Thursday, December 16, 2010
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Nick Cave - Hallelujah (Live 2001)
...And now, words from another Anglican of a very different stripe, George Herbert - whose words are no less coruscating, no less haunting -
The Foil.
If we could see below
The sphere of virtue, and each shining grace,
As plainly, as that above doth shew;
That were the better sky, the brighter place.
God hath made stars the foil
To set off virtues; griefs, to set off sinning.
Yet in this wretched world we toil;
As if grief were not foul, nor virtue winning.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Dispatches From Elsewhere # 2: Paul Helm
More on Packer and ""Fundamentalism" and the Word of God" here:
http://paulhelmsdeep.blogspot.com/2008/03/fundamentalism-and-word-of-god-fifty_01.html
This link will take you into the blog of Paul Helm, Calvinist philosopher and theologian extraordinaire. This a cracking blog by a very stimulating and helpful contemporary Christian thinker, full of weighty and wonderful things. Paul Helm is currently a Teaching Fellow at Regent College in Vancouver, Canada.
Signing off -
The Scribbling Apprentice
http://paulhelmsdeep.blogspot.com/2008/03/fundamentalism-and-word-of-god-fifty_01.html
This link will take you into the blog of Paul Helm, Calvinist philosopher and theologian extraordinaire. This a cracking blog by a very stimulating and helpful contemporary Christian thinker, full of weighty and wonderful things. Paul Helm is currently a Teaching Fellow at Regent College in Vancouver, Canada.
Signing off -
The Scribbling Apprentice
Homage á Packer: Fundamentalism and the Word of God
The following is a review (written some time ago and edited for clearer reading) of one of Packer's very influential little volumes, "Fundamentalism" and the Word of God. Although quite short and published over half a century ago, it remains a sharp and lucid vindication of the evangelical doctrine of Biblical revelation. Packer takes liberalism to task for misunderstanding and ultimately forfeiting the meaningful witness of the Biblical texts for the sake of what appears to be enlightened rationalism. As Packer shows, however, such a tack trades a rich inheritance for a mess of pottage. Of course, a critical reading of ""Fundamentalism" and the Word of God" in the context of the dizzying advances of critical theory and postmodernity shows up some of the short-comings of this work. However, in terms of a deft and clear exposition of the central matters at stake in the on-going debate over Biblical authority, Packer's work can hardly be bettered.
""Fundamentalism and the Word of God" (Eerdmans, 1958) by J. I Packer: A Review
Packer’s treatment of the topic of “fundamentalism” and the Bible opens up into a comprehensive engagement with the evangelical doctrine of Scripture and the contrasting trends of liberalism, which effectively rob Scripture of its authority and internal coherence. He shows up the often unexamined assumptions that underlie so much seemingly “scientific” criticism of Scripture and the inconsistencies bound into the liberal stance on the place and authority of Scripture.
Early on, Packer disregards the term “fundamentalism” as being unhelpful insofar as it is a term often used to convey and cover up opposition to the evangelical stance on the authority of the Bible. It is more often than not bound up in rhetoric and thus encourages emotional responses as opposed to clarity. Moving on from this point, Packer identifies authority as the main issue underpinning so much debate on the nature of Scripture. Essentially, he writes, there are only three possible views of the Bible; the evangelical, traditionalist and subjectivist viewpoints. Only the evangelical approach coheres with the texture of Scriptural authority and is thus in accord with apostolic tradition and Christ’s own view of the Scriptures. Scripture, on the basis of the evangelical view, is the rule of faith and life. The theological method Christ demands of the church must conform to the pattern of the Scriptures themselves; reason and human thought is thus to be shaped by the authority and witness of Scripture.
This is in direct contrast to the subjectivist approach to the Bible (the only real alternative to the evangelical standpoint) which is based primarily on the acceptance of the conclusions of nineteenth century critical Bible study. Such a viewpoint demands that Scripture errs at various points and must therefore be interpreted effectively by discerning scholars. Therefore, only Scripture that is pruned by human reason remains authoritative and not necessarily Scripture itself. The supreme authority is human reason; critical rationalism becomes the conduit of divine revelation. This approach underpins the subjectivist project, which is the staple methodology of liberalism.
In response to such a viewpoint, Packer unfurls a properly Biblical view of Scripture. He fleshes out the meaning of the term theopneustos (“breathed out by God”) from 2 Timothy 3.16. Through careful exegesis Packer shows the Bible to be the product of God’s inspiring activity working through the various Biblical writers’ cast of mind, outlook, temperament, interests, literary habits and stylistic idiosyncrasies to bring about the textual revelation of Scripture. God is sovereign over (what Packer calls) this “concursive” process and so is in no way frustrated by the sinfulness and humanity of the Biblical authors. Scripture is thus fully human and fully divine. Providence and the free agency of man harmonise to produce the revelation of Scripture. A denial of this truth is primarily rooted in a stunted, limited doctrine of God that is built on a deistic conception of his deity. The god of rationalistic liberalism is an anaemic, weak deity or “super-force” who cannot address human kind or intervene in the mechanics of world-events. Because such a god cannot speak or act, the Scriptures are seen as purely human constructions; the distilled reflections of man’s religious genius and nothing more. If God cannot act and if God cannot speak, the Biblical witness is human, all too human. It is little more than compelling and enigmatic literature.
This idea that Scripture is an entirely human construct built on merely human reflection and speculation on experience is a major tenet of liberal Protestantism. But, as Packer writes, no amount of human speculation could ever make real sense of Jesus Christ the Man (to pick a single example; the same applies to any major event of revelation in the Bible). The Bible is thus more properly understood as an inspired record of history; God’s actions in history being bound up with the words he inspired to interpret them.
Scripture is a complex, self-interpreting organism containing every conceivable literary genre. Packer asserts that only an evangelical viewpoint of revelation can properly do justice to the wealth of Biblical literature and revelation. Far from cramping exegetical style, the evangelical hermeneutic should liberate it, for only the standpoint of evangelical tradition enables Scripture to speak with suitable authority. The evangelical hermeneutic encourages a posture of obedient listening to the text of Scripture. Thereby, spiritual change in human hearts is brought about. The end result is dynamic transformation; individual lives and whole communities are transformed as the Word of God is heard.
In contrast, liberalism places the ultimate emphasis on the role of unaided human reason (separated from believing faith) as the sole interpreter of Scripture. The intellectual schema of the detached “objective” cogito ascertaining “pure facts” defined the scholarly project of modernity (which in turn under-girded the development of theological liberalism.) Ironically however, our human reasoning faculties are loaded with undetected prejudice and bias. As has been indicated time and again, the idea of pure intellectual detachment yielding objective truth through unaided reason is a mere myth. Instead of guiding people into a deeper grasp of the Biblical truth, unaided human reason more often than not merely ends up emasculating it and shaping it according to the fashionable intellectual whims of the age. The end result is an all-out silencing of the voice of Scripture; the gagging of God.
As I read “”Fundamentalism” and the Word of God” I particularly admired Packer’s ability to so effortlessly unmask the presuppositions bound into the liberal project of Biblical interpretation. So often, evangelicals are castigated for holding to a blinkered and prejudiced approach to Biblical interpretation. In fact, however, as Packer reveals, the evangelical hermeneutic is more properly “catholic” in orientation and far more loyal to the tradition of the church. It is not a recent fashion that emerged after the Enlightenment as a defensive response to the emergence of historio-critical approaches to Scripture (as many suppose). Every major Christian theologian through the ages has held to what might be identified as an evangelical approach to Biblical interpretation. As such, as Packer reveals, it is actually the liberal project which is the anomaly, having sprung up in its modern form during the nineteenth century.
Furthermore, at heart, liberalism revolves on a faith bias insofar as its advocates spurn the Bible’s own witness to itself as God’s authoritative revelation. Rather than trust the witness of Scripture and accept it as God’s revealed Word, liberalism puts its faith in autonomous human reason (exalted over humble, believing faith and the veracity of the Biblical record.) The result is a multitude of different theologies and systems of interpretation that ultimately fog up the Biblical accounts under various trends of philosophical thought. As Packer writes, reason must be put to the service of believing faith. Otherwise, it becomes irrational. This insight rings true of so many liberal trends of Biblical interpretation. Packer builds up to a damning indictment of liberal theology, claiming it works with a stunted rationality that actually weakens the intellectual life of the church.
Following on from this critique of liberal trends of interpretation, Packer encourages an approach to Scripture that springs from “reasoning faith”. I was heartened by Packer’s plea for careful and constructive thought that applies Biblical truth to the whole of life. Such an enterprise is crucial. The duty to effectively communicate God’s truth involves the duty to think hard. This involves reasoning (Paul provides a good example in Acts 17.16-33 when he preaches in Athens[1]) in an effort to get across Biblical concepts in a language that is comprehensible within contemporary culture and yet does not deny the gospel. After all, Biblical revelation is predominantly given in terms of near Eastern culture and thought forms; it is necessary to do the work of translating it into the thought patterns of contemporary culture.
Packer writes, “…it is through the ferment of thought created by such interaction that theological insight is deepened and the relevance of the gospel more fully grasped” (p. 135). I heartily agree. Indeed, since the publication of “”Fundamentalism” and the Word of God” (1958), the term “fundamentalism” as a by-word for anti-intellectualism has to some extent been superseded by the term “evangelical”, at least in my experience. Bibliolatry, bigotry, unthinking dogmatism and shallow theology are conflated under the term “evangelical” – at least, it was by some of my university peers. I believe that on some level this is a justified critique. Quite simply, the hearty and vibrant thought and reflection Packer calls for, the kind of thinking that relates Biblical truth to every aspect of social, cultural, historical, political, philosophical and scientific reality (as well as to the arts) is lacking in a good amount of contemporary evangelical life and thought.[2] Packer admits recognition of this trait in the evangelical circles of his own period. The pairing of evangelicalism and anti-intellectualism is an unhealthy and unwarranted development that is ill-at-odds with a thoroughly Biblical Christian witness in the world.
As Packer suggests, a vibrant faith (and reliance on the Bible as the Word of God) does not necessarily negate or undermine vibrant, vital thinking and critical reflection. If any tradition can claim intellectual credibility, it is evangelicalism. The theological ancestry of evangelicalism is rooted in the thought of giants like Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley. Evangelical thought (because it springs from the Reformation revolution) has properly resolved the dual role of reason and faith and how they ought to compliment one another on the basis of prior divine illumination. This complimentary relationship between reason and faith is fostered only by a proper understanding of Biblical revelation. Liberalism on the other hand is “wedded to axioms which represent a lapse into unbelief” (p. 142) and therefore estrangement from God. As such, it must (and inevitably does) lapse into intellectual short-falls and error.
Overall, I was encouraged by Packer’s estimate of the vitality of the evangelical tradition, which despite so many protestations to the contrary, is in fact a treasure trove of so much formative and ground-breaking thought. To be thoroughly evangelical, then, does not demand a wholesale abandonment of contemporary thought and culture, but the opposite; a robust engagement that seeks to redeem it for the glory of Christ.
Accordingly, the evangelical opposition to liberalism is absolutely not based on irrationality or lack of intellectual depth. Rather, the opposite is the case. It is precisely because evangelicalism contains a deeper, truer and more rational estimate of Scripture, that it must stand against liberal trends of interpretation. Packer helped me to see that. Indeed, a thorough-going liberalism collapses under itself; by evacuating Scripture of its historical veracity and theological truth, it leaves only a single option for the basis of belief – a will to “leap into the dark” without any basis on evidence. Such is a true abdication of the use of the mind.
Finally, Packer helped me to realise that repentance follows through on the intellectual level. It is possible to be in intellectual revolt against the God of the Bible. Such a stance is embodied in an unnecessarily sceptical and wise-ass approach to Biblical truth, which seeks to force it into a prior mould borrowed from agnostic trends of contemporary thought. I know that I have been guilty of this although I have often conveniently ignored it. At root, as Packer makes clear, all intellectual pride emerges from a prior flouting of God’s authority, a refusal to submit both the heart and mind to Christ in willing obedience and love. If our thinking is to be properly and truly doxological, we must first submit to the God who is there: the God who has spoken and revealed himself through his Word.
[1] Jesus himself, according to Bernard Ramm (The Pattern of Authority, Eerdmans, 1957, pp.51) – cited by Packer on pp. 93 – appealed to logic: “With reference to logical forms our Lord used analogy, Luke xi.13; reduction ad absurdum, Matt. xii.26; excluded middle, Matt. xii. 30; a fortiori, Matt. Xii. 1-8; implication, Matt. xii. 28; and the law of non-contradiction, Luke vi. 39.”
[2] Perhaps this is an overstatement: there is much in the way of evangelical engagement with critical thought and contemporary culture in the work of a long list of writers and scholars like D A Carson, Tim Keller, N T Wright, John Frame, William Lane Craig, William Alston, Alvin Plantinga, Kevin Vanhoozer, Stephen N Williams…to name but a few working in different realms of thought.
""Fundamentalism and the Word of God" (Eerdmans, 1958) by J. I Packer: A Review
Packer’s treatment of the topic of “fundamentalism” and the Bible opens up into a comprehensive engagement with the evangelical doctrine of Scripture and the contrasting trends of liberalism, which effectively rob Scripture of its authority and internal coherence. He shows up the often unexamined assumptions that underlie so much seemingly “scientific” criticism of Scripture and the inconsistencies bound into the liberal stance on the place and authority of Scripture.
Early on, Packer disregards the term “fundamentalism” as being unhelpful insofar as it is a term often used to convey and cover up opposition to the evangelical stance on the authority of the Bible. It is more often than not bound up in rhetoric and thus encourages emotional responses as opposed to clarity. Moving on from this point, Packer identifies authority as the main issue underpinning so much debate on the nature of Scripture. Essentially, he writes, there are only three possible views of the Bible; the evangelical, traditionalist and subjectivist viewpoints. Only the evangelical approach coheres with the texture of Scriptural authority and is thus in accord with apostolic tradition and Christ’s own view of the Scriptures. Scripture, on the basis of the evangelical view, is the rule of faith and life. The theological method Christ demands of the church must conform to the pattern of the Scriptures themselves; reason and human thought is thus to be shaped by the authority and witness of Scripture.
This is in direct contrast to the subjectivist approach to the Bible (the only real alternative to the evangelical standpoint) which is based primarily on the acceptance of the conclusions of nineteenth century critical Bible study. Such a viewpoint demands that Scripture errs at various points and must therefore be interpreted effectively by discerning scholars. Therefore, only Scripture that is pruned by human reason remains authoritative and not necessarily Scripture itself. The supreme authority is human reason; critical rationalism becomes the conduit of divine revelation. This approach underpins the subjectivist project, which is the staple methodology of liberalism.
In response to such a viewpoint, Packer unfurls a properly Biblical view of Scripture. He fleshes out the meaning of the term theopneustos (“breathed out by God”) from 2 Timothy 3.16. Through careful exegesis Packer shows the Bible to be the product of God’s inspiring activity working through the various Biblical writers’ cast of mind, outlook, temperament, interests, literary habits and stylistic idiosyncrasies to bring about the textual revelation of Scripture. God is sovereign over (what Packer calls) this “concursive” process and so is in no way frustrated by the sinfulness and humanity of the Biblical authors. Scripture is thus fully human and fully divine. Providence and the free agency of man harmonise to produce the revelation of Scripture. A denial of this truth is primarily rooted in a stunted, limited doctrine of God that is built on a deistic conception of his deity. The god of rationalistic liberalism is an anaemic, weak deity or “super-force” who cannot address human kind or intervene in the mechanics of world-events. Because such a god cannot speak or act, the Scriptures are seen as purely human constructions; the distilled reflections of man’s religious genius and nothing more. If God cannot act and if God cannot speak, the Biblical witness is human, all too human. It is little more than compelling and enigmatic literature.
