The Surprising God

The practice of Trinitarian theology

2012-02-09T10:50:00.021-05:00

This blog often discusses theological theory. In doing so, there is the risk of succumbing to "ivory tower" thinking that is disconnected from real life. However, for me, Trinitarian, incarnational theology rings true precisely because of its inseparable connection to real life and ministry.

This connection is often noted and explored in the discussions that are a key part of the online course I teach at Grace Communion Seminary in Trinitarian Youth Ministry. My students wrestle together with the teachings of Trinitarian theologians Andrew Root, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Thomas F. Torrance and others. What they find is not "ivory tower" stuff that makes no difference in real life, but stunning truth that speaks directly to real life and ministry.

Finding this connection is not forced, for the very basis of Trinitarian, incarnational theology is the reality of the presence and ministry of the incarnate Son of God in our world through the Holy Spirit. This theology thus speaks to our real sharing in what Jesus is actually doing in our world now - a ministry, which Bonhoeffer and Root after him, refer to as "place-sharing" (Jesus, in his humanity, sharing our place).

Recently, Root together with Kenda Creasy Dean authored The Theological Turn in Youth Ministry. This very helpful book is a series of essays that address the practice of youth ministry when grounded in Trinitarian, incarnational theology. According to Dean, the goal is advocating a youth ministry that puts "wheels on the gospel" (p20) . What does that look like? The book explains, and here are a few quotes:

Perhaps the most noticeable change in youth ministry in the early twenty-first century is the diminished role of denominations, youth programs and events in favor of relationships and spiritual practices - those ongoing activities of the Christian community that shape us in relationship to God and to one another - as the primary vehicles through which adolescents recognize God encountering them.... [Such practices] embody Christ's suffering love, thereby preventing Christianity from deteriorating into abstract intellectualism or vapid generic "feel good-isms." And, by enfleshing God's love in word, deed and divine accompaniment in daily life. In short, faith practices allow young people a way to encounter God without needing a priest, a program - or, for that matter, an adult - to guide them" (p34, from The New Rhetoric of Youth Ministry by Kenda Creasy Dean).

If youth ministry is to avoid [the] deadly traps of self-justification and isolation, it must move boldly into deep theological construction. What I mean is that we must begin to see ourselves not primarily as youth ministry directors but as theologians who do constructive theology in the context of ministry with the adolescent population. ...All pastoral ministry needs a turn to the theological (p39, from Go Is a Minister, by Andrew Root).

...Ministry always precedes theology and becomes the fodder for constructive theological thought because of our claim that God is living and active in the world - which means that God is a Minister. By looking at God's Ministry of creation, covenant, incarnation (including crucifixion and resurrection) and Pentecost, it is obvious that God is not a theologian but a (the!) Minister. God has committed to be the Minister of creation, and theology is reflection on and articulation of God's Ministry. If we confess that God is active, that God is moving creation to its completion, then ministry is participation in God's own act of Ministry, and theology is nothing more than reflecting on God's action. And if it is true that God is alive and moving in the world as Minister, then all constructive theological work must be done in conversation and connection with this same world to which God is in God's tri-unity. To be in contact with this world is to be in ministry, and therefore is to do theology. ....Youth ministry is ministry that seeks to connect not primarily to adolescents but to God's own Ministry as God ministers to adolescents. ...Ministry is [thus] a theological task, for if it is ministry of the gospel it seeks to be faithful to God's own Ministry (pp40-41, from God Is a Minister, by Andrew Root).

If we view ministry to youth (or to any other age cohort, for that matter) in this way, what difference will that make in how we practice ministry? Your comments are welcomed, and next time we'll examine what Root and Creasy Dean say.

Resurrection and life to come (Nicene Creed #13)

2012-02-02T09:31:00.012-05:00

This post concludes our series examining the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (commonly referred to as the Nicene Creed). For other posts in the series, click a number: 1, 2, 3, 4 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 12.

We are examining the Creed's final clause:

We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

Last time we addressed one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. Now we'll address the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.

Note that the Creed links the resurrection with forgiveness of sins. As noted by Thomas F. (T.F.) Torrance (in The Trinitarian Faith), this linkage was of particular importance to the Creed's framers, "for it meant that forgiveness was not in word only but enacted in the concrete reality of human physical existence" (p298).

This linkage also served to expose certain heresies that denied that the Word of God really did become flesh, and really did die and then rise from the dead in flesh (bodily), remaining forever fully God and fully human (now a glorified human). T.F. explains:

In his incarnate life, death and resurrection the Son of God established a binding relation between his divine reality an humankind; he not only bridged the gap between the creature and the Creator but triumphed completely over the separation between man and God due to human sin and alienation. The resurrection of Christ demonstrated the fact that all division between man and God has now been removed in atoning reconciliation through the blood of Christ. Moreover, the resurrection of Christ in body demonstrated that the saving work of Christ on our behalf was fulfilled within the concrete reality of our actual human existence, and in such a way as to set it upon an entirely new basis in the regeneration or renewal of human being in the risen Lord. That was the great message of forgiveness proclaimed at once by the apostles on the day of Pentecost and sealed by the gift of the Holy Spirit in baptism.

To be united to the crucified and risen Christ through the baptism of his Spirit , necessarily carries with it sharing with him in the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. 'Our resurrection is stored up in the Cross,' as Athanasius once expressed it. Through his incarnation the Son of God took up into himself our physical existence enslaved to sin, thereby making our corruption , death and judgment his own and offering himself as a substitute for us, so that through the atoning sacrifice of his own life, he might destroy the power that corruption and death have over us. Through the resurrection of our physical human nature in himself Christ has set us upon an altogether different basis in relation to God in which there is no longer any place for corruption and death. 'Now that the Savior is risen in his body, death is no longer terrible; for all who believe in Christ trample over it as if it were nothing, and choose rather to die than deny their faith in Christ. They know that when they die, they are not lost, but live and become incorruptible through the resurrection. Thus the central focus of Christian belief is upon the incarnate, crucified and risen Savior, for he has burst the bands of death and brought life and immortality to light - that is the forgiveness of sins and resurrection of the dead into which we are once for all baptized by the Holy Spirit. Far from being just a promise for the future, it is an evangelical declaration of what had already taken place in Christ, and in him continues as a permanent triumphant reality throughout the whole course of time to its consummation, when Christ will return with glory to judge the quick and the dead, and unveil the great regeneration which he has accomplished for the whole creation of visible and invisible realities alike (pp298-9).

Conclusion
And so we have come to the end of this 13-part series. The emphasis throughout has been on our triune God - the one who in being and activity is one in three and three in one. T.F. comments:

For there is from the Father one grace which is fulfilled through the Son and in the Holy Spirit; and there is one divine nature and one God "who is over all and through all and in all" (quoting Athanasius who quotes Ephesians 4:6) (p307).

Let's conclude with the prayer offered by T.F. at the end of his book (p340):

Almighty and everlasting God, who hast revealed thyself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and dost ever live and reign in the perfect unity of love: Grant that we may always hold firmly and joyfully to this faith, and, living in the praise of thy divine majesty, may finally be one in thee; who art three Persons in one God, world without end. Amen.

One baptism (Nicene Creed #12)

2012-01-30T07:57:00.019-05:00

In this post we continue looking at the marks (identifying characteristics) of the Church as defined by the Nicene Creed. For other posts in this series, click a number: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13.

We come now to the final clause of the Creed:

We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

In this post, we'll address the first part, one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.

One baptism
The framers of the Creed apparently took the phrase one baptism from Paul's letter to the church in Ephesus (Eph 4:4-5). Paul exhorts that congregation to a unity grounded firmly in the fact that there is but "one body and one Spirit...one Lord, one faith [and], one baptism."

Why do Paul and the Creed highlight baptism but not the Eucharist? According to Thomas F. Torrance (in The Trinitarian Faith), it is because of the important "inner connection between baptism and the wholeness of the apostolic and catholic faith." Indeed, "the whole substance of the Gospel of grace...[is] concentrated in one baptism for the remission of sins" (p290). In making this point, T.F. references Athanasius' understanding that the "fullness of the mystery" (the gospel) is found in baptism, which "is given in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit" (p290). Like other early church fathers, Athanasius regarded baptism as....

...The great seal... the all-embracing sacrament bound up with one Body, one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, and one God and Father while the Eucharist was regarded as celebrated only within the Church's participation in the great mystery of baptism and as properly included within it (p. 290).

One baptism thus points directly to Jesus as the one Lord of the church. Indeed, it was through Jesus' vicarious life, death and resurrection that the church came into being. According to T.F., "baptism in his name signified incorporation of the baptized into Christ as members of his Body" (p291).

T.F. then shows that one baptism also points to the Holy Spirit...

For it is in one Spirit as well as through Christ that the Church has access to the Father. It is through the koinonia [communion/fellowship] of the Holy Spirit that the Church shares in the incarnate mystery of Christ, and through the power and operation within it that the unity of the Church as the Body of Christ is progressively actualized among the people of God. The Church is thus respected as the Temple of God in which he dwells through his Spirit (p291).

For the forgiveness of sins
Why does the Creed declare one baptism for the forgiveness of sins? Does baptism bring about that forgiveness? Torrance answers that "baptism in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit initiates people into the sphere in which all the divine blessings [including forgiveness of sins]...are bestowed and become effective" (p292). In saying this, Torrance is not suggesting that we are forgiven (and thus saved) by baptism (or at the time of baptism). Rather he is noting that in the rite of baptism we experience subjectively (personally) all that Jesus accomplished for humanity objectively, including what he accomplished through his baptism in the Jordan. What is true objectively, becomes personally experienced (or actualized) in our baptism. It's one thing to be forgiven, it's another to experience that forgiveness, and thus have it become effective in our personal lives.

But what is personally (subjectively) experienced is grounded in a greater objective reality. It is to this reality that Torrance points. In doing so he notes that Athanasius (like other of the Greek church fathers) regarded Jesus' baptism as a vicarious baptism, which was "a decisive point" for all humanity. Torrance explains:

In his baptism in the Jordan, the incarnate Son of God received the Spirit upon the humanity he had taken from us, not for his own sake, but for our sake. That is to say, it was our humanity that was baptized, anointed, sanctified and sealed in him. Thus when he was baptized for us we were baptized in him. Our baptism in the name of the Holy Trinity, therefore, is to be understood as a partaking through the Spirit in the one unrepeatable baptism of Christ which he underwent, not just in the Jordan river, but throughout his life and in his death [and] resurrection on our behalf. That vicarious baptism was the objective truth behind the one baptism of the Creed in which its depth of meaning was grounded....We are [thus] directed through the rite of baptism to its objective ground and reality, [which is] Christ clothed with the saving truth of his vicarious life, death and resurrection (pp292-3).

T.F. continues:

Baptism is the sacrament of that reconciling and atoning exchange in the incarnate Savior. When we understand baptism in that objective depth, we are directed away from ourselves to what took place in Christ in God (p293).

Thus we understand that it is the objective sense of baptism that is addressed in the Creed's declaration of one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. This phrase then points to the Creed's related phrase concerning eschatology: the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. We will address this when we next pick up this series on the Nicene Creed.

For a related Surprising God blog post on Gospel-Centered baptism click here.

The Story of God: Our journey

2012-01-24T15:36:00.024-05:00

As Steve Sabol, president of NFL Films, is fond of saying, "Tell me a fact and I'll learn; tell me the truth and I'll believe; but tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever."

How true (as every good teacher knows). Jesus, the Master Teacher, often made his point with a story. His stories pointed people to the greatest story of all: The Story of God.

At the center of this story is Jesus who, as Andrew Purves notes,"is the mediating center of revelation, whereby all of our knowledge of God is controlled" ("The Shape of Torrance Theology," Theology in Scotland, vol XVI, p26).

Because Jesus, who reveals God as God, has united himself to all humans through the Incarnation, his story is the story of all humankind. Our history is his-story.

The story of Jesus as our representative and substitute, is the gospel. This story encompasses creation, fall, re-creation (redemption), leading to humanity glorified and dwelling with God in a new heaven and new earth. This story thus tells of an unfolding journey - not one merely facilitated by God on our behalf, but one of God-with-us (through Christ, in the Spirit).

Some (nonbelievers) journey with God quite unknowingly. Others (believers) journey knowingly and (as sung by Michael Card) experiencing "joy in the journey." May that joy (the joy of Jesus himself, given to us through the Spirit), be yours.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing,

so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

(Romans 15:13, NRSV)

The church's apostolicity (Nicene Creed #11)

2012-01-16T17:23:00.008-05:00

This post continues our examination of the marks (identifying characteristics) of the Church as defined by the Nicene Creed. For other posts in this series, click a number: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13.

We come now to the church's apostolicity, which Thomas F. Torrance (in The Trinitarian Faith) defines as follows:

In its simplest sense the apostolicity of the Church refers back to the original foundation of the Church once for all laid by Christ upon the apostles, but it also refers to the interpenetration of the existence and mission of the Church in its unswerving fidelity to that apostolic foundation (p285).

The Apostles were chosen and sent by Christ as a link between himself and the church. They would be this link by both teaching and embodying the truth of the Gospel (the deposit of faith), which is "the unrepeatable foundation on which the Church was built" (p286). This deposit includes the content of the Gospel found in the Apostles' writings (the New Testament, which points back to, and thus includes and interprets the Old Testament). However, this deposit is more than information on a page, for the Gospel itself points directly to the life-giving reality of Christ himself. This is vital to understand, for as Torrance notes:

It is only in Christ and not out of itself, and only through union and communion with Christ in its faith and mission and not through its own piety, that the Church is continuously sustained....That the Church is apostolic as well as one, holy and catholic, signifies, therefore, that it is ever one and the same with the Church once for all founded by Christ in the apostolate... That is to say, apostolicity has to do with the continuing identity of the Church as the authentic Body of Christ in space and time (p287).

To be truly apostolic in both its belief and ministry, the church must focus continuously and faithfully on the interpretation, exposition and application of Holy Scripture, which contains the apostolic witness to Christ...

...For it is through faithful transmission of the preaching and teaching of the apostles that the Church is itself constantly renewed and reconstituted as Christ's Church (p287).

The bishops and theologians of the Church who assembled at Nicaea grounded their deliberations in careful exposition of Scripture, even though, at times, they had to coin new terms to adequately express and thus faithfully convey the deposit of faith contained in Scripture. This was particularly needful in formulating statements concerning the triunity of God and the Incarnation of the Son of God. According to Torrance:

[The bishops and theologians attending the Council] were concerned in wrestling with the Holy Scriptures to express what they were compelled to think and hold within the context of the apostolic tradition under the impact of God's self-revelation through the Word and Spirit of Christ, and on that basis alone, to confess their faith in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. And thereby they sought to provide continuing generations of people in the Church with an evangelical and apostolic framework within which continuing interpretation of Holy Scripture, proclamation of the truth of the Gospel, and instruction in the faith could be carried out (p289).

We are richly blessed to have inherited this "evangelical and apostolic framework," which defines and thus defends the deposit of faith once and for all given to the church by Jesus through his Apostles. By remaining true to this framework, the Church remains connected to Christ himself, who is the one Apostle in the absolute sense. That connection includes faithfully reading, understanding and teaching the deposit of faith given in Holy Scripture, and it includes faithful participation with Christ in his ongoing apostolic mission to the world, through his body, the Church.

The Creed's declaration of the church's apostolicity provides the basis for its concluding statement concerning the church's one baptism and issues pertaining to eschatology (the resurrection and the life to come). We will look at one baptism when next we return to this series.

The Mission of God: The Bible's grand narrative

2012-01-10T09:24:00.010-05:00

In The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible's Grand Narrative (IVP 2006), Christopher Wright leads us on a journey through the Bible using a "missiological hermeneutic." Concerning this journey, he asks...

Is it possible, is it legitimate, is it helpful for Christians to read the whole Bible from the angle of mission? The immediate challenge that bounced back was: it all depends on whose mission you mean. If by "mission" we are thinking of "missions," and the great and laudable efforts of cross cultural missionaries, then we would be struggling to defend an affirmative answer to the first question. While our human missionary endeavor can find ample justification and explicit textual imperative in the Bible, it would be a distorted and exaggerated hermeneutic, in my view, that tried to argue that the whole Bible was "about" mission in the narrowly defined sense of human missionary activities.

He continues:

The Bible renders and reveals to us the God whose creative and redemptive work is permeated from beginning to end with God's own great mission, his purposeful, sovereign intentionality. All mission or missions which we initiate, or into which we invest our own vocation, gifts and energies, flow from the prior and larger reality of the mission of God. God is on a mission, and we, in that wonderful phrase of Paul, are "co-workers with God."

Wright demonstrates that throughout Scripture, God reveals himself as the God whose driving purpose is that humanity have with him a knowing relationship. The consistency and universality of this message throughout Scripture is striking. For example, in the Old Testament...

Yahweh presents himself as the God who will to be known. This self-communicating drive is involved in everything God does in creation, revelation, salvation and judgment. Human beings therefore are summoned to know Yahweh as God, on the clear assumption that they can know him and that God wills that they should know him.

Wright presents the Bible as constituting the revelation of this mission of God. Furthermore, as we embrace this revelation, we have in our possession the hermeneutical key that unlocks the Bible's purpose as a grand narrative that gives shape to a biblical, God-centered worldview.

For Wright, this grand narrative stretches from creation to new creation, and accounts for everything in between. It is The Story that tells where we have come from, how we got here, who we are, why the world is in the mess it is, how it can be (and has been) changed, and where we ultimately are going. It is the story of the mission of God revealed to us in Scripture as Father, Son and Spirit. It is the story demonstrating that the mission of this triune God is the heartbeat of all reality: all creation, all history and all that lies ahead.

Wright then notes that this biblical, missional worldview is disturbingly subversive in that it relativizes our place in the grand scheme of things. We tend to ask, "Where does God fit into the story of my life?" But the real question is, "Where does my little life fit into the great story of God's mission?" We tend to want a purpose that has been tailored just right for our individual life. But a biblical worldview sees our life's purpose as wrapped up in the great mission of God for the whole of creation. We tend to argue about what the church's mission should be. But the real question is this: "What kind of church has God formed for his mission to the world?"

Sometimes our motivations for mission are inconsistent with the Bible's grand narrative. We tend to want numerical results ("nickels and noses"), emotional highs, amazing experiences, or personal respect and fulfillment. However, when our worldview is shaped by the revelation of who God is and what he is doing on mission to the world, then we see ourselves as part of what he is doing to call all people to himself, When our identity is conformed to this reality, then we are able to act in harmony with God's design as co-workers with him in his mission to all humanity.

For a more detailed review of this helpful book, click here.

Epiphany Sunday

2012-01-07T08:49:00.002-05:00

Sunday, January 8, 2012 will be celebrated in many churches as Epiphany Sunday. This post about Epiphany repeats one that appeared here in 2008.

January 6 (the 12th day of Christmas) is designated by church tradition as "Epiphany." It is celebrated by many churches on the following Sunday, known as "Epiphany Sunday."

The term epiphany means "to show," "make known" or "reveal." In some Western churches, it remembers the coming of the Magi (wise men) bringing gifts to the Christ child, who by so doing "reveal" Jesus as the Lord and King of all humanity (Jews and Gentiles included).

In some Eastern Churches, Epiphany also commemorates Jesus’ baptism by which he was consecrated in his mission as the God-man, sent from the Father, anointed by the Spirit, for the benefit of all humanity - indeed, for the benefit of all creation.

Epiphany powerfully presents the Gospel of the inclusion of all people (and all creation) in God's triune love and life through the substitutionary and representative (vicarious) humanity of the Son of God come to us, as one of us, through incarnation as the Son of Man (including his birth, life, ministry, death, resurrection, ascension, continuing session from heaven, and promised return when he is revealed in all his glory at the final consummation of this age).

The Magi who brought gifts to the infant Jesus were the first Gentiles to acknowledge Jesus as "King" and thus they were the first to "show" or "reveal" Jesus to a wider world as the incarnate Christ. This act of worship by the Magi, which corresponded to Simeon’s prophetic statement that this child Jesus would be "a light for revelation to the Gentiles" (Luke 2:32), was one of the first indications that Jesus' vicarious life embraces all people, all nations and all races.

The work of the Father, in Jesus, through the Holy Spirit for humankind's salvation is truly for all. Therefore, Epiphany is also a good time to focus on the mission of the church to participate in the ministry that Jesus is now doing through the Holy Spirit to reveal God and his salvation to all people. It is also a good time to focus on Christian fellowship, especially in healing the divisions of prejudice and bigotry that we all too often find between God’s children.

For a helpful GCI article concerning the season of Epiphany, click here.

A brief word for a New Year

2012-01-01T06:30:00.048-05:00

To all Surprising God readers: Happy New Year! Here is a brief word for 2012: Jesus is alive!

By this I mean that Jesus is not merely...

A concept to be studied
An historical personage to emulate

We are well advised, of course, to study and emulate Jesus. However, my prayer is that in 2012 we will experience and express even more fully the all-encompassing love and life of Jesus, our living Savior who is...

The incarnate Son of God - fully God, and fully human. When Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, he did not shed his humanity. He remains human (now glorified) forever.
Our Mediator. As both divine and human, Jesus continues to be the "go between" - the one who, in his own Person, unites humanity with God. Jesus is the Atonement.
Our High Priest. Jesus the God-man lives forever to make intercession for humanity.
The One who sends the Holy Spirit to educate all humanity concerning who Jesus is, and thus who we are because of who he is.
God at work in our world through the church. God is not absent and aloof from life on earth. He is present with us and for us in Jesus who, through the Holy Spirit, is actively at work in our midst. As the church formed and sent by the Holy Spirit, it is our high calling to participate in what Jesus is now doing in the world. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer was fond of saying, we are called to be "place-sharers" with Jesus - sharing the life that he is now sharing, through the Holy Spirit, with each person on earth.

In 2012, may we experience great joy as we share the love and life of God, in Jesus, through the Holy Spirit.

The church's holiness and catholicity (Nicene Creed #10)

2011-12-26T06:49:00.013-05:00

This post continues our look at the marks (identifying characteristics) of the Church as defined by the Nicene Creed. For other posts in this series, click a number: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13.

We come now to the church's holiness and catholicity.

Holiness
As noted by Thomas F. Torrance in The Trinitarian Faith, though holiness is God's will for the church...

...[it] does not derive from any moral goodness or purity of its members, but from the holiness of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The holiness of the Church is thus objectively grounded in the utterly transcendent holiness, glory and purity of God's being (pp280-281).

God comes among his people, the church, and in doing so sanctifies them - or as T.F. says, "implicates them" in God's own holiness. Coming among them as a holy God would annihilate his people, except that he comes with grace and mercy, and, ultimately, he comes through the incarnation of his Son. In Jesus Christ, God takes our diseased humanity into himself where it is sanctified (made holy). T.F. comments:

Since the Church was brought into being through [the Son of God's] assumption of our fallen and enslaved humanity into himself, the self-sanctification of Christ as the Holy One in its midst brings the holiness of the Holy Spirit to bear upon it in conviction and judgment of its unrighteousness, but nevertheless in such a way that the Church is justified in Christ and made holy with his holiness (pp281-282).

Thus the holiness of the church (its righteousness and sanctification) is not its own, but is derived from Christ, "who is Righteousness in his own being" (p282).

Jesus then presents his sanctified humanity to the world through his body, the church:

Through the self-sanctification of Christ in its midst and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit upon it, the Church has been chosen by God and set apart as a spiritual house and a royal priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ...[it is thus] the unique place where God is immediately present to us through the Holy Spirit in his very own being as God (p282).

Catholicity
In saying that the church is "catholic" the Creed is saying that it is "universal" or "all inclusive":

The Catholic Church is to be understood as embracing all dimensions of the people of God and their existence throughout space and time, for by the very nature of its unique foundation of Christ upon his apostles, and in virtue of the faith once and for all delivered to it by the apostles, the Church must ever be one and the same in all ages and places (p283).

The Creed thus correlates the catholicity of the Church with its apostolic faith, which is the basis for the church's one doctrine. The church's catholicity is also correlated with the "universal range of the incarnation and atonement" - for the Son of God "died and rose again for all people irrespective of who they are" (p284). T.F. comments further:

The oneness of the Church arises out of the interlocking of the incarnation and the atonement... the indivisibility of the Person and work of Christ as the one Mediator between God and man. This one Church is intrinsically catholic because it is the one Body of Christ in whom the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily in whom all things visible and invisible are gathered up and reconciled to God, and because as the Body of such a Christ the Church is itself the fullness of him who fills all things.

The catholicity of the Church, then, refers to the intensive wholeness and fullness of the Church in Christ, to the coordination of the Church, everywhere, in every place, and throughout all space and time, with the wholeness and fullness of Christ himself (p285).

When we next return to this series on the Creed, we'll discuss the apostolicity of the church.

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-22T08:02:00.000-05:00

Each Christmas reminds us anew of the glorious truth concerning the birth of Jesus Christ - God in the flesh come to rescue us through his life, death, resurrection and ascension.

The video embedded below presents Christmas in this whole-gospel context. May your Christmas celebrations be similarly focused, leading to an even deeper appreciation of God's love for you and all humanity.

When do you become a child of God?

2011-12-15T06:56:00.006-05:00

One of the readers of this blog sent this question:

Ephesians 1:13 says, “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation.” How then can we say that the whole world is already included in Christ, when not everyone has yet heard the gospel?

To answer, we need to note the larger passage in Ephesians chapter one (vv3-14, with v13 bold-faced):

3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. 4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5 he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will-- 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace 8 that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. 9 And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, 10 to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment-- to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ. 11 In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, 12 in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. 13 And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, 14 who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession-- to the praise of his glory.

Note that the primary subject here is what God predetermined to do, and now has done, in order to make us his children through adoption (v5) - an act that makes us "holy and blameless in his sight" (v4). God predestined us for this "before creation" (v4), thus the choosing for adoption has nothing to do with our action (including our personal belief). Moreover, the steps taken to make us his children were taken by God at no cost to us - God grants us this status "freely" (v6).

