Sermon 1/30/05 Matt. 6.1-15 The Prayer of the Kingdom

We live in a refugee world. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, there are twenty million refugees in our world today. Burundi, Somalia, Palestine the Sudan, in these and many other countries may be found people who do not have a home or country. They have nowhere to go. Some live in fear of persecution on the basis of political or racial association. Others are fleeing war or natural disaster. By whatever means, they dwell outside the margins of the world, and are people to be pitied.

We are truly insulated from this phenomenon in New England. Our nightly news is more concerned with coastal snowfall than with the hopeless tent-squalor of refugee camps. We don’t even think about it. I confess that I don’t think about it much. And even when I try I can’t imagine what it must be like for those twenty million refugees.

The closest we get to understanding what it feels like to be a refugee might be a description of his teen years that a friend of mine uses. He says that when he was a teenager, he was constantly aware that, “there is something good going on somewhere, and I am not a part of it.” There is an “in” and there is an “out” and you are definitely out. That is a refugee feeling. You aren’t important. You aren’t a part of things. You are lost and powerless. Your situation is hopeless. There is no way out. Refugees don’t have a prayer.

When we turn to our text in Matthew today, the first thing we should understand is that Matthew is a refugee gospel.

The Roman provinces were home to innumerable Greek-speaking Jewish communities. Acts chapter 8 tells us that due to persecution after the death of Stephen, thousands of Jewish Christians scattered out into these communities. They took the gospel with them, and churches sprang up wherever they went, in Lydda, Joppa, Damascus, and Antioch.

Remember, though, that these are Jewish believers. They worship in synagogues. Most of them continued to practice the dietary laws and calendar observances of their Jewish heritage; a heritage geographically dominated by Jerusalem and the temple complex. Imagine, then, what it meant for them when, on July 10, AD 70, the Roman general, Titus, breached the temple’s inner courts and set everything on fire. In September, he ordered the temple razed to the ground. Not one stone was left upon another, including those emotional and psychological stones that defined the Jews as a people.

Think about the affect on these Matthew Christians? Their confession of Jesus had made them different, yet. But they were still Jews. Now even that was gone. Who were they now? Politically, emotionally, socially, they were cut off. They were refugees.

Matthew is written to them. It is a thoroughly Jewish gospel. Matthew quotes from and alludes to the Hebrew Bible more than any of them. It employs Jewish terminology and doesn’t care to explain Jewish customs.

Matthew's gospel is also interested in, above all, proclaiming Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah. Fourteen times--seven twice over--Mathew says of Jesus’ ministry, “all this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophets.” Jesus fulfills all that has come before. Matthew records Jesus’ teaching in five great sermons, echoing the five books of Moses. Indeed, Jesus is the one like Moses who was to come. He is the Messiah, approved by God. In his mouth is the new Torah, and it is to him that God-fearing Jews should listen.

Thus, when we come to our text today, the first of Jesus’ five sermons, we should be very aware of exactly what is happening. Here is the Messiah of God. We are at the very beginning of his ministry, still in Galilee. He has just called his twelve disciples, and now he has ascended the mountain. The people have clustered about him. He has seated himself, just as Moses did, and from his mouth comes an inaugural speech: the constitution of the new Israel. But, you see, there is a problem: Jesus himself is a refugee.

Have you ever been lost and you try and get directions from someone only to discover that they are as lost as you? And invariably at first they sound like they know what they are talking about [improvises speech, which sounds fine until it ends with, “even though I’ve never actually been there.”]

Remember that Jesus said, “Foxes have holes and birds have nests but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” Jesus gets crucifixion at the end of all of this! Suspended between earth and heaven, condemned by Jewish and Gentile courts, abandoned by his friends, he cries out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me!” This is the cry of a refugee. He is not at home here.

Matthew is writing this gospel to give a sense of direction to the lives of the Jewish Christians all over the Roman world. They want a home. They want to belong, to be a people. They don’t want to be refugees any longer. They want to be Israel again. But Jesus isn’t talking about Palestine; he’s talking about the Kingdom of Heaven. [read some of the beatitudes simply to introduce the word “kingdom.”] This isn’t Jordan or Tel Aviv or any other place where we can emigrate or possess. This place is something that Jesus’ describes as a reward. Jesus is a refugee, too, but he knows the way home. Like Moses, he can lead you to the Promised Land. That’s the context of our passage today. A refugee gospel written for refugees relating the message of a refugee messiah, and it yearns for what all refugees yearn for: home.

So how do we get there? Let’s examine chapter 6 vs. 1.

[1] Beware of practicing your piety before others to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.

This verse is very plain: if you want to have your reward--if you want to obtain the blessing of citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven and no longer be a refugee--then you have to do this (the verb is imperative): “be careful not to do your acts of righteousness before men to be seen by them.”

And what are these acts of righteousness? Look at chapter 6.

[2] So when you give to the needy . . . [5] And when you pray . . . [16] When you fast . . .” Almsgiving, prayer and fasting, these are the “acts of righteousness.” Such acts would not surprise a God-fearing Israelite. They are par for the course of what a good Jew should do. But notice that Jesus is warning us about this, he says, “Be careful!” in verse 1. What is Jesus talking about?

This warning occurs five times in the Gospel of Matthew. In each case, it is warning against false teaching which, in 16.6 and 16.11 Jesus calls the “yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” The Pharisees, even more than the Sadducees, are the principal bad guys of Matthew’s gospel. So who were these guys, what were they about?

The Pharisees were highly religious and strictly pious. But note why: because they felt that by returning wholly and completely to the Law, by obeying it in every nuanced detail, that Yahweh would again favor Israel, kick the Romans out (remember, the Romans ran the country in Jesus’ day), and re-establish the remembered theocracy.

And it isn’t like the Pharisees were just a problem in Jesus’ day. Decades later, the people reading the Gospel of Matthew didn’t like the Romans either. They were being persecuted by them, and the Pharisees were still around too. Yes, the Pharisees were still there, with their message of relief from the burden of being a refugee. The Pharisees were refugees too, and they didn’t like it any more than we would. No one wants to be disenfranchised and dispossessed. But, remember, the way the Pharisees had to overcome the problem was about them. Their superb piety would impress God and move his hand to re-establish the Kingdom and remove the burden of being a refugee.

Now compare and contrast. Jesus has a plan for getting the Kingdom, and the Pharisees have a plan. Both of them don’t want to be refugees anymore. They want a country of their own, no persecution, nor marginalization, instead: belonging! And, if 6.1 tells us anything, it says that prayer has a role to play in all of this.

Okay, now we can read our text! Look carefully, beginning at 6.5, this section is subdivided into three parts:

[5] And when you pray . . .” [7] "And when you pray . . .” [9] "This, then, is how you should pray.”

I plan to deal quickly with each part and end with some concluding observations.

The First Subjunctive

[5] And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. [6] But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

A couple of observations. Couched as it is coming after a warning against the Pharisees, we understand quite well who the hypocrites are. We are also well aware of the danger of pride when it comes to the spiritual life and are suitably warned as Jesus says, “they have received their reward in full.” And isn’t this last part wonderful, warming the hearts of introverts everywhere, “go into your room, close your door.” And I love this part here in which the Father is called “unseen.” It hints at a parallel between the way we pray and the nature of the person to whom we pray.

I also love this idea of a prayer closet. The image here is the inmost room of a house. There would be no windows or anything, kind of a person’s “holy of holies.” (Personal story or whatever of setting aside private places to pray. Having set times and places for prayer is a good idea. Idea of creating a family “prayer chair.”)

Think for a minute, too, about how strategic this is. I said before that Matthew’s gospel was a very Jewish gospel. It references the Hebrew Bible more than any other Gospel. It is also a gospel of mission. This gospel ends with the Great Commission. Matthew’s point isn’t just to speak to Jewish Christians of his day, it was to keep them “going into all the nations.” It is a lot easier to melt into foreign cultures if you don’t have to import elaborate ceremonies with you. Every house, no matter the construction or the language of its builders, has a place for prayer.

But wait a minute! Look at the promise here on this section: “the Father will reward you.” Wait a minute. What sort of reward are we talking about? The sweet fellowship of prayer? The fellowship of his peace? Certainly these are rewards, but think of the context. The context is the Kingdom. This is a refugee gospel. When we think of it this way, this section begins to change.

First, what exactly is this person up to who is praying standing in the synagogues and on street corners? Is he really doing this just so people will say how religious he is? Well, sort of. He’s hoping people will join his cause. He’s advertising. By his public prayer, he becomes an evangelist for the cause. Remember, he is a Pharisee. He believes that his effort will move Yahweh to usher in the Kingdom. Not so, says Jesus. You can’t make the Kingdom come any quicker by advertising, by marketing. The results you get from that kind of work are a return on your investment. They may look good, but they aren’t the Kingdom. You want to see the Kingdom, don’t go out and make it happen, pray and receive it.

There is a lot of hype in our time about marketing your church. We are a media-savvy people. No matter how good the product, if it isn’t marketed correctly then it will never sell, that’s the wisdom of our day.

And is this bad? We just finished a slick-program ourselves. Did we sin in doing that? Some of us have been pretty frustrated about the results. We wonder, after all the effort and expense, has anything really changed? Let me say this, and I humbly submit this to your judgment. As I read this, it isn’t so much what you do as it is where you put your faith for the results. Was your faith in your effort? Put another way, do you judge success in the church according as you see a result? Individually, are you counting on a result to convince you as to the presence of the Kingdom? Do you rate your walk with God according to visible fruits of your “ministries”? You are putting your faith in the wrong place: your efforts and their results.

