Why we get on the merry-go-round in the first place

The lack of recent blog activity (now being overcompensated for) may have made you realise that I've been quite busy recently. I tend to go through phases of taking on too much, and Christmas was a wonderful rest from that. Tim Chester's The Busy Christian's Guide to Busyness is a brilliant book on how it is our lack of faith that often (although not always) leads us to be over busy. I highly recommend it.

But Helmut Thielicke said the same a few decades ago when preaching on the parable of the seed growing secretly (Mark 4:26-29):

Our overactivity, which constantly keeps us on the merry-go-round and yet, no matter how fast we go, gets us nowhere, but only makes us dizzy, is not caused by the fact that we were so nervous or that we had no time. It is just the opposite. We are nervous and we have no time because we think everything will stop without us and because we think we are so tremendously important - we parvenus [newcomers/upstarts] in this old business of creation! And this is why we can never let anything get out of our hands and be entrusted to others. That's why we hold on to everything convulsively and thus wear ourselves out all over again. Undoubtedly, all this is connected with the ultimate decisions of our life and not so much at all with medicine or with the problem of our modern way of life. And because we have thus taken over the management of the bankrupt assets of creation, because we do everything ourselves and therefore must always be producing something, we never get away from constant care and concern. For anybody who takes everything upon himself finds that everything depends on him.

(p.84f, The Waiting Father: Sermons on the Parables of Jesus)

Isn't the true gospel so freeing in comparison to the false gospel of our mastery over the world? No wonder it rest is so important in the bible. Not because passiveness towards the world is the ideal, but because God is active in caring for his creation.

Thielicke on the Parable of the Soils

Helmut Thielicke makes two really important points that I think I often miss when reading this familiar parable:

1. It is a solemn parable

I wonder whether we have caught the sadness that hangs over this story. Jesus spoke this parable at a high point in his life and activity. The people were flocking to him in great numbers [and yet] the parable is really pointing out how frequently the divine seed is destroyed - destroyed in stony hearts, by the heat of the sun, by choking thorns and predatory birds - this is why there is in this parable a deep sense of grief and sorrow. And all this is seen and proclaimed while outwardly the people are coming in droves, inspired with festive enthusiasm, and the hucksters are rubbing their hands with delight over this "colossal" attraction

(p.53, The Waiting Father: Sermons on the Parables of Jesus)

2. It is meant to provoke a response

We should be misunderstanding [Jesus] disastrously if we thought that this was simply an enumeration of the forces which obstruct and choke our faith for our information or even for self-examination. This is more than "analysis." Jesus is never interested in counting and statistics; he always puts us to work. He says: Weed out the thorns; see to it that the seed does not fall on the path; be careful lest you be people so shallow that the Word cannot take root. Jesus says: Be good soil.

(p. 59f, ibid)

Are we sure assurance should be sought for?

[To S]

Luther's whole theology was driven by the question of how he could be assured of God's favour - how he could know that he was saved. He even defined faith as including assurance of salvation.

Our theology is shaped by the questions we asked. Was that the wrong question for Luther to be asking? Should we expect Christians to be sure of their salvation? Perhaps it is even unhelpful.

In contemporary Evangelicalism you could often assume that good emotions, and positive feelings are the primary purpose of all Christian activities. So we don't even think if there is anything wrong with Luther's question. But it is a question we should ask. Why is assurance of salvation essential to Christian faith?

Off the top of my head I would give two answers:

1. It honours God as truthful. To not be assured of your salvation is to call God a liar, because he promises just that in the Bible, the words of Christians, and the sacraments. "when the soul firmly trusts God's promises, it regards him as truthful and righteous. Nothing more excellent than this can be ascribed to God [this is the] very highest worship of God" (Martin Luther, The Freedom of the Christian).
2. It is the only way anyone will do good works. We will never be motivated to do truly good works by mere command, even less by fear. Unless we are sure that we have all that we need we will look first to shoring up our own salvation, before seeking to serve others. Unless we know for sure that God loves us we will not love him in return. A few quotes:

"For what reason is faith, as trust in God's promise [of our forgiveness], given priority over all works? In what way does it alone make all works good? Because it alone - and thus God alone, who establishes faith - breaks open the nature of the sinner as one curved in on himself; only he can loosen the fist that is clenched so tightly, so that my existence on behalf of others becomes natural once again and takes place with 'passion and love.' The imagery of receiving and passing on to others brings us to the foundational motif of Luther's understanding of God, that of categorical gift: through the Son, God in the Spirit gives himself to us as Father, in every sense of the word, so that we do not hoard and keep for ourselves what is given to us, which is what we do as sinners, but instead pass it on to others" (p. 283, Oswald Bayer, Martin Luther's Theology: A Contemporary Interpretation)

"if we recognize the great and precious things which are given us, as Paul says [Rom. 5:5], our hearts will be filled by the Holy Spirit with the love that makes us free, joyful, almighty workers and conquerors over all tribulations, servants of our neighbours, yet lords of all." (pp.304f, Martin Luther, The Freedom of the Christian)

"It is impossible to love God until the forgiveness of sins is first grasped by faith. For the heart that truly believes that God is angry is unable to love God until he is shown to be reconciled. For as long as he terrifies us and appears to be casting us into eternal death, human nature cannot bring itself to love such a wrathful, judging, and punishing God. It is easy for complacent minds to fabricate some foolish dreams about love [...] But in its agony and its battles the conscience experiences the emptiness of such philosophical speculations." (p. 126, Apology of the Augsburg Confession)

When Christian friends meet

My Christian friendships should look like this. I should

pour out my sadness to the one who is close to me and ask him for comfort. What that person then gives and promises to me as regards comfort is to be affirmed by God in heaven as well. On the other hand, I should also comfort and and say to another person: dear friend, dear brother, why do you not let go of your affliction? It is certainly not God's will that you experience a single bit of suffering. god allowed his Son to die for you, so that you need not mourn but that you can be joyful. Therefore be of good courage and be comforted; you will do a service and that which is pleasing to God, and you ought to kneel down with one another and pray the Lord's Prayer, which is certainly heard in heaven, for God promises: "I am in your midst" [Matt. 18:20]. He does not say: "I will see it. I will hear it," or "I will come to you," but "I am there already."

(Martin Luther, Matt 18-24 interpreted in sermons; 1537-40, cited in pp. 277f, Oswald Bayer, Martin Luther's Theology: A Contemporary Interpretation).

I.e. Christian friendship should involve:

• Openness in discussing sins, worries and sadnesses;
• Application of the Gospel to comfort, encourage, and bring joy;
• Corporate prayer.

I have friendships with Christians where I'm pretty bad on one or all of those. But Luther is not listing requirements for gritty and serious Christians to put their backs into their Christian growth. Instead, it is a wonderful encouragement that Christ stands behind our words of consolation guaranteeing their truth, and that he stands with us when we pray so that we can have confidence of an answer.

Christ, our peace

"But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace" (Eph 2:13f)

We are hopefully used to the idea that we cannot find our righteousness in ourselves, but have to find it in Christ. We know that this means among other things that:

• We are (now) perfectly righteous in God's eyes, no matter what we think or feel about ourselves;
• Sin remains in our life, but we are progressively being made righteous by the Holy Spirit's application of Christ's righteous resurrection life;
• As Christ is the only righteous one, he is our model for what righteous living looks like. That is what is helpful about the WWJD slogan. Jesus, and his cruciform life, is the definition of righteousness.

But what is true of righteousness is also true of peace (wisdom, etc).

• We have peace with God and his creation, even if we feel that God is at war with us and the world is all against is. We may rarely feel very settled and tranquil in ourselves, but we are (now) perfectly at peace in God's eyes;
• There remains hostility towards others and towards us, and much of life is chaotic rather than tranquil, but the Holy Spirit is giving us the peace of God, and that is slowly becoming integral to us, even if we're not aware of it;
• But part of the reason we may not be aware of the peace we already have is because we have a false idea of what peace looks like. Perhaps we think it looks like stillness, or a deserted beach with the sun coming up over the horizon. But if Christ is the one who has, and is, perfect peace, we should look to him to know what peace looks like. He is at war with the devil, mourning over evil, and even when they are defeated will be as active and creative as he has always been.

Questioning people

Listening to: Red Mountain Church: The Gadsby Project

Questioning Evangelism by Randy Newman argues that it is much better to answer a question with another question when doing evangelism. I could do with reading the book, rather than just skimming it, but it strikes me that questions are important not just because they are an effective evangelistic technique, but because of what they communicate in themselves. As such, they are important not just in evangelism but in all our relationships.

1. Questions communicate that we care - people who care ask questions. A self-obsessed person will talk about what themselves, what they think, and what they've done, till the cows come home. They don't want to listen to you, or understand you because that's irrelevant to their relationship with you. In contrast, someone who really cares about you will ask probing questions to find out how you really are (although not in an insensitive way).

