Author: Guest

Decline in the Independent Christian Churches: Part II, the Pastoral Segment

A guest blog by C. J. Dull

The Pastoral Segment, preachers/ministers for all practical purposes, is more or less where we started in our break from the Disciples.  The major educational institutions, institutionalized missionary organizations, pension fund, national publishing house (Bethany) and official national assembly (the International Convention) all went with the Disciples, often referred to as “the cooperative work”.   Their enthusiasm did not seem dimmed by the closing of a significant institution, the College of Missions, nor the continuous deficits from 1927 (the date of the first North American Christian Convention) to 1936.  The major exception in all this was the ministers of large congregations.  While many of those ministers (e.g., P. H. Welshimer) attempted to maintain positive relations with both camps, increasingly they became more conservative.

One of the central dilemmas or enigmas of the group is the uncertainty of the theological position of ministers.  On a practical level, they are indispensable, and credit is generally given to ministers for any significant growth of a congregation.  Yet, they are clearly not deacons, even though Latin (cf. Pliny the Younger’s famous letter) “ministrae” refers to deaconesses.  Many would like to be considered “elders” in some sense although some congregations expressly forbid it.  Elders have no doubts about their biblical status and are generally jealous of it.  Among Noninstrumentals that is emphatically true.  The preacher is most often called officially an “Evangelist” regardless of how long he stays.   The use of that title among Independents in that sense has been minimal, and the use of “bishop” seems to have currency mostly in the Black community.

Ministers are what I dub “church managers”.  The analogy is with city managers, a professional that is skilled in running a particular organization.  Like city managers, they are often hired from outside, often with no particular connection to the congregation that hires them.  A successful “ministry” is increasingly thought of in business terms, growth (cf. “church growth”) being the sine qua non of any congregation.  Historically, methodology is the strong point of such congregations.  That type of methodology has reached a level of sophistication that it is now not unusual, such that a new congregation, within a few years may have attendance in the thousands, thanks to a stake in the millions being borrowed.  When church growth experts say that only big churches are growing, they do not mention that the methodology of growth that causes such growth will only work in a large church.  Since typically smaller churches tend to imitate larger ones; the results are not the same because the methodology is self-limiting in a smaller congregation.  Recently, ministers have become a type of impresario, someone who manages a big show for a big theater or movie scene.  Small churches often have little more than a piano or small DVD player.  Almost without exception, a kind of theological minimalism results.  Those who succeed most in numerical terms—and this seems the dark side of congregational autonomy—are those who are most flexible in agreeing with the predilections of their audiences.  Many openly boast of differing theological positions among their membership.  Unlike Jews, there is no definitive tradition to hold together an autonomous congregation.

Since the absence of “growth” has almost come to have a negative theological implication, perhaps it is worth looking at some ways it can take place and how such activities can affect both large and small congregations. 

Probably the most tried-and-true means of building up a congregation is simply the personal charisma of the minister.  This is applicable for both large and small congregations in different measures.  Typically, the former have a number of related groups and institutions to maximize their efforts.  They also have examples of such personal skill used for unseemly purposes. As in the classic novel by Sinclair Lewis (Elmer Gantry), preachers even today have at times become notorious for their sins, personal and financial, although many, amazingly, afterward are received back in the fold.  Order and organization seem almost subsets of larger groups.  P. H. Welshimer managed a congregation in the thousands with only a part-time assistant because of the organization of non-specialists of his congregation, perhaps women most of all. 

The next item is fidelity to a tradition or book.  Technically, that is possible but now unlikely.  Before the split, editors often constituted a subgroup because of the paucity of preachers available.  A “sermon of the week” was often part of a periodical’s offerings.  There was no exaltation of the Millennial Harbinger or other earlier documents, in this pre-college-press era.   There is nothing like the Talmud, which ties small synagogues to larger ones with the same interpretive options.  Those with centralized structures can make the same resources available to all.  Small Roman Catholic parishes, for example, can instruct with the same Jesuitical scholarship as the largest archdiocese.  Sadly, we have nothing comparable except perhaps a love by flexible-minded preachers for the same sermon series.

Basic demographics can often be determinative.  It is obviously easier to build a big church in a densely populated urban area than a small town.  New suburbs seem especially congenial for the formation of megachurches.  Many decreases in attendance are little more than a commentary on the wider community’s population.  I once asked Medford Jones, Sr., later president of Pacific Christian College (now part of Hope International University), if in his years as a traveling evangelist he had come across a congregation that grew when the population of its area was declining.  To my considerable surprise, he did respond: Sullivan, IN under the ministry of Ben Merold, who of course had a number of other significant ministries.  Demographics is not always destiny!  It seldom hurts to have something to say.

Some examples of academics who have become pastors: Charles Sackett, Dean of Lincoln seminary (doctorate Trinity) to congregation in Quincy, Ill (Madison Park), Johnny Pressley (doctorate Westminster) from Cincinnati seminary to Washington, NC (First Church of Christ), Leroy Lawson (doctorate Vanderbilt) from Milligan to large congregations in Indianapolis and Mesa, AR. David Wead (doctorate Basel) from Emmanuel to Boones Creek and Nashville.  Results ranged from spectacular to solid to minimal.  More recently, both “Marks” (Scott and Moore) and Ric Cherok have left Ozark Christian College, and Jon Weatherley and Mark Ziese, left Johnson. Some took up interim ministries for a change of pace such as John Castelein (Lincoln) and Jim Girdwood (Kentucky Christian). Presumably this sort of “brain drain” will strengthen the position of congregations and other nonacademic institutions even more. 

Way back in 1977 I had a conversation with a professor who had just left a seminary and was interim preaching at a country church of some size. I asked him if he was going to another seminary.  His reply was that he had had offers, but a move was unlikely because it would mean a pay cut of half.  He retired a preacher.  Perhaps the best predictor of the future may be the adage made popular by a movie about Watergate: follow the money.

End Part II

(Sign up for the upcoming class, “Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method.” The course will run from the weeks of February 16th to April 11th.    Register here https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings)

Decline in the Independent Christian Churches: Part I, the Theological Segment

A guest blog by C. J. Dull

The subject of “decline” has held a fatal fascination ever since the appearance of the first volume of the classic work of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in that storied year 1776.  Three more volumes finished the opus in 1788.  Since Gibbon attributed the Roman Empire’s decline in significant measure to the rise of Christianity, that ensured Christians would want to deal with the concept. More recently and more commonly known now is William Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich in 1960 with its Wagnerian overtones.  He refers to its last days as a Goetterdaemmerung (twilight of the gods). 

It is pretty obvious that this is a period of decline for this group.  Its main annual gathering, the North American Christian Convention is no more.  The main publisher, Standard Publishing, exists only in vestigial form as a section of David C. Cook.  That many of the same personnel are still part of it does not augur well for any particular new initiatives but rather an increasing milking of existing assets.  The educational situation has seen some especially striking developments.  Two of the three graduate seminaries, all with full accreditation at one time, are now gone with the third only surviving by being absorbed by its undergraduate associate; even as Lincoln’s seminary has been absorbed by Ozark so Emmanuel has been absorbed by Milligan. 

 One major consideration yet to be resolved is the absence of a congruent approach between the two most dynamic segments of the group, especially as it relates to seminal influences. Scholars, whom I designate the theological segment, typically and overwhelmingly look to the liturgical churches for not only background, but guidance.  More significantly—certainly financially—the managerial and perhaps pastoral segment, especially the larger congregations, continue to dominate virtually all our institutions.  They look to different groups for leadership or inspiration, most often Baptists, Nazarenes and Pentecostals.  Influence from business techniques is not lacking.  That these two major sources of influence do not integrate well clearly is a significant issue, problem even. 

Independents created an impressive educational establishment fairly quickly and inexpensively.  The regional schools, of which Lincoln was the most successful, often were able to establish themselves in areas of relatively low cost (Norfolk, NE; Grand Junction, CO; Sturgis, S D; Scottsbluff, NE; Joplin, MO; Moberly, MO;  Oklahoma City, OK;  Elizabeth City, NC; ) Some older schools had benefitted from the nineteenth century tradition of locating colleges in remote areas or small towns (Milligan College; Kentucky Christian College, Johnson Bible College) as others did by being located near major universities (Manhattan Christian College, NW Christian College, Minnesota Bible College).  Newer formations in major metropolitan areas had varied success.  Atlanta, Southern California, to a lesser extent Dallas and Boise, seemed to do well.  Others such as Puget Sound (Seattle), Eastern Christian College (suburban DC), Memphis Christian College (among other names), Iowa Christian College (Des Moines) often found the going tougher.  Many, like Lincoln, began as institutes and never got beyond that stage (NY Christian Institute, Clarence, NY).  At least one Spanish language school, Colegio Biblico, has endured. The Ottumwa offshoots (Midwest School of Evangelism,  Portland, Dorr Drive, Rocky  Mountain, as well as a number of congregationally based schools) often prospered and sometimes in theologically unpredictable ways.  Most of the doctoral faculty got their degrees from state universities largely in the Midwest but whatever was approachable in their area.  There was a twofold advantage in this.  The cost was less, and any particular religious tradition would have to be dealt with only tangentially.  The major graduate seminary, Southern Baptist in Louisville, had a number of advantages:  central location, free tuition and an atmosphere in which baptism by immersion was supreme.  By contrast, Fuller with its California location (and higher cost of living), and significant Presbyterian faculty representation was much less influential even with a Disciple on that faculty, Donald McGavran.

