How hymns changed

Shane Lems summarises some of what Barth has to say about hymns in his Church Dogmatics:

Barth talks about Luther's hymns and how they were simply meant to teach the Word of God and Christian doctrine to the common people ... He explains that Luther's hymns are "completely lacking in...all emphasis upon the emotion of the subject. What these hymns contain is adoration and solid communication, confession of faith, confession of sins, proclamation." Luther's hymns don't "demand to lay this or that" upon people's hearts in a subjective, man-centered way. "In these hymns we never find either God’s child or God's Church preoccupied with themselves, but always turning to the recognition and praise of God and his acts."

He then traces Lutheran hymnody and mentions how it later shifted its "epicenter" to the "heart, the soul, the I, the We;" to the subjective aspect of the Christian faith and away from the objective truths.

I a bit too much of a pietist at heart to regret the great hymns pietism produced, but it is interesting to read this because on Saturday I heard the Yorkshire Bach Choir perform Bach's Cantata BWV 80, Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott. Bach's cantata is based on Martin Luther's famous hymn A Mighty fortress is our God, but it interposes Luther's words with those of Salomo Franck (1659–1725). The difference two centuries made is quite starkly in line with Barth's observations [Luther in blue; Franck in red]:

1. Chorus [Verse 1] (S, A, T, B)


A mighty fortress is our God,
A sure defence and armour;
He helps us free from every need
Which us till now hath stricken.
The ancient wicked foe,
Grim is his intent,
Vast might and deceit
His cruel weapons are,
On earth is not his equal.


2. Aria (B) and Chorale [Verse 2] (S)


All that which of God is fathered(2)
Is for victory intended.

With our own might is nothing done,
We face so soon destruction.
He strives for us, the righteous man,
Whom God himself hath chosen.

Who hath Christ's own bloodstained flag
In baptism sworn allegiance
Wins in spirit ever more.

Ask thou who he is?
His name: Jesus Christ,
The Lord of Sabaoth,
There is no other god,
The field is his forever.

All that which of God is fathered
Is for victory intended.


3. Recit. (B)


Consider well, O child of God, this love so mighty,
Which Jesus hath
In his own blood for thee now written;
By which he thee
For war opposing Satan's host, opposing world and error,
Enlisted thee!
Yield not within thy spirit
To Satan and his viciousness!
Let not thy heart,
Which is on earth God's heavenly kingdom,
Become a wasteland!
Confess thy guilt with grief and pain,
That Christ's own soul to thine be firm united!


4. Aria (S)


Come in my heart's abode,
Lord Jesus, my desiring!
Drive world and Satan out,
And let thine image find in me new glory!
Hence, prideful cloud of sin!


5. Chorale [Verse 3] (S, A, T, B)


And were the world with devils filled,
Intending to devour us,
Our fear e'en yet would be not great,
For we shall win the victory.
The prince of this world,
How grim may he be,
Worketh us no ill,
That is, he is destroyed.
One little word can fell him.


6. Recit. (T)


So stand then under Christ's own bloodstained flag and banner,
O spirit, firm,
And trust that this thy head betrays thee not,
His victory
E'en thee the way to gain thy crown prepareth!
March gladly on to war!
If thou but God's own word
Obey as well as hearken,
Then shall the foe be forced to leave the battle;
Thy Saviour is thy shield.


7. Aria (A, T)


How blessed though are those who God hold in their voices,
More blessed still the heart which him in faith doth hold!
Unconquered it abides, can deal the foe destruction,
And shall at last be crowned when it shall death defeat.


8. Chorale [Verse 4] (S, A, T, B)


That word they must allow to stand,
No thanks to all their efforts.
He is with us by his own plan,
With his own gifts and Spirit.
Our body let them take,
Wealth, rank, child and wife,
Let them all be lost,
And still they cannot win;
His realm is ours forever.

Law court metaphors

Sometimes people say that it is reductionist [...] to always talk about Christianity as a courtroom. Life is more than a courtroom, so why on earth would you always want to make everything about justification and exoneration and guilt and verdicts?

And the only response that we have to that is that is how life actually works. If you're not in a courtroom in your mind when it comes to your spouse, making up fake arguments after something has happened that has hurt you, then I can't relate to you at all.

Life is a courtroom. I wish it weren't that way, but we are arguing. We argue with ourselves, we argue with people that aren't there, we argue with parents that are long deceased. We are constantly arguing and trying to justify ourselves.

So that God should choose to work in that framework should be something that we see as a grace. Not that he is limited or somehow caged in by a legal framework, but that human beings are hard-wired for the law, [so] that God would somehow deal with legality is a good thing.

(David Zahl, Good News for People with Big Problems - Session 3 MP3, Cf. Oswald Bayer)

I'd put it slightly differently, but I wanted to note down what he says because I do think there is a lot of truth there.

