Theology for the Masses

**This is a story I told as a presentation of the Gospel at the MizzouBSU’s RealLife Thursday Night Live. I would be interested in your thoughts.**

If we can say anything at all about our culture, it’s that we love stories. Look at our movies, our television, our sports, our gossip (talk radio, celeb magazines, sometimes our ‘prayer requests’). We are captivated by the power of the Story. And so for just a few minutes tonight, I want to look at a story from the Gospel of John. It takes place the morning of Jesus’ resurrection, and involves Mary of Magdala, one of Jesus’ closest followers. She and a couple of Jesus’ disciples go to visit his Tomb and find it empty. The other disciples leave, and Mary stays, weeping. Here’s where we pick up:

But Mary stood outside the tomb weeping. As she wept, she knelt to look into the tomb and saw two angels sitting there, dressed in white, one at the head, the other at the foot of where Jesus’ body had been laid. They said to her, “Woman, why do you weep?” “They took my Master,” she said, “and I don’t know where they put him.” After she said this, she turned away and saw Jesus standing there. But she didn’t recognize him. Jesus spoke to her, “Woman, why do you weep? Who are you looking for?” She, thinking that he was the gardener, said, “Mister, if you took him, tell me where you put him so I can care for him.” Jesus said, “Mary.” Turning to face him, she said in Hebrew, “Rabboni!” meaning “Teacher!” Jesus said, “Don’t cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I ascend to my Father and your Father, my God and your God.’” Mary Magdalene went, telling the news to the disciples: “I saw the Master!” And she told them everything he said to her. — John 20:11-18

Why would Mary mistake Jesus for a gardener? Maybe it was still dark. Or perhaps we need to listen to the larger story, of which the Empty Tomb is the ending. I want to tell you God’s story as we have it in the Scriptures. Listen and see if you, too, can see what Mary saw.

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In the beginning, the Creator planted a beautiful garden. It was lush and fertile, overflowing with every kind of delicious fruit and vegetable imaginable, each one fully ripe, the flavors practically bursting through their skins before your teeth could break them. It was a perfect place. It was a wholesome place. It was a place where beauty was almost tangible, where you could see the health and perfection and wonder of the whole garden, just by looking around. And the Creator very much loved to take walks through his garden, to enjoy the subtle fragrances mixing together, shifting as he walked from one area to the next, to savor the sunlight as it played across the various plants, setting them on fire with reds and oranges or cooling them in deep blues and purples. As the Creator surveyed his garden, he sighed mightily, satisfied, and he said to himself, “This is good.”

It was so good, in fact, that the Creator wanted to share it beyond himself. And so he created the Man. How he loved those first days when the Man explored the garden, enjoying the sights and sounds and tastes and smells. One moment will forever hold a special place in his heart: He brought the Man to the center of the garden, where the trees were, those two trees. He stopped the Man there and said to him, ‘I have named you Adam because you are made of adamah, or dust. And just as I made this garden for us, I made you to take care of this garden with me. You will be my co-laborer, my gardener. You are going to work with me to keep this whole place beautiful.’ As the Man’s smile widened, the Creator turned to the trees to explain their nature to the Man: ‘Of all of the plants in this garden, these are the most important. One tree gives you life. You’ll live forever. This is tree I want to you eat from. I want you to experience life and this garden with me.’

‘And what of the Other?’ the Man asked.

‘The Other tree will give you the ability to choose your own way,’ said the Creator. ‘You will be able to decide your ways are better than my ways, that your plan for the Garden is better than mine. But you should know this: you cannot take care of the Garden without me. You are the gardener only because I am already gardening. You only know what to do because you have already seen me doing it.’

‘Hear me, Adam,’ the Creator said, ‘You can only eat from one of these trees. If you choose the Other tree, it means you’ll die. You can’t have life apart from me.’

I don’t know how many days passed between that conversation and Adam’s choice. I like to think that it was quite a while. I do know that the Creator made him a partner (but that’s a story for another time). I like to think that he and his partner were happy in the Garden with the Creator for a long time. And I don’t know why they chose what they did. I do know that eventually, Adam chose the Other tree. He chose to believe that his ideas were better than the Creator’s. That he could take care of the Garden on his own. And he died because of it. Oh not right away. No, actually, the rest of Adam’s long life was filled with the consequences of that fateful decision. I know he got to watch the beautiful Garden God had created consumed with violence and hatred and greed and all the other fruits that Other tree. And then, at the end of a long, hard and painful life, Adam and his wife, Eve, died. And they most certainly did not live happily ever after.

