What Staint Paul Really Said, NT Wright

When I first read this in chpater 6, it went right over my head. Didn't even notice. It wasn't until much later, when I was reading his Easter series of meditations, that the point really hit home.

Paul says, in his 2nd letter to the church at Corinth,

We are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making his appeal through us. We appeal on behalf of Christ, 'be reconciled to God'. God made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the dikaiosune theou.

For Paul, the apostles were the expression and means of God's covenant faithfulness. The church, therefore, was the ground and pillar of the truth (as Paul says elsewhere): the witness and manifestation of it, the proof of it. But what truth does the church prove? Well, the truth that God has been faithful, and has fulfilled his word to Abraham.

That is our privilege. To become in turn the dikaiosune theou: the righteousness of God. The means by which restoration continues, and therefore the witness that God has been true.

Lessons learned from chess

#1 Never let your enemy define the problem

Here is part of another post from the WrightSaid list (which I consider the best Christain discussion board on the interweb). John Shakespeare has this to add to a discussion of individualism in the practice of Lord's Supper/Eucharist in various traditions:

I have succeeded in persuading the church to which I belong to incorporate the Lord's Supper into a larger common meal which we share week by week. The problem with this is not theological, but purely to do with -- guess what -- tradition, which is that we have got used to going home after the morning meeting, having lunch, then coming back for the evening meeting, which includes the Lord's Supper, and then home again for our own suppers. Social and family life has tended to be fitted in around that pattern, so it is difficult to change it. But we are trying. We shall attempt to have one Sunday meeting only, after Sunday lunch, lasting throughout the afternoon and evening and incorporating a communal meal (a proper one, not just a bit of bread and wine, part of which will be the "Lord's Supper"). At this we will talk together, give thanks together, sing together, learn together, pray together, share news, problems and pleasures together, and go for short strolls together. So this meeting/meal will operate as the central feature of the church's communal life. We will then be free to fall into all of the errors of the Corinthians, which would not normally be available under the usual arrangements. It is as far from a liturgical, eucharistic, sacral view of the Table as one can get. But it loses none of its significance as "the meal Jesus gave us".

As for impoverishment, well, there are all sorts of richness associated with sacramental settings: carvings, pictures, robes and coloured glass, nice strips of carpet and sounds of instruments. I am happy to dispense with all of those riches. If this is impoverishment, then blessed are the poor.

Regards

John Shakespeare
Walsall, England

I would love to see improvements along these lines take place in our own churches. This would make the reformation cry of semper reformanda (reformed and always reforming) come alive to me. And, at the heart of that, it would ritually manifest and shape the type of community that we are - in Christ and for the world - supposed to be.

I have James Jordan's permission to republish this post from the WrightSaid list:

My thought is this: that the Lord's Day is the Day of the Lord (identical in Greek). to understand it aright, one must first grasp the LD in the OT, which is not quite the same as the sabbath. For starters, it is not a 24-hour block of time, but any time when God draws near. Hence, the LD is actually the time of the covenant-renewal worship assembly -- in America from about 11-12 on Sunday, or thereabouts. John was in Spirit in the LD, that is, in the worship service, not "sometime during a 24-hour day called the LD." IMO, it is incorrect to refer to Sunday as "the LD."

It's like baptism. NT baptism is baptism, not circumcision. It subsumes circumcision into it, but it is primarly the fulfillment of all the OT baptisms, and the NT refers to these far more than it refers to circumcision.

I am unsure the extent to which, or even if, the NT LD subsumes and transforms the OT sabbath. Maybe it does, analogous to how NT baptism does circumcision. But as regards liturgical-religious observance, Paul seems, as Rance said, to let the sabbath go.

But positively as to sabbath, I submit that as long as we still live in this world, the sabbath rules have much to teach us. We still have our old bodies and still live in a world of days and weeks, and months and years. To "keep our bodies in subjection" we need to consider the rules for the original creation. But these are applied by us via wisdom, not as under law. (The same is true of ALL the laws given to Israel, I hasten post-theonomically to add -- they are not to be ignored, though we are not "under" them.)

Hence there is much to be said to thinking creatively about applying the sabbath rules in a modern society, and much to be said for blue laws that force employers to grant rest one day in seven to their servants.

FWIW.

JBJ

This fits in so well with everything else I have thought (and suspected) that I am immediately convinced.

