicals to favour the Christus Victor model as the dominant model. Galli, however, says that,

biblical substitutionary atonement in all its nuances (the Bible frames it in subtly different ways: as sacrifice, propitiation, and payment) remains the dominant metaphor for atonement in Scripture.

I don't know much about the history or the contents of the Christus Victor model, but is substitution not a part of it? Galli says that the Christus Victor model comes under the umbrella of the substitution model (he cites a tenuous example from Colossians 2 to support his point), but is it not the other way round? Christus Victor doesn't exist for the purpose of substitution; substitution exists for the purpose of Christus Victor. In other words, substitution isn't the goal; Christus Victor is.

Substitution is a necessary part of Christus Victor because humanity's original calling was to power, dominion -- ultimately, to kingship. We have failed in our vocation individually and communally, therefore we needed someone to step into our shoes to do what we didn't and couldn't. This is perhaps the chief reason the cross is so offensive to us - it is God's way for humanity to exert power and authority over the competing powers and authorities, but we have sided with the competitors rather than God. 

In Jesus weakness, servanthood, and sacrifice become the hallmarks of what a powerful human being looks like. Jesus offends us because he has put himself in our place but acted in a way that is seemingly irrational, even sub-human. But the gospel is (amongst other things) the message that Jesus is truly human. It is thus the announcement that power and authority has returned to its rightful owner. Jesus has taken our place, but the staggering good news on top of this good news is that he wants us to join with him in his reign. The law says that we are unfit to be kings, but Jesus has overturned the law's verdict. The record of debt against us was nailed to the cross with Christ, but unlike Christ it did not rise again.

I don't know if this is all part of classic Christus Victor, but I'm excited about it. This framework of understanding seems to make better sense of God, humanity, the role of Law, justification, participation and how these fit together in that at times elusive story we call "the gospel".

Galli says that there are "no extensive discussions of Christus Victor anywhere in the New Testament". Mark Galli, meet Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Matthew Mark, Luke and John, meet Mark Galli. They may not be "discussions" of Christ Victor, but they surely tell its story. 

The problem with the "biblical substitutionary atonement" model is that it doesn't make good sense of the Gospels. A resulting problem is that those who hold to it as the dominant model struggle to find the gospel in the Gospels. We end up with a Jesus who didn't really preach the gospel at all, even though he said that he did. Something like Christus Victor seems to solve these serious problems.

What do you think? Is Galli right about the rise in popularity of Christus Victor, but wrong to let "biblical substitutionary atonement" dominate it? Do I need to read A Community Called Atonement again since I mostly forget what it says other than something about a golf bag? I'm gonna say Yes, Maybe, and Yes, but feel free to disagree.

Sympathy for the Devil

I've been reading quite a bit of early church history of late, particularly that history which surrounds Marcion. For those unfamiliar with him, sources tell us he was a Christian who made considerable money in the shipping industry (he lived on the coast of the Black Sea), and decided to give that up for some kind of career in missions. He moved to Rome and made a sizeable donation to the church there, before gaining an audience with some of the church leaders, during which he shared his opinions on matters theological.

Here is where it all went wrong for Marcion. His opinions (a word which comes close to the meaning of "heresy") were not well received. His donation was returned to him, and he left the church in Rome in order to forge his own path; indeed, his own church. From what we can gather, the Marcionite church was a serious rival to the proto-orthodox Church, and there is evidence to suggest it lasted right up until the tenth century.

I must confess, I have sympathy for Marcion. I have done for quite some time. That is not to say I agree with his opinions, or with his methods. Marcion was convinced that the Old Testament God was different to the God revealed by Jesus. The Old Testament God, so his story went, was a God of pure righteousness. He was not an evil God. He was simply legalistic to a fault. The Father to whom Jesus referred, however, was a God of love, of forgiveness, of peace. He was the unknown God who suddenly became known through the Christian gospel. For Marcion, then, the Old Testament was not a foreshadowing of Christ but the antithesis to Christ.

