Pastoral discernment

I heard Mark Mattes say in a talk not long ago that the art of distinguishing law and Gospel is not a matter of syntax but of pastoral discernment.

I experienced that powerfully this week when I shared with a friend Philippians 1:6: "I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ".

It was a verse that had really encouraged me and I hoped would encourage them. They appreciated it, although felt that in my words there was a hint of condemnation for the negative feelings they were experiencing. Fair or not, I knew that they needed to hear the Gospel, but I delivered the wrong goods.

On the other hand sometimes I can fail to realise what goods need to be delivered at all. I can think that someone needs to hear a command when they need to hear a promise. On other occasions I can think someone needs to hear a promise when they need to hear a command.

It is a hard skill, as Oswald Bayer comments:

Luther refers to the discovery of how to make the distinction as a breakthrough...But such freeing does not have the character of an experience that one, as such, can leave behind and that one can keep at the ready and used at will. It remains an art and a skill, a blessing that is experienced when one can distinguish properly in a very tough situation.

(p. 67, Martin Luther's Theology)

There has been a lot of blog discussion recently about the role of the law in sanctification and I have found Dane Ortlund's reflections very, very wise and perceptive. Among them he observes that "ministry context plays a part in how we parse out the gospel [Also] personality--specific, unique, wiring; our own personal bent--plays a role [as] does personal history and background".

Books and blogs loose this pastoral element which is one reason why I am slow to recommend a book that has helped me to a person unless I feel I know them fairly well. One Christian may love a book and another hate it, and that can have nothing to do with its worth.

So I appreciated that when Dave Bish experienced Joe Thorn's book as "more like law" he didn't generalise that to saying that the book was law. To some other people I am sure they will experience it as Gospel.

This is not to say that everything is relative because I do not think words can mean whatever you want them to mean. But if both law and Gospel are personal address then the person being addressed is important as well as the words used. Tone, context and the character of the person speaking are also massively significant.

The Righteousness of God revealed

Mark Seifrid writes that:

It is clear from these contexts that when Paul speaks of the ‘righteousness of God’ he does not refer to an abstract divine attribute, but to the event of God’s justification over against fallen humanity, which paradoxically is also the justification of the fallen human being.

He sees 'the Righteousness of God' as something that cuts two ways for us sinful human beings. On the one hand it is God's retributive justice in which his wrath is rightfully poured out, but on the other hand it is also his salvific justice in which he saves his people as he promised.

If the book of Romans has as a theme the Righteousness of God being revealed (1:17), then it is noteworthy that the next verse says God's "wrath is revealed", and that "because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed" (2:5). These are all retributive meanings of the Righteousness of God.

But then the turning point comes in the great "but now" of Romans 3:21, where the wrath meets the salvific faithfulness to his promises:

"But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it — the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus." (3:21-26)

Now, in Christ, the Righteousness of God can have a salvific meaning for us.

I think Seifrid gets the meaning of the Righteousness of God better than any other, and I think that is because he is unwilling to give it an exact definition but is an unusual kind of theologian who can accept the paradox and point to Christ instead of a form of words:

Paul’s language obviously includes the idea of retribution…Any interpretation of God’s righteousness or justification in purely salvific terms is forced into the untenable position of ignoring a significant element of Paul’s language and argument as it appears in Romans…For Paul, God’s righteousness is revealed in the event of Christ’s cross and resurrection. Here the contention between the Creator and the fallen creature is decided in God’s favor and yet savingly resolved…There is no definition of ‘righteousness,’ not even in narrative terms, which adequately accounts for the simultaneity of righteous wrath and the gift of righteousness of which Paul speaks (Rom. 3:4-5; 3:21-26). The Christ-event itself supplies the final definition of the language.

Exactly right!

Quotes taken from here, which is from a great collection of big quotations on the meaning of the phrase provided by various theologians.

Luther's Reformation Discovery

Bayer writes of Luther:

His "Reformation discovery" happened in the wake of a deeply profound reflection on the sacrament of penance, which had been required of him by the monstrosity of indulgences. At first, Luther understood the priestly word of absolution: "I absolve you of your sins!" as an activity of declaration, which states something already present. The priest sees the remorse, takes it as a sign of the divine justification - the divine absolution occurring already in the one being absolved but unknown to him - and lets this appear as such. He states it or the assurance of the one being absolved. By this means the word of absolution is understood as a judgment in the sense of a statement.