Love unknown

My song is love unknown,
My Saviour's love to me;
Love to the loveless shown,
That they might lovely be.
O who am I, that for my sake
My Lord should take, frail flesh and die?

The first verse of 'My Song is Love Unknown' is an even more poetic version of Luther's final theological thesis at the Heidelberg Disputation of 1518:

• The love of God does not find, but creates, that which is pleasing to it. The love of man comes into being through that which is pleasing to it.

Two things are expressed by both Martin Luther and Samuel Crossman's words:

1. God's gracious love is qualitatively different from our natural love - we love the lovely, but God's love is 'unknown' to our experience because he loves the unlovely. God is not just more loving (a Feuerbachian projection of our desires) but loves differently to the way we naturally love.
2. God's love is creative - God said let there be light and there was light. God declares us lovely and we become lovely. Our love is responsive because it comes after the apprehension of something lovely. God's love takes the initiative and comes first. But it is powerfully active because it pushes forward to its purpose - "That they might lovely be".

God does love the lovely too of course, and as I've clumsily blogged before, it worth meditating on how those loves inter-relate.

High Street Hymns

One of the joys of revision is listening to a lot of music. An exciting new discovery for me has been High Street Hymns. Coming out of Christ Episcopal Church, Charlottesville, Virginia, they are a bit like the excellent Red Mountain Music but more cheerful and suitable for congregational singing.

This is what they say about their ministry:

Our goal is touch hearts and minds with the love and grace of God, primarily through the forgotten poetry of the Church. By writing new music for long-forgotten hymn texts, we hope to infuse the Church with songs that are both theologically rich and musically accessible. The words we sing each Sunday matter tremendously. They reach into the deepest places of our souls and form us, preaching the Gospel to us again and again.

Alex Mejias talked and performed his way through a few of their recordings here. One word that he used over and over for the words of the hymns he was singing was 'beautiful', and I think the music captures that response to the love of God in Christ.

You can listen to all their music online. The words are lovely (not least the EP of songs about the love of God and 'My Song is Love Unknown').

A low voice trembling in the hearts of men

"Without your wound, where would your power be? It is your very remorse that makes your low voice tremble in the hearts of men. The very angels themselves cannot persuade the wretched and blundering children on earth as can one human being broken on the wheels of living. In love’s service only the wounded soldiers can serve."

(Thornton Wilder, The Angel That Troubled the Waters, HT PZ)

Do you want the Gospel to "tremble in the hearts" of those you speak to?

It will not happen through eloquence, even eloquence in the service of extolling the beauties of our God.

Paul says that he was among the Corinthians "in weakness and in fear and much trembling"! It was in just this that the Spirit demonstrated his power and Christ was believed on (1 Cor 2:3-4).

I know my temptation when talking about the Gospel is to appear strong, have all the answers and a wide smile. Paul knew better and stood exposed as a weak and sinful Apostle through whom the Spirit powerfully worked.

New design

Denise, has very graciously designed me a new banner to give my blog a fresh look. I hope you all like it as much as I do.

Somehow she seems to have got the impression that I like Martin Luther...

I encourage you to check out her very pretty blog, Paper Angels. Great graphics and a beautiful faith.

Thanks Denise!

Theological terrorism

Do you have a deeply cherished truth or perspective which you constantly analyse teaching through?

I do, and I often see myself in those proud Oxford Logical Positivist students Brian Magee describes:

[Logical positivism, like Marxism,] constituted a ready-to-hand instrument of intellectual terrorism. At the university in which I arrived as a freshman in 1949 there were many who prided themselves on their mastery of it for this purpose. Almost regardless of what anyone said to them on any subject they would run him through with a 'How would you go about verifying that statement?' or a 'What kind of an answer do you want to that question?' Clever young people were exhilarated by the sense of mastery this gave them.

(p.55, Brian Magee, Confessions of a Philosopher)

Do you have a ready-to-hand instrument of theological terrorism?

What is it?

Do you use it?

What we talk about when we talk about freedom

"For freedom Christ has set us free" (Galatians 5:1)

"What We Talk About When We Talk About Freedom" is a 24min talk given by David Zahl to close the 2011 Mockingbird Conference.

After briefly reviewing the conference and discussing different perspectives on what the freedom at the heart of Christianity is he finds the most significant meaning of freedom is freedom from yourself; or to use the jargon, imputation.

This freedom from yourself works itself out in four ways (among others):

1. Freedom from judgement
2. Freedom from obligation
3. Freedom from time
4. Freedom from freedom

I got quite emotional listening to this talk. I've listened to it four times over the last day because it penetrated so deeply.

Guilt and grace in Sigh No More

Sigh No More by Mumford and Sons is a great album. But, contrary to many Christian commentators I cannot see it as an album full of grace.