Also note (and this is critical), that this status is granted to us "in Christ." For Paul, the phrase, "in Christ" sums up a large and glorious truth about what happened to humanity through the birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension of the incarnate Son of God, Jesus Christ. By joining our humanity to his divinity, then living, dying, rising to new life and taking that life to heaven, Jesus re-created our humanity; as Paul says in v7, he accomplished humanity's "redemption."

But when did that redemption through adoption occur? Paul answers: "When the times..reached their fulfillment" (v10a) - a time that Paul pinpoints here as occurring when Jesus gave his life for us ("through his blood," v7). And that event occurred nearly 2,000 years ago! Thus, for us (and all humanity), it is an accomplished fact.

However, not all people know of this accomplished fact. And thus not all have come to believe in, and thereby embrace their true status as dearly loved, adopted children of God, in Christ. The work of the Holy Spirit on this side of Jesus' ascension to heaven is to make this adoption/redemption known to humanity. That is why Paul here addresses these first-century Ephesian believers as among "the first to hope in Christ" (v12). And speaking of these believers (those who know of their adoption/inclusion), he says in v13 that they came to know of it (and subsequently believe in it) when they heard "the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation" (v13b).

Given this flow of Paul's logic, we are not justified in reading v13 as though it says that it is our belief that causes (or leads to) our inclusion/adoption in Christ. Unfortunately, the way the NIV translates this verse might lead to this misunderstanding. The more literal NASB translation is to be preferred:

13 In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation--having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, 14 who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God's own possession, to the praise of His glory.

It is not our belief that makes us God's adopted children. However when the Holy Spirit leads us to personal belief, he begins a special/new work in our lives by which we are "sealed." Through this sealing (the sealing of this knowledge in our minds and hearts), our adoption becomes "real" to us - it becomes our new, defining identity. Through the Spirit's work in our lives we come to understand and embrace who we actually are in Christ (God's adopted children). For us, this realization changes everything. It is one thing to be a child of God and not know it. It is quite another to be a child and know and embrace it - thus allowing that knowledge to redefine and thus transform our lives. As Jesus told Nicodemus, it is tantamount to being born again!

Part of what this gift of knowledge from the Holy Spirit brings to us is the great and abiding hope of our coming "inheritance" as God's children (v14). We are God's children already, however, there is a glory as his children that is our inheritance coming in the future. And only those sealed by the Spirit have this hope. And with that hope, this assurance, comes a sacred calling from the Father to join with Jesus who, through the Holy Spirit, is helping more and more of God's children come to know who they truly are.

Does your eschatology suffer from "ascension deficit disorder"?

2011-12-08T20:51:00.012-05:00

The Theological Turn in Youth Ministry by Andrew Root and Kenda Creasy Dean includes a chapter from Dean titled, Ascension Deficit Disorder (Youth Ministry as a Laboratory for Hope). She masterfully shows that the purpose for eschatology (the study of God's ultimate purposes for humankind) is not to help us predict the future, but to give us hope - a commodity often in short supply due to what Creasy calls, "ascension deficit disorder (A.D.D.)," which is the tendency:

...to act as though the future God has promised in Jesus Christ is a fairy tale, which shrivels our ability to practice hope. When we don't believe that Christ's promise to secure the future is true, we live as people fearful for our own prospects, protecting ourselves instead of allowing the Holy Spirit to use us as Christ's witnesses. A.D.D. is the reason churches get distracted so easily from the work Jesus commissioned us for: to be his witnesses throughout the earth. Instead, we are stymied and stressed, straining to make sense of the future's cloudy uncertainty" (p202).

For Creasy, the solution to this A.D.D. is to have faith in the incarnate, risen, ascended, and returning Son of God - a faith that gives rise to an "eschatological imagination," which is:

...the ability to envision the counter-intuitive world God intends, and to live into the fact that this world has already started to unfold... Churches with eschatological imaginations do not merely cling to hope; they enact it, because the kingdom of God is not just up ahead. The kingdom of God is at hand" (p203).

Creasy continues:

Eschatology is neither a way to predict the future nor a doctrine about heaven and hell. Rather, eschatology simply means that we know how the story ends - God wins. And because God has bound Godself to humanity in Jesus Christ, if God wins, we win too. Knowing the "end of the story" therefore funds Christian hope, and it profoundly affects the way we live now. If we no longer need to worry about the future, we can let go of our survival anxiety. This allows us to live life as it unfolds, one play at a time, without worrying about the score or about running out of time... When we know how the game ends, we don't sweat the individual plays, even the ones we lose.... A sturdy eschatology makes the Christian community an "unanxious presence" in the world because we are not obsessed with life's final score. Instead of functioning as a spiritual weathervane, eschatology enables us to read the "signs of our times" in light of an ending God has already written (p204).

Indeed, the message of Advent is one of hope in light of the ultimate end (the eschaton), which is in continuity with the past coming of Jesus into our world at Bethlehem, and his present coming to us in the Holy Spirit. And so with this message of hope in mind, may all the readers of this blog enjoy the presence of the One, True and Blessed Hope, Jesus Christ, who, in himself, is "the reason for the season." May he bless you this Advent with a vivid eschatological imagination, and may that lead you into joy-filled celebration of his birth at Christmas.

The oneness of the Church (Nicene Creed #9)

2011-11-30T17:42:00.032-05:00

In this post we continue looking at the marks (identifying characteristics) of the Church as defined in the Nicene Creed. For other posts in the series, click a number: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13.

As with the other marks of the Church, the Creed presents its oneness as grounded in its union and communion with the Holy Trinity. As noted by Thomas F. Torrance (in his book, The Trinitarian Faith), the Trinity is...

The regulative center to which all the worship, faith and mission of the Church take their shape: from the Father, through the Son and in the Spirit, and to the Father, through the Son and in the Spirit (p263a).

The Creed thus proclaims a Christ-centered, incarnational (participatory), Trinitarian ecclesiology (doctrine of the Church). T.F. continues:

Everything we say of the Church must be consistent with the consubstantial oneness between the Son and the Father and be an expression of the union and communion between God and man effected in the incarnate life and reconciling work of the Mediator [Jesus Christ]. That is to say, the doctrine of the Church must be expounded in terms of its internal relation and not some external relation, to Jesus Christ, for it is in Christ and his inherent relation to the Father and the Holy Spirit that the essential nature of the Church is to be found (p264).

This vital truth is the heart of Athanasius' biblical doctrine of the Church as the one Body of Christ. Note T.F.'s commentary here:

It is not due to some external relation in moral resemblance to Christ that the Church is his Body, but due to a real participation in him who is consubstantial with God the Father (p265a).

This participation (koinonia, communion) with Christ, which makes us his one Body, "is not one of nature but one of adoption and grace effected through the gift of the Spirit who comes to dwell in us as he dwells in God" (p265b). Thus this union and communion is deeply personal in that it happens within the incarnate person of Jesus himself, who in his dual nature as God and man, has united God and humanity in one person (p266).

Moreover, Jesus...

...Makes our humanity in him partake of the Holy Spirit with which he has been anointed and sanctified as man for our sakes, and thereby unites it through himself with the Godhead... The Church is thus to be regarded as constituting all who are reconciled to God in one body through the Cross and are made one in Christ, united with his humanity in such a way that he now comprises both in himself, their humanity and his own, as 'one new man,' for he is in them as they are in him (p267).

T.F. then emphasizes that the Church is the one Church of Christ only as it...

...Looks away from itself to its objective source and ground in the Godhead, and dwells in the Holy Trinity, for it is in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit that the Church and its faith are rooted and founded.... The Church is truly Church in so far as it dwells in the Holy Trinity and embodies the truth of the Gospel in its empirical life and worship (p268).

The Church's dwelling in the Holy Trinity is in Jesus, who in his representative humanity is the Church (p270). As members of this Church we are given to participate in the one Body of Christ. This participation is actualized through the one faith and one baptism of the Church (see pp269, 278). With this understanding our definition of what constitutes the one Church is being focused. Though all humanity has, via the incarnation, life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus, been (objectively) united to Christ, it is not accurate to say that all humanity is the Church. Rather, Jesus himself is the Church and we humans are part of his one Body as we, through the power of the Holy Spirit, personally (subjectively) participate.

Though the Spirit is at work in all people (poured out on "all flesh"), he is sent from the Father and the Son with a particular ministry of sanctification in the lives of those who are participants in the Church.

As T.F. notes...

The Church constitutes the sanctified community within which we may draw near to the Father through the Son and in the Spirit and share in the eternal life, light and love of God himself (p275).

Thus through the communion [koinonia, participation] of the Holy Spirit imparted to it by Christ, the Church is united to Christ as his body (p277).

Through the pouring out of the Holy Spirit upon it, the Church [is] constituted the unique 'place' where access to the Father through the Son [is] grounded in space and time among the nations of mankind (p278).

When we next return to this series on the Nicene Creed, we'll continue exploring these marks of the Church. Next up is the Church's holiness.

A God of wrath or of love?

2011-11-23T05:50:00.008-05:00

Is the God of the Old Testament a different God than the one portrayed in the New Testament? The answer is no, there is one God, who is revealed to us through Jesus as a triune communion of love: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Certainly, the Old Testament is full of examples of God punishing various nations and people (including Israel, his own people). The following post from Surprising God reader Jerome Ellard, addresses this issue:

"The Old Testament shows that God's punishments (or what he allows to beset his people) are the long, difficult road to restoration of relationship with him that he desires for them. All through the Old Testament we see the phrase "they will be my people and I will be their God." Here is a prime example, right in the middle of warnings and punishments:

“Is not Israel still my son, my darling child?” says the Lord. “I often have to punish him, but I still love him. That’s why I long for him and surely will have mercy on him" (Jeremiah 31:20, NLT).

"God's overarching love contains what John Eldredge calls a "fierce intentionality," similar to what my wife would say to our son when she must discipline him: "I love you too much to let you act this way!" God loved Israel and all humanity "too much" to let us remain in our darkness and misery.

"Understanding this dynamic that occurs throughout the Bible, helps us to avoid the mistake of thinking God is "mean" in the Old Testament but "loving" in the New. In fact, the Lord of the Old Testament is none other than the pre-incarnate Son of God, as noted by Paul in 1Cor 10:1-4:

1 For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers, that our forefathers were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. 2 They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. 3 They all ate the same spiritual food 4 and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.

"We see God's "fierce intentionality" expressed in Jesus' dealings with the Pharisees. He loves them, but he loves them too much to let them remain where they are. His desire for them is beautifully expressed in Matthew 23:37:

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing."

"There is a beautiful coherence to the story of the Bible, and Jesus and his love are right at the center!"

[For a helpful GCI article on this topic, click here. And click here for a previous post on this topic.]

The Church (Nicene Creed #8)

2011-11-16T06:08:00.013-05:00

The Adoration of the Trinity
by Albrecht Durer, 1511

In this post we continue exploring the Nicene Creed. For other posts in this series, click a number: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13.

We come now to the section of the Creed that addresses the Church:

[We believe] in the one holy catholic and apostolic Church. We confess one baptism for the remission of sins; we look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.

Note that the Creed declares the church to be one, holy, catholic and apostolic. These identifying characteristics are sometimes referred to as the "marks" of the Church. It is vital to see these characteristics within the overall Trinitarian context of the Creed.

One Church
The Creed declares that the church to be one in the sense that it is rooted in and thus expresses the essential oneness of the triune God. Reflecting on this, T.F. Torrance (in The Trinitarian Faith), writes the following:

[The Church is] the empirical community of men, women and children called into being through the proclamation of the Gospel, indwelt by the Holy Spirit in whom it is united to Christ and through him joined to God. Far from being a human institution it was founded by the Lord himself and rooted in the Holy Trinity. As Ignatius of Antioch [an early Church leader who may have been a disciple of John] taught that the members of the Church are united with Jesus Christ just as he is united with the Father. Hence whatever the Church does from beginning to end is done 'in the Son and the Father and the Spirit'. The Church is what it everywhere is in the world as a manifestation of the saving union with God incarnate in Jesus Christ....'Wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the universal Church' (p253).

Making reference to the writings of Irenaeus (which preceded, but heavily influenced the writing of the Creed), Torrance continues:

The [Church] is what it is through the incarnation of the Son of God in Christ who has gathered up and reformed the human race in himself, and through the astonishing event at Pentecost when God poured out his own Spirit upon the apostles and disciples of the Lord Jesus thereby giving birth or rather rebirth to the Church and making it participate in his own divine life and love (p254).

This Christocentric understanding of the church tells us that that the Church is formed to be a servant of Christ who, in the power of the Holy Spirit, is a servant of the Father's mission and kingdom. Thus "the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit occupied the unqualified center of Christian faith and life empirically as well as spiritually" (p255).

That is Holy
As noted by Torrance on p252, the Creed shows that the Church is holy because it is formed by the Holy Spirit (note in that regard, that the Creed's section on the Church follows immediately its section on the Holy Spirit - this is no accident). We are to revere and honor the Church as holy because upon it is the imprint of the character of the Holy Trinity. The Church's holiness is not its own, but rather its sharing in the holiness of God himself.

Through one baptism
The Creed's statement on the Church and its mission includes the reference to "one baptism" in the one name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This baptism is seen as the means by which people enter the one Church. As Torrance notes, the early church prepared candidates for baptism with thorough instruction in the Gospel. Thus baptism is grounded in the Holy Trinity and related directly to the truth of the Gospel. In this context, Torrance expands his definition of the Church:

Thus the Church may be described as the place in space and time where knowledge of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit becomes grounded in humanity, and union and communion with the Holy Trinity become embodied within the human race. Expressed the other way round, the Church is constituted by the Holy Spirit as the empirical counterpart of his sanctifying presence and activity in our midst, for in the Spirit we are made members of Christ the incarnate Son and through him have access to the Father... As Irenaeus...expressed it: "This Gift of God has been entrusted to the Church, as breath was to the first created man, that all members receiving it may be vivified, and the communication of Christ has been distributed within it, that is, the Holy Spirit, the earnest of incorruption and the confirmation of our faith, as the ladder of ascent to God... For where the Church is there is the Spirit of God; and where the Spirit of God is, there is the Church, and every kind of grace; but the Spirit is truth." As such the Church is constituted by Christ to be the receptacle of the Gospel proclaimed and handed on by the apostles... It was ultimately in the Gospels themselves that Irenaeus located the vivifying deposit committed to the Church, and handed on by the apostles. In this conception of the Church Irenaeus was clearly drawing out the implications of the New Testament injunction about "the faith once for all delivered to the saints" (p257).

In this way we are given to think of the Church as indwelt by Christ himself, who comes "clothed with the Gospel" (see p258). In this we see the importance of the Church's calling to proclaim the Gospel as it is presented in the writings of the Apostles (the New Testament). Through this proclamation, Jesus himself is proclaimed and through that proclamation the saving Word and power of God is at work in people's lives (see p260). In that context, Torrance adds this to his definition of the Church:

The Church [is] the community called to believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and brought into union and communion with God the Father through baptism and the regenerating gift of the Holy Spirit. By its very nature, therefore, the Church is tied up with the tradition of the apostolic...Gospel which is handed on from generation to generation with baptism: instruction in the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints and baptism in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are thus inseparable (p261).

Next time we return to this series, we'll discuss further these identifying marks of the Church.

Celebrating Advent and Christmas

2011-11-10T05:53:00.005-05:00

Click image to read full size.

We will soon enter the month-long season of Advent followed by Christmas. These celebrations of the "comings" of the incarnate Son of God, Jesus Christ, begin a new cycle in the annual worship calendar of the Christian church in the West.

For a Trinitarian perspective on the meaning of Advent and Christmas, along with resources for celebration, see the November issue of GCI's Equipper ezine, posted at mindev.gci.org/Web%20Documents/Equipper6.11.pdf.

If you would like to receive Equipper each month by email attachment, send your request to Ted Johnston. All issues of Equipper are posted at http://mindev.gci.org/equipper.htm.

The Eternal Spirit (Nicene Creed #7)

2011-11-03T07:16:00.041-04:00

In this post we continue exploring the Nicene Creed. For other posts in the series, click a number: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13.

We come now to the section of the Creed that addresses the Holy Spirit:

The Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets.

As T.F. Torrance notes (in The Trinitarian Faith), the Creed presents the Holy Spirit as...

...God himself...immediately present in our midst, miraculously and savingly at work, and through him God reveals himself as Lord, for God himself is the content of what he does for us and communicates to us. The Spirit is not just something divine or something akin to God emanating from him, not some sort of action at a distance or some kind of gift detachable from himself, for in the Holy Spirit God acts directly upon us himself, and in giving us his Holy Spirit God gives us nothing less than himself" (p191).

Torrance continues:

The Spirit of God is not the emission of some divine force detachable from God but the confrontation of human beings and their affairs with his own Self in which he brings the impact of his divine power and holiness to bear directly and personally upon their lives in judgment and salvation alike (pp192-3).

The deity of the Spirit and the doctrine of the Trinity
The Creed thus presents the biblical teaching that the Holy Spirit, with the Father and the Son, is fully God and thus is both the subject and object of our worship. As Torrance notes,

Faith in the Holy Spirit is to be held in a trinitarian frame in accordance with the ordinance of holy baptism into the one name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit...(p193).

Indeed, the trinitarian baptismal formula in Matthew 28:19 was of particular importance to the framers of the Creed in upholding the deity of the Holy Spirit, and establishing the doctrine of the Trinity. The framers also looked to several other passages of Scripture, including:

Mat 3:13-17, which tells of Jesus' baptism, where the Father acknowledges Jesus as his beloved Son and the Holy Spirit descends upon Jesus, anointing him as the Christ.
2 Cor. 13:14, which tells of the Son's grace, the Father's love, and of the communion of the Holy Spirit.
1 Cor 12:4-6, which tells of diversities of gifts but of the same Spirit, Lord (Son) and God (Father).
Acts 2:32-33, 1 Pet 1:2, 2 Thess 2:13-14, Eph 2:18 and Eph 4:4-6, which all include the triadic formula in one form or another.

Torrance comments:

...A definite doctrine of the Trinity was found to arise out of a faithful exegetical interpretation of the New Testament and out of the evangelical experience and liturgical life of the Church from the very beginning. It made explicit what was already implicit in the fundamental deposit of faith. It was with the formulation of the homoousion [meaning "of one being"] clarifying and expressing the essential connection of the Son to the Father upon which the very Gospel rested, and with the application of the homoousion to the Holy Spirit to express his oneness in being with the Godhead of the Father, that the theological structure the trinitarian understanding of the Godhead unfolded and established itself firmly within the mind of the Church (p199).

Thus the Creed teaches that to be indwelt by the Holy Spirit is to be indwelt by God himself. Indeed, the Holy Spirit is "the Lord God in the full reality of his divine life and being... In sending to us his Spirit God has given us, not just something of himself, but his very Self" (p209).

The Spirit's gifts to humanity
When the Holy Spirit comes, he does so from the inner communion of the Holy Trinity. And as he comes, he brings God's own revelation, life-giving power and manifold gifts. This revelation is not of the Spirit himself, but through the Spirit of the "Face of the Father...seen in the Son" (p212). Thus we understand that our understanding of God is "from the Father, shining in the Son and becoming manifest through the Spirit" (p212). Viewed from our perspective, this means that "our mind, enlightened by the Spirit, looks toward the Son, and in him as in an image, sees the Father" (p212). Hallelujah!

Along with this revelation of God, the Holy Spirit brings to us God's own life-giving power and his many spiritual gifts (p220, 225). These are not merely things that God has, but what God, in himself, is. As Torrance is fond of saying, "The Giver and the Gift are one." T.F. continues the thought...

We must think of the Holy Spirit, then, as the creative, energizing, enlightening presence of God who freely interacts with his human creatures in such a way as to sustain their relation to himself as the source of their spiritual, personal and rational life (p227).... Moreover by his presence the Holy Spirit is the 'place'... where men may meet with God and are enabled to have communion with him, receive his revelation and worship him (p229).

And so we conclude this post with a short prayer: Come Holy Spirit!

The Incarnate Savior (Nicene Creed #6)

2011-10-26T06:45:00.035-04:00

This post continues our series exploring the Nicene Creed (read other posts in the series by clicking a number: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13). We come now to important words defining the Person and work of Jesus Christ:

Who for us men and our salvation, came down from heaven, and was made flesh from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and was made man and was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried, and the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of God the Father. And he shall come again in glory to judge both the living and the dead; his kingdom shall have no end.

A key point here is that our salvation is the act of God himself, who through the Incarnation...

...takes the concrete form of the actual historical man Jesus. As St Paul had expressed it: "God our Savior desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is on Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus who gave himself a ransom for all" [1Tim 2.4-6]. For Athanasius [a primary author of the Creed] this meant that the mediation of Christ involved a twofold movement, from God to man and from man to God, and that both divine and human activity in Christ must be regarded as issuing from one Person. Here we see again the soteriological [saving] significance of the Nicene homoousion: If Jesus Christ the incarnate Son is not true God from true God, then we are not saved, for it is only God who can save; but if Jesus Christ is not truly man, then salvation does not touch our human existence and condition. The message of the Gospel, however, is that Jesus Christ embodies in his human actuality the personal presence and activity of God. In him God has really become man, become what we are, and so lives and acts, God though he is, "as man for us." Only God can save, but he saves precisely as man - Jesus Christ is God's act... (T.F. Torrance in The Trinitarian Faith, pp148-9).

Thus the doctrine of the Incarnation stands at the center of the Creed's assertion that salvation is fundamentally personal. It is accomplished by who the Son of God is and by what he does in person by becoming fully and truly human (the Incarnation); and as human, being born, living, suffering, dying, rising and ascending on our behalf. This points to the related doctrine of the vicarious (representative-substitutionary) humanity of Jesus. For comments from David Torrance (T.F.'s brother) on this vital doctrine click here (and start watching the video at 11:28). Here are T.F.'s related comments:

It was the whole man that the Son of God came to redeem by becoming man himself and effecting our salvation in and through the very humanity he appropriated from us - if the humanity of Christ were in any way deficient, all that he is said to have done in offering himself in sacrifice "for our sakes", "on our behalf" and "in our place" would be quite meaningless....The whole life of Christ is understood as a continuous vicarious sacrifice and oblation which, as such, is indivisible, for everything he assumed from us is organically united in his one Person and work as Savior and Mediator" (p152).

Torrance emphasizes that the human nature, which the Son of God assumed in the Incarnation, was the same nature we have, "the defiled nature of man" (p153). This is vital to understand, because it is only by being united with the person of God that our defiled human nature is healed. Thus we understand that the atoning work of Jesus on our behalf is something that happens within Jesus' own Person...

...within the incarnate constitution of his Person as Mediator... As the Head of creation, in whom all things consist, he is the only one who really can act on behalf of all and save them. ...Thus the redemptive work of Christ was fully representative and truly universal in its range. Its vicarious efficacy has its force through the union of his divine Person as Creator and Lord with us in our creaturely being, whereby he lays hold of us in himself and acts for us from out of the inner depths of his coexistence with us and our existence in him, delivering us from the sentence of death upon us, and from the corruption and perdition that have overtaken us (pp155-6).

Torrance continues:

Through his incarnation the Son of God has made himself one with us as we are, and indeed made himself what we are, thereby not only making our nature his own but taking on himself our lost condition subject to condemnation and death, all in order that he might substitute himself in our place, discharge our debt, and offer himself in atoning sacrifice to God on our behalf. Since sin and its judgment have affected the actual nature of death as we experience it, Christ has made our death and fate his own, thereby taking on himself the penalty due to all in death, destroying the power of sin and its stronghold in death, and thus redeeming or rescuing us from its dominion (p157).

Thus the Creed emphasizes that the Incarnation was essentially redemptive and conversely, that redemption is inherently incarnational. Said another way, Jesus in his own Person is the atonement. Our reconciliation with God is not merely something Jesus did (external to himself), but something that he is in himself. This is why forensic (legal) theories of the Atonement are flawed. These theories conceptualize salvation as a transaction, rather than as the personal/relational act it truly is. If you take away the Incarnation, you remove the very ground of salvation. "God in Christ has substituted himself for us in making our sin and death his own that we may partake of his divine life and righteousness" (p161). God accomplished this atoning exchange for us, by transferring, in Christ...

...to himself [our] fallen Adamic humanity which he took from the Virgin Mary, that is, our perverted, corrupt, degenerate, diseased human nature enslaved to sin and subject to death under the condemnation of God. However, far from sinning himself or being contaminated by what he appropriated from us, Christ triumphed over the forces of evil entrenched in our human existence, bringing his own holiness, his own perfect obedience, to bear upon it in such a way as to condemn sin in the flesh and to deliver us from its power (p161)

The whole incarnational assumption of our human nature was at the same time a reconciling, healing, sanctifying and recreating activity. In making himself one with us he both took what is ours and imparted to us what is his (p162).

This atoning, redeeming exchange between us and Christ is at the heart of the Creed's doctrine of salvation - he became what we are in order that we might share in what he is - thus restoring our communion (fellowship) with God. Truly, our salvation is in Christ - the one who forever, and on our behalf, is fully divine and fully human.

Nicene Creed video

2011-10-20T13:14:00.005-04:00

Here's a moving rendition of the Nicene Creed - a worshipful meditation with music. Enjoy! And for commentary on this important creed, click on the corresponding number of each post in a continuing series: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Do we turn faith into a human work?

2011-10-14T12:31:00.000-04:00

We must avoid the tendency to see our faith as what saves us, thus turning faith into a human work. For a related discussion (with a powerful illustration), watch the excerpt below from a You're Included interview with trinitarian theologian Dr. Elmer Colyer.

Click here for more You're Included interviews and here for more excerpts.