The result of Luther's Reformation discovery was that language is no longer to be viewed solely as a system of signs "that refer to objects or situations or of signs that express an emotion. In either case the sign is - as a statement or as an expression - not the reality itself. In other words, the linguistic sign is itself the reality; that it represents not an absent but a present reality was Luther's great hermeneutical discover, his 'Reformation Discovery' in the strict sense." It can be classified as a speech act that is an "effective active word that establishes community and therein frees and makes certain. It does what it says. It says what it does."

(p. 152, Mark C. Mattes, The Role of Justification in Contemporary Theology)

Freedom

In the gospel, we are free from the wrath of God [and] we are free for sheer enjoyment of God, the world, and our very lives, which, as created, are interwined with others. Acknowledging God to be God allows us to be free from ambitio divinitatis [ambition to be divine], allows us to accept our humanity, including those aspects of ourselves that apart from God's affirmation of us in our entirety we would find unacceptable. In such trust that God is for us, and from the assurance of God's present commitment to us, the future is promised as a space for the flourishing of life, not only personally but also socially and cosmically. In God's provision, there will be enough for us. We need not be driven by the anxiety that results in greed. Furthermore, the past is not something from which we must flee in shame or guilt, but instead can become an integral part of our histories and identities. We are free from the compulsion of establishin g our own worth and security, because these are in the hands of a trustworthy God. As free, we can be free for others - genuinely open to their needs and concerns as well as the needs of the earth.

(emphasis original, p.184, Mark C. Mattes, The Role of Justification in Contemporary Theology)

Incidentally, someone pointed out to me recently that the first three words of God to humanity in the account of Genesis 2 are "You are free...".

The contemporary non-Christian legalist

Contemporary men and women are every bit as much "works driven" as their ancestors were, even if they fail to have the proper fear of God as judge. Indeed, they are even more burdened than people in the past for the very reason that they see themselves as their own judges. They carry the weight of establishing worth within themselves.

(p.187, Mark C. Mattes, The Role of Justification in Contemporary Theology)

The task of the church

The church today is trying to do so many tasks because it has forgotten the task for which it exists: delivering the good news...

The task of the church is not, paternalistically and patronizingly, to do the world's work for the world, as if the world were incompetent to do it, or as if God had abandoned the world.

(p.184-186, Mark C. Mattes, The Role of Justification in Contemporary Theology)

NB that as a Lutheran Mattes is not suggesting that Christians don't do the world's work in their roles as parents, children, employees, citizens, etc (cf. Mark 7:10-13), just that the gathering that is the 'church' doesn't.

Bonnie Zahl on 'Grace and the self'

Listening to: Jonsi: Go

Bonnie Zahl’s talk on ‘Grace and the self’ is a demanding but rich talk (not surprising for someone educated at Harvard and Cambridge).

These are my notes on what she says, although I add in some of my own interpretation. You can listen to it here. There is also a Powerpoint.

She explains that we all have ‘self-schemas’ through which we interpret our experience. They are: “cognitive generalizations about the self, derived from past experience, that organize and guide the processing of self-related information contained in the individual’s social experiences” (Markus, 1977, p. 64)‏.

So to be “To be schematic (as opposed to aschematic) for a particular trait is for a person to consider themselves on either extremes of that trait, and to consider that trait as personally important.”

For example, to be schematic for weight is to be quick to evaluate food on its health benefits, quick to remember times when your weight was different, to evaluate comments about yourself as to do with your weight (e.g. ‘you’re looking well’), but to be resistant to information which challenges how you feel about your weight (e.g. NHS charts say you’re underweight, but you disagree).

We all have three different selves:

1. Actual self – Who I actually am‏
2. Ought self - Who I ought to be (Ought-Own) / Who I think other people think I ought to be (Ought-Other)‏‏
3. Ideal self – Who I would ideally like to be (Ideal-Own)/ Who I think other people would like for me ideally to be (Ideal-Other)‏
‏

When our ought and ideal selves do not match our actual selves then serious problems result. We despair of ourselves.

