The forgotten Father

I've just written in a comment: "I get to know Jesus as the one who loves us so much that he laid down his life for me". This is not wrong, but it is unlike most NT language. Spot the difference...

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16)

"God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8)

"He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all" (Romans 8:32)

"God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ" (Ephesians 2:4-5)

"the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." (1 John 4:9-10)

The difference is that the NT emphasis (perhaps anticipating people like me) is on the Father's love for us in sending his Son, not the Son independently coming to us. Although other passages explain that Jesus loved us too (e.g. Ephesians 5:2). As if that was not enough, the emphasis in the NT is on the Son's death reconciling us to the Father and revealing him (Romans 5:10; 2 Corinthians 5:18).

I am either harbouring a view of the death of Christ that deserves the name 'cosmic child abuse' or a monistic view of God who is occasionally called by different names (Jesus, God, Father, YHWH etc).

The parable of the prodigal son as incomplete gospel

The parable of the prodigal son is receiving a lot of attention at the moment. So I thought I'd share a taster of PT Forsyth on the passage:

There are those who say you have the whole of the gospel really in the parable of the prodigal son, that that was the culmination of Christ's grand revelation of God...But you have not the whole gospel in the parable of the prodigal son...

Now the one ruling idea in the parable of the prodigal son is the idea of the centrality, the completeness, the unreservedness, the freeness, fullness, whole-heartedness of God's grace - the absolute fullness of it, rather that the method of its action. But however a parable might preach that fullness, it took the Cross and all its train to give it effect, to put it into action, life, and history, to charge it with the Spirit...Hence as to the method of God's free and flowing grace the parable has nothing to say. It does not even say that the father was seeking the prodigal. The seeking grace of God we find there as little as the redeeming grace....

[The prodigal can only be sure of the father's forgiveness if] the father not only says but pays. His mere repentance could not make him sure, could not place him at home again, could not put him where he set out. His mere repentance could turn his heart to his father, but it could not break the bar and fill him with certainty of his father's love and forgiveness. And that is what the sinner wants, and what the great and classic penitents find it so hard to believe. Now, the parable tells us of the freeness of God's grace, and its fullness, but the Cross enacts it and inserts it in real history. It shows to what length that grace could go in dealing with a difficulty otherwise insuperable when we turn from a single prodigal to a world...the act of Christ's Cross - is not simply to produce individual repentance, but it has its great effect upon the relation of the whole world to God. And the judgment, the payment, was on that scale. (The Work of Christ, pp.106-111)

I am not ashamed to ask the question

At work I have a colleague who asks me, again and again, why it is that God did not create human beings incapable of sinning. He is obviously far from satisfied with my answers, and I can't blame him. What would you say? You must have been asked the question.

Cur Deus Homo has a brief aside about the question. In contrast to the rest of the book this section is as clear as mud to me. Nevertheless Anselm's answer manages to shut up his dialogue partner...

Boso: given that God is capable of creating such a man, why did he not make the angels and the first two human beings such that they would likewise be both incapable of sinning and worthy of praise for their righteousness?

Anselm: Do you understand what you are saying?

Boso: It seems to me that I understand it, and that is why I am asking why he did not make them like this.

Anselm: This was because it was neither right nor possible for it to be brought about that any one of them should be identical with God, as is the case, so we are saying, with this man [Jesus, who is righteous and incapable of sin 'independently']. And if you ask why he does not bring this about for as many such human beings as there are persons of God, or why he did not at least do it for one of them, I answer that reason did not at all demand that this should be done: rather, since God does nothing irrationally, it prohibited this.

Boso: I am ashamed at having asked this question.

(Cur Deus Homo, Book 2, Chap 10)

Now I don't want to shut up my friend so completely, but want I do want him to be pointed to him who does make us incapable of sin. So I'm not ashamed to ask such a question of my intelligent readers, in the hope of fresh insight.

Top ten films I saw in 2008

This list is more for me than anyone else. But I would strongly recommend that everyone see number 1 on the list. I really do believe it is a genuine masterpiece. (Watch it on a big screen if you can.)

1. There Will be Blood
2. No Country For Old Men
3. Wall-E
4. Juno
5. The Dark Knight
6. Changeling
7. The Duchess
8. Sweeney Todd
9. Burn after Reading
10. Iron Man

Why am I not blogging?

To be honest I'm not really sure. Perhaps it is because I'm busy... but that has never stopped me before.

I think it has to be due to the fact that I'm doing a decent amount of reading. I've recently read, or I'm in the middle of:

• The Work of Christ by PT Forsyth. Amazing to read an entire book on the atonement again. He is an engaging writer who thinks really deeply and originally. I don't think I really got it till the end, but he is very thought-provoking. I greatly enjoyed it, although I wouldn't agree with all of it.
• The Shack by William P. Young. The book of Job if it had been written by a 21st century Christian who has a problem with authority.
• Dogmatics in Outline by Karl Barth. Beautiful, moving, massive yet concise. Lots of questions but I'm beginning to understand why his impact was so huge.
• Faith in a Hard Ground: Essays on Religion, Philosophy and Ethics by G E M Anscombe. Interesting lady, but crazily hard to understand. Is she right or wrong... I simply can't compute.
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy. A dying world with a total lack of hope and humans that lie to themselves about their future and their present. Wonderfully written. I read it in a single evening. Thanks Steve.
• Cur Deus Homo by Anselm. A clear and simple walk through reasons why the atonement had to be substitutionary, with less weird asides than I'm used to in ancient Christian books.

Next on my list: Rowan Williams, TF Torrance, and John Murray.

What I'm trying to say is that because of my request for recommendations and other factors I've been reading more widely than usual and I feel like I am so far from getting my bearings that I cannot manage even my usual half-baked thoughts which I pass of as posts.

I'm sure you are not missing me.

As an aside I have just come across a bunch of excellent looking MP3 lectures by some top-notch scholars from a recent conference on 'Reading the Decalogue through the Centuries'. I've listened to Timothy Wengert on Luther's view of the Decalogue which was very good. I'm looking forward to listening to some more.