Mon 28 Aug 2006
Alrighty then.
I've been completely snowed for the last week and am just now getting around to nailing some thoughts down about this not-so-easy-to-deal-with book. Yes, I know Boyd is an openness proponent. But rather than listen to others dissect and condone/condemn this book, I wanted to deal with it myself. So there.
Boyd goes to lengthy detail to establish a 'warfare worldview', in which God has enlisted us as believers to engage in the conflict. He gives a great historical and cultural background of many world cultures (from Eastern Ecuador to Babylonian and Mesopotamian). Those of you familiar with Gilgamesh and the like, will appreciate the connections he makes. However, don't think this is a demons-under-every-bush book, either. It's not.
The perennial question has to be dealt with in concrete terms : Why do evil things happen to good people? After all, if the world is truly caught up in the middle of a real war between good and evil forces, evil is to be expected–including evil that serves no higher end. For instance, when evil happens (murder, rape, abuse, …televangelism), it may not be 'in order to bring glory to God by your testimony years down the road.' Evil just happens. In any state of war, evil for the sake of evil is just part of the equation. "Only when we assume that the world is meticulously controlled by an all-loving God does each particular evil event need a higher, all-loving explanation." [p.21]
Hmmm..
Now before I get a slew of nasty emails: He's NOT saying God is not all-loving, or that God cannot/does not/will not bring good/blessing/healing from evil suffering. He IS, however, saying that just maybe, when Jon Benet Ramsey was murdered, it wasn't for a higher cause of fulfilling His will. If we are in a real, spiritual war, maybe she was murdered as a casualty of that war.
Chew on this: why do we pray? Out of duty? Or out of a sense of 'warfare'?
Why study the Word? What difference does it make if we know what our role in The Church is supposed to be? If 'everything that happens is according to God's plan'…why bother? Won't it work out anyway?
Why share our faith? Why bother with the rejection and ridicule? Why not spend the day at the lake rather than in worship on Sunday? When someone drowns in Lake Travis this upcoming Labor Day weekend…why be concerned? If it's ALL according to plan, that is….
Within a warfare worldview, particular evils are their own explanation. When we ask the question 'Why do bad things happen to good people?' we are assuming that bad things are supposed to happen to bad people. That's how God gets even with sinners and they learn their lesson, right? Somewhere along the way (Augustine, I think), we've picked up the idea that people suffer because they deserve it. (To the theologs who visit here, think of a more pre-Augustinian, biblical understanding of the world as involved in a cosmic war.)
Part One of the book (the first 160+ pages) deals with OT references, beginning with the genesis of creation and Yahweh's conflict with the raging sea, and dealing with humanity's role as 'restorative viceroy over the earth.' (I like that.)
Part Two (which I'm beginning as soon as I hit the 'post' button) deals with the NT and the Kingdom of God as a warfare concept, the Christus Victor concept of Jesus' death/resurrection, and spiritual warfare in the life of a believer. Again, not about exorcisms and holy water, but about prayer, service and mercy as acts of engaging the conflict.
I'll post more thoughts as they brew. Right now, I need to top off my Halle Berry coffee and get back to work…
Thoughts?
15 Responses to “ God At War ”
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August 28th, 2006 at 11:05 am
Interesting. Just from your comments, I have a few thoughts. First, as you know, I sense a tension in what we are told about God and creation that we must never lose.
We are told, emphatically, again and again that God is the source of all creation, that everything exists because of him and that without him sustaining it, nothing at all would exist.
At the same time, and just as emphatically, God asserts that darkness, wrong, evil — radical and minor — has no part in him. He doesn’t create it. He does not intend it. And he does not use it. Ever.
And that’s good news. Because a God that had any truck with evil while having the power to do something about it would be a bad god.
Scripture offers us very little to resolve the tension it presents while at the same time providing everything. We are not, for instance, given any clear and easy solution to the conundrum. Instead, we are given Jesus and the Spirit. In Jesus lies the picture of God defeating evil and in the Spirit we have what we need to work that out. For we live in the part of time when the powers, when evil itself, has been defeated. We proclaim that has already occurred. But it has not yet fully been realized. The victory lies in our past. The final realization of that victory lies in our future. It’s an odd place to live.
The problem I have in so many of the approaches to the problem of evil is twofold. On the one hand, they tend to so elevate God’s sovereignty that he ipso facto becomes responsible for all the evil that happens. (And never forget, God classifies death itself as evil and not of him.) On the other hand, they can so weaken God and strengthen the devil that the two become somewhat equal opposing forces.
Both of those perspectives exist widely in the pagan world (something most present-day Christians may not know) and scripturally, both are mistaken.