Psychology offers three possible solutions to the problem of discrepancies between our actual and ought/ideal selves:

1. Self-awareness - Helps us to understand the cause of our problems, important but doesn’t fully deal with the problem.
‏
2. Minimising the difference between our actual and ought/ideal selves - This would solve the problem, but is very difficult. As we are ‘slaves’ with bound wills we struggle to change who we actually are. Lowering the standards is equally difficult. Many ought/ideal selves are written into what it means to be human so we can’t deceive ourselves that they are different. Some ought/ideal selves are social constructs, but it is hard to block out what our society is telling us.
‏
3. Increasing self-complexity - This means seeing ourselves in different ways (e.g. as intelligent as well as thin). This means that when there is a discrepancy within one schema (‘I feel I ought to be thin but I’m fat’), then others can hold me up (‘but at least I’m intelligent’).
‏

What difference does Christianity make?

1. The law (in Moses, Christ or elsewhere) show us how humans ought and ideally should be. As such it strengthens and heightens many of our ought/ideal selves making the discrepancies between selves more extreme. However, it does devalue many of our ought/ideal selves – e.g. looking beautiful is not as important as our society says.

The law (in the history of Israel’s failure, direct statements of our guilt, e.g. Rom 3, experience etc) shows us how we actually are. As such it further depresses our opinion of our actual selves making the discrepancies between selves more extreme.

The law therefore helps us with point 1 more than secular psychology: self-awareness. The Bible encourages confession. However, it is not enough because it has also made the problem worse (sin is made sinful beyond measure, Rom 7:13).

2. In the atonement of Jesus Christ where we are given a new actual self which matches the ought/ideal self of the law. There is no condemnation for those of us in Christ Jesus because we are who we ought to be and who God’s would like us to be. By the Holy Spirit this new reality is breaking into our lives as the old actual self wastes away and the new actual self grows (2 Cor 4:16).

3. The Gospel also gives us a host of different schemas by which we can relevatise other schemas. I may not be thin, but I am a child of God. I may not have a successful career, but I am human being with dignity made in the image of God. I may not have a functional biological family, but I have the family of the church. Etc.

Lewis on his book The Problem of Pain

the only purpose of the book is to solve the intellectual problem raised by suffering; for the far higher task of teaching fortitude and patience I was never fool enough to suppose myself qualified, nor have I anything to offer my readers except my conviction that

when pain is to be borne,

• a little courage helps more than much knowledge,
• a little human sympathy more than much courage,
• and the least tincture of the love of God more than all.

(formatting mine, from the Preface of The Problem of Pain, p.xii)

A vast and gracious tide

I heard a wonderful sermon by one of our elders this Sunday on Jesus' words from the cross, "I thirst" (John 19:28). Linking Jesus' cry to Ezekiel (!) he took us to the Valley of Dry Bones in chapter 37, but then to the New Temple in chapter 47:1-12:

Then he brought me back to the door of the temple, and behold, water was issuing from below the threshold of the temple toward the east (for the temple faced east). The water was flowing down from below the south end of the threshold of the temple, south of the altar. Then he brought me out by way of the north gate and led me around on the outside to the outer gate that faces toward the east; and behold, the water was trickling out on the south side.

Going on eastward with a measuring line in his hand, the man measured a thousand cubits, and then led me through the water, and it was ankle-deep. Again he measured a thousand, and led me through the water, and it was knee-deep. Again he measured a thousand, and led me through the water, and it was waist-deep. Again he measured a thousand, and it was a river that I could not pass through, for the water had risen. It was deep enough to swim in, a river that could not be passed through. And he said to me, “Son of man, have you seen this?”

Then he led me back to the bank of the river. As I went back, I saw on the bank of the river very many trees on the one side and on the other. And he said to me, “This water flows toward the eastern region and goes down into the Arabah, and enters the [Dead] sea; when the water flows into the sea, the water will become fresh. And wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live, and there will be very many fish. For this water goes there, that the waters of the sea may become fresh; so everything will live where the river goes. Fishermen will stand beside the sea. From Engedi to Eneglaim it will be a place for the spreading of nets. Its fish will be of very many kinds, like the fish of the Great Sea. But its swamps and marshes will not become fresh; they are to be left for salt. And on the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither, nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for healing.”

Where before there was death, dryness and undrinkable salt water, now there is life, floods and fresh water. But this came at the cost of Jesus going thirsty (John 19:28), drinking sour wine (vv. 29-30), and dying in the place we should have been. From his side "blood and water" spilled out for us to drink and live (John 4:14; 6:54).