One of the major issues in any movement is what emphases will be dominant or even significant.  The paramount need now is to begin work toward a stable synthesis, intellectual and institutional—and above all one that is distinctly ours!  Most theological faculties might be a simple example of the problem.  There systematic theology is distinctly a Calvinistic specialty while historical theology generally is dominated by graduates of Catholic universities.  Integrating the two has obvious difficulties.  One can only wonder how difficult it would be to add “liturgical theology”, as in the Orthodox Churches, to the mix.  Yet, for better or worse, there will have to be major trends that must be addressed.   

First, there is the theme of Christian unity.  To put it bluntly, the sooner it is jettisoned, the better.  That many will cringe—for lack of a better word—at that thought is a monumental understatement.  Yet there is much about “unity” that is a no-win situation.  On the frontier, the concept in the form of “union” definitely prospered, creating the impression that even as a major nation could be formed from disparate units, so could the Christian world be similarly addressed.  Yet, its increasing identification doomed it in the long run.  Connections with current national trends are hardly restricted to specific continents or languages. Such movements seem increasing and ubiquitous.   Most movements for unity presuppose a single dominant or at least lingua franca language, a situation becoming more rather than less difficult.

First of all, it ought to be very clear by now that the creation—or re-creation– of a single unified church will never happen.  The situation becomes more emphatic when we add research on Eastern and other non-familiar groups.  Almost every nation and ex-mission field can claim a plethora of approaches to historic Christianity.  Then there are very real and germane issues about connections to various political movements.  Many ancient and medieval religious officials owed their positions to what we would consider secular rulers.  Pope Gregory the Great became pope because the Byzantine emperor said so.  The phenomenon is not limited to that period.  During the period of my graduate study, there was in 1973 a coup d’état in Greece by the military.  Shortly after they took power, they appointed a new head of the Greek Orthodox Church in Greece. 

Next, unity essentially is a validation of the work of others, not a discreet, creative process.  The fact that many of the positions of those groups are stable would also seem to leave little room for creativity or growth.  In short, it is a recipe for stalemate, not progress.  Then there is the issue of the philosophical foundations of ancient and medieval doctrines.  They may impress because of their intricacy, but that does not make them any less pagan, from Platonism to Neo-Platonism to Stoicism inter alia.  It is haunting that Augustine of Hippo did not quote Scripture on his deathbed, but Plotinus. 

The ancient church’s synthesis is in many ways simply a triumphal procession over earlier work and may resemble it only as much as Augustus does Curius Dentatus.  The analogy is comparable because the first figure is dominant and familiar while the second is obscure, but both were elected to multiple consecutive consulships.  A look at the texts of some early important writers (e.g., Irenaeus, Origen) shows the immense sophistication employed merely to get a workable text—my favorite is the Sources Chretiennes text of Irenaeus on Heresies.  Their work was often superseded through neglect, new theological insights, or even outright condemnation, and yet they were much closer—certainly timewise – to the primitive church than what finally prevailed.

End part I. 

(Sign up for the upcoming class, “Lonergan & the Problem of Theological Method.” The course will run from the weeks of February 16th to April 11th.  Also sign up for Sin and Salvation: An in-depth study of the meaning of sin and a description of the atonement as a defeat of sin and the basis of an alternative community in Christ. This course will run through the beginning of February to the end of March. Register here https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings)

“The Weight of Things”

A guest blog by Monroe Johnson

Tom stood in his father’s study, holding a worn wooden spoon. The pancake batter stains had darkened the wood over decades of Sunday mornings. He remembered the rhythmic scraping sound as his father stirred, telling stories about his childhood breakfasts, each memory layered like the rings of an old tree.

The spoon felt heavier now than it should have. It was like his father’s watch, neatly placed on the desk, its brass face scratched from years of construction work. A box of old nails caught his eye—”$0.89″ written in his father’s precise handwriting. Each object seemed to pull him deeper into the reality of their relationship, anchoring moments he hadn’t known he needed to hold onto.

Tom had always known he loved his father, but now, handling these everyday items, that love became tangible. It wasn’t that the objects themselves made him love his father more. Rather, they provided concrete points of connection, like anchors holding abstract feelings in place. Each item was a thread in a web of shared moments, making what had always existed more visible but was sometimes hard to grasp.

The pipe on the windowsill still smelled faintly of cherry tobacco. Tom remembered summer evenings watching his father pack it carefully, their conversations about life flowing as easily as the smoke. These weren’t just memories – they were touchstones that gave his love substance and shape in space and time.

What had been a floating, undefined feeling now had weight and dimension. Through these ordinary objects, Tom could trace the outline of their relationship, feel its texture, understand its depth in ways that thoughts alone never quite captured.

He sat in his father’s chair, the wooden spoon still in his hand. The late afternoon light filtered through the window, catching dust motes that danced in the air. He chuckled, remembering how his father would always say “Time to make the magic happen!” before starting the pancakes, as if stirring batter with a wooden spoon was some kind of sacred ritual. Maybe it was. His dad had a way of making ordinary moments feel special, not through grand gestures but through small constants – the Sunday pancakes, the careful pipe-packing, the meticulous labeling of even a simple box of nails.

These ordinary moments, lived so fully and freely in their own time, had somehow carried forward. Each item held not just memory but possibility, as if his father’s complete presence in every simple moment had created its own momentum, reaching naturally into the future. The spoon wasn’t just a reminder of Sunday pancakes past; it carried the echo of his father’s laughter forward, a thread of joy that would weave into new stories, new mornings.

The love between father and son wasn’t preserved – it was alive, growing from the soil of those fully-lived moments. His father hadn’t tried to create legacy; he had simply lived each moment with such authenticity that the future grew naturally from it, like oak trees from acorns.

Tom set the spoon down gently on the desk, next to the watch that still kept faithful time. His father’s absence was still a raw wound, but these ordinary treasures somehow made it bearable, even beautiful – turning grief into a kind of promise, memories unfolding into hope.

Luke 24:30-31: 30 And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them. 31 And their eyes were opened, and they knew him, and he vanished out of their sight

An afternoon of scriptural discourse – words upon words, prophecies analyzed, meanings debated. Their hearts burned within them, but their eyes remained dim. Until that simple, everyday act: the breaking of bread.

Perhaps it was the way His thumb pressed into the crust, that familiar indent they’d seen a thousand times. Or how He lifted the loaf slightly, pausing as He always did to inhale its warmth – a habit so characteristic they’d once teased Him about it. Maybe it was the precise angle of His wrists as He tore the bread apart, a gesture as unique as a fingerprint.

In that moment, theology became touchable. Like Tom finding his father in a worn wooden spoon, they found their Lord not in the grand interpretations of scripture they’d discussed along the road, but in this intimate choreography of hands and bread. The abstract Truth they’d debated became flesh and bone before them, recognized not through intellectual assent but through the tangible grammar of shared meals and familiar gestures.

What all their scholarly discourse couldn’t accomplish, this simple act achieved – like how a father’s old pipe can say more about love than a thousand words. The gap between symbol and reality, between scriptural knowledge and living presence, closed in the breaking of bread. Their eyes were opened not by more explanation, but by witnessing this physical signature of the One they knew so well.

Before them stood not a theological concept, but their teacher, known in the flesh through the material language of bread and familiar gesture – just as Tom found his father’s love made tangible in the objects that carried the imprint of his presence.

The Salvation of the Curse Through Christ

By: Allan S. Contreras Rios

Could it be that the drama of fall and salvation or of sin and deliverance are interwoven and simultaneous? The creation is suffering the consequences of sin and death, introduced by humankind (according to Genesis 3), but the consequences of which are directed onto all of creation, and which Paul describes (in Romans), as already salvific. In Romans 8 Paul tells us that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth until now (v. 22), but not only it, but we also groan within ourselves (v. 23), and in the same way, the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings that cannot be uttered (v. 26). Paul is, however, describing the pain of childbirth suffered by creation as part of the pain of new creation. The indication is that each of the curses of sin (the futilities inflicted on creation), take on an intrinsic salvific element through Christ.