Success in ministry is measured only as God measures it. It is a surprise, so to speak. God loves surprises. Business is about managing so-called risk and surprise down until it is a computable, quantifiable, recognizable equation which we can manipulate. That isn’t what the Kingdom is about. I understand how difficult it is to be a refugee, how much you long for home, but trusting in some external activity or product is not the way to get there.

The Second Subjunctive

[7] When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. [8] Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

Have you ever noticed that the ratio of hearing goes down as the number of words goes up? (Maybe you are noticing this now.) My Dad tells the story of my Grandfather Pater’s fondness for long prayers. Once, he says, Pater was asked to give a blessing at a family meal. Instead, he preached a sermon and, by the time he was done, the food was cold. (When I was younger, I thought that story was about his being long winded. Now that I’m older I understand that, as a married man, my Grandfather was actually seeking martyrdom.)

You may think of the author of Ecclesiastes warning, when you hear this verse. “Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God. Let your words be few.” (Eccl. 5.2a) Others have taken this babbling which Jesus mentions to be a condemnation of written prayers. The term, “Hocus Pocus,” for example, is lifted right out of the lips of a medieval priest muttering the Latin mass in so confused and hasty a manner as to be smashed together and sound a lot like “hocus pocus.” This is about plain praying, it is said. Written prayers or liturgies, then, are forbidden as just as much paganism.

Another thing people say about this passage is, “Well, if God knows what I need before I ask him, then why do I pray?”

But let’s look again at this verse. We are refugees, remember? What we need is the Kingdom! Now maybe I need to define the Kingdom quickly for you. Jesus came preaching the Kingdom. The Kingdom is the central focus of Jesus’ ministry. Simply put: the Kingdom is manifest wherever Jesus rules as king. We want his rule over our lives. We have a ministry of reconciliation, bringing people into citizenship in his Kingdom. We yearn for the full in-breaking of his Kingdom. We are refugees longing for our King and his Kingdom. That is what we need.

When it reads, “the Father knows what you need before you ask him,” it is talking about the Kingdom, not your or my perceived needs.

So what does he mean by babbling? Is it about forbidding written prayers and proscribing only spontaneous praying? Not at all! Rather, it warns us against trusting in our own private piety. We are in our closets, but the need to earn came in with us. I didn’t pray hard enough. I don’t fast. I am not giving like I should. We think these things about ourselves because we believe that the Kingdom is given to us on the basis of our piety: let us pray harder and God will work.

Just as we cannot trust in programs, marketing, and other tools, even though we must use them; just as in that case we must trust in a rewarding God. So, here, we cannot trust in our piety or religiosity. There is nothing wrong with praying harder, with fasting, with pursuing virtue, but it is wrong if you trust in those things. Our God is a rewarding God. He did not hold his only Son from us, so why do we think that he will withhold the benefits of citizenship in the Kingdom of his son from us unless we are good enough? The Kingdom doesn’t come in any faster because you worked harder. Why do we keep trying to make God do what we want him to do?

A word about written prayers. I see no problem with written prayers, nor do I think they are forbidden in this passage. What counts is the intent of the heart.

The Third Subjunctive

[9] Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven; hallowed by your name. [10] Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. [11] Give us this day our daily bread. [12] And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. [13] And do not bring us to into temptation, but rescue us from the evil one. [14] For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly father will also forgive you; [15] but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

Since the earliest centuries of the Church, theologians, pastors, and authors have contemplated this prayer line by line, word by word and have found in it the summation of the gospel. That is not my goal here today. Rather, in the time we have left, I want to just make a few comments on this prayer which has been called “the Lord’s prayer,” even though we have no record of the Lord ever praying it.

With this prayer, Jesus turns from saying what not to do to saying what to do: “This, then, is how you should pray.” Many people have used this prayer as a model prayer, which is fine, but, remember, we are looking at this in terms of the Kingdom. “This, then, is how you should pray [for the Kingdom].” That’s the overall point Jesus is getting at. You are a refugee, and you are longing and aching. What can you do about it: pray like this.

Earlier I said that refugees don’t have a prayer. Now they do. They are given a foretaste of home in one another under the word “our” and the common pledge of a common prayer.

“The Lord's Prayer binds the people together, and knits them one to another, so that one prays for another, and together one with another; and it is so strong and powerful that it even drives away the fear of death.” Martin Luther, Table Talk, 338

Who gives this to us: the Father.

The overall pursuit of this discourse has been the reward of the Kingdom. You can’t make it happen by your own efforts, or earn it through some holy zeal, you receive it from the rewarding God.

But note the singular context in which Matthew places the prayer: forgiveness. After he has recorded the prayer, Matthew highlights forgiveness. We refugees need to practice forgiveness one to another.

As we join together under this prayer, so the need for forgiveness becomes greater.

[At this point, my notes leave off. I remember talking about how the injunctions to forgive and the warnings about the Father not forgiving serve as a litmus test. Putting people and actions up against this reveals something about them; no true disciple of Jesus will fail to pass the test.]
__________
Sermon preached at North Shore Baptist Church, Peabody, MA, on January 30, 2005.

The Lord's Prayer; Kingdom of God; Matthew; The Lord's Prayer; practical theology

With the cross of Jesus / Marching on before

It seems I have opened a door into something much larger, and this through a process of reading Walter Wink’s The Powers that Be: Theology for a New Millennium (Galilee/Doubleday, 1998)

And what are the Powers? Here is Wink’s description:

Latin American liberation theology made one of the first efforts to reinterpret the “principalities and powers,” not as disembodies spirits inhabiting the air, but as institutions, structures and systems. The Powers are simultaneously an outer, visible structure and an inner, spiritual reality. What people in the world of the Bible experienced as and called “principalities and powers” was in fact the actual spirituality at the center of the political, economic and cultural institutions of their day. (Powers That Be, 24)

Wink continues:

It is merely a habit of thought that makes people think of the Powers as personal beings. In fact, many of the spiritual powers and gods of the ancient world were not conceived of as personal at all. I prefer to think of the Powers as impersonal entities, though I know of no sure way to settle the question. Humans naturally tend to personalize anything that seems to act intentionally. But we are now discovering from computer viruses that certain systemic processes are self-replicating and “contagious,” behaving almost willfully even though they are quite impersonal. For the present, I [Wink] have set aside the question of the actual status of these Powers, and instead have attempted to describe what it was that people in ancient times were experiencing when they spoke of “Satan,” “demons,” “powers,” “angels,” and the like. “None of these “spiritual” realities has an existence independent of its material counterpart. None persists through time without embodiment in a people or a culture or a regime or a corporation or a dictator.

The issue is not whether we “believe,” in them but whether we can learn to identify them in our actual, everyday encounters. When a particular Power becomes idolatrous—that is, when it pursues a vocation other than the one for which God created it and makes its own interests the highest good—then that Power becomes demonic. The spiritual task is to unmask this idolatry and recall the Powers to their created purposes in the world. But this can scarcely be accomplished by individuals. A group is needed—what the New Testament calls an ekklesia (assembly)—one that exists specifically for the task of recalling these Powers to their divine vocation.

Evil, then, is not just personal but structural and spiritual. It is not simply the result of human actions, but the consequence of huge systems [Dominations Systems] over which no individual has full control. Only by confronting the spirituality of an institution and its physical manifestations can the total structure be transformed. Any attempt to transform a social system without addressing both its spirituality and its outer forms is doomed to failure. (Ibid. 27, 30-31)

Now an address by Dan Liechty, "Principalities and Powers: A Beckerian Reading of Walter Wink's The Powers Trilogy."

"In the Yoder/Berkhof line of interpretation, Principalities and Powers are understood as social forces, encompassing

an inclusive vision of religious structure (especially the religious undergirdings of stable ancient and primitive societies), intellectual structures (`ologies and `isms), moral structures (codes and customs), political structures (the tyrant, the market, the school, the courts, race, and nation).

Walter Wink's voluminous work self-consciously builds on and extends this line of interpretation. Wink's approach emphasizes the following points, which will also become our final points of comparison for a social scientific view.

The Powers are Good. Wink suggests that the Powers were created by God for the ordering of human community. The Powers are part of the original creation of God and, as such, were created good, like all of God's original creation. If the Powers functioned according to God's original intention, they would be our ally in assuring that people are fed, goods are distributed to those in need, and in general, that communal laws would govern life together for the common good.

The Powers are Fallen. But these Powers are in rebellion against God's original intentions. As such, these Powers act in accordance with the `system of domination,' creating vast inequalities and injustices in the economic order. They make themselves the hand servants of the worst of human emotions and motivations, of greed, envy, revenge and violence. They facilitate actions leading to ecological destruction, inequality and injustice, making such actions appear `logical' and `inevitable,' causing good people to act accordingly, even as they may personally regret the results.

The Powers must be Redeemed. Christ has brought redemption for the Powers. They have been broken and shown in the Cross to be a mockery of God's justice and goodness. The decisive battle against the Powers has been won in the Cross of Christ. The task now is to bring the Powers to this recognition and to allow them again to function for the common good according to God's original intention.

The eschatological Christian community is God's tool to bring this redemption of the Powers into historical reality. The problem arises when Christians themselves fail to recognize this corporate and transpersonal element in God's salvation and retreat into satisfaction with personal salvation, the world be damned. They then become easy prey for the fallen Powers, seducing them into acting corporately and politically according to the Powers' own fallen dictates. Christians then begin to value `patriotic duty' as equal to or above their Christian commitments. They begin to lean toward the `expediency' of violent solutions to political problems. They close their eyes to the systemic inequalities and injustices of economic and political systems, however much they may regret the suffering that results. And worst of all, they begin to play power politics within the Christian community itself on the model of the fallen Powers rather than according to Christ's suffering love, thus diluting and negating the very high calling with which God entrusted them."

