Christological titles and stories

Listening to: Balmorhea: Constellations

Prompted, but not in response to, Chris's blog (go read it). This post is largely a riff on Gerhard Forde's argument in pp.62-67 of Theology is for Proclamation, which is where the quotes are from unless otherwise stated. I haven't really thought it all through so please pick holes.

Jesus' question in Mark 8 "Who do you say that I am?" is a question that Jesus cannot answer directly. "Traditionally", Forde says, "titles cannot be self-designations" (cf. John 8:54: "If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing"). Therefore Jesus only makes "an implied christological claim", and "does not speak of himself openly and directly".

Instead he puts others "on the spot to speak for" themselves. As soon as we start to talk about Jesus we find that the question of what title to give him is "inevitable". "We are called upon [like Peter was] to make explicit what was implicit in him".

There are two inter-related dangers in this:

The first danger is that we rewrite the story to fit what the title means in our culture.

Every new title brings with it its own world of meaning, its own story. Inevitably pressure is exerted in countless subtle ways to rewrite the story to fit the title [...] Perhaps that is why the Jesus of the Gospels either refuses the titles or wants them kept secret. The story is not yet over and all the fine titles press toward a different end.

To avoid this danger "the title must be transformed to fit the [true] story." I.e. language, and the culture expressed in language, must be 'redeemed'. But Jesus will ensure that this happens. In his church it will happen in part now and universally it will happen in the future when "every tongue confess[es] that Jesus Christ is Lord".

Most evangelicals today think that content is all that matters and that the form and mediums we use to express it (e.g. the style of music, venues, the language we use) are insignificant. Jamie Smith, sees this as naive and criticises evangelicalism for:

unwittingly reducing Jesus to one more commodity precisely because, in the name of "relevance," they've adopted a worship "style" that simply mimics the mall. Since ... the form/content distinction is specious, you can't simply take Gospel "content" and drop it into the "form" of the mall's worship because that form is already loaded and primed to another end or telos. This doesn't make the the church relevant; it reduces Jesus to a commodity.

However, this wise caution about Jesus being co-opted to serve another end can go to an extreme which is a lack of confidence in the power of the Word to transform what seems unredeemable by the Holy Spirit. Luther and Melanchthon in the 16th century would justify themselves before more radical reformers for being slow to reform the liturgies of the church because they were confident that as long as the Gospel was preached it had power enough to transform everything else. It has the power, and God's promise, to burst out of any constraints placed upon it.

We should find a middle road of confidence but not complacency that is realistic about both the power of the Devil and the power of God over our language and liturgies.

The second danger is that we rewrite the story to fit what we, personally, would like the title to mean.

The hearer, it should be realized, has a stake in the giving of titles. The title represents dreams and hopes: the final ratification of our aspirations; a judge who will finally give evildoers their comeuppance; a Messiah, a Christ who will finally do in all the enemies; a Son of God who will be a universal ruler; a liberator; a man for others; one in whom God-conciousness reaches its zenith [...] We would like nothing better than that all our dreams, without alteration, should be realized in him.

To avoid this danger we must be changed by the title. With Jesus' question "who do you say I am?" we are "drawn into the story" and either it is fitted to us or we are moulded by it. Our dreams and our loves have to be reshaped by the story of Jesus, so that we long to see God face-to-face, we hate evil and love communion with God and his church.

This need for change of the culture and ourselves (not that you can separate the two) cannot be avoided because Jesus will be king, and not let titles rule him. It is also a radical change of death and new-birth. That is why Jesus follows Peter's confession and rebuke with the statement that "if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me."

We have to reach the "end of our story". We are drawn into Jesus' story by the confession, and if we cannot shape it around ourselves then we will be shaped by Jesus' story of death and resurrection.