As the only created beings described as ‘image-bearers’ or, as Scot McKnight calls us, Eikons, I believe the fault is entirely ours. I sense we are the only ones who could have introduced evil into God’s creation. And it strikes me that the evil we introduced altered the very fabric of creation in a way not bound by time and space. In other words, I tend to view the presence of the temptor in the Garden not as a sort of equal power with God pulling us in the other direction, but actually as the result of our own sin. In other words, Satan and the angels (who are never described as in the Imago Dei) were only able to rebel against God, even though it was before we were formed, because we introduced that which was not God into creation. If anyone sees anything or anyone else in all creation who could have done something like that other than us, please let me know. Because I don’t see it.
God, of course, is our creator. He could simply eradicate evil at a thought. But apparently the easy path would involve either our destruction or the elimination of whatever it is that makes us in the image of God. (And I do not pretend to understand that idea.) And there God has a problem. He loves us in ways we cannot fathom. He has no desire to change or eliminate us. So instead, he acts to redeem and restore us, and through that redemption, all of creation. And that path looks like God becoming truly one of us, experiencing all we experience, and giving up almost all of what it meant to be God for a little while at the climax of history. Everyone I say this to seems to disagree with me, but I see enormous, incomprehensible risk in the Incarnation. And in that risk, I see love, so much love my mind can’t grasp it. That is the place in which we must live.
Why do I describe all that? Because, from your description, I see Boyd sliding too far to the dualist side in reaction against the Augustinian (if it really was his thought, about which I have some doubts) monoist perspective.
Now, I do agree that evil, including death itself, is simply evil. It isn’t a tool of God, nor is it ever an intention of God. He specializes in somehow bringing good out of it anyway, but he is not responsible for evil. I disagree with the idea that it plays out as some sort of cosmic battle with God and Satan and the spiritual powers as the combatants and us caught in the middle. Rather, I sense that it is our sin empowering Satan and all the rest and it is our turn from that to Christ that, in part, God is using to defeat the evil we enabled.
And with that said, while the warfare metaphor can be helpful, I have the sense from what you wrote that Boyd reduces it entirely to the spiritual realm. And that strikes me as too restrictive. For Jesus also defeated all earthly and physical powers on the cross and in the resurrection. They are all defeated and we are implementing their defeat. Any picture that focuses only on the spiritual powers strikes me as … incomplete.
Enought thoughts for you?
August 28th, 2006 at 12:58 pm
Can I agrue with a key assumption in the original argument? The phrase, “why do bad things happen to good people?” Who ever said that there are any “good” people?
I love my grandmother to death and think she is the greatest person on earth, but she is not a good person. She is a sinner, who is forgiven, not “good” just forgiven. (sorry Grandma, since you do not read the internet, you will never know I said this about you.)
August 28th, 2006 at 1:24 pm
ahhh…good thoughts that need to be deconstructed, which i sense may take a while.
“On the one hand, they tend to so elevate God’s sovereignty that he ipso facto becomes responsible for all the evil that happens.”….I think we can thank our Augustinian roots for that definition of ’sovreignty’. And, yes, both of those perspectives, are flawed.
You say that you get the sense that Boyd slides too far on the dualism end of the scale, perhaps in reaction to Augustine (if, indeed, he actually took a monist pespective)…I have a couple of questions, because I sincerely may not have either articulated Boyd’s thoughts correctly or understood your comment. So, maybe some working definitions would be in order.
I’m assuming ‘dualism’ as the belief that their are two rival great energies, substances, etc., that work in polar opposition to each other. For example, one god is good, the other evil; or one god works for order, the other for chaos. The Christian conflict between God (the source of all good) and Satan (the source of all evil) can be labeled as ‘dualist’, though we realize Satan is not a god, but a former servant (angel) of God, whom God has allowed to attain near God-like power.
Monism seems the metaphysical and theological view that all is of one essential essence, principle, substance or energy.
When Boyd talks about the unresolvability of the problem of evil (within Augustine et al.), he’s looking directly at his ‘Confessions’:
“Evil does not exist at all, and not only for you (God), but for your created universe, because there is nothing outside it whic could break in and destroy the order which you have imposed upon it. But in parts of the universe, there are certain elements which are THOUGHT OF AS EVIL (caps mine) because of a conflict of interest.: [p. 125]
Boyd maintains that, according to Augustine, what seems evil, because it conflicts with our finite understanding, is actually a dimension of higher authority. For Augustine, we ought to regard everything as flowing from God’s sovereign hand. Even when an innocent person suffers unjustly at the hands of another person, Augustine maintains, “he ought not to attribute it to the will of men, or of angels, or af any created spirit, but rahter to His will who gives power to wills.” [City of Gold. 5.10]
Evil occurs at the hands of those God of those God has apparently empowered to do so? Isn’t that monoist?