Now, as stories go, if that were the ending, it would make for a pretty depressing story, but also one that touches perhaps too closely to the truth of our lives. Because as Adam’s children, we all have made a habit of choosing that Other tree, of decided to go about life on our own, with little regard for the Creator’s desires for us and our world. To say it another way, we all think of ourselves as main characters in our own stories, rather than as characters in God’s story. And our world is proof of the truth of the Creator’s promise: our choice to tell our own stories has created a world that looks more like a grave than a garden. Adam’s legacy, our legacy, is death and destruction, not growth and goodness, not flourishing according to the Creator’s designs as he tells our stories. Our world of famine, rape, broken homes and broken hearts, of war and bloodshed, of children who die to young and old ignored and abused is a long way from that Garden, and we have lost the way back.

How fortunate for we sons of Adam and daughters of Eve that we were not left out here to wander in the dark and dead among the tombs! Because the Creator was not content to allow his children to destroy the world he’d created for them, nor to let them destroy themselves rather than live with him. Instead, God became human, one of us. And in doing so, he showed us what a rightly lived human life looks like. He showed us the Creator’s original plan for Adam.

He showed us a person who was more concerned about other people than himself. He showed us a person who gave his life over to the pursuit of Justice for all persons, not just those in power. And he showed us a person who did all of these things because he was first and foremost connected to the Creator, who only did what he saw the Creator doing, and – consequently – whose life was one long process of putting right the world we’d steered so horribly wrong.

And all of this culminated when he was in his early 30’s, during a holiday that celebrated the fact that the Creator is also the Liberator, that God not only brings about new life, but he restores that which was broken back to wholeness. During that holiday (called Passover), that God-become-human named Jesus took on the worst evils humanity had to offer and dared them to do their worst. We did what we have always done since we left the Garden – we killed. We brought about death. We slaughtered God and laid him in a Tomb.

The Second Adam had come to us that we might have life, that we might reconnect with God. That we might begin to fix what we had broken. He came into our darkness and offered to show us the ways of God that we had so long forgotten. And still, even after thousands of years of the pain of death, we chose the Other tree. We chose our own way. We killed the God made human.

And we declared it a Good Friday.

But as the Creator and the Liberator so often does, he redeemed us even from that choice. He set us free from that slavery to ourselves that we can’t seem to break. He took upon himself the first Adam’s death and destruction and offered us instead resurrection and restoration.

Because early on that Sunday morning, a new day began unlike any other in history. Jesus’ dead body was no longer dead. He moved; he sat up and removed his grave clothes, folded them neatly on the stone slab where he’d lain. And he emerged from the Tomb, from the place of death, from the consequences of Sin.

The Second Adam had defeated evil, death and sin. He had taken the worst we had to offer upon himself and by doing so placed himself between us and the death we’d called down upon ourselves and our world. And then he rose. He conquered. And so he walked out of the Tomb alive and well, ready to fulfill the work the first Adam had left undone.

So it’s not so great a surprise that, a few hours later, when Mary visits the Tomb to mourn, she mistakes him for the Gardener. Because he is the Gardener. But the whole world is his Garden, and he’s working towards the day when we’ll have no more Tombs. And no more suffering.

And if you’ll walk with him a ways, he’ll take you to that hill where he died. And he’ll point up to the tree on which they crucified him and say, ‘Child, if you continue to eat of this Other tree, if you choose to go your own way, you’ll die. Come with me and eat of the Tree of Life. Come join me once again in taking care of my Garden.”

The other day I listened to a series of sermons by Biblical Complementarians arguing for the traditional role of women in the home and church. Without fail, every sermon mentioned the fact that the Egalitarian position is influenced by secular Feminism, an influence which causes Christian Feminists to obliterate role distinctions and differences between the sexes.

To be sure, there’s no denying the cultural influence of secular Feminism. But does this necessitate that we disregard Egalitarianism simply because it’s been influenced by a culture? Could we not turn the same comments around on the BC position and protest that they’ve been influenced by 1700 years of theologically justified oppression of women? There’s no religious institution which has not in some way been tainted or influenced by secularism. None.

Thus, all sides of any theological/religious discussion have already been shaded by previous predispositions handed to us by culture. Being influenced by culture, then, is no reason to reject a theological position – indeed, if it were, there would be no theological positions to accept or reject.

Most often statements that accuse someone else’s position as being culturally compromised are fear tactics used to persuade people against a position before allowing them to examine the evidence for themselves. If I can convince you that someone is a misogynist bigot before you even talk to them, then I’ve won the argument. If you can convince someone that I’m a bra-burning wo-man, then you’ve won the battle without even allowing me a voice.

The goal, then, is not merely in labeling others as more influenced by culture than myself. The goal is in understanding and critiquing positions on both what they assert and where their logic might end up. How does my cultural influence help or hinder my exegesis or theological analysis? How does yours?