The Redemptive Suffering of Birth Extended to All Suffering

The idea of “pains of childbirth” for Jews and Christians is an apocalyptic image that has to do with the suffering that accompanies God’s eschatological action of bringing in a new age. Yes, childbirth hurts, but through it a new life is being born, a New Creation. In Galatians 1:4, Paul tells us that Jesus has delivered us from the present evil age. As Richard Hays says commenting on that verse, “Jesus’ death not only procures the forgiveness of sins; it moves us into a completely new reality by freeing us from the power of the ‘present evil age.’” In other words, childbirth is part of the eschatological conflict in which God vindicates and redeems the entire creation. And this new life, this New Creation, is inaugurated through the death (the agonizing pain) and resurrection of Jesus. God’s saving work in Christ, transforms the suffering of all creation into an eschatological suffering of hope.

In Genesis 3:16: “To the woman he said, I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth.” Pain, as the consequence of sin, is not exclusively that of the woman. In fact, the Hebrew word עצב translated as “pain” describes the “pain” of childbirth, the “pain” for the man to get his food, due to the curse that falls upon the land, and God’s “grief” at seeing His creation ruined in Genesis 6:6. This painful sorrow is something that involves mankind, God, and the entire creation. It is no surprise Paul says the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth, but now each element of suffering(due to Christ) implies hope and adoption into the family of God (Rom. 8:22-23).

Redeeming Death

In Genesis 3:15 (known as the protoevangelium), God says: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you will bruise his foot.” Although, at first glance, it would seem that the wound in the head is mortal and the wound in the foot is not, this is not entirely true. While it is true that a snake dies when its head is crushed, the venom of a snake through a bite on any part of the body (in this case the foot or heel) is also deadly. The prophecy indicates they would kill each other. Jesus’ feet are nailed to a cross but he is not only wounded, but on that cross He dies. In his resurrection Jesus defeats death itself (which is why the cross cannot be separated from the resurrection), dealing the final blow to the serpent’s greatest power (crushing his head) but also why entropy and death cannot be separated from the hope of childbirth.

The Fruit of the Tree of Calvary

Genesis 3:17-18 says: “Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’; cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you will eat of it all the days of your life. ‘Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you will eat the plants of the field.’” There are two things I want to highlight from what God says to man and what Jesus does on the cross.

The first has to do with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that was not to be eaten. On this tree hung a curse and it is through the ingestion of the fruit that this curse falls, not only on humanity, but on the earth. How does Jesus reverse this curse? The connection between the fruit of the tree and the cross may not be obvious. However, Paul tells us in Galatians 3:13 that, “Christ redeemed us…having become a curse for us, for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.’” Paul is quoting Deuteronomy 21:23 which says everyone who hangs on a tree or (pole) is cursed, linking Jesus to that curse that hangs on a tree like a fruit. However, as Jesus becomes cursed for us, He redeems us, but not just by hanging on the tree (remember ingestion is important).

Jesus says in John 6:51: “I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he shall live forever; and the bread which I also will give for the life of the cosmos is My flesh.” To partake of “the Lord’s Supper” is precisely to eat of that bread and wine that poured out His life (kenosis), not only for humanity, but for the entire cosmos. Through the ingestion of one fruit came the curse to the entire creation, and through the ingestion of another fruit (the metaphor of bread in this case) comes the redemption of the entire creation. Following the imagery of fruit hanging on the tree, when a fruit falls dead from the tree, the seeds of that fruit fall on the earth, giving the possibility for more trees of that fruit to sprout from the earth.

The Kenotic Fruit Renewing All Things

What do I mean by the above? Jesus becomes the curse that hung on the tree; by dying He drops the seeds of the Gospel on the earth giving the possibility for more trees and fruit like Him to sprout (Matt. 13:3-9, 18-23). This is what we know as “the fruit of the Spirit” (Gal. 5:22-23). As long as a person constantly ingests “the bread” which is Christ (1 Cor. 11:23-26), as long as a person remains “in Christ”, they will be producing fruit, blessing all of creation. It is through Jesus’ hanging on the tree that the fruit of curse is transformed into the fruit of blessing, becoming the fruit of life, like that of the other tree in Eden. It is precisely from this new life of New Creation, inaugurated through the death and resurrection of Jesus, that in the New Jerusalem there is no longer the dualistic tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but only trees of life (Rev. 22:2).

The second thing to highlight from Genesis 3:17-18 are the thorns that the earth produces after being cursed. These thorns make it more difficult for man to gather food, for they become painful inconveniences for mankind. Jesus, on the cross, also absorbs this curse into Himself. The King of Kings rules, not with a crown of gold and diamonds, but with a crown of thorns (Matt. 27:29), making accessible the food (Himself) that man needs for life. Pierced by the thorns (thwarting nourishment), in suffering humility, he offers the ultimate nourishment of his life.

The Curses Have Become Blessings

It could be said from all this that, not only is Genesis 3:15 the protoevangelium, but every one of the consequences of sin in Genesis 3 point to the Savior’s reversal of the curses. Focusing on the event of the cross, it is not merely that Jesus is providing forgiveness, which is what his work is often limited to, but is reversing the consequence and curse of sin in all of creation, such that the elements of the curse have become the vehicle of blessing.

Connecting this with John 14:6, what Jesus does then is to renew our way of thinking and acting (“He is the way,” see my previous blog). He replaces the alternate (un)reality (enslaving creation) with the reality (truth) which has obtained victory over death through the resurrection, giving us the opportunity to live eternally with Him, not only as an extension of our days, but as a quality of existence (true life) retroactively changing curses into blessings.

The God Humanity (A Conversation with Dostoyevsky on Free Will)

By: Allan S. Contreras Rios

Note: The quotes found in this blog come from the book The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky, unless specified otherwise. Also, this is a translation from a blog in Spanish, so the quotes are translated from Dostoyevsky’s book as well and not exact quotes from an English version of the book.

After the second creation narrative of mankind in Genesis 2, mankind (represented by Adam) is given a warning about eating from a certain tree in the Garden of Eden. The perennial question concerning this tree is: “If God knew mankind was going to sin, why put this tree there?” The common answer: humankind cannot really love God if he does not have the choice to hate him. Not having the choice would be kidnapping, not love. And not having that choice would make us robots instead of humans, according to this reasoning. But is the focus on choice mistaken?

The problem is, that instead of opting for the simple, to love God and what He loves, namely His creation, the alternative is the continual complexity of choice. As Dostoyevsky says, “It is true that nothing pleases man so much as free will; and yet there is nothing that makes him suffer more.” The suffering option cannot resolve itself, as having free-will, in this mistaken understanding, demands choice. That is, free-will (equated with choice) is already a choice against the definitive Divine resolution.

The story in Genesis indicates human choice is a shaping force and the names of the trees indicate how this is the case. The tree of life represents simplicity: to love God and what He loves. This tree does not contain the complication of a dualistic choice. It is a single thing: the tree of life.  It requires participation in relationship with God and His creation and this constitutes life. It is simplicity itself. But the second tree represents the complex in a dualistic choice. That is, the second tree affirms the possible existence of good and evil as independent antagonistic realities coexisting in creation. The lie is, that without one (good or evil), the other cannot exist or be defined (i.e. as in yin and yang). For the choosing to remain open, a dualistic reality is posited.

Another way of saying this is that by not eating of the fruit of the second tree, life is simple (e.g., no bad decisions or false choices, as there is clarifying singular reality). But eating from the second tree constitutes a grounding in human decision: the decision between good and evil. And this complexity and its decisionism displaces the simplicity of knowing God, and it poses an alternative, dualistic, reality.

 It is on this basis that we become our own guides, and the problem is, as Proverbs 16:2 says, “All the ways of a man are pure in his own sight.” As Dostoyevsky writes in several dialogues,

“Well,” I asked him, “what would become of man if he did not believe in God and immortality? In that case he would be allowed everything, even the greatest atrocities.”

What is our destiny if God does not exist… If the idea of God is nothing but the fruit of man’s imagination, how could man remain virtuous?

Everything is permitted to man… If God does not exist, there is no virtue.

Once God is displaced, humanity becomes its own ground, its own god, but it is only in a dualistic world that this god can exercise (deciding) power. The free-will choice already constitutes a world made in the human image. Free-will (in this definition) requires a subjective decisionism, dependent upon human moral choices, which displace transcendent virtue.

