Post-mortum response to the unveiled word

the Word of God is so weak that it suffers to be despised and rejected by people...This weak Word, which suffers contradiction by sinners, is the only strong, merciful Word, that can make sinners repent from the bottom of their hearts. The Word's power is veiled in weakness. If the Word came in full unveiled power, that would be the final judgment day.

(p.173, Deitrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship)

It would be an interesting question to ask Rob Bell, whether it makes any difference that post-mortum repentance would be in response to the glorified and strong Word of Christ.

I think that when Paul says that he preached "the word of the cross" (1 Cor 1:18), he wasn't just referring to the content, but the form of Gospel he preached. It was weak and foolish, carried by jars of clay, just as Jesus seemed to so many in first century Judea.

At his second coming the Word will be much more a "word of the resurrection", and will be carried by angels blasting trumpets. Glory will be unveiled and strength exerted.

If Rob Bell sees people repenting, and trusting, in response to that Word then is there something quantitatively different to our repentance and faith?

God's judgement

How can we know that God hates evil? How can we know what hell is like? How can we believe that justice is done in this universe?

• Romans 1:18-32: It is seen in our experience - just look around, and you can see hell.
• Romans 3:1-20: It is declared verbally in the Bible which repeatedly shows that we are in the wrong and the consequences of that.
• Romans 3:21-31: It is executed to the full on Jesus Christ

It is important to see that each is clearer than the one proceeding it.

There is a crescendo as the ugly theme becomes louder and louder, so that it is tempting to cover your ears.

Irreligious folks block their ears early in the crescendo when they suppress the knowledge of God in their experience.

Religious folks hear what their experience says, but when things become sharper and more personal when God addresses them in the Bible they put a different kind of ear-plug in. They say the Bible isn't really addressed to them because it was for a different era, or that it was for the younger son living immorally far from home.

But Christians listen to the full crescendo despite the unpleasantness. This is not because they rejoice in the oppressive noise but because they want to have their ears utterly unblocked for the crash at the end which ends that discordant note and marks the beginning of a new and beautiful melody.

Random thoughts on the tragedy of those that haven't heard

God's providence is incredible. On Thursday, after a week of Rob Bell posts hogging Google Reader, out of the blue I had a weighty conversation with someone really wrestling with this issue.

All the musing that I had been doing in relative leisure was put to use, but I finished realising the utter insufficiency of myself, my thoughts and my words for the task. For the last 2 days my mind has wandered back to the subject again and again. Here are some random reflections.

• I can't see how people who have not heard can be saved in the present because:
• Creation tells us about God's grace in giving us life, but not of forgiveness for us destroying that life.
• If salvation is a personal relationship, knowing God in Christ, then we can't be 'anonymous Christians'
• Any salvation without hearing ends up being legalistic, because it ceases to be reception of a gift and becomes a test to be good enough
• The Holy Spirit is found wherever the Son is found and the Son as Redeemer is found wherever the cross is preached. So there can be no regeneration without preaching.
• In principle I can see no problem with post-mortem repentance and faith in response to a revelation of the grace of God in Christ after death, for example through some kind of purgatory. The thing is that the whole NT and historic church says that Christ will "come again to judge the living and the dead" (Apostles Creed). In his first advent he did not come to condemn the world, but in his second advent he will come to condemn. That puts fear in my heart, as it did in Paul's (2 Cor 5:10-11), but it is unavoidable that "it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment" (Heb 9:27)
• Isn't it crazy... just plain crazy...that God has made the salvation of people dependant on them being told by the church? That's people like me! But "the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men", so although I can't imagine why he has left things to jars of clay, he is wiser than me in doing it.
• Any kind of inclusivist view on the salvation of those who haven't heard tends to cut out the church. Perhaps it is the lack of a strong ecclesiology and an emphasis on the "personal relationship" (by which we mean "individual relationship") with Jesus that has meant that we have forgotten why to have God as our Father we must have the Church as our mother (Cyprian).
• I really do not deserve to have heard when others haven't! This week, for the first time in years I've been shaken by something that begins to approach the thinking of war veterans on TV who ask "why did I get to live and they didn't?"
• The problem of the seeming unfairness of people being condemned for the sin of rejecting God the Creator only, when they never had chance to accept or reject God the Redeemer, is no greater than that of the seeming unfairness that God chose only some of those who did hear to have new hearts. It is a problem we cannot solve.
• The revelation of God's love is full. There is no more loving act that we can know than Jesus carrying the cross to Calvary and dying there. Yet people watched and hated him all the more for his love. Paul testifies to the same division as a result of his "ministry of reconciliation". Adam and Eve knew nothing but love and walked out on that relationship. No demonstration of God's love post-mortem is going to be more powerful than Christ on the cross.
• Have I ever really understood mission to my neighbour and the world as anything other than a superfluous "nice to have" even though it is essential and desperately needed? Suddenly reading John and Romans the need to invite and to to proclaim seems to be behind almost everything John and Paul are saying.