In fact, Marcion's major work (which is lost to us) was titled Antithesis. In it he contrasted the Old with the New. For example, in the Old, the sun is stopped so that Joshua could slay his enemies; in the New, Christ tells us not to let the sun go down on our anger. And, in the Old, the prophet Moses stretches out his hand so that many will be killed in war; in the New, the prophet Christ's hands are stretched out on the cross so that many will be saved.

As I said, the church rejected Marcion's notion of there being two Gods, and continued to believe that the Scriptures of the Jews belonged also to Christianity; in many cases, in fact, that the Scriptures of the Jews belonged exclusively to Christianity, since by their rejection of Jesus as Messiah the Jews forfeited their claim on the Scriptures.

There were (and are) good reasons for the Church to affirm the continuity between Old and New. Marcion could only avoid these reasons by writing off three of our four gospels as corrupt and heavily editing the gospel of Luke, ridding it of what he deemed Jewish interpolations. Along with Luke's gospel Marcion included ten of Paul's letters in his canon of Scripture. For Marcion, Paul was the only faithful apostle, since the apostle to the Gentiles was the only one who discerned the radical newness of Christianity, a newness which made a clean break with the past.

Marcion, it should be noted, was not necessarily anti-Semitic; or, at least, he was no more anti-Semitic than his orthodox opponents, and perhaps a good deal less. His issue was that he was unable to reconcile the gospel of Christ with the Old Testament. As the title of his work indicates, he could only see contradiction between the two. Here is where my sympathies with Marcion lie. I think the Old Testament is far more a problem for Christians than is generally acknowledged. One only has to go through the lectionary and notice what is not included in order to discover the unacknowledged problems that the Old Testament throws up for the Church. Our canon includes the Old Testament (though even here, this is no agreement regarding the books which comprise the OT), but I do not think we use it as a measure. Rather, our use of the Old Testament reveals that something else is measuring the Old Testament, something which dictates that certain portions of it are ignored. At this point the Church is more or less Marcionite in its practice, without fully subscribing to all that Marcion believed.

There is a good reason why the Church has adopted a subtle form of Marcion's techniques. Marcion, like most interpreters today, found no use for allegory. He read the Old Testament at face value, and in much of it he could find nothing of edification. One of the reasons the early Church was able to adopt the Old Testament as its Scripture was precisely because the Church's interpreters had the method of allegory in their hermeneutical arsenal. The early Church was not oblivious to the problems which Marcion raised. Rather, through the method of allegory, the Church was able to find use for those passages which Marcion rejected. Nowadays, however, this option is more or less unavailable to us (though there have been recent attempts to revive allegorical interpretation of the Old Testament - for example, Douglas Earl's work on Joshua). 

I may be overstating the case, but it is not wholly unreasonable to claim that the early Church was Marcionite when the Old Testament was approached literally. Only when the text could be approached using a different sense was the Church able to avoid Marcion's ideas. But where does that leave us today, we who are the heirs of literalists?

Reckless Grace - #2

^{Luke 15:11-31
11}Jesus continued: "There was a man who had two sons. ¹²The younger one said to his father, 'Father, give me my share of the estate.' So he divided his property between them.

¹³"Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. ¹⁴After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. ¹⁵So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. ¹⁶He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.

¹⁷"When he came to his senses, he said, 'How many of my father's hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! ¹⁸I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. ¹⁹I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.' ²⁰So he got up and went to his father.
"But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.

²¹"The son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.'

²²"But the father said to his servants, 'Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. ²³Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let's have a feast and celebrate. ²⁴For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' So they began to celebrate.

²⁵"Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. ²⁶So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ²⁷'Your brother has come,' he replied, 'and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.'

²⁸"The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. ²⁹But he answered his father, 'Look! All these years I've been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. ³⁰But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!'