Marcus Mumford is the son of two of the leaders of the Vineyard group of churches in the UK [1]. But in interviews he and the other band members don't speak very much about their religious beliefs so, although it seems at least some of them are Christians [2], I don't know what he believes now. The album is full of biblical allusions and Christian jargon, but it is also an album of struggles with a God who accuses.

I think "Roll Away Your Stone" is a song in conversation with God, although you can also imagine it being between Mumford and his parents. It contains a description of grace in the third verse drawing upon imagery from the Parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15 (which has echos in other parts of the album).

It seems that all my bridges have been burnt
But you say that's exactly how this grace thing works
It's not the long walk home that will change your heart
But the welcome I receive with the restart

By itself that is powerful indication that he knows something of the power of grace to conquer all that he has done. And yet, the walk is a 'long' one and it is not clear whether he thinks he can make it to the welcome at the end.

The rest of the song is much darker. The first verse is an invitation to mutual confession and investigation into past. He'll "roll away" the stone to let the light into the cave/grave of his soul, but he's afraid of what he "will discover inside". In the second verse he recalls how he's been told that he would find within his soul a "void" or "hole" (perhaps the god-shaped hole people often talk about). But on self-examination he has filled that hole "with things unreal" that steal his character.

He recognises that this all seems quite dark, so in the chorus he protests that he should sing about it becuase "it dominates the things" he sees.

As the third verse of grace I quoted follows these bleak reflections on his sins, you may see a movement from guilt to forgiveness in the song. But the fourth and fifth verses suggest that he doesn't embrace this "grace", but recoils from it.

"Stars hide your fires" is a quotation from Macbeth Act 1, Scene 4:

Stars, hide your fires,
Let not light see my black and deep desires

And John 3:19-20 is also brought to mind:

Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.

The light has shone into his life, he's seen his plight, but I'm not sure that he can embrace the salvation in verse 3. He will stick his stake in the ground "Marking the territory of this newly empassioned soul". He wants to declare his ownership of his own soul because, as he says to the person he is addressing, "you've gone too far too far this time" and have no justification "to take this soul that is so rightfully mine".

It seems that he comes so close but in the end cannot surrender his life to a God he doesn't quite trust or love. It's really a very sad song, and a very sad album.

In other songs he suggests that the accusation of sin is what has driven him from God. In "the Cave" he sings, "The shame that sent me off from the / God that I once loved". "Timshel" is a reflection on the Lord seeming to offer a choice to Cain of whether sin will rule over him or not according to John Steinbeck's East of Eden. "Little Lion Man" is dominated by guilt and the fear that "grace is wasted". "Thistle and weeds" has obvious illusions to the Parable of the Sower. In "Awake my Soul" he looks to the day when he will "meet [his] maker" - not a phrase used by those looking forward to Christ's return.

"Dust Bowl Dance" is perhaps the darkest song of all. To me he seems to see Jesus, God's "only son", as his "accuser" who will lay out the singer's crimes before announcing he'll get his gun to execute judgment. The singer then steals himself, admits his crimes but seems to declare he'll fight back by going to get his own gun!

Please correct me if you think I'm hearing the album wrongly, but the grace is surely a minor note in the Album. Perhaps I'm the one only seeing darkness, but guilt seems to be the dominant note.

Instead of being laid at the foot of the cross, Sigh No More is an album where recognition that we are sinners drives Marcus Mumford to stand his ground and take on his accuser head on. However, what seems clear is that doing that has not led to release from the guilt that haunts him. His experience does not seem to have been that of Charles Wesley when he let light into the dungeon of his heart:

Long my imprisoned spirit lay,
Fast bound in sin and nature’s night;
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray—
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.

Unconditional love

Ashley Null:

Americans today often confuse unconditional affirmation with unconditional love. Unconditional affirmation is what your dog gives you. He simply affirms you without challenging your innate desire to be the center of your own universe. That's why it feels so good.

Unconditional love, however, is not the same as unconditional affirmation. Love creates a crisis. And the greater the love, the greater the crisis. For love reaches out for union. For implicit within the gift of love is a calling of the other into relationship. To accept the gift of love is admit into our heart a power from outside ourselves that tugs at our very self-centredness, seeking to draw us into relationship by stirring up in us a desire to love in return the one who gave us the gift of love. Yet, the price of this relationship is a dent in our self-sufficient autonomy, where our selfish ways have thrived unquestioned. And the greater the love, the greater the loss of the right to live for oneself alone. And perfect, unconditional love seeks to stir up an equally unreserved giving of all of ourselves to the other. In short, true unconditional love does not simply affirm us in our self-satisfied self-centredness. True unconditional love provokes the ultimate crisis where we are called to die completely to our desire for autonomy and wholly give ourselves to the one who has already done the same for us.

The true meaning of the Gospel of Grace is this: that God unconditionally calls each of us to seek release from our selfish ways so that we can join the self-giving fellowship of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and his love is so at work in us to transform us that one day we will enjoy fellowship with God and one another as much as God enjoys fellowship within Himself.