Tears of the Saints from AsiaLink HistoryMaker on Vimeo.

Love and hell

Hell is a horrible subject to talk about particularly if you have loved ones who you fear may be there or who are walking the road which leads there*. It is also terribly humbling, because you know that it is where you belong too, often more than they.

But if I was talking about it there are a few things I would want to say about God's love in relation to it:

1. Love for the lovely

The love of the three persons of the Trinity for each other’s glory is the primary reason for the existence of hell. God will punish and destroy all who dishonour his name.

The love of God for the beautiful world and significant creatures is the secondary reason for the existence of hell. God will punish and destroy all who have harmed his creation, especially as they will continue to if allowed to live unchanged.

2. Love for the unlovely

The love of God means that he warns us of hell and gives us time to repent. God does not desire the death of the wicked, which is why Jesus warns of hell more than any other person in the Bible.

The love of Jesus means he will go through hell in our place. All of us have rebelled against God, and all of us hurt one another and the world. The only person who hasn’t stepped into our shoes and showed us the full depths of devotion to God and to us when he was forsaken on the cross.

* I accept that talking about hell as a 'place' may not be very accurate, but I have yet to see better, and it was good enough for Jesus.

Christ's descent into hell

Listening to: Sibelius: Symphony No.5

"He descended into hell" (or "He descended to the dead") is an article of the creed that most people I know don't know what to do with. As a result some people just brush it off as nonsense and further proof that we shouldn't pay too much attention to the ecumenical creeds.

I think we ought to give our forerunners the benefit of the doubt whenever we can, but I'm not sure what to do with it myself.

The writers of the Lutheran Formula of Concord, saw two broad categories of interpretation, and because argument between the two were getting quite heated they judged that "there should be no dispute over this issue but it should be believed and taught on the simplest level". They explained that people disputed "whether this article of faith belongs to the suffering of Christ or to his glorious victory and triumph." I must confess that I was only aware of it belonging in some form to Christ's suffering.

1. Belonging to the suffering of Christ

John Calvin argues that the phrase refers to the depths of the suffering that Jesus suffered on the cross for us:

"subjected to condemnation, he undertook and paid all the penalties which must have been exacted from them, the only exception being, that the pains of death could not hold him. Hence there is nothing strange in its being said that he descended to hell, seeing he endured the death which is inflicted on the wicked by an angry God." (Institutes 2.16.10)

2. Belonging to the victory of Christ

Luther read the article more in connection with Christ's resurrection than his death:

"The customary way of depicting how Christ descended into hell on church walls represents him with a cape and with banners in his hand as he makes his descent and stalks and assaults the devil, as he storms hell and rescues his own people from it. The children's play presented at Easter depicts it in a similar way. It seems better to me that you depict, act out, sing, and recite the story in a very simple way and let it remain at that and not concern yourself with sublime and precise ideas about how it actually took place. for it did not happen in a physical manner, since he remained three days in the grave." (p. 159, cited in Timothy J. Wengert, A Formula For Parish Practice)