Here is love, vast as the ocean,
Lovingkindness as the flood,
When the Prince of Life, our Ransom,
Shed for us His precious blood.
Who His love will not remember?
Who can cease to sing His praise?
He can never be forgotten,
Throughout Heav’n’s eternal days.

On the mount of crucifixion,
Fountains opened deep and wide;
Through the floodgates of God’s mercy
Flowed a vast and gracious tide.
Grace and love, like mighty rivers,
Poured incessant from above,
And Heav’n’s peace and perfect justice
Kissed a guilty world in love.

I'm away for a couple of weeks at a camp, so no blogging here for a while.

With many thanks to Mr Hulse.

Why forgive?

Why should we forgive those that have wronged us?

Here are a few quick thoughts:

1. Because healing only comes through accepting the harm

If someone has inflicted harm on you, you can war against them either in your heart alone or externally. But even as you try and undo the harm or redress the balance the splinter only slips deeper and deeper into your soul. It is commonly commented that the bitterness or anger will kill you slowly unless you accept the harm done to you (painful as that may be initially), forgive and move on (cf. pp. 188ff, Tim Keller, The Reason for God).

This is deeply true, and is a good reason to forgive, although as clever Kim Fabricius notes

"Counsellors tell us to forgive people lest we become embittered and twisted. Thus forgiveness itself becomes a fashionable therapy, all about me."

2. Because we have been forgiven much

Like the servant in Matthew 18:23-35 we have been forgiven an enormous debt that dwarfs anything we may be owed. We have been forgiven the enormous sin of rejecting our creator and redeemer and instead of an eternity of punishment we have an eternity of glory in Christ Jesus. In that light, how can we not forgive others their minor offences against us? Anything that has been taken from us by a person is only a drop in the ocean of riches we have in Christ. It is not a loss worth dwelling on.

3. Because they have already been offered forgiveness by the judge of all the earth

I am loving reading Romans 1-2-1 with a friend at the moment. Reaching chapter 14 it is surprising that the reason we should not judge or despise our brother (okay, a little different to forgiving) is because God does not judge or despise them. There is no condemnation for them now in God's eyes (8:1) so how can we mere humans condemn them? In fact we should "welcome" those who God welcomes (14:1, 3). Any sin we have suffered is also a sin against God (Ps 51:4) and God has already offered forgiveness to that person. Therefore, we echo God's word of forgiveness to those who have wronged us.

Luther's Christmas sermon on Isaiah 9:6

to us a child is born,
to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder

Luther preached a sermon on Christmas day, 1531, on Isaiah 9:6.

It is a good example of two great aspects of Luther's teaching: the proper application of the pronoun, and the free nature of the gift.

1. to us a child is born:

For whom was he conceived and born? For whom did he suffer and die? For us, for us, for us! Always add us! That is why the fathers rightly put the word [in the creed]: “And in Jesus Christ, our Lord.” We should relate this word to every sentence: conceived for us and born for us, suffered for us and raised for us, ascended for us and sitting at the right [hand of God] for us. For [it is no accident that] the words, “I believe in God, [the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth],” [are followed by,] “And in Jesus [Christ his only Son] our Lord.” In the same way, this word “our Lord” must be included with all [the following] sentences so they don’t just stand there naked. They are all about us. Christ didn’t need these works. He would have remained a lord quite well without them. Rather, his conception and birth, his suffering and death, his ascension and sitting at the right hand are all for our benefit. They belong to us. Note that well!

2. to us a Son is given:

it is not enough that he is “born” to us; he is also “given” to us. What does “given” mean? He is a [pure] gift, a present. There is nothing I have to give or pay in return.

He then has some wonderful things to say about the government resting on Christ's shoulders.

even the good authorities are carried on the shoulders of their subjects. But the rule of that Son who was born to us works the other way around: he carries us! We rest on his shoulders; he is our bearer...This is wonderful. Christ’s kingdom is not under his feet...it is on his shoulder...He must pay for us; he must make satisfaction and suffer. He must carry us, not we him. He does not want to be served, but to serve and to carry us. [He says,] “I will give you everything; all your guilt will be on my shoulder.”