I fear certain BC’s repeatedly fail to understand that Christian Feminism is not the same thing as Liberal Feminism. Liberal Feminism emphasizes the similarities between men and women while downplaying the differences. Christian Feminism, on the other hand, appreciates God-given differences, but maintains that these differences need not necessitate hierarchy or subjugation. The failure of BC’s to understand this, or at least admit this when they do understand it, perpetuates stereotypes regarding their position.

Am I influenced by culture? Yes, but so are you and so is John Piper, Wayne Grudem, Ben Witherington and Michel Foucault. Let us acknowledge this fact and see where we benefit from it, where it hurts us and where to go once we’ve figured this out.

Growing up poor, I remember times when my parents just didn’t have enough money to buy Christmas presents for us. They almost always seemed to work things out in the end, but there were times things just didn’t to come together. One advantage they had was Wal-Mart’s layaway program – come in and find what you want, pay a little for it now and come back and pay the rest later, at which time you can pick up your item.

This was an advantage for my parents, but not for us kids. One Christmas I remember my mom and step-father taking us to Wal-Mart and telling us we had $100 worth of items to put on layaway. This was right around the time the original Super Wal-Mart’s came out, so I ran around that store for probably 3 hours collecting baseball cards, sweaters (when I was a kid I wanted to be a preppy[1]) and a baseball glove. After our time was up we went and put the items on layaway, in full confidence that in a month we would be able to come back and get our presents.

Unfortunately, that never happened. The first payment was made and my mom and step dad never went back to pay the rest so that we could get our Christmas presents. They never gathered enough money to pay the full sum; I never saw my baseball cards.

The larger narrative of the Spirit of God never has this kind of unfortunate conclusion. The Spirit is the first-fruits of our final, eschatological inheritance…the down payment of our final redemption. At the cross our savior won redemption for the entire world and the giving of the Spirit testifies that that redemption, already accomplished, will finally be completed. The Spirit witnesses in the “right now” to the “what is yet to come” – and the “what is yet to come” is guaranteed.

“Down payment” is from the Gk. avrrabw.n, a word which comes from the business world. The idea is a contractual agreement between two parties that the buyer will make a single payment at one time, in promise of returning with the full sum at a later time. The fulfillment of the promise is GUARANTEED in the initial installment.[2] Thus, promised by the Father (Acts 1:4-5), the Spirit is God’s layaway plan for creation. The Spirit is His promise to entirely finish what He began so long ago. The Spirit is the evidence that we possess in the “now” what we still yet await for in the “then.” The Spirit is the church’s evidence that God will cash in on His promise.

The Spirit is the promise of the final redemption of this world. He is the “wellspring of Christian faith, forward-looking toward the final end.”[3] The Spirit is the promise of the Father, the promise that all our temptations and sufferings do not have the final say. We do not have to wallow in our own depravity, but the Spirit gives us hope to see “the possibility of being wholly set free” and urges us to break free from the fetters of our so-called “freedom.” This hope is entirely audacious. In the face of our failures, this crazy, Spirit induced hope emboldens us to see that our sin does not have the final say. We can truly believe that this sin is the last one.

In Ephesians 1:13, Paul speaks of this inheritance of redemption being sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. A seal was a stamped impression on wax or clay that signified ownership and authenticity. It carried with it the protection of its owner. The Spirit, then, is the evidence that we are authentically owned by God. He has purchased us out of the slave-market and has made us children! This seal marks us “until the day of redemption.” The Spirit is the evidence that God protects us and will finally redeem us.

What better message of hope exists? God is not like my parents. He does not lack the resources to go back and finally redeem his purchase. The promise of full and final redemption is made known in the initial installment, the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit and the Word are inseparable. They, together, are the means by which God created and sustains the world in Genesis. By His word God calls forth all of creation. By the Spirit He works chaos into cosmos. God has called the world into being with the breath of His mouth (ruach) and has made everything by his word (Ps. 33:6).

At times in the OT “spirit” and “word” are even interchangeable. Ancient Jews found it difficult to draw too sharp of a contrast between them. This is because they understood the creative and providential potential of both.

Ancient people believed they could create reality through the spoken word. The spoken word “is regarded as the medium of owners which effectively influence events.”[1]

And even today, though we hardly believe it, human words have the ability to create worlds. By gossip or negativity a world of despair may be created around a person. By love and grace a world of godliness may flourish around someone else.

If we are to have a renewed understanding of the Spirit in the church today, we need to also regain a new understanding of the power of words. With our words, we need to create a world where the Spirit and spiritual things may thrive and prosper. Clearly we do not take the freedom from God to choose to act on His own, but we can still work to create an environment that is ready when God does choose to act. This is done through a connection of Spirit and word.