2. Questions communicate that the person we're speaking to is not the judge - a danger of suggesting that we always ask questions is that we assume that to be loving is just to listen. But questions also ask people to give an account. They demand an answer. We are always prone to think that we understand the world perfectly, but as soon as we are forced to explain it to others we realise the shortcomings of our understanding. We realise that we are not in a position to judge - the questions are being asked of us. The questioner becomes God to us, and it is now us in the dock, and not God. This is a challenge to the sinner in us who judges themselves to be righteous apart from Christ, and release for the broken saint involved in self-condemnation.

Top ten books I read in 2009

I like making lists to review my year. Last year I didn't read that much so didn't do a top ten list (2007's list is here) but this year I've read more books in a year than I ever have. I realise I've read quite a lot looking down this post, but this has been an exceptional year for me. I'm unlikely to have so much time for reading again for a long, long time. Besides, a lot of these books are really very short. I'm painfully aware too that reading doesn't produce either holiness or wisdom ex opere operato. Thankfully though many of them do remind me that I have both in Christ, by faith and not by reading!

One theme of my reading this year has been CS Lewis (7 books). You may have missed that on this blog, as I haven't blogged that much about it. A group of people from our church have had a reading/discussion group going through some of his books this year and that was the impetus. I am left with enormous respect for the brain he had. His learning, his skill in communication, his mastery of so many disciplines (fiction, philosophy, theology etc), and his insight into how humans tick is beyond belief. Nevertheless, I have a few concerns with his approach. I was continually struck by two things. Firstly, how rarely he starts with Jesus Christ, and secondly the almost total absence of repentance as fundamental to knowledge of God. But a couple of his books make it into my top ten despite those fairly fundamental problems.

The second theme is probably less of a surprise. Nine of the books are Lutheran. My respect for the distinctives of Lutheranism has only grown this year. I ought to write a post to give an account for why I think that everyone should listen to the Lutherans, and take them as seriously as they take the human situation. However, I have seen that their strength in getting to the heart, and seeing through to what is fundamental, also means that they often become disconnected from the Bible.... but this does need a post to explain.

Before I get into the top ten books I've read this year, I have to mention 2 books which I've only dipped into but which still come with the highest recommendation from me. First, Leiths Vegetable Bible. A dirty little secret is that I became a (flexible) vegetarian this year. This recipe book has made me actually enjoy that transition. While I went over to the dark side on moral grounds, I think this book has made me willing to stay here just on taste grounds too. Hundreds of excellent, honest but not boring, recipes. Even if you're not a veggie you should buy this book. Second, is The Books of the Bible which I've mentioned before. It has made reading lengthy sections of the bible so much more enjoyable.

But without further ado, here are the top ten books I read in 2009:

1. Martin Luther's Theology: A Contemporary Interpretation (by Oswald Bayer). This book took me almost a year to read. It was so rich I felt I needed a few weeks to absorb each chapter. A truly incredible book, I can't recommend it highly enough. One of Germany's premier Lutheran theologians having a conversation with Luther in order to understand what he has to say to us today.
2. Loci Communes (1st edition, 1521, by Philip Melanchthon). Luther praised this book more than any other, saying it deserved "not only to be immortalized but even canonized". Written by his sidekick Philip Melanchthon when aged just 23, only 4 years after Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church. It is a theology shaped around the distinction between 'Law and Gospel'. Short, but packing a punch. It should be much more widely read.
3. On Being a Theologian of the Cross: Reflections on Luther's Heidelberg Disputation, 1518 (by Gerhard O. Forde). Brings out the powerful, world shaking nature of Luther's message to his fellow Augustinians at Heidelberg early in the Reformation. Will throw you upside down, as you seek to re-evaluate whether you really see things as they are.
4. Life Father Like Son: The Trinity Imaged in Our Humanity (by Tom Smail). A good brief introduction to the contemporary movement to putting the Trinity back at the heart of our theology. It then asks what implications thinking Trinitarianly would have to our understanding of ourselves as human. Brilliantly provocative.
5. Out of the Storm: Questions and consolations from the book of Job (by Christopher Ash). A brief exposition of the book of Job. I've read Job many a time, but I don't think I really understood it as good news for sufferers until I read this book. It really opened up God's final speech to me at a time in this year when I really needed to hear it.
6. When Christ Comes and Comes Again (by TF Torrance). A collection of early evangelistic sermons by Tom Torrance. Beautiful, comforting and thought-provoking. You couldn't assume this level of biblical and theological literacy today (you probably couldn't then!), but he shows us how we can imaginatively present the gospel from a variety of different angles.
7. Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold (by CS Lewis). A novel! I have only read two this year, and this is the only one that wasn't explicitly Christian one. I'd read it once before, but reading it again while discussing it with others showed just how deep it goes. I have literally spent hours talking about this book with others in our group that have read it, and I still don't think I've reached the bottom of it.
8. Miracles (by CS Lewis). Packed full of arguments to take seriously. I particularly liked his argument against David Hume. And his idea of the 'fittingness' of the biblical miracles - and particularly the 'Grand Miracle' of the Resurrection.
9. Luther: Man Between God and the Devil (by Heiko A. Oberman). Brings out quite how Luther's view of his life and the preaching of the Gospel as apocalyptic struggle against the devil shaped his theology in ways as Moderns we have trouble comprehending.
10. The Soul of Prayer (by PT Forsyth). This is on the list almost entirely for the final chapter, 'the Insistancy of Prayer', and its explanation of how prayer should include wrestling - that is fighting - against God's will being done (Ooo that's provocatively put, but that's what he says and I think he's right).

For what it's worth here is the complete list of books I read in 2009:

• Martin Luther's Theology (Bayer)
• [The Cost of] Discipleship (Bonhoeffer)
• The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Lewis)
• Miracles (Lewis)
• The Cruciality of the Cross (Forsyth)
• On Christian Liberty (Luther)
• When People are Big and God is Small (Welch)
• The Four Loves (Lewis)
• A Grief Observed (Lewis)
• Out of the Storm (Ash)
• The Soul of Prayer (Forsyth)
• Till We Have Faces (Lewis)
• The Hammer of God (Giertz)
• Contra Gentes and De Incarnatione (Athanasius)
• Mirror, mirror (Beynon)
• The Screwtape Letters (Lewis)
• On Being a Theologian of the Cross (Forde)
• Loci Communes (1521, Melanchthon)
• When Christ Comes and Comes Again (Torrance)
• The Abolition of Man (Lewis)
• Luther (Oberman)
• The Enemy Within (Lundgaard)
• PT Forsyth (Hunter)
• Like Father, Like Son (Smail)
• The Humanity of God (Barth)
• Pia Desideria (Spener)
• Worship, Community and the Triune God of Grace (Torrance)
• Baptized into Gods Family (Das)
• Calvin (Wendel)
• Handling the Word of Truth (Pless)
• Treatise on Good Works (Luther)

My films of 2009

One of the wonders of living in York is the City Screen cinema by the river. I love this cinema, and saw a good few films there this year.

Its review of the year time, but sadly 2009 hasn't been a vintage year for filmgoers. Nevertheless, for your consideration, here are my top ten films I watched at the cinema in 2009:

1. Slumdog Millionaire
2. The Wrestler
3= Doubt
3= Away We Go
5. Up (3D)
6= Revolutionary Road
6= Gran Torino
8. Star Trek
9. Das Weisse Band - The White Ribbon
10. Moon

With an honourable mention to Synecdoche, New York.

There have been some great films that I've missed. But so you know the sample I'm basing this on. Here are all the films I saw at the cinema this year:

(500) Days of Summer
A serious man
Away We Go
Breakfast at Tiffany's (rerelease)
Che - Part One
Das Weisse Band - The White Ribbon
District 9
Doubt
Frost/Nixon
Gomorra / Gomorrah
Gran Torino
Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince
Milk
Moon
Revolutionary Road
Slumdog Millionaire
Star Trek
State Of Play
Synecdoche, New York
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Wrestler
Up (3D)
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Where the Wild Things Are

Christ's mediation: pop quiz

Some questions on my mind this evening.

1. Do you think that most people think of Christ as the mediator between us and the Father, and the Holy Spirit as the mediator between us and Christ?
2. What impact would it have on our thinking if we remembered more often that Christ was the mediator of the Spirit?
3. What do we mean by Christ's mediation anyway? Is his cleansing us so we can enter the prescence of God the end of it? If not, what else does it involve?

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe film discussion questions

[These are my notes for leading a discussion on the film The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Feedback welcome. Sorry for the extent that they're decipherable only to me. I haven't had time to edit them for public consumption]

From dedication of the book: "My Dear Lucy, I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you think of it. I shall probably be too deaf to hear, and too old to understand a word you say, but I shall still be your affectionate Godfather, C. S. Lewis."

We're a bunch of adults who have decided to watch a 'kids' film, involving talking animals and a secret other world. Is Lewis right that you grow out of fairy tales, and then grow into them again? Why?

• Escapism?
• Sentimental longing to relive childhood?
• Do they enable us to understand the real world in a way which realist fiction or abstract argument can't?

** WATCH FILM **

Any parts of the film you particularly enjoyed, or thought didn't work?

• Tilda Swinton
• Colours of Narnia, particularly when Lucy and Edmund first enter. Snow.
• Soundtrack
• London scenes. Character development. Parallels of war in England and Narnia.
• Why Aslan had to die.

