"Do you want to believe in the living Christ?" says Barth. "We may believe in him only if we believe in his corporeal resurrection. This is the content of the New Testament. We are always free to reject it, but not to modify it, nor to pretend that the New Testament tells something else. We may accept or refuse the message, but we may not change it."
Karl Barth - Witness to an ancient truth
Tag Archive for 'Jesus'
I had a long conversation last night with a good friend about various theological topics. Some of them will find their way on here, in time. The first of them is the doctrine of assurance. How can we be confident that we are saved? Is such confidence possible?
For Methodists, 'assurance' historically refers to a feeling of peace and joy that our sins are forgiven. An example might be John Wesley's famous line, 'I felt my heart strangely warmed.' He goes on to say:
I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation. And an
assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and
saved me from the law of sin and death.
On this understanding, assurance is the feeling that accompanies faith in God's promises.
The difficulty is of course that feelings can mislead us. It is entirely possible for someone to feel 'assured' of their salvation, without having the accompanying faith.
It is therefore perhaps more helpful to talk about assurance in terms of faith. God has promised that those who believe in him will have eternal life, that if we believe in the salvation won for us by Jesus on the cross, we will be saved:
It is not possible for someone to be genuinely broken by sin, genuinely
to believe that Christ is the only way to salvation and genuinely to
have asked God for salvation, and yet still to be unsaved.
This is the most we can say: God has promised certain things in Scripture. Therefore if God is true to his Word, then what God has promised will happen. At the end of the day we can never be 100% certain that God exists, or we would not have faith, we would simply know.
However we can be almost 100% certain that he does, and therefore almost 100% certain that we will be saved if we trust in his promises.
On the BBC website today I read this article:
Children 'damaged' by materialism. It is particularly aimed at advertisers who specifically target children.
The Children's Society said adults had to "take responsibility for the current level of marketing to children".
Bob Reitemeier, chief executive of the society, said: "A crucial question raised by the inquiry is whether childhood should be a space where developing minds are free from concentrated sales techniques.
"To accuse children of being materialistic in such a culture is a cop-out," he said.
Reitemeier said: "Unless we question our own behaviour as a society we risk creating a generation who are left unfulfilled through chasing unattainable lifestyles."
And Rowan Williams said:
Children should be encouraged to value themselves for who they are as people rather than what they own.
The selling of lifestyles to children creates a culture
of material competitiveness and promotes acquisitive individualism at
the expense of the principles of community and co-operation.
There is even a suggestion that 'commercial pressures' may cause psychological problems in later life.
The report is rather terrifying, but not perhaps surprising. The relentless drive to have more and own more pervades our entire culture. Our economic system of capitalism relies on human desire as its driving force. More and more companies are becoming skilled in manipulating that desire through slick advertising, so that we desire things we don't need.
Somehow, as Rowan Williams said, we have come to value ourselves more in terms of our prosperity, our possessions, than in our value as people.
This story hit a nerve with me this morning because I have just read Luke 12, in which Jesus says this:
Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of one's possessions.
Luke 12.15 (ESV)
Jesus then goes on to tell the parable of the man who stored up crops for himself saying, 'relax, eat, drink, be merry.' But God took it all away from him that night, and he had nothing. Rather, Jesus says, seek the kingdom of God, and store up treasure in heaven, where it cannot be stolen or destroyed.
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
Luke 12.34 (ESV)
Some of the BA students in college have been writing about the impassibility of God, which has prompted not a few discussion in the Common Room over coffee and snooker. One of them has written three blog posts about it, here, here and here. A good article I have read on the subject can be found here. A further post can be found here. There is such a wealth of information on the internet, this is not an attempt at a comprehensive study of the subject, but a few thoughts in what I think is the right direction.
Definitions
The first problem we encounter is defining the slippery term that is 'impassibility' (cannot suffer). Its origins can be found in Greek philosophy, along with 'immutability' (cannot change), in the understanding that perfection is static and supreme, immovable. They have 'cold' overtones, of unemotional behaviour, pure logic and reason, a being totally unaffected by anything or anyone else.
However they also have many positives, for example, they assure us of a firm foundation, consistency, confidence in God's promises, and the affirmation that God is perfect, and can get no better or worse.