One more note from Wink. He writes:

William Stringfellow's Free in Obedience(New York: Seabury, 1964) had provided me a vision of how the biblical category of principalities and powers could serve as the basis for a social ethic based on the New Testament. The received wisdom till then was that the New Testament is only concerned with personal ethics; if one is interested in a social ethic, one must turn to the Exodus or the prophets. Work on the Powers series, first conceived as a single volume, grew into three, and occupied 28 years. The titles in the Powers trilogy are Naming the Powers, Unmasking the Powers, and Engaging the Powers (which was awarded the "Best Religious Book of 1993.”) A related volume, Cracking the Gnostic Code, rounds out the understanding of the Powers in the early centuries of our era.

And a nod toward his solution to the Powers:

I became increasingly convinced that nonviolence was the only way to overcome the domination of the Powers without creating new forms of domination. (Walter Wink, “Write What You See: An Odyssey.” The Fourth R Vol. 7 No. 3 (May/June 1994)

Now all of this meshes quite well with what N.T. Wright was saying about Colossians. And, as I said, it opens a door for me that hasn’t been opened before, both to the role of the liberal arts, as I stated, and also for the role of the church and its people: people like me going about their Kingdom-work within the everyday.
__________
Walter Wink, Professor Emeritus of Biblical Interpretation at Auburn Theological Seminary, New York, NY. has worn many hats. Previously, he was a parish minister and taught at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. And, in 1989-1990, he was a Peace Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace. His many award winning books include: The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination, Unmasking the Powers: The Invisible Forces That Determine Human Existence, Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament and When the Powers Fall: Reconciliation in the Healing of Nations

Most recently, Wink has written The Human Being: Jesus and the Enigma of the Son of the Man(Fortress Press, 2001; read scholar's responses.) and edited the book, Peace Is The Way: Writings on Nonviolence from the Fellowship of Reconciliation(Orbis Books, 2000.)
__________
See the previous post in this series, Unmasking the Powers with N. T. Wright

Walter Wink; N. T. Wright; powers; spiritual warfare; Ephesians; nonviolence

Fee in '98 on Spirit and Trinity

Gordon Fee lecturing on: The Spirit: The Restored Presence of God

[This lecture consists of] three interwoven urgencies which bring this material together:

1. Lack of scholarship/need for trinitarian re-emphasis. While preparing this material for publication. at the time, NT scholarship treated the Spirit as a minimal reality, lip service but not serious study. Ridderbos's Paul only gives five pages to the Spirit. Ziesler only gives one page to the Spirit. While gathering the material together for the entry in the Dictionary of Charismatic Movements (Zondervan) on the Spirit in Paul, Fee realized there was no work on this. He was also writing a commentary on 1 Corinthians. The Spirit is a central view of Paul. Paul isn't christocentric, as has been said, but, rather, is theocentric; in other words, Paul is a trinitarian. It was Paul's experience of God that led to the doctrine of the Trinity. The Trinity wasn't dreamed up by the church two hundred years later, but was there in the experience of the early church. Most christians today are binitarian in practice even though they confess the Trinity. For most, the Holy Spirit is a grey oblong blurr. Let us become trinitarians in life and living.

2. The Personal/Existential Dimension of the Trinity. There is not just trinitarianism as doctrine, but the personal dimension of the trinity that should be experienced.

3. Deep concern for the church, arguing for a more Pauline view. We cannot restore the full New Testament church. There is just too much between ourselves and the first century. We can, however, reclaim the heart of the early church. In a postmodern world, how can we live the life of the future in the present so that the world dislikes us for the right reasons, not the wrong ones? We can't do this without the work of the Spirit.

Personal nature of the Spirit; the Trinity and what it means to understand the Spirit as the renewed presence of God.

We must break the habit of talking about the Spirit in abstract and removed terms. All Christian traditions seem to speak abstractly of the Spirit--even Charismatics emphasize the language of experience rathern than personal encounter. You hear such phrases in Charismatic circles as "baptized in the Spirit", baptize is always a verb. You can't say, "receiving the baptism" because baptism is a verb not a noun. When we start using language like that, we over emphasize experience and talk about "it" rather than "he." The Spirit isn't an impersonal force. In other evangelical circles, the emphasis is on the still small voice not the power and presence of the living God. We become practicing binitarians. Part of the reason for this is the language about the Spirit we read in the Scriptures. All our images about the Spirit (dove, wind, water, fire, oil) are impersonal and move us away from seeing him personally as we see the Father or the Son.

I Corinthians 2:6-16. The Corinthians are transforming the gospel into sophia/wisdom and measuring such wisdom in human terms. Paul tries to shatter this (1:18ff) by pointing to the evidence that the gospel is not wisdom humanly understood. No human wisdom could have come up with the gospel--would human wisdom have chosen you. ("such as were some of you") The only way you can know divine wisdom is if the Spirit reveals it; the gospel is foolish without the Spirit revealing it as true. Spirit must touch spirit and change the heart. Romans 8:16, the Spirit touches the spirit. That allows us to cry in the language of Jesus [Aramaic] "Abba!" 8:26 Likewise the Spirit cries for us when we do not know how. The mind does not understand. [He's making a veiled reference to tongues assuming we all agree and understand a larger amount of unspoken doctrine] You can't talk about an impersonal Spirit when the Spirit prays and convinces. The Spirit isn't an "it" but has true personhood [hypostasis/person]. What people pray & sing is what people really believe [Pastor Bob adds to my notes, "and how you serve."] In the Old Testament, the Spirit is called the Spirit of YHWH. Kurios in the LXX becomes "Spirit of the LORD," which is what Paul picks up on and changes to the "Spirit of God," because Lord refers to Christ in Paul. Yet, several times Paul says "Spirit of Christ" (pneuma tou Xristou) so that the Incarnation not only put a human face on the father but on the Spirit as well. We can see the face of the Spirit in the face of Christ.

Galatians 3:3-7 adopted sons/heirs, receive the Spirit of the Son by which the death and ressurection of Christ is appropriated to us. The Spirit is our link with what happened two thousand years ago. Because we have the Spirit of the Son we speak "Abba" the language of the Son. Paul, in almost every instance, speaks of salvation in a trinitarian way. God's love initiates. "The love of God shed abroad" by the Spirit through the work of the Son on the cross. Our salvation is a trinitarian event. Jesus saves, yes, but Paul says more exactly: the Triune God saves! Fellowship (koinonia) is fellowhship in and through the Spirit (koinonia en pneumatos). Without the Spirit there is no salvation. The final word in our theology must always be doxology. Eph. 1:1-14. It is an overloaded, stream-of-conciousness passage because it is worship. The work of the Son carries through to verse 12. In verse 11 the passion of God begins to emerge, God has created one people. The experience of the Holy Spirit indwelling is what seperates pagan and believer.

[Short Break in the Lecture]

Renewed Presence . . . is central to some other truths about the Spirit & the Church.

Narrative. You can't tell the Biblical story without telling the story. Abstract theology can't lose the story from which it originates. If you don't start with creation, then redemption doesn't make much sense. Paul was always in the Biblical story. "four score and seven years" is a stock phrase that is innately a part of the story of what it means to be an American. Such are the OT allusions in the New. Such allusions triggered the whole story of Israel in the minds of the hearer--but we only hear "87" years, the same way a foreigner hears that American phrase. We are little engaged in the symbolic universe of the NT writers. Don't think NT--think Bible as a whole. John Stott tells a story of when he was at Regent College doing his seminar "Pastor as Storyteller" and his grandson came to him and said, "Grandpa, gell me a story and put me in it!" This is exactly what our task is, to tell God's story and put people in it.

Paul believes that this is a continuation of the story.

II. The Spirit, the Present and the Future

The new covenant promise finds it first clear articulation in Jeremiah 31. The new covenant has to do with the failure of people to keep the old. Ezek. ties this new covenant specifically to the Spirit. Ezek. 36:26 picking up the language of Jeremiah "new heart/new spirit/remove heart of stone/give heart of flesh". The valley of dry bones was written during exile. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live.

Paul picks up on this in 2 Corinthains 3: "The letter [Torah] kills but the Spirit gives life. New vs. old covenants. Dr. Fee then says that when he finished this section of his commentary, he sat down for an hour or so and just thought about that text.

The second symbol is the presence. The OT people were marked out from the surrounding nations because they were a people of the presence. The law, the land, circumcision, all were just out-workings of this central tenet, the presence. God left Sinai, his dwelling, and the tabernacle is built so that his people are now known as the people with whom the Lord dwells. The tragedy of the exile is the destruction of the temple, they are no longer a people of the presence. Ezekiel is trying to say that the destruction of the temple is not necessarily a bad thing. The crucial text for this is Is. 63 His presence saved them. (10) yet they rebelled and grieved his Holy Spirit. Paul quotes this when he says, "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit" in Eph. In Isa. already the presence is being identified as the Spirit. The boldness of I Cor. is that the temple is still standing in Jerusalem while Paul is calling the church the temple. What distinguishes the church, then, is that they are a people of the presence. Romans 6 Paul uses temple language to refer to the individual believer. We live in the presence of God. Christ lives in us by his Spirit, not an "it" but "he" "Christ" "GOD!!!!" and because God is there, then we are empowered. Gentiles, who had no place in the symbolic universe of Israel, now do.