We might wrongly blame the first couple for all of our troubles, but the option posed in Genesis continues to present itself: divine versus human or life versus death. Dostoyevsky says that, “Men have eaten the fruit of good and evil, and they continue to eat it.” Day by day we decide, we are the ethicists, and our decisionism is a displacement of divine goodness and virtue.

Maybe God did not place the tree of the knowledge of good and evil to tempt us to do evil, but to give us the opening to the good; to live in eternal simplicity instead of complexity; to live with God as opposed to living in antagonistic dualism, clashing with others and ourselves. The complexity is continually compounded and exponentially multiplied, as Dostoyevsky describes:

New people are living, who want to destroy all that exists, and return to anthropophagy. How stupid! And they have not come to ask my advice! In my opinion, it is not necessary to destroy anything, except the idea of God in the mind of man: that is what we must begin with. Once all mankind has come to deny God, and I believe that the epoch of universal atheism will come at last, as the geological epoch came in its time, then by themselves, without anthropophagy, the old moralists will disappear. Men will gather to ask life for all that it can give, but only and absolutely to this present and terrestrial life. The human mind will be enlarged, will rise to a satanic pride, and it will be then that God-Humanity will reign.

Who determines morality in an atheistic world? If humanity is composed of a quasi-infinite number of humans with different wills that compete, not only with each other, but within themselves, antagonism, opposition, decisionism, constitutes the world. The virus of dualism introduced by the ingestion of decisionism infects from within but manifests itself as a self-imploding “reality.”

Dostoyevsky could be describing the human predicament inaugurated in Genesis 3, but it is continually re-inaugurated. This ongoing “Fall” is not atheism per se but the exaltation of humanity. There is a closure, which implicitly or explicitly excludes transcendent morality. Although many subject themselves to the absurd concept of atheism, they try to live a moral life, which Nietzsche criticized as a form of hypocrisy. Why feel obliged to live out Christian morality if the God of the Bible does not exist? Nature is cruel and we are products of nature, so we should be cruel. That would be a consistent atheism. However, most who consider themselves atheists, live in the discrepancy that reaffirms the dualism of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (presuming, without reason, the good).

We live in a time when as, Dostoyevsky says, humanity “asks life” for things. Let us replace “life” with “mother nature”, “vibes”, “spirit”, “universe”, etc., and we will realize that we do not live in atheism, but in idolatry. As the apostle Paul says, we have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and we worship and serve the creature instead of the Creator (Rom. 1:25). But this projection of divinity onto the creaturely is, as Dostoyevsky portrays it, a continued swallowing of the serpent’s venom. The deadly lie continues to kill. Dostoyevsky writes that, “The important thing is to know how to flee from the lie.” However, this is easier said than done. We live in a world where the lie has become “reality.” What we need is the truth to displace the lie. And that is where the last Adam comes in, namely Jesus (1 Cor. 15:46; cf. Rom. 5:14).

The Gospels describe Jesus’ mission as exposing the lie. The problem is, we may not understand the saving ministry of Jesus as He and the early Christians understood it: deliverance from the bondage of an enslaving lie. The tendency is to reduce salvation to His propitiating death, while his life and his resurrection are not seen as revelatory or salvific. By reducing Christ to a sacrifice, we leave out His ministry, his healing, his teaching, his resurrection, and we cease to see Jesus as the God/human Savior and turn Him into an instrument, displacing the holism of the Gospel. Instead of being “the way” Christ is reduced to a point of law, another decision, in which the focus is human will and choice.  Jesus said in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” Here is the true fruit, lost in the lie, and it pertains to everything. Where Christ is reduced to an instrument of the law, rather than being “the way,” He becomes a tool of decisionism rather than a relinquishing of this enslaving “freedom.”

In its metaphorical use, “the way” is the universal symbol of human existence that describes the dynamics of life. In the Old Testament we are told that man is guided by God (e.g., Israel in Exodus), that path of righteousness is the one to walk in order to be wise and not foolish (Prov. 15:19). Similarly, in the New Testament, “the way” is used as a figure for the way of thinking and/or acting (2 Pet. 2:21). What is lost in the lie, is the way of thinking, acting and being. As a sacrifice, Jesus does not constitute the way, but serves an already established way.

The same holds with regard to “the truth.” We tend to think of truth in terms of a concept rather than a person. Truth is embodied in the God/man. To live in relationship with Him, to live “in Christ” (Rom. 8:1) is to live in truth, but this is a relinquishing of the common notion of free-will. This truth does not leave humanity alone, with its free-will, its choices, its imagination, or its autonomy. In Paul’s description, choosing does not enter into the equation, as the two Adams are the heads of two streams of humanity. Romans 5:12 says death entered the world through one man, and through death, sin, and death spread to all men, whereupon all sinned (Rom. 5:12). Paul’s ordering of this sequence (as rightly translated by David Hart) indicates that death posed as final reality, and Christ exposes this lie, displacing the lie and death with truth and life. In the first, death and evil constitute an alternative reality, in the second this alternative is emptied (eliminating the false choice).

This fits Dostoyevsky’s description in Crime and Punishment, where the false choice is exposed: “Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.” The power of choice, as in the novel, is by definition murderous and transgressive. Raskolnikov exercises the power of life and death through murdering the old pawn broker. It is a heady drug, this power of life and death, which reduces to nothing and ruin.  Raskolnikov’s power is literally a covenant with death, which Isaiah pictures as the universal predicament. “Because you have said, ‘We have made a covenant with death, And with Sheol we have made a pact. The overwhelming scourge will not reach us when it passes by, For we have made falsehood our refuge and we have concealed ourselves with deception’” (Is. 28:15). Their guilt is to imagine they can manipulate death, as if it is a reality on the order of God. The resolution of Isaiah, is on the order of that of Romans, in that this false choice is eliminated. Isaiah says the covenant with death is annulled (v. 18), exposed by the costly cornerstone of Zion (v. 15). By relocating God as God in our life and denying ourselves (including our power of free-will choice), by Jesus gaining victory over sin and death (exposing their unreality), we put on the singular truth indicated in Eden.

Rereading Romans, Part 2

A guest blog by Brian Sartor

Protestant era readings of Romans take 1:18-32 as the foundation. Our reading takes it as a false pretense. The voice of 1:18-32 is that of one who “passes judgment” (2:1) and “boasts in God” (2:17). It names boastfulness as a practice of the unrighteous (1:30), yet each remaining occurrence of the word ‘boast’ in the epistle refers to the boasting of one who presumes himself to be righteous (2:17-29, 3:27, 4:2, 15:17). The conventionally acceptable practice of boasting in God, boasting in law, and boasting in an outward form of righteousness (and Jewish identity) is the implicit tone of voice in 1:18-32. In 2:1—3:20, Paul exposes that tone—that mode of approaching life and law—as one of subtle self-deceit, hypocrisy, and death.

The last two verses in 2:1—3:20 conclude: “Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God; because by the works of law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through law comes the knowledge of sin.” “That every mouth may be closed” is where Paul is taking us as we proceed from the boisterous claims of 1:18-32. The nature and function of law is that it closes all mouths, as law is not a foundation from which anyone may boast. “That every mouth may be closed” also pre-figures 11:32, the very last line in Paul’s argument: “For God has shut up all in disobedience so that He may show mercy to all.”

“There is No Partiality with God”

The ethnic distinction between Jew and Gentile was a hindrance to gospel living, and addressing it was essential to Paul’s mission as the apostle to the Gentiles (Galatians 2, Acts 15). Writing to establish a base for his future ministry in Spain (1:10-11 and 15:22-24), in Romans Paul sought to address this false distinction from the ground up. He alluded to it subtly at first with an ironic use of the phrase “…to the Jew first, and also to the Greek” in 1:16. Then in 2:9-10, Paul fully twists this conventional phrase back in on itself, neutralizing, or canceling out, any significance it could possibly have for common use in relation to the gospel.

Then Paul states the first point in his argument: “For there is no partiality with God” (2:11). The phrase originates in the Torah (Deuteronomy 10:17), shows up in the wisdom literature, and gets repeated in a passage from the synoptic gospels (Matthew 22:16, Mark 12:14, Luke 20:21). It becomes a fundamental theme in Paul’s corpus and in other New Testament writings (Acts 10:34, James 2:1-9, Galatians 2:6, Ephesians 6:9, Colossians 3:25, 1 Timothy 5:21). The first eleven uses of the word ‘law’ in Romans begin to explain why the ethnic distinction between Jew and Gentile has no place in the righteousness of God:

For all who have sinned without law will also perish without law, and all who have sinned under law will be judged by law; for it is not the hearers of law who are righteous before God, but the doers of law who will be justified. For when Gentiles who do not have law do by nature the things of the Law, these, though not having law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them, on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of mankind through Christ Jesus (2:12-16).