Jesus Christ, God's Son (Nicene Creed #5)

2011-10-06T05:34:00.026-04:00

This post is part 5 in a series on the Nicene Creed. To read others, click on a number: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. In this post, we'll examine the section in the creed concerning Jesus Christ, God's Son:

[We believe] in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten from his Father before all ages, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one being with the Father, through whom all things were made.

Note how the creed defines Christ as from his Father. In this eternal relationship, he is begotten not made. The Father-Son relationship precedes any Creator-creature relationship.

This, of course, was a key issue when the creed was written. All sorts of heretical ideas conceived of Jesus as some sort of creation of God rather than as true God. The creed shows such ideas to be false by asserting the biblical truth that Christ is the One through whom all things were made. Thus when we are confronted in the Gospels with Jesus Christ as a man, we understand that he is God become man, while remaining God. And thus we are taken to the doctrine of the incarnation. Note Torrance's comment in The Trinitarian Faith:

The New Testament did not present Jesus Christ in contrast to God or alongside God, or argue from one to the other, as in ebionite or docetic Christologies [heretical doctrines that denied either the full divinity or the full humanity of Jesus Christ], but presented him in the undivided wholeness of his divine-human reality as God become man (p114).

Torrance's thought derives from Athanasius' stress on Christ as 'whole man and God together' (footnote 6, Trinitarian Faith, p114). If Jesus Christ were not fully God, we would not have in him the full revelation of God. But Jesus insisted that to see him is, indeed, to "see the Father" (John 14:9). Torrance continues:

That Jesus Christ is God's Son or Word, and that God's Son or Word is Jesus Christ, was the central evangelical truth which the Council of Nicaea reaffirmed, and had to reaffirm, in order to cope with... [various false] Christologies, threatening the integrity of the Church's faith. The church refused to weaken or compromise faith in Jesus Christ as God and man in one Person, for if he was not really God then there was no divine reality in anything he said or did, and if he was not really man then what God did in him had no saving relevance for human beings (p115).

One being with the Father
This part of the creed spells out in detail how it is Christ is related to the Father. It does so with an essential phrase that declares Christ to be of one being with the Father (homoousius to Patri in Greek). To this phrase is added, through whom all things were made, so as to emphasize the identification of the Son with the Creator (and thus that the Son preexists creation).

The point is that Jesus Christ as fully God, shares with the Father the one being (ousius in Greek, meaning being, substance or nature) of God. Jesus Christ is fully God in his very being and nature. To make this clear, the creed applies the biblical expressions of by, from and of God to the incarnate Son. What is the very being of the Father is entirely the being of the Son. Said another way, Jesus Christ is the Son of the Father from his very being, that is, from his essential reality and nature. Torrance elaborates:

The Father/Son relation falls within the one being of God, the Father and the Son inhering and coexisting eternally, wholly and perfectly in one another. God is Father precisely as he is eternally the Father of the Son, and the Son is God of God precisely as he is eternally Son of the Father. There is perfect and eternal mutuality between the Father and the Son, without any 'interval' in being, time or knowledge between them (p119).

This is in keeping with the teaching of Athanasius that "the son is continuously coeternal with the Father" (footnote 28, p120). This idea is expressed in the creed using the biblical image of light:

[Just as] light is never without its radiance, so the Father is never without his Son or without his Word. Moreover, just as light and radiance are one and are not alien to one another, so the Father and the Son are one and are not alien to one another but are of one and the same being. And just as God is eternal light, so the Son of God as eternal radiance of God is himself eternally light without beginning and without end (p121).

Athanasius emphasized the essential oneness (the homoousion in Greek) of the Father and the Son by stating that "the Son is everything that the Father is, except Father" (p124). Torrance puts it this way: "The incarnate Son has all the prerogatives of God, except Fatherhood" (p124).

So what?
Torrance then goes on the discuss at length the great significance of the homoousial relationship between the Father and his Son. An important point is that it is this concept that served as the measuring rod (canon) by which many of the individuals who authored the creed, also determined which book were accepted into the New Testament canon. Books that upheld the essential oneness of the Father and the Son were accepted; books that did not were rejected. In short, the homoousian served as the hermeneutical principle by which the content of the New Testament is determined. It must, therefore serve as the hermeneutical principle by which the meaning of these books is undertood.

This principle, of course, points to the ultimate canon of Scripture and, indeed of all truth - a who, not a what: the Lord Jesus Christ. Here are some of Torrance's comments:

The primary and all-embracing significance of the homoousion was its categorical assertion that Jesus Christ is God, and that as God he shares equally with the Father in the one being of the Godhead. As the only begotten Son of the Father he is the embodiment of the whole being of God and his exclusive self-revelation as the Word made flesh (p133).

To believe in the Lord Jesus Christ is to believe in God himself... In the incarnation God has revealed himself to us... God is completely identical with his self-revelation in Jesus Christ. ...The Son of God in his incarnate Person is the place where we may know the Father as he is in himself... The homoousion asserts that God is eternally in himself what he is in Jesus Christ, and, therefore, that there is no dark unknown God behind the back of Jesus Christ, but only he who is made known to us in Jesus Christ (p135)....The utterly astonishing thing proclaimed in the Gospel is that God himself came among us precisely as man... in body, mind and soul (p136).

This is good news, because it means that there is "no division between the acts of the Son and the acts of God" (p137). In Jesus we see (and taste and feel!) that God truly is for us. Torrance comments:

God himself is the content of his saving grace in Jesus Christ. In Jesus Christ the Giver of grace and the Gift of grace are one and the same, for in him and through him it is none other than God himself who is savingly and creatively at work for us and our salvation (p138).

Nicene theology rejected entirely the idea that grace is a created medium between God and man. Rather is grace to be regarded as the self-giving of God to us in his incarnate Son in whom the Gift and the Giver are indivisibly one (p14).

And now, with this concept in mind, let us fast forward to the final judgment. There we find that our Judge is none other than this incarnate Son, Jesus Christ. It is he who will judge all humans at the Last Day. Or as Michael Card sings, we will "look into our Judge's eyes and see our Savior there." The God who judges is no different than the God who saves. And that is VERY good news - based not on hopeful speculation, but on the eternal homoousial relation between the Father and his incarnate Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Can people get out of hell?

2011-09-29T18:04:00.002-04:00

Dante and Virgil in Hell
by William-Adolphe Bouquereau, 1850

In a previous post, I noted a question raised by Rob Bell in his controversial book, Love Wins. That question is this: Can people get out of hell?

To answer this question, we must consider two others:

Is a person's fate determined permanently at death?
If not, on what basis might those consigned to hell get out?

Many Christians answer "yes" to question number one. In support of their position they frequently cite Hebrews 9:27, understanding this scripture to assert that upon death, a person is judged and the decision rendered is irreversible.

However, using this passage to make this point is, in my view, questionable. Note that the context is the universal scope of Jesus' substitutionary, atoning work, which he did "once for all" (v26). He does not accomplish this work at some future time (such as some point prior to or including the moment of our death). Also, note how v27b points forward to the future when Jesus will "appear a second time...to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him." Might it be that some who are "waiting" have not yet met Jesus personally, yet will welcome him with a heart of repentance now that they see him 'face to face'?

I would also note that what we find in Scripture is not an emphasis on the moment of the death of an individual person, but on the moment when all people will rise to face Jesus in what is often termed the "general resurrection" (a time Jesus refers to in John 5:28-29).

Some take Jesus' words to mean that when a person rises they rise to hear pronounced an irreversible sentence determined by the life that ended in their death before the resurrection. With that reasoning, we're back to square one, namely that one's fate is determined irreversibly at the moment of death.

But not so quick! One also has to give credence to the verses that at least hint at an opportunity for a postmortem change of heart. Note the sequence in Revelation 20-22. In chapter 20 we find the general resurrection and the judgment that comes at that time. Then we find in the first part of chapter 21 the ushering in of a new heaven/earth with its Holy City, wherein everything is made new (21:5).

In 21:8, certain persons, having been excluded from the blissful life within the City, are consigned to "the fiery lake" (v8). Now that sounds pretty final, doesn't it? However, note in 21:25 that the gates of this City remain open. Is this an indication that those outside (those consigned to "hell") are able to enter? Note in v14 the reference to certain people who at this time, "wash their robes," and thus "go through the gates [which remain open] into the city." Still, on the "outside" (of the City) are found people who refuse this washing. Nevertheless, v17 tells us that, "The Spirit and the bride say, 'Come!' And let him who hears say, 'Come!' Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life" (which flows in the City). We understand that this invitation is being given now, but this also seems to indicate an invitation then (after the 'final' judgment), being given to people outside the City (and thus in hell).

And so it seems that there is Scriptural reason to at least wonder about the possibility of a postmortem, post-resurrection, post-final judgment change of heart. Does hell have a cleansing/educational value? Perhaps some who, in this life or in the general resurrection, repudiate the forgiveness and acceptance they have with God in Christ, will, in hell, change their mind and enter through open gates into the Holy City (a symbol of communion with God).

As for my personal view on this matter, I don't think we can say with certainty, one way or the other, "thus saith the Lord." We simply are not given to know these details. I think what we can say is this: God never stops loving his children (including those in hell who continue to repudiate his love). We know this of God because we know Jesus who is the perfect, complete and final revelation of who God is and what God is like.

One final note: To believe that some people might leave hell, is not the same thing as embracing Universalism, as it is classically construed. If some leave hell, it will be because they, using the freedom God gives them, repent and thus decide to leave. But God will force such a decision on no one, and thus the possibility remains open that some will decide to repudiate God forever, and thus stay in hell forever. Thus we can not say that all will be saved (in the ultimate sense).

Father Almighty, our Creator (Nicene Creed #4)

2011-09-17T11:04:00.015-04:00

This post is part 4 in a series that explores the Nicene Creed. To read other parts, click on the corresponding number: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13.

We come now to the section of the Creed that speaks of God the Father:

One God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible.

Here the Creed asserts that the one God, in the person of the Father Almighty, is Creator (Maker) of all that is.

As we noted in part two of this series, the Creed emphasizes that God is one in being (Gk=ousia). Yet now the Creed begins to speak of the three persons of the one God, beginning with the Father, who as Almighty, is associated with his act of creating. This does not mean that the Father is Creator to the exclusion of the Son and Spirit. Rather (as noted by Tom Torrance in The Trinitarian Faith), the Creed is granting "primacy to the concept of the Fatherhood of God, for knowledge of God as Creator is taken from knowledge of God as Father, and not the other way round" (p76). And, of course, we receive this knowledge of the Father through the Son, by the Spirit.

The point being made is that the Father Almighty is the Source (or Fount) of all being - both the being of God (which is ultimate being), and the being of the creation, which is granted its being by God, who creates all that is out of nothing. Thus the creation is from the Father (as creative Source), through the Son (as creative Word), in the Holy Spirit (as creative Agent).

In associating the Fatherhood of God with the act of creating, the Creed is not asserting that God became Father by creating. The Father has always been Father (and thus it follows that the Son has always been Son of the Father). However, there was a time when the Father was not Creator. As Torrance notes, "God always had the power to create [he is the Father, Almighty], and did actually create because he was and is the Father of the Son. God is, and always is, Father, but to create something out of nothing utterly different from himself is an act of his will and freely follows from what he eternally and intrinsically is" (p87a).

Following Athanasius, Torrance draws a parallel between this original act of creation and God's subsequent act of incarnation. In both, God acts to create something entirely new (p88). There was a time when there was no creation, but God, as Father, became Creator and created the cosmos out of nothing. Similarly, there was a time when the eternal Son of God was not human, but became human through the incarnation, which is a stunning act of re-creation.

The reason for both creation and re-creation (incarnation) is that God does not will to exist for himself alone. God, who is complete in himself (three-in-one; one-in-three), lacks nothing and thus has no need for a creation. Rather, because God in his own triune nature is love, he wills to create in order to love his creation:

He does not will to exist for himself alone, but has freely and spontaneously brought a world into existence out of non-existence... Although he is utterly transcendent he does not hold himself aloof from his creation, but is freely present and at work within it, intervening personally and providentially in the events of the world and in the affairs of his human creatures... God created all things out of nothing and wishes them to exist as objects of his loving-kindness which he has now manifested to the world in Jesus Christ" (pp90-91).

Thus, according to Torrance, "the whole raison d'etre of the universe lies in the fact that God will not be alone, that he will not be without us" (p94). We were created for communion with the triune God of love, and in Christ we were re-created to make that communion possible, despite our sin. And so the Creed leads us to worship God the Father, who in his Almighty love both creates and re-creates, providing for all humanity (the object of his love) a means to share forever in his divine, triune communion.

A Trinitarian, relational worldview

2011-09-11T05:45:00.003-04:00

How does one make sense of the world and God's relationship with it? These are always big questions, but of particular note as we remember 9/11.

Though the video below does not address 9/11 specifically, it provides relevant insight. Jim Cantelon, a host of the Canadian program 100 Huntley Street, interviews L.T. Jeyachandran concerning how a trinitarian, relational theology informs L.T.'s understanding of the world. L.T. is an apologist and speaker who oversees the Singapore operations of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

Food for thought (and feel free to comment)!

One God, the Father (Nicene Creed, #3)

2011-09-04T13:42:00.012-04:00

This is part three of a series exploring the Nicene Creed. To read other parts, click on the corresponding number: 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. Part 1 looked at the Creed's history, and part 2 looked at its opening phrase, We believe. Now we'll expand on that, looking at the longer phrase...

We believe in one God, the Father...

The Creed was written to combat heresies infecting the fourth century church. Of particular concern was the dualistic idea that God (being spirit and thus transcendent), is necessarily separate from the material world, including humanity. This non-biblical worldview, which emerged out of pagan Greek philosophy, was embraced by some influential church leaders. As a result, some denied Jesus' humanity, while others (notably Arius of Alexandria) denied Jesus' divinity. Arius and others also denied that the Holy Spirit was a divine person.

The Council of Nicaea went on the offensive against these heresies, seeking to understand and uphold what Scripture declares to be true of the triune God revealed in and through the incarnate Son of God, Jesus Christ, who...

...Came among us as man; and by what he was as man...revealed to us what he was and is as God. That is to say, without giving up his divine nature, he united himself to us in our human nature so completely, that by living out his divine life within our human life as a real human life he revealed something of the innermost secret of his own divine life as Son of the Father (T.F. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith, p55).

In Jesus, all dualistic views of God and of the world (including humanity) are obliterated. In his divinity, Jesus shares with the Father and the Holy Spirit the one being of God. Thus our knowledge of the Father and of the Holy Spirit coincide in the person of Jesus, who as Torrance notes, is "the very reality of God in his self-communication to us" (p63). Jesus said it very simply: "If you have seen me, you have seen the Father" (John 14:9). Jesus reveals God because Jesus is God.

The Nicaean Council wrestled to understand, accurately communicate, and thus defend this trinitarian revelation. Its profound assertions state that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, though not the same person, share the one being of the one God. Said another way, God who is one in being, is three in person.

Though we barely have begun the Creed, already we are confessing that there is "one God," and that this one God is tri-personal. Thus, the Creed immediately asserts the identity of the first person of the Trinity, who is
"the Father." Torrance comments:

"...The very center of saving faith is belief not merely in God, but in God as Father; not merely in Christ but in Christ as the Son of God... It is understanding of the Fatherhood of God, mediated in and through the Person and Work of Jesus Christ, his beloved Son, that governs all that is truly thought and said of God (p77).

And that includes what is thought and said of God in his work, including his work of creation. This is the issue that the Creed next addresses. We'll pick it up there next time as we explore the Nicene Creed.

Will all be saved?

2011-08-27T10:49:00.017-04:00

Rob Bell asks this question in his book, Love Wins. Doing so has produced accusations of heresy and a firestorm of controversy surrounding the topics of heaven, hell and salvation. Here is a short video in which Rob summarizes the book's main points:

Is Rob Bell a universalist?
Despite accusations to the contrary, Rob denies being a universalist. He believes that no one can know what people will ultimately decide concerning God and his grace. However, Rob wonders if God's love might eventually overcome any resistance, as people open their hearts to God and embrace their salvation in Christ. Perhaps it is accurate to call Rob a "hopeful universalist."

Torrance on universalism
Regarding universalism, I find helpful the perspective of trinitarian theologian Thomas F Torrance. T.F. notes that, "whether all men will as a matter of fact be saved or not, in the nature of the case, cannot be known" (Scottish Journal of Theology 2 [1949] 310-18, quoted in In the End, God, by John A.T. Robinson, Wipf and Stock: 2011, p148). Torrance gives two reasons: 1) The irrational mystery of evil, and 2) The truth that God gives each person the freedom to say "no" to him - potentially forever.

Both of these reasons must be seen in the light of the deeper truth of God's election, which, in Torrance's view...

...expresses the universal action of God's grace in such a way that, far from dissolving the personal elements of choice and decision, it establishes them.

Election means nothing more and nothing less than the complete action of God's eternal love, that "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth on him should not perish but have everlasting life." It is the eternal decision of God who will not be without us entering time as grace, choosing us and appropriating us for himself, and who will not let us go. Election is the love of God enacted and inserted into history in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, so that in the strictest sense Jesus Christ is the election of God...

The great fact of the gospel then is this: that God has actually chosen us in Jesus Christ in spite of our sin, and that in the death of Christ that election has become a fait accompli [accomplished fact]. It means too that God has chosen all men, in as much as Christ died for all men, and because that is once and for all no one can ever elude the election of his love....Every man's being is bound up for ever with the one and indivisible act of God's love in Jesus Christ (Robinson, pp148-150).

This is true for all people - whether they accept their inclusion (election) in Christ, or reject it. Thus people in heaven are included, as are people in hell. What then is the difference? Those in heaven embrace their inclusion, while those in hell reject it.

But how could a person who is included in God's life (which means that they are accepted, forgiven and loved), reject that life, and thus consign themselves to hell? Again, Torrance cites both human freedom and the irrational nature of evil (the "mystery of iniquity"). As he notes, "to choose our own way [in rejecting God] and yet in that choice still be chosen by God would be hell" (Robinson, p151). Reflecting on this irrational, inexplicable reality of hell, Torrance wonders...

Can we imagine anything more appalling than that a man should use the very power that God gives him to choose...should choose to depart from God, and yet be unable to depart, because in spite of all he is still grasped by God in an act of eternal love that will not let him go? The choice by God's love - once and for all enacted in the cross of Jesus - holds that man in being in spite of the fact that he chooses the very contradiction of love and life and being... Love will not let him go. Even when a man has made his bed in hell God's hand of love will continue to grasp him there. To choose finally and forever - unfathomable mystery of iniquity - to say "No" to Jesus is to be held in a hell of one's own choosing and making. It is not God who makes hell, for hell is the contradiction of all that is of God (Robinson, p151).

And so, for Torrance, hell is a real possibility, and that possibility cancels out any doctrine of universalism. It seems that Rob Bell makes his point from essentially the same theological perspective. However, he does not give a full-orbed theological/biblical defense - I hope he will do so at some point.

Can people get out of hell?
Rob also wonders if hell is a reversible fate. Is it possible that some in hell will repent (change their mind), and embrace the inclusion they have in God's love and life, and leave? This idea that hell might have a redemptive value is utterly rejected by many Christians as unscriptural. But is it? We'll have to leave that question for another time.

Is God's forgiveness conditional?

2011-08-20T08:18:00.013-04:00

Are there things we must do before God will forgive us? Many answer 'yes,' often making two claims:

That God, being holy, stores up wrath against the sinner (here they typically cite Rom 2:5). Moreover, God will not let go of this wrath, through forgiveness, until the sinner repents (which to them, includes asking God for his forgiveness).
That God will not forgive the sinner until they forgive those who have sinned against them (here they typically cite Jesus' words in Mat 6:14-15 and 18:21-35).

I address the second claim in another post, so I'll focus here on the first. What I understand Scripture to teach (when read in the light of the gospel of grace), is that God's forgiveness of all humanity is unconditional and has already been granted.

First, I note a disconcerting paradox: Those who claim that God will not forgive us until we repent, often claim that we should forgive those who have offended us, whether they repent or not. I agree that our forgiveness of others should be unconditional; but does that mean that we are required to be more generous with our forgiveness than God is with his? How bizarre to think so!

And how untrue! To forgive others unconditionally is not to trump God, but to be like God. We forgive others unconditionally, because that is how God has forgiven us. Stated more accurately, in forgiving others unconditionally, we participate in God's unconditional forgiveness of all humanity. Conversely, when we withhold forgiveness, we block our experience of God's unconditional forgiveness. This is what I understand Jesus to mean when he instructs us to pray to our Father in Heaven, "forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."

Second, I note that God the Father is not one way toward sinners and Jesus another. Jesus is "a friend of sinners." He said, "if you have seen me, you have seen the Father." Therefore, we can be assured that the Father is also a friend of sinners. His "wrath" is toward sin, not sinners - precisely because he is their friend, and knows the destruction that sin brings into the lives of his friends.

And so, in wrath against sin, and in love and friendship toward sinners, the Father, with the Son and Holy Spirit (the Trinity, which has one undivided being and thus mind and will), acted on behalf of humanity (sinners all), to bring healing through forgiveness. This was accomplished for humanity by God through the Son of God who through the incarnation became our representative and substitute. On earth he lived a perfect life while bearing our diseased nature. He then died our death, and rose to new (glorified) human life and ascended to heaven. Through Jesus, God accomplished his will to reconcile humanity to himself, forgiving all sin. That forgiveness came not by sweeping sin aside, but by decisively dealing with it, through Jesus, on our behalf.

Thus, God's forgiveness of all sin (and all sinners) is accomplished fact - granted in Jesus, unconditionally to all people. For us, it is a free gift (a gift of grace). However, for God, it is a gift bought at great price - the life of his Son, Jesus Christ.

If this gift of forgiveness is already given, why then the many scriptures calling people to repentance? Certainly not to earn what is free, rather it is to change one's mind (the New Testament word for repentance is the Greek word metanoia, meaning literally to change one's mind). Through repentance, we change our mind, agreeing with God's assessment concerning our sin (as horribly destructive). We agree as we confess our sin to God (and one another) - allowing us to appreciate and thus embrace the forgiveness that we already have from God. And this embrace is important - it makes 'real' in our personal experience what is already established in God's will and heart - our unconditional forgiveness.

The journey with Jesus

2011-08-11T06:01:00.073-04:00

In a recent You're Included video, Dr. Alan Torrance beautifully and profoundly summarizes the Christian life as, "our sharing by the Spirit in the Incarnate Son's communion with the Father."

As noted frequently in this blog, the Son of God, our Creator and Sustainer, united himself to all humanity by adding humanity to his divinity in the person of the God-man, Jesus Christ.

Though not all people know of and thus personally experience this established union with Jesus, Christians do, and through the Holy Spirit they share actively in the Son's communion with his Father. Is their sharing perfect? No. Christians, like all human beings, are a work in progress. Therefore,I think it's helpful to think of this union leading to communion as a journey with Jesus. As I study Jesus' earthly life in Scripture, I see the journey as consisting of three basic steps (or, better yet, patterns of being and doing) that are grounded in and expressive of God's own life and love:

1. Seeking the lost
The journey begins for all people in a condition of not knowing of their true identity in Jesus (as it says in Col. 3:3, our true life is "hidden in Christ with God"). Jesus refers to such people as 'lost' (as in lost sheep, see Luke 15:3-7). Though Jesus is their devoted, loving shepherd (they belong to him and are united to him), they have no recognition of this reality. And so Jesus seeks after them (Luke 19:10), so that they may come to know him, and in knowing, to follow him.

2. Nurturing believers
In the power of the Holy Spirit, through Jesus' initiative (often involving his followers with him), the lost become found - the blind begin to see - the deaf begin to hear - the lame begin to walk - non-believers become believers. Jesus, with the assistance of the church, nurtures these believers in the faith - building them up in Christ (Col 2:7) and helping them to walk in the Spirit (Gal 5:25). As this transformation occurs, their union with Jesus becomes communion - an active sharing with Jesus in his own fellowship with his Father and with all humanity.

3. Equipping workers
As this communion deepens, these 'babes in Christ' (no matter their chronological age), are led by the Holy Spirit, who equips them through the church (Eph 4:11-13) to become 'workers' with Jesus (Mat 9:37-38). As workers, they share actively and skillfully with Jesus in what he is doing to seek the lost, to nurture believers and to equip others to be active workers with Jesus.

A way of being and becoming
This participation in the love and life of Jesus is not merely about 'Sunday-best' behavior. Rather, it's a 24-7 way of life in union and communion with God. Is this pie in the sky stuff? No, it is real sharing in Jesus' actual life in communion with his Father and with all humanity through his continuing incarnation. Do we share in Jesus' divine-human communion perfectly? Of course not. As noted earlier, we're a work in progress - on a journey toward glorification in Christ; and we're not there yet. However, we are becoming more and more who we truly are in Christ (Eph 2:10).

Journey on!
And so we journey forward with Jesus - confident and trusting in his power and perfection (Mat 11:28). We look to Jesus and away from ourselves, knowing that he accepts and loves us where we are, even while he leads us forward to become all that he has created us to be. Enjoy the journey!

We believe (Nicene Creed, #2)

2011-08-04T06:05:00.051-04:00

The Nicene Creed (click to enlarge)

This post is part 2 of a series exploring The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (commonly called the Nicene Creed). For other parts, click on the corresponding number: 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13.

This historic, orthodox Creed begins with a simple, yet profound assertion:

We believe...

The Creed defines the content of this belief in a way that has stood the test of time, being embraced by Christians of nearly every denominational stripe for over 1600 years!

According to Athanasius, who was an influential delegate at Nicaea, the Creed sets forth "the divine and apostolic faith" (quoted in The Trinitarian Faith by T.F. Torrance, p15). According to Torrance, it presents the "simple first principles of the Gospel" (p16).