³¹" 'My son,' the father said, 'you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. ³²But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' "

As noted preiously, this parable is generally read with the wayward son as the primary point of contact, hence its popular title "The Prodigal Son". But a brief look at the setting in which Jesus told this story reveals that He had two primary points of contact in mind, with the elder son perhaps even being the more crucial one. Luke 15 begins,

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, "This man receives sinners and eats with them." So he told them this parable:

The parable about the two sons is the third in a series of parables which act as vindication for what Jesus is doing - dining with sinners. Though He is not obliged to justify His actions, He does so anyway through the telling of parables in the hopes of gaining a response not from the sinners (for they have already responded to Him favourably) but from the Pharisees who are incensed at His shenanigans.

And so the parable of the father and his two sons is aimed at the heart of the Pharisee. This is a heart which refuses to share in God's delight over sinners coming to have fellowship with Him. The message of the two preceding parables is that there is joy in heaven when that which is alienated from God is reconciled to Him. This is the same point made by Jesus in the third of these rapid-fire parables. God's heart is full of joy when the lost are found, with the underlying question being what is in your heart when you see sinners enjoying fellowship with God? As Keller says,

The parable of the two sons takes an extended look at the soul of the elder brother, and climaxes with a powerful plea for him to change his heart.

Since there are two sons, it is safe to say that there are two types of people who need to hear and respond to this parable. This first and most obvious type is those who have turned away from God and chosen to live life apart from Him. Those who have acted as if He doesn't exist and as if the world and its contents exist as objects to be used for ones self-gratification. The second type of people targeted are those who appear to have stuck with God their entire lives. Those who live a seemingly devout, religious, moral life. These people attend church, they have an exceedingly high opinion of Scripture, they are fervent in their prayer life, they are quick to sign-up for any church related activities, they are careful to obey God's commandments and feel obligated to aid others in doing likewise. These people may be elders in your church. No doubt they are held in high regard by the surrounding Christian community. The Christian faith is their life. But Jesus tells them that they need a radical change of heart. Though they may not appear so, they are standing outside as the party rages on inside the house. The God they thought they knew has exposed Himself as One full of unconditional love, One who delights in seeing broken people come to Him, and their hard hearts cannot tolerate it. It simply doesn't make any sense.

Most of us have probably fitted into at least one of these types over the course of our life. We try the do-it-yourself approach to life, or we try the devout approach. The problem with the church today is that do-it-yourself people aren't being called to join a feast of celebration. Do-it-yourself people are being told that they need to become devout people. Or more subtly, they are shown that they need to become devout, and so they either run away from the church, or worse, they join in not with a celebration but with a ritual, where the God worshiped is not a loving Father but a legalist.

The simple fact portrayed in the gospels is that Jesus was a foe to most of the religious people of His day while He was a friend to sinners. The "elder brothers" grumbled because of His behaviour, the "younger brothers" gathered around Him with joy, eager to hear Him (Lk. 15:1). Is this reflected in the modern church? What kind of people are attracted to what should be a community of celebration? Keller boldly states that,

If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did. If our churches aren't appealing to younger brothers, they must be more full of elder brothers than we'd like to think.

Do we know the God that Jesus knew so well? No matter which son we feel resonates with us, it is the same father who throws the party. The task of a Christian is not to label people as irreligious or religious, but to be a faithful witness to the God revealed by Jesus; the God of reckless grace.

Pathetic Theology Part II

A few days ago I posted a piece that caused a veritable storm around the blogosphere. You literally could not count the amount of comments it got on one hand. (Granted, I was responsible for two of them, while one of them was simply a spelling correction.) It had to do with Pete Rollins' tragic theology. The feedback sparked a whole train of thought that I've been trying to get on track ever since.

One of the questions (and it is an extremely important one) was this: "Did Jesus really come to embrace brokenness in order to heal it?" (emphasis mine)

There were legitimate cries for this discussion to become more theological (by becoming more christological), and I think that it's precisely at this point that we can begin to make that happen. My short answer is Yes, Jesus really did come to heal brokenness. Luke places Jesus's manifesto at the beginning of his gospel:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour.