David Powlison:

Unconditional love, as most of us understand it, begins and ends with sympathy and empathy, with blanket acceptance. It accepts you as you are with no expectations. You in turn can take it or leave it.

But think about what God’s love for you is like. God does not calmly gaze on you in benign affirmation. God cares too much to be unconditional in his love.

It is worth reading more of the context of these incredibly insightful quotations. Ashley Null's quotation is from this interview. The Powlison quotation comes from Seeing with New Eyes. Although he has written something very similar (maybe the same) in a little booklet entitled God’s Love: Better Than Unconditional. There are two quite different but complementary summaries here and here. All of those links will give you lots of food for thought.

Here is a bit more Powlison though, from his classic article "Idols of the Heart and 'Vanity Fair'" (HT DB):

The Gospel is better than unconditional love. The Gospel says, “God accepts you just as Christ is. God has ‘contraconditional’ love for you.” Christ bears the curse you deserve. Christ is fully pleasing to the Father and gives you His own perfect goodness. Christ reigns in power, making you the Father’s child and coming close to you to begin to change what is unacceptable to God about you. God never accepts me “as I am.” He accepts me “as I am in Jesus Christ.” The center of gravity is different. The true Gospel does not allow God’s love to be sucked into the vortex of the soul’s lust for acceptability and worth in and of itself. Rather, it radically decenters people—what the Bible calls “fear of the Lord” and “faith”—to look outside themselves.

Incredible stuff! Mind-blowing truths! May we never stop praising and proclaiming God's unconditional love. But in conclusion, I think David Powlison is spot on here:

We do not need to use a vague, abstract word like unconditional when the Bible gives us more vivid and specific words, metaphors, and stories to communicate what God’s love is like.

God's alien and proper work

Listening to: Polly Paulusma: Scissors In My Pocket

I realised in my last post I bandied about the theological jargon terms 'alien work' and 'proper work' along with the very non-theological talk of 'bad news' and 'good news'. A quick google search gave me this very helpful description which I thought worth quoting:

God's self-revelation is not direct. In fact God is revealed as God through what is God's opposite. The central core of God's revelation is the cross of Jesus Christ. What humans perceive in the cross is weakness, shame, humiliation, and suffering. Precisely here, in these experiences, God is to be found. Hidden beneath them, the eye of faith perceives God's power, glory, and love. Exactly where God seems most absent is where God is revealed most fully.

God is found not only in the suffering of the cross but also in the midst of the suffering that humans experience as God drives them to doubt, fear, tribulation, temptation, and finally despair. This is what Luther calls God's "alien work" (opus alienum Dei), God's work of wrath. Beneath it is to be found God's "proper work" (opus proprium Dei), God's work of mercy. For only when humans abandon themselves can they begin to trust in God's mercy alone. This experience, Luther believes, is what makes a theologian of the cross: "Understanding, reading or speculating do not make a theologian, but living, or rather dying and being damned." This is what Luther had in mind when he said, "The cross alone is our theology."

(Denis R. Janz, "Syllogism or paradox: Aquinas and Luther on theological method", Theological Studies, March, 1998)

As far as I know the phrase 'alien work' comes from Isaiah 28:21 (quoted in Luther's 1518 Heidelberg Disputation), and read in its context Isaiah 28:21 is probably provides about as good a definition as you can get: God will "will sweep away the refuge of lies, and waters will overwhelm the shelter" not as an end in itself, but so he can rebuild on the foundation of Christ (28:17-18).

Finding Nemo and God's alien work

'Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth. And the Lord said to me,

"Behold, I have put my words in your mouth.
See, I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms,
to pluck up and to break down,
to destroy and to overthrow,
to build and to plant."'
(Jer 1:9-10)

Would you describe that as a good summary of the work of God and the work of his ambassadors?

I can think of a whole host of reasons why you wouldn't. Some better than others.

But I am convinced that God doesn't just work through 'good news', but through 'bad news' as well. Equally I'm convinced that God doesn't lay on the 'good news' so he can later catch you with the 'bad news' or that the 'bad news' is hidden within the 'good news'. Instead I believe God always works his alien work of 'bad news' in order to do his proper work of declaring 'good news'.

This is the pattern of all God's saving work in this fallen world.

If we reflect I think we can see this in our own experience and in profound pieces of art like this scene from Finding Nemo:

Ultimately though we see it the story of the crucifiction and resurrection of Christ.

David Zahl in this 14min reflection on Jeremiah 1:10, draws on the scene from Finding Nemo and episodes from real life to show that God really is present in his alien work, despite how alien that thought first appears. I encourage you to listen to it.

This is how he ends his sermon, summing up "the message of grace":

Heavenly Father we thank you for this message. Lord, we pray that where we need to be torn down that you would overthrow us and overpower our controlling tendencies. Lord we pray also in the places where we are torn down and bereft and tired and depressed and lonely that you would build and plant just as you have done ultimately in your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray.