The chief concern of the framers of the Creed, including Athanasius (see picture), was to clarify and defend what the Apostles taught concerning the nature of our triune God. The resultant, carefully chosen words constitute the heart of our Christian faith, which is the doctrine of the Trinity. This doctrine is not merely of academic importance. It speaks to all aspects of the church's being and doing including its worship and mission.

In defining this doctrine and others that flow from it, the Creed places a protective 'boundary' around the Christian faith. Thus, it is of immense significance to the church, and on that basis should be taught (in my view) to all Christians, and repeated as a confession of faith in Christian worship.

However, a word of caution is in order here: The Creed is not the truth! Rather, the truth is God himself. And that truth comes to us principally not in words, but in God's self-revelation in the person and work of Jesus Christ (p.23). And so we worship the triune God, not words about him, though words about him are very helpful (even essential) to our worship.

In reading the Creed, we also are mindful of the limitations of human language. Even with prayerful, Biblically informed consideration, the councils that framed the Creed were "forced to stretch the feeble capacity of...language to give expression to indescribable realities" (p27). That being said, the words of the Creed have stood up remarkably well over 1600 years of study, debate, and worship. It uses words of great meaning that we would do well to seek to understand. Indeed, this humble series is given to that purpose.

Some Christians object to the Creed, because it uses words not found in Scripture. I appreciate this concern; it was one I once held. But I came to realize that the Holy Spirit, through Holy Scripture, leads us to seek a deep understanding of God, and then to convey that understanding to others, using words not found in Scripture if need be. Sometimes we may even need to coin a new word, such as "trinity".

Athanasius, who was a careful and faithful student of Scripture, pointed out that it does not matter whether a person uses a non-scriptural word or not, so long as he has a "godly mind." As Torrance notes, this father of Nicaea, far from speaking irreverently of Christ, spoke of him with "an exalted mind and a Christ-loving godliness" (p42). May we do so as well!

Exploring the Nicene Creed (#1)

2011-07-28T07:14:00.022-04:00

This post is part 1 in an ongoing series that explores the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (commonly called the Nicene Creed). To read other posts in this series, click on the corresponding number: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13.

This series) will make frequent reference to the book The Trinitarian Faith by theologian Thomsas F. (T.F.) Torrance.

Greek philosophy
As Torrance notes (p2), the Nicene Creed represents the work of the Greek church fathers in reaching careful expression of crucial points in the Gospel where it had been seriously misunderstood and distorted under the influence of Greek philosophy. This philosophy viewed God as one, perfect, unchangeable and totally unlike physical beings. Such a perfect, unchanging God, they reasoned, would have nothing to do with physical matter, including with flawed human beings.

The Arian Controversy
Influenced by this Greek (Hellenized) philosophical view of God, some Christians began to speculate that the one supreme God who must remain aloof from the changing world of matter, created angels, and that these angels were the ones who created and then interacted with the physical world. In like manner, they reasoned that Jesus Christ (who came into the world of matter and took on flesh) must also be a created intermediary. This view was taught by Arius, an influential Christian elder in Alexandria, Egypt.

However, Alexander, the bishop of Alexandria, vehemently disagreed with Ariius' view. He tried to remove Arius from his church office, but the people protested. In order to try to settle the Arian controversy, the Roman Emperor Constantine called a church council in the year A.D. 325 at the city of Nicea, in Asia Minor near Constantinople. About 300 bishops came, almost all from the East.

The Nicene Council
The council debated the nature of God and Jesus Christ. Most of the bishops rejected Arius' idea that Jesus was a created being. They believed that when they worshiped Jesus, they were worshiping God. They believed they were saved by God, not by a created being. In short, they were convinced that Scripture declares that Jesus Christ is God. To affirm this belief, they wrote the Nicene Creed. It declares that Jesus Christ is, "God of God, light of light, true God of true God, begotten, not made, of one substance with the Father." The last portion had particularly significance in the council. "Of one substance" translates the one Greek word homoousios, which means of the same substance or essence - of one being. The Nicene Creed thus declares that what God is in his essence, the Son of God is too. We'll have much more to say about this word in later posts in this series.

After the Nicene Council, the debate continued, including discussions about the Holy Spirit. The Nicene Council had merely said that "we believe in the Holy Spirit," without saying anything about who or what the Spirit is. Contrary to Arius' teaching that the Holy Spirit was a created spirit being, others, such as Athanasius of Alexandria, believed and taught that the Holy Spirit is divine.

Council of Constantinople
Eventually, Theodosius (the new Roman emperor), called a second council. It was held in Constantinople in 381. This council affirmed the Nicene Council viewpoint that Jesus is fully divine, eternal, not created. Moreover, the council accepted the full divinity of the Holy Spirit, teaching that the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, yet there is only one God - one God in three Persons. They felt compelled by Scripture to come to this conclusion.

The result of these two councils (with some later editing) is the following creed, known as the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, but often referred to by the shorter name, the Nicene Creed.

We believe in one God the Father, the Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, and of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven; by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father (and the Son). With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified. He has spoken through the Prophets.

We believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

(Note: this translation is by the International Consultation on English Texts, 1975, published in appendix A of Gerald Bray, Creeds, Councils and Christ, InterVarsity Press, 1984.)

In posts to follow in this series, we'll unpack the Nicene Creed, noting its essential points in defense of the Trinitarian, incarnational faith which is grounded in the Gospel given by Jesus, taught by his Apostles, and recorded in Holy Scripture. There is much for us to learn. It will be a source of much rejoicing!

What is the center of the Christian message?

2011-07-20T12:06:00.006-04:00

Bishop Ware

The July 2011 issue of Christianity Today features an interview conducted by CT editor-in-chief David Neff with Bishop Kallistos Ware of the Greek Orthodox Church (click here to read the article, and here for a video).

In answer to Neff's question, What is the center of the Christian message?, Ware states the following:

I believe in a God who loves humankind so intensely, so totally, that he chose himself to become human. Therefore, I believe in Jesus Christ as fully and truly God, but also totally and unreservedly one of us, fully human...

The love of God is so great that Christ died for us on the cross. But love is stronger than death, and so the death of Jesus was followed by his resurrection. I am a Christian because I believe in the great love of God that led him to become incarnate, to die, and to rise again. That's my faith. All of this is made immediate to us through the continuing action of the Holy Spirit (p41).

Note the Trinitarian framework as Ware explains that love is both God's essential nature and motive in saving us. Later, Ware notes that when Orthodox churches discuss what God, in love, has done and is doing to save us, they tend to focus on the biblical metaphor of Christ as victor over sin and death, rather than on the metaphors that tend to present salvation as a transaction. Here is part of Ware's comment on this point:

We prefer the image of Christ as victor over death... the kind of victory that we sense at the Paschal service Easter midnight in the Orthodox Church, when there is a constant refrain, "Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and to those in the tombs he has given life"...

Certainly within the New Testament there is a whole series of images. There is no single systematic theory of the Atonement, and we should make use of all these images. So, yes, we should find a place for the idea of substitution, which the Orthodox don't stress so much... The idea of the sacrificial Lamb is also a profound scriptural image.... [However,] I don't care so much for the idea of satisfaction. Satisfaction is not a scriptural word. The legal imagery, I think, should always be combined with an emphasis upon the transfiguring power of love. The motive for the incarnation was not God's justice or his glory, but his love. That was the supreme motive. "God so loved the world." That is what we should start from (p41).

I agree with Ware that we should make use of all the biblical images (metaphors) describing our salvation in Christ. They are like the multiple facets of one single, stunningly beautiful gem (for this idea I am indebted to the book Salvation, Word Studies from the Greek New Testament, by Gerald Cowen). All of these facets must be seen in order to fully see (and thus appreciate) the gem. Unfortunately, legal/penal theories of the Atonement tend to emphasize only one or two facets, and overlook (or at least diminish) the others.

In the interview, Neff points out to Ware that Protestants sometimes accuse Orthodox Christians of deemphasizing Jesus by emphasizing the Trinity. Here is Ware's reply:

I would not want to contrast faith in Jesus with faith in the Holy Trinity. My faith in Jesus is precisely that I believe him to be not only truly human, but also to be the eternal Son of God. I cannot think of a faith in Jesus that does not also involve faith in God the Father.

How is Jesus present to us personally at this moment? How is it that ht is not merely a figure from the distant past, but that he also lives in my own life? That is through the Holy Spirit. Therefore, I cannot understand a faith in Jesus Christ that would not also involve faith in the Holy Spirit.

I don't think we can have too much faith in Jesus. But faith in Jesus, if it is to be truly such, is necessarily Trinitarian. If you look at the lives of the Orthodox saints, you will find a very vivid faith in Jesus. Their affirmation of the Trinity did not in any way diminish their sense of Jesus as their personal Savior" (p41).

I am grateful to my Orthodox brothers and sisters (including those, like Irenaeus and Athanasius, who wrote many centuries ago) for formulating and then preserving the doctrine of the Holy Trinity - a doctrine that is essential to a vibrant, biblically accurate Christology.

P.S. For a dramatic and helpful Trinitarian, incarnational presentation of the gospel (in contrast with a legal, transactional one), watch this video, Love Wins - An Orthodox View from Orthodox priest, Steve Robinson.

Beware exclusivism!

2011-07-08T10:41:00.058-04:00

John Wesley

Trinitarian, incarnational theology teaches that God the Father has included all people in his love and life, through the person and work of his incarnate Son Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit. How ironic (and sad) if those who embrace this theology of inclusion would express an attitude of exclusivism!

I was thinking about this (and examining my own attitude), when I watched the movie Wesley. It dramatizes the story of the life and ministry of John Wesley and his brother Charles.

John and Charles were highly educated (both grads of Oxford U.). However, part of the genius of their Methodist movement was the ability to recognize that the Holy Spirit is able to further the cause of Christ through common, often uneducated (and sometimes even ill-informed) people serving as teachers and preachers. Though the Wesley's valued and advocated higher education and sound theology, they realized that perfection in these matters is not the end-all and be-all of Christian ministry (only the Triune God holds that lofty position!).

This was further illustrated to me when I came across a story that tells of a time when John Wesley attended a Methodist meeting where one of his lay leaders, who had very little education, was preaching from Luke 19:21, "Lord, I feared thee, because thou art an austere man." Not knowing the meaning of the word "austere," this preacher thought that the text spoke of "an oyster man." And so in his sermon, he spoke about the work of those who retrieve oysters from the sea-bed. The diver plunges down from the surface, cut off from his natural environment, into bone-chilling water. He gropes in the dark, cutting his hands on the sharp edges of the shells. Now he has the oyster, and kicks back up to the surface, up to the warmth and light and air, clutching in his torn and bleeding hands the object of his search. So Christ descended from the glory of heaven into the squalor of earth, into sinful human society, in order to retrieve humans and bring them back up with him to the glory of heaven, his torn and bleeding hands a sign of the value he has placed on the object of his quest.

During that sermon, twelve men were converted to Christ. Afterwards, someone complained to Wesley about the inappropriateness of allowing preachers who were too ignorant to know the meaning of the texts they were preaching on. Wesley's response was direct and simple, "Never mind, the Lord got a dozen oysters tonight."

Though education leading to sound theology and careful biblical exegesis is important to ministering well, let's be careful not to be exclusivistic (and even snobbish) about what we have come to understand. Rather, let's focus on proclaiming the perfections of our Savior and the glory of his gospel as best we know how. And then let us show respect for others by extending to them the same privilege. Above all, let's allow the Holy Spirit to do his amazing, often mysterious work through us and others (and sometimes despite us and others). He is able!

On journey with Jesus: From union to communion with God

2011-07-03T06:18:00.066-04:00

Trinitarian, incarnational theology understands Scripture to teach that all humanity has been included in God's love and life in union with Jesus, the incarnate, crucified and ascended Son of God.

Those who disagree generally assert that union with Jesus does not occur for an individual until they come to faith in Jesus. However, I suppose those who make this assertion would agree that this faith is a gift from God (Eph 2:8-9, and click here for additional scriptural references and here for a related GCI article). If that is so, they face a dilemma: How can a person receive God's gift of faith, except in union with Jesus? After all, Scripture teaches that the faith we are experiencing when we believe the gospel is Jesus' own faith (see Gal 2:20, KJV, where Paul speaks of living not by our own faith, but by "the faith of the Son of God").

Some seek to resolve this dilemma by arguing that the faith that leads to personal conversion (and thus, in their thinking, to union with Jesus), is given by God before union with Jesus occurs. Some refer to this as prevenient grace. To me, this argument as inadequate, in that it fails to acknowledge that God's grace, in all its forms as it pertains to our salvation, comes to us through the union that we have been given with Jesus - a union created in and by Jesus, not by anything we have done (including any response of ours prior to conversion, or otherwise).

The Apostle Paul is careful to insist on this. In fact, he notes that God's grace came to us (and here I believe that *us* must be read as *all* humanity), when we were still powerless (Ro 5:6); when we were still sinners (Rom 5:8); when we were still God's enemies (Rom 5:10); and, indeed, before the world began (2Ti 1:9, KJV, and Eph 1:4-6). In short, it came to us before we made any sort of response, and thus was due entirely to the action of the Father, by the Holy Spirit, in and through Jesus who acted on our behalf. We did not ask for it; we did not earn it; and the giving of this gift did not (and does not) await any decision or other response we might make.

So here's the bottom line: All are included in God's love and life apart from any action (work) or any merit of their own. And to that statement, I hear these objections:

But, must not a person trust in Jesus in order that they are brought into union with him? No. As I noted above, it is utterly impossible for us to to trust in Jesus except that first we are united to him. And even then, the trust we exhibit is not our own - we are sharing in the human trust in God, which Jesus himself possesses and expresses on our behalf.

But, isn't it impossible for a holy God (like Jesus) to be in union with a person who has not yet repented of their sin? No, for a sinner repents only as they experience and thus respond to the union which they have with Jesus (who is called a 'friend of sinners', and who 'became sin' for us long before we came to know, let alone respond to him). Moreover, in his representative, substitutionary humanity, Jesus was baptized as a sign of repentance on behalf of us all.

But, maybe we are granted union with Jesus because God knows that we will repent shortly after the gift is granted. No, Scripture declares that what Jesus accomplished in his life, baptism, temptation, ministry, death, resurrection and ascension reconciles "all things" (all humanity, and the entire cosmos) to God the Father (Col 1:19-20). This reconciliation is accomplished in and by Jesus, the God-man, who unites in his own person all humanity with God. This inclusion is not merely something Jesus did (as incorrectly taught in forensic - transactional theories of the atonement) , but who Jesus is, namely the Son of God become, and remaining forever, human on our behalf.

And now I'll add a "but" of my own - one I happen to agree with: But, not all know of this union, and thus not all participate in it knowingly and thus actively. Here's another way to say that: What is true of all objectively, is not being realized (experienced) personally (subjectively) by all.

Paul addresses this reality in his epistle to the believers in Colossae: "Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds" (Col 1:21). Though they were united to God in Christ before conversion, they remained (in their own distorted, subjective thinking) alienated from God. In that sense, they were God's enemies (in their thinking). And there they remained until the stunning, life-changing miracle of opened minds and hearts ("I was blind, but now I see!").

This miracle of illumination, the sovereign and often mysterious work of the Holy Spirit, leads to personal repentance and faith (Romans 2:4). And this too, like all of God's work in our lives, is a gift of his grace. When this illumination is given, each person is faced with a personal decision - to embrace and thus live into their union with Christ, or to reject it and thus remain alienated from God in their minds.

For those who embrace this union through trust in Jesus, there is forward progress on a Spirit-led journey with Jesus from union to communion with God. For those who refuse this journey, the union with Jesus remains, but it will be experienced in a decidedly negative way, potentially forever.

May more and more people, through the ministry of Jesus, in the power of the Holy Spirit, come to understand, embrace, trust and obey, and thus deeply enjoy who God has already made them to be in union with Jesus Christ: God's dearly loved, adopted (included) children!

Male and female as the image of God

2011-06-26T05:58:00.026-04:00

God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them (Genesis 1:27).

According to Frances and Paul Hiebert, the humanity that images God is a co-humanity constituted by men and women in relationship. Stated negatively, men alone and women alone do not express fully the image of God (see the Hiebert's essay, The Whole Image of God: A Theological and Anthropological Understanding of Male-Female Relationship, in Incarnational Ministry, edited by Kettler and Speidell).

This makes sense in light of the biblical revelation that our triune God is a relational communion of three persons (Father, Son and Holy Spirit), in which there is unity, diversity (distinction of persons) and equality. God's communitarian nature is imaged in humanity when a similar unity, diversity and equality are found in us - particularly in our male-female relationships.

According to the Hieberts, differing male and female reproductive functions produce a unity-in-diversity expressed in "one flesh" intimacy (p270). God's intent in this is shown in the first chapters of Genesis. There all that God creates he pronounces "good," with the exception of Adam in his state of aloneness. This is intentional, but subsequently resolved by God when he creates woman - recognized by man as his equal ("bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh"), sharing both his strengths and weaknesses. The Heiberts comment:

They each shared the full spectrum of human characteristics. But because either of them alone would have been 'not good,' they were made to be mutually interdependent. They were "for" each other - "for" in the sense of being in support of, not in the sense of being used by (p271).

God gave the woman to the man to be his "helper" (Heb='ezer; Gen 2:18) - not a role of inferiority or servitude, but an exalted role like that filled by God himself, who in Exodus 18:4 is called our "Helper" ('Ezer). Indeed, the original design for the woman with the man is that of co-equality:

When everything still was good in God's creation, the man and the woman, thrilled by the discovery of their mutual humanity, were fully equal. They both mirrored the image of God; they both were honored by God with the gift of responsibility for the earth. With singing hearts, they lived in harmony with God, with each other, and with the rest of creation" (p272).

Sadly, their disobedience changed everything. The image of God in their co-humanity was splintered as the relationship between woman and man was shattered and "the world is still reeling from that terrible, cosmic disaster" (p273). And though it is typically understood that this disaster brought alienation between God and humans, it is less well understood that it also brought alienation between humans, particularly between men and women.

In the New Testament, male-female alienation is seen principally as conflict instead of cooperation. In defending their self-interest in this conflict, men tend to dominate, while women tend to manipulate. Both approaches express the twin sins of pride and independence. Thus the New Testament solution is restoration and reconciliation, which stand at the heart of the gospel (Col 1:15-20):

The broken body and shed blood of Jesus restores the broken image to wholeness; what was lost in Eden is recovered by his life, death, and resurrection. Because of Jesus, it is possible for humans to be reconciled to God and to each other, male and female, and to live in the awareness of what God means by good through the strength of the indwelling Spirit of God.... In the new era inaugurated by Jesus, man and women, rather than being at war for the dominant position, are restored to the position of equality that constituted their life before the fall (pp 274-5).

In Christ, men and women are set free to be "equal to" one another in order that they may be "for" each other as God originally intended. According to Jesus, the appropriate metaphor for this is being a servant of one another, rather than lord (Mat 20:25-28). Indeed, the way Jesus treated women was an indication of this restored equality within the kingdom of God. Sadly, this was not practiced by the early church for long. This was largely due because the church embraced the deprecation of women practiced in surrounding cultures.

But the church is called to live in this present age out of the truth of the image of God, revitalized by the breath of God, the Holy Spirit. History shows that when it does so, men and women begin to relate more as equals. This is seen in the New Testament record, and in church renewal movements since. For example, there was a significant move toward female ordination during the American Great Awakening of the 18th century in the northeastern United States. Breathe on us breath of God!

A Trinitarian Theology of Family Ministry

2011-06-19T21:57:00.030-04:00

How may the church join with Jesus in what he is doing through the Holy Spirit to minister God's love and life to and through families?

Dennis Guernsey answers in Family Ministry and a Theology of Family: A Personal Journey, an essay in Incarnational Ministry (eds: Kettler and Speidell). Guernsey, now deceased, teamed with Ray Anderson at Fuller Theological Seminary to develop an approach to family ministry informed by Trinitarian theology and family systems psychology (click here for details).

In Guernsey's view, "family" is best understood as a verb, rather than a noun. Family is about being "familied." Unfortunately, some family ministries are more about programs and structures than about loving, family-like relationships. As guidance to churches wishing to join with Jesus in relational ministry to and through families, Guernsey offers five theological principles:

1. "Human persons are created in the image of God and are of infinite value" (p222). Whatever defaces or destroys this imago dei is contrary to God's will and must be resisted. Accordingly, effective family ministries have a strong ethical center.

2. "Human persons are created as relational beings to exist in cohumanity as male and female" (p222). Guernsey emphasizes the conjunction and (male AND female), noting that effective family ministries facilitate the participation of both men AND women as relational persons in relational ministries that view the church itself as a relational family.

3. "The church as the body of Christ is the real presence of the incarnate Christ in the world" (p223). The human person Jesus Christ (now glorified and in heaven), is present and active in the world through his body, the people of God (the church). This people is called to family-like relationships - both with one another and with those in the world around them. It is in and through these relationships that the help and healing of God flow to us through the Holy Spirit from Christ himself. Expanding on this thought, Guernsey makes this important statement:

If it is going to be real, Christianity must work in the most intimate of relationships: between husband and wife, parent and child, sibling and sibling, friend and friend, believer and believer, believer and unbeliever. As the people of God we paint a family portrait as we demonstrate the real presence of Christ in the world through our love for one another (p223).

4. "The church is primarily the people of God, and secondarily the place they gather" (p223). When we understand this, family ministry becomes more about relationships than about programs - about being "familied," rather than merely talking about family.

5. "Family ministry takes place most naturally wherever and whenever people feel most natural" (p224). Unfortunately, family ministry programs often are highly structured and thus rather artificial. Effective family ministries put people in settings where they are comfortable and thus can be "real" - relating with one another in natural ways. In that regard, it's helpful that family ministries take advantage of a culture's family rituals and celebrations. These gatherings tend to be centered in homes and other community spaces outside of church buildings.

Is the Holy Spirit God?

2011-06-12T15:11:00.019-04:00

This was posted on Pentecost Sunday - a good day to address a question sent in by one of our readers, a church pastor:

"Within the past year, two long-time members have relocated from other parts of the country to one of my congregations. Neither of these individuals believes in the deity of the Holy Spirit, believing instead our old teaching that the Holy Spirit is some kind of energy or power of God. Why is it necessary to believe in the deity of the Holy Spirit? Why isn't faith in Jesus Christ enough?"

To believe in the deity of the Holy Spirit is to understand that he, like God the Father and God the Son, is fully God. This contrasts with the mistaken idea that the Holy Spirit is merely the "power" or the "wisdom" of God, in an impersonal sense.

There are many reasons why it is vital to uphold the deity of the Holy Spirit. I'll comment on two here. I invite our readers to add others (use the comments feature below).

1. The Bible teaches that the Holy Spirit is God.
Seeing the Holy Spirit as merely an impersonal power extended by God, does not do justice to what the following verses (and others) infer concerning the divine nature and ministry of the Holy Spirit:

The following verses indicate that the Holy Spirit is equal with God (and thus is God, for God has no equal): Mat 28:19; 2Cor 13:14; Eph 4:4-6; 2Cor 3:16-18.

The following verses refer to the Holy Spirit using personal terms that infer that he is a person, not merely an impersonal 'power' or 'presence' of God: John 6:63; 1John 5:6; John 14:26; Rom 8:11, 16, 26-27; Isa 63:10; Eph 4:30; Acts 5:3, 9, 32; 7:51; 8:29; 10:19; 11:12; 13:2; 15:28; 20:28; 21:11; 28:25-26; 1Tim 4:1; Heb 3:7-8; Rev 2:7; 14:13; 22:17; 1Cor 2:11.

2. Knowing that the Holy Spirit is God, gives us assurance.
Scripture declares that the Holy Spirit indwells us. When we understand that the Spirit is God, we are assured that God himself ("in person") dwells with us! For a GCI article on this important teaching, click here.

Understanding that the Holy Spirit is a divine person also helps us to understand why Jesus said that it is good for us that he returned to heaven (John 16:7). Why? Because from there he now sends the Holy Spirit to be with us as "another counselor" (John 14:16-17) - meaning another, just like him (God in person). Thus to believe in the deity of Jesus, is to believe in the deity of the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit dwelling in us and with us, has the specific ministry of helping us believe in Jesus.

Believing in Jesus means believing that he truly is who he says he is: very God (which means one with the Father and the Holy Spirit in the divine Trinity). It is this tri-personal God who saves us. Indeed, salvation is from God the Father, through God the Son, in the power and indwelling presence of God the Holy Spirit. Believe and receive!

Leadership of the Jesus kind

2011-06-05T20:05:00.010-04:00

In The Ministry of Leadership: Empowering People (an essay in the book Incarnational Ministry), Walter C. Wright, Jr. defines Christian leadership as a relationship by which the leader works to empower, nurture and increase the maturity of the follower as a person loved by God (p207). This leadership of 'the Jesus kind,' is servant-leadership that transforms.

Whereas current literature tends to define leadership as a process by which individuals or groups are influenced toward a particular outcome or goal (p207), Jesus' way of leadership is principally about relationship.

Of course, relationships involve influence, but the principal focus of Jesus is not to influence his followers toward an external objective (no matter how lofty), but to love and serve them with an eye toward their empowerment, leading to the positive transformation of their lives. Jesus demonstrated this radical approach to leadership at the Last Supper, where he washed his disciple's feet (John 13:3-5), then proclaimed, "I am among you as one who serves" (Luke 22:27).

With this in mind, Wright defines Christian leadership in an organizational setting as follows:

[It is] a relationship between two persons engaged in a process of influence in which the leader seeks to: articulate the vision and mission of the organization for the follower; shape and reinforce the culture, values, or beliefs of the organization, as well as the character of people within the organization; contextualize the follower's contribution to the organization, showing how it fits and why is it important to the mission; provide the resources and the power to make the contribution possible; express thanks on behalf of the organization, affirming the follower's value as a member and conveying appreciation for the follower's contribution (p208).