Once all four children enter Narnia, it is largely the actions of Edmund that drive the story. What motivates Edmund to join the White Witch?

• Absence of his father (running back to save his photo in air raid; "Wouldn’t have to go away if Dad was here" at station). Does this excuse him?
• Book: new school is blamed
• Estrangement from siblings, in particular from Peter.
• Problem with authority: Doesn't like authority of Peter and Susan over him ("You think you’re Dad, but you’re not" when Peter tells him off for mocking Lucy’s belief in Narnia; "Yes Mum" his response to Susan when she suggests they go to bed)
• Desire to be king (Doesn't like it when he thinks Witch will make Peter king as well; sits on Witch's throne: “like it?” she asks - “yes” Edmund replies).
• Half-believes she is right (thinks that faun may be lying about her, that and that it is Tumnus who is a criminal).
• Enjoys the Turkish Delight and wants more (book: "this was enchanted Turkish Delight and... anyone who had tasted it would want more and more of it, and would even, if tthey were allowed go on eating it till they killed themselves")
• In the end he doesn't get anything that he betrayed his family for. No throne, no food.

If Edmund is flawed, is Peter any better?

• self-righteous
• quick to round on Edmund at any opportunity (gets angry at air raid about photo Edmund goes back for, gets angry about cricket ball, gives Edmund girls coat out of wardrobe, "I know")
• He likes authority too. Not happy to ask Professor for help, "we can handle it".
• Confession to Aslan: "It’s my fault really. I was too hard on him"

Aslan sacrifices himself to save Edmund. Self sacrifice is a common theme in films. The centaur and rhino sacrifice themselves in this film to save Peter. Is Aslan's self-sacrifice different in any way?

• Planned? No, it is often planned in stories.
• He is in control though in a way that you don't often get. He has to satisfy the Deep Magic. That is the problem, not the Witch.
• Only he could "turn death backwards", be resurrected, break the Deep Magic's hold over Narnia, because he is the only innocent one - and god?
• Why does he have to die? What does it achieve?

[OPTIONAL QUESTION: Tilda Swinton says about the film: "It's about finding self-sufficiency in difficult circumstances and finding the capacity to dig deep, survive and prevail."

Is her interpretation of the film correct?

• Yes, digging deep and courage important themes.
• No, self-sufficiency is far from promoted (Children need each other and other animals, need Aslan - “Only Aslan can help your brother now” Mr Beaver on Edmund going to the witch’s palace, Aslan's desire not to be alone as he goes to his death, contrast the Witch who needs no-one and doesn't want to - even says to dwarf who asks if she will kill him: "not yet"). We are created to need others, and particularly to need Christ (and his death). Self-sufficiency is not an ideal to aspire to.

]

Running theme in film is who is telling the truth. Lucy and Edmund contradict on existence of Narnia. Lucy: "She calls herself the Queen of Narnia thought she has no right to be queen at all". Faun has book on his shelf "Is Man a Myth?" Edmund on Mr Beaver: "how do we know we can trust him?" What does film say about how we can know what is true?

• Edmund at least really knows in deep-down that witch is evil. He lies to himself.
• The Professor's advice to Peter and Susan on whether to believe Lucy: "If she’s not mad and if she’s not lying then she must be telling the truth"
• Ultimately, belief in truth is presented in a very personal way.
• Some are ignorant of truth so doubt it ("Is man a myth?").
• Truth is inescapable reality whatever stance people take.

The Deep Magic of Narnia

A lot of Evangelicals have a problem with the atonement theory they see displayed in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis. They are uncomfortable that it seems to suggest that:

1. the devil had something he could demand of Christ
2. Christ's death was not to satisfy God's wrath, but to satisfy the devil

But I think that CS Lewis does not say anything wrong, but he leaves the door open to problems coming in.

The Witch appeals to the "Deep Magic" for her claim on Edmund's life. She also says "the Law" demands it. For Lewis the "Deep Magic" seems to be another name for "the Law" in Christian theology. It is built into the fabric of the universe, but it is not an independent god which both the Witch and the Aslan have to obey. It was put in place by the "Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea" (God the Father), and it belongs to him. The Stone Table represents this Deep Magic. It has the words of it written on it, just as the words of the Law were written on stone tablets delivered to Moses.

Any claim that the Witch has against Edmund is derived from the Deep Magic, and more fundamentally from the Emperor who gave it. Aslan says that the offence committed by Edmund was not an offence against the Witch, and so she does not have a natural right to claim Edmund's life. As the Beaver observes, she is "the Emperor's hangman" and it is he who gives the Witch her right. It is ultimately not either the Witch or the Deep Magic which has a claim on Edmund's life, it is the Emperor. The devil in Christian theology is in the same position. He is called Satan ('the accuser') because his power is only in bringing the Law of God to bear on people's lives. As the early chapter's of Job show clearly, he is God's servant and not a truly rival power.

Aslan would not go against the law given by the Emperor who is his father, but his authority does not derive from it like the Witch's does. He subjects himself to the Deep Magic voluntarily, even though it clearly only applies to traitors. In this sense Aslan and the Witch are not two equals under the Deep Magic. Aslan lowers himself to the Witch's level, but that is not where he belongs. It is only as Aslan identifies with Edmund that the Witch can demand anything from him. The parallels with Christ are obvious.

When Christ died on the cross in the place of us, the Law was nailed to the cross (Col 2:14). The Law has been torn down and we no longer will we be put to death by it. Similarly, the Stone Table cracks when Aslan is brought back from the dead.

That's all good stuff, but I think Lewis leaves the door open for problems in several ways:

• God is distant. It is only in a very indirect way that Aslan seems to be experiencing the Emperor's wrath. Because of this it appears that our biggest problem is not God's anger at our sin, but the devil out to hurt us.
• Because of this distance of God, it seems almost like the devil is acting as a free agent, albeit under authority of the Law. There is no sense that God has sovereignly arranged for the attack of the devil. Except perhaps in Aslan locating his army's camp at the Stone Table from the beginning.
• Because Aslan is a lion and Edmund a human, it is not clear that Aslan is only subject to the "Deep Magic"/Law by his identification with Edmund. It could be misunderstood that he is under the "Deep Magic" in exactly the same way the Witch is.
• The Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea does not seem to be the loving Heavenly Father of the Christian Faith. He is not only distant, but possibly even evil. He does not act for good (it is never clear that he sent his son, Aslan). He is only ever depicted as standing behind the cold justice executed by the evil Witch. The Deeper Magic which means Aslan is raised from the dead is only implicitly the Deeper Magic of the Emperor. In contrast the New Testament is crystal clear that it was God the Father raised Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. The whole Trinity is acting in the salvation of sinners. If it is was not then, like here, God the Father is thought to be the angry God, and Jesus the loving God subjected to divine child abuse.

Those are my thoughts. Do you have any others?

These are the only relevant passages in the book:

"You have a traitor there, Aslan," said the Witch...

"Well," said Aslan. "His offence was not against you."

"Have you forgotten the Deep Magic?" asked the Witch.

"Let us say I have forgotten it," answered Aslan gravely. "Tell us of this Deep Magic."

"Tell you?" said the Witch, her voice growing suddenly shriller. "Tell you what is written on that very Table of Stone which stands beside us? Tell you what is written in letters deep as a spear is long on the fire-stones on the Secret Hill? Tell you what is engraved on the scepter of the Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea? You at least know the magic which the Emperor put into Narnia at the very beginning. You know that every traitor belongs to me as my lawful prey and that for every treachery I have a right to kill."

"Oh," said Mr. Beaver. "So that's how you came to imagine yourself a queen - because you were the Emperor's hangman. I see."

"Peace, Beaver," said Aslan, with a very low growl.

"And so," continued the Witch, "that human creature is mine. His life is forfeit to me. His blood is my property."

"Come and take it then," said the Bull with the man's head in a great bellowing voice.

"Fool," said the Witch with a savage smile that was almost a snarl, "Do you really think your master can rob me of my rights by mere force? He knows the Deep Magic better than that. He know that unless I have blood as the Law says all Narnia will be overturned and perish in fire and water."

"It is very true," said Aslan, "I do not deny it."

"Oh, Aslan!" whispered Susan in the Lion's ear, "can't we – I mean, you won't, will you? Can't we do something about the Deep Magic? Isn't there something you can work against it?"

"Work against the Emperor's magic?" said Aslan, turning to her with something like a frown on his face. And nobody ever made that suggestion to him again.

(pp. 128-129)

"though the witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge only goes back to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards."

(p. 148)

How can we be sure of God's love?

A lot of people are very 'down on themselves'. They clearly need words of affirmation and assurance that God really does love them. But that doesn't mean that we stop telling people they are sinners. Only through judgment will we experience God's love. And, as PT Forsyth put into words, only when a person has seen the magnitude of God's holy anger against us will that love be real and trustworthy to the person who can never see how he could be loved.