I Corinthians 5 is difficult to understand because our symbolic universe is so different than Paul's. You should go into mourning because this man has died. I being absent in body but present in spirit, not as though present in body but in Spirit. They don't carry sentence out alone. (4) but when you & my spirit are assembled together in the power of the Lord Jesus. Paul understands his letter as a prophetic word, his letter is his presence in their midst. [True knowledge is evidenced in love] "with the power of the Lord Jesus" They couldn't understand that the Spirit could be present without power and without manifestation! Our problem is that people "go to church." People go to church, you see, on a consumer basis. You give them a good product, says the contemporary wisdom, and they'll come. This is demonic. Nobody "went to church" in the 1st century. TSOUNERKOUMAI we assemble as the church, you can't go to church: you are it! Going to church is like hoping without really expecting. The way to correct abuse is not disuse, but correct use. [in this section, he is alluding to the gifts of the Spirit. At least that is my belief from listening to him--he kind of slipped around a bit. It seems that what he was saying was that where the Spirit is, we should expect power because the Spirit is the living God. Not only so, but we should stop not expecting because of this going to church attitude, but instead should expect something. As for how to expect something, simply disusing something because of past abuses isn't mature, rather instead learning to use --and I'm assuming he means the gifts here -- the gifts correctly is the mature option.]

[Lunch]

III. The Spirit, the Present and the Future

Ecclesiology. Fee is not against denominations, the question is how can we recapture a more biblical sense of the church. /kirk/ has no reference to EKKLESIA. Today the word "church" carries too much baggage to be useful. Rather, Fee uses the language of the "people of God."

"Trust me," he says, "these separate concepts will eventually come together." The people of God are an eschatological people. We always deal with the end, the story has an end as well as a beginning. The story must be told in total. The people of God live in the realities of the future. Elizabeth à John; Hannah to Samuel. there is a parallel there. Movement from Judges to Kings with Hannah N Samuel, and later from Kings to the Davidic Kingship.

Psalm 89. Resurrection and the gift of Spirit are two eschatalogical expectations contained in the prophets. The ressurection of the body and the gift of the Spirit are the signs of the end times. Jesus is tested by Satan at the points where Israel failed in their wilderness journey. Jesus' resurrection is the certain evidence that the crucial eschatalogical event has taken place. Examine the church calendary. you abound in hope only by the power of the Spirit. The Spirit becomes for Paul the crucial eschatalogical symbol of the certainty of what is coming. Our present existence is already/not yet. We live in certainty of the future. What makes Paul so certain is the gift of the Spirit. The Spirit is the the deposit (arabone) guaranteeing all the rest. In the New Testament, joy is a verb not a noun. The Spirit is the seal, not baptism. (Sorry all you Presbyterians.) The Spirit is the authenticating reality in our lives. The Spirit is the evidence of salvation. God is already creating his eschatalogical people.

The ecclesiological dimension with the Spirit. The difference between Old and New covenant is how people enter into the Kingdom of God. The continuity between old and new is that God is always about saving people for his name. This is why the cross is central. The New Testament always puts the saved life in terms of "with others." The Trinity informs and underlies christian anthropology and the imago dei saying that humanity is at it heart social. We are only human beings in community with others. How can you love God and not your neighbour? We leave out the message about community. Conversion is a giant umbrella term. It includes all that ends with a new body and a new earth. How do we know if we love when we only are with people who look like us? Paul does not believe in homogenous churches, because how then do we know if we love? We live in the most intensely selfish and self-centered culture on the planet.

Romans. Luther and Calvin got almost all of it correct, but missed a few percent. What drives Romans is the question "Who are the People of God?" Circumcision/food laws/observance of days. Circumcision is dealt with earlier in Romans. Later (Romans 13:1-15:13) the other two are dealt with. Paul says the only thing is faith expressing itself through love. Peace has to do with Shalom. By Paul's day, Jew and Gentile are seperated by intense ethnic hatred. Only the Spirit can overcome race, class, and gender separation.

IV. Life in the Spirit

The Spirit is person, the renewed presence of God.
The eschatalogical people of God living the life of the future in the present age.
The people of God are called saints, every believer is called this. The Scriptures do this because God says he's going to make a holy people for himself. The holy ones of the most high stand in the presence of the most high. Every bit of New Testament theological language finds its roots in the Old Testament. Ekklesia is not the Greek city state, the polis, where landed men gathered to debate and vote. No, Paul was using this out of the LXX, referring to the people gathered in Israel. Paul recognized that all the promises which include Gentiles eschatalogically drive the understanding that there is one people of God. Most of the New Testament doctrines are written in multicultural cities with tons of divisions. The New Testament knows nothing of homogeneous churches. Philemon tells me the gospel works, because Jew (Paul) Gentile and Slave (Philemon) come together in unity. Unity is not because we all wear the same clothes. Rather, we live as one people abiding in a foreign land. We live this heavenly citizenship worthy of the gospel. Humility means to place the needs of others ahead of your own. At the end of Philippians 3 Paul says our citizenship is in heaven, and from there we await our Savior and Lord, Jesus. The people of God are counter-cultural because their citizenship is in heaven. We are a colony of heaven; you want to know what heaven will be like, look at a colony of it. What chance do people have of hearing the gospel if they don't see the gospel in its citizens? Christians are always countercultural. Fruit of the Spirit: fruit in Galatians is Chapter 5, which is a natural part of Paul's whole argument in the epistle. The argument doesn't work without the fruit. Gal 5:13. don't let freedom become an opportunity for the flesh, rather use your freedom to perform the duties of a slave. Walk in the Spirit and you won't obey the lusts of the flesh. Now flesh is often interpreted as an inner tendency toward physical lust and sins of lust, yet Paul's list has 8 of these works of flesh pertaining to sins of discord, conflict and the desire to win. If you are led by the Spirit, you aren't under law, but you have the fruit of the Spirit now. The fruit is almost totally involved with relationships in the community. The fruit isn't individual peace but communal shalom. Whether we want it or not, we are thrown into a community of other forgiven sinners to live a counter cultural life of the Spirit before the eyes of the world. we are bound together absolutely so that even though we aren't geographically together we are one body in community. We are at war. Some are torn to pieces in the conflict. Others fight on and some come fresh to the front, yet we do not fight alone. If we aren't living in community then what hope does the world have for hearing the gospel?

Question/Answer Session

Q: What is the relationship of the charismata/gifts to all this?
A: In Paul they exist only for the building up of the body. Our American individualism has destroyed the whole thing. The church didn't care what gift you had, just that you are open to be used by the Spirit in whatever gift he gives you in the moment for the good of the body. We don't believe this stuff anymore. However, our churches in latin america and Africa do--they came from animism and tribal gods who manifested themselves commonly and demonically. If those false gods had power, then they assume quite naturally that the real living God will be a force indeed. Remember, though, such gifts are for the community.

Q: How do we "test all things"?
A: That is a good question. 2 Thess. 2 where Paul is not sure of the source of what that church is saying. Did they it from reading a letter or from a prophetic utterance? In 2:15 hold to the traditions of word & epistle. So the way the Spirit is tested is the apostolic tradition (ie. Scripture). Another thing is that all who have the Spirit ought to have a sense of the what the Spirit is saying? Does the blood run cold, so to speak. And there should be a mechanism for judging/testing and discipline/reconciliation, too. also 1 Cor 14:3: edification, exhortation, encouragement. You should ask, "Does this message do these things?" "Most of us don't have the courage to take our hand off the control button…I think we ought to have the courage to make mistakes. Remember, too, that the 1st Century church met in houses in small groups. They couldn't have imagined the 200- or 1500-member churches of today."
__________
Notes taken during a lecture given by Dr. Gordon Fee at the Gordon-Conwell Chapel on November 1st, 1998.

Gordon Fee; biblical theology; the Trinity; Paul; Galatians; Romans; ecclesiology; 1 Corinthians; pneumatology

Sermon fragment Matt. 5.17-20

The following is the last half of a sermon I gave in the Fall of 1999 Matthew 5.17-20.

Most people think of the Ten Commandments as God's guilt-trip-rules imposed on people, but they are missing the point. Wherever there are nations, there are laws. Wherever there are kingdoms and governments, there are laws defining what it means to be a citizen. Laws express the character and beliefs of an assembled people. So God wasn't imposing anything. Rather he was creating a people for himself. The Law at Sinai defines for the remainder of the Old Testament what it means to be a citizen of the Kingdom of God. Salvation is being a citizen of that Kingdom, and so salvation was of the Jews, for the Jews were the receivers of God's Law.

Applying this knowledge to the Sermon on the Mount, the parallels with Sinai are obvious. The people are assembled. The disciples have come up the mountain. And the Messiah, the second Adam and very God of very God, is seated. The Kingdom is on his mouth and is flowing down the mountain like rivers of milk and honey. How can we not expect him to talk about the Law? The Law defines the nation or kingdom, and the Kingdom is what is on his mind--the new Kingdom which he has come to proclaim to all the world. To be its citizen is to be saved from the coming wrath. To be outside it is to pass away and be destroyed.

Let us quickly, then, examine our text. Again, what is our relationship as Christians today to the Law and the Prophets?

[17]Don't ever think [you see how that is like "Thou Shalt Not", very strong language] that I came to abolish the Law and the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.

Now, what does fulfill mean? It is quite obvious what abolish means. Jesus was the Messiah, and it was generally believed by all Israel that the Messiah was going to alter the Law in some way or other. But, especially if you think of Sinai, no one expected the word "fulfill" to be a part of it! Can you see the shock on their faces, their mouths dropping open as they are hearing this. "This wasn't like at Sinai!" they're saying. And, no it wasn't. Back then, you either obeyed or your were cursed. But now, Jesus is saying something about fulfillment. What does he mean by "fulfil?" Is he imposing a new command on us?

But follow: Jesus continues and says the word "for." Some of your translations don't have this little word at the beginning of verse 18, but it is extremely important. How we read that little word says everything about our own relationship to the Law and the Prophets. Let's go further.

[18]For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke of a pen will ever disappear from the Law until everything might come to pass.

