Reading Athanasius: Why YHWH Redeems

For VBCC’s October schola, we read Athanasius’ On the Incarnation. Ancient theologians are loquacious suckers, often needlessly so. I feel a certain kinship. That aside, I found one of his arguments compelling and possibly fruitful for discussion. Athanasius argues that the salvation of humanity is required for God to maintain his personal honor. In his view, not only are the divine image-bearers sinful and rebellious, but they are descending into nothingness.

…death had them completely under its dominion. For the transgression of the commandment was making them turn back again according to their nature; and as they had at the beginning come into being out of non-existence, so were they now on the way to returning, through corruption, to non-existence again (1.4).

Since the Logos brought creation into being as a reflection of Himself, it would dishonor Him to surrender it to nothingness. Further, because sin results in the unraveling of human nature to death, it became necessary to renew and re-create human nature by exchanging places with men and bearing their deaths in his own body (2.7, 9). The Incarnation was necessary for this needful redemption:

The Word of God came in his own person, because it was he alone, the image of the Father, who could re-create man made after the image (3.13).

Athanasius illustrates this as a model posing again for the restoration of a painting. What we couldn’t be in our brokenness and rebellion, Jesus becomes for us, so that we can become like him. May God empower us to be his restored people.

In terms of comprehending the love of God and his dedication to people, this is a powerful idea that understands our help and healing as a matter of God’s honor and consistency with the works he has already purposed to perform. Those of us who have difficulty understanding how or why God would go to any lengths to love, heal and free us can see: God has staked himself on us completely.

More later.

Technorati Tags: sin, theology, athanasius, church history

Living in a Body

Resurrection is not the sequel to death.

It is its reversal.

— overheard in a lecture last year

Heroes

We commonlife folks shared worship with Vine and Branches last week. We relaxed, shared a little brie, talked about our lives in Christ and engaged the liturgy.

It was good. It was good just to have that reminder that we are not the only ones doing what we do.

Something I’m trying to get my mind around – should being a presbyter be like any other profession? Is it really like being a professional counselor? Is that any more appropriate than the model of pastor as CEO?

We lit candles for significant (to us) saints at the All Saints Celebration over the weekend. I tried for a few minutes to think of a dead person whose faith and work had impacted me. I could only think of one: Geoffrey Anketel Studdert-Kennedy. I read quite a bit of his poetry while at Oxford, and was struck to find the candor with which his “rough rhymes” expressed and mourned the suffering of the post-WWI era, both of men and of God. He was called “Woodbine Willie” because he (against regulations) entered the trenches with the men on the front lines, handing out Woodbine cigarettes and saying the burial office while covered in muck. He was an early leader also of the Christian Industrial Fellowship – I’ll leave you to suppose what that was all about in 1920s England.

I was struck by something else. I read bits of theology and the history of the ancient Christian church, try to understand the stuff of the original gospel proclamation and how it first came to bear in particular cultural contexts and get excited about that work. I want to be involved in the conversation and do the needful and hard work of faithfully translating the ancient faith into contemporary practice. I want to do that as a presbyter and teacher, looking after people, offering the sacraments, helping them live into and practice God’s vision for their lives as the Body of Christ, and speak healing into dark and empty places.

I’m not sure I’ve yet seen a model of professional ministry that put those things at the top of the job description. I’ll keep giving “traditional church” the benefit of a doubt (I have been, really!), but that doubt is shrinking.

I want to be faithful, but I don’t know in which direction I ought to walk, at least in terms of professional clergydom and denominational polity.

From T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday:

Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

Tim LaHaye feels "disappointed," betrayed

A little bit of justice in the world: Tyndale's publishing a new fiction series founded on an honest and reasoned reading of Revelation, which hold that the book is symbolic of things that were happening in the first century.

Rev. Tim LaHaye, co-author of the Left Behind books, called the decision by his publisher "stunning and disappointing" and said he felt betrayed. "They are going to take the money we made for them and promote this nonsense," he said.

Still more:

"The Bible, in particular the Revelation of John, is open to many dramatic readings," said Harvey Cox, a professor at Harvard Divinity School. "Unfortunately, some are merely a paste-up of what the Bible actually says, a pulling from various passages to craft a theology that the bulk of New Testament scholars do not support. [Revelation] was a polemic against the corruption, debauchery and greed of the Roman Empire ... meant to be an encouragement for the people who were living under persecution. Christians were being fed to the lions. John was writing in exile, fearful for his life."