The joyous affirmation of brokenness (a term I would really like to clarify, if not replace with other more concrete terms) can be seen in this light to be a kind of bourgeoisie theology/politics that leaves social situations as they are. If we want to put flesh and blood on the presence of God, however, then we must take Jesus seriously. And to take Jesus seriously means that those who hunger and thirst for justice are not told that life's crap but to enjoy its crapness; they are told that their hunger and thirst will be satisfied.

The problem I have with Rollins's version of tragic theology is that it has a deficient christology and therefore a deficient ecclesiology. "Humanness" in the abstract is not beautiful. What is beautiful is the Human One that is Jesus of Nazareth. "Brokenness" as an abstract concept is not to be affirmed. What is to be affirmed is the One whose body was broken for us. Where our brokenness imitates that brokenness (which is really the only kind of suffering rejoiced over in the New Testament) then at the point we may discern the presence of God at work in the world.

What, then, of the mother and father who watch helplessly while their child suffers inscrutable pain? Where is the presence of God in this situation? Can beauty shine forth from such suffering? I think it can, but it will be a beauty whose movement is from mourning to hope, rather than a beauty that simply accepts the suffering as "mystery" (the book of Job would be instructive here). The church is called to weep with those who weep, to mourn with those who mourn, but to do so while hoping against hope in the God who doesn't affirm or accept death but who transforms it into life; the God who will shine his face on us even (perhaps precisely) at our weakest, most vulnerable moment. This is what it means for the church to be prophetic - we, together, are made capable of imagining a world that is radically different to the one we have been given. This isn't pie-in-the-sky theology. It is deeply political. Once again, yes, Jesus really did come to heal brokenness. "At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. But we see Jesus..." and he promises us that he really is making all things new. The church, as body of Christ, is a foretaste and partner in that renewal.

Karl Barth wrote that "Every word in the New Testament presupposes the resurrection of Jesus" (or something like that). Every word and act of the church ought to do the same. We have tried demythologising the Jesus of the Gospels; we have tried depoliticising him; we have tried spiritualising him, we have tried not taking him too seriously; we have tried blatant unbelief. What if the church actually believed?

Is any of this linked to the impassibility of God? If I have taken Kevin's correction with due seriousness then hopefully it is, because, strange as it may sound, the impassibility of God is witnessed to by the obedience unto suffering of Christ and his church.

There is far more to write (and I think Yoder would be a good voice to bring into the discussion more explicitly), but that's all I've got for now. I guess I have come down on one side after all...at least for the moment, anyway.

Biblical Theology: An Immodest Proposal

Reading Biblical Theology: A Proposal by Brevard Childs has given me a cunning plan: constructing a work of theological reflection based on the text of Isaiah. It would not so much be "The Theology of Isaiah" as it would be "Theology", elaborating on the themes of Isaiah in light of Old and New Testament reflections, the history of interpretation, the preoccupations of dogmatic theology, and, most importantly, in the light of the life of the church which has Christ as its head.

Atonement? Let's look again at Isaiah 53

Non-violence? Let's look again at Isaiah 2

Christian Aesthetics? Let's look again at Isaiah 6

Eschatology? Let's look again at Isaiah 11

Justice? Let's look again at Isaiah 58

Christology? Let's look again at the Servant Songs

It is becoming  clear to me that if theology has any desire to be useful to the church -- and if it doesn't, then what exactly is it doing? -- it must be about the task of illuminating the things in Scripture which theology has often hidden. Indeed, what theology often hides these days is Scripture itself, protecting us from its vulgarity, its poetry, its scandalous affirmations, its unshakeable convictions, its diversity, its preferential option for the poor, the oppressed, the aliens.

I recently read a blog post about the song 'Come Now is the Time to Worship'. The author was writing that he cannot sing this song because the last line -- Still the greatest treasure remains for those who gladly choose you now-- seems to imply some kind of universalism.