If God's love were not essentially holy love, in course of time mankind would cease to respect it, and consequently to trust it. We need not a fond love, but a love we can trust, and for ever [...]

the sinner could not trust a love that could not justify itself as holy. It is the holiness in God's love, I urge, that alone enables us to trust Him. Without that we should only love Him, and the love would fluctuate. For we could not be perfectly sure that His would not. It is the holiness in God's love that is the eternal, stable, unchangeable element in it - the holiness secured for history and its destiny in the Cross. It is only the unchangeable that we could trust; and there alone we find it. If we only loved the love of God, we should have no stable, eternal, universal religion. But we love the holy love He established in Christ, and therefore we are safe with an everlasting salvation.

(pp. 113-137, The Work of Christ)

Ultimately, the person who is down on himself can only be sure "because the father not only says but pays" (p.111, ibid)

Living witnesses to the Gospel

What kind of life commends the Gospel?

My stock answer would be something like Paul in 2 Corinthians 6:6: "by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love". In short, by 'the good life'.

But that isn't the whole picture. As Paul himself says in that passage it is also by "great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labours, sleepless nights, hunger" (vv. 4-5). We commend the Gospel by suffering! I don't often hear that or say that, and I think that is because I'm a closet theologian of glory.

Sinning less is how I see us commending the Gospel. But that isn't a rounded New Testament picture. In many ways it is by appearing foolish, weak and bad in the world's eyes that the Gospel is most proclaimed. Not by seeming to be wise, strong and holy.

Although this does not flow seamlessly, PT Forsyth has his own problem with the idea that it is by sinning less that we commend the Gospel:

The difference between the Christian and the world is not that the world sins and the Christian does not. It suits the world to think that it is; because it offers a handy whip to scourge the Church’s consistency while resenting its demands. But such a distinction is no part of the Church's claim. Nor does it mark off the Christian’s worldly years from his life in Christ. A difference of that kind is merely in quantity — all the sin on the one side, none of it on the other. But the real difference (I must say often) is not in quantity; it is in quality. It is not in the number of sins, but in the attitude toward sin and the things called sin. It is in the man's sympathies, his affinities; it is in his conscience, his verdict on sin, his treatment of it — whether the world's or his own.

(p.109, God the Holy Father)

So both in respect of our physical lives, and our moral lives, it is also being put to death (in the physical body by others, and the moral 'body' by ourselves) that we point people to Christ.

As Paul said "We are...always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies" (4:8-10).

The 360 degree turnaround

Listening to: Mozart: Piano Trios

1. The turn away from people to Christ

"Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes and even life itself, cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:26) [...]

Jesus' call itself already breaks the ties with the naturally given surroundings in which a person lives. It is not the disciple who breaks them; Christ himself broke them as soon as he called. Christ has untied the person's immediate connections with the world and bound the person immediately to himself.

2. Christ the mediator between person and person

It s true, there is something which comes between persons called by Christ and the given circumstances of their natural lives [...] it is Christ himself. In becoming human, he put himself between me and the given circumstances of the world. I cannot go back. He is in the middle. He has deprived those whom he has called of every immediate connection to those given realities. He wants to be the medium; everything should happen only through him. He stands not only between me and God, he also stands between me and the world, between me and other people and things. He is the mediator, not only between God and human persons, but also between person and person, and between person and reality.

3. The turn back to the world through Christ

There is no genuine love for the world except the love with which God has loved the world in Jesus Christ. "Do not love the world" (1 John 2:15) [for the sake of self, apart from gratitude to God]. But "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life" (John 3:16) [for the sake of God (and others), with gratitude to God].

4. Abraham as the role model

Abraham had to learn that the promise did not depend on Isaac, but only on God [...] He brings his son to be sacrificed [...] for the sake of the mediator. At the same time, everything that he had given up is restored to him. Abraham receives his son back. God shows him a better sacrifice which is to take Isaac's place. It is a turnaround of 360 degrees. Abraham received Isaac back, but in a different way than before. He has him through the mediator and for the sake of the mediator. As the one who was prepared to hear and obey God's command literally, he is permitted to have Isaac as though he did not have him; he is permitted to have him through Jesus Christ. No one else knows about it. Abraham comes down from the mountain with Isaac, just as he went up, but everything has changed. Christ had come between the father and the son. Abraham had left everything and followed Christ, and while he was following Christ, he was permitted to go back to live in the same world he had lived in before. Externally everything remained the same. But the old has passed away; see, everything has become new.

(pp.92-98, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship)

I thought this idea of Christ as mediator between people to be really amazing. Not 100% sure that it is the best way to understand things, but its very powerful.

BTW it seems that Bonhoeffer nicked the idea of the 360 degree circle from Barth:

When such a church embarks upon moral exhortation, its exhortation can be naught else but a criticism of all human behavior, a criticism which moves through every one of the 360 degrees of the circle of our ambiguous life

(p. 428, The Epistle to the Romans)

Following

Listening to: Bob Dylan: Highway 61 Revisited

"And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience — among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind." (Eph 2:1-3)

Without Christ we:

• follow the world; and
• follow the devil.

As we discussed in Christianity Explored tonight, that is a fairly offensive thing to say to people. But it's not only offensive, its makes no sense to us. How can they we be following the devil if we don't even believe in him? And, it isn't true to say that I mindlessly follow everyone else when I make up my own mind about things?

We follow the world and the devil in two ways:

Firstly, we do the same thing as both of them. We live for ourselves. We carry out whatever our body and mind desire to do. That is the only rule we accept, the rule of ourselves. In our assertion of self-determination, we display our unity with the world and the devil.

But secondly, we not only do the same thing as them, we do the same thing as them because of them. We learnt sin from the devil in the Garden, and we inherited sin from the world. Sin is not original to us.

"But... we are [God's] workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them." (Eph 2:4-10)

We now follow Christ. This means that we walk in good works, not in trespasses and sins. We follow Christ in a mirror image of the way in which we used to follow the world and the devil.

Firstly, we do the same thing as him. We walk in love, "as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us" (5:1). Previously we lived to satisfy our own desires. Now we seek to please God, and satisfy our neighbour, just as Christ did.

Secondly, we do the same thing as him, because of him. We are God's "workmanship...in Christ Jesus". We were dead and unable to save ourselves, but we were made alive as a new person because of God's action in Christ.

The missing commandment (Part 2)

A while back I posted what I thought was one of my more controversial posts on the absence of the commandment to "love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength" in the letters of the NT. Surprisingly it got no comments!

I've continued to muse on this, and asked a number of people about it. As I've continued to read the NT with this in the back of my mind I continue to be struck that while we are often commanded to love our neighbour, we never seem to be commanded to love God. Today I came across 1 John 3:23. Like Jesus in Mark 13 he seems to group together two commandments in one "commandment" (singular).

this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ [vertical] and love one another [horizontal]

This seems a good summary of the NT ethic. Faith towards God, and love towards our neighbour. God's love for us is always the primary thing in our relationship towards him. Our love towards others is always the primary thing in our relationship towards them. It is the two-kinds of righteousness thing again. In one dimension we are passive, in the other active.

Serious challenge though: find me a commandment to love God, or Christ, post-Cross.

It is implicit in some places, and it is assumed that we will love God if we are Christians, but I am yet to find a place where we are commanded to do so. My bible knowledge is pretty thin though.

The doctrine of the Trinity at the end!

Glen Scrivener recently posted a great post on why when doing theology we should start with the Trinity, not with any general teaching about God. I must admit I've been largely sold on this over the last few years, and found that while people may not practice it, nobody ever seems to disagree with the basic idea that the Trinity is where we should begin.... that was up until very recently, when I came across a confident broadside against it in the most surprising place.

Oswald Bayer notes that starting with the doctrine of the Trinity "is the pattern that is followed by an ever-increasing number of dogmatic theologians throughout the world" (p. 335, Martin Luther's Theology; A Contemporary Interpretation). But this is not something which he approves of. He describes as "one of the grandiose blunders of the more recent history of both philosophy and theology" (p. 339)!

He believes that the doctrine of the Trinity is "properly located neither as a bland addition nor in the middle as just one dogmatic theme among many, but correctly in the middle and correctly at the end" (p.334). The reason for this is that "the triune nature of God can only be comprehended only as an unfolding of the pure gospel" (p.335 - reminds me of the title to Tim Chester's Theology Network, "The good news of the Trinity"). He sees a number of problems if we start the doctrine of the Trinity. E.g:

• "if one proceeds in such a way, one will come dangerously close to... a brand of speculation that ignores time and the situation" (p.335)
• it "ignores or minimizes the problem of unfaith" (p.335)
• it has no place for the sufferer's experience of God as his seeming enemy, or take seriously the "reality of evil".

The basic problem though is that those who want to see the Trinity placed at the beginning see what is first in theology as the most fundamental. They are always concerned that we fit what follows to what comes before, and that much theology has fit the Trinity into the procrustean bed of a Unitarian view of God. However, a Lutheran who believes in law and then Gospel believes that what follows is the more fundamental. The Lutheran believes the good news is a surprise.

