What are the greatest injustices that currently exist in this world (both at home and abroad)?
How can we remedy those injustices?
Who are those in the greatest need (both at home and abroad)?
Who are those with the greatest power (both at home and abroad)?
How might the powerful empower those in need?
What are the cultural structures that are most oppressive and corrupt?
What are the most poisonous ideas in our culture that might infect our minds?
How can we cultivate holiness in our spirit?

I know very little of Augustine, I must admit. Same with Luther, Calvin, and most church fathers. What I know of them I know from second hand knowledge. Well, in reality I’ve met very few people who actually know the giants from the past first hand, so I don’t feel that alone, although I’d like to change this over time. Someone said somewhere in the past few months at a place that I attended (I think it was Scott McKnight), that Augustine’s confession was the prototype for a conversion that went together with extreme experiences of guilt. Luther’s was similar. And this has become the prototype for how conversion stories must.

This was the classical conversion story that I’ve heard in my life. The recognition of my own total depravity, my absolute guilt, my being a worm in the eyes of God, and God then coming to take away this guilt. Recognition of sin always lead to an experience of guilt over this. Then the sin was forgiven, and God never though about it again.

In conversations on Apartheid, there is a group which I’d call that “sal-nie-langer-jammer-sê-nie”-group (translates with “I-will-not-say-sorry-any-longer”-group). This is from a song by a well-known Afrikaans band in which they sing about how they won’t say that they are sorry about Apartheid any longer. It was in reaction to this that Tom Smith and some friends started a website which said that they are sorry for Apartheid.

Let me quickly put down my thinking and then ask you to respond. I wonder whether there is a link. In this classical tale of conversion, past sins need to be forgiven quickly and gracefully, if not they lead to feelings of guilt. For those caught in this approach, the wrongs of Apartheid will lead to feelings of guilt if they make themselves part of the people who did this, and if they consider this a wrong which still must be addressed.

However, I also see some who don’t consider recognition of past, and even present, sins to be a source of guilt, but rather a source of change. In this approach guilt do not lead to redemption, but redemption lead to recognizing sins. Moving closer to God will reveal my own wrongs, my own sins, which I embrace because in time this will help me change. It’s not something bad, something which should be gotten rid of, but something good. Maybe it’s this lack of Augustinian guilt that make it easier for some to continue being sorry for Apartheid?

What’s your thoughts?

Looking back over Scott McKnight’s always-interesting blog, I noticed this post about his dalliance with Calvinism (or, at least with some Calvinist writers) and why he couldn’t, in the end, accept Calvinism as a ’system’, much as he admired many aspects of it.

He writes:-

I love the “architecture” of Calvinism — that is, the focus on God’s glory and loving God, and I love the magnitude of grace in that theology, and I even love the radical transcendence that is often found in Calvinism…

When I was in college I sat for afternoons in our library and pored through Calvin’s Institutes, leading my dear wife to comment that I’d be better off underlining what I didn’t like because I had underlined most everything! Calvin’s Institutes are doxological; I still dip into him and read him. And, at the same time, I was a huge, huge fan of Spurgeon and read his Autobiography twice while in college. And, of course, other Calvinists banged around my desk — like the ever-wordy John Owen and I read devotionally John Brown’s commentary on Hebrews and Manton on James.

Then I went to seminary at Trinity [Evangelical Divinity School], Grant Osborne asked me to be his TA, and one of his first assignments was to work through his extensive notes on the Calvinist-Arminian debate. Which I did. To be up to snuff on it, I read Howard Marshall’s Kept by the Power of God — and my mind changed. Not all at once, but this is what I remember: the consistency of the OT warnings for the covenant community formed a natural bridge for me to the NT warnings. And I couldn’t contest his many, many passages that all added up to one thing: genuine believers can lose their faith by throwing it away consciously.

Then I began teaching at TEDS, then I was asked to teach Hebrews, and then I made a special study of the warning passages in Hebrews, and from that time on I was simply convinced that no matter how much I liked the architecture of Calvinism, I couldn’t believe the system (TULIP, etc) because of the warning passages in Hebrews — and they then influenced how I read such things as Col 1:23 and the like. If the warning passages in Hebrews are what I think they are, then the systematics of Calvinism are unbiblical — lest, like one of my TEDS colleagues, you think both sorts are found in the Bible.