A further problem is that the words are negative, telling us something about what God is not, rather than something about what he is like. This tends to have a de-personalizing effect on the subject - after all, we usually describe one another using positive terms rather than negative (e.g. 'she has brown hair and likes pizza' instead of 'she doesn't like driving and hates cauliflower'). For us to know something about God, we have to use language we understand. Therefore, if our language is telling people something about God that is not right (e.g. that he is cold and unaffected by his world) then we either need to define our language better, or find different words to explain the same concepts.
When encountering any thorny theological problem, the first step is usually to look at the Bible, to see if it helps us. We will find that in this case it has the potential to make things even more confusing!
Scriptural Evidence
Scripture unequivocally states that God does not change:
'For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.'
Malachi 3.6 (ESV)Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
James 1.17 (ESV)25 Of old you laid the foundation of the earth,
and the heavens are the work of your hands.
26 They will perish, but you will remain;
they will all wear out like a garment.
You will change them like a robe,
and they will pass away,
27 but you are the same,
and your years have no end.
Psalm 102.25-27 (ESV)Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
Hebrews 13.8 (ESV)
I could go on, for there are many more such verses. They highlight a key concept for us: God is not like us. His ways are higher than our ways, his thoughts higher than our thoughts. Even though we are authorized by Scripture to use human language (anthropomorphisms) to describe God in ways we can understand, it does not follow that God is exactly like us, or exactly like the words we use to describe him.
A classic example is this: God is just, God is merciful. Both are affirmed throughout Scripture, both are true. The problem the Bible poses is this: how can God be both just and merciful at the same time, when faced with his sinful people? It isn't that God is just one day and merciful the next: he is just and merciful all the time. We see this supremely and perfectly on the cross, where God's justice and mercy met in the death of his Son. The crucifixion doesn't give us a new word, like 'just-ercy' or 'mer-stice', it simply shows us how it can be that God is just and merciful at once.
Back to the problem at hand. Just as with 'justice' and 'mercy', there is an 'opposite' to God's changelessness: his loving involvement with his people. Throughout the prophets God wrestles with the problem of loving his people, being hurt by their rejection, wanting to punish their sins, and wanting to forgive them so they might turn back to him (e.g. Jeremiah 4.19-26). And of course there is the love of God for his world, so great that he sent his only Son to die for his enemies.
God is intimately involved in his creation. He was when he made it, when he walked with Adam and Eve in the garden, when he called Abraham, when he rescued his people from slavery, when he called David, the man after his own heart, when he punished his people for turning away from him, sending them into exile, when he brought them home again. And, of course:
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 1.14 (ESV)
So what next?
This rather long post is coming to an end, do not fear! We need to find a way of expressing the truths about God's changelessness, his difference from his creation, whilst at the same time not denying his involvement in that creation, supremely in his Son Jesus.
I suggest that instead of 'impassibility' (cannot suffer) we say 'sovereignty', and instead of 'immutability' we say 'faithfulness'. Starting with the second, the whole reason the Bible emphasizes that God does not change, is to affirm his faithfulness to the covenant he made with his people: 'God doesn't change, so what he promised yesterday he promises today, and will promise tomorrow.' Unlike we humans who break our promises, God never does. Once he has spoken, that is it for eternity: his words never pass away.
And yet, God remains free always to act in surprising ways, for it isn't our understanding that will never change, but God himself who will never change. Further - and this is the crunch - God was free to submit himself to the powers of history, in Jesus. As Jesus said, at any point the Father could have sent legions of angels to protect Jesus. His suffering (and suffering it was - read the ends of the gospels) was not forced upon him by the world, but by his and the Father's will.
Just as with the 'problem' of God's justice and mercy, in the cross we see a glimpse of how God was both God (totally different to his created things) and man (at the mercy of bloodthirsty creatures). At any moment Jesus could have saved himself, as he was taunted to do by the Pharisees and scribes. But he didn't. He chose to suffer with us his people, he chose to be obedience to his Father. At all times God remained sovereign and faithful - and free.
Let us never imagine that we can define God so accurately that we can restrict his freedom to be himself. Everything we say about God is only transitory, is only partial - only when we are with him in his kingdom will we finally know as we are fully known. Until then, let's do the best we can, knowing we will always fall short.