On introducing evil into the world…I’m curious how WE could be the ones that introduced it into the world. Could you expound on that? I realize, we may be talking about a difference between the poles of literal creationism and some variant of the 5 Act position, but I’m curious. Honestly, I don’t know if I’ve ever considered that as an option….but I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.
Of course, I’ve not completed the book yet, but I DO expect Part Two to focus more on Christ’s defeat of earthly and spiritual powers (although not yet fully realized). Whether we are currently implementing their defeat or still playing a part in the process remains to be seen.
One thing I forgot to mention (other than I hate having to reply in this stupid little restrictive box…): I agree–the Incarnation looks like a HUGE risk to me. Again, if it wasn’t a risk, it doesn’t seem like much of a real war, does it?
August 28th, 2006 at 3:09 pm
Is it a real war really? It seems to me as much more of an all powerful against a power usurper. A slap here and there to get the twit out of the house is all it seems to require.
On the other hand, that is the eternal and we live in there existence of time and space where the usurper uses his usurped power to continue the “shadow-existence” (Plato has some usable illustrations every once in a while) of our rebellious race.
are we not merely fools of ourselves in being rebellious at heart against an all powerful. Are we not brought under submission at the will of the all powerful? Is there really a war at hand or do we give satan and ourselves too much credit.
I just finished re-reading Job and looked at the times satan was in heaven at the throne. He is more like a roach or some pest more than a warrior. He is blown off with a whisp of the hand into the inconsequentialness of his bleek existence.
Just looking at it from a totally different view, always.
August 28th, 2006 at 4:03 pm
’shadow existence’…no matter what road you take, you will meet Plato coming back down it.
If it is NOT a real war, then why enlist? Don’t we have enough exterminators already ?
August 28th, 2006 at 4:59 pm
source of good and another as the source of evil. If you leave it simply as opposing ‘good’ and ‘evil’ forces in a pagan context, you tend to end up back at monoism. And with that in mind, Christianity cannot be called dualist in the pagan sense. Nowhere that I’ve found is Satan described as the source of evil. Evil? Yes. Fallen? Absolutely. The temptor? The deceiver? Roaring lion? Yes to all of those. But never as the source of evil in creation. Satan cannot be that source, for apparently he can create nothing. He can only pervert. And there is a huge distinction between the two.
And yes, it looks to me like Augustine collapses into monoism in the worst possible sense. However, I’m still hesitant to make that assertion about him. Augustine is a highly complex individual with a perspective I don’t feel I truly grasp. Nevertheless, many have certainly used his writings to support a monoist perspective, so whether it’s what he actually intended or not, it’s where he is typically taken.
For me, I’ll say up front that if I ever had any inclination to return to the monoist path, I can’t imagine choosing a perspective with anything but an impersonal source of all that exists, both good and evil. A personal god who actively wills both good and evil, especially the horrific evil we see at times is not a god worthy of allegiance or worship. Such a god is a really, really bad god.
Yet it is clearly the picture of our God that many Christians today hold. And sometimes it hurts me, almost physically, to see them struggle to understand why God would inflict this evil or that on the innocent. I’ve even seen some unable to cling to faith in the onslaught of that unnecessarily cruel perspective. We need to be the people who, in the face of pain and evil, stand at that point groaning ourselves, carrying within us the Spirit of God who groans inside us. The pain the evil of sin and death inflicts on God’s tortured creation hurts him as it hurts us to see that which we love in agony.
Why the Incarnation? Why the Cross? Why the Spirit? That’s why. No other reason strikes me as sustainable.
What I sense in Boyd is a reaction against that perspective. And I think such a thing is good and necessary. In some of your description, though, it sounds like he is moving close to either reducing God or elevating Satan to the point where the situation approaches a pure dualistic understanding. Even if he does not intend it, as Augustine may not have intended to be taken to the other extreme, as fallen humans we have always tended toward one or the other and even with the advent of the ongoing 5th act, we still struggle to maintain a proper Christian confidence that neither is true.
This one is tricky, in part because it remains only half-formed in my own mind. I doubt it’s at all original on my part since it seems to flow naturally when you connect the dots of a number of different perspectives.
But first, I’ll dispense with the creational perspective thing. I believe that’s largely irrelevant. I could chase the deconstruction of what people today seem to mean by ‘literal’ in this context to show how it ends up, but that’s a complete rabbit trail and would distract from what you asked.
No, this connects several threads that may or may not belong together, but which continue to seem to me to fit.