Bayer believes that we should begin with "'general' teaching about God", but not because he thinks that the Trinity is subsidiary. He has no love for the God who is not Trinity. "The God who comes to us apart from being the triune God, who is purely and completely love, 'looks on,' and has for us the grimace of the devil" (p.338). General teaching about God, even a monotheistic God, is something that belongs to the non-Christian and will be left behind in eternity.

The distinction between what is involved in the teaching about the Trinity and "general" teaching about God [...] is encountered in faith and in the hope that this distinction will be removed, along with the distinction between law and gospel, in the eschaton. The the triune God - he alone - will be all in all (1 Cor. 15:28). Then we also will no longer be assailed by the oppressive, incomprehensible hiddenness that weighs us down even to the point of our death. It will be consumed by open love which itself cannot be comprehended, which will free us from its power and which comes to us conclusively already now in the gospel.

The end that we believe in and hope for, because of the love that has come to us and has been promised to us - the consummation of the work of creation by the triune God - is misinterpreted with regard to its true character when it is claimed that it exists as a timeless principle of knowledge and existence. Its universality cannot be demonstrated in the abstract, not even with theoretical means linked to the Trinity; one cannot apply its truths to every circumstance one can postulate and treat it as an a priori. (pp.339-340)

Glen and others (hi Glen!) are driven by their conviction that we should start all our thinking about God with the Trinity to argue that the Trinity was fully understood by the OT saints. Hence the regular 'Angel of the Lord' etc debates. But while a Lutheran would admit that the Trinity was seen in the OT, just as the Gospel was preached in the OT, they would also want to retain a distinction because:

just as the chief teaching of the New Testament is really the proclamation of grace and peace through the forgiveness of sins in Christ, so the chief teaching of the Old Testament is really the teaching of the laws, the showing up of sin, and the demanding of good. (Martin Luther, Preface to the Old Testament)

For Oswald Bayer there is always a shape and a story to the Bible and to our lives. He sees those who start with the doctrine of the Trinity as flattening the contours of this story, and so missing out on the depths and the heights of the Bible's message about God.

... I must confess its shook up all my thinking. Who knows how it will all settle again.

[A few asides: (a) it is interesting to note that Karl Barth was led the way in both making the doctrine of the Trinity at the beginning of theology, and in arguing that we should deal with Gospel then law. (b) It is also interesting how those who start with the Trinity always seem (IMHO) to be struggling to not say that creation and redemption were necessary for God. (c) In The Cruciality of the Cross PT Forsyth argues that the Atonement (i.e. the Gospel) drives us to the Incarnation, not the other way round. But it could be equally said of the doctrine of the Trinity. The Gospel drives us to the Trinity from our point of view, even if the Trinity is what leads to the Gospel from God's point of view.]

How to seek to have our relationship needs met

Listening to: Sovereign Grace Music: Worship God

In The Four Loves, CS Lewis begins by making a helpful distinction between what he calls "need-love" and "gift-love". He explains that:

The typical example of Gift-love would be that love which moves a man to work and plan and save for the future well-being of his family which he will die without sharing or seeing; of the second, that which sends a lonely or frightened child to its mother's arms

He successfully shows that there is nothing wrong with "need-love". We all have emotional, physical and spiritual needs that we need meeting. So how should we go about having those needs met in our relationships?

Firstly, I think it is helpful to take the point that Ed Welch makes in When People Are Big and God Is Small. We need to examine our "needs" and consider whether they are actually sinful wants. We shouldn't just assume that because we feel the need for something that it should be met.

But given that we have done that, how should we pursue the meeting of those good relationship needs we have? Perhaps we should just look for them from God. Shouldn't he meet our needs for love, recognition, friendship etc? This seems to have some weight because to seek the meeting of our needs elsewhere looks (a) like idolatry; and (b) hopeless, because of people's limited ability to "deliver".

But if we should look only to God, is there still a place for desiring marriage, friendship etc? We know that these things are good things, but maybe only in moderation. You shouldn't love your wife too much, or be too dependent on anyone. Perhaps we just have to keep things in proportion, and ensure we always are more dependant on God. Perhaps Tim Keller definition of an idol is helpful:

It is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God (my italics)

But the first commandment, is not "You are to have no other gods more important than me", but "You are to have no other gods". God is one.

Martin Luther is right when he says that "it is God alone ... from whom we receive anything good". But, no sooner has he seemingly backed some super-spiritual monasticism than he says that "much that is good comes to us from human beings". He believes both these things because:

we receive our blessings not from [human beings], but from God through them. Creatures are only the hands, channels, and means through which God bestows all blessings. For example, he gives to the mother breasts and milk for her infant or gives grain and all sorts of fruits from the earth for sustenance - things that no creature could produce by itself.

In fact, to reject our needs being met through other human beings is to "through arrogance...seek other methods and ways than those God has commanded". In seeking to have our needs met only in God, we could be in danger of actually spurning his gifts and before we know it we would "not be receiving [our needs met] from God, but seeking them from ourselves".

But returning to the practicalities of how we should seek to have our needs met in relationships, this means that if our emotional needs (as well as 'spiritual' ones) are met by God, then we should receive them in the same way as we always receive gifts from God: passively.

But as when we receive our righteousness passively, that does not mean that we are not active. But we are active not in earning or obtaining it for ourself. The activity comes from the faith that we already have everything in Christ, even if we do not see or experience it yet.

On reflection I think that it is in those relationships where I have set out to serve and give, and continued to have to do so, have been the ones that have given the most to me and helped me through the most. But when I think about relationships that I have sought for what they give to me the fruit goes rotten in my hands. They just don't deliver.

Perhaps then we should seek only gift-love in our relationships, but then we will receive need-love anyway. The problems with idolatry come when we are actively looking for our needs met in relationships with other people, instead of passively expecting to receive through them by God's grace. Only in self-giving love are we free (as Jesus was when he gave himself for his people) and only in that way do we actually receive the love and glory we long for (as Jesus received from his Father who glorified him because of his obedience).

In Luther's book The Freedom of the Christian he sets out two famous statements:

1. "A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none"
2. "A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all"

He is basically saying there are two dimensions to life and if we misunderstand this then everything goes astray (The two kinds of righteousness). By faith in Christ we share in his lordship of Creation. Everything serves us and works for our good (Rom 8:28 etc), and this happens freely apart from any effort or works of our own. But at the same time we are called and empowered by this grace to serve everyone we meet. We don't do things to receive justification before God, or good things from people, but we serve everyone without any hope of gain because we already have everything in Christ who gives through his creatures.

By the way, I haven't thought about all this a great deal until very recently, so please feel free to poke holes. It would be helpful if you do. Hopefully, its not totally obscure.

Thoughts on how to do evangelism

Listening to: Mozart: Cosi fan tutte (interspersed with preview of Thea Gilmore's live album on Amazon!)

[Here are some hasty thoughts on my philosophy on how to 'do' evangelism. Perhaps one day I'll turn it into something proper. As this has quite big implications for my life it is probably more important than almost anything else that turns up on this blog so please do point out anything amiss. Also as a by-the-way, I don't live up to this at all.]

A. HOW PEOPLE BECOME CHRISTIANS

1. Prayer

Because evangelism is God's mission before it is ours, prayer should be the most important activity of evangelism. It is God alone that enables people to see the truth of the Gospel (2 Corinthians 4). The Lord's prayer includes within it the prayer for the coming of the Kingdom of God, and that grows as people become Christians (e.g. Luke 16:16) and its consummation is hastened by every person that is converted (2 Peter 3). Paul commands us to pray for everyone because of God's desire to save all people (1 Timothy 2:1-4).

2. Witness of the spoken word

But of course God uses means and faith comes by hearing the word of Christ (Romans 10:17; cf. 1 John 1:1-3 etc). It is God's word which converts people, because it never comes back without achieving its purpose (Isaiah 55:11). Our imperfect lives, and limited resources are never going to be up to the task of converting people. Even Jesus who lived the perfect life, and had the most impressive show-stopping stunts, 'proclaimed' the good news. The reason the spoken word has priority is that the Gospel is firstly something that happens outside of ourselves. While the Gospel is something that happens to us, and in us, it is firstly something done to and in Christ.

3. Witness of community of love

Jesus also teaches that people will belief in him because of the unity in love of the church community (John 17:23). People looking on the community of people preaching a message of forgiveness and love and will judge the truthfulness of that message on the basis of whether the people doing the preaching are living consistently with what they say. This is why Lesslie Newbigin described the church as the 'hermeneutic of the gospel'. Francis Schaeffer also saw the importance of this for evangelism and termed 'the observable love of true Christians for true Christians' as the 'final apologetic'. The good works of the community is a light for people to see and then believe in Christ (Matthew 5).

4. Witness of individuals living in hope

Christians should seek to do good in all of their lives though to point people to Christ (1 Peter 2:12). Employees should work hard and honestly for their employers to avoid people having contempt for the Gospel (1 Peter 2:15). Spouses by their conduct in marriage may convert their unbelieving partner (1 Peter 3:1; cf. 1 Corinthians 7:16). Sometimes this way of living will be seen in Christians in community by non-Christians but often it will just be individuals that they come into contact with. But they should notice that the individual Christian they know is not living for this world, but has a hope beyond it, and so they will want to know the reason (1 Peter 3:15).