The Gospels show Jesus doing these things with those in his "organization" - his group of disciples. He imparted to them kingdom vision, he challenged and equipped them. He gave them opportunities to learn by serving. He then debriefed them, corrected them when needed, and gave them lots of feedback, including encouragement. Most importantly, he valued and deeply loved them. And they knew it, and their lives were transformed.

Wright notes that the Apostle Paul also practiced the same empowering - transforming approach toward leadership, with a view toward...

...seeing each person mature in Christ and coaching the person on how to live up to that maturity (Eph 4:1, Col 1:10). Transforming leadership is believing in the potential of a person to be more than what you see today and committing yourself to work toward the development of that person (p209).

When we share with Jesus in his transformational, servant-leadership, our focus is on the follower rather than on ourselves as leader (p210). Our effort is focused on seeking the follower's transformation - seeing them move "up the maturity scale, to increase their competence and their confidence" (p211).

There are, of course, a variety of leadership styles or approaches that fit this focus. However, the choice of style is dictated not by our preference as a leader, but by the need of the follower at a particular place on their journey with Jesus. At times, a directive style will be best; at other times a consulting or coaching style is called for. In that regard, note that Jesus changed styles with his followers as they matured (or went backward!). Wright comments:

Empowering leadership accepts followers where they are but sees in them the potential to grow in maturity. It adapts leadership style in order to transform their ability to do the task, their confidence in accepting ownership of the task, and their perceptions of themselves. The goal of empowering leadership is to help every follower grow into an empowered leader who will in turn exercise this kind of leadership with each person for whom he or she is responsible (p214).

Jesus is alive, and through the Spirit leading his followers on earth. He is sharing his life and love with them, and in doing so serving them in ways that help them grow. Let us with Jesus be transforming, servant-leaders.

What about mission?

2011-05-28T06:27:00.045-04:00

Since God has reconciled all humanity to himself in and through Jesus (2Cor 5:17-19), why should the church be concerned about mission? And if it is to be concerned, what does mission look like?

To answer these questions we first must answer this:Who is God? The Bible answers that the one God exists as a triune communion of love. In his being (nature) he is love (1John 4:8). And he acts accordingly (God does what God is).

Missional God
In love, God created the cosmos as a time/place in which to share his triune love and life with his creation. And because his love never ceases or diminishes, he became Redeemer to rescue his creation from its inability, due to the fall, to live in communion with him. As Creator and Redeemer, God has, from before time, been on mission.

The mission of God (missio Dei) in creation and redemption originates in the heart of the Father (John 3:16-17), and is accomplished through the Son of God, in the power of the Holy Spirit. In redemption, the Father sends the Son, who through his incarnation, life, death, resurrection and ascension, and sending of the Holy Spirit, reconciles all humanity to the Father. In this great missional act, the Father is the sender, Jesus is the sent one (the missionary) and the Spirit is the sending agent. And note that this mission is not finished. It continues with Jesus' ongoing intercession on our behalf through the power and indwelling of the Holy Spirit (Heb 7:24-25).

Missional people
It is here that the church comes in. Jesus sends the Holy Spirit to form, call and gift the church to share in his ongoing ministry, which is fulfilling the Father's mission to the world. In short, the church exists because of, and for God's mission. The church is no mere 'tool' in God's hand, but is called to actively participate (partner as co-workers) in mission with him.

Mission = discipleship
Since the ascension and Pentecost, what God is now doing in the world in and through the church has principally to do with discipleship. This aspect of God's mission is not about 'getting people saved' (God has accomplished that already in Jesus), but about getting people into their salvation - helping them be (live) saved. This missional work (ministry) is about illumination, education and application. Jesus is working in people's lives in all three areas through the Holy Spirit. The church is called to participate by bearing witness to Jesus (Acts 1:8). It does so by sharing in Jesus' ongoing acts of healing, mercy and forgiveness; and by proclaiming with Jesus the stunning truth of the gospel (a declaration that includes inviting and empowering people to follow Jesus as one of his disciples).

In solidarity with the world
According to Karl Barth, the church participates in this ministry by living in solidarity with the world. Doing so means sharing with Jesus as he shares the world's suffering (due to sin), and its hope, which is grounded in the "free grace of God" in the person of Jesus (see Church Dogmatics;IV/3, p773, quoted by William Pannell in his essay, Evangelism: Solidarity and Reconciliation, in Incarnational Ministry, p197).

Through incarnational ministry
According to Barth, the church finds its reason for being not in itself, but in this incarnational ministry with Jesus. God, in Christ, exists for the world - his supreme act of love is the incarnation by which he came to the world, becoming part of the created order, while remaining its Creator and Sustainer. In so doing, he reconciles the creation back to God. And his church, his "body" on earth (1Cor 12:27), is called to share this ministry with Jesus. Note, however, a word of caution: Our calling is to incarnational solidarity with the world, not conformity to it. As Barth notes, the church cannot say "yes" to the world, if it cannot also say "no." Here is the genius of Jesus himself - a friend of sinners, yet without sin of his own.

Reconciliation = incarnation
Pannell notes that the church's inability to stand in solidarity with the world is largely due to a lack of understanding that reconciliation is a function of incarnation. The reconciliation of the world to God is accomplished not only at the cross, but in the entirety of the incarnation. Thus reconciliation, because it is in the incarnate Son of God, is both personal and permanent. Jesus remains forever human on our behalf.

And now Jesus is making himself known - making this reconciliation that all people have with God in him, an experienced, personal reality (2Cor 5:20). Jesus is doing this ministry principally through his human presence in the world, the church, sent to stand in solidarity with the world - sharing its plight, and proclaiming and demonstrating to humankind its one and sure hope.

Conclusion
And so we return to our original questions: Why should the church be concerned about mission? And what does mission look like? In both instances, answers are found in the person and work of Jesus - the Son of God incarnate, who stands in solidarity with the world. Let us be among his disciples - those who not only hear his voice, but actively join with him as he, in the power of the Spirit, helps people live into the reconciliation with God that they have forever in and with him.

Generous God: generous people

2011-05-22T06:37:00.077-04:00

Trinitarian, incarnational theology shapes our understanding of Christian stewardship. It points us to the life and love of Jesus, who represents and substitutes for us as the perfect human steward of God's grace in all its forms (1Pet 4:10 KJV).

From this perspective, Christian stewardship is a believer's active participation in Jesus' lavish generosity (his own love, which "compels us," see 2Cor 5:14), as he lives in union with the Father and the Holy Spirit (in the Trinity), and with all humanity (through his continuing incarnation).

I'm reminded here of a phrase coined by Mark Vincent in A Christian View of Money: Generous God, generous people.

In the above cited passage from Peter's first epistle, the Apostle is addressing the stewardship of spiritual gifts (one aspect of God's amazing and bountiful grace to us). These gifts are the very ones that Jesus possesses in himself. Through the indwelling Spirit, he shares these gifts (abilities) with us in order that we might participate well with him in his ministry, including his ongoing generous stewardship of the grace of God.

Our calling then, as Christian stewards, is to share in Jesus' own ongoing stewardship. We do so through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, who unites us to Jesus and then shares with us the things of Jesus.

What is it that, with Jesus, we are stewarding? Everything that God gives us: this good earth, our life, our time, our talents, and our treasure (money). Not surprisingly, Jesus has much to say about this 'whole life' view of stewardship, particularly the stewardship of our material possessions (including money). His teaching on this topic is often given in the form of parables in which Jesus, in effect, says "this is how I am" - and then invites us to "dive in" with him - to share in his generous love and life.

Because Jesus is generous God and generous man, as we share his love and life, we too are generous: he perfectly; we partially (headed toward the time in glory when we will share fully in his perfect humanity).

Some define Christian stewardship as a "faith response to God." Because he is generous to us, we are generous in response. I'm OK with that definition as far as it goes, but I think it is incomplete. It is more accurate to say that we are generous in our giving because we participate in the love and life of our generous God: Father, Son and Spirit.

A key here (and again I refer to what Mark Vincent teaches in his books), is to set aside in our lives a certain "margin to be generous." Rather than using up all our time and treasure; we set some aside so that we have margin with which we can be spontaneously generous. Read the gospels and you'll see Jesus doing just this. Let us join with him, through the Spirit, and in so doing share in his expression of the Father's generous heart.

Gospel-centered baptism

2011-05-16T07:22:00.002-04:00

In an essay in Incarnational Ministry, Colin Gunton writes against an individualistic approach to baptism and for a gospel-centered approach. In doing so, he addresses various pastoral concerns, including the practice of infant baptism.

Against an individualistic approach
Gunton decries an approach to baptism that emphasizes the individual person, thus separating baptism from the shared life of the church:

While baptism is in part the concern of the particular person, it is not primarily a matter for the person as individual but for the person in relation to other people in the community of salvation, the covenant people of God. Baptism cannot, and should not be treated in isolation form the life of the community of faith (p100).

Historically, individualistic approaches emerged from the idea (grounded largely in Platonic philosophy) that each person inherits, via descent from Adam, the stain of "original sin." According to this idea, the purpose of baptism is to remove this stain from the individual. Thus baptism is seen from a largely negative, and somewhat magical perspective. Gunton notes that this erroneous perspective undergirds some forms of infant baptism, though he notes that the problem is not in baptizing infants, but in holding an inadequate, individualistic theology of baptism.

For a gospel-centered approach
For Gunton, whether one is baptizing infant children of believers, or believing adults, it is vital that the practice be centered in "the logic of the gospel" (p100). A gospel-centered approach understands that, "baptism takes its reality from the death of Jesus on the cross. We baptize because Christ died on the cross for the sins of the world" (p102).

This gospel-centered approach views baptism not in individualistic terms, but in the context of Jesus Christ and what he has done for all humanity, apart from our knowledge and wishes, as our representative and substitute. Indeed, Jesus stood in for us and acted on our behalf when we were entirely "helpless" (Romans 5:6, NASB). This gospel truth points us to the true significance of baptism: "Before we can possibly be in a position to know or appropriate [baptism's] meaning, something has been done for us and for all the world" (p102). The early church baptized with this truth in mind, and in obedience to Jesus' command to baptize (Matthew 28:16-20). And they did so with glad hearts, having experienced the reality of Jesus' death and resurrection, which is the reality of the gospel.

Moreover, their perspective on baptism was informed by Jesus' own baptism. In being baptized by John the baptizer, Jesus was doing two things:

Identifying himself with Israel as a people under God's judgment, in need of reconciliation.
Showing that he would soon die on behalf of Israel (and all humankind), accepting upon himself as their representative and substitute the judgment of God against their sin. Jesus' baptism thus anticipates his soon-coming death on the cross (Luke 12:50) - a death that includes all humanity (2Cor 5:14).

Gunton notes that "while the baptism of Jesus is an essential element of the theology of baptism, we do not baptize because Jesus [was] baptized, but because he went to the cross which was foreshadowed in his baptism" (p103).

Baptism and the church
Because baptism pictures the death and resurrection of Jesus for all, it should be seen as an event with "communal significance" by which people are incorporated into the body of Christ, the church:

Just as Jesus' baptism bound him up with Israel, and his death with the whole human race under judgment, so our baptism binds us to Christ and the covenant people of God reconstituted in him. That...is the primary significance of baptism. It is not first of all the expression of the faith of an individual or some invisible inner cleansing, but is public and communal: it is the means by which a person is brought into relation with Christ through the medium of his body, the church. The crucial link is between the once-for-all death of Christ on the cross and the baptism which appropriates that death for the member of his body. The logic is that as Christ died once, so can there by only one baptism into his death (p103).

According to Gunton...

Baptism is a churchly and public rite before it is an individual one. It is therefore not just for the "saved," and certainly not just for those alone who have been through a certain kind of experience, but for all who are called to share the life of those who are on the way to salvation (p104).

Infant baptism
On this basis, Gunton argues for the baptism of the infant children of believing adults, noting that children are full and essential members of the covenant community. Like adults, their entrance into that community comes through baptism (p105). In this context, he highlights the Holy Spirit's ministry who is the "agent of our incorporation into Christ through the medium of the community of faith" (p106). Continuing to speak of the Spirit he notes that...

His is a churchly rather than an individual sphere of activity in the sense that particular gifts are given for the building up of the life of the people of God... This means that to baptize is not so much to confer a gift upon an individual as to bring a person into the sphere of the Spirit's working, into the place where his or her gifts may be exercised for the glory of God... Baptism, therefore, brings persons into relation with that community (p107).

Pastoral implications
Gunton concludes with three implications for pastoral practice (see p108):

We should treat all who are baptized, no matter how they are baptized, and no matter at what age, as full members with us of the covenant community (the church).
We should not baptize any child whom we do not expect to enter into a living relationship with the covenant community.
We should actively encourage the baptism of the infant children of active Christian adults.

To read the adult baptismal ceremony of Grace Communion International, click here. To read the infant baptismal ceremony, click here.

A three-fold ministry of the Word

2011-05-06T07:07:00.030-04:00

The book Incarnational Ministry, the presence of Christ in Church, Society and Family contains an essay by Geoffrey Bromiley, The Ministry of the Word of God.

Bromiley notes that some (including many of the Reformers) define the Word of God as the Bible. However, Bromiley (following Karl Barth and others), views that definition as incomplete. For him, the Word of God is three-fold: a "triune perichoresis" of the written Word of God (Holy Scripture), the proclaimed Word of God (the church's proclamation of the apostolic gospel), and first and foremost the incarnate Word of God, Jesus Christ. For Bromiley, this three-fold Word informs and shapes a three-fold ministry of the Word. Following is a summary of his thoughts concerning each part:

1. Ministry of the incarnate Word
Ministry is not our own - it is our participation (as the body of Christ) in the ministry of, by and through the Lord Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word of God:

We often forget the threefold nature of the Word and its ministry and rush on too hastily to our own role as ministers of the Word of God, and the problems associated with that role. We thus overlook the more important fact that primarily and properly the ministry is the Word's own ministry. This is preeminently true in the case of the incarnate Word. Christ the Word came into the world to minister. He "came not to be served, but to serve" (Mat 20:28)....He had, of course, his own specific ministry during his earthly years from Bethlehem to Golgotha and Olivet. But Christ also continues his ministry through his disciples and by his presence in and through the Holy Spirit. It is his Word that they speak, his acts that they do, and in his name that they minister. Their ministry is his ministry (p82).

No church at all has an autonomous ministry of God's Word... all that any church can do is participate in the ministry of Christ the incarnate Word (p83).

This participation in Christ's ministry is not the purview of clergy only:

Is it sufficiently appreciated [by the contemporary church] that the ministry of Christ the Head [of the church] implies the ministry of the whole body, the taking up of all believers in different ways and according to their different gifts, into the ministry of the incarnate Word?... All our ministry rests on commissioning by the word into the Word's own ministry (pp83-84).

In every age one of the most urgent needs of Christian ministry is that the churches, their leaders, their synods, and their members should realize that the incarnate Word into whose ministry their own is incorporate, and from whose absolute authority their own relative authority derives, is indeed the living Lord of the church, who is not merely present on occasion (in the Eucharist!), and the invasion of whose prerogatives can bring only confusion, disruption, and failure (p85).

Bromiley addresses the structural dimensions of the church's ministry of the Word, including challenges related to church growth:

The problems of growth admit of no simple solutions, but the time has surely been long overdue for the churches to stop adapting their structures to secular models and to start conforming them to the pattern of Christ's own servant ministry, so that in this regard and at this level, too, their ministry can truly be, and be seen to be, the ministry of the incarnate Word.

2. Ministry of the written Word
Holy Scripture is given to us as a means for us to encounter the person and ministry of the incarnate Word, Jesus Christ. This occurs through the Holy Spirit's work of inspiration and illumination:

God caused the Word to take written form in order to teach us that he has shown his benevolence to us through his Son... He..enables the written Word to perform [this] function by means of the Holy Spirit, whose inner witness gives it its dignity and authority... and whose illuminating makes it possible for us to perceive it to be God's Word. Nevertheless, within this ministry of Christ and the Spirit, the written Word has its own ministry into which the ministers of the Word of God are integrated as they participate in the ministry of the Word incarnate.... The written Word has this ministry in its normative function as the original, divinely inspired, prophetic and apostolic testimony to God's revealing and reconciling Word and work. All subsequent ministry, to be authentic, must be tested and informed by this ministry (p87).

3. Ministry of the proclaimed Word
How the incarnate Word ministers through the proclaimed Word is no less important than his ministry through the written Word, but may not be as obvious. The proclaimed Word is an "historical entity" - sometimes referred to as the church's "tradition." This word is found in the great creeds of the early church as well as in its confessions, writings, rites, ceremonies, practices, policies and institutions.

The proclaimed Word derives its authority and power from the incarnate Word, mediated by the written Word. Under this norming authority, "the proclaimed Word has a valuable ministry of insight, direction, warning, and example....[offering] helpful hints for the presentation of the gospel, the living of the Christian life, and the shaping of the church and its mission" (p91). Though the proclaimed Word is to be regarded and respected, "it does not bind us absolutely" (p91).

Conclusion
We are faithful as ministers as we give each part of the three-fold Word, "free course in proclaiming its own vital message... [letting it] say what it has to say, to teach ourselves and others how to let ourselves be told what it has to tell" (p93). As we do, Jesus uses these means not merely to present information about himself, but to present himself in a real encounter with himself - a real experiencing of his love and life, leading to our active sharing in his ongoing incarnational ministry in the world.

Bromiley concludes with an important question and comment:

Are we setting our...human ministry within the perichoresis of the ministry of the Word incarnate, written, and proclaimed? Do we here and now present Christ according to the normative biblical witness and with regard to [the church's] tested tradition [proclamation]? If we do not, no facile talk about the moving of the Spirit will give our ministry of word and work validity as the ministry of the word of God (p96).

Our part in God's ministry of atonement

2011-04-30T07:13:00.018-04:00

The book Incarnational Ministry, the presence of Christ in Church, Society and Family contains an essay by Christian Kettler, The Atonement as the Life of God in the Ministry of the Church.

Kettler notes that God's ministry (his doing) expresses his being as the God of love and grace. As we (the church) participate with God in his ministry, we learn more about his being. In this way, ministry precedes theology. However, the reverse is also true - our participation with God in his ministry grows as our understanding of his being (our theology) deepens.

This dynamic interaction of ministry and theology is liberating, setting the church free to "determine its ministry based on who God is and what he has actually done, rather than what would sell in the marketplace of ideas and religions and in 'self-help' books" (p60).

This being true, we ask, what is God's ministry? The answer has many facets, but a primary one is that God's ministry is the ministry of atonement. But how do we participate in that? Here it is critical to hold a Trinitarian, incarnational understanding, which views the atonement as God's ministry of healing - the healing effect of God's own life being communicated to humanity through the life, death, resurrection and continuing intercession of the incarnate Son of God, Jesus Christ.

The atonement is thus a past, present and continuing, Christ-centered, Trinitarian event. Said another way, Jesus is the atonement, and he does (ministry) what he is (theology). The church shares in his atoning life and love by participating with Jesus in his ongoing ministry in the power of the Holy Spirit to communicate the atoning life of the Father to all people.

To illustrate the nature of the church's participation, Kettler tells of a woman named Sondra, who at age 43 is wrestling with the effects of being sexually abused by her father when she was young. How might God's ministry of the atonement be extended to Sondra through the ministry of the church? In answer, Kettler makes five points about God's ministry of atonement and the nature of our participation as the church.

1. The Father's heart
The atonement begins here. The Father's heart is one of love toward his creation, expressed in his desire to rescue humanity from its own devices. Sondra needs to know the true heart of the true Father, even as she struggles with her memory of her sin-filled human father.

2. The Son's incarnation
The Father's love is seen clearly in the incarnation of his Son ("God so loved the world that he gave...). Indeed, "the incarnation of the Son truly reveals the Father" (p62). Unfortunately this fact is often obscured by penal (or forensic) theories of the atonement, which say that the Son paid the penalty for humanity's sins in order to assuage the Father's wrath and revulsion toward sinners. This approach denies the essential unity of being and will shared by the Father and the Son (with the Holy Spirit).

Sadly, Sondra, like many Christians, views God (i.e. the Father) as an "angry judge." Where in this image is the solace and comfort she needs from her heavenly Father? It is absent. How sad, for her true Heavenly Father, in his love for Sondra and for all humanity, gave his only Son to rescue us all from the ravages of sin (including our own and those of others, like Sondra's human father).

Kettler points here to the truth of the oneness of being that is shared by the truine persons. The relation of that oneness to the atonement has HUGE implications for pastoral care, as Kettler notes,

"The God who meets Sondra in the face of Jesus Christ with forgiveness and mercy is the same as God the Father. There is no 'God behind God.' As [Scottish theologian] McLeod Campbelll states, there is one divine purpose of love seen in the relationship between the incarnation and the atonement" (pp62-63).

This love of the Father, revealed clearly and decisively in Jesus, keeps us from making the grievous mistake of "reading into God any [false] idea of God, including our human ideas of 'father'" (p63). This will be of particular importance to Sondra and all whose experience of their human father was of an abuser and not of a compassionate, protective and loving father.

3. The ongoing nature of the atonement
Kettler notes that the atonement is not simply a single moment at the cross. Rather, it should be understood as the ongoing "development" of the continuing incarnation of the Son of God, by which the life and love of God is communicated to us. The life that is incarnate in Jesus, gives itself to us in suffering love, even to the point of death on a cross (see p64). It is through this continuing incarnation of the Son, that the Father brings us atonement (healing):

In the incarnation of the Son, humanity participates in "the history of the inner life of His Godhead" [quoting Barth]. God communicates his own life in order to heal broken humanity... Healing and reconciliation come when we participate by the Spirit through faith in this "inner life" of the triune God, made manifest to us by the incarnation of Jesus Christ (p64).

The atonement includes forgiveness of sin, but also the impartation to us of God's own life through our union with Jesus (who is our life - see Col 3:4). This being so, Kettler asks,

Where is that life for Sondra? Where is she to find the life of Christ which can begin to deal with the depths of her anguish? [What she needs is] an incarnational place... to begin to be healed. Jesus' presence was such a place for the [original] disciples. The church as the body of Christ, as the community of atonement, should be a place of 'rehabilitation' for all, building upon the accomplished radical surgery performed by the life of th Son lived in our human flesh (p66).

4. Jesus' vicarious humanity
Kettler notes that the atonement is not only God's action toward us, but also humanity's response back to God. Here we are reminded of the vital reality of Jesus' vicarious humanity. Because we, as sinners, are incapable of responding to God's love, his Son becomes human and makes the perfect human response on our behalf as our representative and substitute. Jesus provides this human "atoning response of perfect worship, trust, service, and confession of sins to the Father on behalf of humanity" (p67).

As Kettler notes, atonement is not simply God saving humanity from sin, death, and hell, but also God saving us for eternal life, with all the fullness of what that means (see p68). For this to occur, Christ was "made like his brethren in every respect," becoming High Priest for us and the expiation for our sin, to the extent of "learning obedience" by his suffering (Heb 5:8; 2:10), which expressed itself in "loud cries and tears" (5:7).

This being so, the church can, with joy and confidence, reassure Sondra that the atonement accomplished by Jesus on her behalf "penetrates into every point of [her] existence." Jesus is right now interceding for her - she can be reassured that she is not alone in her suffering, for Jesus identifies with her anguish and in "some mysterious way, the terror, the fear, the guilt the hatred, the shame that Sondra feels for her father is being felt by Christ himself. Her anguish has become his anguish" (pp68-69).

5. The church's ministry
Kettler concludes with this vital point: "The actualization of the atonement in the ministry of the church is in the proclamation of the forgiveness of sins" (p69, emphasis added). Why is this so important? Because...

Forgiveness of sins is the atoning manifestation of the life of God, motivated by the heart of the Father, taking deep ontological roots in humanity through the incarnation, and perfectly fulfilled by the faithfulness of the vicarious humanity of Chrst (p69).

The church is not called to cause this forgiveness, but to make it known - to help people "see" what is essentially invisible, in that the atonement happens within the heart and mind (being) of God. But how does the church make the invisible, visible? By being a "sign" - a representation - of the atonement. The continuing atoning life of God is communicated by the church to people (like Sondra)...

...through... preaching, teaching, pastoral care, and fellowship. In these acts, the vicarious humanity of Christ continues to live in the church [which is] the body of Christ... The atonement continues to be powerful in the church when the message of forgiveness through the life of God is still proclaimed, even when we cannot believe, even when we need someone to believe for us (p75).

Sondra does not need the church to tell her to "become more spiritual" so that she might "forgive and forget." What she needs is to be lovingly, patiently and continuously reminded of the truth of who God is for her and with her (in her past, right now, and forever). She needs assurance that Jesus, in his vicarious humanity, is with her, and believes and forgives for her; thus bringing God's atoning life to her. The church's calling is to help her deeply experience this truth and life, even while being patient with her struggles to do so. As this occurs, little by little, her life is transformed, because more and more, she is able to share in the love and life of God that is hers in Christ.

An incarnational view of holiness

2011-04-25T07:09:00.013-04:00

The book Incarnational Ministry, the presence of Christ in Church, Society and Family contains an essay titled, Holy God, Holy Church, in which Donald McCullough examines from a Trinitarian, incarnational perspective what the Bible says about holiness.

Holiness in the Old Testament
McCullough begins where the OT starts, with holiness as a religious concept, having to do with that which is separate:

As applied to the cult [OT religious system], the holy things of God are perceived as set apart for his service; and second, as applied to the name and person of God, God himself is understood as set apart. Thus [in the OT] holiness is first a religious, not an ethical, term (p17).