First, there’s nothing particularly new about the idea that God created a good and even very good creation and by the choice of man that which was not of God entered creation causing not just the fall of man, but the fall of all creation. People connect some of the ideas in places like the Genesis 3 pronouncements of the fall, Romans 5, Romans 8, and similar texts to show how it was not just man that fell, but that we took the earth side of the heavens and the earth with us. Off-hand I can’t recall all the places I’ve seen this idea proposed, but it’s not uncommon. In fact, I think I even remember Brother Steve saying essentially this on more than one occasion, though I could be wrong.
And that idea makes sense. A lot of evil can, of course, be laid at the feet of man directly and obviously. But ‘forces of nature’ that inflict suffering, pain, and evil do not fit that category. Yet if we see nature itself also groaning and fallen through the damage of sin, that picture falls into place as well.
Next we face the question, why? What is it about us that our actions can so warp the creation of God? Why is it that God loves us? And the answer to this seems to revolve around our nature and our vocation. We are created in the image of God or Eikons of God. There is something about us that is intended to both reflect God into his creation and join God in the interpenetrating dance of the trinity. And in that nature, we are intended to care for all creation, our vocation from God.
But all of that was twisted, cracked, and broken in the Fall. We reflected God dimly, if at all. We contended with creation and often subdued it oppressively and even violently. We created that which was not-of-God and all creation shuddered. This is what God deeply, deeply desires and plans to redeem even as he has already redeemed it.
But there is something in the manner in which God breathed life into us that allows us to choose whether or not to follow God at any point and in any way. We call that ’something’ free will, but that almost trivializes something that is deeply mysterious. How did God create something entirely sourced and sustained in him, yet able to choose that which is not him?
Now add to this picture another thought. Remember that time itself is a part of creation. To speak of something capable of affecting the fabric of creation itself as bound by any of the strictures of that creation is to speak nonsense, it seems to me. All creation is impacted for all time. And I’ll take it a step further. If the creation of that which is not-God by an Eikon of God does indeed rip the fabric of creation across the ages, then it is also true that our sin today continues to ripple both in visible ways and invisible, both through space and time.
That’s a sketchy outline of some of my thoughts on this. It provides a picture that seems to hold together the tension between the easier end results of pagan belief, honoring both the all-good and almighty aspects of God and the very real existence of evil in creation. Hopefully it’s enough of my thoughts to communicate.
If the Incarnation is not a huge risk, it seems to me we end up trapped in some docetic view. Unfortunately, it looks to me like a lot of people hit that path.
August 28th, 2006 at 5:13 pm
I sense we purged Aristotle’s influence from the medieval church only to replace him with Plato. The ‘gospel’ I hear most proclaim looks, smells, and tastes like platonism. The ‘heaven’ of ‘afterlife’ I typically hear about comes straight from Plato.
And frankly, it’s all booooooring. Who, in the name of God actually wants something like that?
Granted, God could end creation and start over any time he desires. For whatever reason, that’s not what he has done. He says it’s because of his love for it and us, and that is certainly what Jesus looks like, from every angle and at every depth. It seems he wants to redeem us and all creation, to rescue his good creation. And apparently that is no easy task. He cannot simply exert his power and might and have it so. Instead, the almighty God became a human baby. The eternal Son entered creation and time and gave up his status and position, temporarily subordinating himself to the Father. How difficult was the war? Look at the Cross, where Jesus submitted willingly to the worst that evil could do and thereby defeated evil and death for all time. Look at Christ’s victory and subsequent vindication and tremble at the cost and unimaginable scope of the battle.
I give us no more ‘importance’ or ‘credit’ than God seems to give us.
August 28th, 2006 at 6:16 pm
Scott and Tom,
I gather from what you two seem to be asking is where did it come from and how did it get here? Where do we lay the ultimate reality for it seems to be the question of the day?
What was brought into existence that was not of God but that was from God? I am way past comfort in this idea, but let me hang myself and you can give CPR later. The only thing that was from God but was not of God is The Tree. Does The Tree have anything to do with the conversation or not? Like I said, I am way past comfort zone in this, but the knowledge of Good and Evil would not have been in God since there is no evil there. Was this knowledge and its ultimate repugnance to God the bringer to mankind?
You are asking a highly loaded and theologically charged question that to be fair to the original concept of the question limits what the answer can be from a Classical Christian perspective.
Now that I have stepped into the deep end of this cow pie, I want to go take a bath. I do not like the topic because I know where the ultimate reality must go and I am not comfortable going there theologically but do not mind it philosophically.
Thank God Bill Clinton made compartmentalization a rationalized way to conduct your life.
August 28th, 2006 at 8:22 pm
Jimmie, Jimmie, Jimmie,
To echo Morpheus now that you’ve reached for the red pill, “Remember, all I’m offering is the truth. Nothing more.” Do you really want to see how deep the rabbit hole goes, Alice?