Now, where’s my copy of Marshall’s book, and what does an unrepentant Calvinist like me make of those warning passages in Hebrews…?

The Year of Living Biblically

I am only about 70 days into this year long adventure from author A.J. Jacobs. So far this book has been insightful, culturally relevant, but most of all hysterical. Jacob (this is his new Biblical m.o.) is learning many lessons about himself and the Bible. He is attempting to live life according to the Bible as literal as possible. If you can imagine this leads to many uncomfortable situations and awkward encounters with people. So far my favorite story comes when Jacob is determined to live by the law of stoning adulterers. So naturally he goes to a park and his mission to find a worthy stoner seems too easy. He has an encounter with this old man who is admittedly an adulterer, but unwilling to take a “stone” because of it. 

I am really loving this book. I highly recommend the book to this point. I promise that you will get something out of it. 

The Blue Parakeet

  Scott McKnight presents some compelling thoughts on the Bible and what it looks like when we read it. So far in this book McKnight writes about the idea of the Bible as a story. He argues that we (evangelical christianity) have moved away from the story of God that is found in the Bible and we have transformed the Bible into little morsels of truth that are often taken out of context. 

I have not read too much of the book yet, but I am finding it very helpful for me personally. It has given me insight into how I can read the Bible and I can understand the Story of God better. I am enjoying it very much. I will give a better synopsis of the book after I finish it. 

What are we saying to North America?  Really, I want to know.  I’m afraid that the Gospel of the Kingdom, which is both the formative power behind the Church and the reason for her existence is being miscommunicated, misunderstood, or is missing altogether from the rhetoric of the North American Church. 

The canonical Gospels depict both how and why the Gospel of the Kingdom will be rejected by the political, economic and social forces of the world (If you want a deep understanding of the role of the Powers and Principalities, read Naming the Powers by Walter Wink, then read The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, and finally, N. T. Wright’s commentary on the Gospel of John.), and so we should be little surprised that this condition persists until this day.  What should be surprising; however, is the discrepancy between the populist response as recorded by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and the populist response we see today. 

I could attribute the difference to the times, say it’s a product of progressive sin and a degenerative depravity, but that would be to limit the power and effectiveness of the Gospel, which Jesus (and Peter, James and Paul after him) stubbornly refused to do.  I could just as easily blame today’s poor reception on the lack of ability, both rhetorical and spiritual, of today’s Gospel purveyors, and almost no one would object to this characterization: except Jesus, who most emphatically did.  Jesus gave us no such excuse when he claimed that he had been given all power in heaven and earth, that he would be with us always, and that the result would be the accomplishment of even greater things than he had done.  Our reluctance to agree with Jesus on the later point (we feel creepy and heretical when we claim that we will do even greater things than Jesus did, even though Jesus made that exact claim) is perhaps the most obvious example of theology making heresy of Jesus’ own words. 

This example of our ill-at-ease with the reality of the Kingdom as proclaimed by Jesus may be getting us closer to the problem of the relative ineffectiveness of Gospel proclamation (and incarnation, or lack, thereof) in North America today.  The tendency to limit the Gospel to the atonement, and thus re-interpret all of Jesus pre-passion teaching and action as prophetic foreshadowing of the cross is more insipid than we realize. 

I wonder if the Gospel of the Kingdom sounds hollow to North America, because it is presented as a utopian philosophical response to evil, not as the outgrowth of the life, words and work of the King.  And I wonder if their misconstrual of the Gospel is due largely to our lack of familiarity with the King, himself.  Or, perhaps, the political, economic and social powers have influenced us more than we realize and we have grown uncomfortable with the King’s own message and ways. 

There is no doubt that the Church in North America has been ineffective in presenting and incarnating the Gospel of the Kingdom as pronounced and enacted by Jesus.  But Jesus doesn’t allow us to blame the message, or the inability of the messenger.  Likewise, he doesn’t allow us blame this sinful and stubborn generation (which for all purposes seems to be remarkably similar to the wicked generation that Jesus described as ‘ripe for harvest.’) for failing to understand and receive it. 

The lack of effect is most likely the result of a substitute Gospel, a Gospel of sin management as Dallas Willard calls it, or more to the point, a Gospel without a Kingdom (Scott McKnight has something meaningful to say about the Gospel resulting in the creation of Church and the synonymy of Church and Kingdom).  When we understand Jesus as the King, we understand that his will cannot be enacted outside of his own Kingdom (here again the theology of the omniscience of God gets in the way of the actual biblical record of an all-powerful God who frequently limits his power in a way that is quite contrary to our theological preferences). 