Notice how so many of our spiritual charisms (gifts) essentially involve words: Tongues is itself a verbal gift, teaching and prophesy are gifts most often employed through spoken word, discernment involves distinguishing whether a spoken word came from God or not, and what would encouragement be if it did not involve a word of hope? And the list could go on.

In a world where everything has already been said, and much of our rhetoric is merely adding to the noise, we need to recover a sense of connection between the Spirit and words. If we fail to do this, “our words may well make a good deal of sense, but they will be devoid of power; it may be that they will explain something, but they will move nobody. They will be ineffectual, idle, fruitless.”[2]

We live in a world where words are considered either hurtful or meaningless. People do not trust the words of lying politicians, the words of cheating pastors, nor the words of even their own family members (“I love you.” doesn’t even mean anything anymore because it’s been so overused and commercialized!).

The church, to them, is just another political entity vying for power, a power to hurt other people. This is how the world sees the church – and we’ve given them no other model! But “if we really want the Spirit to place words on our lips, we need to live constantly in an attitude of death to our own glory, seeking only the glory of God.”[3] We need to stop our self-seeking and squelch our power-hunger. We need to humbly live in the Spirit and employ the words of humility and love.

A fresh recovery of the Spirit goes hand in hand with a recovery of our ecclesial rhetoric. From the individual struggling with gossip, to the larger community struggling with our political rhetoric, from the Pentecostal emphasizing the Spirit to the Protestants emphasizing the Word, we cannot forget that these are inseparable. The Spirit and the word, together, create and sustain worlds. As long as we ignore the value of both in the contemporary church we will continue to reap the harvest of spiritless meaninglessness.

In this final installment on the “Abraham Alone” series, we will look at the ambiguity of Abrahamic religion’s relationship with Canaanite religion and culture. Nearly every text has something to say about this porous relationship that is strained by the wickedness of Canaanite culture in general, but at times quite intimate and righteous. So, the last feature of Abrahamic religion is that it was distinct from, but at times having commonality with Canaanite religion and culture.

Beginning with the distinctions,[1] whether or not Abrahamic religion was monotheistic it is obvious that Abraham follows only Yahweh. Additionally, the practice of circumcision on the eighth day after birth also separates Abraham from the Canaanites. Though ancient Semitic peoples practiced circumcision, this feature is unique to Abrahamic religion. The rituals and theology separating Abrahamic faith from Canaanite religion reinforces the “choseness” of Abraham and the wickedness of most Canaanite culture.

Despite the texts generally negative view, in certain segments Abraham honors Canaanite people and religion. He pays tithes to Melchizedek, understanding El Elyon, a Canaanite deity who is “God Most High,” as Yahweh (14:22). Melchizedek’s is the apex of Canaanite religion, worshiping Abraham’s God, only by a different name. This deity was likely the highest in the Canaanite pantheon, and Abraham’s connection of this name with Yahweh may be due to Melchizedek’s conception of El Elyon as displaying Yahweh’s attributes. Abraham simply sees no difference between Yahweh and El Elyon in this text or a few others: he builds altars to the god El (22:9), which he also connects with Yahweh (22:11).[2]

Abraham’s attitude toward them, then, is not only shaped by the wickedness of some, but also by the righteousness of a few. He enters into treaty’s (21:27) and is even buried among some of them who honor him and his wife (25:8-10).[3]

In the end, full realization of Yahweh’s promises necessitated that Abrahamic faith avoid fraternization with the wickedness of the Canaanites. However, the boundaries were rather porous when it came to Canaanites who were generally righteous in character.

In a previous post I argued that everything is sacred. That is, all aspects of our lives are sacred because the Spirit permeates all things. Taking a bath is sacred. Baptism is sacred. Doing the laundry is sacred. The Eucharist is sacred.

What I unwittingly communicated in that post, however, was that taking a bath and getting Baptized are sacred in the same way and to the same degree. And though Luther says that every time we wash our face we should think of our Baptism, I am convinced that this reasoning is flawed. There is something distinctively set apart about the sacraments. That is, the sacraments are holy in a different way and to a different degree than taking a shower is holy.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I think I was on the right track in that post, I just think there were implications of that line of reasoning that I hadn’t explored. In this post, I want to suggest that the problem with the previous post wasn’t so much that I uplifted the bath (which was the intent), but that in doing so I unfortunately drug Baptism down to the level of a bath.

Instead of positing an “everything is equally sacred” model, I want to continue to suggest that everything is sacred, including a bath, but that all things are not sacred in the same way or to the same degree. While a bath is sacred because the Spirit is present with us during that time, there is a very real sense in which the church has always held that Baptism is a time and ritual which invokes the Spirit in a special way. The sacraments of the church invite the presence of the Spirit in a distinct way. So, yes, my bath might be sacred because the Spirit communes with me there – indeed, some of my best times of worship and fellowship with the Spirit have been while showering – but it is not sacred in the same way as Baptism.