Nothing new here. Jesus' audience knew this already. The Law was here to stay until the new heavens and earth should swallow up the present ones when the Kingdom of Heaven would come. Until then, even the smallest most obscure commandment--like one hidden perhaps in one of the Minor Prophets that no one can find when they need to--remains in effect. What that means for us is that we are just as shackled to the commands as they were. The Law at Sinai and you and me are all chained together like prisoners at the hands and feet. Wherever we go, it is there with us and we can't get away.

But Jesus is not done. He keeps talking.

[19] Therefore, [before that time] whoever should relax one of the least of these commands and teach others to do the same will be called "least" in the Kingdom of Heaven [for that is what they will be] but whoever should practice and teach these commands will be called "greatest" in the Kingdom of Heaven [and rightfully so].

According to the United States Immigration & Naturalization Service, there are several requirements for persons wishing to become U.S. citizens. You must be at least eighteen years of age and be living in the United States. You must have a good moral character, have some knowledge of how the government works. Let me read this: "An applicant must show that he or she is attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States." Requirements for citizenship. Obedience to the supreme law of the land. Is this any different from what we find in verse 19?

You can't get away from Jesus' teaching about the Kingdom of Heaven. The words of his first recorded sermon are "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near!" Now he's talking about obeying or disobeying the Law as proof of citizenship in that very Kingdom. Want to be a good citizen in the coming Kingdom? Practice and teach these commands. Want to be a US citizen? Obey the Constitution. As a matter of fact, that's part of the oath required of new citizens, that they promise to, "support the Constitution and obey the laws of the United States." Incidentally, notice the contrast he makes between people who disobey or relax one of the least of these commands and those who obey. One is called "least" and the other "greatest." You should know that Jesus is using a figure of speech. It may look like even the disobedient get a place at the table--after all, least is better than none, right? However, it is a figure of speech. Least is just a nice way of saying not at all. If you don't practice and teach the Laws of the Kingdom, then you are no citizen.

Is it becoming clear now why Jesus started out this whole section by saying, "Don’t you ever even think I came to abolish the law"? Don't ever think it, because your and my obedience to the Law determines whether we are saved into the new Kingdom. To be mistaken on this point is a matter of life and death!

An influential and important group of people in Jesus' day strongly believed this. We know them as the Pharisees. The Pharisees were the religious Hercules of their day, and Jesus' words would naturally have made his audience think of them. The Pharisees were the most law-abiding people they knew. Surely, if the Messiah's new Kingdom requires obedience to the Law, then the Pharisees are in the front of the line for citizenship.

That said, we are set up for the next verse:

[20] For I say to you, [there's the oath language again] unless your righteousness greatly surpasses the Scribes and Pharisees, under no circumstances will you enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

Surpasses the Scribes and Pharisees! Doesn't Jesus realize just how nutty for obedience those people are? This is an impossibility.

But Jesus is clear: unless you surpass, you cannot enter. He has made immigration and naturalization into the Kingdom of Heaven impossible. The border is effectively closed. We are lost.

See, we cannot go down the mountain to the crowds; they are as lost as we are. We cannot go any higher; the King himself is before us. In despair, caught between the doomed world of the now and the holy righteousness required by the one to come, we can only hurl ourselves at his feet and cry, "Please, please, oh Lord, let us in! We will try, we will try! Please! Have mercy on us!" And that's when we hear the most curious thing.

"It is I who have come to fulfill, not you."

What? We feel a ray of sunlight on our darkened faces. We blink in confusion and amazement. Jesus' voice runs like sweet aloe into our ears. "What made you think," he says, "what made you think, weak as you are with sin, that you could meet the divine requirements for citizenship in my Kingdom? It is I who have come to fulfill, not you."

Why didn’t we see it before? We thought he was talking about us. But he was talking about himself. He is the one whose righteousness surpasses that of the Scribes and Pharisees. He is the one who is greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. It is his obedience to the Father, even to the cross, that will bring everything to pass, that will last after heaven and earth are passed away, and will fulfill even the smallest letter and the least stroke of a pen.

Suddenly everything is different. We ask again, what is our relationship as Christians to the Law of God? And now we can answer, he is our Lord. We know him and love him. Jesus, after all, is himself the Law, not the Law, Jesus. Jesus is, as it were, living righteousness, and as we read the gospel and read of his death for us, we see that fact acted out time after time, verse after verse, until all that was spoken by the Law and the Prophets of old is fulfilled and Jesus cries out, "It is finished!" With Peter we can only say, "Where else can we go? Only you, Lord, have the words of life."

You might object, "But that doesn't answer the question. The question is about relationship." Okay, fine. Then think of it this way. He is our husband and we, the church, his bride. What is his is ours, what is ours his. In the covenant of love that binds us together, sealed in his blood and assured in the will of God before the creation of the world, he takes upon himself our sinfulness and goes to the cross. And, further, he gives to his bride the whole measure of his perfect and spotless obedience.

We hear a lot about the former, about how our guilt is wiped clean by the atoning and willing sacrifice of Christ upon a Roman gibbet. Now fill in that empty place where our sin was with the fullness of his perfect and divine obedience.

Can you contemplate that? Can you see that? If I ended the sermon here, that would be enough. But let's go furtehr and see how they apply to us.

First, Christ's obedience is better than yours. Stop trying to earn his favor. You have it. God isn't like man that you should earn his favor. Stop kicking yourself for the little ways you fall down day by day. Stop harassing your spirit to death with guilt because you aren't so regular in your devotional life, because you are so timid a witness to your co-workers or friends, or because your marriage isn't what you wish it would be. Stop telling yourself it is up to you to be the best Christian you can be. There is only one good Christian, and that is Christ himself. Don't you ever, don’t you ever, don't you ever forget that Christ came to fulfill the Law for you. Put on the breastplate of his righteousness and do not be afraid.

Second, obey the law. "Wait a minute," you say, "what about the temple and the sacrifices? Do we need to start sacrificing young lambs to celebrate Passover?" Ah! You are sharp! Look at what comes after our section today (vv. 21ff). See how Christ asserts the moral but not the ceremonial and civil demands of the Law. It is not obvious, but implied, so listen carefully. Our husband, Christ, has done it, but now he reasserts the moral part of the Law. And this makes sense, because the Law is just a reflection of the character of the Godhead. Want to look in face of Christ? Look at the Law and the Prophets which describe him. So, obey the moral demands of the law.

I challenge you, teenagers, kids, adults, heads of families. Memorize the Ten Commandments in the coming week. Memorize them and pray over them. Talk about them in your goings out and your comings in and with your families and friends. Bind them upon the door posts of your house, so to speak, and write them deep on the tablet of your heart. Christ has told us that whoever should practice and teach these commands will be called great. Let us aspire to greatness.

Third, a word to those outside of Christ. The law is in effect. The simple fact that we live on this earth under this heaven proves it so. Doesn’t your conscience prick your heart with guilt at your willful life? I don't care how good you are. And what does ignorance matter? Ignorance of a speed limit doesn't keep the nice police officer from giving you a ticket. Don't try and disappear into the crowd. Don't struggle up the mountain to try and find another god, either in some abstract heaven above or some mysterious chamber of your soul. There is only Jesus before you. The Kingdom is near. Repent and believe in Jesus' life and death for you, and become a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Isn't it wonderful what happens when we put our whole confidence in Christ! We ourselves become the true law-keepers and the true law-teachers. In placing our faith, body and soul in life and in death, in the King of the Kingdom, we are true citizens of his true Kingdom and fall into no error.

The Pharisee obeyed the law but forgot God, others, in our own day, forget God and obey their lusts, but we are Christ's and he is ours forever.

sermon; Matthew; soteriology; Kingdom of God; Sermon on the Mount; biblical hermeneutics; biblical theology

Unmasking the Powers with N. T. Wright

For in [Christ] all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones (qronoi) or dominions (kuriothtes) or rulers (arcai) or powers (exousiai) – all things have been created through him and for him. For in him all the fullness (plhrwma) of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

"For in him the whole fullness of deity (pan to plhrwma ths qeothtos) dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness (plhrwmenoi) in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority. He disarmed (απεκδυσαμενος) the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in [the cross]." (NRSV)

These verses from Colossians have been on my mind quite a bit lately, with particular emphasis on what is meant by fullness and what is meant by powers. I’ll put down a few quotations to bring some shape to what I’m getting at. First, from a sermon on Colossians by N. T. Wright:

Ancient pagans, like some animists to this day, thought of the world as peopled with hostile, or potentially hostile, forces. In fact, there were so many that life became extremely complicated, and not a little threatening. And a lot of ordinary folk went about their daily business in a climate of fear and uncertainty. They did their best to stay out of trouble; but often the best wasn’t good enough, and the demons that lurked behind every bush would get you anyway.

As often as not, the gods and demons would act through human agency. If Rome won a victory over Britain, that was because the goddess Roma was stronger than the goddess Britannia. The earthly battlefield and the heavenly battlefield were not separated by a great gulf; the heavenly was the hidden dimension of the earthly, the extra feature of ordinary reality that explained what was ‘really’ going on. The principalities and powers were not far away. They were the inner dimension of exterior events.

Wright goes on to say that we, today, though we smile at such superstition, still give the nod to forces: forces that create recession or homelessness or political ineffectiveness, forces that create disasters and conflicts that just can’t seem to be sorted out. He says:

We can’t touch and see these forces. Some of them may, for a while, come to be quite closely identified with certain human beings; but take that person away, and the force will remain. The only significant difference between us and our pagan ancestors appears to be that they recognized the situation and gave the forces vivid names, while we hide them behind the grey obscurity of vague words, in order to go on [with the illusion we are gods to ourselves, and in control of things].