Then the OT develops an ethical conception of holiness: "Because God has set apart not only objects for his use but a people as well, there emerges the idea of a holy people who live according to a unique standard of conduct" (p17). This comes to the fore in Lev 19:2: "You shall be holy; for I the Lord your God am holy", and is developed further in the OT prophets:

The prophets blast with abhorrence empty cultic ritualism and call the holy people of God to live justly by correcting oppression, defending the fatherless, and pleading for the widow (Isa 1:11-17). This emphasis on the conduct of the holy people is perhaps due to a new appreciation of the moral distinctives of their holy God. Hosea, especially, recasts the idea of the Holy in a new form. Breaking completely with the cultic element of Israel's faith, Hosea presents Yahweh in moral antithesis to humanity: "I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst" (11:9). Because God's holiness opposes the uncleanness of Israel (6:10, 9:4), it has a death-dealing aspect that causes the final "stumbling" of Israel (14:1); yet his holiness also has the creative element that makes him a tree of life (14:8). In a way that is astonishing in the context of Israel's religious traditions, Hosea links the notions of holiness and life (11:1-4)... The holiness of Yahweh, as the sum of his being, is precisely the creative love that heals as it tears and brings life through its slaying (6:1)... The antithesis between God and man consists in the very love which overcomes it (pp 17-18).

In a similar way, Isaiah connects God's holiness with his life-giving salvation: "Yahweh reveals his holy 'otherness' precisely in his power to save, to be the Holy One of Israel" (p18). McCullough then sums up his review of the OT's view of holiness:

The Holy is utterly distinct: the "wholly other" is the God of Israel; his set-apartness consists in the fact that he is Redeemer, the God of love. The holiness of God, therefore, refers to the fact that God is antithetical to humanity precisely in his overcoming the antithesis. As holy, he is the consuming fire of love (p19).

Holiness in the New Testament
McCullough finds in the NT the bringing together of the religious and ethical conceptions of holiness in the person and work of Jesus, the one in whom "all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell" (Col. 1:19).

In Christ, God reveals his holiness, his utter separateness precisely in his will not to be separate. But theology has not always kept this Christological focus, and the result has been continuing bifurcation in the church's understanding of both the holiness of God and its own holiness (p19).

McCullough argues forcefully that in the biblical revelation, which points to Jesus...

The Holy is not an empty, independent category; it knows only the Holy One of Israel revealed in the Holy One of Nazareth... The 'otherness' of God is precisely his redemptive love (p21).... We must look for an understanding of holiness that is grounded in Jesus Christ. Since both the religious and the ethical dimensions of holiness find their unity in him, we cannot be satisfied with approaches that abstract one or the other apart from him.... In the unity of his act of grace and judgment [in Jesus], God's 'otherness' asserts itself without compromise - an 'otherness' which is nothing other than love (p23).

The holiness of the church
McCullough then notes that the holiness of the NT church must not be reduced to either a "religious notion" or an "ethical concept." Rather, the church's holiness is a participation in the holiness of God as it is revealed in the person and work of Jesus, who is...

...the Holy One of God...the "wholly other," [who is] absolutely free and distinct from this world, the personal embodiment of transcendent grace. And yet, inasmuch as the "wholly other" is revealed in grace, he is shown to be "wholly for." What sets the Holy One [Jesus] off from the world is precisely his being for the world (p26).

McCullough notes that this understanding of holiness has two important implications for the church:

Holiness in its original sense is God's act of grace in Jesus - thus it must never be abstracted from that grace, and must always be understood as God's gift of grace to the church.
"Inasmuch as the holiness of the church is participation in God's gift of holiness, the distinctiveness of its being is the very distinctiveness of God himself" (pp26-27).

Understanding that the church's holiness is entirely of grace, in the person of Jesus the Savior, we are reminded that the church, in itself, is sinful, and thus always in need of that grace. This also reminds us that the church is a "pilgrim people" - a people "on journey with Jesus," clothed in his righteousness, and moving away from the sin of its past toward the "eternally victorious love of God" (p28).

The bottom line for McCullough is this: all attempts to define the church's holiness in purely ethical or religious terms are inadequate and misguided. The holiness of the church exists in Jesus, who calls the church to participate in his unique "otherness." That otherness is Jesus himself, drawing near, in love, to forgive and to bless sinners. This very grace, in accordance with the nature of its giver, judges all sin as sinful, and overcomes it all through holy, divine love; not through wrath, condemnation or being aloof. By this grace, the church is holy as it shares in this holy love of Jesus, which is his redeeming love for all people.

Have a joy-filled Holy Week

2011-04-21T12:08:00.006-04:00

The Last Supper on Maundy Thursday

In the midst of Holy Week - the very heart of the Christian calendar - we pause to consider what is laid out for us to understand, and in understanding to experience:

Jesus' entering Jerusalem as the servant-King come to suffer and die for his subjects (Palm Sunday).
Jesus' gathering his followers for the Last Supper; sharing the glorious truths about who he is and what he is about to do for them and all humanity (Maundy Thursday).
Jesus' dying on Calvary's cross - the great and complete sin offering that secures forgiveness for all (Good Friday).
Jesus' going to the grave where in death he experiences the depth of our corruption - the consequence of sin (Holy Saturday).
Jesus' rising from death; born again to new, glorified human life; securing in himself this new birth for all (Easter Sunday).

Happy Holy Week!

Incarnational Ministry

2011-04-16T07:12:00.017-04:00

The book, Incarnational Ministry, the presence of Christ in Church, Society and Family (1990, edited by Christian Kettler & Todd Speidell), features essays in honor of Ray Anderson. Ray (now deceased), is widely regarded for advocating an incarnational approach to ministry grounded in a Trinitarian, Christ-centered theology. According to the editors, this approach emphasizes...

...the critical significance of Christ's continued ministry through his church... [a ministry which] cannot be conducted as a mere matter of technique, as if the social and behavioral sciences contributed more to the practice of ministry than theology itself. Theology that is true to the incarnate Savior will inform and enable ministers of Christ's church to understand better, and participate in more effectively, the ministry of Christ through his church. (pxiv)

Referencing Thomas F. Torrance, the editors define incarnational ministry as, "the ministry of God in becoming a person in Jesus Christ, the 'Personalizing Person,' who creates 'personalized persons' by taking upon himself our humanity." (pxiv)

In the book's first essay, The Distinctive Character of the Reformed Tradition, Torrance notes that God, through the Incarnation, has communicated to humanity not just information about himself, but himself in his own personal being and doing as the Triune God of love.

Torrance notes that this reality has vital implications for Christian doctrine, including predestination, election and judgment. Rather than referencing timeless decrees of God, these doctrines, rightly understood, reference the loving activity of the triune God (who is love), in and through the incarnate Son of God, Jesus Christ.

In choosing humanity for fellowship with himself, the electing God...wills to set aside everything contrary to his eternal purpose... There are not two wills in God, but only the one eternal will of his electing love. It is by the constancy of that love that all who reject God are judged. The gospel tells us that it is only in Jesus Christ that election takes place. He embodies the electing love of God in his own divine-human person... In Christ the whole electing and covenanting love of God is gathered up to a head and launched into history. Before Christ, apart from him, or without him, God does not will or do anything, for there is no God behind the back of Jesus Christ. (p4)

Torrance also calls for a Trinitarian, incarnational teaching of the ordo salutis (order of salvation). Thomas Aquinas and other theologians of the middle ages erred in teaching an order where union with Christ follows justification and sanctification. Calvin and other protestant reformers vehemently disagreed, understanding that...

It is only through union with Christ first that we may partake of all the saving benefits embodied in him: Union with Christ thus precedes justification and sanctification... Christ himself is not only the agent but the actual matter or substance of election... To be united with Christ is to be joined to him in his life of faith, obedience, prayer, and worship, so that we must look away from our faith, obedience, prayer, and worship to what Christ is and does for us in our place and on our behalf. (pp6-7, and see Gal 2:20 in the KJV translation, which speaks of living by Christ's own faith)

It is here that the doctrine of the vicarious (representative-substitutionary) humanity of Jesus comes front and center:

It is through a real union with Christ in his vicarious humanity that all that he has done for us in himself becomes ours and we are made to share together what he is...It is in that incarnational and atoning way that justification has to be understood, not just in terms of imputed righteousness but in terms of a participation in the righteousness of Christ which is transferred to us through union with him [what Calvin, borrowing from the Greek fathers, called the 'blessed exchange']. (p7)

Are all forgiven?

2011-04-11T07:45:00.034-04:00

A Trinitarian-incarnational view of the gospel proclaims that God has reconciled all humanity to himself through the vicarious humanity of Jesus. In Jesus, all are forgiven, accepted and included in God's love and life (see 2Cor 5:14-21).

But how can it be said that God has forgiven those who have not repented - not turned to him in faith? Doesn't the idea of universal reconciliation conflict with Jesus' words in Matthew 25?

31 "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. 34 Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.' ...41 Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.'"

Here Jesus apparently refers to his return in glory (his "second coming") on that "Great Day" (Acts 2:20, Jude 1:6) when all will be judged. Jesus seems to refer to that time in John 5.

26 "For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself. 27 And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man. 28 Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice 29 and come out-- those who have done good will rise to live, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned."

"Rise to be condemned" in v29 is taken from Daniel 12:2. In the KJV, this phrase is translated, "the resurrection of damnation." Damnation" is "krisis" in Greek, a word that carries the meaning of judgment, decision and evaluation, and that speaks of discernment and the sentencing/separation that flows from it. As noted by Bultmann, the final judgment will be a time when "men divide themselves into those who accept Christ and those who reject him" (quoted in BAGH, p453). This rejection and its consequences is what Jesus points to in John 3:18.

What we learn from these and other scriptures (like Acts 24:15), is that at the time of this judgment, all people will stand before Jesus and see him for who he is - the judge who is the savior of all. This revelation will call forth the ultimate "decision." What decision? Whether or not to trust Jesus to be who he is (both judge and savior) and whether or not to embrace their true identity in him as dearly loved, accepted, included and forgiven children of God. Seeing Jesus, and themselves this way, brings to all a "crisis" of decision. It will be a glad crisis for those who believe (the "sheep"), but a terrible one for those who do not believe (the "goats").

Does God not love these "goats"? Are they not his? Has he not sent his Son to die for them? Has he not through his Son already included them in his triune life? Yes he has. Because of a decision they made or will make? No, because of who Jesus is and what he has done for them. This is the objective truth of all humanity in Christ. However, not all believe and thus experience this truth. Jesus never forces it on anyone - he will not coerce anyone now nor when he returns. Yet, he gives each person meaningful, unimpeded opportunity to "see" him and in seeing to choose. This is his gift of revelation and freedom - both expressions of God's love. However, their choice neither makes them a beloved child of God, or removes them from being one. This status is theirs only by God's gracious action in Jesus on their behalf.

Note, however, that their choice does have bearing on their experience of and thus enjoyment (or rejection) of their true identity. The final/ultimate "place" of this enjoyment is heaven; the final/ultimate "place" of this rejection is hell.

Scripture reassures us that a time is coming when all will "see" Jesus, and in "seeing" will understand (perhaps for the first time) who they are in him. Thus no one will end up in hell by "falling through the cracks" of ignorance. Jesus will see to that. But the question is this: What will they decide about Jesus, now clearly seen? We'll see, but our hope and prayer (joining with Jesus in his prayer for all), is that they will embrace their true life, now "hidden in Christ," but on that Great Day seen with clarity. In the meantime, we are called to tell people who Jesus is and who they are in him, even as we continue to pray, "Come, Lord Jesus."

What about infant baptism?

2011-04-07T06:15:00.004-04:00

Grace Communion International (GCI), baptizes adult believers and their infant children. GCI finds support for this in a Trinitarian, incarnational understanding of Holy Scripture. That understanding is summarized briefly in this post. A video of an infant baptism ceremony is linked below.

The New Testament speaks of whole households being baptized upon the conversion of the head of the household (Acts 16:15, 31-33; 1 Corinthians 1:16). It is likely that there were infants and children in these households, though these texts do not provide conclusive evidence of infant baptism.

A more persuasive text is Acts 2:39. In Luke’s account of Peter’s speech on the Day of Pentecost, Peter speaks of the covenantal promises of God given to believers and their children, verifying that believer’s children are already included in the household of faith prior to any personal profession of faith. 1Cor 7:14 likewise indicates that the children of believers are in a different category than the children of unbelievers, although neither text specifies exactly what the difference is, or how it is to be denoted.

Trinitarian, incarnational theology affirms from Holy Scripture that it is the faith of Jesus Christ, not our own faith, that draws us (Eph 2:8; Gal 2:20 KJV). Christian baptism signifies what God by grace, of his own initiative, has done for us. It is upon the truth of this already accomplished fact that faith comes to rest.

As Paul says, “…while we were yet powerless” Christ died for all humanity (Rom. 5:6). Christ lived on behalf of all humanity, died for all humanity, and rose again for all humanity. Similarly, he was baptized on behalf of all humanity, and in that way all have already been baptized, whether or not we are old enough to understand it. Powerless and helpless humans (both adult and infant) are loved and affirmed by God in spite of their current inability to understand or respond.

This video shows an infant baptism service in a GCI congregation.

When adults are baptized they are able to give their free, personal response of faith to God’s claim and call upon their lives. Those who are baptized as infants also come to a point in their lives when they can consciously give their allegiance to Christ. For those who are baptized as infants, a “confirmation ceremony” provides opportunity to give public acknowledgement of their faith.

James Torrance put it this way: “In the practice of infant baptism, we believe that in faith we are doing something for the child, long before the child comes to faith, in acknowledgement of what Christ did for all of us nineteen hundred years before we were born. But in faith we pray that Christ in his faithfulness, and in his own, time, will bring this child to personal faith. The efficacy of baptism is not in the rite or in the water, but in the faithfulness of Christ”.

In most churches, infants are welcomed into the community of faith and their special status before God is recognized either by a blessing or by baptism. Either way, the community of faith (parents, extended family, care givers, and all members of the local congregation) has the covenantal responsibility to work together to bring up the child “in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4).

Daniel Migliori says: “While the practice of infant baptism is not absolutely necessary in the life of the church, it may be permissible. And whether it is permissible depends on whether it is being practiced as a routine social rite, or as a form of cheap, magical grace, or instead with the clear understanding that it proclaims the unconditional grace of God in Jesus Christ and calls both parents and community to responsibility for the care, nurture, and guidance of the baptized child in the life of faith, hope, and love” (Faith Seeking Understanding, 2nd ed., p. 286). Migliori’s book has an excellent discussion of the permissibility of infant baptism from a Trinitarian theological perspective (including a critique of Karl Barth’s negative position.

When infant baptism is practiced responsibly by the community of faith it can be viewed as a sign of God’s gracious initiative and a powerful expression of the fact that God loves us before we ever begin to respond to God. Infant baptism proclaims that God’s love, grace, and salvation are purely his gift. Any human response to this is just a matter of time as to when it occurs.

Given this understanding, GCI baptizes believers and their infant children (when the infant's parents are guardians request it). GCI believes that infant baptism is a scripturally permissible and spiritually blessed expression of God’s unconditional grace and love. As these infants come to faith, they are provided with a confirmation ceremony in which they publicly express their faith in Jesus, providing for them a “rite of passage” that helps mark their conscious acceptance of the grace that has already been given to them.

Are all born again?

2011-04-02T08:06:00.028-04:00

A monarch butterfly emerges from its chrysalis.

A blog reader asked if the understanding that all humanity is included in God's love and life, means that all people are already spiritually alive (i.e. "born again"). My answer is this: to be included in God's life and to be born again are related, but not the same. Let me explain.

Time and again, Scripture proclaims that what God has done (through the incarnation, life, death, resurrection and ascension of his Son, and the outpouring at Pentecost of the Holy Spirit) transforms all humanity. Here are some of the verses of Scripture speaking to this: Romans 5:15, 18; 6:10-11; 2Corinthians 5:14-19; Ephesians 1:3-10, 2:4-9; Colossians 1:19-20, 3:1-4, 11; 1Timothy 2:5-6.

I hasten to add that we do not rely on select "proof texts" for this understanding. Rather, we must take into account the full story of God and humanity told in Scripture, by which we come to know Jesus for who he is, and for what he has done; and the effect this has on all of humanity (and, indeed, the whole cosmos). The above cited verses give a brief summation of this stunning truth, which is the "scarlet thread" that runs through and gives coherence to all Scripture. The ancients refer to this thread as "the rule of faith."

Paul's argument concerning this rule of faith, which is the core message of the gospel, is compelling: Because Adam, representing all humanity, sinned, he took all into sin and humanity, in Adam, fell. But Jesus (the Son of God incarnate), who upholds all humanity as its Creator and Sustainer; and represents all humanity as human himself, took Adam's place as head of humanity and reversed the fall. In doing so, he restored humanity to its privileged position as God's accepted, beloved children. Jesus reconciled all to God.

What Jesus accomplished for us as one of us is not what might be true for us "if...."; but what is true for us (and all people), because of what Jesus has done. It is an accomplished reality (and that's good news!).

But does this mean that all people are spiritually alive (what John refers to in John 3 as "born again")? In answering, we must be careful to make the distinctions that Scripture makes, in the ways it makes them. Above, I cited Col. 1:19-20, which states that through Jesus (and what he has done as fully God and fully human), God has reconciled all humanity to himself.

Accordingly, we speak of all people everywhere as "included in God's love and life." They are not cut off from God; they are not condemned before God (Romans 8:1); indeed he has forgiven them all and keeps no record of their sin (1Cor 13:5). In short, all people everywhere are God's dearly loved children. That's how he sees them, because of what has happened to all humanity in Jesus.

This is a universal truth - true for all people irrespective of their present, personal view of and relationship with God. This truth is grounded not in personal (subjective) experience/action, but in the objective reality of who Jesus is (God in union with all humanity) and what Jesus has done in and through his vicarious (representative - substitutionary) humanity.

However, note Col 1:21, which speaks to a personal (individual/subjective) experience. Here people who are objectively included, are said to have been (prior to their personal conversion) "alienated from God" - "enemies in their minds" toward God. What gives? How can those who are included, forgiven and accepted by God be said to be "enemies of God"?

The answer is that God views all people - believers and unbelievers alike- as his dearly loved children. He does so because he has taken action himself, through his Son, to make it so.

However, not all know this. Individual non-believers remain in the "dark" about this reality - they continue, despite their inclusion, to be alienated from God in their minds. And so, many of God's beloved children do not know their true identity. And this lack of knowledge is evidenced by "evil behavior" (v21b). Their true father is God, but they are behaving as if he is not. They have not come to see and to embrace their true identity - an identity that is "hidden in Christ" (Col 3:3), but is true of them nonetheless.

It is the present ministry of the Holy Spirit (who was "poured out" on all flesh at Pentecost, Acts 2:14-17) to reveal the truth about humanity to those who do not yet know it, enabling to believe and to thus be released from the "alienation" that is in their minds toward their true Father. To come to know this truth - which means to come to deeply experience and to put one's trust in the Source of this truth - involves being born again (from above), a miracle to which John, starting with a quote from Jesus, makes reference in John chapter 3:

3 "I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again." [declares Jesus] 4 "How can a man be born when he is old?" Nicodemus asked. "Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born!" 5 Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, 'You must be born again.' 8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit."

This re-birth, via the agency of the Holy Spirit, is a stunning transformation (see Rom 12:2 and 2Cor 3:16), which opens a person's mind and heart to receive the truth of who Jesus is, and what he has done for them (and for all humanity), and thus who they are. To believe this does not create this truth - rather it opens their hearts and minds to come into alignment with it. The Bible refers to this realignment of thinking as repentance. And it transforms everything.

Through this Spirit-given gift of repentance/transformation, one's union with God is not created (Jesus brought us all into union with God long ago). However it gives one entrance into a personal experience of who they truly are, and that makes them "spiritually alive." Note Jesus' words, again quoted by John: "I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life" (John 5:24).

Does the phrase, "has eternal life," mean that the person first becomes a child of God and is given this new life at the point of personal belief? Or does it mean that through belief, they "get hold of" the eternal life that is already theirs in Jesus, made possible by what Jesus did long ago?

I believe the latter is true. In the objective sense, we can rightly say that we were born again the day Jesus rose from the dead 2,000 years ago. However, in the personal (subjective) sense, we can say that we were born again the day the eyes of our heart were opened to see who Jesus truly is and thus who we truly are in him. Both the objective (universal) and the subjective (personal) are very real, but note that the personal has no meaning or reality except for what Jesus did for us, with us and to us, long ago; and continues now to do in union with us through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Awakened (illuminated/born again) by the Holy Spirit to our life in Christ, we are made "spiritually alive" - a miraculous transformation like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis...

Born again, and now in the light, we are able to see what had been true for us all along, but could not be seen in the darkness of our alienation from God. Now able to see, we rejoice with a "joy unspeakable and full of glory" (1Pet 1:8, KJV). In the light of this glory, everything is brand new. And everything begins to change. As the song Amazing Grace declares, "I was lost, but now I'm found; blind, but now I see." Watch and rejoice:

What about hell?

2011-03-29T09:40:00.024-04:00

Dante & Virgil in Hell

A discussion of "last things" (eschatology) necessarily addresses the subject of hell. It's a hot one right now (forgive the pun!), due in large part to Rob Bell's book, "Love Wins" (click here to read a helpful review of Rob's book written by Jonathan Stepp, who agrees with most of Bell's conclusions, but notes that Bell does not reason out of a theology that is fully Trinitarian and incarnational).

So what are we to think about hell? What does the Bible say? And how do we understand what it says in the light of the revelation about God and humanity given us in the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ?

It seems to me that the biblical revelation concerning hell is often misrepresented. People routinely read back into Scripture modern conceptions of hell that have more to do with Dante's fanciful imagination (in the epic poem, "Divine Comedy") than with what Scripture actually says. A case in point is what Jesus says in Luke chapter 12:

4 "I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. 5 But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him. 6 Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. 7 Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows. 8 I tell you, whoever acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man will also acknowledge him before the angels of God. 9 But he who disowns me before men will be disowned before the angels of God."

In verse 5, Jesus mentions the idea of punishment in hell (Gehenna). He is referencing the traditional Jewish conception of a place where the incorrigibly wicked are punished. Jesus makes this reference not to comment on what hell is like, but to remind his audience of God's complete and ultimate authority and power over both life and death. We are to fear God, says Jesus, not humans (like the influential, yet hypocritical Pharisees mentioned in v.1).

In making this point, Jesus reveals what this powerful God, his Father, truly is like. Unlike the Pharisees who are on a power trip, God is lavishly (even shockingly) loving toward his creation (humankind included). Not even one sparrow dies without his caring attention (v6). And so Jesus' admonition is to give allegiance and trust to this God, and also to Jesus his Son.

Note that Jesus refers here to himself not as "the Son of God" but as "the Son of Man" (v8). By doing so, Jesus not only identifies himself as Israel's promised Messiah, but shows his close identification with all of humanity - all are his brothers and sisters and thus objects of God's unconditional love.

The God who has power over life and death, loves all of humanity so much that he has come, in the person of his Son, to be with us as one of us. In Jesus, God has joined us in our darkness, pain, sorrow, suffering and sin in order to deliver us and to grant us entrance with him into the life that is eternal - the life of love enjoyed by the Father, Son and Spirit.

Why then this warning about hell (life apart from God's love and joy)? So that we will focus on the loving God who saves, giving to him alone our trust and allegiance. In doing so, we will not fear human powers (or demonic powers or even the power of death itself). We will be freed up to fear (reverence) only God.

Is hell then real? Yes, and in two ways:

It is real now. Many, in this life, live in hell - a condition of alienation from God with all the darkness and suffering that brings. Through the incarnation, life, death, resurrection and ascension of the Son of God, all people are included in God's love and life. But not knowing it, or knowing it and rejecting it, some continue in darkness. It is a living, present hell for them.

It is real in the future beyond the final judgment. All humanity, at Jesus' return, will know who Jesus is and in knowing, will face the ultimate decision: to receive and embrace the one God has given them as their salvation, or to reject and turn away from him. The possibility of such rejection creates the possibility of its consequence, which is hell.

Thus, hell has to do with the exercise of the freedom that God extends to his children. Why such freedom - even to reject our Creator and Savior? Because God is love, and love never coerces. Could God force from us the decision he prefers? Of course. Will he? Never. If we decide, ultimately, against God, which is to reject his salvation, we decide for hell. Thus hell, ultimately, is a place of our own choosing. As C.S. Lewis has said, hell's door is locked from the inside.

What will this "place" be like? Scripture says little, and what little it says is couched in metaphors that simply point to the agony and emptiness of living in alienation from the God who is love. Will God cease to love those who consign themselves to hell? No, God cannot cease being who he is. Inhabiting the new heaven and earth will be God's dearly loved, forgiven, accepted and included children, who embrace this God of love. Inhabiting hell will be God's dearly loved, forgiven, accepted and included children, who refuse this love and thus reject this God. That's the hell of it.

P.S. One question remains: Can people in hell, after the final judgment at the eschaton, get out? Note two things:

First: God, who forever is loving and forgiving, will not ever forget his children (even those in hell).

Second: the story given by John in Revelation, which employs highly symbolic, apocryphal symbolism, ends with a tantalizing image: The new heaven and new earth has arrived (21:1), and the unrepentant have been consigned to hell, which John likens to a "fiery lake burning with sulfur" (21:8). He also likens hell to a place outside "the Holy City, Jerusalem" that has come down to earth from God and now is the center of a new heaven joined with earth (21:10, 27; 22:15). Stunning! But note an equally stunning (and unexpected) detail: the gates to this new Jerusalem are left wide open (21:25; 22:14)!

Thus the book that puts a "wrapper" on the story of God, ends with this open-ended invitation: "Come...let all who wish take the free gift of the water of life" (22:17). Clearly this is an invitation to those now living in alienation from God. Could it also be an invitation to those in hell following the great judgment at Jesus' return? God knows. And so, like all things, we entrust this to him, trusting him to be always who he is: the triune God of love. And as Rob Bell helpfully notes, love wins!

A trinitarian view of the last things (eschatology)

2011-03-22T06:51:00.006-04:00

This post concludes our review of Life in the Trinity, an introduction to theology with the help of the church fathers by Donald Fairbairn. We'll look now at Fairbairn's view of the last things (eschatology). This topic is rather controversial at this time, due in large part to Rob Bell's book "Love Wins." I've not read the book, but from reading what Rob says about it (and Jonathan Stepp's helpful review), I sense some continuity between his and Fairbairn's views.

A key point made by Fairbairn concerning God's work to redeem humanity, including at the coming eschaton, is this:

...All the arrows point down, not up.... At no point in the biblical panorama is redemption a matter of our rising up to achieve a higher condition ourselves. Instead, at every point, God comes down to us, and at every point, this world is the focus of God's gracious activity. (p225)

At the creation of humanity, God came down and walked among us in the Garden of Eden. Then, in order to reverse the fall, he came down as one of us to live our life, die our death and give us new, redeemed life. Then when Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, returned to his Father in heaven, he sent the Holy Spirit down to dwell with us, uniting us to Jesus and through Jesus to the Trinity. But what about the next step? Fairbairn comments:

Scripture...clearly teaches that in the next great redemptive event...the Son will come down a second time to this world.... Just as the arrow has pointed down at the incarnation, so the arrow will point down again as the Son returns to this world. (p226).

With this great event comes another: "God the Father will bring his dwelling place, heaven itself, down to this world." (p226). This coming of heaven to earth creates what is referred to in Isaiah 65:17 as "new heavens and a new earth" and in Revelation 21:1 as "a new heaven and new earth." This place of God's dwelling with humanity is radically new, yet in continuity with what we now experience. God will not bring us "up" to heaven, but bring heaven (his manifest presence with us) "down" to us. Fairbairn comments:

From beginning to end, this world is the focus of God's activity and God comes down to accomplish his redemptive work among us. As stunning as it is to think that God chooses to give us a share in his own intratrinitarian fellowship, it is equally stunning to recognize that God's final act will be to change his address in order to dwell with us in the world he created for us originally, a world that he will re-create for us at the end of history. (p227).

As Fairbairn notes, these Scriptural truths were taught by the early patristic fathers. Sadly, some of this teaching is under-emphasized in modern evangelicalism, though some like N.T. Wright (in "Surprised by Hope") and Rob Bell (in "Love Wins") are once again emphasizing that God's plan is to dwell with us forever in a renewed earth, merged with heaven.

Many and important implications flow from this understanding, not the least of which is a reminder that the earth matters greatly to God and therefore should to us: "Christianity is not world-rejecting but ultimately world-affirming." (p228). Moreover, this understanding reminds us that "life in this world has direct continuity with the life we will live eternally... Christian life is the task of beginning to live now in the way we will live perfectly later, in the new heavens and new earth..." (p229).

Fairbairn does not go into detail concerning related issues, such as who will dwell in this new heaven/earth and who will not (thus dwelling in hell). I'll take up these topics next time. In doing so, I'll build on what we've learned from Fairbairn concerning the doctrine of theosis, which tells us that salvation is our sharing in the Son's relationship with his Father through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Adoption, conversion, faith and Christian living

2011-03-16T09:10:00.018-04:00

In Life in the Trinity, an introduction to theology with the help of the church fathers, Donald Fairbairn addresses the related topics of adoption, conversion, faith and Christian living.

Adoption and conversion
Fairbairn locates the moment of our adoption at the point of personal belief (conversion), noting that, "our believing/receiving [Christ] makes us children of God." (pp184-5). I respectfully disagree with his conclusion. Though personal belief helps us experience our adoption, I believe that we are adopted before we believe.

Paul speaks of adoption as having occurred to all humanity in and through what the Son of God has already done through his incarnation, death, resurrection and ascension. Through these historic events, humanity was united to Christ and in Christ taken up into the divine communion. Indeed, all this occurred when we were "dead in...[our] trespasses and sins..." (Eph 2:1). It seems that Fairbairn overlooks this objective/ universal sense of adoption, focusing exclusively on the subjective/personal sense. This is unfortunate and misleading.

However, I agree with Fairbairn's assessment that personal belief (which itself is God's gift of grace), is essential for experiencing and thus enjoying one's adoption in Christ. As we share in Jesus' believing, we actively and thus transformingly experience Jesus' own relationship with his Father. We refer to these believers as "Christians" - the gospels calls them disciples (followers) of Jesus. To follow Jesus is to actively share in his life and his love, thus sharing his relationship with his Father, and with all humanity, in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Faith
Concerning the faith by which our adoption in Christ is subjectively (personally) experienced, Fairbairn rightly notes that evangelicals often get tied up in knots trying to define faith in ways that separate it from works. Certainly, we want to be clear that we can not earn our salvation (adoption) by our works. However, to focus so much on what constitutes faith, and faith's "mechanics," inadvertently can turn believing into a human work, placing the focus back on ourselves. Fairbairn comments:

The fathers of the church did not normally try to define what faith was, and they certainly did not try to delineate which religious activities belonged in the category of works and which belonged in the category of faith. Instead, they wrote of faith by writing about the one toward whom we are to direct our faith. They wrote endlessly about God the Trinity...[and] modeled faith in God the Trinity by directing everyone's gaze toward God but did not articulate what it meant to have faith. (pp187-8)

The fathers understood that everyone has faith - all believe in something. And so they focused on the true and only saving object of faith, namely our triune God, and specifically the person and work of Jesus Christ. And so Fairbairn concludes...

It is perhaps appropriate today for evangelicals to spend less time seeking to nail down exactly what faith is and instead to point other people to the only one who is truly worthy of their faith, Jesus Christ. Conversion to Christianity is not so much a process of gaining faith where one had none before as it is a process of transferring one's trust from whatever or whomever one was trusting previously to Christ alone. (p188)

Christian Living
Concerning the Christian life, Fairbairn rightly notes that "our union to Christ is deepened by our continued adherence to him... In Christ we become more and more who we already are (that is, by remaining in Christ we begin more and more to reflect his character and thus to be more and more sanctified)." (p207)

Fairbairn carefully emphasizes that this sanctification, like our justification, is God's work of grace in us through the Spirit who unites us to Christ. We are not saved (justified) by faith and then sanctified by our own effort (works). Just as we deepen our personal experience of justification through active participation in it, so too with sanctification:

All aspects of Christian life, from beginning to end, revolve around our union with the Son and our reflection of his relationship to his Father. In a corresponding way, all aspects of Christian life involve our trust in Christ - we trust him to share his righteousness with us in sanctification just as much as we initially trusted him to share his righteousness with us in justification.... This recognition that both justification and sanctification are linked to Christ's righteousness was one of the fundamental insights of the early church, although the church fathers rarely expressed it using the words we use. Instead, they spoke of salvation as theosis, a word that emphasizes the believer's participation in the life of God. Believers are given this participation at the onset of faith and grow in it through what we call sanctification. Therefore, one may not speak of the righteousness that comes from sanctification as being our own any more than one may speak of initial justification as being our own. Instead, we come to life by union with Christ, and we grow in Christian life by remaining united with Christ, by fostering our relationship with him through the action of the Holy Spirit.... Accordingly it is important to speak of Christian life not just as growth in holiness but as cultivating and reflecting the share in the Father-Son relationship that we have been given at the beginning of Christian life (pp207-9)

How does this "cultivating and reflecting" occur? Fairbairn, noting the Scriptural metaphors, likens it to "eating and drinking from Christ." (p214), which occurs as we practice spiritual disciplines: Scripture reading, prayer (the "practice of being in his presence") and the Lord's Supper (Eucharist). Sadly, many Christian fellowships "seriously under-emphasize" the Eucharist. (p217) In contrast, the early church "made the Eucharist the central aspect of worship and celebrated it regularly (at least once a week, and in some churches several times a week or even every day)." (p217) Fairbairn reminds us that these practices are communal as well as individual. Indeed, "life in the Trinity is life in the church and involves regular participation in the worship and the mysteries Christ has entrusted to the church." (p219)

Finally, Fairbairn notes that our sharing, and thus growing in the Son's life includes sharing in suffering, "which God uses to bring about perseverance in faith and maturation of our Christian character.... Suffering is a way of both deepening our participation in the Son's relationship to the Father and reflecting that relationship in a broken world" (pp221-2).

Next time we'll conclude this series with Fairbairn, looking at his trinitarian view of eschatology.

Christ's death has undone our death

2011-03-10T23:35:00.006-05:00

In Life in the Trinity, an introduction to theology with the help of the church fathers, Donald Fairbairn addresses the related topics of redemption and immortality, citing the patristic fathers who, "wrote of the death of Christ in terms of its undoing our death." (p163)

As noted by the fathers, by virtue of the fall (Adam's transgression), we humans are mortal, that is, subject to death (corruption). However, God created us for immortality - our "share by grace in the natural immortality that characterizes the persons of the Trinity." (p163) How can what was lost be restored? Note comments from Athanasius:

What should God have done? Demand repentance from men for the transgression? For one might say that this was fitting for God, that as [humans] had become subject to corruption by the transgression, so by repentance they might return to incorruption. But repentance would not have saved God's honour, for he would still have remained untruthful unless men were in the power of death. Repentance gives no exemption from the consequences of nature, but merely looses sins. If, therefore, there had been only sin and not its consequence of corruption, repentance would have been very well. But if, since transgression had overtaken them, men were now prisoners to natural corruption, and they had been deprived of the grace of being in the image [of God], what else should have happened? Or who was needed for such grace and recalling except the Word of God, who also in the beginning had created the universe from nothing?... For since he is the Word from the Father and above everyone, consequently he alone was both able to recreate the universe and be worthy to suffer for all and to be an advocate on behalf of all before the Father. (On the Incarnation, par. 7; cited by Fairbairn on p164)

Jesus, through his vicarious humanity, has recreated us in God's image, thereby undoing our death (corruption). As Fairbairn notes, "death died with the death of Christ, and we who were in slavery to death have now been set free... Christ's death [is]... both a sacrifice to remove wrath/guilt and.. a victory over the demonic powers that hold us captive to death" (p165 and note Col 2:13-15 and Hebrews 2:14-17).

On this point, Fairbairn also quotes Cyril of Alexandria:

[Jesus] was scourged unjustly, that he might deliver us from merited chastisement; he was buffeted and smitten that we might buffet Satan, who had buffeted us, and that we might escape from the sin that cleaves to us through the original transgression. For if we think aright, we shall believe that all Christ's sufferings were for us and on our behalf and have power to release and deliver us from all those calamities we have deserved for our revolt from God. For as Christ, who knew not death, when he gave up his own body for our salvation, was able to loose the bonds of death for all mankind, for he, being One, died for all. (Commentary on John, book 12, introduction; cited by Fairbairn on p166)

Fairbairn then makes this important statement about Christ's representative/ substitutionary death:

What Scripture compels us to say, and what the early church recognized, is that somehow God the Son died for us... We turned away from God. We lost the share in the fellowship between the Father and the Son that God had given us at creation. We are born spiritually dead, enslaved to death and the devil, and unable to return to God. How can this terrible situation be remedied? By an atoning sacrifice. The consequence of sin is death, which implies both physical separation of the soul from the body and, more significantly, alienation from God. So if human beings are to be restored to life, then a substitute must be brought forth who can take that alienation away from us by taking it upon himself.

The entire Old Testament sacrificial system testifies to the necessity of such a sacrifice, and the repetition of the Old Testament sacrifices shows that they do not provide that sacrifice; they merely symbolized it. So who or what could be this sacrifice? It had to be a human being, since only a human would qualify to die in place of other men and women. He had to be a sinless human being, one who had never lost his share in the love between the Father and the Son, since a sinful human being could die for his own sin, but not for someone else's. And he had to be able to die not just for one other person's sin but for the sin of many people at once, indeed for the sin of the world. Thus he had to be somehow an infinite human being, whose life would be of such infinite value that it could be laid down for the sin of the world rather than just for the sin of one or two other people.

Who then qualifies to offer such a sacrifice? Who is fully human and utterly sinless and yet also infinite? Only the incarnate Word, God the Son after he has become a man. And this, John says, is the one whom God sent specifically to offer the atoning sacrifice. (pp166-167, and see 1John 4:7-12 and Romans 5).

Fairbairn concludes by noting that Jesus' resurrection reverses our death. His resurrection in his own human (physical) body "undoes our physical death, serving as a seal that we too shall one day be physically resurrected from the dead..." (p180, emphasis added). In like manner, his resurrection reverses our spiritual death. In his humanity, Jesus died a sinner, bearing on the cross our sin. But in his resurrection, Jesus, in his humanity, is restored to full fellowship with God. This is symbolized by the image of Jesus sitting at "the right hand of God" in heaven. Cyril of Alexandria writes of this in noting that the Son takes up his former glory "in a way that befits a man." (Christ is One, cited by Fairbairn on p181)

Through the humanity of the Son of God, who died and rose for us and with us, death and Satan have been conquered. The fall has been reversed; humanity has been recreated; and as a consequence, human fellowship with the triune God, who alone is immortal, is restored. Thank you Jesus!

Salvation is adopted sonship

2011-03-04T05:31:00.038-05:00

In Life in the Trinity, an introduction to theology with the help of the church fathers, Donald Fairbairn equates salvation with adopted sonship by which we, through the Holy Spirit, share in Jesus' own relationship with his Father.

God adopted humanity as his own dearly loved children (Gal 4:4-6) through the incarnation, birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension of his "only begotten Son", Jesus Christ (see John 1:18, KJV). In union with Jesus, humanity is embraced, forgiven, reborn, exalted and through the power of the Holy Spirit given to share in the Son's unimpeded fellowship with his Father. Note these comments from Fairbairn:

The Son has become human in order to make himself our adopted brother, so that we, having become his adopted sisters and brothers, could then become the adopted daughters and sons of his natural Father, God. The Son by nature has made us sons and daughters by grace. (p136)

Salvation is our sharing by adoption in the Son's own relationship to the Father. Because salvation is Christ, then only Christ can give himself to us. Only the one who is naturally the Father's Son, who has from all eternity shared in loving fellowship with the Father, is able to grant us participation by adoption in his own relationship to the Father.... The reason salvation cannot be earned is that salvation is adopted sonship. (pp136-7)

The incarnation was the movement of God that made it possible for human beings who had lost their relationship with God to be restored to that fellowship again.... We are not sons and daughters by nature and never will be, but through the grace of the incarnation, we are given anew the fellowship that the natural Son shares with his Father. (p138)

To understand the nature of the incarnation, and how it accomplishes the adoption of humanity into the triuine life, it's vital to understand the dual nature of Jesus. He is not merely a human in whom God dwells, but...

...God the Son living personally on earth as one of us... Only the Son by nature could make us sons and daughters by grace, so in order for us to be saved, the natural Son had to come personally from heaven to earth through the incarnation. He did this, the [early] church proclaimed, by taking a human nature into himself, that is, by assuming a human set of characteristics and components into his own divine person to go along with the divine characteristics (that is, the divine nature) he had eternally possessed.... He was God the Son who became man while remaining God. (p142)

Jesus is ONE person: God the Son. He came down from heaven and united humanity to himself. And thus with the incarnation, this one person, the Son of God, now (and forever) possesses both divine and human natures. The stunning truth is that there is (and forever will be) a human in the Trinity. By grace, in union with Jesus, we share this human place in the triune fellowship of the Father, Son and Spirit.

In the life of this God-man, Jesus Christ, we see two things:

What it looks like for God to share in the love and life of the Trinity
What it looks like for a human to share in that love and life...

...a life [that is] characteristic of the age at the end of history when God's purposes will be fulfilled. It is a kind of life in which we share in the fellowship between the Father and the Son, just as humanity did at creation before the Fall. (p149)

In his humanity, Jesus lives perfectly on our behalf as one of us: He "obeys whereas Adam disobeyed, trusts where Adam failed to trust, resists temptation whereas Adam succumbed" (p154). Whereas Adam headed the human race into sin; Jesus (who replaced Adam as head of humanity) led us back to God. As noted by Irenaeus, Jesus, serving as our representative and substitute, passed through every stage of human life, restoring communion with God each point along the way (p154-5). As we trust Jesus, we participate as adopted sons and daughters of God in the perfect human life that he lives on our behalf in fellowship with the Father and the Holy Spirit. In Jesus, our salvation, which is our sharing through the power of the Holy Spirit in his Sonship, is established and forever secure!

Life in the Trinity: Interpreting Scripture

2011-02-26T08:40:00.009-05:00

In Life in the Trinity, an introduction to theology with the help of the church fathers, Donald Fairbairn advocates the Christ-centered approach to biblical interpretation utilized by many of the church fathers. That approach begins with the central message of Scripture (what the fathers called the rule of faith) and then understands a specific text in that light. In this way, one starts with the broad context (story) of all Scripture and only then focuses on the narrow particulars.

Unfortunately, we often do the reverse. We read a particular passage, then look only to its immediate (narrow) context to determine its meaning. When we do so, the broad context and thus the true meaning is often distorted or entirely missed.

Fairbairn elaborates, pointing to the church father's understanding of the rule of faith:

We [tend to] start with ourselves and ask how God relates to us. The church fathers started with God, and especially with Christ, and asked how we participate in Christ. This is why virtually all of patristic thought saw theosis - humanity's becoming somehow a participant in the divine life - as the link between God and humanity. Furthermore, this is why one strand of patristic thought...understood theosis in terms of the Father's relationship to the Son and saw our participation in this relationship as the scarlet thread of the Christian faith. If one does theology in the way the church fathers did, with the life of the trinitarian persons as the heart, then one will seek to find those trinitarian persons - especially the preincarnate Son - throughout the Old Testament. (p115, emphasis added)

Note that the church fathers saw the rule of faith as Jesus and our relationship with God in him. To them, this scarlet thread unifies all Scripture and the Christian faith. Fairbairn illustrates with a quote from Irenaeus concerning interpreting the parables of Jesus:

All Scripture, which has been given to us by God, shall be found by us perfectly consistent; and the parables shall harmonize with those passages which are perfectly plain; and those statements the meaning of which is clear shall serve to explain the parables; and through the many diversified utterances [of Scripture] there shall be heard one harmonious melody in us, praising in hymns that God who created all things. (p112, emphasis added)

In interpreting the Old Testament, the church fathers "scoured the Hebrew Scriptures for hints, prefigurings and foreshadowings of Christ..." (p111-112). In order to avoid over-allegorizing the Old Testament in order to find Jesus there (as some of the church fathers are accused of having done), Fairbairn suggests that we look in Scripture for the important Christ-centered theme of promise, upon which the related biblical idea of covenant is built:

Shortly after the Fall, God gave humanity a promise that a single person would come to undo the effects of that Fall and bring humankind back into the fellowship of the Trinity. Then throughout the Old Testament period, God revealed with increasing specificity where this promised person would come from, why people would need him, what he would do, and most important, that he would be not merely a human person but a divine person, the Son of God.

...This idea of promise is fundamental to the Old Testament...even more foundational than the concept of covenant or the question of how God relates to humanity at different periods in redemptive history. The concept of promise places the focus on God, because God has made the promise, and the content of the proimise is that God will send his own Son to us. Thus the idea of promise provides the context in which the question of God's relationship to humanity is addressed. Or, to say it differently, the promise underlies and provides the groundwork for God's covenant (or covenants) with human beings. (pp 121-122)

Life in the Trinity: What does that look like?

2011-02-20T07:17:00.032-05:00

In Life in the Trinity, an introduction to theology with the help of the church fathers, Donald Fairbairn refers to the doctrine of the Trinity as "the gateway to understanding Christian life" (p50).

Last time, we noted Fairbairn's understanding of the Trinity: God, who is three (tri-personal), is one in substance ("God-ness") and fellowship (triune communion) (p55). But what does this mean for our lives?

According to Fairbairn, just this: though we do not and cannot share in God's substance, God created us to share in his triune fellowship (p56). Indeed, this sharing in the love and life of the Trinity, which the Patristic fathers referred to as theosis, is the essence of human life. He comments:

...We are meant to remain creatures and thus remain lower than God but at the same time to share in the fellowship and love that have existed from all eternity between the persons of the Trinity.... This God who shares such fellowship within himself offers his very self to us in this way, and he is the center of life as it is meant to be. (pp56-57)

But there's a problem: Though we are created in the image of God (the capacity to share in the Triune fellowship), that image was terribly distorted in the Fall, causing us to break fellowship with God - a fellowship we can't restore through our own effort.

But, thank God, there is a solution: Jesus restored the perfection of God's image to humanity through his own continuing, perfect humanity. And through the Holy Spirit, he is sharing his humanity with us - a humanity that is in full fellowship with God.

In Jesus, human fellowship with God is restored.

In that regard, and emphasizing the role of the Holy Spirit, Fairbairn quotes Cyril of Alexandria's commentary on Gen 2:7 and John 20:22:

Christ's act [of redemption] was a renewal of that primal gift...the in-breathing [of the Holy Spirit] bestowed on us, bringing us back to the form of the initial holiness and carrying man's nature up, as a kind of firsfruits among the holy apostles, into the holiness bestowed on us initially at the first creation. (p63)

Fairbairn notes that this "holiness," which is our sharing in the Triune fellowship...

...Was not meant to be purely vertical. Rather people were meant to share that same fellowship among themselves as well...God intended human beings to share his presence both with God and with each other...Human life as God meant it to be...was life in the Trinity...a reflection of the love between the Father and the Son. (pp63-65)

But what does this sharing look like in our lives now?

Fairbairn suggests four qualities of life that we experience as we share in the life and love of the Trinity:

1. Significance
"Our significance does not ultimately lie in what we accomplish or what we do; it lies in the one to whom we belong...We already possess a significance greater than that of any other created beings, simply by virtue of being made in the image of God. We belong to him" (p67).

Can you imagine the difference in our lives now if we lived knowing that God loves us, accepts us and has included us in his own triune love and life?

2. Peace
Human life is full of anxiety and fear, but Jesus proclaims 'My peace I give you' - a peace unlike what the world offers. Jesus' peace is an "internal peace that does not depend on eliminating the sources of stress and hostility" (p70). The source of that peace, which Jesus possesses and shares with us, is his relationship with the Father. "Being in Christ, sharing in the Son's fellowship with the Father, gives us a radically new perspective toward the stresses of life" (p72).

God does not always calm the storms, but he calms his children; they are never alone.

3. Meaning in work
Remembering the comment above on our significance, we understand that we don't work to achieve it. But then why work hard?, or at all? Fairbairn answers:

[Because] a relationship with Christ is so liberating that it inspires a person to work harder....[spurred on] by the realization that God is at work in and through him. Becoming a Christian enables one to see one's work (whatever kind of work that is) in a new way, as the opportunity for God to work through the person.... When we share in the fellowship that characterizes the persons of the Trinity, we also have the privilege of sharing in the work that those persons carry out. We are in the Lord, and so we labor in the Lord. And this means that our work - far from becoming insignificant - takes on a surpassing importance. We are the one through whom the love between the Father and the Son is expressed on earth today, and we are also the ones through whom the purposes of God are carried out today. (pp75-6)

Awesome! But there's more - and this is the heart of the matter:

4. Other-centered relationships
In our brokenness, we often use relationships to achieve personal power. But as we share the Triune life, self-centeredness makes way for us to share in God's own sacrificial, other-centered love. As Fairbairn notes, "this understanding should dramatically change our attitudes toward relationships in the home, school, church and world" (p81).

In Christ, we are free to love with his own love for others. Amazing; and liberating!

We experience this significance, peace, meaning in work, and other-centeredness as we participate in the Triune life and love. But, "restoring us to share in the Son's relationship to the Father is not something we can accomplish; it is something that must be done for us by another" (p102). Realizing this is not cause for despair. Rather it is a source of great relief - allowing us to "breathe the liberating air that comes from allowing God to do everything because we can do nothing" (p105).

Yes, thank God that he does it for us, in and through his Son Jesus, by the power of the Holy Spirit. Through this grace, we are given to share in the fellowship of the Father, Son and Spirit; and in their fellowship with all humanity. Dive in!

Life in the Trinity: God's threeness and oneness

2011-02-15T09:55:00.020-05:00

This post continues our examination of Donald Fairbairn's book, Life in the Trinity, an introduction to theology with the help of the church fathers.

In chapter 3, Fairbairn addresses differing views of the Trinity. He notes that, "the Western church has emphasized the oneness of God..." whereas, "the Eastern church has stressed God's threeness." Why the difference? Because, "whether one starts with the one or the three depends on how one interprets the flow of biblical revelation about the Trinity" (p39).

The Old Testament emphasizes God's oneness (e.g. Isaiah 43-45 and Deuteronomy 6:4-9). Then the New Testament testifies to this one God's threeness (the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God). Both ideas are true and essential, but a problem arises when they are reduced to a mechanistic formula. Instead, the Bible speaks of God's oneness and threeness in a relational context - God is revealed as personal being who is both one and three.

In this relational context, God is one in that he is unique. This is stressed in the Old Testament because the immediate audience viewed God in the context of the culture's dominant polytheism. Israel needed first to understand that there is but one God, and his name is Yahweh, the Great I-Am; their God.

Though the Old Testament hints that this one God is plural (God, Word/Wisdom, Spirit), it remains for Jesus (and his apostles in the New Testament) to reveal that the one God of Israel is tri-personal. Fairbairn comments:

God [with 'God' in the NT typically referring to the Father] has a Son, and a Spirit, and...these two are persons (thus they can have relationship with the Father and each other) and also that they are not separate gods but are united to the Father and each other so as to be a single God....The New Testament writers do not use the word God to refer in the abstract to God's essence or substance [as though God were a mere concept], nor do they treat the Father, Son and Spirit as some kind of subdivisions within God. Instead, the New Testament uses the word God primarily to refer to the Father, and on the basis of this usage, it affirms that the Son and Spirit are God as well, and indeed are the same God as the Father. (p43)

As scriptural examples, Fairbairn cites 1Corinthians 8:5-6, 2Corinthians 13:14, Galatians 4:4-6 and Ephesians 4:4-6, then concludes:

The biblical idea is not so much that there is one divine essence in which Father, Son and Spirit participate. Rather it is that there is one God, the Father, but there are also two other persons who are equal to him and united to him and each other in such a way that they are one being, one God. (p44)

Fairbairn notes that, in his view, this is "precisely the way the early church understood God" (p44). He also notes that the early church as a whole began in their understanding of God with God's threeness - and that with a relational emphasis. The shift to a more mechanistic focus on God's oneness, was primarily a later, and unfortunate, Western Development (see pp44-45).