Martin Luther on the Word of God

David Lotz, in his brilliant essay "The Proclamation of the Word in Luther’s Thought", makes 13 points about Luther's understanding of the Word of God and its proclamation (all points are quotations and italics are original):

1. For Luther the “Word of God” is first and foremost God himself, since God is Deus loquens, the God who speaks.
2. Holy Scripture shows that God’s Word also takes the form of concrete historical acts of redemption and revelation, since according to the Hebrew idiom a word (dabar) is also a deed.
3. All God’s words and works find their ultimate purpose and meaning in the incarnate Word. Yet even God’s speaking and acting in Christ would remain meaningless and ineffectual without the oral witness to the Word made flesh, namely, the apostolic preaching or publishing of Christ to the world, the gospel or “good news” of Christ as “God for us.”
4. The Word of God as gospel is found throughout the Old Testament, chiefly in the form of promises of the coming Christ, but no less in God’s gracious dealings with his covenant people for the sake of the coming Christ.
5. The Old Testament Scriptures are precious because they are “the swaddling cloths and the manger in which Christ lies” (LW 35.236). Thus the gospel is at once contained and concealed in the Old Testament, and this “manger” remains shrouded in darkness unless illumined by the “star of Bethlehem,” namely, “the new light, preaching and the gospel, oral and public preaching,” whereby the living voice “produce[s] in speech and hearing what prior to this lay hidden in the letter and in secret vision” (LW 52.205).
6. The Holy Scriptures are, for Luther, rightly understood when they are seen as the record of past proclamation, and are rightly used when the preaching there recorded is continuously transposed into the modality of present proclamation.
7. The Holy Scriptures are justly called Word of God, the written Word, because they have God the Holy Spirit as their ultimate author: the prophets and apostles all spoke and wrote under the inspiration of the Spirit. Yet the Scriptures are Word of God in a secondary or derivative sense because they always point beyond themselves to Jesus Christ
8. The preceding considerations clearly show that for Luther the Word of God as gospel, the oral proclamation of Christ and his benefits, is the basic form of the Word.
9. The preached Word as gospel is the basic form of the Word of God and the creator of the church because it is nothing less than the real presence of the exalted Christ. The gospel is “of Christ” not only because true evangelical preaching has Christ as its object, but above all because the risen Christ himself is the acting subject of this proclamation.
10. To say that the gospel is the real presence of the exalted Christ is to say that salvation is a present event of preaching, and is thus a “Word event.”
11. Central to [the "Word event"] is the assertion that faith in the gospel effects a personal union between Christ and the Christian, and that this union is the sole ground of the believer’s acceptance before God.
12. The preached Word that is the occasion of salvation is the Word of law and gospel... the gospel must be preached together with the law.
13. The church is the daughter of the Word and the creation of the gospel.

With Ben and Jerry's and Alcoholics Anonymous in the school of evangelism

In 1978 two friends named Ben and Jerry started selling ice-cream.

In 1935 an alcoholic named Bob met a recovering alcoholic named Bill and gave up alchohol.

We know these facts because both Ben and Jerry's ice cream and Alcoholics Anonymous have some passionate and effective evangelists.

Why?

Circumcision

Circumcision was a sign of the promise, and that promise was made to Abraham and his Seed. More than that it was promise about the Seed that was to come.

Therefore it makes sense to have such a weird sign. Not to be too crass, but the seed would come through reproduction of Abraham and his descendants.

Therefore, the offence to God in continuing to be circumcised after Jesus had come (and faith in him, Gal 3:25) is in denying that Jesus was the promised Seed. It says you are still waiting for the promise to be fulfilled and looking for another descendant of Abraham.

Can a unitarian god answer prayer?

How can we influence through prayer a god who from eternity has already decreed what should happen from the beginning to the end of time?

Andrew Murray believed it could only happen by us entering into the eternal counsel of God, and that is only possible if God is Trinitarian.

If God was only one Person, shut up within Himself, there could be no thought of nearness to Him or influence on Him. But in God there are three Persons. In God we have Father and Son, who have in the Holy Spirit their living bond of unity and fellowship. When eternal Love begat the Son, and the Father gave the Son as the Second Person a place next Himself as His Equal and His Counsellor, there was a way opened for prayer and its influence in the very inmost life of Deity itself. Just as on earth, so in heaven the whole relation between Father and Son is that of giving and taking.