Wright then talks about the virtue of gratitude that should characterize believers because they have been rescued from the powers and translated into the Kingdom of light, the Kingdom of the Son. He writes:

This is Exodus language. Now, by the preaching of the gospel, people everywhere can be transferred from the grip of the powers into the kingdom of Jesus--because he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. Events in the socio-political world carry an interior meaning, and often a threatening or disturbing one; the events of Jesus carry an interior meaning, a powerful and liberating one. He is the image of the invisible God [who] is in the business of rescuing the world, and calls us to follow his Son as rescued rescuers." (Following Jesus, 17-18)

Now Wright asks a few questions. (1) Where do the powers come from? He points to Colossians 1.15: all things were made through Christ. "God intended his world to be ordered, not random; to be structured, not chaotic. He intended what came to be called the powers, the forces, to be part of the way his world worked." (18) (2) Why are the powers so threatening? Human beings, he says, gave and give their power over to the powers. "When the powers take over, human beings get crushed." (3) What does this mean for the church? The church, after Christ, is no longer subject to the powers, but is in the business of triumphing over them by the cross. "There is only one Power we are to follow, and that Power has a human face." The cross is the defeat of the powers; in him they are totally subverted, and this is the call to the church. The powers will resist, even with violence, but they are defeated. Not annihilated, and this is important, but defeated through reconciliation. "God is in Christ making a new world; now, however, brought into new order under the authority of Christ." God intends the powers to serve him.

Thus, in some ways, Wright has put a few bricks into the bedrock of my understanding of providence: the powers now serve God’s purposes. But, in other ways--and I hope to get into this with Luther later, there is a way in which Christians are called to reshape the powers. They are called not to be afraid of them, but to know them, to subvert them, and to use them for the Kingdom. "To say," writes Wright, "that you must not worship Aphrodite is not to say that you must become sexless beings. To say you can’t serve God and Mammon doesn’t mean we should give up using money. To say that racial prejudice is wrong doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate the differences between us. God intends the powers to serve him and to serve and sustain his human creatures."(20)

So, here again, friends, I find the program of the liberal arts: the effective un-masking and re-shaping of the powers to serve the Kingdom of our God and of his Christ (for thine is the Kingdom and the Power). Wright ends this sermon talking about the grateful, liturgical celebration of the eucharist, but he could be talking about any act.

We celebrate the victory of Jesus Christ in a way which, by the power of its symbolic action, resonates out, into the city, into the country, into the world . . . that God is God, that Jesus is his visible image, and that this God has defeated the powers of evil that still enslave and crush human beings today. (21)

N. T. Wright; Colossians; the Powers; Kingdom of God; Liberal Arts; spiritual warfare; ecclesiology; sacramental theology; eucharist.

N.T. Wright addressing Hebrews in outline

N T. Wright, in his collection of sermons entitled Following Jesus: Biblical Reflections on Discipleship (Eerdmans, 1994), devotes a chapter to an analysis of the larger themes in the book of Hebrews. He identifies three motifs running through the book, or, as he says, “three lines of thought which may open the book up for us, not least in coming to the Eucharist.” These are: A compelling portrait of Jesus; A new reading of the Old Testament; Jesus the Final Sacrifice. In the process, he also outlines the structure of the book, and it is this that I want to reproduce here. Why? Well in order to provide context to the long-in-the-making discussion of the definition of faith in Hebrews chapter 11. Now, to Dr. Wright:

“In chapter 1, Jesus is the Son of God, superior even to the angels. There were some in the early Church who thought of Jesus as just a special sort of angel; no, says the writer, he is of a different order of being altogether. But at once, in case you should get the wrong idea, chapter 2 emphasizes that Jesus is also totally and truly human. Please note: not only was Jesus totally and truly human, he still is. One writer described Hebrews’ portrait of Jesus as ‘our man in heaven’. That is one of the major thrusts of the book – to emphasize that the one who has sat where we sit, who has lived our life and died our death, has now been exalted and glorified precisely as a human being. He hasn’t, as it were, ‘gone back to being just God again’. Chapter 2 closes with the first statement of our opening theme: because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.

Then, in chapters 3 and 4, Jesus is the true Joshua; it’s the same name, actually, in Hebrew and Greek. He is the one who leads the people of God into their true promised land. Then, in chapters 5, 6, and 7, he is the true high priest. That’s where Melchizedek comes in. To understand this we need to take a step sideways for a moment.

It was a problem for the early Church that Jesus was from the house of David. It meant he was qualified to be Messiah, that is, King of Israel. But it disqualified him from being a high priest, who should have been from the house of Levi, a different tribe altogether. Hebrew points out that, in Psalm 110, the King is said to be a priest for ever, according to the order of Melchizedek, whose priesthood does not depend on ancestry but on the call of God alone. Jesus is not, then, a transient high priest, to be replaced by someone else. He remains a priest for ever. In other words, summing up where we’ve got to so far, Jesus, the Son of God, the truly human one, is leading his people to their promised land, and is available for all people and for all time as the totally sympathetic one, the priest through whom they can come to God. Following Jesus is the only way to go.

We then move into chapters 8-10, which speak of Jesus’ sacrifice and the new covenant, to which we shall return. This leads us to the great list of the heroes of faith in chapter 11. There are lists like this in various Jewish writings; and the vital thing about the list is, who comes at the end? In one of the most famous lists, the one in Ecclessiasticus which begins ‘Let us now praise famous men . . .’, the answer is: Jesus himself. In chapter 12.1-3 the writer issues an appeal which could stand as the key biblical text on the whole theme of ‘following Jesus’:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us and persevere in running the race that lies before us while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and perfecter of faith. For the sake of the joy that lay before him he endured the cross, despising its shame, and has taken his seat at the right of the throne of God.

Consider how he endured such opposition from sinners, in order that you may not grow weary and lose heart.

The themes we have already looked at come to a head in this passage. Take them in reverse order: Jesus, the high priest, coming at the end of the great list of heroes. Jesus, the one who leads us into our promised land, the pioneer, the one who goes ahead to blaze the trail. Jesus, the truly human being, who has travelled the road of human suffering ahead of us. Jesus, now enthroned as Son of God. Jesus, therefore – as the final chapter, chapter 13, puts it – Jesus Christ, the same, yesterday, today, and for ever; Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, the one brought again from the dead. That is the picture of Jesus which Hebrews offers us; . . . And at the heart of this picture we find the cross: the cross which Jesus endured on our behalf, which was, as we shall see, the final sacrifice. This, then, is the first part of the bird’s-eye view of Hebrews: a picture of the human high priest Jesus and his cross.” (pp. 5-7a)
__________
Cf. the previous post in this series: The danger of substantial faith - pt 2

N. T. Wright; Book of Hebrews; exegesis; New Testament.

scrap of notes from April 2005

For the sake of memory and chronology, here's what I'm working on right now.

First, I'm very slowly beginning to read the early twentieth century French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859-1941). I'm digitizing an introductory monograph of his for inclusion in Project Gutenberg. Bergson's works were published in French just before the turn of the century and, up until WWI, he was a world-star of academia. A 1913 announcement that Bergson would be lecturing caused the New York's Times Square's first traffic jam. Indeed, Bergson is experiencing a renaissance in phenomenology circles, and especially among film theorists such as Gilles Deleuze. French thinkers as Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, and Lévinas acknowledge his influence on their thought. There is something in him about the image and its permanence through change. I don't know enough to even know why I want to know. I'm just following the tip of my nose and seeing where it all goes.

Martin Heidegger, on the other hand, is beautiful! He is to the twentieth century what Kant and Hegel are to the nineteenth. I'm teasing apart the eleventh edition of his 1929 address "Was ist Metaphysik?" In eight or nine pages, he overthrows the Enlightenment projects "certainty" and announces the hermeneutical nature of theology up to the present day. Marvelous! In that one essay--as fundamental as Renee Descartes's Meditations on First Philosophy--Heidegger cracks the solid wall of modernism and opens a space for the suspicion-of-supicion called postmodernism. It is really exciting, but slow going. I only have a few minutes a day to devote to the few pages a day I can cover. And it is not uncommon to review.

Additionally I'm discovering what I believe could be the beginning of my first pursued publication/article. The theme is the nakedness of Christ. I believe that research will show that Christ was crucified naked, yet the Gospels do not directly mention this, nor does any treatment in art or film of which I am aware. Being the second Adam, there is something here, a parallel to the innocent nudity of our first parents. And, note that he appears clothed after the resurrection. Paul, too, talks about our present nakedness and a longing to be clothed. Nakedness in the OT is always bad, connected to adultery (idolatry), but it seems that there is a change in that--a restoration of it. And this theme can easily branch out into discussions of the human gaze, our own embodiedness (and shame), even philosophically there is a motive of conceal/reveal; known/unknown; there is something about the difference between voyeurism and the gaze of love. I mentioned to L/ the other day, thinking about this, that Jesus's nakedness (for I am assuming at this point, albeit prematurely, that he was naked on the cross) was the nakedness of a groom who presents his body lovingly to his bride, whereas the world sees through the eyes of humiliation and rejection. It quakes with fear at the exposure of its own nakedness. [A later addition: this would also figure into media studies where people reveal and conceal themselves through media.]

I'm also playing with ideas about a unique method for writing theology modeled on the improvisational community-making methods of jazz. As in music composition, I would like to propose a fundamental motive and build my paper out of its development just as if it were a musical composition. I want to think of theology from the perspective of the liberal arts, rather than syllogistically like a math problem or taking a cue from Quintillian's rhetoric. I want it to welcome, receive, and serve as a vehicle for the opening up and uncovering of human being-ness (there's the Heidegger.) We should read a theological text as much like a work of art or a musical score as a "logical argument." People are not argued into the Kingdom as much as they are drawn as the Spirit opens their eyes to the beauty of the gospel. In that case, the choice is obvious. It is the choice for oneself as one was created to be, and the giving up of fantasies about personal divinity.