Dr. LaHaye said the viewpoint expressed in his books is backed by "300 years of church teaching." But Dr. Cox said dispensationalism was considered heresy in ancient times and suppressed. It re-emerged in the 19th century, thanks to "a New Age-y, mystical type sect in Scotland."

Read it all, courtesy of the Dallas Morning News

christlife : not there yet

I attended the Renovare conference at Asbury with a couple of the guys two weekends ago. It helped me get my bearings on a few things, among them:

The point of discipleship is to become more like Jesus. Not prayer or good works in themselves, but to belong to him and be re-formed in his image. To show justice and mercy like him and effect healing like him, we must live like him.

The spiritual disciplines aren’t meant to be herculean demonstrations of spiritual strength. It’s not like a body building competition. It’s more like going to the gym to get in your cardio workout: it’s maintenance.

Contemplation, for example, is not done for its own sake. It’s a way of relating to Jesus. It’s good and right to go for slow, sustainable change. Fifteen minutes a day of quiet and meditating on something true and right isn’t second best to spending three hours a day. The latter may never be feasible. If it is, great. A balanced Christian life is more important.

Bozo: "The World's Only Mind Reading Dog"

And pretty much still the world's only mind-reading dog

I found this being used as a bookmark in a 1933 bank ledger in the College Archives. See, I do neat things all day. More details on Bozo here.

Windsor Commentary II: Conservatives, Liberals and Gay Theology

As I read and listen to reactions to the Windsor Report given by the various voices on the 'Net (and a few I get to overhear) I am struck by a particular theme: the inability (refusal) to recognize that that not only do people on various sides of these issues have different perspectives, but entirely different worldviews.

Many on the left take for granted that a theology that will pronounce homoerotic relationships as part of God’s creative and redemptive intention for his image-bearers is ultimately an issue of gay liberation. The oppressed are finally being listened to, and that will change things. Let me clarify here that violence against others is always wrong, and that homophobia is wicked and evil. The problem is that the oppressed are being granted epistemological priority: their narrative is now to be super-imposed over everyone else’s, and it will be the overarching story into which every other story fits.

Beware the tyranny of the oppressed: forcing everyone to conform to the (felt, experiential) truth of the oppressed is not a reasonable corrective to the former practice of everyone conforming to the (felt, experiential) truth of the oppressors. What’s more, not everyone buys into the narrative of oppressor/oppressed. While you find elements of liberation in the Christian story, it must be said that classical recapitulation / Christus Victor (freeing the Creation from the principalities and powers and placing it under the headship of Christ) is not the same as post-modern liberation: God-empowered self-actualization over and against those who would keep you down.

I hear often that the decisions at ECUSA’s 2003 General Convention (encouraging the blessing of same-sex unions and confirming the election of Rev. Canon V. Gene Robinson to the see of New Hampshire) represent a step forward with the Holy Spirit, and that the Africans (and American conservatives) are asking “us” to step back. Not all steps are forward or backward. I think it’s a step down from the kind of life Christians are intended to live together.

It’s not about scriptural interpretation. It’s about worldview, and whether one considers New Testament sexual ethics to be normative and binding for the Christian Church. I don’t think anyone’s questioning what the NT norms are themselves.

Check out Oliver O’Donovan’s thoughts on the left/right extremes as well as the state of “gay theology” (and see here for the entirety of his essay on the Windsor report):

Nobody reading Resolution 1.10 of Lambeth 1998 – and I am among those who read it sympathetically and appreciatively – could seriously pretend that it was supposed to represent the last word about homosexuality or about the church’s pastoral practice in relation to its homosexual members. It simply set responsible bounds within which we could approve one another’s pastoral practice in good conscience to Scripture and tradition while continuing to explore together a phenomenon of extreme cultural and anthropological complexity. The difficulty the church faces with such an exploration is that left and right wings, in almost equal measure, seem to think that there is nothing to explore. Either Scripture and Tradition have Settled it Once and for All (though how well our phenomena match those that Scripture and tradition addressed is an open question until we have learned to describe our phenomena better); or else Science has Taught us Better, (though no one can quite remember what the scientific experiments were, or what they were supposed to have demonstrated). Our greatest difficulty is that we all follow faithfully the ironic advice of Hilaire Belloc: O let us never, never doubt What nobody is sure about!