("Harmony with the Being of God" in With Christ in the School of Prayer)

As Fred Sanders comments on Murray:

the fact God eternally exists as Father and Son (in the unity of the Holy Spirit) means that there is an opening, a space prepared, for the structure of asking-and-granting that is prayer

Just as the Sonship of Jesus on earth may not be separated from His Sonship in heaven, even so with His prayer on earth, it is the continuation and the counterpart of His asking in heaven. The prayer of the man Christ Jesus is the link between the eternal asking of the onlybegotten Son in the bosom of the Father and the prayer of men upon earth. Prayer has its rise and its deepest source in the very Being of God. In the bosom of Deity nothing is ever done without prayer—the asking of the Son and the giving of the Father.

Crucial for Murray was to resist the urge to think of some will of God that is antecedent to the Son and the Father, or some decision that was made behind the back of the Tirinity, in the oneness of God that is not already triune. There is no such God, so there is no such divine will. The divine will is Trinitarian and is worked out according to the asking-and-granting structure revealed in the Son:

This may help us somewhat to understand how the prayer of man, coming through the Son, can have effect upon God. The decrees of God are not decisions made by Him without reference to the Son, or His petition, or the petition to be sent up through Him. By no means. The Lord Jesus is the first-begotten, the Head and Heir of all things: all things were created through Him anduntoHim, and all things consist in Him. In the counsels of the Father, the Son, as Eepresentative of all creation, had always a voice ; in the decrees of the eternal purpose there was always room left for the liberty of the Son as Mediator and Intercessor, and so for the petitions of all who draw nigh to the Father in the Son.

(pp. 222-223, Embracing the Trinity)

Incidentally, I once heard James Torrance despair of the lack of books on prayer that were strong on the intercession of Christ. Andrew Murray's book was one of the few he thought was good.

Honour in 1 Timothy

• "Honour widows who are truly widows" - 1 Tim 5:3-16 deals with how you honour widows by providing for them financially.
• "Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honour" - 1 Tim 5:17-24 deals with how you honour elders by financial provision and respect.
• "slaves regard their own masters as worthy of all honour" - 1 Tim 6:1-2 deals with how slaves honour their masters by serving them.

All are in the context of the two verses of the letter that end "Amen", 1:17 and 6:16, which make clear that ultimately it is the Lord Jesus Christ who deserves and receives all the honour.

(with thanks to MT)

John Donne sonnets

Holy Sonnet 10

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

(HT Colin Gunton)

Holy Sonnet 14

Batter my heart, three-person'd God ; for you
As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend ;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy ;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

(HT Rosemary Grier)

Colin Gunton on God's omnipotence

It is easy to formulate [God's omnipotence] in terms of an abstract contrast between awareness of our finite power and a supposedly infinitely powerful deity who can, according to a famous definition, will everything except a contradiction. This approach, however, will not do, because if God is simply power magnified to an infinite degree, then God is little distinguishable from a tyrant or the devil. It is better that we remember two things, only apparently in tension with one another. The first is that Paul centres his notion of divine power on the salvation achieved by Christ on the cross and the power of the proclamation of the gospel to reconcile lost sinners to their loving creator. To call Christ 'the power of God and the wisdom of God' (1 Cor. 1.24) privileges a certain way of exercising power. This must not, however, be sentimentalized, as it often is in an era which has become too conscious of excesses committed in the name of divine power. There is much talk of non-coercive love and power, and indeed, the cross is a sign that in one respect God indeed does not coerce. But that is not the whole story, for the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is an act of power of another kind and, although in no way to be divorced from the divine action on the cross, is coercive of reality in a strong sense. As John Donne's great sonnet celebrates, death the coercer is coerced. These two central insights together entail that in some way or other we must hold together the power that is made real in the suffering of Jesus and that manifested, on the one hand, in his 'works of power' and, on the other, in his being raised from the dead.

(p. 16, Colin Gunton, The Christian Faith)

I think that massive quotation is massively helpful. Our doctrine of God's omnipotence needs to come out of the exercise of God's power in both Christ's cross and his resurrection.