The Church in North America needs to be reacquainted with her King before she can begin enacting the Kingdom.  Until then, our message will remain hollow and ineffective.  Until then our Gospel will be of a Kingdom without a King.

I don’t know a lot about Scott McKnight but after reading his latest post (recommended by taddelay, a blogger I casually follow and has posted here before), I want to know a little bit more about him. It appears that he and Dan Kimball (one of the only ones in the “Emergent” movement that I have liked some of his writings) are doing some new things together. I have plenty of more research to do there of course.

Anyways, this lead to another blog which was a response from Tony Jones (an “Emergent” leader who I have not been impressed with in much of any way at all).

In this blog, Tony joins Scott in their disregard for titles such as emergent and emerging. That titles mean nothing and what matters is the heart of any of these discussions.

My first thought as I read this from Tony is what? When I first went to the Emergent Summer Institute a few years back, I had an interesting thing happen. It was clear to me what emerging meant but I knew little of Emergent at the time. Having a week with Doug Paggitt, Tony Jones, and other Emergent voices, one thing became very clear; our church would fall into the title of emerging but not Emergent. However, as each of us shared about our church over the week, person after person would say “Oh, then you’re an Emergent church!” and I would have to say “No, we’re not.” It was evident to me that there not only no coincidence that Emergent and Emerging are so close in names but it appeared purposeful to make Emergent seem larger than it was and draw more churches in.

However, there has been a backlash as more and more churches like ours have no interest in being Emergent and more and more people are saying, “Wait a minute? What’s the difference between the two?” Now that they are, it seems the popular response is “What’s in a title?” as if this wasn’t propelled by them anyways in the first place.

OK, I get that but then Tony throws out a new title (at least to me) and it makes my head spin. In one paragraph, Tony is kicking back at their cabin wondering what’s the deal with these titles (we created) and then in the next, we get EMC (or Emergent/-ing Church Movement). This new phrase plays the same old game as before, let’s combine Emergent and Emerging and pretend they are the same thing.

I wish the title games didn’t matter but none the less, it has tripped up a lot of good people. Even one of my favorite books, “Why We’re Not Emergent by Two Guys Who Should Be” (which I wish was required reading personally) treated all emerging as Emergent because the lines are so grey now, it’s too hard sometimes to draw the line.

My concern is there are many, many great people and churches in both. There are loud voices within Emergent who are messed up theology wise to say the least. There are many voices trying to arise from the emerging church that are drowned out by the previous mentioned line and are lost in the shuffle. There are several great people in the emerging church movement but you know what, they wouldn’t even admit they are in the emerging church movement because they don’t want to be confussed into the Emergent boat.

The titles have been confussing and a mess. Let’s not add more thinking people won’t catch on this time. OK, that’s my rant. Have a good afternoon.

Scott McKnight offers some thoughts…

Übersichtsseite zum Buch von Scott McKnight

Kapitel 11:
Wie Jesus seine Geschichte sah: Passa

Was dachte Jesus selbst über seinen Tod? Viele gehen davon aus, dass Jesus dachte, was sie selbst darüber denken: die einen sehen keinen Zusammenhang zwischen Jesu Mission und seinem Tod, die anderen sind überzeugt, dass Jesus von Anfang an wusste, dass sein Tod das eigentliche Ziel seines Mission war.

Nun muss das, was Jesus dachte und was die späteren neutestamentlichen Autoren (Paulus, Petrus, Hebräer) dachten, nicht unbedingt identisch sein. Dieser Unterschied darf auch nicht verwischt werden. Ein großer Teil der neutestamentlichen Wissenschaftler bezweifeln heute allerdings ganz, dass Jesus selbst seinen Tod als sühnend/versöhnend verstand. McKnight gibt dazu zwei Punkte zu bedenken:

• einmal muss Jesus spätestens seit dem Tod Johannes des Täufers auch die Möglichkeit seines eigenen gewaltsamen Todes vor Augen gehabt haben;
• zum anderen ist es nicht vorstellbar, dass Jesus diese Möglichkeit nicht im Licht der Schrift bedacht haben würde. Und tatsächlich gibt es zwei Stellen (Markus 10,45; 14,24), in denen Jesus seinen Tod als sühnend/versöhnend deutet – ein Hinweis, dass die spätere kirchliche Lehrentwicklung ihre Wurzeln schon in Jesu eigenen Gedanken hat.