If anyone thinks that a prolonged exploration would simply hand a victory to revisionists, let me recall that in 1997 a group of British theologians (“traditionalists” as the press would call them) put some questions, chiefly about theological anthropology, to advocates of the gay cause in the churches – hoping for a reply that would bring to clear expression gay thinking about the gay position and so provide something to discuss. I was among the authors of the so-called “St. Andrew’s Day Statement” – and to the best of my knowledge the questions I and my colleagues then asked have not received the first shred of an answer. The Christian gay movement is not, by and large, a self-theorising movement. For that reason the distinctive experience it wants to attest is often inarticulately expressed, and easily swamped by a well-meaning liberal social agenda of championing all minorities in sight, an agenda which is precisely uninterested in what makes the gay experience different. All this poses a problem for the church, since it means that any possibly helpful pastoral initiative risks signing up, unwittingly perhaps, to a dogmatic revolution. In a world where nothing is clearly explained, all cheques are blank.

(The above emphasis is mine) I’ve read some theology done by the Christian gay movement, and must point out (I don’t think many people know this) that there isn’t a consensus of those thinkers that civil unions, marriages, or “long-term relationships marked by full fidelity” is what homosexual men and women ought to be striving for in church and society. Such arrangements are considered by some to be a product of heterosexist norms and to strive for those is still a way of conforming to the desires of the “oppressor.”

All cheques are indeed blank: can any of these well-heeled, educated, guilty white liberals draw boundaries on what “liberation” ought to mean?

It’s Overcast Today: Elections and the Will of God

The actions and policies of President Bush are not “closer” to the will of God than those of John Kerry. Neither would the opposite be true. Neither of these men is concerned with embodying the reign of God in their decisions, and this is evidenced by the words and actions of both men. Whether or not, then, the reign of Bush or Kerry would be “more Christian,” is a dead question. Neither would be Christian, because only the Reign of YHWH is “Christian.” There is, however, room to discuss whether or not particular policies or actions follow charity and justice. But the role of government can never be seen as a building block or capstone for the mission of the Church.

Remember that the reign of George W. Bush is not the Reign of God. Nor would the Kerry administration have been. As soon as we start using language that allies the reign of any Caesar to that of YHWH, we are guilty of idolatry.

George W. Bush is not “God’s man,” no matter what election he wins. God’s man was and is Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah, who came to put to rights everything that went wrong in the Fall of Creation. He, and by extension the Christian Church, are God’s preferred, primary, and quite possibly only means for the redemption of the world. Bush will not put things to rights, and neither would Kerry.

Single People are Pathetic

Got your attention?

I have a few disconnected rants against the language of "singularity" and "singles ministry," at least as I understand it:

Whenever I've been present for singles meetings, either in Texas or Kentucky, things got around to "recognition of singles" by "the church." I don't understand what the deal is with the generation before mine wanting some ethereal entity called "the church" to bless their way of living. Is complaining about this entity some kind of parental displacement? I don't concern myself whether "the church" or "lots of people" think that not being married at age 14, 22, 30, or never, is weird. What think the people who love me? What kind of man or woman, and in what way, am I called to be?

I am not married, and I won't be soon. I am attempting to cultivate a holy celibacy, belonging to God and to my community, a local grouping of the Body of Christ. I do not need some prancing prelate priestling pontificating from a pulpit to inform me that this is an acceptable way of life. I would be insulted by the attempt. My friends and I do quite well discerning my vocation. Christianity, Inc. and assorted associates can keep their opinions to themselves.

I am not single, or alone. Lots of people, including Christians, would say that I'm single, and not in a relationship. How sad it would be if that were true! What's with this "in a relationship" language? No wonder so many unmarried people feel worthless and unloved: they choose language that gives explicit value only those relationships that in some way sexual (or at least romantic) and implicit devaluation to those that are not. "No, I'm not in a relationship." Of any kind? With anyone?