Using that same logic, I assume this person also refuses to read Colossians 1:15-20, Romans 5, or Philippians 2:6-11, since these text also seem to imply some kind of universalism.

The point isn't that we should all be universalists because the Bible teaches it (which it does and which it doesn't). My contention is that we have done to the Bible was this person has done to the song, except of course we cannot admit to it because that would be heresy.

It is therefore at this precise point that theology requires a Barthian turn, for Barth's theology was nothing if not a reflection on Scripture in the light of the resurrected Christ. Dialectics therefore wasn't so much a method for Barth as it was a natural consequence of taking Scripture seriously.

As much as Pete Rollins may hope for it, congregations around the world will not be carrying a copy of the latest work by Zizek into church with them, nor will preachers be expounding from Caputo. The church has been given the Word, and we have been searching for it ever since, in many languages, in many contexts, but in the same(ish!) Scriptures.

Which brings me back to Isaiah, the herald of the Word of God. He was known by the early church as the first apostle or the fifth evangelist (after Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). Along with Psalms and Deuteronomy, Isaiah was the book that Paul turned to the most. (Which gives me an idea for another task: a theology based on Deuteronomy (The Law), Isaiah (The Prophets), and Psalms (The Writings.) The church could do with turning to Isaiah again and there discover the Word afresh. Here is one example of such a turning:

The God of the Bible

If the God you serve is a God unwilling to dine with prostitutes and scoundrels, then yours is not the God of the Bible.

And the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples, saying, "Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?" And Jesus answered them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance." - Luke 5:30-32

Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you. - Matt. 21:31

Holiness in the Kingdom: A Sermon

I have been hesitant to put a link to this - partly out of false modesty, partly out of genuine embarrassment, and partly because I am unsure that a sermon remains a sermon when it is abstracted from its particular moment in time - but for anyone interested, here is my first "sermon", available at my home church's website.

http://www.gcf.ie/learn-grow/sermons/sermons/holiness-in-the-kingdom/

I have only listened to the first couple of minutes, but it seems that I say "ummm" a lot. The sermon is also being pulled in a few different directions, but that's just the way my mind works unfortunately. Another year of training will hopefully sort some of that out.

I chose to preach on Luke 13:10-17 only to the extent that I chose to preach on a text from the lectionary reading for that Sunday. I was going to try and weave all four passages together into one brilliant piece of oration, but after about 10 minutes I realised why nobody really does that, and why I wasn't going to be the person to finally pull it off.

The sermon itself it not so much expository as it is theological reflection, though I did carry out the basic hermeneutical tasks as best I could in my preparation. Like Hauerwas, I am suspicious of preachers giving the congregation "the meaning of the text", because when Christians get a grip on the meaning of a text that usually doesn't end well for anybody. But more than that, the goal of a sermon ought to be an encounter with Christ beyond the text. This, after all, is the function of Scripture itself. To put my aim into wishy-washy postmodern jargon, then, with this sermon I tried to give the Gospel story the space in which to breathe.

I am thankful for the opportunity I was given to preach by the church that has been my home since I moved to Galway in the early 90's. There were offers before this which I declined (agent fees, third party ownership, excessive, celebrity-esque demands that could not be met (was a bowl of red Skittles too much to ask?)), but the patience shown by the leadership eventually wore me down!

I may never preach another sermon again. I may preach dozens more. But for better or worse, I will not forget this one.

The Text

10 On a Sabbath Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, 11 and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all. 12 When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.” 13 Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God. 

14 Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue leader said to the people, “There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.” 

15 The Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? 16 Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?” 

17 When he said this, all his opponents were humiliated, but the people were delighted with all the wonderful things he was doing.

Missio Dei - #2: It's About Jesus

Wright says that "mission is what the Bible is all about". Like I said previously, I can agree with this for the most part. The Bible is about God, His character and His deeds, with the two being intimately connected (as all our characters and deeds are). We may denote God's deeds -- past, present, and future -- as His mission, so yes, mission is what the Bible is all about. However, where does Jesus of Nazareth fit into this? As Christians we were taught by Jesus Himself to read Scripture christocentrically, so how do a missional reading of the Bible and a christological reading of the Bible relate to one another?

Luke 24 has the answers.

Then He (Jesus) said to them, "These are My words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled." Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, "Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. - Lk. 24:44-48

The call to a messianic or christocentric reading of Scripture is obvious here - "...everything written about Me..." However, there is a second and equally important lens through which to read the Bible, and that is the work of Christ as it fits definitively into the mission of God. Jesus is saying that if you read Scripture in light of Me, you will find that it is about Me and what I have done, and you will also see that it is about taking the message about Me to all the nations.

In other words, a christocentric reading of Scripture and a missional reading of Scripture are basically two sides of the same coin. There is also a sort of paradox, whereby the death and resurrection of Jesus is the fulfillment of the mission of God, but also the catalyst. Most Christians get the fulfilment part, but fail to grasp the catalyst part, which is actually the part we are useful for - the proclamation of repentance and forgiveness of sins to all nations. Wright says that,

The full meaning of recognising Jesus as Messiah...lies in recognising also His role in relation to God's mission for Israel for the blessing of the nations.

And so the Bible is not just full of proof-texts about Jesus, but full of God's intentions to bless all the nations and thus bring glory to His name. Thus when we read the Bible we ask:

What is it saying about 1) the person of God and 2) the purposes of God?

Our answers should be found in Jesus, who is the image of the invisible God, and God's chosen Servant through whom He would bring blessing to all the nations of the earth. This, in a nutshell, is missio Dei.

Does it make good sense to read the Bible from this missional perspective? Does this hermeneutic do justice to Scripture? These are the questions answered in the next couple of chapters.

Since It's Christmas And All

My Christmas present to you, dear reader: not one, not two, not three, but three quotes from Karl Barth, weaved together here as an Incarnational Medley, and a very special Christmas reflection. Probably best to open with the reflection.

Last night I decided to read a passage in Luke as my Christmas text. It is a text about the birth of Jesus, a moment to which the Scriptures testify, though in veiled form. Some people came to visit him, bringing along some gifts fitting for the occasion. As they came to the place where he was supposed to be laid in swaddling cloth, helpless and humbled,  there were some heavenly creatures hanging around, bearing good news. The good news? "He is not here." Surprise, confusion. He was supposed to be here. He belonged here. This was the place in which he must be sought. The glorious creatures answered the confusion with a question: "Why do you seek the living among the dead?" The cloth was there all right, but there was no body.

At the beginning, few expected a messiah to be born into a poor family in a stable. At the end, nobody expected a failed messiah to be anywhere but in a tomb. Jesus was never where he was expected to be. But here, on the first day of the week, at dawn, he was where he said he would be. He was no longer in the tomb, no longer wrapped in swaddling cloth. He was risen, the firstborn from the dead, burning hearts as he unveiled the Scriptures, opening eyes in the eucharist, making peace through the blood of the cross, and gracing the old world with the presence and power of the new.

The Word became flesh. And the flesh became resurrected.

God for his part is God in his unity with this creature, this human being, in his human and creaturely nature – and this without ceasing to be God, without any alteration or diminution of his divine nature....We must be able to show that God is honoured and not dishonoured by this confession.

God does not have to dishonour himself when he goes into the far country, and conceals his glory. For he is truly honoured in this concealment. This concealment, and therefore his condescension as such, is the image and reflection in which we see him as he is. His glory is the freedom of the love which he exercises and reveals in all this. 

How should God’s divinity exclude his humanity? For it is God’s freedom for love, and therefore his freedom to be not only in the heights but also in the depths, not only great but also small, not only in and for himself but also to be with another who is different form himself, to give himself for this other, since there is room enough for it for community with humanity.