The progressive agenda

We live in a context where many people and ideas claim to be “progressive." Think about it for a moment: the essential point of claiming to be progressive is that one owns the future, that the future is progressing toward the position I hold... various positions claim to be progressive, which is another way fo saying, "I own the future on this issue."

Yet in view of changing cultures and times, one could begin to have serious doubts about whether we have any sense at all of wht it means to be progressive. My generation, Generation X, was told that the future belongs to us. Younger generations are told the same thing. But of course, that's not really true since every generation has generation following it. Things that seemed progressive to my generation are likely to seem retrograde to the next. At various points in recent history, practices like eugenics and racial segregation where championed as progressive. The fact that they no longer seem progressive to us just shows how much the future isout of our grasp.

However, the question of who owns the future is one that scripture specifically addresses. Revelation 1:8 reads, "'I am the alpha and the Omega,' says the Lord god, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty." Then in the final chapter of Revelation, Jesus Christ himself says, "'I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end'" (22:13). This statement means not just the Jesus was at the beginning and the end, but that Jesus Christ "i the origin and the goal of all history." [Bauckham] Jesus is the Lord of history throughout, even to its end, which is our future.

Thus, although we cannot state with great confidence a public policy that will be truly progressive in ten of fifty years, we can state with great confidence soething about the future: it is heading toward Jesus Christ, as Lord of all.

(pp.32-33, J Todd. Billings, Union with Christ: Reframing Theology and Ministry for the Church)

Out -> inside -> out

Now, our Scholastics and papists have taught an external piety; they would command the eyes not to see, and the ears not to hear, and would put piety into our hearts from the outside. Ah, how far this is from the truth! But it comes in this way: When the heart and conscience cling to the Word in faith, they overflow in works, so that when the heart is holy, all the members become holy, and good works follow naturally.

(Easter Sunday Sermon: Of Christ's Resurrection, on Mark 16:1-8)

Martin Luther criticised an ethics which taught that by doing good things you could develop good habits that would filter down into your heart. He saw this ethics in Medieval Scholastic theology, but originating in Aristotle ("Virtually the entire Ethics of Aristotle is the worst enemy of grace. This in opposition to the scholastics" [Disputation Against Scholastic Theology, 1517]).

But that does not mean that he thought that personal change was a simple case of inside->out.

Our hearts are not changed spontaneously but in response to the external word, which could only be understood correctly by prayer, meditation and experience (Or Anfechtung, see his three rules).

Therefore, Bonhoeffer was standing in Luther's line when he explained that:

only the believers obey, and only the obedient believe.

It is really unfaithfulness to the Bible to have the first statement without the second. Only the believer obeys - we think we can understand that. Of course, obedience follows faith, the way good fruit comes from a good tree, we say. First there is faith, then obedience. If this meant only that faith alone justifies us and not deeds of obedience, then it is a firm and necessary precondition for everything else. But if it meant a chronological sequence, that faith would have to come first, to be later followed by obedience, then faith and obedience are torn apart...

space should be kept and had to be kept for that external deed required to enable faith - the step, in this case, to the church, where the word of salvation is preached... You can leave your house on Sunday and go to hear the preaching. If you do not do it, then you willfully exclude yourself from the place where faith is possible...

it is not the works which create faith. Instead, you are given a situation in which you can have faith.

(italics original, pp. 63-67, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship)

[Note that as well as this 'religious work' he also gives examples of an alcoholic giving up alcohol or a rich man giving away his money]

[Note also that Bonhoeffer is not saying that the 'first step' is a 'good work', but that is a work, which allows space for faith, which leads to good works.]

Imperatives and indicatives

Wonderfully clear post from Tim Chester:

Think how you would summarise Ephesians 5:1 in your own words: 'Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children.'

I wonder if your summary focused on the call to imitate God or the description of Christians as 'dearly loved children'?

It is all too easy for us to hear only the commands of Scripture and miss the descriptions out of which they arise. The prescription to behave like God only makes sense as the outworking of the description that we are God’s children. The imperatives (commands) of the New Testament always arise out of the indicatives (description). We are already God's dearly loved children so let's live as God’s dearly loved children by imitating our Father.

Reading Paul, and to a lesser extent other Biblical writers, as arguing from indicative to imperative, is probably one of the most important things I've ever been taught. But I sometimes struggle to spell out exactly what it means. It is easy to trot out "be what you already are", but it is more difficult to explain what that really means.

Melanchthon in his commentary on Colossians 3:1 helpfully breaks it down into three things:

1. cause to effect - what will make us be
2. what is due from us - what we ought to be
3. what is possible - what we have the resources to be

I find that quite helpful in actually applying it to my life.

BTW this is my 500th post on this blog. Crazy stuff!

Why you should take care in choosing songs for worship

Funny quote from Stanley Hauerwas:

One reason why we Christians argue so much about which hymn to sing, which liturgy to follow, which way to worship is that the commandments teach us to believe that bad liturgy eventually leads to bad ethics. You begin by singing some sappy, sentimental hymn, then you pray some pointless prayer, and the next thing you know you have murdered your best friend. (HT John Halton)

It seems hard to see how that could come about, but when it is your best friend who has chosen that insipid meaningless chorus for the twentieth time this year then perhaps you'd understand that it is probably for the best that he was prevented from making the same mistake again.

Quotable: CH Dodd on 'ethical religion'

CH Dodd argues that the gospels, the epistles, and the Pentatuach all combine 'ethics' and 'religion' in the same way:

first the proclamation, then the beginning of instruction in morals, first kerygma [preaching], then didache [teaching], seems to have been thoroughly characteristic of the Christian mission.

[...]

This way of approach to ethics was sharply distinguished from that of contemporary Greek moralists, who from the time of Aristotle had set our to provide a self-contained and self-justifying system of ethics. For Christianity, ethics are not self-contained or self-justifying; they arise out of a response to the Gospel.

(p. 10, Gospel and Law)