Notice the different uses of ‘law’, with and without the definite article: 1) “the Law”, i.e., Jewish Law, God’s Law, and 2) “a law to themselves” i.e., conscience. Paul equates these two in the way they function, saying that “Gentiles who do not have law [and who] do by nature the things of the Law… show the work of the Law written in their hearts.” He is saying that the Jew and the Gentile each participate equally in a universally human and highly consequential relationship to this thing that we call law. Therefore, there is no distinction. Jews participate in law; Gentiles participate in law. There is no partiality with God.

 “He is Jew Who is One Inwardly”

The next eleven references to ‘law’ also support Paul’s primary point, that there is no partiality with God. To analyze the nature and function of law, showing why there is no basis for partiality, Paul takes us to the essence of what it means to be Jewish:

But if you bear the name “Jew” and rely upon law and boast in God, and know His will and distinguish between the things which differ, being instructed out of the Law, and are confident that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of infants, having in law the embodiment of knowledge and of the truth, you, therefore, who teach another, do you not teach yourself? You who proclaim that one shall not steal, do you steal? You who say that one should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who boast in law, through your breaking law, do you dishonor God? For “the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you,” just as it is written (2:17-24).

For indeed circumcision is of value if you practice law; but if you are a transgressor of law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision. So if the uncircumcision keeps the requirements of the Law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision? And he who is physically uncircumcised, if he keeps the Law, will he not judge you who through the letter and circumcision are a transgressor of law? For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the spirit, not by the letter; and his praise is not from men, but from God (2:25-29).

Paul names five things that on the surface may seem advantageous and consequential about being Jewish: bearing the name “Jew”, relying upon law, boasting in God, knowing His will, and distinguishing between the things which differ. What does the last one suggest? Along with circumcision, the primary identity marker of the Jew by which he may set himself apart from the Gentile is by his knowledge of the Law, his ability to “distinguish between the things that differ.” This description of law is an essential feature of the concept of law itself, echoing God’s command for Adam not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Who ultimately sets and distinguishes between the things that differ, between such things as good and evil? What is the nature of the command to Adam in Genesis 2? Does it go well for Adam after he gains the knowledge of good and evil? Did it not bring death like God said that it would? If so, how? These are the questions Paul is addressing in Romans. The letter of the law distinguishes between the things that differ and relies upon a dialectical knowledge of good and evil, but the spirit as the source of law inwardly habilitates the true Jew to rely directly upon the one who is faithful, Jesus Christ, the tree of life himself. In my next post, Rereading Romans, Part 3, we will look to the latter half of Romans 3 at the next 11 occurrences of ‘law’ and consider the meaning of faith in relation to Paul’s analysis of law.

(Register for the class with Michael Hardin: René Girard and Nonviolent Atonement here https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings). The course will run from the week of October 7th to December 6th.)

Rereading Romans, Part 1

By Brian Sartor

In the Torah, life and death hinged upon our mode of approach to a tree: “…the tree of life in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. …from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat from it, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die” (Genesis 2:9,17). In Saint Paul, life and death hinge upon our mode of approach to the law: “…the letter [of the law] kills, but the spirit [of the law] gives life” (2 Corinthians 3:6).

Paul possessed unique insight into the concept of law. After abiding blamelessly by law as a Pharisee (Philippians 3:5-6), he had been dramatically reoriented to it by an encounter with Jesus (Acts 9:1-30). As a result, his analytical insight into the nature and function of law was unique, even among his fellow apostles. It was for this reason that Paul became the apostle to the Gentiles (Galatians 1:11—2:21).

Jew-Gentile relations were troubled in early Christian communities due to commonly held assumptions about law, so in Romans Paul addresses the issue from the ground up. Attention to what Romans says about law therefore lends deep unity and interpretive structure to the epistle’s argument, clarity concerning its occasional purpose, and high resolution to its picture of the universal human condition.

The word ‘law’ occurs seventy-eight times in Romans; seventy-one of those occurrences are in 2:12—8:8; sixty of them occur within the eighty verses that comprise 2:12—3:31 and 7:1—8:8. This means that in these two sections of Romans, the word ‘law’ is found on average three times every four verses.

This would not be so remarkable if Protestant era readings of Romans did not fail to see the unity of these sections. Indeed, the unity of Paul’s argument about the nature and function of law, the unity of his overall aim to address the issue of Jew-Gentile relations in Rome, spans the entirety of Romans 1-11. Romans 3:21 sums up Paul’s announcement, “But now apart from law the righteousness of God has been manifested…” The universally presumed fundamental category of nature we call law is set aside for a divine righteousness that is based on something completely new and wholly other than law as we know it.

Yet Protestant readings of Romans have written law as we know it right back into the gospel. The natural, conventional, and perennial guiding assumption is that law remains fundamental to all things, even to the righteousness of God. As a result, we have read Romans as if Paul were addressing two different topics: the legal aspect of salvation (justification) in chapters 1-4, and the practical aspect of salvation (sanctification) in chapters 5-8.

However, Paul is not using justification as a legal term. Faith is not a precondition for, nor a means of access to, divine righteousness as a legal concept. God’s righteousness itself is a person who is our only mode of direct participation in the power of God, the wisdom of God, the tree of life. Life and death are not two topics, even as the spirit and the letter of the law are not two topics. The dual-designated tree of life at the center of the garden of Eden is not two trees. Life is life, law is law, and it turns out that all that matters is the way we go about them both. The spirit as the source of law gives life, and the letter as an agent of law leads to death.

As Protestants, we have been unwittingly befuddled by the characteristic mistakes of our age. We have interpreted Romans according to “a great mass of common assumptions”[1] about law in the West. St Augustine misread Romans and gave us original sin through the federal headship of Adam. Martin Luther misread Romans and gave us justification as an imputed righteousness. Both are nonsensical apart from a legal paradigm so definitive in the West that it has shaped even our theology.

Rereading Romans, however, promises in the words of C.S. Lewis, “to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds.”[2] This patient and slow-moving breeze, Lewis says, is the only palliative to the characteristic mistakes of eras and individuals. Rereading Romans, we see Paul deliberately analyzing the concept of law, exposing its deadly natural function in the human psyche, naming something better that both perfects and displaces law.

“They exchanged the truth of God for the lie.”

Protestant era readings of Romans place the old lie about law right back at the center. Romans 1:18-32 describes the moral decline and the naturally occurring consequence of wrath among those who presumably do not have the Law. Their depraved condition and their condemnation are due to their own suppression of a basic, nascent, universal human knowledge of God. This purportedly highlights their absolute moral culpability, explaining why they are without excuse.

For many it will come as a shock to hear it suggested that in Romans 1:18-32, Paul is merely giving voice to conventional wisdom concerning the universal human condition. It sounds familiar, harmless, and true enough to many of us at first, just as it would have to the original recipients of the epistle. However, in Romans 2:1 Paul clearly begins exposing the lack of depth, and the inadequacy, of the conventional view to which he had just given voice. Romans 1:18-32 does not sufficiently describe nor accurately describe the human condition from the standpoint of Paul’s gospel.

Here we are following the groundbreaking work of Douglas Campbell, The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul.[3] Campbell’s work is extensive, detailed, and monumental. He reads Romans in such a way that the position given voice in Romans 1:18-32 is a voice-in-character speech attributed to a false teacher in Rome. Occasionally, the false teacher is given voice throughout Paul’s argument, representing either conventional human wisdom or an elemental false teaching (as I would read it), if not also that of a specific false teacher who had been influential in Rome (as Campbell reads it).

We already know that throughout the letter Paul spars with an imaginary interlocutor, a rhetorical voice interjecting thoughts and questions that are not Paul’s own but that ultimately serve his point. In this rereading of Romans, we are saying that the dialogical exchange between Paul and this rhetorical voice begins boldly and abruptly in Romans 1:18-32 where Paul steel-mans the position of his interlocutor.

Eventually, in Romans 7:7-25, Paul describes the human condition according to his own analysis of the nature and function of law. The description of the human condition in Romans 1 is woefully bereft of the analytical depth Paul offers in Romans 7. The contrasting relationship of these two passages ought not be overlooked, otherwise the unity of the entire argument is lost. Romans 1 and Romans 7 cannot be synthesized or assimilated to one another as statements made from the same voice or vantage point. This is why Protestant era readings fragment the structure of Romans 1-8 as if Paul were addressing two different aspects of the gospel, first the legal, then the practical.