A few things to like about David Zahl:

• He likes people;
• He understands people;
• He likes pop culture;
• He uses pop-culture well;
• He's Evangelical-Lutheran-Episcopalian, which has to be rare;
• And most importantly he understands why Pixar make the best films.

We who must die demand a miracle

WH Auden (HT DZ)

We who must die demand a miracle.
How could the Eternal do a temporal act,
The Infinite become a finite fact?
Nothing can save us that is possible:
We who must die demand a miracle.

Michael Ots - What Kind of God?

Micahel Ots has written a wonderful book called What Kind of God?: Responding to 10 popular accusations. I highly recommend it. I have just come across these youtube videos of him preaching through most of the chapters of the book.

• What kind of God doesn't make himself clear?
• What kind of God is still relevant?
• What kind of God doesn't stop suffering?
• What kind of God allows violence in his name?
• What kind of God has only one way?
• What kind of God limits my sexuality?
• What kind of God sends sincere people to hell?
• What kind of God would send his son to die?

Two kinds of knowledge of God

God knows everything and everybody. Yet, the Bible says that it is only Christians who love God who are known by God (1 Corinthians 8:3, Galatians 4:8-9). How did we come to be known by God when he already knew us?

We came to be known by God in a qualitatively different way. Before he knew us children of wrath, but now he knows us as his children.

Paralleling this everybody knows God (Psalm 19; Romans 1:19) even if they suppress that knowledge. However, in becoming a Christian we come to know God but in a different way. Not as your judge, but as your saviour. Not as distant, but as close. Caught between the times we know him this way only in part, but when he comes again we will know him fully (1 Corinthians 13:12). But it is more important that he knows us fully; and he does know us fully, closely and savingly as his children already (Romans 8:27, Galatians 4:8-9).

It is like knowing someone as your manger, but then you leave the place of work meet him at the local pub and begin to know him as your friend. The former knowledge was not a false knowledge, but the second knowledge is the better knowledge and supersedes the previous knowledge. Before you knew him, but now you know his heart.

A taster of Tim Chester's latest

I think Tim Chester's latest book, A Meal with Jesus, looks amazing. You can get a taster from reading his article, Making a Meal of It and watching this trailer:

A Meal with Jesus is available here from amazon.com and amazon.co.uk and there is also a Kindle version available here from amazon.com and amazon.co.uk.

[the pun wasn't originally intended, but why look a gift horse in the mouth?]

Lutheran responses to Barth

This is a rather rushed attempt to share some thoughts on part of what Dan is saying in this post. I thought I ought to sum what I understand as the Lutheran response to Barth. My knowledge of such a weight of theological wisdom on both sides is hilariously small, but I thought I should try. Why, these things are important to Lutherans would take a lot of time and energy, so sorry for not being able to give that. There's more important things to do for a Christian layman.

1. We should give up worrying that we cannot force our knowledge of God into a unity

I believe it is good if in our present age we cannot imagine how the Creator God could also be Christ crucified, but have to stand amazed at God's unfathomable wisdom and love. To force all our knowledge of God into a unity by starting with one event, rather than one person revealed through a story full of twists and turns is to walk by sight instead of faith. It is to over-realise our eschatology as we do not yet see Christ face-to-face. Contrary to what some say, death is not equal to life and glory is not shame. Life is revealed through death, glory through shame, strength through weakness but that is a story of a surprise and not a neatly tied system. Death seems to go in an opposite direction to life, but by faith in Christ crucified and risen we believe that they don’t, even if we cannot see how that is the case.

2. The tension is often between ‘God’ and ‘God for us’, not false and true

Often when people see a tension between God known through experience, reason, creation etc and the God who loves the world so much that he sends his Son to die for us, they assume that this is because the former must be a false knowledge. Of course all our knowledge of God is a mixture of truth and lies to a different extent, but I would suggest that at its core the tension is actually between a knowledge of ‘God’ and ‘God for us’ (or 'law' and 'Gospel'). God owes us nothing, and as sinful beings we are due only wrath. So knowledge of ‘God’ is a terrifying thing on its own. It can be a true knowledge, but given God’s promises it is a strange knowledge and not proper knowledge.

The knowledge of ‘God for us’ seems to contradict the knowledge of ‘God’ we may have apart from his revelation of his love for the unlovely in Christ. But by faith we believe (i) that they resolve in the mystery of Christ who is both divine and future, even if we cannot understand how, and (ii) that ‘God for us’ is the proper knowledge of God, and ‘God’ is him hidden from us.