If you've ever helped prevent a suicide attempt, you've almost certainly saved the person's life for ever:

Dr. Seiden’s study, “Where Are They Now?”, published in 1978, followed up on five hundred and fifteen people who were prevented from attempting suicide at [San Fransico's Golden Gate] bridge between 1937 and 1971. After, on average, more than twenty-six years, ninety-four per cent of the would-be suicides were either still alive or had died of natural causes. “The findings confirm previous observations that suicidal behavior is crisis-oriented and acute in nature,” Seiden concluded; if you can get a suicidal person through his crisis—Seiden put the high-risk period at ninety days—chances are extremely good that he won’t kill himself later.

The New Yorker, 'Jumpers'

30 seconds' walk

From our front door, and we're on the beach. Beautiful shining day. The harbour is sparkly and blue.

So nice.

Luxary.

Wondering...

A couple of posts ago I outlined a response to the news that reform is underway in parts of the Islamic world. I noted that the reform looks like it is proceeding along dualist lines, whereby religion - the place of faith, and politics - the place of public reason - are seperated. In exactly this dualist way, I said, western Christianity has already given up the public realm of politics to other gods. No human affairs are ever, truly conducted sans gods: it is all a question of which of the gods they invoke and serve.

I cited no examples. Here is one, though, taken from this speech by a Syrian Professor:

"This is a reality that must be acknowledged as a first step toward a non-terrorist Islam … an Islam that teaches the values of truth and justice… Islam as a religious establishment is today in need … of a precise definition of its position between earth and heaven, between this world and the next. If it chooses the earth, it must accept the laws of politics that regulate earthly affairs, and must leave the holy to those who occupy themselves with the affairs of heaven. If it chooses heaven, it must leave politics and earthly affairs to those who find interest in them. He who cleaves to both realms undoubtedly [chooses] terrorism and certain death…"

What I wonder is this: is biblical Christianity the only religion that bears at its very core a profound affirmation of creation's goodness, and of YHWH's connection to it? I can think of three distinct lines of thought that head toward this centre:

(1) incarnation: the dwelling of God in human flesh,
(2) theosis: the assumption into the divine family of human beings (i.e, the sonship of Adam, Israel and Jesus (and by the way, I am not certain that I understand theosis properly))
(3) creation: God saw that it was very good.

It is possible that we Christians share this affirmation with the Jews, but I am not sure. Something nags at me and tells me it may not be so. They do not, after all, accept the incarnation, and there is something about Christ's claim to stand in God's place that they found very odious. Why?

Anyway, could it be that only Christianity has the robustness to produce a restoration of all of life? And could it be, therefore, that biblically rooted faith will be the only candidate left standing once the others have run out of puff?

Addendum: I might add, by the way, that this conviction of creational goodness is one of the great riches preserved within the historic reformed faith, for which we should give thanks.

Lest we forget

There is a series of ads on TV here in NZ, run by one of our mental health agencies. Each ad features a very ordinary person, as desribed by friends and family. The ad ends with the observation that the person has an identified mental illness, and them saying "know me before you judge me".

Sometimes blogging is like a mental illness, I think. It is an obscuring veil over reality.

For instance: I have just returned from one of my best friend's wedding, 7 hours away in Rotorua, one of New Zealand's tourist meccas. It was inexpressably fantastic. I still feel very, very moved.

But some things defy words, and are diminished when forced into them. I won't attempt to capture the glory and greatness of the event - the majestic sweep of friendship, love and celebration that - under God - is an enormous privilege and a great calling, a truly humbling thing and a thing that sends one out, changed and comissioned to do thou likewise.

For another instance: who would know, reading this, that the most significant things to come out of the comments thread of the post below about the Faith in Focus article occured off the blog? Yet those things go to the heart of the people involved. And they are the truly significant things, without which the rest is a veil.

I think that the sacraments we Christians practice as part of formal worship are like a drawing back of the veil. And the things that happen off-blog are likewise a drawing back of the veil. But in both cases, one must be involved behind the viel to understand the surface appearance. The signifiers are but poor pointers, an indication of what might be real. If we take them beyond their worth, or misunderstand their point, we corrupt both. In fact, we idolise them.

I can think of no other way to describe this weekend than to say it was like the breath of God, permeating all. It was like the most profound sense of place and belonging, of comfort and love. Such times come upon us like unexpected rendings of the veil, glimpses of a yet greater glory which eye has not seen nor ear heard - for which we can only be caught up in thanksgiving and awe.