If that's the way I saw it, I would certainly feel pathetic. But I am in lots of relationships, with lots of people. They love me, and I love them, and that's important. We learn to love well. We are committed to one other through our baptism and unity in the truth, empowered to love and remain by the Holy Spirit. Sexual relations would obviously not improve those friendships (for many, many reasons), but that's what's implied by the language of "in a relationship" and "just friends." Non-sexual relationships are second-best. Everyone knows that, apparently.

Christians are picking up the world's false views on healthy intimacy and happiness, and once again failing to teach a redemptive and healthy sexuality as a consequence. I think these false views of what it means to be with others and to be alone foundational to the idea of a "singles ministry," and why I don't share the enthusiasm of some of my colleagues.

While I am not in a romantic or sexual relationship with anyone, I am not "single" in any way that is meaningful to me, and I am certainly not "alone." For that reason, I could not in good conscience do "singles" ministry. I've not met any peers at this point in my life who see the need for such a thing, because for most of us it would unnecessarily separate us from our friends in the life of the Church.

At its worst, I think it becomes a lonely persons ministry or a matchmaker gathering, meant to offer "another chance" at dating or assuage the woundedness of those who experience continual relational disintegration. It can't ultimately heal those conditions because the premise is faulty: that unmarried (celibate) people are a different class of human, and need to be treated as such. In attempting to overcome the felt alienation of singles, these ministries increase it by buying into the assumptions of the cultural and ecclesial assumptions they hope to challenge.

And that's what I think about that.

Technorati Tags: ministry, church, singles ministry

An Emo Installment: And I Don't Think I'll Miss Her at All

Fall Break has come and gone, but I think I made the most of it. I visited the folks at Vineyard Central this weekend; I feel pretty encouraged in terms of my discernment. There are indeed folks in the last couple of generations who are actively discerning what faithfulness to the Gospel means in terms of their ecclesiology and common life. It’s probably arrogant of me, but I was starting to think it was just me and a handful of friends. The gathering at La Roca a few weeks ago was good for that, as well.

Reading the first thirty pages of the Windsor Report as well as Mission Shaped Church from the Church of England has reminded me that mission and a catholic, missional, sacramental ecclesiology just might be in the Anglican DNA. This in spite of what I’m experiencing with rank and file Episcopalians. Maybe they’re mutants?

I showed my face at "church" for the last time yesterday. I had been growing tired of trying to make friends in a group of people with whom I couldn’t sustain a conversation of more than two minutes. I didn’t care about receiving the Eucharist or the music, (consuming or producing religious goods and services), but was only there to make friends with people. Three months of laborious coffee drinking later, and I still have to nearly pounce on people to have a quick, superficial conversation. Of course, it might just be my age, or values, or personality. I wear some pretty bright shirts, for example, and Jeremy (my roommate, the house god of snappy banter and fun times) says that they can be intimidating.

To say nothing of what I saw in vestry meetings. I’ve alluded to that before, so I’ll leave it be.

If a church ever tells you they’re a friendly bunch, know that they’re lying. Ask somebody who’s visited their house, instead.

I’m trying to drop angry language though. The whole thing just hurts, y’know?

I feel like I’ve broken up with a girl, from an odd kind of relationship in which the idea of romance was nice, but neither one of us was really into it. Or more like it, I just had a crush that was in no way reciprocated. Why keep crushing? What did I want to get out of it? I mean, anybody could have said she wasn’t my type.

What was the point of that little experiment? I don’t know. I’ll think about it and get back to you.

Opinion on the Windsor Report

For my part, I'm on page thirty-something of the sucker. So far it looks to me like it's staying that there are various reasons that ECUSA should not have "consecrated" Canon Robinson, the Canadian Diocese of New Westminster should not have approved a liturgy for the blessing of same-sex unions (to say nothing of declaring them to have official "sanctity") and that ECUSA bishops should stop performing marriages/blessings of same-sex couples. (Which, by the way, at least the bishop of Vermont has refused to do, and the bishop of D.C. has refused to stop his priests)

Gene Robinson says that he's glad to report doesn't say he shouldn't have been consecrated. I'm thinking he's not read it, as paragraphs 33 and following say that "present problems have reached the pitch they have" because ECUSA practiced theological innovation

1. without doing proper foundational theological work (33)

2. without following existing procedures for consulting with other Anglicans in that work (35)

3. ECUSA and the Diocese of New Westminster "hold to the opinion, at least by implication, that the questions they were deciding were things upon which Christians might have legitimate difference, while large numbers of other Anglicans around the world did not regard them in this way" (37). And you know, it's not like they weren't told this by many voices long before they did it.