You said you were writing a book to help SBC churches ‘minister’ to ‘postmoderns’ or within a ‘postmodern’ culture. That’s a laudable goal and as I emailed you, I would be honored to participate, even if I have doubts that many SBC churches are actually truly interested in such a vocation. However, this conversation is one of the ones that lies at the heart of that goal. Postmodernity has rehabilitated so many gods, the inevitable question becomes, why the Christian God? Or why, more or less exclusively, only Christianity? What is it that makes this ‘faith’ different? (And I know for certain that many in the American church have no clue what those outside now hear when they hear ‘faith’.)
And once you ask that question, this is one of the sorts of places that you go. We have a God who takes all the answers toward which we tend and says either none of those, I’m doing something completely different and unexpected or who picks two or more apparently antithetical choices and says hold on to all of these and don’t slide toward one or the other. Hold them all and you begin to approach me.
And yes, when you look at evil in all its many, varied forms, you find yourself asking, how can it exist at all? If everything is from God and is sustained through God, while at the same time evil has absolutely no part in him, where does the evil come from.
It’s interesting to me that you jump to that particular Tree. For the Trees God places in the Garden are powerful, powerful symbols and I do, in fact, see a lot in them, though not what you might expect. I’m not convinced we can say that either tree is not of God, for God places them both at the very center of his garden. I do not see how either of them could be evil.
But I do see great significance in them both and in their placement. These were unique trees and they were placed in the central place of the Garden. And they are a very interesting pair. The one is the Tree that gives Life. I sense that a lot of people see it as little more than a plant form of the mythical fountain of youth, but I see much more than that.
I am reminded, for instance, of Colossians and that all things were created through Christ and that all things continue only in him. I remember one of the names Jesus claimed for himself: “I am the Life.” And I see in the great and powerful symbol of the Tree of Life, at the center of the garden, a symbol for creation, the Son providing life to all creation.
What then of this other tree? The one also placed in the very center of the garden, this other unique Tree? Would it not be as central to the fabric of creation as the other? It seems to me it must. And what is knowledge of good and evil? How could anyone come to know evil if God only creates good? If evil flows from sin, what is sin? There are lots of conjectures out there, but the best I’ve heard is that, at its root, it’s a failure to trust God. When we fail to trust, many other things emerge and those other things all fall under the rubric of sin, evil, and death. We produce that which is not-God in a creation wholly made and sustained by God. Wrap your head around that.
On the simplest level, the Tree shows how evil is known in a failure to trust by Adam and Eve’s failure to trust God that they should not eat the fruit of that one tree. But how can you speak of someone choosing that which is not of their creator, shaper, and sustainer, and not speak nonsense? And that is where the deeper layers of the symbol come into play for me. If the one tree is the life that sustains creation, then this tree must also weave into creation that which allows the image-bearer of the living God to choose not to trust that God.
And if you hold that image in mind, you see why our choice, again and again, to not trust, wreaks havoc in God’s good creation. We tearing creation at its core. Yet for some reason, God felt it necessary for his image-bearers to have the choice to crack and damage that image, to fail to reflect his glory, to deeply damage rather than care for his creation. I sense the answer lies in love. Only those who can choose not to love can ever choose to love. And God is certainly love. Complete in the perichoretic union of the Trinity, God had no need for love, but he imagined us and fell in love with what we could be. He has made it evident that, to him, everything has been worth the price.
Oh, and Bill Clinton certainly didn’t make compartmentalization anything. He was as much a victim of that facet of Americana as everyone else. Our churches are filled with little else but highly compartmentalized people. That’s especially true on Sunday.
The blue pill is still available for you, Jimmie …
August 28th, 2006 at 10:04 pm
The little blue pill is always to easy. I want to follow Alice all of the way through the hole. Or Neo’s path past that which is seen to that which is not seen.
As you can tell, as a modernist, I tend to be very confident in my views, but I also understand that where my views lead is not where the postmodern world follows.
I am more than willing to confront my denomination with the Pre-Socratic/PostModern mindset and challenge them to drop tradition which is only tradition and seek the God of the Bible, not the denomination.
Does that mean I may be Gulliver or gullible? It is quite possible I may be labled a heritic, but I will never allow that to bother me, I have been one before and I will be one again.
I think the challenge is not what to address, it is how hard to push against the status quo. I want to break the doors down and Post a new set of thesis to the door. I look forward to pushing down the doors, and I do not care who the doors fall upon.
All I ask is that we stay true to the Biblical text and I will be ready for the challenge of learning to dive into the world of a new mindset. It is not foreign, it is opposite of the way I filter information. Am I willing to go past easy Sunday School answers? I tell everyone from the pulpit top question everything they hear and are told. I want them to go to the text and be doers of the word.
If that means I get to kick down a few doors in the process, I love the thought of it.