Romans 1:18-32 is familiar and resonant to Protestant era Christian insiders, yet it feels uncharacteristic and troubling to outsiders, unbelievers, and dissenters. Romans 1:18-32 has been mistaken by both groups to be Paul’s actual voice and therefore his basic, final account of the universal human condition. Meanwhile, the passage where Paul actually gives his own final and accurate account of the universal human condition, Romans 7, is rendered obscure and irrelevant to the gospel. Moreover, it is often read as a description of normal Christian life, even though it is actually a description of enslavement to the law of sin and death apart from Christ.

Atheist psychologists, philosophers, and outliers within Protestantism, have not missed the plain meaning of Romans 7. Paul Axton brilliantly presents this point in his understated, overlooked, and invaluable contribution to any future rereading of Romans, The Psychotheology of Sin and Salvation: An Analysis of the Meaning of the Death of Christ in Light of the Psychoanalytic Reading of Paul.[4] Axton’s teaching ministry at Forging Ploughshares and Ploughshares Bible Institute has been the catalyst to this writer’s rereading of Romans. Douglas Campbell’s work on Romans 1-4 and Paul Axton’s work on Romans 5-8 converge decorously to expose and elucidate the characteristic mistakes of the Protestant era about law.

The subtle deceit granted character and voice in Romans 1:18-32 is apropos, as the conventional voice it represents is surely that of the serpent. We ourselves within Protestantism have been deceived even as we have read Romans in earnest. We have completely missed the fact that this passage gives voice to an incomplete picture of the human condition, one that is recorded precisely because it represents conventional wisdom. The position having been steel-manned by Paul, we ourselves are easily deceived by it (not purposefully by Paul, of course). The conventional view is partially true and partially complete, both of which are characteristic qualities of the serpent’s voice in Genesis 3. Although Romans 1:18-32 may sound right to many of us at first, it gives voice to a view that is twisted, wrongheaded, and incompatible with the gospel. In Romans 2:1-3:20, Paul proceeds to expose the conventional view as such. This passage will be the focus of my next post, Rereading Romans, Part 2.

[1] C. S. Lewis, Introduction to On the Incarnation, by St Athanasius, St Vladimir’s Seminary, 1998, pp. 4-5.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Douglas Campbell, The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul. Eerdmans, 2009.

[4] Paul Axton, The Psychotheology of Sin and Salvation: An Analysis of the Meaning of the Death of Christ in Light of the Psychoanalytic Reading of Paul, T&T Clark, 2015.

A Sermon by Mr. Michael Hardin, PreachingPeace.com

Preached at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Kingsville, MD Christ the King Sunday, November 22, 2015

Scripture: John 18:33 – 37


33 Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, ‘Are you the King of the Jews?’ 34 Jesus answered, ‘Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?’ 35 Pilate replied, ‘I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?’ 36 Jesus answered, ‘My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.’ 37 Pilate asked him, ‘So you are a king?’ Jesus answered, ‘You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.’

Sermon
Pilate might seem like the ultimate 21st Century Post-Modernist. “What is truth?” he says. What indeed is truth?

In Pilate’s time, of course, there were plenty of philosophies floating around the ancient world: Greek, Roman, Babylonian, Syrian, Egyptian and more, many more. And here’s Pilate, the Curator of Judea, confused by the whole mess, standing before a Galilean peasant who has the audacity to challenge him, challenge his authority but very covertly. If you have a Bible, you might like to follow along in this text. Now, I told Dan I don’t think I have ever preached on this particular text before, although when I was a pastor I did follow the lectionary cycle so there is a chance that back in the day I did.

But I was really struck this week in my work as I reflected and prepared for today. Here’s what’s really interesting from this particular text for us today. It’s not a question of what constitutes some sort of generic philosophical truth. And that’s how the tendency of preachers is to read this text. What is truth? Who can know the truth? How can you know the truth? How is truth even to be known? Is there such a thing as truth? And this is the dilemma the plagues the academy that I’ve been involved in for 30 years reading thousands of books by philosophers and theologians, and they all scramble really, really hard to try and figure out.. what is the truth? But in our Gospel, it’s already been said that the truth is not a concept. The truth is a person.

This changes everything because it takes the category of truth out of some sort of way to divide good and evil, right and wrong, true and false. It places it right into the category of the person of Jesus of Nazareth, who he is and how he lived his existence. And in this text, right here before Pilate is going to come the key element of that which constitutes truth.

Truth is non-violent.

Jesus will say to Pilate in response to his question “Are you a king?” And Jesus says, “If I was a king of this world, my foot soldiers would have fought in the garden.” There’s an irony here, isn’t there? Because we know that Peter himself drew a sword in the Garden of Gethsemane to protect Jesus, slicing off the ear of a young man named Malchus, a servant of the Chief Priest. So, the fact is, Peter in the garden perceiving himself as a foot soldier of the truth, drew a sword and chopped off the ear of a man. And it’s a good thing he didn’t just run him threw. He just managed to miss this poor guy’s head. Peter was looking to behead the man. Think of this in terms of where we’re at politically today. Peter is no different than anyone in ISIS at that point in the garden. He thinks he’s going to protect Jesus by taking his sword and chopping the fellow’s head off. He misses, thankfully. The guy only loses an ear, which, according to the text, Jesus immediately replaces.

But when Jesus stands before Pilate, he’s very, very clear that his foot soldiers, that is, his true followers… do not bear arms. His followers will not take up weapons to protect him. Now there’s a double irony here. Not only does Peter take up the sword, but in this last week since the bombings in Paris, on Facebook, on Twitter, in the news, on blogs, and webcasts, Christian preacher after Christian preacher and lay people have said unequivocally that we have to take up arms against ISIS. And to that I want to say “Blasphemy!” The follower of Jesus does not take up arms, because the way he reigns, is not of this world.

Jesus is a substantively different leader than President Obama or Vladimir Putin or any other leader on the planet. Every single leader on the planet that runs a nation state or any government, with few exceptions, has a standing army and that standing army is there to protect the people. There is no way a civilized leader with a standing army or the power to push a red button and drop nuclear bombs or to command drones that kill innocent civilians can call themselves a follower of Jesus. They are just kings of this world just like Pilate, and they don’t get that truth has nothing to do with retaliation, nothing to do with violence.

When Christians come to the New Testament, particularly the Gospel of John, our tendency is to say “Oh. The people rejected Jesus because they wouldn’t accept his divinity, they wouldn’t accept his claim to be God.” That is not the case. What they specifically rejected was his claim to represent a non-violent God, a non-retaliatory God, a God who would have nothing to do with justice as “eye for eye’ and “tooth for tooth.” That god doesn’t exist. That god is an idol. That’s the god that was believed in by Second Temple Judaism. That’s the god that was believed on in Rome in its many forms. The only God to ever claim non-violence is the God and Father of Jesus, so much so, that this God alone of all the gods forgives.

The great critic of the New Testament, Rudolph Bultmann, was even able to say “Only the God of the Gospel forgives.” Forgiveness is not a category that’s used of figures like Zeus or Apollo. Only God forgives. Only the Maker of heaven and earth loves, forgives and chooses to lay down God’s own life and in the resurrection, not to come back as a retaliatory figure. And that’s what absolutely scared the disciples spitless on that Easter Sunday. They were waiting for vengeance. They had fled, they had betrayed, they had denied Jesus; it was their own people that crucified the Messiah. And surely sittin’ in the room that night when Jesus appears to them, all they can think of is the structure of their theology which requires justice, which requires vengeance, which requires god to satisfy god’s own honor. And so Jesus’ first word to them is the last word that will ever be spoken. “Shalom. Peace. Don’t be afraid. My Papa does not respond to violence with violence, and neither do I.”

And that is the truth that Pilate had in front of him, and that is the truth that confused him. How could this person claim to be a king and yet not take up arms? How is that truth? How is it? How is it that Christianity for almost two thousand years… and one could in fact argue this could be traced to the Jerusalem Church, but I won’t do that. I’ll just go seventeen hundred years with Constantine, not worry about the first three hundred. How is it that for seventeen hundred years we have managed to merge and mingle that which the Gospel has kept apart: God and violence? How is it that we as Christian theologians, as Church, as Christianity have married the two things that God has rent asunder: life and retaliation?

The Gospel text for today is so loaded with irony that if we look at our own historical situation right now as Church, all we can do is repent, because it is in the Name of Jesus that George Bush took this country into Iraq. It is in the Name of Jesus that Christian preachers on the radio and TV would have us sacrifice our young men and young women in Syria. It is in the Name of Jesus that the Airforce Academy in Colorado with its chapel shaped as F-16 jets sits and plays its video games and drones and kills innocent civilians right and left. We as Americans, we’re not just killing foreign terrorists, my friends.