This idea that Scripture is an entirely human construct built on merely human reflection and speculation on experience is a major tenet of liberal Protestantism. But, as Packer writes, no amount of human speculation could ever make real sense of Jesus Christ the Man (to pick a single example; the same applies to any major event of revelation in the Bible). The Bible is thus more properly understood as an inspired record of history; God’s actions in history being bound up with the words he inspired to interpret them.
Scripture is a complex, self-interpreting organism containing every conceivable literary genre. Packer asserts that only an evangelical viewpoint of revelation can properly do justice to the wealth of Biblical literature and revelation. Far from cramping exegetical style, the evangelical hermeneutic should liberate it, for only the standpoint of evangelical tradition enables Scripture to speak with suitable authority. The evangelical hermeneutic encourages a posture of obedient listening to the text of Scripture. Thereby, spiritual change in human hearts is brought about. The end result is dynamic transformation; individual lives and whole communities are transformed as the Word of God is heard.
In contrast, liberalism places the ultimate emphasis on the role of unaided human reason (separated from believing faith) as the sole interpreter of Scripture. The intellectual schema of the detached “objective” cogito ascertaining “pure facts” defined the scholarly project of modernity (which in turn under-girded the development of theological liberalism.) Ironically however, our human reasoning faculties are loaded with undetected prejudice and bias. As has been indicated time and again, the idea of pure intellectual detachment yielding objective truth through unaided reason is a mere myth. Instead of guiding people into a deeper grasp of the Biblical truth, unaided human reason more often than not merely ends up emasculating it and shaping it according to the fashionable intellectual whims of the age. The end result is an all-out silencing of the voice of Scripture; the gagging of God.
As I read “”Fundamentalism” and the Word of God” I particularly admired Packer’s ability to so effortlessly unmask the presuppositions bound into the liberal project of Biblical interpretation. So often, evangelicals are castigated for holding to a blinkered and prejudiced approach to Biblical interpretation. In fact, however, as Packer reveals, the evangelical hermeneutic is more properly “catholic” in orientation and far more loyal to the tradition of the church. It is not a recent fashion that emerged after the Enlightenment as a defensive response to the emergence of historio-critical approaches to Scripture (as many suppose). Every major Christian theologian through the ages has held to what might be identified as an evangelical approach to Biblical interpretation. As such, as Packer reveals, it is actually the liberal project which is the anomaly, having sprung up in its modern form during the nineteenth century.
Furthermore, at heart, liberalism revolves on a faith bias insofar as its advocates spurn the Bible’s own witness to itself as God’s authoritative revelation. Rather than trust the witness of Scripture and accept it as God’s revealed Word, liberalism puts its faith in autonomous human reason (exalted over humble, believing faith and the veracity of the Biblical record.) The result is a multitude of different theologies and systems of interpretation that ultimately fog up the Biblical accounts under various trends of philosophical thought. As Packer writes, reason must be put to the service of believing faith. Otherwise, it becomes irrational. This insight rings true of so many liberal trends of Biblical interpretation. Packer builds up to a damning indictment of liberal theology, claiming it works with a stunted rationality that actually weakens the intellectual life of the church.
Following on from this critique of liberal trends of interpretation, Packer encourages an approach to Scripture that springs from “reasoning faith”. I was heartened by Packer’s plea for careful and constructive thought that applies Biblical truth to the whole of life. Such an enterprise is crucial. The duty to effectively communicate God’s truth involves the duty to think hard. This involves reasoning (Paul provides a good example in Acts 17.16-33 when he preaches in Athens[1]) in an effort to get across Biblical concepts in a language that is comprehensible within contemporary culture and yet does not deny the gospel. After all, Biblical revelation is predominantly given in terms of near Eastern culture and thought forms; it is necessary to do the work of translating it into the thought patterns of contemporary culture.
Packer writes, “…it is through the ferment of thought created by such interaction that theological insight is deepened and the relevance of the gospel more fully grasped” (p. 135). I heartily agree. Indeed, since the publication of “”Fundamentalism” and the Word of God” (1958), the term “fundamentalism” as a by-word for anti-intellectualism has to some extent been superseded by the term “evangelical”, at least in my experience. Bibliolatry, bigotry, unthinking dogmatism and shallow theology are conflated under the term “evangelical” – at least, it was by some of my university peers. I believe that on some level this is a justified critique. Quite simply, the hearty and vibrant thought and reflection Packer calls for, the kind of thinking that relates Biblical truth to every aspect of social, cultural, historical, political, philosophical and scientific reality (as well as to the arts) is lacking in a good amount of contemporary evangelical life and thought.[2] Packer admits recognition of this trait in the evangelical circles of his own period. The pairing of evangelicalism and anti-intellectualism is an unhealthy and unwarranted development that is ill-at-odds with a thoroughly Biblical Christian witness in the world.
As Packer suggests, a vibrant faith (and reliance on the Bible as the Word of God) does not necessarily negate or undermine vibrant, vital thinking and critical reflection. If any tradition can claim intellectual credibility, it is evangelicalism. The theological ancestry of evangelicalism is rooted in the thought of giants like Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley. Evangelical thought (because it springs from the Reformation revolution) has properly resolved the dual role of reason and faith and how they ought to compliment one another on the basis of prior divine illumination. This complimentary relationship between reason and faith is fostered only by a proper understanding of Biblical revelation. Liberalism on the other hand is “wedded to axioms which represent a lapse into unbelief” (p. 142) and therefore estrangement from God. As such, it must (and inevitably does) lapse into intellectual short-falls and error.
Overall, I was encouraged by Packer’s estimate of the vitality of the evangelical tradition, which despite so many protestations to the contrary, is in fact a treasure trove of so much formative and ground-breaking thought. To be thoroughly evangelical, then, does not demand a wholesale abandonment of contemporary thought and culture, but the opposite; a robust engagement that seeks to redeem it for the glory of Christ.
Accordingly, the evangelical opposition to liberalism is absolutely not based on irrationality or lack of intellectual depth. Rather, the opposite is the case. It is precisely because evangelicalism contains a deeper, truer and more rational estimate of Scripture, that it must stand against liberal trends of interpretation. Packer helped me to see that. Indeed, a thorough-going liberalism collapses under itself; by evacuating Scripture of its historical veracity and theological truth, it leaves only a single option for the basis of belief – a will to “leap into the dark” without any basis on evidence. Such is a true abdication of the use of the mind.
Finally, Packer helped me to realise that repentance follows through on the intellectual level. It is possible to be in intellectual revolt against the God of the Bible. Such a stance is embodied in an unnecessarily sceptical and wise-ass approach to Biblical truth, which seeks to force it into a prior mould borrowed from agnostic trends of contemporary thought. I know that I have been guilty of this although I have often conveniently ignored it. At root, as Packer makes clear, all intellectual pride emerges from a prior flouting of God’s authority, a refusal to submit both the heart and mind to Christ in willing obedience and love. If our thinking is to be properly and truly doxological, we must first submit to the God who is there: the God who has spoken and revealed himself through his Word.
[1] Jesus himself, according to Bernard Ramm (The Pattern of Authority, Eerdmans, 1957, pp.51) – cited by Packer on pp. 93 – appealed to logic: “With reference to logical forms our Lord used analogy, Luke xi.13; reduction ad absurdum, Matt. xii.26; excluded middle, Matt. xii. 30; a fortiori, Matt. Xii. 1-8; implication, Matt. xii. 28; and the law of non-contradiction, Luke vi. 39.”
[2] Perhaps this is an overstatement: there is much in the way of evangelical engagement with critical thought and contemporary culture in the work of a long list of writers and scholars like D A Carson, Tim Keller, N T Wright, John Frame, William Lane Craig, William Alston, Alvin Plantinga, Kevin Vanhoozer, Stephen N Williams…to name but a few working in different realms of thought.
Friday, October 29, 2010
What is Hell? J.I. Packer
J I Packer, the theologian who has probably written more introductions to Christian theological books than any other living mortal, addresses the solemn question, "What is Hell?" In terms of influence on contemprary evangelicalism and generations of Christians, Packer's influence is inestimable. His writing is brisk and packed to the hilt with edifying, readable truth ("Packer by name, packer by nature"). In a kind of miniature homage to Packer, I hope to lift an old article on one of his first (and still very influential) books "Fundamentalism and the Word of God" and post it sometime soon. In the meantime, enjoy this post. And if you can get your hands on anthing by Packer, give it a read.
Peter Says: Get Some Nuts (Because the End of All Things is Near) III
"The end of all things is near. Therfore be clear minded and self-controlled so that you can pray. Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers a multitude of sins. Off ospitality to one another without grumbling. Each one should use whatever gift he has reveived to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen" (1 Peter 4.7-11)
Peter writes in verse 7: “The end of all things is near.” This brings us to our second and last point. The end of all things is near therefore we the church (as a pilgrim people) must live a distinctive and prophetic way of life.
Do you know that the church – by simply being – by simply meeting and gathering – is a prophetic voice in the world? It may not seem that way from time to time. But only the church can declare two truths that every person needs to hear. First of all, everyone needs to know that God has not abandoned the world. That is one truth every person must hear. The other truth the church declares is that God will judge the world. Two truths. Both of them stand or fall together. We cannot afford to proclaim one without the other. Both are absolutely vital and everyone must hear them.
They must hear the first truth so that they may know that there is a sovereign God of supreme love and power who created them and the world and everything in it. They must know that there is a God who is sacrificially committed to a dying world – so much so that he gave his only Son Jesus Christ. They must know that Jesus Christ is the one who suffered that they may be healed of their sin and spiritual blindness. They must hear about Jesus the Saviour-King.
But they must also hear that Jesus the Saviour-King is also the Righteous Lord. He cannot permit injustices like rape and murder and unjust violence and adultery and pride to go unpunished. For he is utterly holy and righteous and just. It cannot be that all the heinous evils of the world will go unpunished in the end. It cannot be that all the terribly wrongs of history will not be put right. There must be judgement. But the truth is everyone of us is implicated in the evil of the world; we are all sinners and therefore accountable to God. People must know that there is a judgement to come. No stain of sin, not a hint of evil, or of pain or of suffering can have a part in the New Creation God will bring into being through his Son.
How will the church communicate two such vital truths to a world so full of death, chaos and hopelessness? How is the prophetic voice of the church going to reach a dying culture? Peter spells it out. The end of all things is near therefore we must be:
- clear-minded and self-controlled (verse 7). In other words, have a clear-eyed grasp of the gospel. Know the truth. Be self-controlled so that you can pray. We cannot pray if we are filled with agitation or envy or anger. We cannot pray if we loose control in the chaotic pursuit of self-centred pleasure or if we become drunk and loose the run of ourselves
The end of all things is near therefore above all:
- love one another deeply (verse 8). Paul says in Romans (13.10) that love is the fulfilment of the law. All the commandments are summed up in this one: “Love your neighbour as yourself” (Leviticus 19.18). In John 13.35 Jesus says: “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” Love is the most vital and distinct mark of the church. As Peter says, love covers over a multitude of sins. Our love for one another enables us to forgive one another and self-sacrificially serve one another. This love will express itself in very practical ways, not least of which is:
- offering hospitality to oneanother without groaning (verse 9). It doesn’t get much more practical then this, does it? Peter commands us to open our homes to one another, to share what we have with one another in a spirit of service and love. It is quite incredible; Peter begins by emphasising the imminent end of all things and then in the same breath he commands us to invite each-other over for a cup of tea. The reality of the eschaton intrudes into the most practical, seemingly mundane acts of service. By offering hospitality without groaning we anticipate the eternal Kingdom to come. By living in the manner Peter calls us to we live out the reality of the Kingdom to come in the flesh, in space-time now.
The end of all things is near therefore:
- each one should use whatever gift has been given to serve eachother. There is an overwhelming variety of gifts and temperaments here at Immanuel. Everyone of us is unique and gifted with a particular ability and perspective nobody else shares. It’s worth saying here too that the lists of spiritual gifts that we find in the pastoral epistles are not exhaustive but merely suggestive. It’s impossible to neatly classify the dizzying array of gifts we all possess between us. Having been created in the image of God we each possess different gifts and abilities; it may be intellectual passion, artistic creativity, administrative brilliance or musical genius. All these gifts with which we are endowed by creation are touched by the Holy Spirit when we are created anew in Christ.
We have been gifted so that we may serve one another. Our gifts are only discovered in service and never in introspection. In other words, it is only in the context of community and fellowship that we discover our gifts. We don’t discover them by sitting in solitude and studying our inner selves. As we gather in community others will recognise and encourage our the gifts they recognise in us. A major reason for gathering as church is to enable us to serve one another with the gifts we have. “Each one of us should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms” (verse 10).
As Peter says (4.11) we can only serve eachother in the strength God provides. In our own power we quickly grow weary of serving one other and we become either burnt out or fed up. If we love and serve one another in God’s strength as Peter commands then the prophetic voice of the church will sound out in the midst of the city. The quality of our mutual love, the richness of our communal life and the truth we have to share will impact lives and rescue people out of the flood of dissipation into the fullness of life in Christ Jesus.
Only the church can point ahead to where the universe is going. The gospel alone provides the answers people hunger for. For what were we created? We were created and called “so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ” (verse 11b). Only the church can proclaim this message. Only we can proclaim it as we choose to live out our earthly every-day life not for evil human desires but for the will of God.
May God give us the wisdom, the passion and the desire to do just that. May we arm ourselves with the attitude of Christ so that we may suffer in the world for the sake of pointing to him; the only Saviour-King, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Signing Off For Now -
The Scribbling Apprentice
Peter writes in verse 7: “The end of all things is near.” This brings us to our second and last point. The end of all things is near therefore we the church (as a pilgrim people) must live a distinctive and prophetic way of life.
Do you know that the church – by simply being – by simply meeting and gathering – is a prophetic voice in the world? It may not seem that way from time to time. But only the church can declare two truths that every person needs to hear. First of all, everyone needs to know that God has not abandoned the world. That is one truth every person must hear. The other truth the church declares is that God will judge the world. Two truths. Both of them stand or fall together. We cannot afford to proclaim one without the other. Both are absolutely vital and everyone must hear them.
They must hear the first truth so that they may know that there is a sovereign God of supreme love and power who created them and the world and everything in it. They must know that there is a God who is sacrificially committed to a dying world – so much so that he gave his only Son Jesus Christ. They must know that Jesus Christ is the one who suffered that they may be healed of their sin and spiritual blindness. They must hear about Jesus the Saviour-King.
But they must also hear that Jesus the Saviour-King is also the Righteous Lord. He cannot permit injustices like rape and murder and unjust violence and adultery and pride to go unpunished. For he is utterly holy and righteous and just. It cannot be that all the heinous evils of the world will go unpunished in the end. It cannot be that all the terribly wrongs of history will not be put right. There must be judgement. But the truth is everyone of us is implicated in the evil of the world; we are all sinners and therefore accountable to God. People must know that there is a judgement to come. No stain of sin, not a hint of evil, or of pain or of suffering can have a part in the New Creation God will bring into being through his Son.
How will the church communicate two such vital truths to a world so full of death, chaos and hopelessness? How is the prophetic voice of the church going to reach a dying culture? Peter spells it out. The end of all things is near therefore we must be:
- clear-minded and self-controlled (verse 7). In other words, have a clear-eyed grasp of the gospel. Know the truth. Be self-controlled so that you can pray. We cannot pray if we are filled with agitation or envy or anger. We cannot pray if we loose control in the chaotic pursuit of self-centred pleasure or if we become drunk and loose the run of ourselves
The end of all things is near therefore above all:
- love one another deeply (verse 8). Paul says in Romans (13.10) that love is the fulfilment of the law. All the commandments are summed up in this one: “Love your neighbour as yourself” (Leviticus 19.18). In John 13.35 Jesus says: “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” Love is the most vital and distinct mark of the church. As Peter says, love covers over a multitude of sins. Our love for one another enables us to forgive one another and self-sacrificially serve one another. This love will express itself in very practical ways, not least of which is:
- offering hospitality to oneanother without groaning (verse 9). It doesn’t get much more practical then this, does it? Peter commands us to open our homes to one another, to share what we have with one another in a spirit of service and love. It is quite incredible; Peter begins by emphasising the imminent end of all things and then in the same breath he commands us to invite each-other over for a cup of tea. The reality of the eschaton intrudes into the most practical, seemingly mundane acts of service. By offering hospitality without groaning we anticipate the eternal Kingdom to come. By living in the manner Peter calls us to we live out the reality of the Kingdom to come in the flesh, in space-time now.
The end of all things is near therefore:
- each one should use whatever gift has been given to serve eachother. There is an overwhelming variety of gifts and temperaments here at Immanuel. Everyone of us is unique and gifted with a particular ability and perspective nobody else shares. It’s worth saying here too that the lists of spiritual gifts that we find in the pastoral epistles are not exhaustive but merely suggestive. It’s impossible to neatly classify the dizzying array of gifts we all possess between us. Having been created in the image of God we each possess different gifts and abilities; it may be intellectual passion, artistic creativity, administrative brilliance or musical genius. All these gifts with which we are endowed by creation are touched by the Holy Spirit when we are created anew in Christ.
We have been gifted so that we may serve one another. Our gifts are only discovered in service and never in introspection. In other words, it is only in the context of community and fellowship that we discover our gifts. We don’t discover them by sitting in solitude and studying our inner selves. As we gather in community others will recognise and encourage our the gifts they recognise in us. A major reason for gathering as church is to enable us to serve one another with the gifts we have. “Each one of us should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms” (verse 10).
As Peter says (4.11) we can only serve eachother in the strength God provides. In our own power we quickly grow weary of serving one other and we become either burnt out or fed up. If we love and serve one another in God’s strength as Peter commands then the prophetic voice of the church will sound out in the midst of the city. The quality of our mutual love, the richness of our communal life and the truth we have to share will impact lives and rescue people out of the flood of dissipation into the fullness of life in Christ Jesus.
Only the church can point ahead to where the universe is going. The gospel alone provides the answers people hunger for. For what were we created? We were created and called “so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ” (verse 11b). Only the church can proclaim this message. Only we can proclaim it as we choose to live out our earthly every-day life not for evil human desires but for the will of God.
May God give us the wisdom, the passion and the desire to do just that. May we arm ourselves with the attitude of Christ so that we may suffer in the world for the sake of pointing to him; the only Saviour-King, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Signing Off For Now -
The Scribbling Apprentice
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Peter Says: Get Some Nuts II
1Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because he who has suffered in his body is done with sin. 2As a result, he does not live the rest of his earthly life for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God. 3For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do—living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry. 4They think it strange that you do not plunge with them into the same flood of dissipation, and they heap abuse on you. 5But they will have to give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. 6For this is the reason the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead, so that they might be judged according to men in regard to the body, but live according to God in regard to the spirit. (1 Peter 4.1-6)
So who is the fool? According to Mr T it’s the faker on the pitch crying out for a free-kick (so is the “speedwalka” and the “toe-dippa”.) But who is the fool here? Who is living a fruitless life that will come to nothing? Look again at verse 3 and following: “For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do – living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatory. They think it strange that you do not plunge with them into the same flood of dissipation, and they heap abuse on you. But they will have to give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.”
In the end, it’s worth facing the whateve ridicule and the discomfort our peers will heap on us because of the ultimate things. Death and judgement will come and only Christ can save people. Death will come and only Christ has conquered it. Therefore live it out, says Peter. Suffer for the sake of deep moral commitment to God brought about through the life-saving power of the gospel. In doing so, others without hope will see it. Then they too may be saved from the flood of dissipation that goes nowhere but the bleak despair of eternal hell.
Before we move on to the third post ("Get Some Nuts Because the End of All Things is Near") I think it’s worth saying this: I’m not telling you that enjoying pleasure is wrong and neither is Peter. The God of Christianity is not a pleasure-hating God. How could he be? He created the senses; sex is his idea. This voluptuous world with all its colours and textures are the work of his hands. How could God be a pleasure-hating God if he sent his Son to rescued us from a pleasure-less eternity? God cannot be a pleasure-hating God if he promises us the intense joy of heaven through Christ his Son. Peter is not telling us to deny ourselves that which is good and God-given. A pleasure-hating God would not create a world in which a Taco Taco Beef Burrito with extra Jalepenos could exist; there is too much correspondence between its tangy taste and my personal pleasure for that to be the case.
We are pleasure loving creatures. We delight in beauty and sensation. That is not a mistake. But the abuse of pleasure and the bondage and harm it leads to is wrong. Sin distorts everything that is good; sexual hunger becomes lust, love of pleasure becomes debauchery, love of good food becomes gluttony, the in-born human sense of the divine is warped into idolatory; sin reduces human life to nothing more than a flood of dissipation. It is spiritually fatal and ultimately seals us off from the living God. There cannot be a more heart-rending tragedy or a more fruitless loss than that of a human life spent on triviality and distorted pleasure. Peter wants to spare us from such a tragedy. As Christians we want to call people from such a wasted life of foolishness and ultimate loss.
It’s a shocking thing isn’t it? In an ultimate sense, a life without Christ is a wasted life. A life lived for sin and self-serving pleasure is utter folly. And it only ends in tragedy.
We must continue to live God-honouring lives that magnify Christ and contradict the flow of dissipation and spiritual darkness around us. People need to see that there is an alternative; that there is hope. They need to see that they are not doomed to the death-grip of drug addiction or drink-induced numbness. They need to to see that death, boredom and despair don’t have the last word. So don’t run a mile from what Peter calls the pagan flood of dissipation. Stay close. You’ve been stationed where you are to be a burning light in the smog of spiritual darkness and pain that engulfes so many lives.
If that is not reason enough to push through and press on, verse 5 has got to be: “But they will have to give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.”
In the end the live Peter calls us to is the only life worth living. The alternative is unthinkable. It is folly. It is fruitless and tragic. Yes, to obey Jesus as Lord is costly and difficult. It is painful and uncomfortable to fight against sin and unbelief day-by-day. It is difficult to face the derision of other who think our belief is delusion and our way of life straight-jacketed morality. But, in the end, it is the only way that leads to life. And, in the end, it is the only path to blessing and fullness. It is the only way to live. The alternative is folly.
May God in his infinite love grant us the spiritual strength to go Get Some Nuts so that we might be gracious Jesus-people amidst a flood of dissipation. May we offer the spiritually lost the only thing that can satiate the awful thirst and the gnawing hunger: the gospel of Christ. Amen.
Signing Out -
The Scribbling Apprentice
So who is the fool? According to Mr T it’s the faker on the pitch crying out for a free-kick (so is the “speedwalka” and the “toe-dippa”.) But who is the fool here? Who is living a fruitless life that will come to nothing? Look again at verse 3 and following: “For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do – living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatory. They think it strange that you do not plunge with them into the same flood of dissipation, and they heap abuse on you. But they will have to give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.”
In the end, it’s worth facing the whateve ridicule and the discomfort our peers will heap on us because of the ultimate things. Death and judgement will come and only Christ can save people. Death will come and only Christ has conquered it. Therefore live it out, says Peter. Suffer for the sake of deep moral commitment to God brought about through the life-saving power of the gospel. In doing so, others without hope will see it. Then they too may be saved from the flood of dissipation that goes nowhere but the bleak despair of eternal hell.
Before we move on to the third post ("Get Some Nuts Because the End of All Things is Near") I think it’s worth saying this: I’m not telling you that enjoying pleasure is wrong and neither is Peter. The God of Christianity is not a pleasure-hating God. How could he be? He created the senses; sex is his idea. This voluptuous world with all its colours and textures are the work of his hands. How could God be a pleasure-hating God if he sent his Son to rescued us from a pleasure-less eternity? God cannot be a pleasure-hating God if he promises us the intense joy of heaven through Christ his Son. Peter is not telling us to deny ourselves that which is good and God-given. A pleasure-hating God would not create a world in which a Taco Taco Beef Burrito with extra Jalepenos could exist; there is too much correspondence between its tangy taste and my personal pleasure for that to be the case.
We are pleasure loving creatures. We delight in beauty and sensation. That is not a mistake. But the abuse of pleasure and the bondage and harm it leads to is wrong. Sin distorts everything that is good; sexual hunger becomes lust, love of pleasure becomes debauchery, love of good food becomes gluttony, the in-born human sense of the divine is warped into idolatory; sin reduces human life to nothing more than a flood of dissipation. It is spiritually fatal and ultimately seals us off from the living God. There cannot be a more heart-rending tragedy or a more fruitless loss than that of a human life spent on triviality and distorted pleasure. Peter wants to spare us from such a tragedy. As Christians we want to call people from such a wasted life of foolishness and ultimate loss.
It’s a shocking thing isn’t it? In an ultimate sense, a life without Christ is a wasted life. A life lived for sin and self-serving pleasure is utter folly. And it only ends in tragedy.
We must continue to live God-honouring lives that magnify Christ and contradict the flow of dissipation and spiritual darkness around us. People need to see that there is an alternative; that there is hope. They need to see that they are not doomed to the death-grip of drug addiction or drink-induced numbness. They need to to see that death, boredom and despair don’t have the last word. So don’t run a mile from what Peter calls the pagan flood of dissipation. Stay close. You’ve been stationed where you are to be a burning light in the smog of spiritual darkness and pain that engulfes so many lives.
If that is not reason enough to push through and press on, verse 5 has got to be: “But they will have to give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.”
In the end the live Peter calls us to is the only life worth living. The alternative is unthinkable. It is folly. It is fruitless and tragic. Yes, to obey Jesus as Lord is costly and difficult. It is painful and uncomfortable to fight against sin and unbelief day-by-day. It is difficult to face the derision of other who think our belief is delusion and our way of life straight-jacketed morality. But, in the end, it is the only way that leads to life. And, in the end, it is the only path to blessing and fullness. It is the only way to live. The alternative is folly.
May God in his infinite love grant us the spiritual strength to go Get Some Nuts so that we might be gracious Jesus-people amidst a flood of dissipation. May we offer the spiritually lost the only thing that can satiate the awful thirst and the gnawing hunger: the gospel of Christ. Amen.
Signing Out -
The Scribbling Apprentice
Peter Says: Get Some Nuts I
"1Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because he who has suffered in his body is done with sin. 2As a result, he does not live the rest of his earthly life for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God. 3For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do—living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry. 4They think it strange that you do not plunge with them into the same flood of dissipation, and they heap abuse on you. 5But they will have to give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. 6For this is the reason the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead, so that they might be judged according to men in regard to the body, but live according to God in regard to the spirit." (1 Peter 4.1-6)
To my mind, we need to bring an important question to our text: like Mr T, is Peter simply telling us to get some nuts? Is he simply telling us to get it together, to quit our jibber-jabber and get on with the hard graft of Christian living?
He tells us in verse 1: “Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because he who has suffered in his body is done with sin.” Peter’s command has an almost military-like quality. He uses Mr. T language: arm yourself with the attitude of Christ. He who has suffered in his body is done with sin. In other words, is Peter simply telling us to man up and follow Jesus? Is Peter trying to beat us into submission with his words? Is he coming to us like Mr T and telling us to toughen up?
Peter continues in verse 2. As a result of what Christ has done, we are not to live the rest of his earthly life for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God. He goes on (verse 3): “You have spent enough time in the past doing what the pagans choose to do – living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatory.”
Fool, you’ve spent enough time doing foolish things. You’ve had you’re fill of pleasure. Now flex your moral muscle sukka. Turn from that old way of life and suffer for the sake of what you profess. Get some nuts. It’s time to meet your friend Pain. Do it fool or there’ll be trouble with a capital Mr. T.
Is that what Peter is saying? I think that’s very important question to ask of our passage. I think in one sense it is close to what Peter is saying. I think that Peter is calling Christians to suffer for the sake of deep moral commitment to God – without a doubt. But this deep moral commitment has been brought about in us through the regenerating (life-giving, life-transforming, heart-changing) power of the gospel.
This is the very important thing to take note of; this is what makes Peter’s commands so different to Mr T’s aggressive and completely arbitrary commands. We are called to suffer for the sake of a deep moral commitment. But we are only called to such a life and we can only choose to live such a life because of the gospel. What God has done through Christ precedes Peter’s command that we live and suffer for Christ. What God has done through Christ – the gospel – precedes and enables us to respond to Peter’s commands (in verses 1 and 2) with a “Yes” and an “Amen”.
In fact, verse 1 of chapter 4 has a double meaning. The verse also applies to us; those who suffer for the sake of their faith in God, refusing to sin, do suffer in some sense. Those who choose to suffer only suffer because they are done with sin. As soon as any Christian begins to fight sin, suffering of one kind or another will ensue.
We’re going to flesh out the meaning of this verse as it applies to us in a moment. But first let’s zone in on what it says about the Person of Jesus. He is the one who has suffered and dealt with sin. The therefore of verse 1 sends us back into the packed verses of the chapter 3. There, in verse 18 and onwards Peter writes: “For Christ died once for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous to bring to God.” This really is the heart of the gospel: Jesus the Righteous One died for you and I – undeserving, amoral wretches – so that we might live to God. By dying our death on the tree, Jesus dealt with the sin-issue at the heart of our being that separates us from the Holy, Creator God we were made to serve.
But Peter doesn’t stop there. Jesus is Saviour; yes. But, says Peter, Jesus Christ is also the Lord. Peter continues in chapter 3 verse 19 and following: Jesus was put to death in the body he but he was raised to life again. Essentially, chapter 3 verses 19 to 22 are like a victory parade: Jesus Christ the Son of God – the one who was put to death to rescue sinners – has been raised from death. He has ascended to the Father’s side and in so doing he has made a mockery of death; he has made a mockery of Satan; he has made a mockery of evil.
Peter says that (verse 21 and 22) Jesus “has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand – with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him.” There is no square inch of the cosmos that has not been submitted to Christ’s all-consuming, total rule. There is no unseen, spiritual power that has not been submitted to him. He is over all things; he is above all things. He is the Lord.
"Therefore" says Peter in chapter 4 verse 1: Therefore because Christ is the one who has died for you; because he is the one who bore your sins in his body on the tree – because he has rescued you from futility, from meaninglessness and death, from sin and hell; because he has saved you, live for him. Now give him your life.
But that’s not all. Therefore, says Peter (chapter 4 verse 1), because Jesus Christ is the LORD – because there is no square inch of reality not presently under his reign and lordship – because angels and demons and powers and authorities and principalities and nations and worlds are subject to him – bow down before him and serve him with your life.
Jesus is at God’s right-hand. He is the Lord of life. He orchestrates your day-by-day living. He sustains your very being moment by moment. Therefore: live for him. Obey him and serve him. He is the LORD. He is the Supreme Lord; there is no authority higher than Jesus Christ. There is no other god that can contest his supreme and total authority. He is Lord and King. He is Lord and King and therefore (as we’ll see in a moment) it is utterly fruitless to ignore him and disobey him.
“Since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because he who has suffered in is body is done with sin” (chapter 4 verse 1). Arm yourselves with the same attitude as Christ who suffered for you: you have been saved by him that you may now live for him.
Unless we place Peter’s commands in the context of the gospel truth he unfolds in chapter 3 verses 18 to 22 we will only meet a Mr.T lookalike: a cranky moralising bully telling us to restrain ourselves and live better lives. We must see that Peter’s commands are rooted in the only thing that can and will enable us to follow through with what he asks of us.
The gospel is a rescue mission from beginning to end; a gratuitous, unexpected act of love, completely undeserved. Peter can only call us to conform to a new way of life because we have been saved from what we were becoming when we did not know God. He is calling us now to live a new way of life not for the sake of morality, or respectability. He is calling us to live it out because the alternative is utter folly. It is poor foolishness. Peter wants to walk away from a life that will only bring spiritual death. Like an apostolic Mr T, Peter warns us not to be a crazy fool by running headlong into the abyss of destruction when abundant life is offered us on a plate.
Signing Off -
The Scribbling Apprentice
To my mind, we need to bring an important question to our text: like Mr T, is Peter simply telling us to get some nuts? Is he simply telling us to get it together, to quit our jibber-jabber and get on with the hard graft of Christian living?
He tells us in verse 1: “Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because he who has suffered in his body is done with sin.” Peter’s command has an almost military-like quality. He uses Mr. T language: arm yourself with the attitude of Christ. He who has suffered in his body is done with sin. In other words, is Peter simply telling us to man up and follow Jesus? Is Peter trying to beat us into submission with his words? Is he coming to us like Mr T and telling us to toughen up?
Peter continues in verse 2. As a result of what Christ has done, we are not to live the rest of his earthly life for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God. He goes on (verse 3): “You have spent enough time in the past doing what the pagans choose to do – living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatory.”
Fool, you’ve spent enough time doing foolish things. You’ve had you’re fill of pleasure. Now flex your moral muscle sukka. Turn from that old way of life and suffer for the sake of what you profess. Get some nuts. It’s time to meet your friend Pain. Do it fool or there’ll be trouble with a capital Mr. T.
Is that what Peter is saying? I think that’s very important question to ask of our passage. I think in one sense it is close to what Peter is saying. I think that Peter is calling Christians to suffer for the sake of deep moral commitment to God – without a doubt. But this deep moral commitment has been brought about in us through the regenerating (life-giving, life-transforming, heart-changing) power of the gospel.
This is the very important thing to take note of; this is what makes Peter’s commands so different to Mr T’s aggressive and completely arbitrary commands. We are called to suffer for the sake of a deep moral commitment. But we are only called to such a life and we can only choose to live such a life because of the gospel. What God has done through Christ precedes Peter’s command that we live and suffer for Christ. What God has done through Christ – the gospel – precedes and enables us to respond to Peter’s commands (in verses 1 and 2) with a “Yes” and an “Amen”.
In fact, verse 1 of chapter 4 has a double meaning. The verse also applies to us; those who suffer for the sake of their faith in God, refusing to sin, do suffer in some sense. Those who choose to suffer only suffer because they are done with sin. As soon as any Christian begins to fight sin, suffering of one kind or another will ensue.
We’re going to flesh out the meaning of this verse as it applies to us in a moment. But first let’s zone in on what it says about the Person of Jesus. He is the one who has suffered and dealt with sin. The therefore of verse 1 sends us back into the packed verses of the chapter 3. There, in verse 18 and onwards Peter writes: “For Christ died once for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous to bring to God.” This really is the heart of the gospel: Jesus the Righteous One died for you and I – undeserving, amoral wretches – so that we might live to God. By dying our death on the tree, Jesus dealt with the sin-issue at the heart of our being that separates us from the Holy, Creator God we were made to serve.
But Peter doesn’t stop there. Jesus is Saviour; yes. But, says Peter, Jesus Christ is also the Lord. Peter continues in chapter 3 verse 19 and following: Jesus was put to death in the body he but he was raised to life again. Essentially, chapter 3 verses 19 to 22 are like a victory parade: Jesus Christ the Son of God – the one who was put to death to rescue sinners – has been raised from death. He has ascended to the Father’s side and in so doing he has made a mockery of death; he has made a mockery of Satan; he has made a mockery of evil.
Peter says that (verse 21 and 22) Jesus “has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand – with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him.” There is no square inch of the cosmos that has not been submitted to Christ’s all-consuming, total rule. There is no unseen, spiritual power that has not been submitted to him. He is over all things; he is above all things. He is the Lord.
"Therefore" says Peter in chapter 4 verse 1: Therefore because Christ is the one who has died for you; because he is the one who bore your sins in his body on the tree – because he has rescued you from futility, from meaninglessness and death, from sin and hell; because he has saved you, live for him. Now give him your life.
But that’s not all. Therefore, says Peter (chapter 4 verse 1), because Jesus Christ is the LORD – because there is no square inch of reality not presently under his reign and lordship – because angels and demons and powers and authorities and principalities and nations and worlds are subject to him – bow down before him and serve him with your life.
Jesus is at God’s right-hand. He is the Lord of life. He orchestrates your day-by-day living. He sustains your very being moment by moment. Therefore: live for him. Obey him and serve him. He is the LORD. He is the Supreme Lord; there is no authority higher than Jesus Christ. There is no other god that can contest his supreme and total authority. He is Lord and King. He is Lord and King and therefore (as we’ll see in a moment) it is utterly fruitless to ignore him and disobey him.
“Since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because he who has suffered in is body is done with sin” (chapter 4 verse 1). Arm yourselves with the same attitude as Christ who suffered for you: you have been saved by him that you may now live for him.
Unless we place Peter’s commands in the context of the gospel truth he unfolds in chapter 3 verses 18 to 22 we will only meet a Mr.T lookalike: a cranky moralising bully telling us to restrain ourselves and live better lives. We must see that Peter’s commands are rooted in the only thing that can and will enable us to follow through with what he asks of us.
The gospel is a rescue mission from beginning to end; a gratuitous, unexpected act of love, completely undeserved. Peter can only call us to conform to a new way of life because we have been saved from what we were becoming when we did not know God. He is calling us now to live a new way of life not for the sake of morality, or respectability. He is calling us to live it out because the alternative is utter folly. It is poor foolishness. Peter wants to walk away from a life that will only bring spiritual death. Like an apostolic Mr T, Peter warns us not to be a crazy fool by running headlong into the abyss of destruction when abundant life is offered us on a plate.
Signing Off -
The Scribbling Apprentice
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Monday, October 4, 2010
Re-examining "Calvinism"
An illuminating segment culled from a book by Bernard Ramm examining the troubled interface between Calvinism and culture. A helpful correction to what he terms the "Calvin-stereotype". Worth quoting in full I think:
"Some of the things said about Calvin make one wonder if most people writing about Calvin have ever read him. It is hard even for scholars to break away from the Calvin-stereotype. Calvin’s theses are essentially those of Luther. Reason in sin makes man proud and defiant of God’s truth. Therefore, the supreme virtue of sinful man before God is humility. At this point Calvin begins a discussion of the fact that “man’s nature endowments [are] not wholly extinguished [by the fall of sin].” (Institutes Book 2, paragraph 12-17) He devotes six very impressive paragraphs to maintain that thesis. His style is so elegant and the language so clear that anything short of giving the full text itself leaves so much unsaid. I will, therefore, resort to a sampling of his thought.
Although the supernatural gifts of God to man in creation were lost through sin, the natural gifts were not, and enough reason remains in man so that man is to be distinguished from the beasts. Sin could not “completely wipe out” reason for “some sparks still gleam” in man. Nor did man’s will utterly perish. Then Calvin makes the following remarkable comment:
“For we see implanted in human nature some sort of desire to search out the truth to which man would not at all aspire if he had not already savoured it. Human understanding then possesses some power of perception, since it is by nature captivated by love of truth.” (Institutes Book 12, paragraph 2)
Next he states that man is a social creature and all men have within themselves “universal impressions of a certain civic faith dealing and order” and it is these seeds which give rise to specific laws for man knows “law and order” before he is ever taught it. The seeds of law have “been implanted in all men.” The conclusion that Calvin draws is that if all men have some sense of political order then “this is ample proof that in the arrangement of this life no man is without the light of reason.”
Next he discusses art and science and finds that the capacity for art and science are gifts of God for all men. They are not natural endowments as if independent from God, but they exist because of God. Calvin regards “the Spirit of God as the sole fountain of all truth.” Therefore if we despise art and science – fundamentalists take note! – “we condemn and reproach the Spirit himself,” for it logically follows that if the Spirit is the fountain of art and science, to despise art and science is to despise their author, the Spirit.
Calvin then puts in a commending word for ancient jurists, doctors, men of mathematical sciences, and pagan poets. Even though Scripture calls these men “natural men,” nevertheless they “were sharp and penetrating in their investigation of inferior things. Let us, accordingly, learn by their example how many gifts the Lord left to human nature even after it was despoiled of its true good.” This is not all in accord with the rantings one finds in so many books which claim Calvin thought human nature totally depraved and therefore totally corrupt and totally bereft of anything worthy of dignity and respect. This is the difference between Calvin of caricature and the Calvin of the Institutes.
In paragraph sixteen Calvin pushes further his thesis that “human competence in art and science also derives from the Spirit of God.” He makes the sharp observation that “if we neglect God’s gift freely offered in these arts, we ought to suffer just punishment for our sloth.” Finally he speaks of the general grace of God as the source of all reason, science, art and learning. He concludes that “we still see in this diversity some remaining traces of the image of God, which distinguish the entire human race from the other creatures.”
This concept of the general grace of God has been developed by later Reformed theologians into the systematic doctrine of common grace. It is called common because it is, in Calvin’s word, general, that is, it applies to all men, unregenerate and regenerate. It is called grace because man has no right to it. By sin man has forfeited all. Special revelation, special grace, is that which redeems man. Man shall survive and not devour himself out of existence by his hatreds, nor degenerate into the life of a brute by loss of reason, but shall have a culture and civilization with government, law, education, art, science, and economics. In this God has given all men grace.
Abraham Kuyper has been called the greatest Calvinist since Calvin, and he has pursued this vein of Calvin’s thought with force and consistency. For example, in his book on Calvinism he indicates that Calvinism is not just a doctrine of salvation but a total life system involving politics, science, and art. He writes:
“Thus understood Calvinism is rooted in a form of religion which was peculiarly its own, and from this specific religious consciousness there was developed first a peculiar theology, then a special church-order, and then a given form for political and social life, for the interpretation of the moral and world-order, for the relation between nature and grace, between Christianity and the world, between church and state, and finally for art and science.” (Lectures on Calvinism, pp. 10)
What Kuyper says of art is also important in showing that evangelical theology has a world-affirming dimension that so frequently gets dropped out in its exposition. Kuyper writes of art as follows:
“As image-bearer of God, man possesses the possibility to create something beautiful and to delight in it. This artistic ability is in man no separate function of the soul but an unbroken (continuous) utterance of the image of God…Understand that art is no fringe that is attached to a garment and no amusement that is added to life, but a most serious power in our present existence, and therefore its principal variations must maintain, in their artistic expression, a close relation with the principal variations of our entire life; and since, without exception, these principal variations of our entire human existence are dominated by our relation to God, would it not be both a degradation and an underestimation of art, if you were to imagine the functions, into which the art-trunk divides itself, to be independent of the deepest root which all human life has in God?” (Lectures on Calvinism, pp. 142)"
Certainly bucks the standard trend of interpretations that boils Calvin down to nothing more than a grim and puritanical ideologue.
Signing off -
The Scribbling Apprentice
"Some of the things said about Calvin make one wonder if most people writing about Calvin have ever read him. It is hard even for scholars to break away from the Calvin-stereotype. Calvin’s theses are essentially those of Luther. Reason in sin makes man proud and defiant of God’s truth. Therefore, the supreme virtue of sinful man before God is humility. At this point Calvin begins a discussion of the fact that “man’s nature endowments [are] not wholly extinguished [by the fall of sin].” (Institutes Book 2, paragraph 12-17) He devotes six very impressive paragraphs to maintain that thesis. His style is so elegant and the language so clear that anything short of giving the full text itself leaves so much unsaid. I will, therefore, resort to a sampling of his thought.
Although the supernatural gifts of God to man in creation were lost through sin, the natural gifts were not, and enough reason remains in man so that man is to be distinguished from the beasts. Sin could not “completely wipe out” reason for “some sparks still gleam” in man. Nor did man’s will utterly perish. Then Calvin makes the following remarkable comment:
“For we see implanted in human nature some sort of desire to search out the truth to which man would not at all aspire if he had not already savoured it. Human understanding then possesses some power of perception, since it is by nature captivated by love of truth.” (Institutes Book 12, paragraph 2)
Next he states that man is a social creature and all men have within themselves “universal impressions of a certain civic faith dealing and order” and it is these seeds which give rise to specific laws for man knows “law and order” before he is ever taught it. The seeds of law have “been implanted in all men.” The conclusion that Calvin draws is that if all men have some sense of political order then “this is ample proof that in the arrangement of this life no man is without the light of reason.”
Next he discusses art and science and finds that the capacity for art and science are gifts of God for all men. They are not natural endowments as if independent from God, but they exist because of God. Calvin regards “the Spirit of God as the sole fountain of all truth.” Therefore if we despise art and science – fundamentalists take note! – “we condemn and reproach the Spirit himself,” for it logically follows that if the Spirit is the fountain of art and science, to despise art and science is to despise their author, the Spirit.
Calvin then puts in a commending word for ancient jurists, doctors, men of mathematical sciences, and pagan poets. Even though Scripture calls these men “natural men,” nevertheless they “were sharp and penetrating in their investigation of inferior things. Let us, accordingly, learn by their example how many gifts the Lord left to human nature even after it was despoiled of its true good.” This is not all in accord with the rantings one finds in so many books which claim Calvin thought human nature totally depraved and therefore totally corrupt and totally bereft of anything worthy of dignity and respect. This is the difference between Calvin of caricature and the Calvin of the Institutes.
In paragraph sixteen Calvin pushes further his thesis that “human competence in art and science also derives from the Spirit of God.” He makes the sharp observation that “if we neglect God’s gift freely offered in these arts, we ought to suffer just punishment for our sloth.” Finally he speaks of the general grace of God as the source of all reason, science, art and learning. He concludes that “we still see in this diversity some remaining traces of the image of God, which distinguish the entire human race from the other creatures.”
This concept of the general grace of God has been developed by later Reformed theologians into the systematic doctrine of common grace. It is called common because it is, in Calvin’s word, general, that is, it applies to all men, unregenerate and regenerate. It is called grace because man has no right to it. By sin man has forfeited all. Special revelation, special grace, is that which redeems man. Man shall survive and not devour himself out of existence by his hatreds, nor degenerate into the life of a brute by loss of reason, but shall have a culture and civilization with government, law, education, art, science, and economics. In this God has given all men grace.
Abraham Kuyper has been called the greatest Calvinist since Calvin, and he has pursued this vein of Calvin’s thought with force and consistency. For example, in his book on Calvinism he indicates that Calvinism is not just a doctrine of salvation but a total life system involving politics, science, and art. He writes:
“Thus understood Calvinism is rooted in a form of religion which was peculiarly its own, and from this specific religious consciousness there was developed first a peculiar theology, then a special church-order, and then a given form for political and social life, for the interpretation of the moral and world-order, for the relation between nature and grace, between Christianity and the world, between church and state, and finally for art and science.” (Lectures on Calvinism, pp. 10)
What Kuyper says of art is also important in showing that evangelical theology has a world-affirming dimension that so frequently gets dropped out in its exposition. Kuyper writes of art as follows:
“As image-bearer of God, man possesses the possibility to create something beautiful and to delight in it. This artistic ability is in man no separate function of the soul but an unbroken (continuous) utterance of the image of God…Understand that art is no fringe that is attached to a garment and no amusement that is added to life, but a most serious power in our present existence, and therefore its principal variations must maintain, in their artistic expression, a close relation with the principal variations of our entire life; and since, without exception, these principal variations of our entire human existence are dominated by our relation to God, would it not be both a degradation and an underestimation of art, if you were to imagine the functions, into which the art-trunk divides itself, to be independent of the deepest root which all human life has in God?” (Lectures on Calvinism, pp. 142)"
Certainly bucks the standard trend of interpretations that boils Calvin down to nothing more than a grim and puritanical ideologue.
Signing off -
The Scribbling Apprentice
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath Pt. 3 of 15
To some extent this is old-hat but these are two shorts in a fantastic series of outtakes taken from Dawkins' Channel 4 documentary that aired sometime ago. Here he locks horns with fellow Oxford associate, Alister McGrath. Scintillating conversation and you can sense the tension bubbling below the surface as their polite camera demenour is strained to the limit!
The Crisis of Suffering and The God Who Is There
Throughout the book that bears his name, Job pleads with God to show himself. He groans and pleads with God to appear, that he would contend with Job and explain the deeper reasons for his awful affliction and suffering. At one point, in chapter 23, Job cries out in his pain and anguish:
“Today also my complaint is bitter;
my hand is heavy on account of my groaning.
Oh, that I knew where I might find him,
that I might come even to his seat!
I would lay my case before him
and fill my mouth with arguments.
I would know what he would answer me…” (23.2-5)
Job gradually looks from his own suffering and begins to cast his gaze over the suffering and difficulty of his neighbours. Injustice is everywhere; the poor are abused and exploited while the criminal and the wicked prosper. Job sees the unjust and the evil people who
”…drive away the donkey of the fatherless;
they take the widow’s ox for a pledge.
They thrust the poor off the road;
the poor of the earth all hide themselves.
Behold, like wild donkeys in the desert
the poor go out to their toil, seeking game;
the wasteland yields food for their children.
They gather their fodder in the field,
and they glean the vineyard of the wicked man.
They lie all night naked, without clothing,
and have no covering in the cold.
They are wet with the rain of the mountains
and cling to the rock for lack of shelter.
(There are those who snatch the fatherless child from the breast,
and they take a pledge against the poor.)
They go about naked, without clothing;
hungry, they carry the sheaves;
among the olive rows of the wicked they make oil;
they tread the winepresses, but suffer thirst.
From out of the city the dying groan,
and the soul of the wounded cries for help;
yet God charges no one with wrong. (24.3-12)
“…yet God charges no one with wrong.” The poor are afflicted and the righteous suffer whilst the wicked and the unjust prosper. Poverty, misery, despair, death and injustice are everywhere. But where is God? Why does he not intervene? Why will he not act? Job’s anguish and misery deepens until it becomes focussed in a lengthy discourse that culminates in a direct provocation of God:
“God has cast me into the mire,
and I have become like dust and ashes.
I cry to you for help and you do not answer me;
I stand, and you only look at me.
You have turned cruel to me;
with the might of your hand your persecute me.
You lift me up on the wind; you make me ride on it,
and you toss me about in the roar of the storm.
For I know that you will bring me to death
and to the house appointed for all
living.” (30.19-23)
Job’s former resolve to honour God with his lips despite his grave suffering has collapsed. Misery has engulfed him. For the first time, he doubts the gracious character of God and shouts in his face. God is no longer his advocate. Instead, he has become his persecutor, the one who tosses him in the storm; the one who will bring him to death with no word of comfort. God will not help him. God stands and merely looks on as Job writhes in agony and goes to the grave in despair.
And so it seems that God will bring Job no resolution. The knot of anger and outrage in the pit of Job’s stomach will not be assuaged by a clear answer from God. The litany of anguished questions that perplex Job are ours too. Will God show up and speak for himself? Will he give an account of himself? Will he meet Job’s piercing questions head-on or will he remain hidden, inscrutable, distant?
God does show up. And he speaks. Indeed, he answers Job - but not in the way we expect. We are completely unprepared for the denoument that unfurls as God finally speaks out of the whirlwind:
Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind and said:
"Who is this that darkens counsel by
words without knowledge?
Dress for action like a man;
I will question you,
and you make it known to me.
"Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
On what were its bases sunk,
or who laid its cornerstone,
when the morning stars sang together
and all the sons of God shouted for joy…?” (38.1-7)
Out of the whirlwind God speaks. He hurls a catalogue of questions that scupper the human intellect and bow the human spirit low in bafflement and awe:
"Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades
or loose the cords of Orion?
Can you lead forth the Mazzaroth in their season,
or can you guide the Bear with its children?
Do you know the ordinances of the heavens?
Can you establish their rule on the earth…?” (38.31-33)
The book of Job climaxes in this shocking and exhilarating revelation of God; unbounded in his freedom and supreme in his wisdom he questions Job. No longer is God in the dock; suddenly Job is challenged to come forward and answer the searching questions God puts before him. Job’s questions, formerly so pointed and urgent, now evaporate into thin air as the presence of God engulfes him. God reveals the unsearchable depths of his glory; he speaks and Job listens.
“Then Job answered the LORD and said:
"I know that you can do all things,
and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
'Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?'
Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.'
'Hear, and I will speak;
I will question you, and you make it known to me.'
I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,
but now my eye sees you;
therefore I despise myself,
and repent in dust and ashes." (42.1-6)
“I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.” The philosopher Paul Ricoeur mused on these passages in an article entitled The Religious Significance of Atheism. To his mind, when God finally speaks he reveals the very fullness of his Being; something so incommensurable and immense that no words are adequate to capture it or render it comprehensible. In other words, the manifest presence of God is signified in words and questions designed to short-circuit human understanding. The Being of God is disclosed in words that can summon only one response; a posture of listening and awe.
Job cannot answer the questions God puts to him. And neither can we. The barrage of words are intended to signify the mystery and the majesty of the Being of God; his words convey his overwhelming presence. Job is engulfed in an explosion of pure Being; he is surrounded by the presence of God who fills and contains all things. (According to Ricoeur, it is this Being whom the Pre-Socratics discerned as the “logos” that sustained the known universe and all reality. They had a dim intuition of the One Job encounters directly in the pages of the Old Testament.) Job does not recieve from God that for which he pleaded; instead of offering a clear answer to his questions, God comes close and reveals himself in an immediate encounter.
Like Job, in the midst of suffering, although we cry out to God for the reasons why we suffer, we will never receive them clearly stated in so many neat words we easily comprehend. “The problem we have is Job’s problem writ large: and Job’s protests are our protests. We need the solution he was offered: a sense of the presence of God.” (Frances Young, Can These Bones Live, pp. 80) Ultimately, of course, it is not a ready question that our heart seeks but the comfort of the close presence of the God who is there.
The plaintive cry of Job in the Old Testament anticipates another, far deeper and more disturbing cry. Job’s muttered, tearful questions are mere echoes of a far deeper and far more disturbing question. At the heart of the New Testament, as Jesus hangs on the cross in the darkness, he utters the terrifying words: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mark 15.34, Matthew 27.46)
Jesus is utterly God-forsaken as he hangs from the crucifix on Golgotha. Is it possible to make some sense of this awful cry of Jesus, the anguished questions of Job and the God who is there? How does it all hang together?
With the help of Leon Morris, we’ll investigate these questions in the next post.
Until then –
The Scribbling Apprentice.
“Today also my complaint is bitter;
my hand is heavy on account of my groaning.
Oh, that I knew where I might find him,
that I might come even to his seat!
I would lay my case before him
and fill my mouth with arguments.
I would know what he would answer me…” (23.2-5)
Job gradually looks from his own suffering and begins to cast his gaze over the suffering and difficulty of his neighbours. Injustice is everywhere; the poor are abused and exploited while the criminal and the wicked prosper. Job sees the unjust and the evil people who
”…drive away the donkey of the fatherless;
they take the widow’s ox for a pledge.
They thrust the poor off the road;
the poor of the earth all hide themselves.
Behold, like wild donkeys in the desert
the poor go out to their toil, seeking game;
the wasteland yields food for their children.
They gather their fodder in the field,
and they glean the vineyard of the wicked man.
They lie all night naked, without clothing,
and have no covering in the cold.
They are wet with the rain of the mountains
and cling to the rock for lack of shelter.
(There are those who snatch the fatherless child from the breast,
and they take a pledge against the poor.)
They go about naked, without clothing;
hungry, they carry the sheaves;
among the olive rows of the wicked they make oil;
they tread the winepresses, but suffer thirst.
From out of the city the dying groan,
and the soul of the wounded cries for help;
yet God charges no one with wrong. (24.3-12)
“…yet God charges no one with wrong.” The poor are afflicted and the righteous suffer whilst the wicked and the unjust prosper. Poverty, misery, despair, death and injustice are everywhere. But where is God? Why does he not intervene? Why will he not act? Job’s anguish and misery deepens until it becomes focussed in a lengthy discourse that culminates in a direct provocation of God:
“God has cast me into the mire,
and I have become like dust and ashes.
I cry to you for help and you do not answer me;
I stand, and you only look at me.
You have turned cruel to me;
with the might of your hand your persecute me.
You lift me up on the wind; you make me ride on it,
and you toss me about in the roar of the storm.
For I know that you will bring me to death
and to the house appointed for all
living.” (30.19-23)
Job’s former resolve to honour God with his lips despite his grave suffering has collapsed. Misery has engulfed him. For the first time, he doubts the gracious character of God and shouts in his face. God is no longer his advocate. Instead, he has become his persecutor, the one who tosses him in the storm; the one who will bring him to death with no word of comfort. God will not help him. God stands and merely looks on as Job writhes in agony and goes to the grave in despair.
And so it seems that God will bring Job no resolution. The knot of anger and outrage in the pit of Job’s stomach will not be assuaged by a clear answer from God. The litany of anguished questions that perplex Job are ours too. Will God show up and speak for himself? Will he give an account of himself? Will he meet Job’s piercing questions head-on or will he remain hidden, inscrutable, distant?
God does show up. And he speaks. Indeed, he answers Job - but not in the way we expect. We are completely unprepared for the denoument that unfurls as God finally speaks out of the whirlwind:
Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind and said:
"Who is this that darkens counsel by
words without knowledge?
Dress for action like a man;
I will question you,
and you make it known to me.
"Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
On what were its bases sunk,
or who laid its cornerstone,
when the morning stars sang together
and all the sons of God shouted for joy…?” (38.1-7)
Out of the whirlwind God speaks. He hurls a catalogue of questions that scupper the human intellect and bow the human spirit low in bafflement and awe:
"Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades
or loose the cords of Orion?
Can you lead forth the Mazzaroth in their season,
or can you guide the Bear with its children?
Do you know the ordinances of the heavens?
Can you establish their rule on the earth…?” (38.31-33)
The book of Job climaxes in this shocking and exhilarating revelation of God; unbounded in his freedom and supreme in his wisdom he questions Job. No longer is God in the dock; suddenly Job is challenged to come forward and answer the searching questions God puts before him. Job’s questions, formerly so pointed and urgent, now evaporate into thin air as the presence of God engulfes him. God reveals the unsearchable depths of his glory; he speaks and Job listens.
“Then Job answered the LORD and said:
"I know that you can do all things,
and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
'Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?'
Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.'
'Hear, and I will speak;
I will question you, and you make it known to me.'
I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,
but now my eye sees you;
therefore I despise myself,
and repent in dust and ashes." (42.1-6)
“I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.” The philosopher Paul Ricoeur mused on these passages in an article entitled The Religious Significance of Atheism. To his mind, when God finally speaks he reveals the very fullness of his Being; something so incommensurable and immense that no words are adequate to capture it or render it comprehensible. In other words, the manifest presence of God is signified in words and questions designed to short-circuit human understanding. The Being of God is disclosed in words that can summon only one response; a posture of listening and awe.
Job cannot answer the questions God puts to him. And neither can we. The barrage of words are intended to signify the mystery and the majesty of the Being of God; his words convey his overwhelming presence. Job is engulfed in an explosion of pure Being; he is surrounded by the presence of God who fills and contains all things. (According to Ricoeur, it is this Being whom the Pre-Socratics discerned as the “logos” that sustained the known universe and all reality. They had a dim intuition of the One Job encounters directly in the pages of the Old Testament.) Job does not recieve from God that for which he pleaded; instead of offering a clear answer to his questions, God comes close and reveals himself in an immediate encounter.
Like Job, in the midst of suffering, although we cry out to God for the reasons why we suffer, we will never receive them clearly stated in so many neat words we easily comprehend. “The problem we have is Job’s problem writ large: and Job’s protests are our protests. We need the solution he was offered: a sense of the presence of God.” (Frances Young, Can These Bones Live, pp. 80) Ultimately, of course, it is not a ready question that our heart seeks but the comfort of the close presence of the God who is there.
The plaintive cry of Job in the Old Testament anticipates another, far deeper and more disturbing cry. Job’s muttered, tearful questions are mere echoes of a far deeper and far more disturbing question. At the heart of the New Testament, as Jesus hangs on the cross in the darkness, he utters the terrifying words: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mark 15.34, Matthew 27.46)
Jesus is utterly God-forsaken as he hangs from the crucifix on Golgotha. Is it possible to make some sense of this awful cry of Jesus, the anguished questions of Job and the God who is there? How does it all hang together?
With the help of Leon Morris, we’ll investigate these questions in the next post.
Until then –
The Scribbling Apprentice.
Dispatches from Elsewhere #1
A dispatch in the blogosphere worth sharing. The Exiled Preacher touches on the nature of evangelicalism and its troubled identity:
Exiled Preacher: The Great Evangelical Identity Crisis: "The very idea of what it means to be an Evangelical has been subject to revision and redefinition in the last couple of decades. In 1989, D...."
Exiled Preacher: The Great Evangelical Identity Crisis: "The very idea of what it means to be an Evangelical has been subject to revision and redefinition in the last couple of decades. In 1989, D...."
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Vain Wisdom & the Folly of the Cross
We are currently preparing to begin a series of sermons on Proverbs here at Immanuel (www.immauelchurchdublin.org). Proverbs, the book of Psalms and the books of Job and Ecclesiastes make up what is known as the corpus of “wisdom literature” within the Bible.
The book of Proverbs and the Psalms contain a multitude of commands for daily life. Generally speaking, the commands are clear. Over and over again, a God-centred way of life is presented as true wisdom. The way to live such a life is to obey the will of God revealed in his Word. The only alternative to this way of life is the way of the fool. The foolish person ignores the counsel of God and walks according to his own designs and intentions.
As the Psalms and Proverbs progress, it is made clear that only the wise can live a life filled with blessing. On the other hand, the foolish can only hope for a life pierced with misery and hardship. The wise and the foolish life are continually set in opposition to one another. The writers of Proverbs and the psalmists continually admonish the reader to obey God in order to enjoy his blessing. The reader is constantly warned to avoid the pitfalls of a foolish life.
The Psalms and Proverbs are filled therefore with commands that fit into a general pattern: Obey God and experience blessing; disobey God and endure misery and difficulty. Psalm 1, for example, reads:
1 Blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
or stand in the way of sinners
or sit in the seat of mockers.
2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither.
Whatever he does prospers.
4 Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff that the wind blows away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
6 For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.
The wise man is like a tree planted by streams of water; whatever he does will prosper. Not so the wicked; they are like chaff the wind scatters away. This clear motif in psalm 1 is echoed through the remaining 149 psalms.
The contrast between the folly of the wicked and the blessedness of the righteous is even stronger in Proverbs. Again and again, we read verses like the following in chapter 1:
20 Wisdom calls aloud in the street,
she raises her voice in the public squares;
21 at the head of the noisy streets she cries out,
in the gateways of the city she makes her speech:
22 "How long will you simple ones love your simple ways?
How long will mockers delight in mockery
and fools hate knowledge?
23 If you had responded to my rebuke,
I would have poured out my heart to you
and made my thoughts known to you.
24 But since you rejected me when I called
and no one gave heed when I stretched out my hand,
25 since you ignored all my advice
and would not accept my rebuke,
26 I in turn will laugh at your disaster;
I will mock when calamity overtakes you-
27 when calamity overtakes you like a storm,
when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind,
when distress and trouble overwhelm you.
28 "Then they will call to me but I will not answer;
they will look for me but will not find me.
29 Since they hated knowledge
and did not choose to fear the LORD,
30 since they would not accept my advice
and spurned my rebuke,
31 they will eat the fruit of their ways
and be filled with the fruit of their schemes.
32 For the waywardness of the simple will kill them,
and the complacency of fools will destroy them;
33 but whoever listens to me will live in safety
and be at ease, without fear of harm."
Whoever listens to wisdom and accepts godly counsel will live in safety but calamity will overtake those who despise the counsel of God. The book of Proverbs makes this very clear indeed. The equation is simple: obey God and be blessed; despise God and suffer.
But, is the equation really so straight-forward as all that? Is the reality of life really so simple? Is it not much more complex? Honestly, when we match up the commands and promises of Proverbs with the reality of life, do we not encounter a broad disparity? All around us, we see the evil and the wicked prosper whilst the good, wise and noble people are often made to suffer terribly. The justice that Proverbs promises us is rarely apparent in our day-to-day lives. And there’s the rub: why do bad things happen to good, honourable and God-fearing people whilst evil-doers prosper and flourish?
It is these very questions that the other two books of wisdom literature pick up on and examine. In the book of Job, we encounter a noble, upstanding and God-fearing man who is made to suffer terribly. On the basis of what must be a shallow reading of Proverbs, his friends come to him and insist that there must be some secret evil in his life. There must be some unconfessed sin; otherwise God would not be dealing with him so severely. And so, in the book of Job we are brought face-to-face with the awful mystery; a good and holy man is made to suffer and the wisdom of his friends utterly fails to bring them (or Job) closer to understanding precisely why. Only the evil suffer; the wise honour God and so should only experience fullness and blessing.
In the book of Ecclesiastes, we meet the Teacher who surveys all of life; human commerce, the endless search for knowledge, civilisation, love and death. In the end, he is moved to confess that all is “vanity and a striving after wind”:
"Meaningless! Meaningless!"
says the Teacher.
"Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless" (Ecclesiastes 1.2)
Life is meaningless says the Teacher. There is no rhyme or reason to life; no end or goal. Everything is meaningless. We toil and struggle our whole life long; seeking wisdom, wealth or reputation, gleaning knowledge and what little pleasure our lot in life permits us. In the end,
"There is no remembrance of men of old,
and even those who are yet to come
will not be remembered
by those who follow" (Ecclesiastes 1.11)
Once dead, we are swiftly forgotten by the world. None of us will be remembered by those who follow. Everything is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.
Job and Ecclesiastes examine the human condition in all of its absurdity and frailty; acknowledging the path of wisdom plotted in the book of Proverbs, but wondering at the agonising questions it cannot resolve.
And so, the riddle of human existence and the attendant miseries of suffering and death are in tension with the affirmation of a good, wise and all-loving God. Can the tension be resolved? Can humankind chance upon the wisdom and the insight that will bring resolution to this awful existential tension at the heart of human existence?
The wisdom literature of the Old Testament seemingly leaves us with these unresolved paradoxes that no human being can properly answer. Indeed, there is no human wisdom that is up to the task of answering these taxing questions at the heart of existence. The best of human wisdom, personified in Job’s friends, was woefully ill-fitted to bring a satisfying answer that would comfort their suffering friend.
The vexing questions that hover over the content of the Old Testament wisdom literature are only answered ultimately by Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians: Christ crucified is the wisdom of God revealed. Human acumen, learning and insight could never bring us a thorough and satisfying answer to the riddle and paradox at the heart of existence. In the Person of Christ, in his life, his crucifixion, his death and resurrection, God has finally answered the riddle of the ages. The wisdom of God long sought after has been manifested perfectly in the Person of Jesus:
“…Christ Jesus, who has become to us wisdom from God – that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption” (1 Corinthians 1.30)
Christ Jesus has become for us the wisdom that for so long eluded the Hebrew sages of old and for which every human heart gropes after in the midst of the agony and pain of life. The supreme manifestation of the wisdom of God, says Paul, is Christ crucified:
“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written:
"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate."
Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength” (1 Corinthians 1.18-25)
The world through its wisdom did not know God. The foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom. The foolishness of God is Christ crucified; wisdom supreme above all human thought and speculation.
In a very real sense, the cross of Jesus is anticipated in the tensions encountered in the wisdom literature of the Old Testament. The anguished questions unresolved in Job and Ecclesiastes are answered finally upon Golgotha. Divine wisdom is finally and supremely manifested in the crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ. The wisdom the Teacher sought after in vain and the wisdom Job cried out for in his baffled anguish has been revealed to us finally in the Person of Jesus Christ and the awful cross he bore.
And so we are brought back once again to the enourmity of the atonement event. In the next post, I’m hoping to include some reflections from Leon Morris’ excellent book, The Cross of Jesus, which touches on many of the themes we have briefly examined here.
Until then –
The Scribbling Apprentice.
The book of Proverbs and the Psalms contain a multitude of commands for daily life. Generally speaking, the commands are clear. Over and over again, a God-centred way of life is presented as true wisdom. The way to live such a life is to obey the will of God revealed in his Word. The only alternative to this way of life is the way of the fool. The foolish person ignores the counsel of God and walks according to his own designs and intentions.
As the Psalms and Proverbs progress, it is made clear that only the wise can live a life filled with blessing. On the other hand, the foolish can only hope for a life pierced with misery and hardship. The wise and the foolish life are continually set in opposition to one another. The writers of Proverbs and the psalmists continually admonish the reader to obey God in order to enjoy his blessing. The reader is constantly warned to avoid the pitfalls of a foolish life.
The Psalms and Proverbs are filled therefore with commands that fit into a general pattern: Obey God and experience blessing; disobey God and endure misery and difficulty. Psalm 1, for example, reads:
1 Blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
or stand in the way of sinners
or sit in the seat of mockers.
2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither.
Whatever he does prospers.
4 Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff that the wind blows away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
6 For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.
The wise man is like a tree planted by streams of water; whatever he does will prosper. Not so the wicked; they are like chaff the wind scatters away. This clear motif in psalm 1 is echoed through the remaining 149 psalms.
The contrast between the folly of the wicked and the blessedness of the righteous is even stronger in Proverbs. Again and again, we read verses like the following in chapter 1:
20 Wisdom calls aloud in the street,
she raises her voice in the public squares;
21 at the head of the noisy streets she cries out,
in the gateways of the city she makes her speech:
22 "How long will you simple ones love your simple ways?
How long will mockers delight in mockery
and fools hate knowledge?
23 If you had responded to my rebuke,
I would have poured out my heart to you
and made my thoughts known to you.
24 But since you rejected me when I called
and no one gave heed when I stretched out my hand,
25 since you ignored all my advice
and would not accept my rebuke,
26 I in turn will laugh at your disaster;
I will mock when calamity overtakes you-
27 when calamity overtakes you like a storm,
when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind,
when distress and trouble overwhelm you.
28 "Then they will call to me but I will not answer;
they will look for me but will not find me.
29 Since they hated knowledge
and did not choose to fear the LORD,
30 since they would not accept my advice
and spurned my rebuke,
31 they will eat the fruit of their ways
and be filled with the fruit of their schemes.
32 For the waywardness of the simple will kill them,
and the complacency of fools will destroy them;
33 but whoever listens to me will live in safety
and be at ease, without fear of harm."
Whoever listens to wisdom and accepts godly counsel will live in safety but calamity will overtake those who despise the counsel of God. The book of Proverbs makes this very clear indeed. The equation is simple: obey God and be blessed; despise God and suffer.
But, is the equation really so straight-forward as all that? Is the reality of life really so simple? Is it not much more complex? Honestly, when we match up the commands and promises of Proverbs with the reality of life, do we not encounter a broad disparity? All around us, we see the evil and the wicked prosper whilst the good, wise and noble people are often made to suffer terribly. The justice that Proverbs promises us is rarely apparent in our day-to-day lives. And there’s the rub: why do bad things happen to good, honourable and God-fearing people whilst evil-doers prosper and flourish?
It is these very questions that the other two books of wisdom literature pick up on and examine. In the book of Job, we encounter a noble, upstanding and God-fearing man who is made to suffer terribly. On the basis of what must be a shallow reading of Proverbs, his friends come to him and insist that there must be some secret evil in his life. There must be some unconfessed sin; otherwise God would not be dealing with him so severely. And so, in the book of Job we are brought face-to-face with the awful mystery; a good and holy man is made to suffer and the wisdom of his friends utterly fails to bring them (or Job) closer to understanding precisely why. Only the evil suffer; the wise honour God and so should only experience fullness and blessing.
In the book of Ecclesiastes, we meet the Teacher who surveys all of life; human commerce, the endless search for knowledge, civilisation, love and death. In the end, he is moved to confess that all is “vanity and a striving after wind”:
"Meaningless! Meaningless!"
says the Teacher.
"Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless" (Ecclesiastes 1.2)
Life is meaningless says the Teacher. There is no rhyme or reason to life; no end or goal. Everything is meaningless. We toil and struggle our whole life long; seeking wisdom, wealth or reputation, gleaning knowledge and what little pleasure our lot in life permits us. In the end,
"There is no remembrance of men of old,
and even those who are yet to come
will not be remembered
by those who follow" (Ecclesiastes 1.11)
Once dead, we are swiftly forgotten by the world. None of us will be remembered by those who follow. Everything is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.
Job and Ecclesiastes examine the human condition in all of its absurdity and frailty; acknowledging the path of wisdom plotted in the book of Proverbs, but wondering at the agonising questions it cannot resolve.
And so, the riddle of human existence and the attendant miseries of suffering and death are in tension with the affirmation of a good, wise and all-loving God. Can the tension be resolved? Can humankind chance upon the wisdom and the insight that will bring resolution to this awful existential tension at the heart of human existence?
The wisdom literature of the Old Testament seemingly leaves us with these unresolved paradoxes that no human being can properly answer. Indeed, there is no human wisdom that is up to the task of answering these taxing questions at the heart of existence. The best of human wisdom, personified in Job’s friends, was woefully ill-fitted to bring a satisfying answer that would comfort their suffering friend.
The vexing questions that hover over the content of the Old Testament wisdom literature are only answered ultimately by Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians: Christ crucified is the wisdom of God revealed. Human acumen, learning and insight could never bring us a thorough and satisfying answer to the riddle and paradox at the heart of existence. In the Person of Christ, in his life, his crucifixion, his death and resurrection, God has finally answered the riddle of the ages. The wisdom of God long sought after has been manifested perfectly in the Person of Jesus:
“…Christ Jesus, who has become to us wisdom from God – that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption” (1 Corinthians 1.30)
Christ Jesus has become for us the wisdom that for so long eluded the Hebrew sages of old and for which every human heart gropes after in the midst of the agony and pain of life. The supreme manifestation of the wisdom of God, says Paul, is Christ crucified:
“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written:
"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate."
Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength” (1 Corinthians 1.18-25)
The world through its wisdom did not know God. The foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom. The foolishness of God is Christ crucified; wisdom supreme above all human thought and speculation.
In a very real sense, the cross of Jesus is anticipated in the tensions encountered in the wisdom literature of the Old Testament. The anguished questions unresolved in Job and Ecclesiastes are answered finally upon Golgotha. Divine wisdom is finally and supremely manifested in the crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ. The wisdom the Teacher sought after in vain and the wisdom Job cried out for in his baffled anguish has been revealed to us finally in the Person of Jesus Christ and the awful cross he bore.
And so we are brought back once again to the enourmity of the atonement event. In the next post, I’m hoping to include some reflections from Leon Morris’ excellent book, The Cross of Jesus, which touches on many of the themes we have briefly examined here.
Until then –
The Scribbling Apprentice.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
The Problem of Evil - Dr. William Lane Craig (Part 3)
Dr William Lane Craig ponders the problem of evil and the existence of God (part 3).
The Problem of Evil - Dr. William Lane Craig (Part 2)
Dr William Lane Craig continues to ponder the problem of evil and the existence of God (part 2).
The Problem of Evil - Dr. William Lane Craig (Part 1)
Dr William Lane Craig examines the problem of evil and the existence of God (part 1 of 3). All three audio posts together mount to a measured, ponderous and profound meditation. As with much of Dr Craig's work, it is philosophically rigorous and so rewards a careful listen.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
The Big Issue of Divine Justice: A Rejoinder
I have been reflecting on the issues touched on in a recent post (“The Big Issue of Divine Justice”) and so decided to post up a very brief rejoinder. I simply want to say three things, all of which come off the back of that short post.
First of all, this is no simple issue that is easily navigable; by no means are the issues of justice and unjust suffering reducible to mere platitudes about God and the end of the world. Never are we to retreat into a comfortable, pietistic corner and ignore the brute reality of unspeakable human suffering. God hasn’t; indeed, in the Person of his Son, he suffered through life and endured a death of excruciating physical, mental, emotional and spiritual agony on the cross. Furthermore, God submitted himself to the supreme injustice; Christ was condemned to crucifixion in the wake of a mock trial. The religious and military powers of his age conspired to crush and maim him. In Christ, God became a victim of hatred, abuse, unjust violence and mockery. In the Person of Christ, God has come close to the suffering and the broken-hearted.
Secondly, it seems to me that a Biblical eschatology propels us toward the alleviation of suffering in the world; the Kingdom of God is now amongst us, the new age of the reign of God in Christ has been inaugurated. To refuse to bind the wounds of the broken or being the good news of liberation to the oppressed is to stand against the Kingdom work God is bringing to pass in his Son, now, this very moment. We dwell in a world so broken and torn by sin but the outcome – newness, redemption, renewal – is already certain. As such, we have a great incentive to seek to bring justice to the world now.
Lastly, (and perhaps this is merely a restatement of the last point) if the victory is already certain, if the work of justice is neither fruitless nor aimless nor a waif in an absurd universe, if to bring justice now is to merely echo that which is to come fully when Christ returns – then, as Christians, we are blessed with a third incentive to seek and do justice in the world.
So, three incentives – the character of God demonstrated in his Son, the one who has suffered with the suffering, enduring the lash of military might and corrupt religious authority; the reality of the spreading Kingdom amongst us now; and finally, the certain outcome: the rule of Christ will prevail. He will be all in all and all things will be made new.
It seems to me that on the basis of these three incentives (Biblically grounded, I think) we cannot retreat from injustice and merely voice pious platitudes. The work of justice in the world is the vocation of every Christian. However, harking back one last time to the previous article (“The Big Issue of Divine Justice”), there was a particular point I was driving at. Namely, it is only if we believe that God will bring about ultimate justice that we ourselves can be fortified and strengthened to refrain from doing violence to others in our thirst for revenge.
Surely, if we cannot expect cosmic justice when history has run its course, we human beings are truly pitiable creatures. If, indeed, there is no cosmic weighing of the balances and a true and perfect meting out of justice at the last, can we endure life on this earth?
Cardinal Newman was once asked “What would you do if all the evils and injustices of the world were never to be put right by a loving, just God after all?” He replied “Well, I think I should go mad!” Quite right - I’m with Newman there. If all the grave injustices of the world, all the unspeakable violence and unthinkable atrocities were never to be accounted for by the God of history…well, surely the only options left to me are the poor alleviants of escapism, absurdism, anguish, bitterness or a stoic self-resignation and a tight-lipped commitment to the “common good”.
To my mind, the last is the most noble by far. However, in the face of the heinous evil humanity is capable of and our seemingly inexplicable, uncontainable appetite for the most appallingly capricious and degrading crimes, it seems to me there is no human reservoir of moral fortitude deep enough to enable any one of us to somehow face it all down or arrive at the bottom of it. None of us can make full sense of human evil or injustice, let alone bring alleviation and complete healing to the broken and maimed. No one can re-align the cosmic balances of justice perfectly and right every wrong committed throughout the course of human history. Such a task is utterly beyond us. None of us possess the omnipotence nor the banks of knowledge and memory, nor the inexhaustible love required for such a task.
Every one of us is myopic; even our base understanding of justice is construed by our limited, selfish conceptions of the reality we inhabit. Beneath every assessement of wrong, there lurks the prejudice born of moral blindness and the sheer lack of balanced understanding required to bring about true justice. Indeed, few of us manage to honour and love orthers in the simple everyday niceties of life, nevermind facing up to the far more pressing (and challenging) responsibilities of honouring the stranger, the immigrant, the hungry, the debased and the addicted.
Only God is capable of facing up to the exacting, monolithic task of ultimate, cosmic justice. Further, he has shown himself to be so much more loving and wise than we are. Ultimately, the only satisfying answer to the perplexing riddle of human evil, the unquenchable human passion for justice and the reality of suffering is the revelation of God encountered in the person of Jesus Christ.
Until next time,
The Scribbling Apprentice.
First of all, this is no simple issue that is easily navigable; by no means are the issues of justice and unjust suffering reducible to mere platitudes about God and the end of the world. Never are we to retreat into a comfortable, pietistic corner and ignore the brute reality of unspeakable human suffering. God hasn’t; indeed, in the Person of his Son, he suffered through life and endured a death of excruciating physical, mental, emotional and spiritual agony on the cross. Furthermore, God submitted himself to the supreme injustice; Christ was condemned to crucifixion in the wake of a mock trial. The religious and military powers of his age conspired to crush and maim him. In Christ, God became a victim of hatred, abuse, unjust violence and mockery. In the Person of Christ, God has come close to the suffering and the broken-hearted.
Secondly, it seems to me that a Biblical eschatology propels us toward the alleviation of suffering in the world; the Kingdom of God is now amongst us, the new age of the reign of God in Christ has been inaugurated. To refuse to bind the wounds of the broken or being the good news of liberation to the oppressed is to stand against the Kingdom work God is bringing to pass in his Son, now, this very moment. We dwell in a world so broken and torn by sin but the outcome – newness, redemption, renewal – is already certain. As such, we have a great incentive to seek to bring justice to the world now.
Lastly, (and perhaps this is merely a restatement of the last point) if the victory is already certain, if the work of justice is neither fruitless nor aimless nor a waif in an absurd universe, if to bring justice now is to merely echo that which is to come fully when Christ returns – then, as Christians, we are blessed with a third incentive to seek and do justice in the world.
So, three incentives – the character of God demonstrated in his Son, the one who has suffered with the suffering, enduring the lash of military might and corrupt religious authority; the reality of the spreading Kingdom amongst us now; and finally, the certain outcome: the rule of Christ will prevail. He will be all in all and all things will be made new.
It seems to me that on the basis of these three incentives (Biblically grounded, I think) we cannot retreat from injustice and merely voice pious platitudes. The work of justice in the world is the vocation of every Christian. However, harking back one last time to the previous article (“The Big Issue of Divine Justice”), there was a particular point I was driving at. Namely, it is only if we believe that God will bring about ultimate justice that we ourselves can be fortified and strengthened to refrain from doing violence to others in our thirst for revenge.
Surely, if we cannot expect cosmic justice when history has run its course, we human beings are truly pitiable creatures. If, indeed, there is no cosmic weighing of the balances and a true and perfect meting out of justice at the last, can we endure life on this earth?
Cardinal Newman was once asked “What would you do if all the evils and injustices of the world were never to be put right by a loving, just God after all?” He replied “Well, I think I should go mad!” Quite right - I’m with Newman there. If all the grave injustices of the world, all the unspeakable violence and unthinkable atrocities were never to be accounted for by the God of history…well, surely the only options left to me are the poor alleviants of escapism, absurdism, anguish, bitterness or a stoic self-resignation and a tight-lipped commitment to the “common good”.
To my mind, the last is the most noble by far. However, in the face of the heinous evil humanity is capable of and our seemingly inexplicable, uncontainable appetite for the most appallingly capricious and degrading crimes, it seems to me there is no human reservoir of moral fortitude deep enough to enable any one of us to somehow face it all down or arrive at the bottom of it. None of us can make full sense of human evil or injustice, let alone bring alleviation and complete healing to the broken and maimed. No one can re-align the cosmic balances of justice perfectly and right every wrong committed throughout the course of human history. Such a task is utterly beyond us. None of us possess the omnipotence nor the banks of knowledge and memory, nor the inexhaustible love required for such a task.
Every one of us is myopic; even our base understanding of justice is construed by our limited, selfish conceptions of the reality we inhabit. Beneath every assessement of wrong, there lurks the prejudice born of moral blindness and the sheer lack of balanced understanding required to bring about true justice. Indeed, few of us manage to honour and love orthers in the simple everyday niceties of life, nevermind facing up to the far more pressing (and challenging) responsibilities of honouring the stranger, the immigrant, the hungry, the debased and the addicted.
Only God is capable of facing up to the exacting, monolithic task of ultimate, cosmic justice. Further, he has shown himself to be so much more loving and wise than we are. Ultimately, the only satisfying answer to the perplexing riddle of human evil, the unquenchable human passion for justice and the reality of suffering is the revelation of God encountered in the person of Jesus Christ.
Until next time,
The Scribbling Apprentice.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
How Should We Then Live 7#1
Dr Schaeffer in action and wearing his famed white stockings. This is a clip from ten-part series Schaeffer created with his son, entitled "How Should We Then Live".
A Brief Bulletin Outlining the Recent Lack of Bloggage Material
Early last month, we embarked on an epic 15-day interrailing trip that took us from Bratislava (Slovakia), into Budapest (Hungary), on to Zagreb (Croatia) and on into Istria (the north-west coast of Croatia), then up into the mountainous green of Slovenia. Next, it was south into Trieste, Italy and from there on to Venice. After Venice, we made our way into beautiful Florence and finished up in the medieval, walled town of Lucca. It was all beautiful – just too much was seen and experienced to outline in so short a post!
Next, we caught a train up into Switzerland and spent about 10 days in L’Abri. If have not yet been to stay with the community of L’Abri in Huemoz, Switzerland then you must go. For many, L’Abri and the name of Francis Schaeffer are very familiar indeed. Scheaffer was an evangelist, writer, theologian and thinker who began a ministry from his Swiss chalet sometime in the middle of the last century. What began as a humble work has blossomed into a global network of communities committed to working out the implications of serving and knowing Christ in every sphere of life. L’Abri is the French word for “shelter”. As such, it is a Christian community that welcomes all and sundry who wish to talk and think through the ultimate questions of life – whether atheist, agnostic, universalist or animist – in the context of a Christian community commited to serving and following Christ.
Our days at L’Abri revolved around working on the up-keep of the grounds of the chalet, reading in the quiet surrounds of Farel House (the library and chapel) and discussing our musings and learnings with oneanother as we shared meals together. Without a doubt, one of the most stimulating, encouraging and satisfying 10 days I have yet enjoyed on this earth.
The above paragraphs hardly touch on the reality of L’Abri and the momentous work of Francis Schaeffer. The following links sketch out the life and work of Schaeffer in much greater detail:
http://www.rationalpi.com/theshelter/
http://www.labri.org/
The link below will take you to the swiss L’Abri website:
http://www.labri.org/swiss/index.html
Until next time,
The Scribbling Apprentice.
Next, we caught a train up into Switzerland and spent about 10 days in L’Abri. If have not yet been to stay with the community of L’Abri in Huemoz, Switzerland then you must go. For many, L’Abri and the name of Francis Schaeffer are very familiar indeed. Scheaffer was an evangelist, writer, theologian and thinker who began a ministry from his Swiss chalet sometime in the middle of the last century. What began as a humble work has blossomed into a global network of communities committed to working out the implications of serving and knowing Christ in every sphere of life. L’Abri is the French word for “shelter”. As such, it is a Christian community that welcomes all and sundry who wish to talk and think through the ultimate questions of life – whether atheist, agnostic, universalist or animist – in the context of a Christian community commited to serving and following Christ.
Our days at L’Abri revolved around working on the up-keep of the grounds of the chalet, reading in the quiet surrounds of Farel House (the library and chapel) and discussing our musings and learnings with oneanother as we shared meals together. Without a doubt, one of the most stimulating, encouraging and satisfying 10 days I have yet enjoyed on this earth.
The above paragraphs hardly touch on the reality of L’Abri and the momentous work of Francis Schaeffer. The following links sketch out the life and work of Schaeffer in much greater detail:
http://www.rationalpi.com/theshelter/
http://www.labri.org/
The link below will take you to the swiss L’Abri website:
http://www.labri.org/swiss/index.html
Until next time,
The Scribbling Apprentice.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
We Too Are Beggars
A large crowd followed and pressed around him. 25And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. 26She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. 27When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28because she thought, "If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed." 29Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.
30At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, "Who touched my clothes?"
31"You see the people crowding against you," his disciples answered, "and yet you can ask, 'Who touched me?' "
32But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. 33Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. 34He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering" (Mark 5.25-34).
This may be one of the most touching passages in the Gospel of Mark. Luke and Matthew also report this incident, although they devote a much shorter space to it in their respective accounts. In each gospel account, we read of a woman who suffers from a horrendous vaginal infection which has caused her to bleed ceaslessly for twelve long years. In each account, she is seen to creep up and touch Jesus’ cloak from behind and each gospel makes it clear that she is healed because of her faith. But only Mark includes the details alluded to in verse 26: “she had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse.” The anonymous woman had been to see many expensive specialists but their treatments had been futile and very expensive, draining her of all the money she had.
This anonymous woman was also a social outcast. She was ritually unclean. Her infection was abnormal. It was impure. Her impurity was contagious and transmissible to others until the problem was cured. Anyone who came into contact with her – whether they lay in her bed, sat in her chair, or even touched her – became unclean and immediately had to bathe and launder their clothing. Her discharge of blood causes her to be discharged from society. Like any leper, the anonymous woman is a castaway who is exluded from the normal social relations of first century Jewish society. Because of her constant menstrual bleeding she is a nidda – a Hebrew word designating those menstrual women who were seperated from Jewish community. For most women, they were nidda only for the duration of their period. This woman, however, is perpetually bleeding. Therefore, she is only ever nidda; she is always seperated. Indeed, she is effectively banished.
The Levitical laws that shaped the Jewish culture and religion of the first century focused on four phenomena: death, blood, semen and skin disease. Vaginal blood and semen symbolised life to every Jew of Jesus’ day; their loss symbolised death. The constant loss of blood that marked out the anonymous woman made her synonymous with death in the eyes of her countrymen and women. So she was excluded and villifed as being unclean. As a result, she daily suffers acute social embarrassment and psychological pain. If she was ever married, she would have been divorced as soon as the discharge of blood began. It was unlawful for a man to be with his wife during her menstrual period; it was therefore unlawful and unthinkable for a man to be with her. Menstrual women were looked on as being unclean and so a sexual relationship with her husband would have been impossible. Attending services in her local synagogue – the social, cultural and religious centre of her local village – would also have been out of the question.
In the small village societies of ancient Palestine, word would have leaked out and spread quickly. If the divorce proceedings with a former husband had not brought public humiliation, her many doctors, her friends or even her family would have spread the word about her infection and the attendant bleeding. As a result, the anonymous woman we encounter in Mark 5 has been utterly ostracized. She is walking pollution.
The passage prompts a a number of compelling questions. Why does Jesus insist on forcing the woman to come forward and publicly acknowledge her healing? Why not allow this poor woman to hide in the crowd and go on her way, no longer suffering the humiliation and pain of the blood discharge?
One reason Jesus forces the issue is to ensure that this anonymous woman will leave knowing that the one who cured her cares for her. She will leave the feet of Jeus knowing that she is a person worth taking time for and addressing. In a moment, Jesus overturns the internalised perceptions the woman has of herself. He explodes the personal perception ingrained in her over twelve long years (“I am vile”, “I am nothing”). But not only that; in one swift stroke he publicly challenges and overturns the purity laws every person within ear-shot has worked so hard to preserve and safe-guard. Before the eyes of the watching crowds, Jesus makes sure that the woman he addresses no longer remains anonymous, a despised unclean nobody. Instead, Jesus heals her and then publicly welcomes her back into the fold of the people of Israel.
The woman will leave Jesus a publicly vindicated meber of Jewish society. She is no longer an outcast. Jesus publicly restores her as a daughter of Israel. He releases her from the misery that has trapped her for so long. He tells her to go in peace (verse 34). Undergirding the word “peace” is the Hebrew word Shalom (which has connotations of wholeness, well-being, prosperity, security, friendship, salvation.) In an instant Jesus banishes the infection and the social stigma has brought so much misery and pain into the life of this woman. In their place, Jesus brings wholeness, restoration and salvation.
This is a feature that crops up all over Mark’s gospel; Jesus is not hampered by traditional purity laws in any way. In fact, he shows a blithe disregard for them. He touches a leper and cleanses him, he ventures into the tomb areas of the pagan Decapolis and drives a legion of demons into a herd of pigs, he is touched by a woman with a hemorrhage and she is made whole. Never in the gospel of Mark does Jesus’ connection with the unclean make him unclean. Jesus has the power to overcome ceremonial defilement and reverse it. The Jewish purity laws were concerned to prevent human, sinful uncleaness from defiling God’s holiness. Jesus’ ministry shows that God’s holiness is completely unaffected when it comes into contact with ceremonial uncleaness. Jesus does not need to cleanse himself when he comes into contact with anything unclean; instead, he overcomes it. His holiness swallows up everything that defiles.
It is important to read the above account of the anonymous woman in the context of the story of Jairus. Mark’s account above is sandwiched in the centre of Jesus’ dealings with Jairus, a ruler of the local synagogue. In the context of the story, Jairus is a man of destinction. He has a name. He is an honoured member of his community and can openly approach Jesus with a direct request. In contrast, the woman is nameless and has no honour. She slinks about and must approach Jesus from behind, for fear of drawing unwanted attention to herself. These two main chacters of the story occupy opposite ends of the social, economic and religious spectrum.
By arranging the material in this way, Mark is raising telling questions: should Jesus bother stopping for such a woman when he may endanger the life of another whom we regard as being more worthy? And can the love and power of Jesus really overcome anything, no matter how contemptible? Can he overcome religiously ingrained hatred? Can he overcome social ostracism? Can he overcome vaginal disease? Can he overcome even death?
In our passage, Mark depicts two very different people, each with a very different social standing. In the space of a few paragraphs, Jesus meets a synagogue ruler and a social outcast. Mark wants us to see that not for a moment does Jesus assess either person on the basis of their social standing; not for a moment does he respond to them because of their social or religious credentials. Jairus the synagogue ruler is made to wait in distress as Jesus carefully addresses a nobody; an anonymous woman in a crowd. Mark wants us to see the stark truth: Jesus responds to people on the basis of their faith and not their social standing. This is really a very radical thing; the social distinctions, positions and influence by which we define people does not matter to God in the least. In fact, in the eyes of God, such things are completely irrelevant.
Perhaps the anonymous woman was unable to verbalise precisely why she was drawn to Jesus. Undoubtedly she had heard the reports about him. Perhaps she thought Jesus was a charismatic Jewish holy man invested with strange powers. She may have known very little or nothing about the Messianic prophecies of the Hebrew Scriptures. Whether she identified Jesus as the Messiah or not, we cannot be sure. It is likely that she hadn’t worked out all her theology or grasped the scope of Biblical doctrine before she grabbed at the clothes of Jesus. All she knew was that she was utterly desperate. And Jesus was her last hope. So she reaches out to take hold of his cloak in absolute desperation.
Like the anonymous woman, we do not need sophisticated intellectual and theological clarity before we access the transforming power of Jesus. Jairus was so desperate, he lay aside all thoughts of public decency and fell before the feet of Jesus, pleading for the life of his child. The anonymous woman was compelled by utter desperation to reach for the clothes of Jesus as he passed her by. Just like the desparate, trusting faith of Jairus and the anonymous woman, genuine faith is often propelled by a deep conviction that Jesus alone is sufficient to meet the grave spiritual need deep within us. In the end, none of us can verbalise or understand our deep sense of spiritual weakness and our profound need. All we can do is plea with God and fall on the grace he has shown us in Christ his Son.
The anonymous woman, the panic-stricken Jairus and Mark’s depiction of Jesus’ loving response to both of them offers us a stark and moving picture of grace. In preparation for this sunday evening's sermon, as I looked through the various commentaries on Mark available to me, a footnote led me to Timothy George’s “Theology of the Reformers”. There I encountered a study on Luther which echoed the themes Mark touches on in this short segment of his gospel.
After Martin Luther's death, a tattered piece of paper was found lying beside his bed. On it was scrawled 6 words, half in German, half in Latin: “Wir sein Pettler, Hoc est Verum.” “We are beggars, that is true.”
Timothy George writes: “Luther’s whole approach to the Christian life is summed up in these last words. The posture of the human vis a vis God is one of utter receptivity. We have no legs of our own on which to stand. No mystical “ground of the soul” can serve as a basis for our union with the divine. We can earn no merits which will purchase for us a standing before God. We are beggars – needy, vulnerable, totally bereft of resources with which to save ourselves. For Luther the good news of the gospel was that in Jesus Christ God had become a beggar too. God identified with us in our neediness. Like the good Samaritan who exposed himself to the dangers of the road to attend to the dying man in the ditch, God “came where we were”…Luther once remarked that his insight into the gracious character of God had come to him while he was “auff diser cloaca,” literally, “on the toilet.” While some scholars have interpreted this saying in terms of Luther’s acute suffering from constipation, we know that the expression in cloaca was a common metaphor in medieval spiritual writings. It referred to a state of utter helplessness and dependence upon God. Where else are we more vulnerable, more easily embarrassed, and, in Luther’s mind, more open to demonic attacks, than when we are – in cloaca? Yet it is precisely in a state of such vulnerability – when we are reduced to humility, when like beggars we can only cast ourselves on the mercy of another – that the yearning for grace is answered in the assurance of God’s inescapable nearness….”
We are beggars, that is true. Like Jairus and the anonymous woman, we are beggars too.
Yours,
The Scribbling Apprentice.
30At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, "Who touched my clothes?"
31"You see the people crowding against you," his disciples answered, "and yet you can ask, 'Who touched me?' "
32But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. 33Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. 34He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering" (Mark 5.25-34).
This may be one of the most touching passages in the Gospel of Mark. Luke and Matthew also report this incident, although they devote a much shorter space to it in their respective accounts. In each gospel account, we read of a woman who suffers from a horrendous vaginal infection which has caused her to bleed ceaslessly for twelve long years. In each account, she is seen to creep up and touch Jesus’ cloak from behind and each gospel makes it clear that she is healed because of her faith. But only Mark includes the details alluded to in verse 26: “she had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse.” The anonymous woman had been to see many expensive specialists but their treatments had been futile and very expensive, draining her of all the money she had.
This anonymous woman was also a social outcast. She was ritually unclean. Her infection was abnormal. It was impure. Her impurity was contagious and transmissible to others until the problem was cured. Anyone who came into contact with her – whether they lay in her bed, sat in her chair, or even touched her – became unclean and immediately had to bathe and launder their clothing. Her discharge of blood causes her to be discharged from society. Like any leper, the anonymous woman is a castaway who is exluded from the normal social relations of first century Jewish society. Because of her constant menstrual bleeding she is a nidda – a Hebrew word designating those menstrual women who were seperated from Jewish community. For most women, they were nidda only for the duration of their period. This woman, however, is perpetually bleeding. Therefore, she is only ever nidda; she is always seperated. Indeed, she is effectively banished.
The Levitical laws that shaped the Jewish culture and religion of the first century focused on four phenomena: death, blood, semen and skin disease. Vaginal blood and semen symbolised life to every Jew of Jesus’ day; their loss symbolised death. The constant loss of blood that marked out the anonymous woman made her synonymous with death in the eyes of her countrymen and women. So she was excluded and villifed as being unclean. As a result, she daily suffers acute social embarrassment and psychological pain. If she was ever married, she would have been divorced as soon as the discharge of blood began. It was unlawful for a man to be with his wife during her menstrual period; it was therefore unlawful and unthinkable for a man to be with her. Menstrual women were looked on as being unclean and so a sexual relationship with her husband would have been impossible. Attending services in her local synagogue – the social, cultural and religious centre of her local village – would also have been out of the question.
In the small village societies of ancient Palestine, word would have leaked out and spread quickly. If the divorce proceedings with a former husband had not brought public humiliation, her many doctors, her friends or even her family would have spread the word about her infection and the attendant bleeding. As a result, the anonymous woman we encounter in Mark 5 has been utterly ostracized. She is walking pollution.
The passage prompts a a number of compelling questions. Why does Jesus insist on forcing the woman to come forward and publicly acknowledge her healing? Why not allow this poor woman to hide in the crowd and go on her way, no longer suffering the humiliation and pain of the blood discharge?
One reason Jesus forces the issue is to ensure that this anonymous woman will leave knowing that the one who cured her cares for her. She will leave the feet of Jeus knowing that she is a person worth taking time for and addressing. In a moment, Jesus overturns the internalised perceptions the woman has of herself. He explodes the personal perception ingrained in her over twelve long years (“I am vile”, “I am nothing”). But not only that; in one swift stroke he publicly challenges and overturns the purity laws every person within ear-shot has worked so hard to preserve and safe-guard. Before the eyes of the watching crowds, Jesus makes sure that the woman he addresses no longer remains anonymous, a despised unclean nobody. Instead, Jesus heals her and then publicly welcomes her back into the fold of the people of Israel.
The woman will leave Jesus a publicly vindicated meber of Jewish society. She is no longer an outcast. Jesus publicly restores her as a daughter of Israel. He releases her from the misery that has trapped her for so long. He tells her to go in peace (verse 34). Undergirding the word “peace” is the Hebrew word Shalom (which has connotations of wholeness, well-being, prosperity, security, friendship, salvation.) In an instant Jesus banishes the infection and the social stigma has brought so much misery and pain into the life of this woman. In their place, Jesus brings wholeness, restoration and salvation.
This is a feature that crops up all over Mark’s gospel; Jesus is not hampered by traditional purity laws in any way. In fact, he shows a blithe disregard for them. He touches a leper and cleanses him, he ventures into the tomb areas of the pagan Decapolis and drives a legion of demons into a herd of pigs, he is touched by a woman with a hemorrhage and she is made whole. Never in the gospel of Mark does Jesus’ connection with the unclean make him unclean. Jesus has the power to overcome ceremonial defilement and reverse it. The Jewish purity laws were concerned to prevent human, sinful uncleaness from defiling God’s holiness. Jesus’ ministry shows that God’s holiness is completely unaffected when it comes into contact with ceremonial uncleaness. Jesus does not need to cleanse himself when he comes into contact with anything unclean; instead, he overcomes it. His holiness swallows up everything that defiles.
It is important to read the above account of the anonymous woman in the context of the story of Jairus. Mark’s account above is sandwiched in the centre of Jesus’ dealings with Jairus, a ruler of the local synagogue. In the context of the story, Jairus is a man of destinction. He has a name. He is an honoured member of his community and can openly approach Jesus with a direct request. In contrast, the woman is nameless and has no honour. She slinks about and must approach Jesus from behind, for fear of drawing unwanted attention to herself. These two main chacters of the story occupy opposite ends of the social, economic and religious spectrum.
By arranging the material in this way, Mark is raising telling questions: should Jesus bother stopping for such a woman when he may endanger the life of another whom we regard as being more worthy? And can the love and power of Jesus really overcome anything, no matter how contemptible? Can he overcome religiously ingrained hatred? Can he overcome social ostracism? Can he overcome vaginal disease? Can he overcome even death?
In our passage, Mark depicts two very different people, each with a very different social standing. In the space of a few paragraphs, Jesus meets a synagogue ruler and a social outcast. Mark wants us to see that not for a moment does Jesus assess either person on the basis of their social standing; not for a moment does he respond to them because of their social or religious credentials. Jairus the synagogue ruler is made to wait in distress as Jesus carefully addresses a nobody; an anonymous woman in a crowd. Mark wants us to see the stark truth: Jesus responds to people on the basis of their faith and not their social standing. This is really a very radical thing; the social distinctions, positions and influence by which we define people does not matter to God in the least. In fact, in the eyes of God, such things are completely irrelevant.
Perhaps the anonymous woman was unable to verbalise precisely why she was drawn to Jesus. Undoubtedly she had heard the reports about him. Perhaps she thought Jesus was a charismatic Jewish holy man invested with strange powers. She may have known very little or nothing about the Messianic prophecies of the Hebrew Scriptures. Whether she identified Jesus as the Messiah or not, we cannot be sure. It is likely that she hadn’t worked out all her theology or grasped the scope of Biblical doctrine before she grabbed at the clothes of Jesus. All she knew was that she was utterly desperate. And Jesus was her last hope. So she reaches out to take hold of his cloak in absolute desperation.
Like the anonymous woman, we do not need sophisticated intellectual and theological clarity before we access the transforming power of Jesus. Jairus was so desperate, he lay aside all thoughts of public decency and fell before the feet of Jesus, pleading for the life of his child. The anonymous woman was compelled by utter desperation to reach for the clothes of Jesus as he passed her by. Just like the desparate, trusting faith of Jairus and the anonymous woman, genuine faith is often propelled by a deep conviction that Jesus alone is sufficient to meet the grave spiritual need deep within us. In the end, none of us can verbalise or understand our deep sense of spiritual weakness and our profound need. All we can do is plea with God and fall on the grace he has shown us in Christ his Son.
The anonymous woman, the panic-stricken Jairus and Mark’s depiction of Jesus’ loving response to both of them offers us a stark and moving picture of grace. In preparation for this sunday evening's sermon, as I looked through the various commentaries on Mark available to me, a footnote led me to Timothy George’s “Theology of the Reformers”. There I encountered a study on Luther which echoed the themes Mark touches on in this short segment of his gospel.
After Martin Luther's death, a tattered piece of paper was found lying beside his bed. On it was scrawled 6 words, half in German, half in Latin: “Wir sein Pettler, Hoc est Verum.” “We are beggars, that is true.”
Timothy George writes: “Luther’s whole approach to the Christian life is summed up in these last words. The posture of the human vis a vis God is one of utter receptivity. We have no legs of our own on which to stand. No mystical “ground of the soul” can serve as a basis for our union with the divine. We can earn no merits which will purchase for us a standing before God. We are beggars – needy, vulnerable, totally bereft of resources with which to save ourselves. For Luther the good news of the gospel was that in Jesus Christ God had become a beggar too. God identified with us in our neediness. Like the good Samaritan who exposed himself to the dangers of the road to attend to the dying man in the ditch, God “came where we were”…Luther once remarked that his insight into the gracious character of God had come to him while he was “auff diser cloaca,” literally, “on the toilet.” While some scholars have interpreted this saying in terms of Luther’s acute suffering from constipation, we know that the expression in cloaca was a common metaphor in medieval spiritual writings. It referred to a state of utter helplessness and dependence upon God. Where else are we more vulnerable, more easily embarrassed, and, in Luther’s mind, more open to demonic attacks, than when we are – in cloaca? Yet it is precisely in a state of such vulnerability – when we are reduced to humility, when like beggars we can only cast ourselves on the mercy of another – that the yearning for grace is answered in the assurance of God’s inescapable nearness….”
We are beggars, that is true. Like Jairus and the anonymous woman, we are beggars too.
Yours,
The Scribbling Apprentice.
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