4. The above parties "assumed...that they were free to take decision on matters which many in the rest of the Communion believe can and should be decided only at the Communion-wide level" (39).

Catholicity is a major issue (we'll leave aside the authority of scripture, just for the moment). If you want to make an formal innovation to Christian theology, you must consult. You don't get to just decide as if the Church of Jesus Christ were a local franchise that you get to run as you please. The bigger a question (or challenge) is, the wider one must consult. In regard to this de facto alteration of the Church's teaching on sexuality, the wider Communion (and the Church universal) has spoken against it. No, says Griswold, we're just a local franchise, and it only affects us.

I'm still reading. I'll get back to you on the rest...

Eugene Peterson: Spirituality and Commitment

Shun spirituality that does not require commitment. Personal commitment to the God personally revealed in Jesus is at the heart of spirituality. Faddish spiritualities, within and without the church, ignore or deny commitment. Evangelical counsel places the Lord's commands - believe, follow, endure - at the core of all spirituality. A lifelong faith commitment to God as revealed in Jesus Christ is essential to any true spirituality.

"Ecstasy doesn't last," wrote novelist E.M. Forster, "but it cuts a channel for something lasting." Single-minded, persevering faithfulness confirms the authenticity of our spirituality. The ancestors we look to for encouragement in this business - Augustine of Hippo and Julian of Norwich, John Calvin and Amy Carmichael, John Bunyan and Teresa of Avila - didn't fit. They stayed.

Spirituality without commitment is analogous to sexuality without commitment - quick and casual, superficial and impersonal, selfish and loveless - eventually a parody of its initial promise. Deprived of commitment, sexuality degenerates into addiction, violence, or boredom. Deprived of commitment, spirituality, no matter how wise or promising, has a short shelf life.

– Eugene B. Peterson, Subversive Spirituality

Athanasius: We are being raised

When the sun rises after the night and the whole world is lit up by it, nobody doubts that it is the sun which has thus shed its light everywhere and driven away the dark. Equally clear is it, since this utter scorning and trampling down of death has ensued upon the Savior’s manifestation in the body and His death on the cross, that it is he Himself who brought death to nought and daily raises monuments to his victory in his own disciples.

– Athanasius of Alexandria, 296-373, On the Incarnation, 29.

McGrath: Experience and Theology

Experience cannot be allowed to have the final word – it must be judged and shown up as deceptive and misleading. The theology of the Cross draws our attention to the sheer unreliability of experience as a guide to the presence and activity of God. God is active and present in his world, quite independently of whether we experience him as being so. Experience declared that God was absent from Calvary, only to have its verdict humiliatingly overturned on the third day.

– Alister McGrath, The Mystery of the Cross (Zondervan, 1990)

Mark Greene on the Sacred/Secular Divide

Mark Greene argues that “we set a lower educational standard for the way we teach kids in our churches than the standard set in the school room.”

I’ve been thinking about this for awhile: my experiences in most local churches thus far has made it clear that high schools expect a higher level of thought work from teenagers than churches do of adults at any point in their lives.

He blames “the sacred-secular divide: the pervasive belief that some parts of our life are not really important to God – work, school, leisure – but anything to do with prayer, church services, church-based activities is.”

He continues:

In sum, we teach our kids very young that what they do between 9 to 5, Monday to Friday, is not important to God. And we also teach them that their minds don’t really matter to God either. So it was that the national leader of an evangelistic ministry said, “We teach gentle Jesus, meek and mild to teenagers in church. Meanwhile in the world they’re studying nuclear physics.” That’s SSD – setting a lower standard of educational expectation for church teaching than for school, treating adolescents like kids, communicating to them that thinking matters in the world but not in the church [emphasis mine – KP]. That’s SSD, treating church time as if it we are primarily in an entertainment environment, rather than in a vigorous, worshipful, learning environment.

– From the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity