Cruciformity

At church we’ve been working through Revelation and I had the privelege of preaching on a section on Sunday. I wanted to mention this because I was incredibly rewarded. And it wasn’t one of the purple passages that people often find encouraging and hear preached on. Rather it was chapters 12-14 with a big dragon and a pregnant woman standing on the moon.

The point I wanted to make was that despite how scary Revelation is, with all of the seemingly random symbols, it really rewards a slow and careful read. Make it the next book you read in your quiet time, read it slowly, looking up the cross-references in your bible margins!  You won’t be disappointed.

I’ve got three tips and a book recommendation. If you’re looking for a book on Revelation then I highly recommend Richard Bauckham’s book, The Theology of the Book of Revelation. Anything by Bauckham is worth reading, in my opinion. It’s a thin book, well written, historically informed and compellingly cohering.

Here are 3 tips that I started my sermon with on Sunday night:

1. It’s about Jesus

Don’t be distracted, it’s about Jesus all the way through, with the victory of the cross, the blood of the lamb, forming a central image all the way through. Take it from John’s introduction:

The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John,  who testifies to everything he saw—that is, the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. (Rev 1:1-2)

2. It’s for our blessing.

This book isn’t meant to scare us, or confuse us. It’s not meant to be a cryptic crossword or Sudoku to solve. It’s written for the blessing of the reader. Again, take it from John’s introduction:

Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near. (Rev 1:3)

3. It uses Apocalyptic Language.

Apocalyptic Language is picture language used for it’s heightened expression. The images that illustrate this to us best are those 20th Century War Propanda posters. They contain strange symbols that might be hidden in a culture now past and difficult to retrieve. But once those symbols are attained (and I’m convinced that many of them are attainable from the Old Testament) then the message is not only plain, but it’s screamed at you from the pages you’re reading.

If we save ourselves from an overly-literal reading of the text and allow Revelation it’s symbols and exaggerated forms of imagery, then what results is an acutely relevant call for Christians to ‘overcome’ and follow the lamb on the throne wherever he goes!

I’ve had one of those beautiful “ahh!” moments tonight, my eyes opening to see just a little bit more of God’s vision for his people in his world.

What does the Apostle Peter mean by the following sentences?

“Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.” (1Pet 2:11-12 NIV)

How are we as Christians to relate to the world around us? Do we reinforce a distinct identity from the world? Or do we embrace them - becoming socially and politically winsome?

This week’s reading for Social Ethics was an article by Miroslav Volf call Soft Difference where he considers these questions. It’s opened my eyes to 1 Peter and to the way I relate to the rest of the world.

Volf observes in 1 Peter a vision of the Christian life in a community of believers that sums what people mean by “in the world but not of the world”. These Christians find their purpose and significance in God, living without the pressures from the world around them to break away for survival or to accomodate their beliefs for approval. They have a quiet and gentle confidence in God’s future for them. The boundaries they form around them are not hard in order to isolate themselves, nor absent in order to be absorbed in world, but soft. Not soft as in weak. But soft as in ‘not hard’. Not born from fear or indignance, but soft and born from above into a Christ-given hope and love (1:3). What results is a Christian community refreshingly different, born from above, properly outrageous and winsome to the world around and about.

It’s difficult to reproduce the profundity of it, but here is section that I thought hit a nerve for me as I try to relate properly with my neighbours:

The distance from society that comes from the new birth into a living hope dies not isolate from society. For hope in God, the Creator and Savior of the whole world, knows no boundaries. Instead of leading to isolation, this distance is a presupposition of mission. Without distance, churches can only give speeches that others have written for them and they only go places where others lead them. To make a difference, one must be different. (p24).

I’ve been slowly sifting through old posts in my RSS feeder and came across a great post on the reliability of the Gospels over at Ben Myer’s blog by Prof. George Hunsinger. Click here for a great read.

I particularly like his closing paragraphs:

It is finally not we who read the NT, but the NT that reads us. It calls us and our detached role as would-be authoritative, evidence-weighing spectators radically into question. That is why it is so dangerous. Many of those original “unreliable” witnesses to the resurrection of Christ, like Peter and Paul, went to their brutal deaths as martyrs. “When Christ calls a man,” wrote Bonhoeffer, “he bids him come and die.”

No one who is not willing to take this risk should venture to read the NT. But many of those who have turned to it spiritually have found, throughout the centuries, that they end up saying with Peter: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (Jn. 6:68). I suggest that you might want to read the opening chapters in The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

As a teenager I remember engaging with friends in long, long discussions about those questions. Could God produce a rock too heavy to lift? Could God microwave a burrito so hot that even he couldn’t eat it? More often than not, these were questions asked because they niggled. Occasionally, though, someone would suggest that it proved God couldn’t exist.

In any case, I’ve become accustomed to side-stepping these by highlighting the importance of understanding God as he is towards us. Often the philosophical questions result in discussions of an abstract god or a caricature of God. God’s identity is removed from his self-revelation in Scripture, and is reduced to a series of categories - omnipotency, omnipresence, impassibility, aseity, etc. I’ve found that a more meaningful discussion of God draws from God’s revelation of himself. I can still hear my doctrine lecturer, Robert Doyle repeating the phrase, “God is who he is towards us!”

Of course, Robert was channelling Karl Barth, who was channelling Soren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard, often called the Father of Existentialism, keenly opposed systems of thought and particularly those proposed by his predecessors Kant and Hegel. Barth continued this method in his theology, mostly ignoring categories of Systematic Theology and preferring to understand God by his (mostly) excellent exegesis of Scripture. It’s a result of such emphases that here at Moore College Biblical Studies rightly holds a place of priority among the subjects we study. God is as he is as he is towards us: He has revealed himself most clearly in his son Jesus, whose life and work reconciled humanity with himself, and issued in hope of new creation, which is brought into being by God’s Spirit. This is the triune God as revealed in Scripture, the one that Christians believe and worship.

I don’t mean to dismiss any value in discussing God’s attributes; this discussion could venture into a number of interesting areas from here. But the question that I’ve got going relates to the work of Oliver Crisp. I was introduced to Crisp at last year’s School of Theology on John Calvin. More recently, I’ve been reading Crisp’s 2007 work, Divinity and Humanity, a series of essays that relate to the Chalcedonian Definition, both challenging it and reinforcing it. To my surprise, Crisp has embraced these philosophical categories, used them to critique people like Barth and Gunton, and yet doesn’t even mention this key difference in methodology.

In one particular chapter, I’m left almost completely unconvinced by Crisp’s rebuttal of Edward Irving’s, Gunton’s and Barth’s view that Christ had a fallen nature. Granted, it was a short essay. But it really could have engaged more in the long and sustained arguments of any of these thinkers who work closer to the biblical texts and not philosophical categories like God’s omnipotence.

Oliver Crisp is a man much smarter than I am and I certainly don’t want to disrespect him. I also don’t want to say that there is NO value in using these philosophical categories, I guess I’m just confused. Haven’t we realised the limits of these categories?

Galatians is almost certainly one of the earliest New Testament writings, to my knowledge it was indisputably written by Paul, and, as far as I can tell, it has served as a frontline of recent New Testament fistycuffs. So I’m aware that it’s kind of trendy to blog about this kind of thing and I want to avoid the trend of making reductionistic conclusions (not to mention slanderous conclusions!) like a pyromaniacal kid, fixated upon finding the hottest part of the fires of controversy and have a good poke and prod around, toasting well-worn pastors and scholars like marshmellows for a cheap-shot melting moment… Ok, the metaphor’s run it’s course.

I’ve been reading through Tom Wright’s new book, Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision and I have thoroughly enjoyed engaging again with Paul’s writings and trying to hear what Paul actually says. I’ve been challenged to consider some of the tensions and complications that I had simply settled with previously.

As I started reading through Galatians again recently, the place that I first got bogged down, (and I don’t think that I’m the only one!) was the end of chapter 2 at the end of Paul’s conversion narrative and immediately following his confrontation with Peter. So what I want to do here is walk slowly through Galatians and try and make sense of it as a whole, not arguing for a particular viewpoint (Wright’s or Luther’s or otherwise). What is the logic of what Paul says to Peter in v14? What do the three phrases in v16 mean: ‘justified’, ‘works of the law’, ‘faith in Jesus Christ’ (pistis christou)?? Is there a logic to what he’s saying? Why does he mean by rebuilding in v18?

11  But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned. 12 For he used to eat with the Gentiles before certain men came from James. However, when they came, he withdrew and separated himself, because he feared those from the circumcision party.  13 Then the rest of the Jews joined his hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was carried away by their hypocrisy.  14 But when I saw that they were deviating from the truth of the gospel, I told Cephas in front of everyone, If you, who are a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel Gentiles to live like Jews?

15  We are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners;  16 yet we know that no one is justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ. And we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no human being will be justified.  17 But if, while seeking to be justified by Christ, we ourselves are also found to be sinners, is Christ then a promoter of sin? Absolutely not!  18 If I rebuild those things that I tore down, I show myself to be a lawbreaker. 19 For through the law I have died to the law, that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; 20 and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.  21 I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.

I’ve been working through the book of James recently and while I’ve really enjoyed the experience of looking at a book from scratch and considering its structure and themes and message without assistance (something we don’t do a lot of at College), I’ve been suitably challenged.

James is a book that you can’t hold off at arms distance. His words are judgements on my behaviour and I’m challenged not to be “like a man looking at his own face in a mirror; for he looks at himself, goes away, and right away forgets what kind of man he was.” (1:22-23).

Consider the passage in James that speaks about our use of our tongues.

James 3:3   Now when we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we also guide the whole animal.a 4 And consider ships: though very large and driven by fierce winds, they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs.  5 So too, though the tongue is a small part |of the body|, it boasts great things. Consider how large a forest a small fire ignites.  6 And the tongue is a fire. The tongue, a world of unrighteousness, is placed among the parts of our |bodies|; it pollutes the whole body, sets the course of life on fire, and is set on fire by •hell. 

7   For every creature—animal or bird, reptile or fish—is tamed and has been tamed by man,  8but no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.  9 With it we bless oura Lord and Father, and with it we curse men who are made in God’s likeness.  10 Out of the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things should not be this way. (HSCB)

The truth of this reflection is confirmed in the words of novelist Ben Okri:

It sometimes seems to me that our days are poisoned with too many words. Words said and not meant. Words said and meant. Words divorced from feeling. Wounding words. Words that conceal. Words that reduce. Dead words.

If only words were a kind of fluid that collects in the ears, if only they turned into the visible chemical equivalent of their true value, an acid, or something curative - then we might be more careful. Words do collect in us anyway. They collect in the blood, in the soul, and either transform or poison people’s lives. Bitter or thoughtless words poured into the ears of the young have blighted many lives in advance. We all know people whose unhappy lives twist on a set of words uttered to them on a certain unforgotten day at school, in childhood, or at university.

We seem to think that words aren’t things. A bump on the head may pass away, but a cutting remark grows with the mind. But then it is possible that we know all too well the awesome power of words - which is why we use them with such deadly and accurate cruelty.

We are all wounded inside in some way or other. We all carry unhappiness within us for some reason or other. Which is why we need a little gentleness and healing from one another. Healing in words, and healing beyond words. Like gestures. Warm gestures. Like friendship, which will always be a mystery. Like a smile, which someone described as the shortest distance between two people. (quoted in Richard Bauckham, James, 205).