William Temple on self-centredness

When we open our eyes as babies we see the world stretching out around us; we are in the middle of it; all we see is determined by relation of all objects to ourselves. This will be true as long as we live. I am the center of the world I see; where the horizon is depends on where I stand. The same is true of our mental and spiritual vision. Some things hurt us; we hope they will not happen again; we call them bad. Some things please us; we hope they will happen again; we call them good. Our standard of value is the way things affect ourselves. So each of us takes his place in the center of his own world. But I am not the center of the world, nor do I determine what is good or bad. I am not the center; God is. In other words, from the beginning I have put myself in God's place. This is my original sin.

(pp. 37-38, William Temple, Christianity and Social Order, 1942, HT C. Fitzsimons Alison)

That picture that when I move the horizon moves with me, struck me very powerfully when I heard it today.

It is all too easy to see how such self-centredness leads to conflict with one another, and ultimately with our God who will not be moved into our orbit by the force of our will.

... and yet he did move into our orbit according to his own will!

Christ submitted to the judgment of humanity "who call evil good and good evil" (Isaiah 5:20) and was executed as a sinner. After three days the Father could stand the injustice no longer justified his Son by his Spirit who raised him from the dead (1 Tim 3:16).

For a while God let us rule, and the sun stopped shining and earth became unstable... but then Christ was made Lord and Christ and the world is being put right (Acts 2). But because he took that route, rather than the route of shear power, there is room for us in the world put right.

Transforming love and hope

Commenting on Romans 8 Luther recalls the famous saying of Augustine that "The soul is more where it loves than where it lives".

Steven Paulson explains that if the person you love is on the other side of the country your thoughts, money, time is spent there as much as possible. Inevitably, unless the love ends, the lover and the beloved will move together and the identity of each will be found in the other. As Luther says, "love transforms the lover into the beloved", or as Jesus said "two shall become one flesh".

Paulson, sees Luther then explaining this movement as part of the more significant movement of hope. I'm not sure if that is right, but Luther certainly sees hope as important and performing the same movement.

Luther criticises the philosophers for seeking to understand things by focusing on the present and metaphysics. He sees Paul focusing his attention not on creation itself but on what it is waiting for. Paulson comments:

In the forest a birdwatcher learns to listen for birds more than watch for them. A therapist learns to ignore patient projections and to listen for the true source of pain. A theologian must... learn to hear the creature waiting.

If we want to understand people, and all creation, we need to know what they are hoping for as well as what they love. Because, "hope changes the one who hopes into what is hoped for".

I've met those people who ask you off the bat "what would love to do on your ideal day?" or "what do you love most about your church?" I've also been in interviews where you are asked "where do you hope to be in 5 years?" Those are questions that probe right to the heart who you are so they are questions worth asking people you want to know.

Soon I will be moving jobs and cities. Already relationship dynamics are changing, money is being spent on things I can only benefit from after the move, thoughts are in the place where I will end up. I am becoming what I hope for.

[Tim Keller has a sermon series on the transforming power of the Christian hope]

The Bible in a sentence

Colin Gunton had a conversation with John Webster "about whether one can say that there is a single leading idea in scripture" and concluded that if there is then "life" has a claim to it (p.x, Colin Gunton, The Christian Faith).

On the flip-side to this, death could also make a claim. In our recent book discussion of Harry Potter we asked whether the real enemy of the series was Voldemort or Death. I thought it was Death! The prominence of life and death in fiction reflects its pervasive presence in reality, which is just what the Bible deals with.

The Bible certainly sees death as the "last enemy to be destroyed" (1 Cor 15:26), and it is there as a threat and then presence from Genesis 2:17 to Revelation 21:8. A novel begins a story in the midst of countless other stories, and ends when that story is over even though the overlapping stories continue. Similarly, other than a bit of scene setting the Bible starts with the appearance of death, and ends when death's story ends. This is despite the eternity of incredible stories on either end. But not only does it frame the narrative of the Bible it stands at the central turning point when the Son of God died our death to bring us life.

Neither death nor life are static realities, but life is creative and death brings things to an end. Both are rich in meaning if understood Biblicaly as deeply relational, in the first instance toward the Trinity (John 6:63; 17:3) but also the whole of Creation.

The Bible has a two-beat rhythm that is initially of life-to-death, but the increasingly dominant rhythm is of death-to-life.

Therefore, if I had to sum up the Bible in a sentence, as one glittering group of people were asked, I would be tempted by JI Packer's "adoption through propitiation" or James Hamilton's "salvation through judgment", but think I'd plump for life through death.