5. Witness of miracles

It is easy to see in the Gospels and Acts how people believed in the Gospel because of the miracles of Jesus and the Apostles (John 10:25, Hebrews 2:3-4 etc). Even today many people do become Christians because of miracles.

B. IMPLICATIONS

1. Pray lots

Self explanatory really. But is prayer a central part of the church's life? And if so, is it prayer for the world or for our own personal needs? Tim Chester comments that in "the UK the traditional midweek church meeting often provided a focus for missionary prayer. But the house groups that have in many cases replaced it can all too easily become insular and self-regarding" (p.219, The Message of Prayer).

2. Call all the witnesses to the stand

Leaving aside the vexed issue of miracles, are in our evangelism are we integrating all the ways in which the gospel is witnessed to? Do our colleagues just see us living as individuals with hope but never as part of a community of love? Do people experience hear the message but never get to see the community of love in action?

I really like the Christianity Explored training graph of amount of Gospel Content v. depth of relationship. I think it was right that both should grow together. But I would make it a 3D graph with spoken word/individual relationships/corporate relationships all increasing together. As we get to know our colleagues more we should speak more about the Gospel, and they should get to know our church community more. And the same with all our networks of relationships (including church relationships).

In short, we should be questioning any activity which does not include all the witnesses to Jesus.

3. The prescription for the church and the world is the same

It is striking that what brings people to Christ, is the same thing as helps them to grow in him. It is as we hear the gospel that we grow stronger (Hebrews 5:11-14), it is as we are rebuked and encouraged by the church that we become more Christ-like (1 Thessalonians 5:11; Hebrews 10:25).

The problems for both non-Christians as well as Christians is unbelief, and the Gospel to believe is the same for both.

Because of that we don't need to have one set of activities for non-Christians and another for Christians. They can and should be the same. But that means we should have an eye to both Christians and non-Christians in all our meetings (as Paul says 1 Corinthians 14:23). Meetings should always be accessible but should also recognise that the felt needs of both Christians (e.g. rousing worship or traditional hymns etc) or non-Christians (e.g. a good moral environment for children) are not what we are here for. The church is in the business of preaching the gospel and bringing people under the Lordship of Christ.

4. Break down barriers to witness

What is it that stops us bringing all these witnesses onto the stand together for people to see and hear?

Perhaps we work in one area, live in another, and go to church in yet another so all three witnesses will never get together. Perhaps we only have time to build relationships with church people because we are too busy with church activities. Or perhaps we only have time to build relationships with colleagues, but not people at church, because we are too busy with work. Or perhaps the activities of church (organisationally and socially) are totally divorced from those of our family, friends and colleagues outside church. Or perhaps we are not being challenged from the pulpit to live the kind of radically unworldly lives that would turn heads.

Questions to ask of scripture

What are the questions we should ask when approaching a passage of Scripture?

The first question we must ask of every biblical text is simply this—what does it tell us about God? What does it say about who he is and about what he does?

The second question is: what does this text say about us human beings? What are we meant to be and what has gone wrong?

The third and final question is: what has God done about this and what does he expect of us in the light of what he has done? (source)

I quite like those, so will try and remember them. I may want to change it a little to emphasise that it is God speaking to us, but generally I think they're quite helpful. So like most helpful stuff I know I'll forget, I'll blog them.

The way of escape

You do not understand Christ till you understand His cross...

It is only by understanding it that we escape from

religion with no mind,
    and from religion which is all mind,
from pietism with its lack of critical judgment,
    and from rationalism [both liberal and conservative] with its lack of everything else.

(formatting mine, p.26, PT Forsyth, The Cruciality of the Cross)

The narrow road

I nearly finished (The Cost of) Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer while on holiday. An incredible, if occasionally frustrating book. Here is a particularly wonderful quote (formating mine):

The road of the disciples is narrow.

  It is easy to go past it;
  it is easy to miss it;
  it is easy to lose it,

even for those who have already walked it.
It is hard to find. The path is narrow indeed; there is a real danger of falling off on both sides.

  To be called to do the extraordinary,
    but not to see and know that one is doing it
      - that is a narrow road.

  To give witness to and to confess the truth of Jesus,
    but to love the enemy of his truth, who is his enemy and our enemy, with the unconditional love of Jesus Christ
      - that is a narrow road.

  To believe in Jesus' promise that those who follow shall possess the earth,
    but to encounter the enemy unarmed, to prefer suffering injustice to doing ill
      - that is a narrow road.

  To perceive other people as being weak and wrong
    but never to judge them;
  to proclaim the good news to them,
    but never to throw pearls before swine
      - that is a narrow road.

It is an unbearable road. The danger of falling off threatens every minute.

  As long as I recognize this road as one I am commanded to walk, and try to walk it in fear of myself, it is truly impossible.
    But if I see Jesus Christ walking ahead of me, step by step,
      then I will be protected on this path.

  If I look at the danger in what I am doing, if I look at the path
    instead of at him who is walking ahead of me,
      then my foot is already slipping.

He himself is the way.
He is the narrow road and the narrow gate.
The only thing that matters is finding him.

If we know that, then we will walk the narrow way to life through the narrow gate of the cross of Jesus Christ, then the narrowness of the way itself will reassure us. How could the road of the Son of God on earth, which we are to walk as citizens of two realms at the boundary between the world and the kingdom of heaven, be a wide one? The narrow way has to be the right way.

(p. 176, Discipleship)

Thielicke on interpreting creation

Listening to: Schubert: Symphony No.9

Hi everyone. In case you didn't know I've been away for a week in the Lake District, so sorry for the blog-silence. I had a good time, and read a fair bit which should mean lots of blogging coming up, but I probably won't have time to get any thoughts down so maybe it won't.

Last night I started a book of sermons by Helmut Thielicke on Jesus' Parables. By way of a preface he discusses the idea of the parables as "God's picturebook", and how the world can also function in this way. It has some baring on one of the niggling thoughts of this year - the gospel in creation - so I thought I'd post it at length:

For anybody who does not see the world from the point of view from which Jesus Christ, the teller of the parables, sees it, the whole profusion of parabolic images turns into a confused labyrinth; for him the doors are shut instead of opened. Are the birds of the air and the lilies of the field really nothing more than pointers to the Lord of creation, who cares for all his creatures? Or are they not also figures of a world of nature that is dumb, nature that is silent to me, that goes on its way, careless of my concerns and my loneliness. Are the stars just symbols of an eternal order or are they not also a sign of orderly processes that go on quite indifferent to my lot? May they not chill me with the cold of cosmic space rather than make me feel the pulse-beat of a Father's heart? And one thing more; may not the picture language of this world lead us to gods and idols instead of to God? Do not all the pseudo absolutes and all the isms, the hubristic attempts of philosophy to attribute to a single phenomenon - whether it be spirit, matter, or an idea - the prerogatives of ultimate reality - do not all these have their source in this same attempt to interpret the picture language of this world and derive its favorite symbols from it?

[...] In the parables of Jesus the opposite way is taken. He first shows us his Father and points to the "heart of all things." Then from there the things themselves gain their meaning. We start with God and then learn to discover the world anew; but anybody who tries to discover God through the world sees only the distorted reflections of created things, a reflex of his own mind.

That is the reason why the picturebook of created things is in itself of no use at all. Indeed, it confines and limits us to this introverted creation. The mystery of our temporal and eternal destiny is disclosed to us only in the great textbook of God - the Word in which he speaks to us and tells us who he is and what his purposes are. But it is of the mercy of his condescension that in doing so he employs the images and figures of our world. And these images are helpful and comforting; they find us where we are at home. They are so homely that they make us feel at home and give us the certainty that God is not in some remote, inaccessible beyond, but that he gives to everything around us a relationship that leads to his heart, not only grain and fruit, but also the far country and the father's house, summer and winter, lamps and night, money and clothing, weddings and death.

When we read the parables we are surrounded by the scenery of a world that is very near, our world. But everything depends upon our finding the right entrance from which their meaning is discovered [...] The heart of all things discloses the things themselves; but the things themselves do not reveal the heart.

(pp.11-12, The Waiting Father: Sermons on the Parables of Jesus)

As an aside, does anyone feel that this kind of "God is the key"/"God must be the starting point" argument you find in Barth, Forsyth and so many others often seems to assume that if you just start with the right intellectual starting point all will work out ok? I.e. dump natural theology and start with the concept of the Crucified Lord and all becomes clear.

Perhaps this misses the need for repentance and faith and for the work of the Holy Spirit. Only with the Gospel preached as wisdom of God, accompanied by the Spirit, and grasped by faith, will the world open up to us.

PS for an fascinating story about the encounters of Helmut Thielicke, Karl Barth and Billy Graham have a read of this post.

Contextualization and names for God

The BBC News website brings out a concrete question, of wide-significance, on how we communicate the gospel. It reports that:

The interception by Malaysian authorities of thousands of Bibles bound for Christians in the country has produced the latest flashpoint.

The reason - the Bibles use the word "Allah" to described God, and that's been banned by the government...