I started this blog with this post. I continue it now with the same thought: it is but a veil, a mental illness, through which mere glimpses of what might be real - for myself and all who write on it - may be seen.

the self

I've just realised that in our culture 'the self' - that thing which defines 'you' - is thought of as something which is expressed by its choices. In fact, I would even say that our culture thinks that the self is constituted by its choices, and (or especially) in its consumption of pleasure.

Thus, to deny free choice to the self is to deny self-expression, or even self-constitution - which is pretty much the grossest sin these days.

I don't think we Christians share such an elevated vision of this god-like self.

A knife called 'dualism': the castration of Islam

Arts & Letters Daily have a worthwhile article on current reforms occurring in the Islamic world.

Some changes, such to laws regarding women, appear to be driven by the larger cultural (meta-cultural?) shift that has already seen women's legal status change in the Christian west over a much longer period. But imagine the Westminster Divines meeting to reformulate the legal status of women, and you might get close to what is now happening in some Islamic quarters.

Other changes, especially the growing desire to sever the link between politics and Islam, appear to reflect the Hellenistic dualism that has already castrated western Christianity. The bedrock assumption of western culture is that such a thing as 'non-religion' exists, and that some parts of life belong to it - for instance, government, science, justice and the law. These areas should not, it is said, be subject to religious influence or edict. But such a wish is nonsensical. Every part of life is subject to one god or another; it is all religious. The question is not whether you will serve a god, but which one you will serve. You may call your god 'secular', or 'democracy', but do not lie and call it 'neutral' or 'non-existent'.

This, by the way, (for those who have read it) is why Dan Flinn's Faith in Focus argument for moral neutrality in legal advocacy fails. For Dan, the only moral agent is the legal framework that will decide the case, and the lawyer must simply advocate the causes found within that framework by which his client's interests will be advanced. This, I suggest, leaves our own imago dei - our representation of God - aside. Advocacy of the god 'parliamentary legal system' replaces the advocacy of YHWH. And, despite Dan's commendable wish that young Christians bring their knowledge of God's justice to the legal system, such an advocacy as he recommends is unable to do so, right at the very root. Its god is parliament, not YHWH. Here then, now, we must bring the gospel to bear on the 'principality and power' of our legal system, and Christian lawyers must find ways to say "Christ is King".

The salient point for Islam, of course, is that in whatever we do, even eating and drinking, some god is being advocated. This is the truth to which dualism has already blinded us in the west. This is what Dan's university Legal Ethics 101 course has lied about (though at home he should have been unmistakably minded of it in Covenant Life 101). And if under the influence of dualism, Islam is about to give up the notion that politics belongs to Allah, then Islam too will surrender politics to another god, and in the process severely fracture the coherence of Islamic culture. Which will put it in the same position as the traditionally 'christian' west: having now a pantheon of multiple gods.

Perhaps, then, it is time to teach Covenant Life 101 all the more clearly, in order that we and our children may be ready with whole-of-life integrity as advocates of YHWH. Into the fracturing plurality of many gods, the infertility of Allah (with or without demos, technos, economos, environos, ethnos, ego, and whatever other idols are worshipped), we must take the seed of a better way to be human, and let YHWH give it the increase and blessing by the Spirit. (How's that for a Trinitarian image!)

I wasn't going to blog about this but...

This afternoon I tried to write a letter to the editor of our church's magazine, Faith in Focus. I wanted to say, 'great legal ethics article by Dan Flinn, but what's with that book review of The Auburn Avenue Theology, Pros and Cons: Debating the Federal Vision?'

I've never read such a load of bullshit in all my life (mind you, I keep saying that - every edition brings new wonders). I know enough to recognise the Faith in Focus review as a parody of intelligent debate. It is horrible, full of ridiculous, unqualified, preposterous statements. (Like these.) It offends my sense of justice and fairness at a very fundamental level.

Most offensive of all, I think, is the wooden-headed, dogmatic I-will-not-engage-the-issues language of the review. Such refusal means that gross misrepresentation is inevitable: any reader ignorant of the debate is left with the impression that Wilson et al deny some fundamental point, when in fact they would challenge the very way it has been constructed in the first place.