-------------------------------------------------

Here are some Lutheran quotes to chew over:

Everyone naturally has a general idea that there is a God [...] But someone may object: "If all people know God, why does Paul say that before the proclamation of the gospel the Galatians did not know God?" I reply that there is a twofold knowledge of God [duplex est cognitio Dei], general and particular. All people have the general knowledge, namely that God exists, that he has created heaven and earth, that he is righteous, that he punishes the wicked, etc. But people do not know what God proposes concerning us, what he wants to give and to do, so that he might deliver us from sin and death, and to save us - which is the proper and true knowledge of God [propria et vera est cognitio Dei]. Thus it can happen that someone's face may be familiar to me but I do not really know him, because I do not know his intentions.

(from 1535 Lectures on Galatians, in p.99, The Christian Theology Reader ed by A McGrath)

If the cross and the resurrection are to retain their New Testament position at the centre of the message, then a revision of the opposition between transcendence and immanence must be brought about. The Lutheran dualism of law and Gospel in the Word performs just that very revising, anti-speculative function. God's work meets us, sub contraria specie ["under contrary appearances"], hidden under the work of death. It must be so, since we are in thrall to sin; when our sin, which insists on ruling in our being, is killed, we receive life but it seems as though it were death. The lifegiving function of the Gospel is indissolubly bound up with the condemnatory and punitive function of the law; the cross is fast bound with the resurrection. If this intrinsic duality of law and Gospel is abandoned and replaced, as in Barth, by a single 'Word' above the law and the Gospel, then there follows also a new metaphysical cleavage, so that within the single Word we discover a higher, transcendent sphere, the Word of God (Gottes Wort) and a lower sphere, the word of man (Menschenswort). Thereby the Platonic doctrine of two worlds becomes supreme in theology. What is specifically theological and Christian is introduced later in the thesis that 'God' and 'man' meet and are brought together in the Incarnation. But in that case the mere meeting between God and man becomes the centre of the New Testament, while struggle and victory in the death and resurrection have lost their place as the centre of the kerygma. This is the chief accusation that must be brought against Karl Barth's theology.

(p. 92, 1949, Gustaf Wingren, The Living Word)

[the law] must foster a proclamation which points to Christ…It must realize that the unity of law and gospel- that is , that the God of the law and the God of the gospel are one and the same-is something which can be grasped in the final sense only by faith…Theology, of course, asserts this unity, but faith does not consist ultimately in believing the assertions of theology, but rather in trusting in the Christ who alone makes it possible to believe the unity.”

(Gerhard Forde, The Law-Gospel Debate)

We cannot therefore accept a monistic doctrine of the word of God, as advocated by Karl Barth. In the midst of the contradictory and complementary ways in which God encounters us, which are laden with tension and conflict, the gospel stands out in its uniqueness as God’s decisive final word.

(p. 125, Oswald Bayer, Theology the Lutheran Way)

While the distinction between Schleiermacher and Barth may be ever so great, they agree with each other in their thinking about unity. While Schleiermacher, of course, thinks of unity anthropologically, as the one fundamental state, Barth approaches it Christologically, by holding that Jesus Christ is the one Word of God. If we criticize Barth’s thinking about unity, we will have to ask ourselves whether the unity of God is something that we can only confess, as when we confess Jesus to be the one and only Lord, or whether it is something that we can conceive with our minds. But this can happen only in the sense of 1 Corinthians 9:4-6 and of the prayer of the Isaiah Apocalypse: “O Lord our God, other lords besides you have ruled over us, but we acknowledge your name alone” (Isa. 26:13; cf. Micah 4:5)…

The unity of God that we confess can only be believed. It cannot be conceived… If we speak of a "unity" in connection with law and gospel, life and death, judgment and grace, it must be clear that this is meant in a strictly eschatological sense"

(pp.197-198, Oswald Bayer, Theology the Lutheran Way)

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, Oswald Bayer, Martin Luther‘s Theology: A Contemporary Interpretation)

"For Bayer, theology is not done to integrate all knowledge, either theoretical or practical, into an abstract unity, but to limit reason to its proper fields. It is the art of discerning what God is saying to us, not peering into the divine"

(p.149, Mark Mattes, The Role of Justification in Contemporary Lutheran Theology)

Marriage that sustains your love

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote to a young married couple, "It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love" (HT JP).

What did he mean?

He could have meant that you have made these promises to love one another, and by an act of will you will determine to love each other for the rest of your life. After all imagine the shame if you fail to keep your word, or the hurt you'll cause by disappointing your wife. I often hear Christians say something like "love is not a feeling, it is a decision" and admittedly that is better than the "love what you feel like", but ultimately it is self-produced and powered by fear.

Thankfully I think I see something more beautiful in my married friends...

Bonhoeffer could also have meant that with your marriage you have a new identity (something that sadly our culture only recognises in the change of the bride's name). Of course, people do deny that identity and live as if they have another identity even to the point of separating. But to friends of mine their marriage is now so intrinsic to who they are that to decide they no longer love each other is like denying the sky is blue.