Muslim groups claim that Christian use of a word so closely associated with Islam in Bibles and children's books could be aimed at winning converts.

That sparks off lots of connexions in my head. Firstly it reminds me of a quote from Lesslie Newbigin I read yesterday about his time in India:

When I preach in a village where Christianity is not known, and where the name of Jesus is not known ... I have to begin by using the word Kadavul. But of course when I use the word Kadavul they're thinking of Vishnu or Shiva or some other Hindu God. I know that, but I can't help it. It's only when I begin to tell the stories of what God has done that they begin to say, 'Kadavul is not what we had thought.'

Secondly, it reminds me of the Old Testament use of the word 'El' to describe God.

God's name is important to him. But I don't know quite when contextualization becomes accommodation. A difficult question I think, but I suspect we may be too cautious.

Why do I believe in the resurrection of Jesus?

So this is what got churned out late this evening on a rather tight timescale, and with no time to do any reading at all. You can probably tell that I don't write essays (except on law), and I don't give talks. But I post it for what it's worth. I could have done better, but I could have done worse. I'm pretty sure that engagement was my biggest problem, although some of the idiosyncratic way I've gone about the exercise is a reflection of the conversation up till now. Pray that the truth that is in it is accompanied by the power of the Holy Spirit which can break hard hearts.

Asking me why I believe that about 2000 years ago a man called Jesus was raised from from shameful death to a new indestructible life (as the bible describes happened) was to give me quite a challenge. This maybe because by nature I find it difficult to give a short answer to any question, but it is also because the reasons for believing it are so many, so interconnected and so multi-layered that it is difficult to reduce them into a few bullet points. But as I've thought how I should answer this question I've been brought to a growing realisation that the shortest answer I could give is: I believe the resurrection because of God's speech.

A. Peter's Speech

However, a good place to begin thinking about why we should believe in the resurrection is a speech delivered by Peter to a crowd of Jews 50 days after Jesus had risen from the dead. Peter had followed Jesus during his life, listened to his teaching, but when Jesus had been arrested Peter had denied that Jesus had anything to do with him. He had been afraid for his life, and quite understandably. Peter got away with his life, but Jesus was killed by the authorities. But Peter, together with the other followers of Jesus, were rescued from their fear and having met with Jesus after he was risen from the dead were emboldened to speak to hundreds of Jews less than two months after their leader had been executed. To the same crowd that had called for his leader to be executed Peter is recorded as saying these words (Acts 2:24-40):

'God released [Jesus] from the horrors of death and raised him back to life, for death could not keep him in its grip. King David said this about him:
‘I see that the Lord is always with me.
I will not be shaken, for he is right beside me.
No wonder my heart is glad,
and my tongue shouts his praises!
My body rests in hope.
For you will not leave my soul among the dead
or allow your Holy One to rot in the grave.
You have shown me the way of life,
and you will fill me with the joy of your presence.’
“Dear brothers, think about this! You can be sure that the patriarch David wasn’t referring to himself, for he died and was buried, and his tomb is still here among us. But he was a prophet, and he knew God had promised with an oath that one of David’s own descendants would sit on his throne. David was looking into the future and speaking of the Messiah’s resurrection. He was saying that God would not leave him among the dead or allow his body to rot in the grave.
“God raised Jesus from the dead, and we are all witnesses of this. Now he is exalted to the place of highest honour in heaven, at God’s right hand. And the Father, as he had promised, gave him the Holy Spirit to pour out upon us, just as you see and hear today. For David himself never ascended into heaven, yet he said,
‘The Lord said to my Lord,
“Sit in the place of honor at my right hand
until I humble your enemies,
making them a footstool under your feet.”’
“So let everyone in Israel know for certain that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, to be both Lord and Messiah!”
Peter’s words pierced their hearts, and they said to him and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?”
Peter replied, “Each of you must repent of your sins and turn to God, and be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. This promise is to you, and to your children, and even to the Gentiles—all who have been called by the Lord our God.” Then Peter continued preaching for a long time, strongly urging all his listeners, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation!”

So those who received his word were baptised, and there were added to the church that day about three thousand people.'

I said before that I believed Jesus was raised because of God's speech. He is the prime witness to the truth of the resurrection. But God does not always speak as a voice from the clouds, he usually uses means through which his voice is heard. I notice 4 ways in which God speaks and acts in this speech of Peter:

1. Jesus Christ
2. In the followers of Jesus before he was born (the Old Testament)
3. In the early followers of Jesus (the New Testament)
4. In those who received the word

1. Jesus Christ - God's speech

How can we know each other? In daily experience we know we can only know each other by speaking to each other. I may know nothing about my colleague a few desks away, but the reason for this is because they have never told me anything about themselves. That may be because I never asked, but even if I asked, it is up to them whether I get to know them or not. Only if they choose to speak to me can I know who they are.

How can we know if there is God? If there is a God how can we know his character? And if we know his character how can we know how he thinks of us? We can only know if he speaks. Mercifully, he has done just that. And because of the person who he is, he spoke to us in a person - the person of Jesus Christ. It is because of the claim of Jesus Christ that he is the speech of God towards us that it matters whether he was risen from the dead. If he claimed that intimate relationship with God and he is now dust then we have no reason to believe he was who he said he was. But as a witness of Jesus from the dead declared a 20-30 years later: 'he was shown to be the Son of God [i.e. he was shown to be who he claimed to be] when he was raised from the dead by the power of the Holy Spirit'. The resurrection matters, because the identity of Jesus Christ matters.

2. The Old Testament - God's speech about Jesus Christ

In his speech Peter quotes the ancestor of Jesus, King David. About 1000 years before Jesus was born King David wrote songs, which were sung by the people of Israel as they hoped for a new king, greater than David, who would lead them to a peace that they never experienced under David or any of his heirs. David had brought peace to the land of Israel, which throughout most of its history until then, and for most of its history since, has been constantly at war. But David never was able to pacify our greatest enemy that conquers us all - death. But he did look forward to a day when Jesus Christ would do that.

David looked forward to a day when God would not allow a man to rot in the grave. When there would be a man who lived forever. And if that man was the king of a people then the people that live under that king will share in his victory and his life. David wanted to share in that victory, although he knew it wasn't a victory he could achieve on his, he could only share in the victory of another.

But why could David not defeat death? Why can we not do it, despite all our best efforts to fend it off with exercise, technology and healthy eating? The reason is that it is a judgment pronounced on all of us as people who have rejected God. David recognised that the only person who would not be defeated by death was the one whom God helped, and the only one who God would help would be his 'Holy One', a person who was obeyed him completely.

In all four gospels we are told how Jesus was brought to trial but he couldn't be found guilty of anything. He is the only person who has ever lived who had a clean conscience. Who never lived only for himself, who worshipped God perfectly, and served other people to the extent of loosing his life for their sake. In addition, although he didn't look like a king he was of royal blood as he spilt that royal blood for the people he leads there stood above his head a sign, ironically placed by those who crucified him: it read 'the King of the Jews' - the only 'charge' they could justify killing him for.

But when Peter quotes David in his speech he is not only bringing a great historical figure to side with him, he is also bringing God. The Jews recognised that the Old Testament, which included this song of David, was spoken by God through human beings. It carried God's authority, and Peter was bringing God into the court to give his verdict on the resurrection. God's verdict was that it was true. As you read surprisingly often in the New Testament writings, and as the universal church creeds state: 'He was buried, and he was raised from the dead on the third day, just as the [Old Testament] Scriptures said' (1 Cor 15:4).

3. The New Testament - God's speech about Jesus Christ

Peter's speech is recorded for us in the New Testament. That collection of 27 books was written by a number of early followers of Jesus Christ, including Peter and other eye-witnesses of Jesus' resurrection. The reason that 3000 Jews came to believe that Jesus had been risen from the dead on that day 2000 years ago, was because people who had seen it talked to them about it. As Peter said: 'God raised Jesus from the dead, and we are all witnesses of this'. The whole New Testament is a talk like this: a witness to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and what that achieved.

But we do not believe their witness to the resurrection purely on their own authority. Indeed they did not claim to be speaking on their own authority. As their title, 'Apostle', indicates - they were 'sent ones' or 'messenger' (as 'apostle' translates). They called themselves 'ambassadors' because they weren't bringing their own message, but the message of God. The New Testament writers spoke because Jesus had been given 'the Holy Spirit to pour out upon [them]' which is what the Jews present saw and heard.

During his life Jesus had promised that when he was raised to new life he would send his Holy Spirit who would give his followers the words to speak (e.g. Mark 13:11). When the Jews heard Peter speak, and when we read Peter's words today, they testify that Jesus was raised from the dead, but we not only hear the words of an eye-witness, but we hear the words of the most reliable and trustworthy witness there could be - God himself.

4. In those who received the word - God's speech into people's hearts and minds

It is recorded that 3000 people that day 'received' Peter's 'word'. Why did they do that?

They had never met Peter. A man being brought to life after 3 days was not something that they were going to believe on a whim. After all, this was just another man's opinion wasn't it?