Two days ago, we bombed a house that killed a two year old girl. A two year old girl. We did. That was done in our name. We, a Christian nation, killed this little girl. We don’t know the truth. We are so far from the truth in American Christianity, we’re no different than Pilate, or Peter in the garden, or James and John who would call down violence on a Samaritan village. And like them, we, too, are confronted with the Risen Christ who does not come back with revenge. Jesus did not come back with revenge and retaliation on Easter Sunday, and he’s not coming back in the future with revenge and retaliation.

Some years back, where I live in Lancaster, I drove by a church sign out front – you know all those church signs you read when you’re driving past churches – it said “Jesus is coming back and boy is he pissed.” I don’t worship that Jesus. The Jesus I worship is the Son of the Father. The Jesus I worship is homoousius, of the same substance, of the same reality as the Father. The Jesus I worship is non-violent. The Jesus I worship is forgiving. The Jesus I worship is loving, and nurturing, and compassionate, and merciful, and generous. And so is Papa.

The God who now looks down upon you does not look down upon you with hatred. The God who looks down upon you now doesn’t look at your life and demand or require some atonement from you. The God that makes heaven and earth looks down upon you as His precious children. And He looks down upon the ISIS terrorists as His precious children. And looks down upon that two year old that we killed in His Name as His precious child.

We are all on trial today in American Christianity. We are all on trial. It’s not for us to sit and equivocate about the nature of the truth – Well, Jesus got angry in the temple. Well, Jesus said why don’t you buy a sword – and to try and find a way out, a way back to the kingdom of this world. It is our place to listen only to his voice and recognize that he alone, he alone reveals the character of God. And he alone is the one who comes in that revelation and reconciles us by being crucified on a Roman cross.

How many crosses do you suppose there are in this sanctuary, pictures and icons? And from that cross he prays, “Father. Don’t forgive them! Get them back! Send some bombs on them! Kill them!” Does he do that? Does Jesus say that?….. He says “Father, forgive them for they don’t know what they’re doing.” And that is our problem. We don’t know what we’re doing when it comes to the issues of violence and justice, retaliation and revenge.

If we are going to follow Jesus, there is only one way, only one way. And that way is the same way he went. “If you would be my disciple, take up your cross.” To take up your cross doesn’t mean to suffer. It means to learn to live with the same measure of forgiveness that Jesus himself preached and taught his whole ministry. As he died, over and over again from that cross he was saying “Father forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing.”

René Girard, the great thinker that just passed recently, said “There are only two things that can reconcile: violence and love.” Violence does reconcile, my friends. When we take our anger and hostility out together against someone, when we as a group blame someone for our woes, when someone in our family systems we perceive is the trouble, we blame them for all the woes in the family, when we scapegoat others,.. we can be reconciled. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Violence does reconcile.

But that’s not God’s way. Love is God’s way. Love reconciles. Love absorbs the pain. Love absorbs the violence. Love say “You can kill me, but I believe in a God of love. I believe in a God that raises the dead. I believe in a Kingdom to come. Your liturgy is suffused with this language, the language of truth, the language of the reign of God. Listen to what you just said in the prayers. Listen to what you’re going to say next.

God is good. And this is the Gospel of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

(Register for the class with Michael Hardin: René Girard and Nonviolent Atonement here https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings). The course will run from the week of October 7th to December 6th.)

Eschatology And Ethics Today

Guest Blog by Michael Hardin

I am inviting you to a thought experiment. I am going to ask you to consider the
implications of your particular eschatological position. That there are implications may not seem so clear since eschatology has to do with the future, not the present. However, as we shall see, one cannot separate eschatology from ethics because they inform each other. Now which comes first, eschatology or ethics? I want to begin with a quote from a lesser known Swiss theologian, Leonard Ragaz, who I cited in The Jesus Driven Life:

The notion is quite untenable, that Jesus built a kind of ethic and theology upon his expectation of the imminence of the kingdom of God. This sort of thing may well happen in the study of a theologian or philosopher…the relationship is quite the reverse from what the eschatological systematizers imagine. It is not the eschatological expectation which determines Jesus’ understanding of God and man…but, conversely his understanding of God and man which determines his eschatological expectation. To fail to see this one must have already put on a professor’s spectacles.

Now the way eschatology is popularly done is as an exercise in what “things”(logoi) happen at the end (eschatos) of time and history. As a doctrine that comes at the end of all our other doctrines (for this is how systematic theology usually arrays doctrine), in American Protestant theology we find that the usual connection between eschatology and other doctrines, say creation, redemption, Christology, sin, the church, etc., is tenuous; that there is an eschatological element to each of these examples of doctrine, yet one is hard pressed to find an exposition where eschatological considerations are taken into account when engaging such doctrines. If they are considered at all, they are usually appendages validating the transactional character of the Janus-faced god. So, when considering the doctrine of eschatology, we must recognize that it has hermeneutical implications for other doctrine.

Second, we might ask about some of the hermeneutical implications, the kind of “So What?” questions. Does it really matter if we hold to dispensationalism, ECT, some form of universalism or annihilationism? Does our view of the end matter, and if so, how is that view formed? If, as Karl Barth says, “Christology is eschatology and Christology that is not eschatological is no Christology at all”, we might want to ask the question asked by Adrio Konig: How did Jesus become eclipsed in modern eschatologies? For a little perspective we might note that church history seems to be a bit of a roller coaster when it comes to eschatology. The first six centuries saw a decided anti-eschatological bent, at least in those groups influenced by John’s Apocalypse like the Montanists or second-third century millenarianism. For the most part one could say that eschatology in terms of a ‘timeline’ did not exist in most of the early church. At best one finds the ‘return’ of Jesus muted and some form of amillennialism prevalent. The original creed of Nicaea simply has that “he [Jesus] will come to judge the living and the dead.”

Eschatology comes back around near the end of the first millennium with Joachim of Fiore, and quiets down again through the Renaissance and Thomistic scholasticism but rears its head again at the cataclysmic shifts occurring during the 16th century (the Reformation). It quiets down again for the next several hundred years as we progress into the Enlightenment but comes to the fore in America with the revival movements of the mid nineteenth century. The early twentieth century saw a renewal of interest in eschatology on several fronts. The popular front of dispensationalism was being pieced together by Larkin, Scofield and others. The scholars had turned their interest to Jesus and the work of Johannes Weiss and Albert Schweitzer in Germany shifted the discourse from the ‘gentle Jesus who taught love’ (von Harnack, What is Christianity?) to Jesus the apocalyptic prophet who came to herald the coming new age in his own person. Then, with the advent of the first World War (1914-1918), the eschatological explosion sounded in a small parish church in Switzerland as Karl Barth read the epistle to the Romans from his own unique Kierkegaardian eschatological perspective. It was as the Catholic theologian Karl Adam remarked, “an explosion in the theologians sandbox.”

After the second World War (1941-45), Oscar Cullmann introduced the world to a perspective of overlapping ages in his book Christ and Time, and scholars began speaking of salvation history. C.H. Dodd would suggest (in his book on the parables of Jesus) that Jesus preached a realized eschatology, viz., that everything from the future was now here in the present time. Joachim Jeremias would modify this to speak of “eschatology in the process of realization.” thus preserving the temporal element of the future in Jesus’ teaching. These scholarly interactions, which included reflection on rabbinic Judaism and the Dead Sea Scrolls, made eschatology a subject for exposition: was the son of man an apocalyptic figure or not? Some said yes (e.g., Schweitzer, Weiss, Bultmann [?]), then the tide turned to no (Vermes), then back again to yes for some, then back again to no for many members of the Jesus Seminar (the ‘enter-exit the apocalyptic son of man debate’). Of course, beginning in the late 1960’s, American dispensationalism began its march toward an indoctrination of all fundamentalism and Evangelicalism. While its success has been somewhat muted by Calvinism’s a-millennial thinking, Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth would eventuate into a non-stop proliferation of dates of Jesus’ return, and the publication of the best-selling books of all time, the Left Behind series.

All of this to say that the history of Christianity has been a reckoning with the eschatological implications of the Gospel. The problem is that transactional eschatologies like we find rampant in Second Temple Judaism, replete with judgements and determinations as to who goes where and what benefits or punishments are doled out have come into Christianity in a myriad of ways that include over-realized eschatologies (charismatics) to timetables (as in dispensationalism) to utopias (as in most forms of universalism). But rarely do eschatological visions (doctrines) have anything to do with this life.

Jesus’ eschatological vision was quite different. His was an ethical eschatology. He lived in the present the way he would live at the end. His is a life that is self-consistent, he is the “same yesterday, today and forever.” His eschatological vision of the reign of God, how God, whom he called his Abba, reigned in mercy and kindness and peacemaking led directly to his call to the peacemaking (pacifistic) life. It is impossible at this point to unknot Jesus’ eschatology and ethics, they are two sides of a coin. This is an implication that can be demonstrated over and over again in Jesus’ teaching.