I think we should ask and then answer real questions of POMOs. I want to challenge everything we do because we have done it that way for 250 years.
I want to challenge Sunday School
I want to challenge the tradtional worship service. It is supposed to be worship, not evangelism.
I want to challenge the failure of members to love their neighbors
I want to challenge people to live out the great commission in their daily lives, not send money for missionaries to do it.
I want to challenge the ignorance of rules instead of relationship.
I want to challenge the generation that ruined the church to let it go and let God redeem the body.
I want to challenge anything and everything that pulls attention away from the exclusivisity of Jesus Christ, even sorry preachers of which I can sometimes include myself.
August 30th, 2006 at 8:59 am
Scott,
I feel I’m oversimplifying, but are you saying…
A: ’sin’ (at it’s simplist) is ‘failure to trust God’
B: Adam, Eve, and Tom have failed to trust, i.e. sinned.
C: by our/their sin, we’ve introduced evil into the world.
(Obviously, I’m leaving out the spiritual/material/ecological butterfly effect…again, to simplify.)
BTW…perichoretic…GREAT word. I’ll work that one into conversation today and see how many people look at me like I’m from Mars.
August 30th, 2006 at 9:46 am
Tom,
A. I’m not sure that sin has a ’simplest’ facet. As you peel back the layers of the onion, and there are so many of them, it is a failure to trust that lies at or near the core. Read the appeal of the serpent. Is that not where the dagger strikes true with deadly precision? “Did God really say …” For a long while I was leaning toward pride at the core. But then I began to see that the sort of pride scripture particularly condemns, the desire to make yourself better or greater than another (or even God), flows from a deep failure of confidence or even knowledge of your own place. And that, in turn, flows from a failure of trust. And I began to see how any such act must be preceded by some sort of inability or refusal to trust.
And I began to see that the central test illustrated in that particular tree was the choice to trust what God said about it or falter in that trust. And with that comes a profound loss of identity and place, a loss of confidence. And from that we then see immense pride, violence, and other evil flowing. And that strikes me as just as true today.
The Newbigin book, Proper Confidence, sealed this idea for me in a roundabout way. For what is presented in scripture as the path away from sin? (Yes, Jesus is the actual path, the door, the water, the bread, the life, and all the rest. But I’m talking about that by which we take that path. Is it not this thing called faith? And is that not a proper confidence in Jesus? Is not another word for that … trust? And how powerful is this faith compared to the power of sin? I’m reminded of some of the things Jesus had to say about faith.
What is the central feature of the Incarnation? In the face of every storm we endure as humans, Jesus trusted the Father and faithfully followed him in temporary subordination through every situation and temptation.
And is not trust even something of a requirement for love? Every act of love requires a willful exercise of trust, for we are vulnerable when we love. We can be and often are hurt. So I don’t think it’s simple at all. I think it’s deeply complex and layered throughout our being and everything we experience and do. But I do think this thing we call trust lies at the heart of sin and before any sin could exist, we had to lose our confidence or our trust in our creator.
B. Yes, indeed. Somehow God has fashioned a creation that supports people who can fail to trust their creator. And we find trust impossible and inevitably falter and thus sin.
C. In essence, yes. I would use imagery more like ripping and tearing the very fabric of creation. I have this sense we underestimate or minimize the damage our sin has caused. We see it in the manner in which creation is cursed. We see it blossoming as early as Genesis 6 as God tells Noah we had “made the earth full of violence”, and again hinted at in Romans, and many places. And I see the depth, breadth, and scope of the damage in that which was required to redeem creation.
Further, if our failure to trust, our sin, truly does tear and gnaw at the fabric of creation itself, you can’t escape the butterfly effect. For time and space are all aspects of the earth of creation. The effects travel beyond the obvious cause and effect consequences as we keep the world filled with violence, not only the violence we inflict directly, but the terrible violence and destruction of tsunamis, Katrinas, and all the rest. Instead of reflecting God’s glory into the earth of creation as the image-bearers were intended to do, we have reshaped creation, in part, in our own fallen image. And since God formed and sustains everything, it must be part of the master architect’s blueprints somehow.
I’ve found that ‘perichoretic’ is growing on me. It’s one of those words which, in its feel and sound help you sense its meaning and it helps when I try to think of the Trinity to bring that sense with me every step of the way.
August 30th, 2006 at 11:27 am
Tom,
In other words, I sense we’re too quick to jump to the idea that ’sin’ is all about the damage I’ve done to myself and to my relationship with God and maybe to some of the people with whom I’ve directly interacted. That’s all there too, of course. But I sense the power and damage of sin is immensely greater and profound than merely that.