So the review is utterly unhelpful for those that don't know anything about the debate, and utterly useless to those who do.

What makes all this so much worse is that the review is not by anyone in our church. Or even anyone in New Zealand. It was lifted from the Banner of Truth website, and concerns a largely PCA situation. By which I mean, it's a report out of left field for our local circumstances. It has nothing to do with us. So why is it there at all??

But it does do the very Reformed thing and show that we can still proclaim enemies where everyone else sees brothers.

And that, I am forced to conclude yet again, must be the most important consideration for us.

Well, I gave up writing to the editor in frustration that I couldn't express myself adequately. I was trying to be reasonable and diplomatic, and it was just too hard. Maybe I will ring him. And try to be calm.

Well, I've sat here for 5 minutes and there's nothing I can say shortly, so I'll go and have a shower.

Hmmmm

Change of look. Hope you don't mind. It was an accident, mainly.

I hope to restore old links and sections soon.

"I started on the left wing and ended up a fullback. I was bloody good. Solid under the high ball, and good at breaking tackles - especially on the run. Hence being in 1st XV. I played 5 seasons, from 1987-1992. We played 5 games in Japan and won 4 of them. The one we lost was our last, against the Nagoya regional team, who later that year were Japan national finalists."

Who's that then?

John Gray, Heresies: Against Progress and Other Illusions

I reckon this guy gives some clues about how to understand our times...

Gray evinces a Swiftian contempt for our latter-day lay priestlings, direct heirs of the 18th-century philosophes who proclaimed a new paganism but were in fact neo-Christians, "missionaries of a new gospel more fantastical than anything in the creed they imagined they had abandoned". All the Enlightenment did was to promote religion by other means, and its belief in progress was only the Christian message "emptied of transcendence and mystery". One of the heresies promulgated by Gray is that many of those who today continue to hold to religious faith are far more profound in their thinking, and certainly better educated, than most of their liberal-humanist opponents.

Keep reading...

Closing the wombs

How, exactly, does God bring a curse upon a culture?

Well, listen to God's warning to Israel, way back when she first entered the fertile land of Canaan. Canaan was the proto-garden, the replacement for Eden lost, the first establishment of a new place of God's presence and rule. It was governed by Torah, the law of Moses given to Israel as her means of being salt and light to the surrounding nations. In her time, Torah and Canaan (law and land) were Israel's God-given way of returning home from exile, of figuring the redemption of Adam and of his dominion-bearing mission to the world. The law therefore was wholly of grace, and yet listen to YHWH's warning:

However, if you do not obey the LORD your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come upon you and overtake you: you will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country. Your basket and your kneading trough will be cursed. The fruit of your womb will be cursed, and the crops of your land, and the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks. You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out.

It is interesting, isn't it, how much this curse reflects the original judgment on Adam and Eve, as they proved faithless: a curse on production from both ground and womb. Truly, Israel was Adam and Eve come again.

At this time, when Israel knew herself to be Adam's replacement, as the figure of God's Son, she had this to say, through the royal person of the king:

I will proclaim the decree of the LORD : He said to me, "You are my Son; today I have become your Father. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession. You will rule them with an iron scepter; you will dash them to pieces like pottery." Therefore, you kings, be wise; be warned, you rulers of the earth. Serve the LORD with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and you be destroyed in your way, for his wrath can flare up in a moment. Blessed are all who take refuge in him.

28 generations later, Jesus' claim that he was the king and true Son, the Son of David in the full sense of inheriting the Davidic throne and kingdom, was breathtaking. He took Israel's identity and claimed for himself the image of God's anointed, the Servant of blessing to the world. And astonishingly, God vindicated that claim by raising Jesus from the dead, bringing Israel's story and mission to an awesome, incredible climax.

Now, while this climax was still at its peak, and the world of Israel was in turmoil at the events, Paul had this to say about the depravity of Israel as she rejected her God:

They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator--who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

So then, here is the curse worked out. Paul sees Israel's abandonment to perversion as itself the penalty due her abandonment of God. The curse is received and expressed in Israel's own bodies.

Israel should have known, as did those who responded to Peter's Pentecost speech, that by the resurrection of the one who claimed to be the Christ, God had made Jesus Lord and King - the definitive replacement for Adam. He was and is the true Israel, the full Son of David. He had fulfilled Torah, and had become for the creation salt and light. The earth he received as his inheritance was and is the reward to a faithful Adam. Far from being cast out for refusing to believe God, he was returned from death for his obedience, and was given it all.