To illustrate this I want to pull from the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. Under the Old Covenant, the people of God worshipped and met with Yahweh at the Temple. The Temple and its objects were all considered “holy” or set apart from common use. But within the Temple there was a “Most Holy Place.” The existence of the Most Holy Place didn’t negate the holiness of the other spaces and objects, it merely suggested that there is a continuum of holiness. Everything in the Temple was holy, but this particular space and the objects within that space were more holy and holy in a different way.

So too it is with the Spirit’s activities in the life of the church. Mundane things such as eating and drinking can be made holy by the presence and activity of the Spirit of God. But there are some things which are Most Holy. Baptism, the Eucharist, the gathering together of the community on Sunday – these things are Most Holy. Common time, which is never common because of the Spirit, becomes increasingly holy. Common objects, such as bread and wine, become Most Holy during the Eucharist. And common water becomes Most Holy during Baptism.

Everything is still sacred. But some things are more sacred and in a different way.
And what was once routine was now the perfect joy – Switchfoot

I have a question to ask you folks:

Me? Its gotta be the violence of God in the Old Testament. I can handle textual composition problems. I can handle problems of causality and God’s power, and I can deal with contradictions between the narrative of the Bible and what we can tell about the world through science and history. But when I look at the God of the New Testament and the God of the Old Testament, I can understand how some early Christians opted to ignore or reject the Old Testament completely. I am no where near close to doing that, but I am just saying that I can understand the impulse.

So, what does this for you? Be honest. There’s gotta be problems that you are struggling with (or you are probably ignoring implications of certain things).

Update: There is another question that I run into when I study the New Testament period. It has the potential to reshape the way I look at the canon we have constructed. I’ve wrestling with it for some time. I hope to be able to articulate it well sometime soon in the future.

A few months ago I wrote a post charging myself with being Too Skeptical for the Holy Spirit. I lamented, really, the fact that my Pneumatological Hermeneutic of Suspicion is always in over-drive. A few weeks later I wrote a post delineating those Christian beliefs I considered Dogma, Doctrine, Opinion or Heresy. My friend Bryne pointed out that my Dogmas (those things I considered essential to the Christian faith) were overwhelmingly Christological. I realized, in frustration with myself, I had very little to say about the Holy Spirit.

A Hermeneutic of Suspicion is not entirely responsible for this. My tradition (Evangelical/Southern Baptist) rarely touches on the 3^rd person of the Trinity. It’s hard to develop a thoughtful theology when there’s no consistency within the community’s rhetoric.

Our communal avoidance of the Spirit is borne out of at least two factors: 1. we are afraid allowing the Spirit to have control will turn us into Pentecostals,[1] and 2. our view of the Bible restricts our Pneumatological experiences.

Let me explain the second point.

I’ve always loved the authoritative emphasis Evangelicalism places on the Bible. While in certain respects I have no problem with this, I also feel it has led to an unfortunate dichotomy between the Scripture and experience; a dichotomy which is, itself, not scriptural.

John Stott argues in his discussion on the Holy Spirit, “God’s purpose for our lives is to be found in Scripture and not in experience.”[2] Stott argues the Holy Bible, above our experiences of the Holy Spirit, should direct our Christian lives. He says this primarily because he distrusts experience, not because he distrusts the Holy Spirit. The Bible must be the medium of the Holy Spirit.

But here’s the fundamental flaw: All our experiences of the Spirit, including the illumination given by the Spirit to understand the Bible, are still experiences. As Ruether says, “Human experience is both the starting point and ending point of the circle of interpretation.”[3] There’s nothing outside of experience (or the text!). This distrust of experience is an epistemological left over from the Enlightenment, not from a biblical worldview.

The problem with appealing only the Scriptures, and avoiding experience, is not only that everything is an experience, but the Bible only Speaks of experiencing the Spirit. Experience is how the biblical authors knew the Spirit. They didn’t have a Bible on which to rely.

The Luke-Acts narratives, for example, spill over with experiences of the Spirit’s outpouring. Furthermore, Paul appeals to his audience, not to only search the Scriptures (the Old Testament) for their awareness of the Spirit, but to look within their own communal experiences for evidence of the Spirit’s work:

What, don’t you know that your bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit?

Or

If there is any consolation in Christ, any comfort from His love, any fellowship of the Spirit, then make my joy complete…

Indeed, some of Paul’s statements only make sense with the assumption that his churches experience the Spirit: Did you receive the Spirit by works of Torah or by believing what you heard? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now trying to gain perfection by the flesh? (Gal. 3:2-3). His question only works because of the experiential quality of their reception of the Spirit.[4]

Paul assumes his audience will acknowledge, from experience, the Spirit’s work among them. Paul is no Enlightenment scholar suspicious of experiencing the Spirit. He see’s the Spirit at work in his churches, in his mission, and in his life. This is no subjective reality to Paul: don’t you know!

By placing the Bible above the Holy Spirit, we’ve in essence claimed the Bible is objective and public knowledge and the Spirit’s activities are subjective and private. In this, we’ve not only violated our Scriptural foundation, but we’ve denied the 3^rd person of the Trinity out of a preconceived, prefabricated, position of suspicion. For all our arguments about the Historical Jesus, maybe we need to reexamine the ways we’ve abandoned the Historical Spirit.

Part of the churches New Covenant is that the Spirit of God will personally abide with the people of God. This is not an abstract doctrine waiting to be delineated; it is an experience – an experience of a person. When the church gathers, God is present in person.[5] Until we regain this personal, relational, experiential aspect of the Spirit, our churches will continue subject themselves to Enlightenment philosophy instead of the biblical worldview we claim we posses.

The person of the Holy Spirit, not the Bible, is the down-payment of God’s eschatological promises (Eph. 1:14). The Spirit in our midst reminds us that God has already purchased his church and the victory is already won. Christians ought to be the most hopeful of all people for we have the Spirit in our midst reminding us that God has already defeated sin and death. By our failure to experience the Spirit in our midst, we are robbed of that personal assurance.

In the end, this is what I wanted to communicate:

1. Everything is an experience. You cannot avoid experience in your theological, biblical or, especially, your pneumatological reflection.
2. Our fear of experience not only betrays an Enlightenment epistemology as opposed to a Biblical one, but straight-jackets the Holy Spirit – indeed, probably even grieves the Spirit.
3. Paul’s assumption is that the Spirit is experienced by his churches. In contrast to Paul’s churches, I doubt many evangelicals could say, “Yes, Paul, we know from experience that we have fellowship with the Spirit; we know from experience that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit. This is a major flaw in not only our Pneumatology but also our Ecclesiology.

Does the BC position ever use anything from Jesus to support their claims?  If not, what does that mean for their theology?

I was thinking about that this morning as I was wondering about the merits of ESF’s claim that Christianity developed from the Jesus movement into the Early Missionary movement and then into a group which gradually patriarcalized it.

While doing so, I could not think of where BC’s use Jesus for their claims, just some Old Testament and the later Pauline tradition (but, then again, not the early stuff, which would further ESF’s claim about the early missionary movement).

Anyone with thoughts?  Am I wrong here?  There are just musings from a person getting ready.

Ever do theology that way?  I’ve been guilty of it – and I bet you have as well.

Often when discussing Calvinism with my Reformed friends, I hear them use language like “God allowed/permitted sin.” This kind of rhetoric seems strange, though, coming from a group of people who believe, as the Westminster Confession of Faith says, that “God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass.”

Logically consistent Calvinists recognize this problem and concede that God must have ordained and caused evil as well as good. As John Piper has said, “Everything that exists—including evil—is ordained by an infinitely holy and all-wise God to make the glory of Christ shine more brightly.” That is, God didn’t merely “permit” sin or “allow” it; He actively caused it as its Primary Cause.

John Calvin (as quoted by Piper) even goes on to chide those “inconsistent” Calvinists who want to use “permit” and “allow” language when it comes to sin, “John Calvin denies that there is any “mere permission” in God: From this it is easy to conclude how foolish and frail is the support of divine justice afforded by the suggestion that evils come to be not by [God’s] will, but merely by his permission. Of course, so far as they are evils, which men perpetrate with their evil mind, as I shall show in greater detail shortly, I admit that they are not pleasing to God. But it is a quite frivolous refuge to say that God otiosely [= idly] permits them, when Scripture shows Him not only willing but the author of them.”

Now, to be fair, Calvinists believe that God ordained, indeed determined and caused, sin to come into the world without in any way morally implicating God. Essentially God is the Primary Cause of sin and human agents are the Secondary Cause. God determined before creation that humanity would Fall, but because God is only the Primary Cause and not the actual agent committing or having the desire to sin, God cannot be held culpable.

Let me loosely, if not inefficiently, illustrate this*

God Determines (Primary Cause)
↓
Humans Have the Desire (The Immediate Cause) which God has Determined**
↓
Humans Sin (Secondary Cause)

The logic of this aside (for we will concede the point just for the moment and assume that a God who punishes people for actions that they could not have in fact chosen otherwise is actually good) I think it is important to note that nowhere in this model is there room for “permission” language. God does not permit anything; He causes everything – in such a way that He is not responsible for any of the negative results (but curiously all of the positive ones).

Now, when Calvinists slip into “permit” language, not only does it violate the Compatibilistic Freedom model they cling so tightly to, but they are actually employing Libertarian Freedom language. Indeed, John Piper has made this very point, “But we should not assume, as Arminians do, that divine permission is anything less than sovereign ordination.” In other words, it is logically inconsistent and theologically misleading for a Calvinist to say that God “allowed” instead of “caused” something just so it will sound more palatable to their audience.

Of course, there are many Calvinists who do not fall into this trap – as I have just demonstrated with Piper and Calvin. But this post if for those who think is permissive to do so – If you do indeed find “determination” and “causation” language morally abhorrent when it comes to evil and sin, then you would do well to become an Arminian or Open Theist – for that is exactly their complaint! If you do not believe in a God who caused the Holocaust or little girls to get raped, then by all means, abandoned your Reformed views.

In either case, let us not continue employing Calvinistic rhetoric and “permit” language together. For if Calvinism is right, God is not being glorified by such a denial of His Sovereignty.

However, if you are Reformed and you wish to retain your right to “permit/allow” language, you should at least understand that you are falling outside traditional, classical Calvinism, and your position is logically incoherent within that system This ought to tell you something as well b/c for your classical Calvinists, like John Piper, have no problem saying, “It is not wrong to say that God causes evil and sin.”

*Calvinists, I’m trying to be fair in this illustration, so if you think something could improve it, then please let me know – I don’t want to be misleading.

**Calvinistic/Compatibilistic Freedom maintains that a person makes a free choice so long as that choice is immediately caused by an inner state (desire). The person acts according to their own desire, and is therefore making a free choice. They could not act otherwise, but they do act according to their desire, and are therefore responsible for their decision and action.

The other day I was speaking with a friend about the pessimism of our generation, how our Hermeneutic of Suspicion has so permeated every part of our lives that we are (at least I am) too skeptical even for the Holy Spirit. In an age when politicians have bombarded us with promises un-kept, when our preachers of holiness have had extra-marital lovers, and when our God seems increasingly distant, we do not feel we can trust anyone, especially the subjective “inner witness of the Spirit” which cannot be measured or counted by any kind of empirical method I know of.

Even we Postmodern’s who think truth transcends empirical verification struggle to discern the work of the Spirit precisely because we have no way of gauging it. We recognize, hopefully, that there are times when it seems the Spirit is leading us to do one thing, but then when all the chips fall we see that we regrettably misunderstood. Any college student who’s ever used the line “God is telling me to break-up with you” after previously saying “I think it is God’s will that we date” can testify to what this failure to discern looks like. But what are we supposed to do about this?

Paul tells us that if anyone has the Spirit of Christ then he belongs to Christ. But how do I know that I have the Spirit of Christ? He answers that we know this because the Spirit bears witness with our Spirit that we belong to God. But how is this witness sensed? Does this witness look the same for every person? What about when I don’t feel the witness of the Spirit or discern it in any way?

You see, I have trouble with this kind of reasoning – if feel that, in some way, Paul is leaving me to my subjective whims. One minute I may see the fingerprints of God on everything in my life, sensing the Holy Spirit in every footstep I take and every choice I make. The next minute (and this is far more prevalent), I feel abandoned, completely forsaken by any divine testimony, cold and wintry, alone. In fact, if I’m completely honest with you, often (especially recently) when I discern the work of the Spirit in my life, it seems like God is more of a Cosmic Sadist than a Lover wooing me to drink deeply of His Being.

In other words, there’s no consistency here. I have no objective means by which I can discern the witness of the Spirit from heart burn, upset stomach, indigestion, or….well, you get it. In the end, I lack the ability to empirically verify the work of the Spirit, and that’s the only way I know how to sense anything.

But even if I were able to discern the work of the Spirit through verifiable means – I surely couldn’t trust the statistics, could I? Often in our churches we have replaced genuine Holy Spirit movement with static’s about how many have attended or been baptized. Indeed, one clear sign that this isn’t a genuine witness of the Spirit’s presence is that, at least in my Southern Baptist circles, we have tended to lie about our numbers. So, empirical verification is out the window – too easily manipulated by our false-selves.

When we return to the subjective elements of this discussion, though, my skepticism goes deeper still. I wonder if maybe I don’t even want any kind of assurance or subjective witness of the Spirit. That is, when I look around at the comfortable Christianity lacing our pews, eating the greasy sermonic foods of pop-psychology and easy-believism I can’t help but wonder if inner witness and assurance make us fat. Maybe it is better that I never feel I am completely in the arms of God – for then, at least, I know I must continue to press toward the mark of attaining the resurrection of the dead. At least then I know I can’t sit comfortably in my pew assuming God is for me and not against me. Indeed, at least I cannot mistake false-assurance or false-witness for the real thing.