Jimmie,
You wrote:
I think there is some confusion out there over the distinctions between those shaped by modern forces and those shaped by postmodern forces. It is true that by the nature of that shaping, ‘postmoderns’ tend to have a more fluid and changeable understanding of the world. In fact, I recall that Tom liked it once when I said that I understood that someone must have felt like he was trying to nail jello to the wall in trying to ‘pin down’ what I thought.
However, that does not really translate into a lack of confidence in views. In fact, some views can be held quite strongly. It is true that it requires more energy to strongly hold a view in a fluid system so we may have fewer of them. But we certainly have some. And, of course, none of us are very good at seeing or seeing past the forces that have shaped us. To illustrate, I find it incomprehensible that there are people who do not believe the reality we perceive is deeply shaped by experience, cultural forces, and our own constructions. Having been through several such ‘realities’ over the course of my life, I take it as a given. Transition from one to another can be incredibly painful and even traumatic (unlike the more casual shifting of ideas and thoughts), but certainly occurs. And within that, much of the ‘truth’ we perceive is indeed relative.
I thik better imagery might be to think of the modern perspective as more like that of large, craggy rock and that of the postmodern perspective as more like water. Each has its strengths and each has its weaknesses. And they are both responses to very different cultural forces. Hmmm. My imagery here reminds me of something I heard Tom Wright say in a recorded lecture. Postmodernity preaches the Fall to arrogant modernity. That happens to fit nicely with the imagery of water wearing down and toppling rock.
I somewhat understand the sentiment, but it’s impossible to escape tradition. And, unless you wish to deny the Holy Spirit and his work forming and keeping and guiding the Church, I’m not sure it’s even wise to dismiss it out of hand. The Spirit exercising authority through Scripture can be ignored or twisted just as easily as the work of the Spirit in the Church over the centuries.
You are responding to the danger of establishing some particular tradition as a brick, set in and amongst other stones and refusing to test it and reexamine it, even discard it at need. And that is one of the very real dangers and shortcomings of the modern perspective. However, I am also aware that we lie to ourselves, we construct realities that are pleasing to us, and we twist and reshape things to fit into our own interpretive frameworks.
Heck, we can’t even read and understand the Bible without the work of historians and lexicographers to tell us what the words mean. And when agendas get in the way, that goes askew. One small (or not so small) example of that lies in the work behind the development of the NIV and some of the other widely used translations. In Romans 16, the NIV inserts an entirely fabricated Roman name, Junias. There is no evidence or record anywhere in any text of such a male name. From the earliest days of indicative punctuation, that indicating the feminine is used *and* we have plenty of other evidence that there actually *was* a female name of Junia. In texts where there is scribal error, the most common error is to write Julia, a more common Roman female name instead of Junia. And the early church fathers always referred to Junia as a woman, even when they otherwise held a pretty low view of women in general.
So why does the NIV (and some of the other English translations) use the invented name of Junias? Because the translation committees determined that a woman could not possibly have been an apostle. This is the manner in which our agendas, ideas, desires, and thoughts shape our reality. None of us are immune to it. It is not safe to divorce Scripture from the work of the Spirit as if it can stand alone or has authority alone. And the Spirit works consistently through the Church and through Scripture. We can distort either, so we must keep all the guiding work of the Spirit in prayerful tension at all times.
The path of forceful confrontation is certainly richly embedded in the Protestant tradition, but I tend to be hesitant to take that path. It tends to gather the odor of agendas, coercion, and control, however nobly it begins. We can offer corrective perspectives, but I’m not sure we can effectually enact change by beating it into closed minds. Closed minds tend to stay that way and forceful efforts tend to simply reinforce them, not break them down. At least, that’s been my experience.
This could use some elaboration as there are a number of ways to read it and I find I’m unsure how you meant it.
In the SBC, SS seems to lack identity anymore. People don’t really know what it’s for. I hear people say its purpose is for ‘evangelism’. And that just seems bizarre to me. I suppose at one time or another, cultural pressures were such that you could expect plenty of unbelievers at ‘church’ on Sunday simply in response to societal shaping. But those days are long gone. While unbelievers certainly will occasionally accompany friends or relatives to their church, it’s the exception, not the rule.
The things we do when we gather are to engage in corporate worship and to stand as the renewed people of God who are being renewed.
Of course, the framework is so engrained people are unwilling to question it. And would probably get upset if you did.