That's not to say that the old identity of being two flesh is not constantly trying to reassert itself, but that is the value of the marriage covenant. The ceremony creates the reality as a speech-act, and then echoes down through the rest of life.

By hearing repeatedly in words and actions that you are one flesh, Mr and Mrs, husband and wife, the reality of an identity of love is sustained.

Similarly, but on a grander scale where union is not physical but Spiritual (with a big 'S'), we need the Gospel repeating to us constantly because we continually forget our new identity. Hearing it again and again, or eating it in the Lord's Supper, sustains us in reminding us of who we are, and makes us more like the people we already are.

Injecting some eschatology into Christian counselling

Christian counselling can look like any of the following:

1. Secular advice - practical things to do gleaned from experience, medical science and the culture.

2. Biblical advice - practical things to do from the Bible and the Biblical understanding of what it means to be human.

3. Good news of what has been done by God, needing to be applied - Christ has died. We are forgiven, now what we need to do, to feel the benefit, is to think over that.

4. Good news of what has been done by God and is being done by God now - Christ has died, Christ is risen. We are forgiven and the Holy Spirit has been given to us by the risen Christ to change us now.

5. Good news of what has been done by God, is being done by God, and will be completed by God - Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. We are forgiven and the Holy Spirit has been given to us by the risen Christ to change us now and that will be completed when Christ comes again.

There is good in all those which are needed, but 5 is the full Gospel word people need to hear.

1-2 give you different plans to rebuild your life and leave you to do the work. 3 says that the foundation has been built, now do the rest of the work on your own. 4 says that God will build the house but leaves you disappointed because it is not looking all that great, leaving you guilty because you think you're ungrateful. 5 says that God will build the house, but don't be disappointed if it doesn't look much yet because it will look amazing once it is finished.

The captivated heart and captive will

From an interview with Ashley Null (author of Thomas Cranmer's Doctrine of Repentance: Renewing the Power to Love):

According to Cranmer’s anthropology, what the heart loves, the will chooses, and the mind justifies. The mind doesn’t direct the will. The mind is actually captive to what the will wants, and the will itself, in turn, is captive to what the heart wants.

The trouble with human nature is that we are born with a heart that loves ourselves over and above everything else in this world, including God. In short, we are born slaves to the lust for self-gratification, i.e., concupiscence. That’s why, if left to ourselves, we will always love those things that make us feel good about ourselves, even as we depart more and more from God and his ways.

Therefore, God must intervene in our lives in order to bring salvation. Working through Scripture, the Holy Spirit first brings a conviction of sin in a believer’s heart, then he births a living faith by which the believer lays hold of the extrinsic righteousness of Christ. Of course, the perfect justifying righteousness by which we are made right with God must be outside of us, for the ongoing presence of sinful concupiscence in our mortal bodies renders it impossible for us ever to be truly holy in this life. Indeed, the glory of God is his love for the unworthy, that although we are sinners, he makes us his own.

Now, in effect, justification gives us a heart transplant. For at the same time that we receive the gift of justifying faith by which we are credited with Christ’s extrinsic righteousness, God also sheds abroad in our hearts a new love for him and one another. This new heart love for him, from him, naturally redirects our wills away from sinful selfishness towards a life lived in thankful obedience to God’s commands. Even though we continue to have to struggle with the pull of concupiscence in our mortal bodies, the the supernatural power of God’s abiding love has fundamentally changed us. (HT Mockingbird)

I'd tweak that as I think the heart/mind/will view of humanity over-simplifies how we work (anyone know the origins?), but if you're going to use those categories then I do think that this is the best way to relate them. I have a post brewing centred on this theme waiting till after tomorrows exam!

The Tree of Life

This new film directed by Terrence Malick, and starring Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain and Sean Penn, looks exciting.

The film follows the life journey of the eldest son, Jack, through the innocence of childhood to his disillusioned adult years as he tries to reconcile a complicated relationship with his father. Jack finds himself a lost soul in the modern world, seeking answers to the origins and meaning of life while questioning the existence of faith. Through Malick's signature imagery, we see how both brute nature and spiritual grace shape not only our lives as individuals and families, but all life.

I suspect that I won't understand it though! The reviews suggest it is a bit mysterious, and given the director I'm not surprised. His Wikipedia's page includes this gem:

Malick studied philosophy under Stanley Cavell at Harvard University... He went on to Magdalen College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. After a disagreement with his tutor, Gilbert Ryle, over his thesis on the concept of world in Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein, Malick left Oxford without a doctorate degree.

Self-criticism

With my pop-psychologist hat on, I have often noted that being self-critical can lead to two very different ways of relating to other people.

1. A self-critical person can be fearful of other people and their critiques. Because they are self-critical they know all their weak spots and feel exposed and vulnerable as soon as conversation turns to them.
2. But self-critical people can also be deeply judgmental. They hold themselves to a high standard, but also hold everyone else to that standard too. This is my tendency. I have quite a critical streak, but I comfort myself that I am just as strict on myself.