I am currently reading through Romans with a friend at college, and we are up to Romans 7. One of the things we mentioned was how easy it is to mis-read Paul and interpret what he says as gnostic.
For example:
7.5 For while we were
living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at
work in our members to bear fruit for death. 6 But
now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us
captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the
old way of the written code.
Not only does Paul set up a radical distinction between 'the new way of the Spirit' and 'the old way of the written code', he also locates sin at work in 'the flesh', 'our members'. Equally, in the previous chapter Paul writes:
6.12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions.
His emphasis is so strongly on our sinful bodies, on sin which works in our 'mortal body', that it is not a big step to gnostic theology, where the spirit is holy, the flesh evil.
It is also not a big step to the neo-dualism of contemporary evangelicalism. Now there's a sentence and a half! When I worked for A Rocha in London, one of the things I did was go around churches giving talks about the biblical basis for creation care. A regular comment that many of us encountered (and no doubt they still do) was that God is more interested in saving souls than restoring creation.
There is undoubtedly some truth in that statement. God has a special love for humans, made in his image to worship, glorify and love him. However it is no different to the gnosticism that was denounced as heresy, and completely fails to understand the Old Testament, and much of the new.
When Paul locates sin at work in mortal flesh, he is not saying that God will do away with physical bodies. He is not saying that all material things are evil and that what is important is our soul. What he is saying, is that God needs to transform our mortal bodies if we are to obey him. The very next verse in Romans 6 is this:
6.13 Do not present your
members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present
yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life,
and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.
God wants us to use our bodies, our minds, our strength, our souls - all of ourselves - to serve him. He is not interested in disembodied children, but children in his image as he made them, bodies and all. The 'newness of life' that Paul talks about earlier in Romans 6 is the basis on which we are able to 'present' our 'members to God as instruments for righteousness'.
6.4 We were buried
therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ
was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk
in newness of life.
Just as our baptism is a physical event, and just as Jesus' resurrection was a physical event, so also our newness of life is a physical event. So, coming back to Romans 7, serving God in the 'new way of the Spirit' is correctly interpreted and capitalised by the ESV as the 'new way of the Holy Spirit': i.e. the new bodied life in the power of the Holy Spirit, not a new life somehow disconnected from our bodies, and purely 'spirit'. The true meaning of the word 'spiritual' is not 'the life of a spirit', 'but life in the power of the Spirit', mind, body, soul and strength.
I am sure that no self-respecting and thoughtful evangelical would disagree with what I have just argued. Why is it then that the focus of 'gospel ministry' is so often proclamation on its own, without the accompanying care for people's 'fleshy' side? I myself have been guilty of this mistake, but hopefully no longer.
Wearing my A Rocha hat (A Rocha is a Christian environmental charity, seeking to transform communities and ecosystems in Jesus' name and power) I would go further still, and say that God's concern is for the whole of creation, not just humans. After all, Revelation teaches us that heaven comes down to earth, not the other way around. The whole world will be transformed by God, not just those people who call on Jesus' name. (For more on this, please look in the Sermons section, or search for 'creation care' or 'hope for the planet'.)
When we pray 'your kingdom come', what we are praying for is the full and complete kingdom, which includes the transformation of the world, as well as the transformation of the people within the world. The latter concern for people's physical well-being is being rediscovered by the church, but we are still lacking the former concern for the world.
The challenge is this: have we sold out to a gnostic dualism between spirit and flesh? Have we in practice (if not in theology) ignored the fleshy side of life in favour of the spirit side of life? If we have, we need to do both to be doing full and proper 'gospel ministry'.
This evening we watched Heston Blumenthal's Perfect Christmas on BBC2. Normally I love watching Heston - the 'culinary alchemist' - with his very male cooking; it's all gadgets, industrial equipment, perfectionism, and lots of lovely rich butter. And he gets to use liquid nitrogen!!
However this evening's episode left a bitter aftertaste. One of his first comments was about his starter - apparently there are three vital elements to a nativity play: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. We heard all about the 'three kings' travelling through Oman where they probably picked up their frankincense. And who were they for? 'The newborn baby' - not once in the whole programme did I hear the name 'Jesus'.