Anyway, as soon as I'm done with this review, I'm going to get back into Greek during the day and devote next Tuesday to beginning the Biblical/exegetical historical-critical research on the nakedness of Christ. Since the gospels do not say (they turn away, really, viewing the crucifixion with their eyes shut to a large extent), I have to be able to build a pretty solid case if I'm going to rest an entire argument on the nakedness of Jesus. As to why this theme comes to me--this theme of the nakedness of Christ--I have no idea. It just bubbled up two or three weeks ago.

See, my heart says that I'm tired of reading secondary sources. I need to stop "throat clearing" as Dr. Lim calls it, and pick up my own pen, whether I'm totally ready or not. I will even go so far as to say I'm "called" to this, like a missionary is called overseas. It burns away in my mind and my heart night and day, and even obstructs my reading: "Why are you reading this? This is not your work. Why are you following this argument? It is not your argument. It is time, time to find out who you are. What do you have to say for yourself? It is time: do it now, before you become forever lost to yourself and become a parrot and a servant of the ideas that others are having. You will be forever reading, forever questioning, but arriving nowhere. You will be growing, but to where? From where? What is your offering? What do you bring? Do you even have your own questions any longer? Do it now."

My notes from Anthony Lane on Baptism

Dr Anthony Lane
Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary
April 6, 2005

Should we Baptize Babies? A Study of Early Church Practices

I. How did you become a Christian in the New Testament

What must I do to be saved? What is Christian initiation? In Acts 14 and other relevant passages we can collect four elements to salvation: (a) repentance; (b) faith; (c) baptism; (d) receiving the Spirit. The point I want to make here is that the early church considered faith and baptism as 2 sides of the same coin. Baptism is part of the gospel message. One (re: “faith”) always implies the other; there is a unity in practice. Gal 3.25-26; Col. 2.11-12; the structure of Romans where chaps. 1-5 are about justification and chapter 6 unselfconsciously talks about baptism without changing the subject. There is, then, a single reality, from 2 different angles.

The early church linked conversion and baptism with the same connectivity as, say, revivalists view conversion & public confession (responding to an altar call. Really, altar calls function as a kind of surrogate baptism.) Christian homes cannot help but practically gravitate toward paedobaptism.

What about an understanding of believer’s baptism vs. the NT attestation to people baptized at the point of conversion, such a the Philippian Jailor who was baptized that very night? Indeed, there wasn’t any waiting on genuineness or evidence. If apostolic baptism is a baptism of converts, what about the baptism of infants? What do we do about the children of the earliest converts? The NT does not provide a clear answer. We are sure they were not required to wait a la converts baptism - a difference was made between those who came to faith as adults and those who were brought up in Christian homes. Some writing on this issue say it wasn’t even an issue until the 2nd Century, but that is silly. Early believers were people with families! There is no doubt that the question of whether or not to baptize children was a pressing issue from the beginning.

II. Did the Apostolic Church Baptize Babies?

All the evidence is ambiguous, thus, I take what I call a seismological approach. A Boston seismologist can observe an earthquake in Los Angeles without leaving their laboratory. How? Because they have instruments which extrapolate and deduce. Similarly, we can deduce 1st Century practice by examination of the earliest church fathers. A verdict must be approached backwards, working from the clear to the not-so-clear. We begin at the 3rd and 4th Centuries and move back.

In the 3rd Century we have 3 sources of information: Tertullian, Cyprian and Origen as well as tomb inscriptions. We also have, writing from Rome, Hippolytus’ Apostolic Witness, which has been shown to be a generated document with roots that could go as far back as the 1st Century. In the Apostolic Witness, the baptism of adults is the norm, but within that you do find the baptism of small children. Tertullian, writing from Carthage, suggests that baptism be delayed as much as possible, yet he never charges infant baptism with innovation. In the ancient world, innovation is bad; it usually springs from heresy. Tertullian would not have hesitated to bring such a charge against the practice of infant baptism if it was an innovation, but he never does. Tertullian actually only wants to baptize the “ready.” Thus, he urges a delay until the greatest redemptive effect may be obtained – largely a result of his understanding of the relationship between baptism & original sin. Cyprian mentions those who baptized their children 8 days after their birth (following the Jewish custom), but also mentions those who immediately baptized their infants. Origen (writing from Alexandria) claims that infant baptism goes all the way back to the apostles. We must remember, too, that Origen was born cir. 185 CE into a Christian family. There is a significance to tradition that we cannot discount. I myself was told by an elderly woman that she remembers her grandmother telling her about witnessing Napoleon going into exile as a little girl; I was getting this 160-year-old event secondhand! Baptism, too, is not a subtle event that can get mixed up in the memory, you either baptize babies or you don’t, yes/no. Certainly, then, informed Christians of the 2nd Century had a good idea about apostolic opinion.

By the last quarter of the 2nd Century at least some Christians were having their babies baptized. Some argue that the first indisputable reference is Tertullian in the 3rd Century. Yes, but when is the first indisputable reference to the baptism of someone raised in a Christian home? Aha! Same reference! Certainly, Tertullian objected to infant baptism and many leading Christians of the 4th Century weren’t baptized until they were adults (and thought nothing wrong of this). So, given this smorgasbord, I can discern no one pattern but only variety.

Gregory of Nazianzus tells his hearers to baptize whenever they want. He and others understood variety in the time/age of baptism. Tombstones agree with this. Thus, if we know there is accepted variety in the 3rd and 4th Centuries, why not infer it back into time? No one took a hard line either way on the grounds of apolosticity. What starts figuring into waiting until people are older is the fear of post-baptismal sin, with which the early church didn’t really know what to do; they came to understand baptism as a kind of trump card. Sin was Tertullian’s concern, but none called him an innovator for suggesting the delay of baptism. In practice, there was variety: from birth to death. The 1st principled objection to infant baptism doesn’t come about until the Anabaptists. The 2nd Century church: Irenaeus in the early 180’s mentions a variety of ages for baptism. Are we reduced to hints for the 1st Century? Household Baptism of Acts 16 and 1 Cor 1, “whole families” could refer to infant baptism.

In summary: there is no clear evidence until the 2nd Century, though using this seismological method we can infer it backward. In the end, there are 3 possible scenarios. (1) They did Baptize Babies. This is plausible per the epistolary mention of children & whole houses believing. Those who favored infant baptism didn’t charge Tertullian with innovation or not being true to the apostolic witness. (2) Didn’t. How is the variety that we see later to be explained, then? No one was saying that the apostolic church didn’t do it, including Tertullian, who wished people would wait. There is certainly inconclusive evidence for infant Baptism, but there is a total lack of evidence for an assertion as to only doing believer’s baptism. (3) Variety. This is, IMHO, the best option.

What caused this variety? A few off the cuff suggestions. Children born before & after their parent’s baptism. Jews or gentiles. Geographical differences attest for different baptismal practices.

III. Silence of the Bible.

There is a famous tract entitled, What the Bible Teaches about Infant Baptism. Apparently, you open it and it is blank. That is analogous to what we know about the initiation of children brought up in Christian homes. Acts 16.33 Luke wasn’t overly specific about what they did with the children, and we certainly wish he had been. On the other hand, if we are committed to living under the authority of the Bible, then shouldn’t we live under the authority of its silence as well as its assertion? Doesn’t it, then, give liberty to churches by allowing variety in its practice according to need and circumstance. The NT, then, warrants the variety of practice that we do see in the 3rd Century.

Practically speaking, when you examine the way that churches bring up their young, both paedobaptist and believer’s baptism, the similarities far outweigh the differences. Where one has baptism, another has dedication. Where one has public confession, the other has baptism. The pattern is pretty much the same. And, frankly, the two groups honestly don’t care enough about it to alter their curricula when it comes to children; both groups will minister to children in the same way without even asking whether a child has been baptized or not. Indeed, Christian parents in both treat their children as simil justis et peccator. Now, certainly, evangelicals today has far too low a view of baptism, but the early church had a high, high view and they still got along with all sorts of ages being baptized. Consider, for example, the Didache. There are all kinds of different ways of baptizing someone – only water is required in each. In other words, it could care less about the mode.

Other issues I didn’t get to for the sake of time: significant of the Old Testament; Diversity being the filling out of the whole witness. What I mean here is that some are called to be married, some not. Some are pacifists, some aren’t. In the variation of so many things, the variety fills out the whole, “thick” theology of the church.

Question & Answer

Q: Couldn’t you use your seismological method to support things such as the use of relics in the 1st Century?
A: But, see, in the case of relics, there is no evidence in the 1st Century. Clearly you have the immediate need of baptism in the 1st Century, where, with relics, there is no such need.

Q: What about the long separation which catechumens eventually had to go through before baptism?
A: This was either a response to paganism or the church got grace and works screwed up. Lent leads to Easter, but with Jesus it was the other way round. Augustine’s view of baptism addresses original sin.

Q: Any insights into baptism for the dead.
A: An off-the-cuff one. Think about the temporal difference between someone who has finished the work for their PhD and is waiting for commencement. Conversion is, then, more the finishing of all papers, and commencement is the public nature of baptism. I once saw a couple whose daughter had died in between these two moments and they had come to receive her diploma. She had done all the work – by right the diploma was hers. Perhaps we could think of baptism for the dead in the same way.

(The above are my notes/impressions and should not be quoted as direct statements by Dr. Lang)

2005, my perspective

Greetings to all this Advent season, 2005. Where did the year begin? Where did it end? It began with L. in the second-trimester of pregnancy, with Kara entering the second semester of pre-school, and with me … er … commenting on the whole thing on the blog. There was Sunday worship and meetings at our church, NSBC. Monday through Friday was spent at EP or doing Pampered Cheffing or managing house. You, Marc, were the Guard in Antigone. You and I, John, were pulling up chairs to Saturday morning Greek. You, our parents, were running a tour agency, digitizing a hospital and juggling an entire department of techies (as well as fretting over us!) Joanna, you were keeping us company with an extended sleepover, all of us holed up in our little place in Manchester-by-the-Sea. All was life as usual, winter white and cold in breezy New England. We were bundled up and unaware of how it would all end.