Tragically, however, Israel clung to her hope in the glories of Moses for a place in the restoration from Adam's rebellion. Even worse, she clung to the rituals of Torah while in rebellion against its true cause: being light and salt for the world through obedience. She ignored God's testimony about His Son, and with Moses outmoded, continued to fill YHWH's nostrils with the stench of her empty offerings. She forgot her own words, and failed to kiss the Son. He therefore destroyed her in his wrath.

Christ's rule on behalf of YHWH is fearful, and Christ continues to rule now. Now, two millennia later, we must interpret our own age according to the same story, with a continuation of the same plot-lines and themes. And what do we see?

We see a culture that used to know God losing itself to gay abandon, celebrating and establishing homosexuality as legal privilege, just as it has established the horror of abortion as a liberating right. Of course, the problem is not our sexual behaviour, nor our failure to protect the most vulnerable - thrown away with the same self-indulgence that created them. On the contrary, these things herald a much deeper rottenness, a corruption right at the core, now extending to the very perimeters, there for all to see. According to the pattern of old, then, we must suspect that we are not awaiting a curse to fall; rather, we are already subject to one.

And when we read a piece of cultural self-analysis such as this, our suspicions are surely proved right on target. We are in the midst of a people once again subject to being given over, receiving in our own bodies the due penalty of our error. Once again, God is closing wombs, bringing to nothing a people who will not embrace life. And it is a terribly fearful thing. What is still to come, if we do not repent?

When you come together...

I'm interested in exploring in a rather more deliberate way than I have before what it is that Paul and the other apostles consider we do when we come together as God's people.

I have two preliminary thoughts.

The first is that the chief goal of such togetherness appears to be - for Paul - the building up of one another. Everything is measured against that criterion.

The second thought is that this 'building up' is the way we express God's glory. To put it more clearly, when we respond to God's call in and through Christ to be and become the people He covenented to make, we align ourselves with His purposes and proclaim that He is a faithful God, one who is fulfilling His word.

Please feel free to add your comments. What do you think the goals of our togetherness are? Is there perhaps a better language than that of 'goals'?

synonymy

now there's a word.

It's sunny outside, I've just revised an important document and done it well; I like my clothes, and I'm pleased with the day.

And I'm listening to Neil Finn & Friends, 7 Worlds Collide. With such feelings it's understandable that I say how exquisite are the harmonies in the climber, angels heap and edible flowers. Makes one want to sing out in elevated exuberance.

And I cannot tell you how much I like parting ways. The drumming is su-PERB.

I really like the re-interpretation of 'church' in this group of Christians.

Addendum 2 Sept 11:19am:

Tim has commented that he doesn't like the re-interpretation of 'church', and gives the example of a meeting that he attended which lacked teaching, order and any semblence of reverence. I post my reply here in order to clarify what I am getting
at:

Tim: Yep. Know what you mean. I and others once left a service in the Coromandel part-way through, for precisely the reasons you mention. As 'worship', it was offensive to us.

My point is, though, that the people I linked to have constructed a completely different type of meeting precisely because they have (in my view) correctly understood what it means to be church. I find this an excellent antidote to our usual emphasis, which is that 'church' consists in the meeting on Sunday morning.

I don't want you to think I care nothing for the Sunday meeting. I want you to think that I care for the connection between our lives as church and what we do on Sundays. The former should shape the latter, and the latter should reflect the emphasis of the former. What do our meetings show we care about?

We have both experienced an uncomfortable meeting that had the vague semblance of a traditional structure (all gathered in a hall, something going on 'up the front'), but absolutely nothing to show that this was a ceremony of respect and awe at, as you say, meeting our Saviour. So, in fact, it came across disrespectfully and irreverently. I do not support that.

I'm trying to catch up on my reading.

Here's a good article on the meaning of 'the gospel'. The author argues that it's not an conditional describing how individuals can get to heaven ("repent and be saved"), but the historical, public fact that God made Jesus King. With the support of the background Old Testament material the author provides, I really don't see how anyone could disagree.

...more will follow

I blame the isolationist fortress mentality

As NZ Reformed youth, why isn't it part of our education/awareness that there is a long list of prominent achievers/leaders in contempory society who are Christians?