Go there, but don't stay there

"It’s okay not to be okay — but it's not okay to stay there" (Matt Chandler, HT Justin Taylor)

Isn't that great?!

Our lives are characterised by suffering and sin. The cross overshadows all of us and it is more than "okay", it is good for us to see ourselves in the place of the cross and not deny that we are under the curse of death.

But, it is not okay to stay there because if we are on a journey with Jesus we have hope of three days later rising from the dead to a new life of praise and thankfulness in the presence of God.

In some churches it is not okay to be miserable and to mourn, either for suffering ("earth is not our home") or our sin ("everyone sins, you're not that bad"). In other churches there is no joy over the good things in creation ("earth is not our home") or the good things of redemption ("displays of emotion are not necessary in worship"). It is good for a church to be marked by both in a constant re-telling of the Gospel story of death to life. And the movement from one to another is important because that shows that life with God is our goal, and suffering is only the way we walk to get there. We repent of our sin so we can have faith in Christ, and we mourn at loss so we can rejoice consistent with that when what we lost is restored to us.

Most spiritual issues that I see people struggle with are a result of not "moving on" in this Gospel-story way. They are trapped in self-hatred, introspection and sorrow over the life they have been dealt. Most spiritual issues that I see people not struggle with is an avoidance of the narrow way of the cross. They think they're okay and probably would get on fine without God's help, because they haven't committed any terribly bad sins and they've got their health and wealth. I think I fall into both categories of person.

The invisible Father we see

Moses endured "because he saw him who is invisible" (Hebrews 11:27). That is an incredible statement, but the seeming contradiction is just an echo of what it says in Exodus itself. We are told "the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend" (33:11), despite God saying later in the same chapter that "you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live" (33:20)!

John confirms the witness of Old and New Testaments that "no one has ever seen God" (John 1:18), but helps clarify things later by naming the God "no one has ever seen" as the Father (6:46). Later in the John's Gospel Jesus explains that we can see his Father (gaining life), while still not seeing him (avoiding death) when he gives us that promise that "whoever has seen me has seen the Father" (14:9).

I think it is only in conversations with Mormons that I have seen the importance for our salvation that Jesus Christ "is the image of the invisible God" (Colossians 1:15). Because it is not unconnected that Joseph Smith said he saw the Father alongside the Son in a vision in 1820, and also denied that Christ's death and resurrection alone is sufficient for our salvation, or that the revelation of God in the Bible (which is all about Jesus!) alone is sufficient for us to know the Father fully.

It also makes me even more concerned than I was that Rublev's famous icon is not a wonderful celebration of the (Eastern) Orthodox understanding of the Trinity, but is actually an aberration which undermines our relationship with the true Trinity.... just to be a little controversial.

Testing claims to revelation

How can we know that the Bible is a true revelation of God?

1. It is consistent with what we already know to be true

"If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass, and if he says, 'Let us go after other gods,' which you have not known, 'and let us serve them,' you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams." (Deuteronomy 13:1-3)

For the non-Christian they should come to see that the message of the Bible makes sense of what they already know, and integrates with the knowledge we have already gained about science, history, morality etc. That is not to say that it should not transform how we understand what we already know, and question whether we really knew something to be true in the first place, but we are not inviting people to enter a dream world.

If like me you have recently been challenged by Mormons asking why the Book of Mormon could not also be revelation from God, then at least one thing you would want to ask is: does the Book of Mormon agree with the beating heart of the Bible which we already know to be true? In it's denial of Christ alone, I had to say the answer was 'no'.

2. What it warns and promises does happen

"if you say in your heart, ‘How may we know the word that the Lord has not spoken?’— when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the Lord has not spoken" (Deuteronomy 18:21-22)

In line with this type of evidence standard Christian apologetic would point to OT prophecies fulfilled in Christ, but not go much further. However, I would say this is one the most important evidences there is.

When Jesus says that people will know the truth of the Gospel by the lives disciples lived, when Paul tells the Galatians that they know they have heard the truth because they received the Holy Spirit, and when 1 John says to his readers that they know they received the truth from him if they love their brothers, the evidence is this one. The Gospel promises to bring salvation, and that salvation breaks into our life in healings and other miracles, but most of all in the new life of supernatural loving service for one another and love for God.

So actually the transformed lives of people (whether drug-addicted convicts, middle-class doctors or persecutors of the church) is testimony to the truth of the Gospel. It is objective and we can raise it with confidence, although to some people resurrection life will actually look like death rather than life, but if so then they are not then rejecting the evidence but the promise (2 Corinthians 2:15-16).

Christ the one mediator

Here's the beginning of a thought:

If we accept that as the Word of God there is no knowledge of the Father apart from the Son, does that necessarily mean that there is no knowledge of the Father apart from the history of the incarnate Son?

Fact 1: Christ is the only mediator

Fact 2: Christ is the only mediator in a number of ways:

1. Christ mediates God to us (in his divinity)
2. Mediates us to God (in his humanity)
3. Mediates God to us in his mediation of us to God (in his hypostatic union)

I'm no expert, but do Barthians criticise those who ignore fact 1, but make the mistake of equating point (a) with point (c) in fact 2?

In particular, can we:

• See God revealed in and through Christ in his divinity as our creator and as judge?
• and in distinction, God revealed in Christ in his hypostatic union as our forgiving Father?

Basically, I'm trying to think if you can preserve there being two kinds of knowledge of God (bringing death and life) while believing there is only one person through whom we can know God.

On special request

Pretty pictures without a concluding theological reflection.

For other readers, I apologise for the lack of blogging. I am really busy, other than when I'm going for lovely walks up the Thames from Oxford.... honest.

It may be a little while before I return to proper blogging.

Distinctives of Irenaeus

The theology of Irenaeus has two distinctive characteristics:

first, the whole of his theology is marked by his contrast between God and the Devil, and the ceaselessly raging conflict between the two powers, a conflict which is fought out in the midst of our humanity; and

second, this humanity, independently of the conflict we have mentioned, is continually in process of change, developing and altering its form, but never remaining in the same fixed pattern.

(paragraph breaks mine, p.104, Gustaf Wingren, Man and the Incarnation: A study in the Biblical Theology of Irenaeus)

Riffing on the Creed

The creed is structured by the Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit), and by the three acts of God (Creation, justification and sanctification). Luther summarises it:

in all three articles God himself has revealed and opened to us the most profound depths of his fatherly heart and his pure, unutterable love.

For this very purpose he

1. created us,
2. so that he might redeem us
3. and make us holy,

and, moreover,

1. having granted and bestowed upon us everything in heaven and on earth,
2. he has also given us his Son
3. and his Holy Spirit

      through whom he brings us to himself.

            For, as explained above, we could never come to recognize the Father's favor and grace were it not for the LORD Christ, who is a mirror of the Father's heart. Apart from him we see nothing but an angry and terrible judge. But neither could we know anything of Christ, had it not been revealed by the Holy Spirit.

(my formatting, pp.439-440, Martin Luther, "The Large Catechism" in The Book of Concord)

The Creed says Luther, tells us what God does in us as creator, redeemer and sanctifier. He creates us, justifies us and sanctifies us. He also gives to us the rest of creation, and himself in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit (all of which are distinct from us - but joined to us).

see this post