But why does self-criticism lead to two totally different ways of relating to others?

I think it is because the act of self-criticism is the act of dividing yourself in two. You take yourself outside of yourself in order to judge yourself. When you divide yourself in two like this you have a choice: which of the two is my core identity?

If your core identity (the purple circle) is the judged, then you will be fearful of other people and their judgements. "I will never succeed, please don't be harsh on me."

If your core identity (the purple circle) is the judge, then you will look down on other people and judge them. "I am disappointed in myself, but you don't do any better."

It doesn’t take a genius to see that dividing yourself up in order to be introspective is an unhealthy thing. Instinctively we know that splitting ourself in two breaks us, because it alienates us from ourselves. But we can also see it is unhealthy in the external fruit of our alienation from others.

The way to wholeness, and to reconciliation with ourselves and with each other, is through finding a critic and judge totally outside of ourselves. Refusing to judge ourselves, either as passes or fails, but entrusting the judgment to God.

But there is a second step needed in order not to just be whole, but to have hope. That is to find your identity in Christ.

Praise God, that if we give up our self-judgments and instead find God’s judgment in Jesus Christ (his righteousness revealed), we find firstly that we are judged for our rebellion in his cross, but that is then forgotten and forgiven and instead we are judged to be sons in his resurrection.

Notes on Romans 9

Just been going through the sobering passage of Romans 9.

Vessels

"What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory"

I think Paul is saying that Israel were the vessels of wrath, prepared for destruction.

God was patient in holding back on punishing Israel until the Messiah came (3:25)

He then 'destroyed' Israel by casting them off when they rejected the Messiah

This was "in order" that "vessels of mercy" would be glorified. As Paul says in 11:11-15, their casting off was so that the Gentiles could be grafted in.

"riches" is often tied to bringing in the Gentiles for Paul, and the idea of the long preparedness of the mystery of bringing in the Gentiles is also a common theme.

Seeing this passage as storied in this way, makes you look to the future which in Romans 11 is that as a result of being cast off, and becoming jealous, Israel would repent and be saved.

Offspring

The Seed/Offspring (singular) of Galatians 3:16, comes through in Romans 9 as well.

In vv.6-12 all the descendants of Abraham and then Isaac are cut off except one. This is reinforced by the comment that "Rebekah had conceived children by one man" (surely unnecessary to remind us that Jacob only had one father otherwise!).

Isaac and Jacob are not just case-studies of election/reprobation because Paul says they were elected "in order that God's purpose of election might continue". The "in order that" comes again later in v. 23, and chapter 11. Good rejects in order to bring about his redemptive purposes in Christ.

The "offspring", is the remnant in v. 29. Paul quotes the passage to show that God has cast off and carried out "his sentence", but the seed remains.

No stone left standing

It is instructive to read Isaiah 28:14-29 as a background to the whole passage.

Isaiah 28:16 is quoted by Paul, but his conclusion to Romans 9-11 ("Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!...who has been his counselor?") echoes the end of Isaiah 28:14-29 ("the Lord of hosts; he is wonderful in counsel and excellent in wisdom").

Isaiah describes how Israel "have made lies [their] refuge" (NB truth/lies a big theme in Romans), but that God is going to level them. He is going to utterly destroy but then start rebuilding again starting with the cornerstone. To Paul this means that he has rejected Israel so he can build a new people of Jews and Gentiles on the foundation of Christ.

Conclusion

In the light of all this, considering the OT context of Habakkuk 2:4, and reading Ezekiel (one bleak book!) in church bible studies at the moment, I believe the offence of the Gospel for the Jews was that Jesus showed that they needed to die and to raise again a new people. The Jews, like all of us, want to be told the Gospel is a extra to add on or a way of healing our old bodies. But offensively the Gospel says that we have to die and by faith live.

Death is always going to be bad news in some sense, but the good news in this is that eternal life is not more of the same, but something qualitatively different. Christopher Hitchens may hate the idea of eternally carrying on, but I suspect that is only because the life we live right now is fairly tiresome.

The new will be beyond what we can imagine, not just a polished version of the old.

MP3s that have shaped me

I listen to a lot of MP3s on the move, for better or worse. Most of them I forget. But casting my mind back, I think the ones that have really shaped me over the last few years are the following.

• Preaching Christ in a Postmodern World by Tim Keller and Ed Clowney. Hours of lectures and Q&As, and almost all pure gold.
• The Lutheran Mind by various Concordia Seminary folks. A real mixed bag in every way. I don't recommend them all, but Leo Sanchez on the Trinity is worth listening to and the one lecture that I have listened to over and over is the final one of the course by Tim Saleska, Interpreting Scripture in a Systemtatics Context. A bit bleak, but a powerful stuff.
• Various talks by Mike Reeves