Now, I know that it isn't a Christian programme - Heston's comments about his perfect Christmas, which involves roaring fires, the smell of Christmas trees, roast goose and so on, reveal the total secularisation of Christmas into something sentimental, an excuse for the family to eat a slap-up meal in front of a roaring fire - but to talk about Christmas, including the nativity story, without mentioning Jesus' name, is quite something.
But that wasn't the worst part. He managed to come up with something tasteless at best, at worst extremely offensive. He served communion wafers dipped in something that smelled of babies. I have a high tolerance level - I am not offended by The Life of Brian, for example - but that really jarred with me. Using communion wafers in a Christmas meal is crass and, I think, offensive.
Of course, if anyone complains, the media will probably make them out to be fundamentalists who can't take a good joke. However, taking one of the central acts of the Christian faith and turning it into a starter for your Christmas meal, is not a good joke.
I have been reading some of the minor prophets recently, and it hit me quite how angry God is with his people, and with the nations surrounding them. Of Ninevah God says, 'Behold, I am against you, declares the Lord of hosts...' followed by some fairly graphic and disgusting things (Nahum 2.13, 3.5-7 etc). Micah begins with the promise of destruction for Israel's idolatrous behaviour. Obadiah condemns Edom, Jacob's brother Esau, for gloating over Israel's misfortune. And so on.
This made me think. Most obviously I suppose, it highlights just how angry God gets with sin. A stereotype of Protestant preaching is 'fire and brimstone from the pulpit', which reflects God's anger and just wrath, while perhaps being a bit over the top. It is an uncomfortable message, and not one people want to hear - it doesn't sit easily with the general understanding of God as a benevolent father with a big white beard. More serious are Richard Dawkins' attacks on 'the God of the Old Testament' for such unpleasant displays of vengeance and anger; unpleasant, that is, to our modern 'tolerant' sensibilities.
There are two dangers here. The first, corresponding to the uncomfortableness that people feel, is to deny God's wrath. This underestimates sin, and reduces God's holiness. Even claiming it is part of the Old Testament understanding of 'territorial gods' is false, because it is in the New Testament too. It is simply not the case that the God of the Old Testament is vengeful and the God of the New Testament is peaceful.
If we are seeking to be faithful to the Bible we cannot avoid the fact that sin makes God angry. Therefore, just as sin is not confined to the Old Testament, so God's anger isn't confined to the Old Testament. If you want proof, look in a concordance under 'wrath' and 'anger' - not to mention Jesus' display of anger in the temple (Matthew 21 etc). God's righteous anger is a central part of the message of the whole Bible, perhaps at its clearest in the prophets.
The second danger, corresponding to Dawkins' attack, is to stop here, and simply emphasise how angry God is with us 'miserable offenders', effectively denying the message of grace clearest in the New Testament (though present also in the Old). For the Bible tells us that yes, God justly punishes sin, and therefore we sinners deserve death, but that he also loves us and wants to have mercy on us. The interchange in Hosea is particularly astonishing, as we read of God's love and justice wrestling with each other.
It is for precisely this reason that the cross is absolutely central, for on the cross God's love and justice meet - they are both defined entirely and exclusively by the cross. It is on the cross, as Jesus bears the penalty for our sins, their consequence, that God fulfils his justice, whilst at the same time fulfilling his love, as he sets us free from that penalty through Jesus.
If we take the Bible as a whole, we see the Old Testament preparing us for and pointing us to the cross. It is on the cross that the tension between God's love for his people and his righteous judgement of their sins is resolved. The curses of the Old Testament, the condemnation that God speaks over the nations, over his own people, all of that wrath is poured out on Jesus, and we are saved by his blood.
And so we return to the minor prophets. As I was reading Nahum I realised that on the cross, God spoke those curses to his own Son, who willingly and obediently put himself under those curses. And he did that because he loves us so much, and because we have disobeyed him so much, and because he is so holy and just and righteous and faithful.
So on the cross, God's wrath was indeed satisfied - and, in the frequent alternative words to In Christ Alone, God's love was glorified also. However, we need to make sure we strike the balance between God's wrath and his love, so we don't cheapen his love, and so we don't turn God into Dawkins' stereotype. This balance is struck by Paul in some important verses in his letter to the Romans, on which note we will finish.
6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person - though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die - 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.
Romans 5.6-9 (ESV)
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