Dostoevsky peoples his novels with “characters that speak in their own voices, not merely as mouthpieces for their author.” Zosima speaks his own point of view, which may be right or wrong; Ivan Karamazov argues the devil’s point of view so forcefully that the author seems helpless to silence him. If Dostoevsky were a director of a war movie, one gets the sense he would equip the actors with live ammunition. “What Dostoevsky projects into the world of his works is not a finished plot but unfinished voice ideas.” (p. 330) [incidentally, in my more heretical moments I have pondered whether God writes like Kierkegaard... ask me about it sometime]
logizomai [imputation], is logos - in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. And it's the verb form of logos. And it's not merely that by his action Jesus Christ has made it possible for us to have mercy, but that it's because of what the Logos did - it was the verb, the action of the Logos. I am imputed as righteous even though I am not righteous, and by that wording of me as righteous, I begin to become that kind of righteousness that we see in the second person of the Trinity.
the Archbishop’s theological reflections sound quasi-masochistic. For example, he returns again and again in his work to the idea that the ‘inner readiness to come to judgment’ (OCT, p. 32) is the mark of the true disciple... I would argue, however, that it belongs to a complex of other readinesses that together constitute the form of faithfulness. In other words, openness to judgment is genuinely Christian only insofar as it is wedded to the humble audacity—to take up the S. Bulgakov’s idiom—also to receive blessings and to offer judgments in Christ’s name.
Both [Penal Substitution and Christus Victor] actually include dimensions of personal guilt and victimhood, but as I listen to the discussion today, it seems that Christus Victor highlights our state as victims. Substitutionary atonement focuses on our guilt. In Christus Victor, we are liberated from hostile powers out there. In substitution, we are forgiven, and liberation is from ourselves and our addiction to our sin. Naturally, both models speak to truths of the human condition! And both have nuances worth exploring. But I'm concerned at the rising popularity of Christus Victor when it comes at the expense of substitution.
I've also been think a lot about Luke 7:47:
Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.
If I want to love God more the answer is not to dwell on his essence, but on his action. I say that not because his essence is not essentially important (intentional pun ;-)), but because the way to his essence is his action.
"to know Christ means to know his benefits, and not as they teach to reflect upon his natures" (p. 21f, Philip Melanchthon, Loci Communes 1521 in Melanchthon and Bucer)
Interesting to see what Rowan Williams has been reading:
The American Presbyterian writer Timothy Keller has recently published a book on Mark’s gospel, entitled King’s Cross. It is a vividly written and often very moving presentation of the great themes of the gospel (and incidentally offers a forceful defence of substitutionary language for the atonement that might give second thoughts to some who find this difficult); but perhaps its simplest and most dominant insight is that Christianity is not advice but news. The world has changed; humanity is not what it was. We are still working out, often in floundering and stumbling ways, what this means, but the one thing to beware of is reducing the news to exhortation, sound moral or even spiritual teaching, alone. We must always be beginning again with the news that God has shown himself to be a God who does not abandon – even when all the evidence has pointed to his absence, he recovers himself and us in the great act of vindication, homecoming and transfiguration that is the resurrection; a moment so alarmingly beyond all expectation that Mark can only present it with the silence, the fear and trembling, of his famous ending at 16.8. And I suppose that what I am pleading for in our discussion today is a revitalised sense of the news we have, the event we celebrate as having changed everything.
Hitler invaded and occupied France and exploited it and its people. But most collaborated with their new master and many welcomed him. The French were both victims and perpetrators of sin.
The Devil invaded God's creation and exploited it its people. Everyone collaborated with their new masters and welcomed him. We are both victims and perpetrators of sin.
Firstfruits
The Allies landed at Normandy and at great cost liberated its people. Victory and freedom the rest of France was certain once that bridgehead was established.
Christ landed in a manger in Bethlehem and at the ultimate cost saw the first fruits of New Creation when his Father raised him from the dead by his Spirit. Victory and freedom for the rest of creation was certain once that bridgehead was established. But even as he was dying to establish that bridgehead he pronounced forgiveness to all collaborators with the Devil.
Full harvest
The collaborators with Nazis were full of fear. The French resistance grew in strength and those who had collaborated were persecuted by those now full of hope for freedom.
Christ's proclamation of forgiveness for those who collaborated with the Devil in crucifying him means that there is no fear from the completion of his victory. Past guilt is no reason to fear only love for the present order. Living out of the promise of the Resurrection we take up arms and join the resistance.
[with thanks to Oscar Cullmann and Steven Paulson]
I've just discovered this guy's youtube channel. He has been merrily uploading all my favourite Christian worship music: Gettys, Townend, Sojourn Music, Sovereign Grace, High Street Hymns, Red Mountain and others. I'm never quite sure about the morality of that, but here are a few samples of great stuff that I've (re)discovered through him (and Gill ;-)):
First something Christmassy, then a bit of Good Friday.
Approach my soul, the mercy seat
Where Holy One and helpless meet
There fall before my Judgesʼ feet
Thy promise is my only plea, O God
Send wings to lift the clutch of sin
You who dwell between the cherubim
From war without and fear within
Relieve the grief from the shoulders of crumbling men
O God –
Pour out your mercy to me
My God,
Oh what striking love to bleed.
Fashion my heart in your alchemy
With the brass to front the devilʼs purgery
And surefire grace my Jesus speaks
I must. I will. I do believe. Oh Lord.
Jamie Barnes/John NewtonTo See the King of Heaven Fall (Gethsemane)To see the King of heaven fall In anguish to His knees,
The Light and Hope of all the world
Now overwhelmed with grief.
What nameless horrors must He see,
To cry out in the garden:
“Oh, take this cup away from me –
Yet not my will but Yours,
Yet not my will but Yours.”
To know each friend will fall away,
And heaven’s voice be still,
For hell to have its vengeful day
Upon Golgotha’s hill.
No words describe the Savior’s plight -
To be by God forsaken
Till wrath and love are satisfied
And every sin is paid
And every sin is paid
Two hot things to say in my circles these days are:
People trust in the idols of sex, money and power and they fail to deliver.
Too many 'Christians' preach an ugly, tyrannical god
I agree with both statements, but I'm afraid I have to admit that to a large degree I still trust and promote both the first and second set of idols.
We are not in the habit of disbelieving monster gods, we're in the habit of making them!
And that applies to non-Christians as well. My non-Christian friends and family do not disbelieve in the God of Jesus Christ because they perceive him to be a distant bully, whatever they may say. And the reason I don't believe them when they tell me that is because the gods they do believe in are just as monstrous as anything I have heard preached by someone who calls them Christian. Their gods are killing them and giving them nothing in return - but they love them anyway.
Only God by his Spirit and through his Word, which kills the old heart and creates a new one ex nihilo, will we see change in the God we love so that we love beauty.
Luther, from his sermon on Matthew 21:1-9 on the first Sunday in Advent, 1521:
This is what is meant by "Thy king cometh." You do not seek him, but he seeks you. You do not find him, he finds you. For the preachers come from him, not from you; their sermons come from him, not from you; your faith comes from him, not from you; everything that faith works in you comes from him, not from you; and where he does not come, you remain outside; and where there is no Gospel there is no God, but only sin and damnation, free will may do, suffer, work and live as it may and can. Therefore you should not ask, where to begin to be godly; there is no beginning, except where the king enters and is proclaimed.
Sixthly, he cometh "unto thee." Thee, thee, what does this mean? Is it not enough that he is your king? If he is yours how can he say, he comes to you? All this is stated by the prophet to present Christ in an endearing way and invite to faith. It is not enough that Christ saves us from the rule and tyranny of sin, death and hell, and becomes our king, but he offers himself to us for our possession, that whatever he is and has may be ours, as St. Paul writes, Rom. 8, 32: "He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not also with him freely give us all things?"...
Behold, this means that he comes to you, for your welfare, as your own; in that he is your king, you receive grace from him into your heart, so that he delivers you from sin and death, and thus becomes your king and you his subject. In coming to you he becomes your own, so that you partake of his treasures, as a bride, by the jewelry the bridegroom puts on her, becomes partner of his possessions. Oh, this is a joyful, comforting form of speech! Who would despair and be afraid of death and hell, if he believes in these words and wins Christ as his own?
"the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him" (4:23)
To the Jews:
"an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live" (4:23)
To the Disciples:
"the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone." (16:32)
So "the hour" in John seems to be Christ's death and resurrection and the breaking in of that Old Creation death and New Creation life into our present.
"The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men" ([Rom] 1.18). When we ask how that wrath comes to expression, we have a threefold expression that God's wrath is God's abandonment. "Therefore God gave them over (paredoken) to the sinful desires of their hearts" (v.24), "God gave them over (paredoken) to shameful lusts" (v.26), "He gave them over (paredoken) to a depraved mind" (v.28). It is no coincidence that it is this key verb paradidomi (=to abandon, to give up), which is used again in Romans 8.32, He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up (paredoken) for us all" etc... In order to do anything for those who because of sin have been given up to sin's destructive power, and lethal consequences (Romans 6.23a), the Son of God had to identify himself with them, by himself being treated as one who is abandoned and given up by God.
(p. 116, Thomas Smail, The Forgotten Father)
I never get tired of that. The punishment that belonged to us, fell on him!
While I'm here, a few thoughts on the idea often taught from Romans 1 that the wrath of God being God passively stepping back and giving us what we want:
To the person enslaved by his own sin, the experience of being able to 'freely' sin is very rarely that we get what we want - "what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do" (Rom 7:15)
If God's wrath/hell is simply giving someone over to what they want, then how did Jesus experience God's wrath?
One of my favourite blogs these days is Martin Yee, a Singaporean Lutheran. Here is something to put in your theological pipe from his recent digest of a Philip Cary article:
Augustine gives us the gist of the prayer for grace in a famous formulation that irked Pelagius: “Give what you command, and command what you will.” To bring the difference between Luther and Augustine into focus, we can contrast this prayer with a formulation in Luther’s treatise, The Freedom of a Christian (1520): “The promises of God give what the commandments of God demand”. This formulation both echoes Augustine’s prayer for grace and replaces it with something new. Instead of human words of prayer, it draws our attention to the divine word of promise, which Luther elsewhere calls by the name “Gospel.” The distinction he draws in this treatise between commandments and promises as the two types of the Word of God is clearly the same as the distinction he draws elsewhere between Law and Gospel. The crucial point about the Gospel promise is always that it gives what it promises to those who believe it. So for Luther faith does not mean praying for grace and righteousness, but obtaining them by taking hold of Christ in the Gospel.
The biggest difference made by responses to the Word is the difference they make to us, for us, and in us. They decide not whether the Word will achieve his purposes but whether we will enjoy his achievement - or find ourselves in opposition to it.
(p. 73, kingdom, grace, judgment: paradox, outrage, and vindication in the parables of Jesus)
The day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night (1 Thes 5:2).
People sleep during the night or stay up getting drunk. Either way they are not alert (v.7).
Christians live in the daytime (v.4), even though for the world it is still dark. They are experiencing the already even though it is not-yet. Therefore, they should be alert for Christ's appearing and doing the things of the day. That doesn't mean having your head in the clouds and being idle, but working (v.12-14)
Tomorrow's Monday, so unglamorous as it sounds, I'll be at the office as a child of the day. Today was the Lord's day, but so is Monday.
Halloween approaches when people make a mockery of the devil, demons and all sorts of evil. Personally, I tend to think it would be a good thing for Christians to participate in, but not non-Christians (much like the Lord's Supper).
For Christians the devil and demons are no kind of threat because they have been 'disarmed' (Col 2:15). The devil's only power is because he is Satan (trans. "the accuser"), and his only weapon is the law with which stands against us. But the debt to the law has been nailed to the cross and cannot be taken down and used again on those in Christ (2:14). So death and the devil have lost their sting because Christ takes the victory that would otherwise be theirs.
So when the devil, or those who join in his game of judging us or accusing us (even our own consciences) need never be taken seriously (Col 2:16). We are free from all judgment of sin and measurement of performance. That message is why Halloween and Reformation Day actually belong together.
The job of the Christian apologist is to make that question harder to answer, not easier.
Discuss.
Suffering in this world (and the next) is more horrible than you think, God is more powerful over evil than you can conceive and he is more loving towards you than you can imagine. So... "My God, why have you forsaken me?"
[In] the Lutheran tradition [...] any emphasis on the work of the Spirit "in us" is seen to be in latent competition with the work of Christ "for us", to the point that it sometimes seems that the believer magnifies the freeness of God's grace more as a forgiven but unchanged sinner, than as a man in whom the crucified Saviour has worked his regenerating and renewing change. Lutherans are afraid that if anything happens within us, that happening rather than Christ's work will be seen as the basis of our standing with God.
(p. 26, Thomas A. Smail, The Forgotten Father)
I think that criticism is fair. Two quick observations on the two emphases:
One is marked by an over-realised eschatology (i.e. high-expectations and dreamy optimism), and the other an under-realised eschatology (i.e. low-expectations and realistic pessimism).
One is marked by joy and the other by seriousness.
It's not balance that we need, but a church aware of both where its citizenship is, but also where it is sojourning in at the moment.
we have had in recent years a Jesus movement and a charismatic movement. The one has almost disappeared and the other is threatening to run out of steam, perhaps because each is in a different way inadequate to the gospel, which is basically a Father movement... It starts not with the cross of Jesus or with the gift of the Spirit, but with the Father who so loved the world that he gave his Son in his Spirit. And it achieves its purpose, not when the body of Christ is gloriously renewed in very part without spot or wrinkle (Ephesians 5:27), not even when the enthroned Christ has subdued all his enemies and brought every knee to bow before him (Philipians 2:11), but rather when that same Christ "hands over the kingdom to the Father, after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power" (1 Corinthians 15:24). "When he has done this, then the Son himself will be subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all" (1 Corinthians 15:28).
(p.20, Thomas A. Smail, 1980, The Forgotten Father)
I like Tom Smail. He ought to be more widely read. His Charismatic Anglican Trinitarian Theology has a lightness of touch, while retaining real depth, which is really refreshing.
Considering those verses from 1 and 2 Corinthians it is striking that the Father is involved not just at the beginning and end but in the middle where he is the one who puts everything under Jesus' feet.
Love can only be fruit, it cannot take the place of the tree of faith. But there is a constant attempt in the legal scheme to substitute love for faith [...]
[In] Luke's story of the woman in the house of a Pharisee who anointed Jesus' feet from an alabaster jar. The Pharisee, Simon, was found outstripped by the woman not only in faith, but also in his pride - the righteousness of the law (which is love). Jesus said to the woman, "Your faith has saved you; go in peace" (Luke 7:50). Her faith came from the preached word heard earlier: "Your sins are forgiven," and this finally revealed what Jesus meant when he told Simon, "Her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love" (Luke 7:47). Love, it turns out, is either understood in relation to the law - in which case it is a work and cannot bear our trust - or it is simply what happens when Christ has forgiven a sinner.
(pp.235-236, Steven Paulson, Lutheran Theology)
So, when we preach the law, we tell people to "love the Lord your God". But when we preach the Gospel we call people to "believe the Lord your God", and out of that belief (which is receiving the seed of the promise of God himself and his forgiveness) love springs spontaneously. Love is greater because love is the eternal goal (1 Cor 13:13), but it cannot be found without faith receiving the Spirit in the promise of Christ who creates it.
the righteousness based on faith says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’” (that is, to bring Christ down) “or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim)...Jesus is Lord
(Romans 10:6-9)
Paul is arguing that by faith we find Christ present in the preached word we hear from our pastors, evangelists and missionaries. So Christ is not a distant goal to be attained to, or in the first instance somebody who has walked the way of the perfect life for you to follow, instead he is here for us to confess and call upon and be saved. If we have a preacher, Christ is never distant, but in our hearts, and because he cannot be contained we find him overflowing our hearts through our mouths.
Paul used Deuteronomy 30 "the word is near you," just this way. Moses' original use of this word concerned the law, and he thought it meant there was no longer any need to go find the law in a voyage over the sea or going down to the depths since now it had come near in the tablets of stone. But for Paul [...] "up" and "down" describe Christ's ascent into heaven and descent into hell. this is the crucial matter of the presence of Christ around which all of Lutheran theology circulates. Descent into hell is legally inappropriate for the infinite God, and ascent into heaven is impossible for a finite man. The communication of attributes nevertheless accomplished both at once. Christ's ascent into heaven is normally taken as "escape" or absence, consequently whenever Christ's presence is considered following his "humiliation" (as theology calls Christ's descent) and his "exaltation" (to the right hand of the Father) it is spiritualized in a pagan sense. Christ's body is removed from his presence, and more importantly, God himself is removed from the word that is preached... Where is Christ now?... where Moses law once was: "the word is near you... that is, the word we preach" (Romans 10:8)
Death is not defeated by having you avert it, but undergo it in the flesh, and then the Spirit raises our dead bodies - because when he sees the baptized dead, he sees only Christ and cannot resist raising him...
the Holy Spirit's proper work is given a Christological fixation. It is not your human goal that matters any longer, but the Holy Spirit's goal. Your goal is flesh, and flesh is hostile to God; the Spirit's goal is "life and peace" because the Spirit's goal is Christ alone. If Christ is in you, the Spirit raises your dead bodies to life since the Holy Spirit has Christ on the brain. In opposition to this, spiritualism seeks to unlink the Spirit from Christ in order to bypass the cross in its immediate relation to God, but the Spirit's proper work never goes anywhere without Christ, and does nothing apart from resurrecting Christ. The Holy Spirit does not moonlight in another job than to witness, show, and drive everything in the universe to Christ.
(pp. 196-197, Steven Paulson, Lutheran Theology)
He's not quite PT Forsyth, but Paulson really does have a nice turn of phrase.