At our church, for instance, people talk a lot about the time pressures on Sunday morning and the rushed feeling and how much ‘better’ it will be when we get into our new building …. I do agree everything is compressed and rushed on Sunday morning. It’s often hard to feel truly worshipful and to do justice to our time to strengthen bonds with one another and truly return our praise and adoration and reverence to God. But we’ve always had the ability to solve that problem and it doesn’t require a new building. All we have to do is start a half-hour earlier and stay a half-hour later. Meeting from 8:30 A.M - 12:00 P.M. would provide an hour and a half for both Sunday Schools and both worship services with a half hour in-between. End of problem. Alternatively, we could have one of the worship services/sunday school tracks on Sunday morning and another on Sunday night (or Saturday night, for that matter). I know plenty of people who would vastly prefer to have their primary worship time in the evening. My daily work schedule for years now has turned me into something of a morning person, but I could go either way.
But either move would, I’m certain create an uproar. Worship and SS are “supposed” to be one hour each. Sunday morning ‘worship’ has to be on Sunday morning. In fact, all the activities possible must be crammed into Sunday somewhere (which is currently what fills Sunday nights).
That, of course, is a huge one if the American church desires to regain any credibility whatsoever.
August 31st, 2006 at 9:08 am
Scott,
I knew I needed work. I am willing to be taught and learn. I may not be the most pliable at times, but I do know that God must teach me to minister to a people that I am not one of. I must therefor humbly submit to being taught by those God so graciously puts into my path.
With that being said, please teach.
September 1st, 2006 at 3:31 pm
Well, it’s not particularly polite to keep hijacking Tom’s posts to all sorts of tangents so I won’t blather on about anything that springs to mind. However, I think I will illustrate using something I mentioned earlier when discussing some of those things that seem to be deeply intrinsic to the ‘postmodern’ experience by connecting it to something I just heard Dallas Willard say in a recorded lecture.
It’s that thing that seems to form a deep barrier between the present day evangelical and especially SBC church and those on the other side of the cultural divide. And that’s this slippery collection of things we label ‘truth’. It is my observation that this can often make or break any meaningful chance of relating to each other in the first encounter. As a result, I’ve reflected some on it.
First, and well before I get to the quote, I need to add one other curious thing I’ve noted over the past dozen+ years. The truth claims of Jesus have never bothered me, even when I certainly would not have labeled myself even vaguely ‘Christian’. In fact, Jesus is … intriguing. I’m not sure I’ve encountered many people who have actually read one of the gospels and not been fascinated by this man featured in their spotlight.
On the other hand, I have almost always found the truth claims of American evangelicals at best off-putting or opaque and often completely offensive. Even today, when more often than not I actually at least somewhat understand the point someone is attempting to make, and may even generally agree with that point, my first reaction to their truth claim is often to take a step back, to begin to withdraw from the setting.
Why? I think, in part, because the claims of Jesus have the feel and resonance of authority, but the sort of authority that has no need to threaten or control. The truth claims of the American evangelical church, on the other hand, resonate with threads of power plays, manipulation, and attempts to control. They tend to speak less of ‘truth’ and more of ‘rightness’, ‘correctness’, and tend to be dismissive.
In short, they tend to feel a lot more like Pilate’s truth claim than anything that forms a connection with Jesus. Yes, Pilate made a truth claim in the encounter in John. I have this sense, from a lot of things, that relatively few present-day evangelicals really ‘get’ that particular encounter. I have this sense they see Pilate as some sort of wishy-washy confused man in the face of Jesus. Bah. ‘Qui est veritas?’ is not really a question. It’s a dismissal of Jesus’ statement. It’s a truth claim based from power. Pilate is the Roman governor. He knows truth, or at least the only truth that he can see which matters, comes from the swords of the legionnaires. The power to control, ultimately even through torture and death, is the ‘truth’ of Rome.
And in the face of that truth claim, Jesus can do nothing but remain silent. We’ll see why in a minute.
Keep that in mind as I share Willard’s abstract definition of ‘truth’.
I heard that and I had to go back and listen to it several times. Here was a definition of ‘truth’ I could work with. It removes the power factor, at least temporarily. And it says something about why Jesus’ truth claims have such authority without being coercive.
For at the heart of it all, Jesus says he is the truth. He is both the representation we can grasp and thing itself. He embodies and shows (or represents) what it truly means to be human, to live a life worth living. He does not try to force anyone to live that life, but he offers it. And at the same time, he provides a representation we can actually grasp of the truth of God and he is able to do so because he also embodies the fullness of God. Jesus holds authority which people still feel today, but it’s an authority that thoroughly respects the dignity of being human. It does not threaten, manipulate, intimidate, or coerce. That’s not authority. Those are power games and it is exactly those power games that have taken us from the height of arrogance that we could or did know all truth to the winter of postmodernity in which it doesn’t look like we can actually know anything at all about truth. Truth claims are nothing more than convenient means to exercise power and control over others.
With all that in mind, try to think about the way the truth claims of most SBC churches tend to sound and you’ll begin to see the scope of the problem. We’re not even talking with each other, but instead talking right the ‘other’
Just a few random thoughts.