Bei der Einsetzung des Abendmahls (Markus 14,24) stellt Jesus seinen Tod in den Kontext des Passafestes und der Befreiung aus Ägypten. Die Frage, ob das beim eigentlichen Passamahl geschah oder am Tag davor, kann offen bleiben, weil Passa ein Fest war, das sich über eine ganze Woche erstreckte. Alles, was geschah, stand in diesem Zusammenhang. In der Symbolhandlung mit Brot und Wein thematisiert Jesus seinen Tod und fordert seine Jünger auf, daran Anteil zu haben. Jesus identifiziert sich mit seinen Jüngern und nimmt sie mit hinein in seinen Tod. Mit diesem Mahl begründet Jesus seine ekklesiale Gemeinschaft, und die Jünger werden durch ihr Esen und Trinken Teil dieser Gemeinschaft.
Dabei ist nun wichtig, dass der Passa-Kontext die Befreiung aus Ägypten thematisierte – das hatte damals deutliche politische Dimensionen, als eine Stellungnahme gegen die erdrückende Pax Romana. Jesus wählte gerade das Passafest als Kontext für das Abendmahl und nicht den großen Versöhnungstag (Yom Kippur). Er brachte damit seinen Tod in Verbindung mit dem Blut des Passalammes, das als Schutz vor dem Todesengel an die Türen gestrichen wurde. In Analogie dazu forderte er seine Jünger auf, sich durch dieses Essen und Trinken vor dem Gericht Gottes über die ungerechten römischen Machthaber und ihre Verbündeten in Israel zu schützen. Gottes Zorn zielt hier deutlich auf konkrete politische Zusammenhänge.

Die zweite Stelle, an der Jesus seinen zukünftigen Tod deutet, ist Markus 10,45. Jesus sagt voraus, dass er sterben werde “als Lösegeld für viele”. Damit verweist er auf Gedanken Deuterojesajas, insbesondere die Aussagen über den leidenden Gottesknecht. Dort wird ein Tod als Preis für die Befreiung des Volkes aus Gefangenschaft und Unterdrückung verstanden. Der Zusammenhang von 10,45 bestätigt das: Jesus rügt seine Jünger für ihre Machtgier, die der Machtgier des römischen Imperiums gleicht. Aber davon sind sie durch Jesus befreit. Jesus befreit seine Jünger von Sünde und ungerechten Systemen, damit sie als neue Gemeinschaft nach Gottes Willen leben können.
Damit werden Jesu Botschaft vom Reich Gottes und die Sühne/Versöhnung durch seinen Tod ein sinnvolles Ganzes: Jesus kam, um das Reich Gottes aufzurichten, eine Gemeinschaft, in der Gottes Wille getan wird. Er vollbringt das, indem er in das feindliche Gebiet eindringt, dort anstelle und zum Nutzen anderer stirbt und durch die Auferstehung den Tod überwindet. Wenn die Jünger das Abendmahl essen und trinken, bekennen sie ihre Komplizenschaft mit der Sünde und nehmen Jesu Tod anstelle ihres eigenen an. Für sie gilt die Logik von Passa: ein stellvertretender Tod, der das Gericht Gottes auf sich zieht, die Teilnehmer am Mahl schützt und sie befreit.

Von Jesus zu Paulus

Folgende Beobachtung ist wichtig: Die Worte, die Jesus gebrauchte, sind für die anderen Autoren des Neuen Testaments nicht bindend. Paulus und Johannes etwa fühlten sich nicht verpflichtet, bei den Reich-Gottes-Formulierungen Jesu zu bleiben; Johannes z.B. sprach lieber vom “Ewigen Leben”. Sachlich aber gibt es starke Entsprechungen: der Zorn von Röm. 1,18 – 3,20 etwa entspricht dem Gericht Gottes über Ägypten, an das Passa erinnert. Aber auch wenn Paulus so Gedanken von Jesus weiterentwickelt, tut er das in anderen Formulierungen. Schon für die Apostel gab es keine endgültigen Sprachregelungen. Jede Begrifflichkeit ist begrenzt. Es sind nur Bilder, die Menschen zur Sühne/Versöhnung selbst bringen sollen.