Interestingly, I hear people say things like, “God told me…” and I, sometimes, believe they are telling the truth. They are generally people I trust, who I know have a good relationship with God, so I have no reason to be critical of such a statement coming from them. But I wonder why there are so few times, if any at all, in my life when this has happened to me? Do I not read my Bible enough, fellowship enough, attend enough church activities, pray enough? Maybe I’m just not spiritual enough. Maybe I’m still fettered by Enlightenment rationalism and anti-experience. I just want God to tell me something – anything, that I can take and say, “Yeah, that was the witness of the Spirit, that was God telling me….” Unfortunately most of the time I feel He’s an Absentee Landlord.

I truly wish things weren’t this way. I wish I could write a much more positive and enlightening treatise on the Holy Spirit. Hopefully one day I will be able to. But for now – I can neither trust empirical evidence of the Holy Spirit’s work, nor my subjective whims which may be the by-product of having eaten at Taco Bell 2 hours ago. I think I’m just too skeptical for the Holy Spirit – and this scares me.

There is some disagreement over exactly what kind of Pharisee the apostle Paul was before he converted to the Jesus movement on the Damascus road. One thing we do know from the book of Acts is that Paul was a righteously violent one. We read in the early chapters of Acts that Paul was probably quite influential in the stoning of the early Christian martyr Stephen, and that he was on his way to kill more Christians when he met the risen Christ on the Damascus road.

Whatever brand of Judaism he espoused, it was one that saw the early Christian movement as a heretical sect of Judaism – a sect that needed to be violently put down. Violence was considered a justifiable action. Violence, moreover, was the manner in which the true community of Yahweh remained pure. His justification of violence was not merely out of hatred, but more out of righteous anger. His actions were, indeed, justified by the Torah. He was, after all, going to kill those people who said they had experienced Yahweh in the flesh. If there were ever a justifiable reason for violence it would be the protection of the community of Yahweh.

This violent streak changes after Paul’s conversion. While seeing himself in line with the prophets of the Hebrew Bible, Paul does not act in the manner of Elijah in his interaction with the prophets of Baal. Paul does not see pagan peoples as undeserving of life – even those ones who were oppressive to him and his Christ. Rather, Paul takes the position that through his suffering at their hands, he will “fill up that which is lacking in Christ’s sufferings” (Colossians 1:24). That is, he will be a living example of Christ’s unjust suffering at the hands of violent, sinful people. He fully expects this witness (same Gk. word as martyr) to be a living narrative of the death of Christ, and His love for unbelievers.

What I find particularly interesting here is that Paul’s position on violence has a dramatic shift. Before his conversion he sees violence as a justifiable action – especially against heretics. In fact, his Hebrew Bible justifies violent actions against non-Jews as well*. But when Paul converts we find no desire or justification for aggression and violence. As I noted before, even in relationship to Rome Paul command submission as a means of overcoming “evil with good.”

This dramatic change in Paul, combined with other arguments, demonstrates for me that the violence justified and even commanded by God in the Hebrew Bible is not an option for the Christian. Even the Canaanite genocides were performed in order to take the Promised Land from the pagans. Now, for Paul and Christians in general, there is no Promised Land. The kingdom of God transcends a Promised Land.** A people who have no/limited nationalistic identity, a people whose new law of love has surpassed the divinely instructed violence, and a people whose chief example (besides Christ) Paul forsakes violence have no justification for violence.

Paul’s letters are filled with his comments that say something like, “formerly you were {insert something bad}, but now you are {insert something related to being saved by Christ}.” I think his life expemplifies this: Formerly: Righteous Zealot. Currently: Apostle of Peace.

*Yes, I am aware the Torah also provided means of accepting non-Jews. However, I am primarily responding here to the genocides of Joshua.

**Dispensationalists have got it backward.

• Fundamentalist Atheism from The Daily Scribe
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• That Platonic Daimon again… from The Forbidden Gospels Blog
• Christianese Translated from Reverend Scottie
• Personal Impressions of Brian McLaren’s Church from open source theology – Posts
• Reading Romans eschatologically from open source theology – Posts
• obsessed yet? from CRN.Info and Analysis

The audio from the Theology Weekend is up at the Karis Blog. Dr. Tom Schreiner from Souther Baptist Theological Seminary spoke on the person and work of Jesus. I ended up only going to the Friday event with Honzo and JR. We had good times of fellowship before, during, and after. Check it out here.