In one of the earliest writings of the early church, written about 20 years after Jesus died, the apostle ('messenger') Paul remembers how people in the city of Thessalonica first heard this remarkable story of Jesus' resurrection. He wrote: 'we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers'.

The Thessalonians could have received this message of Paul's as just another human opinion. You could understand why. Instead they received it for 'what it really is', 'the Word of God'. Again they saw that the most reliable witness there is had been brought into the courtroom and they believed him. God said that Jesus had been risen from the dead, so they believed it.

But why did they accept it as 'the word of God' instead as 'the word of men'? Paul suggests the answer. He thanks 'God constantly for' their receiving of the message, and he thanks God because it was God's work. As he says God's word is 'at work in you believers'. God is in the business of speaking through the external message of the bible into people's hearts and minds. He opens eyes to see what is really there all along.

B. Our unwillingness to believe

Why does it require God to open eyes for people to see that this is a message from God and not just another opinion held by other human beings? Shouldn't the strength of the argument convince everyone? Is it a weakness of the evidence that God has to get involved and we can't work it out for ourselves?

No, it is not because God's message that is unclear that supernatural work is required for us to believe it. It is because our minds are unclear, because they are clouded and cannot see clearly. But why are our minds unclear and not able believe the truth when it is clearly presented? Why does it need a miracle for us to see?

We know from our experience that we all engage in wishful-thinking. I am continually amazed by people's capacity to believe what they want to believe. It is easy to see in other people but less easy with ourselves. We can look back on history and see incredible blindness to the facts in the 'arguments' put forward for slavery and the 'reasons' that Romans worshipped their all too human emperors. We can also see it in our daily lives as people refuse to see that they are treating another person unfairly, or are certain that they are the most qualified person for that job even when they clearly are not. But everyday we shape our 'reality' around us. This is partly to do with our ignorance, but more often it is due to false opinions about ourselves. We doubt we can be intellectually wrong, and doubt we can be morally wrong, and the facts have to be fitted round those convictions.

Christian's see that this same wishful-thinking occurs with people's reaction to God's message to them. We close our eyes to God so we don't have to look at ourselves, and we close our eyes to ourselves so we don't have to look at God.

But why would we not want to believe the resurrection? Peter again provides the answer in his speech: 'God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, to be both Lord and Messiah'. We are responsible for the death of Jesus just as much as the Jews in the crowd listening to Peter. We have wanted him dead our whole lives, but it turns out that he is not dead but our king. We have wanted to live our life our own way - to decide for ourselves how best to live, we only trust our own opinions and look out for number one. Any threat to our sovereignty over our lives we send to the guillotine - and God is the biggest threat we have ever faced because as our creator he demands everything. But if we kill God and he is brought back to life, then we're in trouble. Much better to pretend it never happened, to continue shaping reality around ourselves and our dream of how things should be.

C. Historical evidences for the resurrection

This may all seem like the resurrection could happen on another plane of reality. But Christians believe that it did happen in history, in a certain place at a certain time. Because of this there are inevitably a number of historical evidences for belief in the resurrection. My time is running low so I will only quickly mention some:

1. The empty tomb

As we have seen, within weeks of the resurrection of Jesus people were publicly claiming to have seen Jesus raised to new life. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for the authorities to squash Christianity before it got going by producing the body.

2. Witnesses

We have already seen how the disciples were witnessing to Jesus' resurrection within weeks of it happening. In his first letter to the church in Corinth, written 15-20 years after the event, Paul writes that (1 Cor 15:3-8):

'I passed on to you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me. Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said. He was buried, and he was raised from the dead on the third day, just as the Scriptures said. He was seen by Peter and then by the Twelve. After that, he was seen by more than 500 of his followers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he was seen by James and later by all the apostles. Last of all, as though I had been born at the wrong time, I also saw him.'

In this public document, designed to be read aloud and circulated, Paul effectively invites his readers to speak to one of the 500+ people, 'most of whom are still alive', for corroboration of the story. The story of the resurrection was not first recounted decades after the event, but from the beginning of the church's existence, and it was accounted for by hundreds of eye-witnesses. The truth of the resurrection and other events of Jesus' life were 'passed on to' Paul, who was converted only a few years after Jesus' death. The resurrection was a common and widely attested belief of all the early church from the word go.

The first witnesses though we are told in the gospel accounts were women. This is significant because women were far from the ideal fake-witnesses if you wanted to fabricate a story. Their low social status meant they could not even testify in court, and the inclusion of them as witnesses in the gospel accounts would have undermined the credibility of the account to the contemporary sceptic. Their inclusion only makes sense if they were in historical reality the first witnesses of the risen Jesus.

3. Changed followers

As we have already discussed Peter and the other followers of Jesus abandoned Jesus when he was arrested. When Jesus is raised from the dead he finds them hiding in a small room, avoiding any contact with the authorities. But within weeks these followers are on the streets telling people that Jesus, and not Caesar, was king. From being afraid to leave the house, Jesus' followers risked their life and usually lost it to tell people about Jesus. Why could explain this transformation except a real experience of the risen Jesus? Why would people die for a belief if they knew it was wrong? There is no other explanation than that they were given hope beyond death by the promise of Jesus who had defeated death.

Paul, who we have already met a few times, was one of the boldest of these witnesses to the resurrection, and died in Rome for telling people about what he had seen. Yet before the resurrection he had not just been afraid of telling people about Jesus, he had been trying to kill those who believed he had risen from the dead. Why would he change from sworn enemy of the church to one of its greatest missionaries if he had not seen Christ alive?

4. Disjunctions with ancient culture

Many people would suggest that we shouldn't believe the resurrection because people were always claiming crazy stuff like that at the time. But this is simply not the case.

Firstly, we shouldn't assume that ancient people were ignorant of the fact that people do not come back to life. They lived with the reality of death in a way we cannot imagine today. They knew, as we all do, without any assistance from modern science or enlightenment philosophy that people just do not come back to life after 3 days. We shouldn't assume that ancient people were stupid - they did not believe stories of the resurrection lightly and there are many accounts in the bible of the idea being scoffed at.

We shouldn't believe that the resurrection of Jesus fitted into the ancient Jewish or Greek worldview either. The Jewish people looked forward to the resurrection of everybody into a new resuscitated body. Christians said that just one man had been raised, and his body was different to the one that he lived his life in. The Greeks were looking forward to a new non-physical existence after death. The idea of a new physical life just didn't fit their outlook on the world.

Neither was it known for revolutionary movements to claim their leader had come back from the dead. Historian and Bishop, Tom Wright, observes that there were a great many people claiming to be the messiah in Israel at that time, but 'in not one single case do we hear the slightest mention of the disappointed followers claiming that their hero had been raised from the dead. They knew better. Resurrection was not a private event. Jewish revolutionaries whose leader had been executed by the authorities, and who managed to escape arrest themselves, had two options: give up on revolution, or find another leader. Claiming that the original leader was alive again was simply not an option'.

Such a new idea, could not be invented, but could only be explained by an event that demanded a rethinking of their contemporary paradigms.

D. The Good news of the resurrection of Jesus

Why should we care about this? Why should we read anyone, let alone this guy called Dave Kirkman who doesn't even know the meaning of brevity, discuss the reality an event that occurred 2000 years ago?

As I've already briefly mentioned the answer is in Peter's statement that the resurrection proves that Jesus is both Lord and Messiah (Greek: 'Christ'). This is big news. Early Christians summarised the Gospel (translated: 'the good news') most often in the phrase: 'Jesus is Lord'. If you reject it this is bad news, but if you recognise it and accept it then it becomes what it truly is - good news.

Jesus is Lord, but we try and make ourselves masters of our own destiny. We refuse to accept that he is king and we are not, even though as creator he has every right over you, and as a perfectly loving person he merits love in return. Because of that we deserve death for what we have done and that is what we taste now as our bodies decay and then rot. But when we are raised from the dead like Jesus, and he asserts his Lordship over the powers of evil and death, those who reject him will be rejected in the same way, and they will continue to die for all eternity. That's a pretty horrible thing to imagine, and not a fun thing to talk about, but its true so I'm telling you even though it is uncomfortable.

But the good news is greater than the bad news. The good news is that the punishment of death that we deserve was taken by Jesus. He took it on his own shoulders and was crushed by the weight of it. But because he didn't deserve it - because he was the 'Holy One' promised - God by the power of his Holy Spirit raised him from the dead. And as he took our punishment of death, we can share in his vindication to new life. If we want to receive this new life that the resurrection promises then it is ours. As Peter says the response to this message should be to turn away from our old lives (repentance) and receive with empty hands the word of forgiveness Peter talks about and baptism displays. This forgiveness is wonderful news. It means that our past is killed and we are no longer bound by it, and we have a new identity which we share with Jesus who identified with us. As Paul said that Jesus was declared to be 'Son of God' by his resurrection, we can like him live by children of God and live life in secure relationship with our Father who created us.

The resurrection is the promise of that. It is a promise that we will remain persons and not become either worm food in the circle of life, or an ingredient in the universe's spiritual soup. We will remain personal individuals, and we will remain physical beings who can enjoy life as God designed it to be when he created it - life in the world, in right relationship with him.