Concerning the more relational understanding of God, with an emphasis on God's threeness, Fairbairn cites the Nicene Creed. This ancient creed identifies the one God as the Father and then concentrates on showing the equality of the Son and the Spirit to the Father:

The working understanding of the Trinity in this creed is that there are three persons who are equal and who therefore are a single God. The Son and Spirit are identified with the Father even as they are acknowledged to be distinct persons. (pp 48-49)

Fairbairn then shows that the New Testament revelation (particularly in the Upper Room discourse of John 13-17), is that from all eternity, the Father has loved the Son and has been "in" the Son. He continues:

One cannot speak of love and relationship unless one is speaking of distinct persons, so the distinctions between the persons are indicative of who God has always been... So instead of thinking in terms of One, who is somehow also Three, we need to think in terms of Three, who have always been in relationship one to another and who are united in such a way that they are a single God rather than three separate gods. I have argued that this is the way the New Testament itself describes God, and it was one of the most fundamental things the church fathers recognized about the biblical witness. (p49)

Life in the Trinity: Our adoption

2011-02-06T15:14:00.065-05:00

In Life in the Trinity, an introduction to theology with the help of the church fathers (IVP Academic, 2009), professor Donald Fairbairn presents an important and helpful overview of a Trinitarian Christian theology. A key feature is following the patristic fathers in emphasizing the Biblical doctrine of adoption.

This emphasis contrasts with Western Protestant theologies that tend to follow the reformers in emphasizing justification. In this context, adoption (and its correlate, sonship) tends to be relegated to a believer's forensic (legal) standing before God.

Donald Fairbairn, professor of

early Christianity at Gordon-

Conwell Theological Seminary

However, in the East (and now in Fairbairn's book), adoption is placed front and center where it is viewed as fundamentally relational: "a sharing by grace in the fellowship the Son has with the Father by nature" (p. 9). The stunning truth is that the divine Son of God became human in order that, in him, we may share his divine Sonship (see 2Pet 1:4).

The patristic fathers referred to this idea as divination (also referred to as deification or theosis). Athanasius spoke of it in On the Incarnation, proclaiming that, "the Son of God became man, so that man could become like God."

Unfortunately, Fairbairn's theology emphasizes the personal (subjective) aspect of adoption, and does not address the universal (objective) aspect. This leaves one wondering if he views Christians as exclusively God's children.

Nevertheless, Fairbairn consistently and helpfully emphasizes that our sharing in the Son's sonship is the heart of the gospel and the organizing principle that ties together all of Scripture, and thus should be the organizing principle of our theologies and doctrinal formulations.

Here are representative statements from the first part of his book:

...Forgiveness and becoming Christlike [the strong emphases of most Western theologies and popular Christian literature] flow from our participation in a relationship, from our becoming sons and daughters by adoption so as to share in the communion that the natural Son has with God the Father... I believe that this way of understanding salvation and Christian life was widely represented in, and perhaps even the consensus of, the early church. This is the strand of patristic thought that I believe has the most to teach contemporary evangelicalism and that can help to end the unintentional divorce between theology and Christian life that often plagues our churches, colleges and seminaries. (p.10)

...Jesus links the Holy Spirit's dwelling within Christians to the fact that the Father and the Son are in each other. Because of the indwelling Holy Spirit, we will recognize that the Son is in the Father and the Son is in us. In other words, the Holy Spirit is the link between the Son's relationship to the Father and the Christian's relationship to the Son. (p.24)

Christ is not simply giving us an example; he is offering himself to us as a person, that we might share in his most deeply personal relationship, the relationship he has with God the Father. (p. 27)

At the heart of the central idea of Christianity lies the reality that Christians will know the Father and the Son. (p.29)

Eternal life is a deeply personal knowledge of the one who has shared from all eternity in the glory of the Father. Somehow, the eternal glorious relationship between the Father and Son is shared with us as we follow Christ. (p.31)

A great benefit of the book is Fairbairn's frequent, lengthy quotes from the patristic fathers. For example, note this quote from Irenaeus of Lyons:

Being ignorant of him who from the Virgin is Emmanuel, they [non-believers] are deprived of his gift, which is eternal life; and not receiving the incorruptible Word, they remain in mortal flesh.... He undoubtedly speaks these words to those who have not received the gift of adoption but who despise the incarnation of the pure generation of the Word of God.... The Word of God was made man, and he who was the Son of God became the Son of Man, that man, having been taken into the Word, and receiving the adoption, might become the son of God. For by no other means could we have attained the incorruptibility and immortality, unless we had been united to incorruptibility and immortality. (p. 33, quoting from Against Heresies, book 3, chapter 19, par. 1)

Fairbairn then adds his own comments:

The four church fathers on whom I am concentrating the most - Irenaeus in the second century, Athanasius in the fourth century, and Augustine and Cyril of Alexandria in the fifth century - all recognize that participation in God, or "becoming divine" (the ancient idea of theosis), involves a variety of aspects, such as becoming incorruptible as God is incorruptible. But all four of them recognize that the central aspect of theosis- and thus the heart of the bond between God's life and human life - lies in our adoption into Christ's sonship with the Father.... We do not simply receive something that [the Son of God] gives us... the Son gives us his very self. And the essence of this gift of himself is that we become sons and daughters of God. We are adopted into the same relationship he has with God the Father - into his own sonship with the Father. (p.34)

We share by grace in the same fellowship or love that the persons of the Trinity share by nature...Our sharing in the Father-Son relationship is at the center of what it means for us to participate in God. (pp.36-37)

Mission or Mission?

2011-02-01T08:46:00.026-05:00

Edwin Searcy

It seems that the Holy Spirit is transforming the church's understanding of mission. In Mission or Mission (an article on page 3 of the Sept/Dec 2003 issue of The Gospel and our Culture), Edwin Searcy (congregational minister at University Hill Congregation, United Church of Canada, Vancouver, B.C.) describes how his understanding of mission has changed:

For most of my life mission has referred to a journey with a purpose, undertaken by an individual or a group. As a teen I watched every mission to the moon with fascination. Growing up in the United Church [of Canada] I learned that the Mission and Service Fund was our calling to "live love." As a minister I worked hard with congregations to craft mission statements that gave direction to our objectives and goals. Mission had to do with us, with what we needed to do, because, as we said to ourselves, "God has no other hands but ours."

But I am undergoing a conversion in my life because of a conversion in my understanding of the word "mission." It started with the deep sense of fatigue and anxiety that I sensed in the church and beyond. Our instinctive reaction to this sinking feeling is to solve the problem by working harder, by doing more, by getting our mission statements right. Yet the more pressure that we feel to get it right, the more burdensome our life together seems. Somehow the deep joy and vitality and energy that should mark an inspired Christian community slips away, like mercury, between our fingers.

Two dates in my journey of repentance (of turning) stand out. In 1995 the congregation at University Hill called me to join with them. It was a congregation that had boomed and then busted (almost) but was beyond its crisis of survival and prepared to talk about mission. My skills in leading suburban congregations no longer fit. So, in 1998, I went back to school and took the congregation with me. We spent four years together on a shared journey [where we]... glimpsed the huge change that one word can make in our life. We heard again, as if for the first time, the ancient news of the "missio Dei" (mission of God).

It seems such a small shift in emphasis, but it is huge. Shifting the locus of mission off of the church and onto the God who is met in Jesus Christ has been, for us, good news of immense joy. We no longer worry about crafting a mission statement, nor do we speak about "the mission of the church." Instead, we focus our attention and our lives on what God is up to in the world and in the church and in our bodies and souls.

Of course, coming to believe that God is actually up to things is the key issue for all people formed by modernity. There are powerful forces at work in the world and the church, seeking to deny the inspiration of deep hope that is the gift of the Holy Spirit. These forces leave in their wake an insipid despair that can trust only in what humans can achieve (as if God had no other hands but ours).

This focus on God's mission here, among us, is the hallmark of those who speak about becoming a "missional church." No longer is mission something that we do. It is not project oriented, nor is it other oriented. It is focused on the changes God intends in our life together so that our distinctive ways are a sign of God's activity in the world.

We do not have the luxury of choosing the nature of the mission. Our mission statement as a church is a given. Jesus calls us to a life of discipleship, to live as citizens of the Kingdom of God even as we also hold Canadian passports. This dual-citizenship is the stuff of our life together.... [We are recovering the] ancient language of Christian hospitality. Frequent celebrations of the Eucharist teach us that Christ is met as both host and stranger here. This is Christ's church, not ours.

These worship practices have led to the daring witness of new found voices that testify to the radical hospitality of Christ. To my wonder, our move to focus single-mindedly on the hospitality of God in Christ has resulted in a number of families in the congregation making major household decisions to make room for others.

In turning away from a focus on our mission, and in turning towards the good news of God's mission, an unmistakable vitality is coursing through the veins of the congregation. There is a quality of joy and of longing, of faith and of impatience that is palpable. In the midst of it all I find myself, nearly a quarter century after ordination, on a journey of conversion. And I find that I am not alone in the congregation or in the conference. And I thank God for this time and place and calling!

The vicarious humanity of Jesus

2011-01-26T07:26:00.026-05:00

David Torrance

In a recent essay, David Torrance notes that a knowledge of the vicarious humanity of Jesus, "is crucial to our understanding of Christ and of Scripture" (p.1). He shows that the eternal Son of God, through whom all things were created and have their being, became human in the person of Jesus Christ. In his humanity (while remaining divine), Jesus is the representative and substitute for all humanity. Thus what happened (and continues to happen) to Jesus, applies to us all.

This stunning truth tells us that our salvation is not merely something that Jesus did for us, but who Jesus is for us, as one of us (the Incarnation continues!). Our salvation is thus far more than a legal (forensic) transaction that was accomplished by Jesus's death to pay for our sin. His death did accomplish that necessary payment (praise God!), however, it is the total scope of Jesus' continuing vicarious humanity that accomplishes and secures our salvation.

Our salvation truly is "in Christ" - the incarnate, crucified, risen and ascended God-man, who has included us in God's love and life; a love and life that we personally experience as we trust in Jesus.

Here is part of what Torrance writes (and I encourage you to read the full essay, linked above):

God, in taking to himself in Jesus our flesh and blood, became not simply a man but Representative Man. He related himself to us all. That is, in Jesus, God once and forever, for all eternity, joined himself in the flesh to the whole of humankind. Men and women, for better or for worse, are united with God in an eternal covenant of Grace through the Holy Spirit, which they cannot break. This means that all that happened to Christ affects our life and being. Christ and all humanity are wrapped together in the same bundle of life for eternity.

Because God became Man, once and forever, in Christ Jesus, God has put his seal on our humanity. The incarnation guarantees our humanity and the safety of all creation. Because of sin, the world was hurtling to destruction. Humankind was destined for death and destruction. God intervened. He entered into this world. He took hold of it making a covenant of Grace and life first through Noah and then through Abraham and his seed, Israel. That covenant of grace and life he fulfilled, confirmed and forever sealed in Jesus Christ who is the Creator Word made flesh, our flesh. God conquered the powers of death and destruction by becoming Man in Jesus Christ (p. 5).

A Trinitarian view of the mission of God

2011-01-19T07:07:00.031-05:00

We are seeing in many places a resurgence of interest in the mission of God. Wonderful! But, as with all things pertaining to God, the mission of God is seen in the fullness of its grace and truth when viewed through the lens of a Trinitarian, incarnational theology. I'm impressed with how Mike King and Scot McKnight do this in a recent Slant 33 blog post (click here to read the full post).

Here is part of Mike's comment:

Mike King
What is God’s mission? The term missio Dei (mission of God) implies that God has a purposeful plan. Karl Barth emphasized the reality that God is at work, actio dei (the action of God). We often think of mission when we discuss the mission and activity of God, which, unfortunately, is so enmeshed in a Western mindset of saving the heathen...

We must recover the Eastern Church Trinitarian emphasis on God’s radical communality and the movement toward restoration and shalom. We are being invited to participate in God’s mission and activity through our triune God’s perichoretic activity of relational and complete restoration.

Here is part of Scot's comment:

Scot McKnight
...Basil [who lived A.D. 330-379] knew that God’s mission didn’t begin at creation. He knew it never began but always was. This great Cappadocian theologian was one of the architects plumbing the depths of how to understand God as three-in-one and one-in-three. The foundational term used then was the Greek word perichoresis, which describes the mutual indwelling and the mutual inter-penetration of the Father and the Son and the Spirit.

Let’s get this down to manageable levels now: perichoresis is the idea that the Father’s life was with the Son and the Spirit and that the Father’s life was for the Son and the Spirit; and the same is true of the Son and the Spirit. When all is said and done, the Trinity becomes an endless dance of love for the “others.”

The mission of God begins in the perichoresis of the Trinity.

It follows, then, for Basil, that he as leader and his people as followers of Christ were to dwell with those in need and to live for those in need; which they did, and none did it better, and none gave up more, and none sacrificed himself more willingly than this great leader of the church. Basil set the tone and the example, and the Basiliad has become a living testimony of what God’s people look like when they live out the mission of God in this world: they live with one another and for one another.

To what these gentlemen observe, I add the thoughts of J.B. and T.F. Torrance:

James B. Torrance in Worship, Community and the Triune God of Grace:

Through our union with Christ we share in his communion with the Father and in his mission from the Father to bring others into that communion... The mission of the church is the gift of participating through the Holy Spirit in the Son’s mission from the Father to the world.

Thomas F. Torrance in Atonement (The Person and Work of Christ):

Because the church is filled with the one universal Spirit of divine love, it is caught up in the universal movement of that love that ceaselessly flows from God through Jesus Christ out into all the world.

And now some concluding thoughts:

The mission of God is just that - God's mission. It's what he is doing in our world. And his doing is expressive of his being as a triune communion of love. God's mission is a mission of love from the Father - through the Son - by the Holy Spirit.
The mission of God is for the sake of the world. As J.B. Torrance notes (see above) its purpose is to bring people from the union that is theirs already with God in Christ (the Atonement), into full communion (fellowship) with the triune God. For some related thoughts from GCI leader Dr. Dan Rogers concerning the journey with Jesus from union to communion, click here.
This communion with God is far more than forgiveness of sin and a free ticket to heaven. It must be seen holistically as intimate fellowship with God that involves all of life.
The church is called to participate in the mission of God by sharing in Jesus' ongoing ministry of love in our world by the Holy Spirit. The church is formed by the Spirit for this ministry. The mission/ministry of God is thus the work of a community (the church); with a community (the Trinity); for a community (humankind; and all of God's creation).

A Trinitarian understanding of the Atonement

2011-01-09T19:55:00.026-05:00

In Faith Seeking Understanding, Daniel Migliore summarizes and critiques the three primary theories of the Atonement in classical Western theology. Why more than one? Largely because the New Testament uses several metaphors to describe the Atonement, and each theory tends to focus on one, sometimes at the expense of the others. Here is a summary of each theory:

1. Christ the Victor theory, which develops the NT's battle metaphor (e.g. Col 2:15). Migliore comments:

According to this view, the work of atonement is a dramatic struggle between God and the forces of evil in the world....Under the veil of his humanity, Christ triumphs over the demons, the devil, and all the principalities and powers that hold human beings captive. By his cross and resurrection, Christ decisively defeats these powers an thus frees their captives (pp. 182-3).

2. Anselm's Satisfaction theory, which arose in the medieval period. It emphasizes scriptures that suggest that humankind is redeemed by Jesus' vicarious suffering on our behalf (e.g. Isa 53; Gal 3:13). This theory tends to see the Atonement as a legal transaction in which God, like a feudal lord, deals with humans as though they are his serfs. Migliore comments:

Since disobedience dishonors the lord, either satisfaction must be given or punishment must follow. The satisfaction that is due to God on account of the offense of [human] sin is infinite. While humanity must provide this satisfaction, only God can provide it.... For this reason God has become human in Christ. In his perfect obedience unto death, satisfaction is rendered, justice is done, God's honor is restored, and sinners are forgiven (p. 184).

3. Moral Influence theory, which emphasizes that Christ...

...shows God's love to us in such a compelling way that we are constrained to respond in wonder and gratitude. The atoning work of Christ [therefore] is complete only when it is appropriated in the act of faith and allowed to transform one's life" (Migliore, p. 185).

As Migliore notes, though each theory offers valuable insight concerning the nature of the Atonement, each, in itself, is incomplete - leaving behind something of the full riches of the person and work of Christ revealed in the gospel.

For Migliore (after Barth), to be faithful to Scripture, one's doctrine of the Atonement must include a full and faithful understanding of who Jesus is as prophet, priest and king (not just one these roles). Moreover, it must uphold the foundational truth of Jesus' full divinity and full humanity. These truths are carefully upheld in a Trinitarian-incarnational doctrine of the Atonement that...

Respects all the NT metaphors concerning the Atonement.
Encompasses the full gospel story (unlike, for example, the satisfaction theory, which tends to focus on Jesus' death). Indeed, all of Jesus' vicarious (representative/substitutionary) conception, life, baptism, ministry, suffering, death, burial, resurrection and continuing intercession, is fundamental to the Atonement.
Emphasizes that atonement is based on God's gracious initiative, even while it understands the importance and place of human response.
Understands that "the grace of God includes judgment, and the judgment of God serves the purpose of grace. A doctrine of atonement should not present the grace and judgment of God as conflicting with each other" (p. 187).
Recognizes that "the atoning work of God in Christ has significance for individuals, society, and the entire cosmos" (p. 187).

A Trinitarian doctrine of God's attributes

2011-01-01T08:39:00.061-05:00

God the Father

(Pompeo Girolamo Batoni, 1779)

In this post, we continue reviewing Faith Seeking Understanding, now looking Daniel Migliore's Trinitarian doctrine concerning God's attributes.

Migliore takes exception to what he sees as a common error in many contemporary systematic theologies, namely grounding the doctrine of God's attributes not in the revelation through Jesus of God's attributes as a triune communion of divine persons, but in speculative, metaphysical, philosophical concepts that dominated the Western theology of the church in the middle ages.

As examples of this error, Migliore cites Augustine's view of God's impassibility (that God does not suffer emotionally). Augustine taught that, "God does not truly grieve over the suffering of the world." He then cites Anselm (considered the father of the Scholastic movement in Christian theology), who taught that God does not experience compassion. Finally, he cites protestant reformer John Calvin who, in line with Augustine's and Anselm's views of God's impassibility, taught that "when Scripture speaks of God's compassion, it employs a figure of speech that is an accommodation to our finite understanding" (p82).

Migliore then notes the unfortunate consequences of this approach to God's attributes:

The scholastic way of developing the doctrine of the attributes of God creates many problems from a biblical perspective and leads to serious consequences in both theology and ethics. Failure to rethink and reform our ideas of God's impassibility, immutability, and omnipotence in the light of the gospel sets Christian doctrine of God at odds with the proclamation of Christ crucified. It may also support, however unintentionally, ways of thinking and patterns of behavior that are insensitive to the suffering of others, resistant to needed change, and prone to divorce power from compassion and responsibility (p83).

Migliore contrasts the scholastic approach with Karl Barth's Trinitarian doctrine of God's attributes (what Barth calls the "divine perfections") as revealed in the person and work of Christ:

The triune God is for Barth the one whose loving is free and whose freedom is loving. Hence Barth contends that the perfections of God are properly understood not in isolation but in dialectical [seemingly contrasting] pairs. Each perfection of divine love is to be set in the light of God's freedom, and each perfection of divine freedom is to be set in the light of God's love. According to Barth, grace and holiness, mercy and righteousness, patience and wisdom are the perfections of the divine love; and unity and omnipotence, constancy and omnipotence, eternity and glory are perfections of the divine freedom (p84).

Migliore comments on Barth's pairing of God's attributes of grace and holiness:

The grace of God is expressed in God's gift of life to the creation at the beginning and in the still greater gift of new life to fallen humanity in God's work of salvation in Jesus Christ and in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit to renew the people of God. Instructed by the biblical witness, we know that the grace of the triune God is not cheap but costly, holy grace, and we likewise know that the holiness of the triune God is not simply purity or faultlessness that places us under judgment but a gracious holiness. An encounter with the holy God is an encounter with the God who seeks to redeem and sanctify us and who calls us to new life, mission, and service (Exod. 3:1-10; Isa. 6:1-8) (p85).

In line with Barth's Trinitarian approach, Migliore rejects the scholastic concept of God's immutability (that God does not change):

Far more accurate than the term "immutable" is the affirmation that the triune God is constant, steadfast, and faithful in character and purpose even as God does new and unexpected things, consistent with the divine character to fulfill the divine purpose. This is surely what Scripture means when it affirms that the Lord God does not change (Mal. 3:6) and that Jesus Christ is "the same yesterday, today, and forever" (Heb. 13:8). An absolutely immutable, utterly changeless God would not be the living, triune God of Scripture but a dead God. Precisely because the grace of God revealed through Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit is constant and reliable yet new every morning, Christians affirm that God's faithful, changeless love is manifested in changing, surprising ways (p85).

The Trinity: the grammar of divine love

2010-12-26T10:18:00.005-05:00

Triune relationality: the divine dance

In Faith Seeking Understanding, Daniel Migliore speaks of trinitarian faith as giving us a "grammar of wondrous divine love that freely gives of itself to others and creates community, mutuality, and shared life" (p76). He summarizes this grammar with three statements (what follows compiles quotes from pages 76-82):

1. To confess that God is triune is to affirm that the eternal life of God is personal life in relationship.

In God's eternal being there is movement, life, personal relationship and the giving and receiving of love.
God is one, but the unity of God is a living unity - a koinonia of persons in love.
The three persons of the Trinity have their personal identity in relationship.
In this oneness, there is differentiation and otherness, for relationship presupposes otherness

2. To confess that God is triune is to affirm that God exists in communion far deeper than the relationships and partnerships we know in our human experience.

This thought is well stated by Gregory of Nazianzus: "I cannot think of the one without being quickly encircled by the splendor of the three; nor can I discern the three without being immediately led back to the one."
God is no supreme monad [single unit] existing in eternal solitude; God is the covenantal God. God's will for life in relationship with and among the creatures is an expression of God's faithfulness to God's own eternal life, which is essentially communal - a communion expressed by the Greek word perichoresis, meaning "mutual indwelling" or "being-in-one-another." The three of the Trinity "indwell" and pervade each other; they "encircle" each other, being united in an exquisite divine dance; or to use still another metaphor, they "make room" for each other, being incomparably hospitable to each other.
The Trinitarian, perichoretic life of God points to experiences of friendship, caring family relationships, and the inclusive community of free and equal persons as hints or intimations of the eternal life of God and of the reign (kingdom) of God that Jesus proclaimed.
Quoting Boff: "The Trinity understood in human terms as a communion of Persons lays the foundations for a society of brothers and sisters, of equals, in which dialog and consensus are the basic constituents of living together in both the world and the church."
Since God's being is in communion, human life too is intended by God to be life in communion.

3. To confess that God is triune is to affirm that the life of God is essentially self-giving love whose strength embraces vulnerability.

The gospels identify God as the power of compassionate love that is stronger than sin and death. To have compassion means to suffer with another. According to the biblical witness, God suffers with and for creatures out of love for them. Above all in Jesus Christ, God goes the way of suffering, alienation, and death for the salvation of the world.
God loves in freedom not only in relation to us but in God's own eternal being. God can enter into vulnerable interaction with the world, even to the depths of temporality, deprivation, suffering, and death, because as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, God is essentially an inexhaustible history of mutual self-surrendering love.

Christmas celebrates our redemption

2010-12-19T08:16:00.005-05:00

At Christmas, we celebrate the Incarnation - the stunning miracle by which the eternal Son of God, while not ceasing to be fully God, became fully human in the person of Jesus Christ.

As noted by T.F. Torrance in Incarnation, the person and life of Christ, the Incarnation is a "redeeming event" by which the Son of God assumed "our unholy humanity" with the result being that, "his purity wipes away our impurity, his holiness covers our corruption" (p82).

This association of the Incarnation with our redemption is often overlooked at Christmas; yet it is central to the Christmas story. As T.F. notes, through the Incarnation, God, in the person of Jesus, permanently united our human nature with his divine nature. The result of this union (which includes us in Jesus' birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension), is that humanity is given to share in the righteousness of Jesus: "Not only the negative righteousness in the remission of sins but also a share in the positive righteousness of [Jesus'] obedient and loving life lived in perfect filial relation on earth to the heavenly Father" (p82).

Thus, according to Torrance, our redemption involves not only the forgiveness of sin by sharing in Jesus' death, but also "the filial relation which the Son of God lived out vicariously in our humanity in perfect holiness and love. He achieved... [this redemption] in himself in assuming our human nature into oneness with himself, and on that ground gave us to share in it, so providing us with a fullness in his own obedient sonship from which we may all receive" (p. 82).

Through the Incarnation, all humanity has, in Christ, a relationship with the Father. More precisely, we are given, in Christ, through the Holy Spirit, a share in the Son's own relationship with his Father. Thus with the birth of Jesus, humanity is reborn (born anew, from above) into a new relationship with God. As T.F. notes, "That is the Christian message - the Christmas message" (p. 101).

May we this Christmas hear afresh this message of the redeeming nature of the Incarnation, and in believing (sharing Jesus' own belief), receive what he so graciously has provided - a share in his relationship with God his Father, and now ours.