Rivers go where water cooperates. The Mississippi is just hydrogen and oxygen going in the same direction. Winter 2005 found me anxious and depressed. I constantly worried at the go-nowhere of my goals, trying to figure out a way forward. On the one hand, there was work, and on the other, theology. In between was life itself, constantly squeezed and under pressure. In desperation one day, I decided to climb the hill in Ipswich and visit Ascension Memorial Episcopal church. On 9/11, Ascension had opened its doors to the entire town, and most came. EP emptied and made its way into a wooden pew under Ascension’s nineteenth century stained-glass. Impressed by that service, I went there alone that day to pray, and obtained permission to continue to do so during lunchtime. I even began attending a service every Tuesday noon. My soul couldn’t stand up any longer, it needed liturgy and the Book of Common Prayer to carry it. Now a few months before, in the Fall of 2004, I had the opportunity to go to Yale for a conference on trust. Jürgen Moltmann delivered an address entitled “Control is Good, but Trust is Better.” I felt like I was going through the motions. And then, during anxious prayer on the way home, I thought, “You know, religious publishing puts everything together.” I interviewed with Hendrickson on a frigid February 24. On March 1, they thanked me for my time. No matter, by then I’d begun reading Heidegger, and writing about Karl Barth for Reviews in Religion & Theology.

L.'s time was spent managing the rest of us. She must have done something terrible in a previous life because, with my revels and Kara’s rainbow land, she spends a good deal of her time simply keeping us on planet earth. Caleb was still an unknown personality, and so the pragmatic thing to do is prepare. And that is what she did. She measured our apartment to figure out how to make our 3 into 4 in a 2. (She’s mathematical like that.) She picked out crib sets and re-sorted baby clothes. She grew out of her own clothes. Kara helped her prepare by making L. take her to school in S. during the week. Kara (with me) also contributed to her well being by making her exercise in the form of cleaning up toys. Pampered Chef helped by making L. responsible for her team, and by keeping a party here and there on the calendar. Our beloved midwives at LT Midwives helped her prepare by scheduling appointments and doing ultrasounds.

One time, the midwives asked us to go into Boston for an ultrasound, and we came back with a 3-D picture of Caleb! It wasn’t long before we saw lots of Caleb. Caleb pushing with his feet. Caleb chillin’. Caleb waving his arm. Caleb waving, um, other things.

And then, in May, our church nearly died at the hands of its pastor. I and my family, with the family of our fellow deacon, were often slandered in the name of ministry. People we had known for nearly a decade were deceived, entertained lies, and denied what was right in front of them. Thoughts of growth were changed for desperate sorties under heavy fire to rescue the dying and wounded. Sermons fell like wormwood from the pulpit where should have gone the life-giving manna from God. When it was over, most had been saved, though through fire. But one family did not make it. I had the painful “priviledge” of moderating their application, and then they were gone. It broke our hearts.

Love, however, picked up the pieces. Love always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. We were like beaten tin, smashed and discarded, but love found us in innumerable ways. In June, I backed the truck over my Fender acoustic. Members of the church replaced it with a Martin. My Dad and Karen gave us their Nissan Pathfinder. L’s parents (and soon her Brother and Sister-in-Law) moved to Nashville. Friends kept in touch by email, by snail mail and by phone. Sir Walter Raleigh and Queen Elizabeth hugged us, ate meals with us, remained our friends in the sight of our church, and played with Kara. And then, on July 23, Caleb was born.

Kara and Caleb. Kara is moving, talking, singing, climbing, building, drawing, cutting, taping, gluing, little-girl-go for the whole of her waking day! In the winter, she and I went to see a production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. The Queen of the Night, played by various Little People, has since been the royal nemesis of many make-believe dramas. When Gramma & Papa came up for Caleb’s birth, Papa became a giant, a mountain and the man of a thousand voices. She loves school, loves her friends -- K, J, A and M -- and loves tape. Caleb, on the other hand, is meditative and content, an infant epicurean. He loves to chirp and smile, to attempt to roll over, to watch Baby Einstein, and, above all, to be dry.

At the end of the year, we are preparing to move to Nashville. As of December 19, I am an editor for Thomas Nelson Publishing. SWR & QE are expecting a baby of their own. Joanna again endures our tired couch to help us pack. The slow work of ministry continues at North Shore, despite its hurts. And, by God’s grace, we are putting down a new foundation with the friends who left our church and, we thought, left us as well.

Adventus. Theologians use that term to say something about the future. It means the past doesn’t say everything. The past does not dictate what comes after. God’s goodness has intervened. The future is made free in the hands of a God who is altogether trustworthy. And with it, we are made free. Free to hope. Free for faith and work. Free to love and be loved. Thanks be to God.

Problems with "40 Days of Purpose"

I have 2 issues of doctrine with Rick Warren and his "40 Days of Purpose" curricula.

My core problem with 40 Days of Purpose centers upon the nature of gospel that it advocates. I believe its gospel is semipelagian, meaning that it adds human works to the work of Christ rather than encouraging believers to trust wholly in Christ for complete justification, sanctification, and reconciliation. The former misrepresents the predicament of human beings and therefore incorrectly administers the remedy. Further, it misrepresents the work of Christ, and therefore misapprehends the object of faith, namely Jesus himself. This is a dangerous error, and one not to be handled lightly or simply dismissed because "it works."[1]

My secondary problem with 40 Days of Purpose is that its author, Rick Warren, incorrectly handles the Scriptures. Many object offhand to his use of various translations, I am not concerned about this. There is nothing wrong with using different translations as long as the aim is right. Is the aim to support your point or to correctly teach the point of the biblical author? Anyone who wishes to submit himself to God as a faithful teacher of the Word knows that attention to the point of the author is paramount for proper understanding. Deviation from that point, even for the most benign reason, results in an instructive word coming not from the mouth of God, but from the heart of man. "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked." (Jer. 17:9)[2] The Scriptures are very plain, God does not brook false teachers. Every teacher and pastor should daily tremble at the warnings plainly given for anyone who knowingly distorts the Scriptures. And, indeed, with the number of translation helps, electronic and in print, and commentary sets, as well as New Testament or Old Testament scholars only too happy to answer any questions a pastor may have, there is no excuse for not trying with all of one's energies to preach God's word in the churches.

Therefore, I find Rick Warren without excuse. Seminary trained, and wealthy enough to hire what he does not personally possess due to constraints in time or temperament, I believe he is responsible to both of these charges. And how is this not all the more so with the explosive success of his programs throughout the world? If there is any question or doubt, even the smallest point of inaccuracy, shouldn't each instance have been exhaustively dealt with at this point simply because of the world-wide reach of this preached word?

One might as that errors are understandable, saying that Rick Warren is just a human being. I understand this, as far as it goes, but argue that the errors of which I speak are not few in number, nor do they spring from "hard texts," passages which may cause disagreement among the most faithful and careful exegetes. Rather, they are at best hermeneutically sloppy and at worst evidence of an eisegetical approach to Scripture which bends the authority of God to the desires of men.

I believe that both of these charges which I have made may be discerned through a careful investigation into the use made of Hebrews 11:6 by the Purpose Driven curricula.
________
[1] There is no doubt that there is a good bit of practical wisdom in the structural advice provided by Rick Warren, and especially in his book The Purpose-Driven Church. I have no issue with this, nor am I responsible for discernment in this area. My burden is the gospel: that in all things I would love, protect, promote and pursue the gospel to the best of my abilities both for myself and for the good and salvation of my fellow human beings.

[2] http://www.the-highway.com/deceitfulness_Black.html

So what did Luther say?

J I. Packer, in a sermon on the Puritans' understanding of Scripture, remarked on Martin Luther's formula for making a theologian. A theologian, said Packer (quoting Luther), is made under the simultaneous pressure of three forces:

• oratio - prayer for the illumination of Scripture by the Holy Spirit


• meditatio - practice of careful meditation on Scripture


• temptatio - denoting every force of distraction from the above

Packer's is a different reading from the one to which I had grown accustomed. My version had been as follows:

• oratio - preaching/teaching


• meditatio - careful meditation on Scripture, primarily, & philosophy & culture secondarily


• temptatio - temptations. sin

Mine had not been so scripturally attuned. So who has misquoted Luther? Is it Packer, with his scripture-centric reading, or Luther scholars & the theological community with their more existential whole-life approach?

hermeneutics; Martin Luther; Puritans; natural theology; fides quaerens intellectum.

Theology as a discipline en se

Martin Luther wrote in the Heidelberg Disputations: “A theologian of the cross calls the thing what it actually is.”

If much academic work in the humanities is regarded as parochial, it is also because of the enormous respect academics have for the texts of long-dead authors, as opposed to the themes with which these authors were themselves concerned. In an English department, you study what Keats thought of love, you do not try to understand love via Keats. In a classics department, you study Epicurus's thoughts on greed, not greed via Epicurus. The emphasis is on recovering exactly what Epicurus said, or in trying to understand precisely what Keats meant. No one gives a thought as to whether this might ultimately be quite dull or mistaken. The University is a culture of quotation.

In a way, science suggests an antidote. The "culture of science," announced C. P. Snow in his book The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, "contains a great deal of argument, usually much more rigorous, and almost always at a higher conceptual level, than the literary persons' arguments." Scientists "have the future in their bones" whereas literary intellectuals are "natural Luddites who wish the future did not exist."

Both disciplines, however, serve as pedagogues for the theologian.

pedagogy; C. P. Snow.