What do you think?

Unity and plurality

Colin Gunton notes that:

"Much recent thought has turned into a contest between exponents of the essential unity of things and those advocating a fundamental, even chaotic, plurality." (. 13, The Christian Faith)

In contrast to this war between the camps that emphasise unity (particularly Modernists) and those that emphasise plurality (particularly Postmodernists), Christianity sees no conflict. Gunton argues that the Bible has a doctrine of creation that emphasises both the "free and sovereign action", but also a pattern of mediation which gives "space" to creation to be itself.

Interestingly he then ties unity particularly to the work of the Son, and plurality to the work of the Spirit, both of whom the Father uses to create both old and new creations:

"while reference to Christ shows how we may hold the world together in unity, the Spiirit is the principle of reality's variety and multiplicity" (p. 14, ibid)

This makes sense to me particularly as I think of Paul and his teaching on the church. He appeals to the unity we as a body in Christ (cf. Col 1:17 which sees union in Christ in creation), but often sees the Spirit gives a diversity of gifts. Christ's saving work is seen supremely in his one action of incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension; but the Spirit works in countless individuals in a variety of times and places and ways. Of course each indwell the other, to the glory of the Father in Jesus Christ, so that there is harmony in the Trinity's work.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows book discussion questions

On Thursday I am leading a semi-evangelistic book discussion on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

I am not a die-hard fan, but I do like the books and believe it provides a deeply real way into discussing the Gospel. I am not intending to draw direct links to Christianity myself (except perhaps at the close), but hope to enlarge imaginations so that the Gospel can be comprehended better once it is heard. The many Christians who will be there will no doubt make the significant links for me and hopefully also see the superiority of the Gospel.

I will probably improve it after some sleep, but here is a link to the questions, plus loads and loads of quotations on the three themes I hope to discuss:

• trust
• death; and
• love

I would like to have done remorse as well but there won't be time. Feedback welcome. I will probably edit this post after the event.

Good News For People With Big Problems

Recently I've really benefited from listening to these MP3s by David Zahl of Mockingbird Ministries. They are unlike anything I've ever listened to and at heart that is because, as he repeatedly says, the motivation behind the series is to look at reality, not just Christian reality.

That works itself out in two striking things about the series:

1. Christian jargon is avoided and it is dominated by clips and stories from 'secular' culture. 10min clips from films, songs, poems, celebrity biography are all brought in, but not as a mere springboard but as something to really look at. David Zahl really believes that the Gospel has something to say to all of life.
2. Five out of the six talks are on the some of the darkest parts of our lives: self-involvement, judgment, depression, addiction, and death. It is a course which focuses on the diagnosis rather than the cure, and in some sense that is a weakness. But the strength is that David Zahl believes that the good news comes through the bad news. Unlike most of society and the church, he believes that it is through facing up to reality that resurrection life can be found.

Have a listen and see what you think.

1. "Starting with the Man in the Mirror: Self-Involvement and Suffering" starring Michael Jackson, Jack Kerouac and Woody Allen.
2. "It’s Not You It’s Me and Other Lies: Judgment, Guilt and Identity" starring George Costanza, Flannery O’Connor and T.S. Eliot
3. "Check Out Any Time You Like (But You can Never Leave), Part 1: Anger, Depression and Christian Hope" starring Whit Stillman, Emily Dickinson and David Foster Wallace
4. "When I Get to the Bottom I Go Back to the Top: Addiction, Anxiety and Recovery” starring Bill Wilson, Nemo’s dad Marlin and Wes Anderson
5. "Getting Out of Jail Free: Death, Despair and Sacrifice" starring Bob Dylan, W.H. Auden, Leo Tolstoy and Clint Eastwood.
6. "What Would Uncle Scrooge Do? Gratitude, Honesty and Astonishment" starring Kermit the Frog, John Lennon and Thornton Wilder

Sorrow in heaven

There once lived a people who had a profound understanding of the divine; this people thought that no man could see the God and live. -- Who grasps this contradiction of sorrow: not to reveal oneself is the death of love, to reveal oneself is the death of the beloved!"

(Søren Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments)

How happy must God have been to tear the curtain of the temple and stop hiding himself from humanity? Yet at the same time he must have been so sorrowful that it was at the cost of hiding himself from his beloved Son dying on the cross.