Most of us on this page have rejected all forms of the penal substitution theory of Calvinism preferring a universalist approach based upon the later authentic Pauline letters (excluding I and 2 Thess, and the Pastorals). We have been able to show that there is nothing penal about the atonement. We hope to also show there is nothing penal about eschatology preferring to speak of restorative judgment rather than retributive judgment. And our vision of the ‘cosmic Christ’ or our exegesis of Christ as the Second Adam (Romans 5:12-21 where “all” means “all”) encourages us to consider that at the end all things will be put right, or so is our hope. And so we rightfully have rejected any theory that sees humans consciously being tortured for eternity.

However, most do not realize the implications for this life of having a universal eschatological salvific perspective. When the Risen Christ returns he says two
things:

  1. Peace
  2. Do not Fear

Have you ever wondered about this? The Risen Christ is the bringer of a message from beyond death and that message is good. It not only speaks peace but his very non judgmental presence is peace; from the perspective of Jesus, the disciples are still his little lambs. Second he tells them not to fear; for they had an eschatology of judgment and Jesus’ presence and word blows that eschatology away as wind blows fog away.

Peace is the final word. Peace, the making of peace between persons in relationship, the unity of all with all, this is the Gospel eschatological vision and it not only began in Jesus’ life but it continues in our lives. If you are a universalist you are de facto a pacifist. If we are not a pacifist in this life and we claim to be a universalist, our eschatological vision has no power, and we live a lie. Universal salvation (eschatological vision) and the ethical implications of that constitute the Christian Life.

If you claim to be a universalist and do not love your enemies in this life what good does it do you to be a universalist? If we seek retribution, reparation, tit for tat justice, if we engage in or justify the use of violent force in this life for ourselves or others we have no right to claim to be universalists. At best all we have is a “shoot to kill and let God sort it out at the end” eschatology.

So I challenge everyone who claims to be universalist to follow Jesus, to forgive the enemy, even if it means doing so all day long, seventy times seven. I challenge you not to take sides in mimetic conflicts but to find ways to be peacemakers. I urge you to live out your eschatological vision in the same manner as did Jesus of Nazareth. Turn your swords, your guns, your resentments, your griefs into plowshares and help illumine a peaceable kingdom.

(Register now for the class: Rene Girard and Nonviolent Atonement, taught by Michael Hardin, from October 7 to December 6th https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/offerings)

Bedrock

Guest blog by Brian Sartor

Celebrating twenty-five years of a critically acclaimed cult classic, New York Times movie critic Alissa Wilkinson’s “Here’s Why ‘The Matrix’ Is More Relevant Than Ever”[1] helped me reframe political polarization and family infighting in the Trump era. My twin brother, Brad, and I were of the same mind earlier in life. We were both in divinity school when The Matrix came out, thinking alike and voting alike. Twenty-five years before that, as monozygotic twins, for two weeks in utero we shared the exact same biological identity, a single fertilized egg, one human cell.

Now we no longer seem to share the same reality. For eight years we have debated each other over politics, philosophy, history, theology, and biblical interpretation. Deep scrutiny of our differences throughout the Trump era has exposed what cannot be denied: the guiding narrative of Christianity for us now appears to have two different meanings.

Wilkinson normalized this experience for me in the last line of her review: “…great art never has one fixed meaning, and because of that, it’s always a little dangerous.”[2] She refers to the alt-right’s use of the red-pill trope to meme their socio-political vision of reality, a national identity based on race. She also refers to other groups finding meaning in the film, including transgender people who take obvious nods from lines in the movie “about Neo’s very existence inside a literal binary system.” Whether the red pill awakens you to deep state control, gender binary, tech-saturated existence, woke corporate capitalism, or the patriarchy, Wilkinson says the identity of the false reality system, the matrix as one sees it, “depends, ironically enough, upon which system you’re most interested in dismantling.”[3]

According to this insight, two meaning systems in the same country, culture, church, or family see each other as a false meaning system to be dismantled. In such a scenario both factions forget that the common ground of a common identity is the only foundation for truth. Wilkinson notes an essential idea articulated by philosopher Jean Baudrillard upon whose thought The Matrix is based: “[I]t does no good to point out ‘the truth’ from within a system that denies or suppresses reality. In those circumstances, your only tool to combat oppression is violence. You can only fight nihilism with nihilism.”[4] Human freedom and difference implicitly subject us to futility and violence. Whenever art, or human meaning, is interpreted in a new way, the natural response to the split, like a newly divided zygote, is that the two cells define themselves in violent opposition to one another.

Wilkinson also notes that Baudrillard did not like The Matrix as it did not accurately represent his philosophical use for the concept of simulation. The writers of The Matrix themselves also parted ways with Baudrillard’s nihilism in their film script by allowing the power of love to have a reality-shaping role. The Matrix is latent with Christian imagery and symbolism and is therefore itself a new interpretation of an old meaning system, a modern narrative for an ancient faith.

Consistent with Baudrillard’s philosophy and Wilkinson’s point that the matrix “you see depends… upon which system you’re most interested in dismantling” is the observation that any new depiction of Christian meaning naturally opposes the older depiction, which counter-opposes the new, and both systems then lapse into twin forms of nihilism locked in opposition. Wilkinson layers in the interesting twist that during the past twenty-five years both writer-directors of the film, born biological brothers, surnamed Wachowski, have each come out as transgender women. One of the Wachowski sisters, Lilly, said, “[W]hile the ideas of identity and transformation are critical components in our work, the bedrock that all ideas rest upon is love.”[5]

This is certainly a Christian insight, but whenever we treat love as a categorical imperative, a universal ethic, or a fixed moral law, its unique power dissipates and leaves us with only a free-floating idea and not bedrock. There is no reason to assume that Lilly Wachowski or her sister, Lana, would disagree with the previous statement, but even alt-right nationalists could claim love as the bedrock of all ideas. Christian love is not an emotion, motive, intention, principle, nature, essence, ethic, law, abstraction, or absolute. Love, the bedrock of reality, much more than the summation of divine or human law, is always modeled and never coded.

Baudrillard is right: each system that denies or suppresses reality is simply its own matrix. Where love is merely the higher law of Christian humanism coded into a matrix, choosing that new “reality” over the old simulation is “to reject one narrative and adopt another.”  As Wilkinson says, “The red-pilled person is just accepting a new matrix.”[6]

Life imitates art, so while reading the last line of Wilkinson’s review, (“…great art never has one fixed meaning, and because of that, it’s always a little dangerous.”)[7] something clicked. I realized that twin brothers who take up Christianity believing its meaning is fixed will proceed to beat each other senseless trying to convince each other about what is true. Such violence can be avoided in one of two ways: 1) by both twins accepting the imposition of an arbitrating authority over the shared original (or other agreed upon) fixed meaning system, or 2) by at least one of the twins exercising the power to resist seeing Christianity as a fixed meaning system. The mode of operating to be resisted here, which is operating according to the letter of the law, includes making clear distinctions, identifying the self and the other according to those distinctions, and then defending the self, attacking the other, or both.

An alternative mode of operating, which is operating according to the spirit of the law, circumvents violence by exercising the power to operate directly according to love, not making distinctions and divisions by which to identify the self and the other. “Walking according to the spirit”[8] is a Christ-like mode of unity, resonance, and communion with God and the world. It is an experiential knowledge that grounds us, defines us, and identifies us, both the person and the newly formed human community. This tacit, embodied, and personal knowledge of God is an experience that cannot be transmitted through a fixed meaning system, nor can it be used to dominate the will of the other without being corrupted. The spirit of the law is therefore elusive to all systems and surprisingly diverse in both insight and application. Words, even creeds, cannot contain it. Ideas rest upon it and take flight. Systems, institutions, and “Christian” empires built by human hands remain external to it, easily ossify, and eventually fade away.

St Paul says that the (fixed) letter of the law kills while the spirit of the law (love) gives life. In Romans 2, in Romans 7, and in 2 Corinthians 3, Paul says:

“…he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter…”[9]

“…now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter.”[10]

“[God] made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life…”[11]

The spirit is wholly other than the letter of the law. One is a shadow or copy,[12] and the other is the real thing. The spirit of the firstborn divine-human person, as anticipated by ancient Israel, has written the law directly on our hearts.[13] There is nothing inherently wrong with the letter of the law written in stone, just as there is nothing inherently wrong with any outward national, ethnic, gendered, social, or cultural identity written in flesh or ink. However, these things are free-floating identity markers and not bedrock. The shared, personal, experiential, and embodied knowledge of God written on our hearts is bedrock. The original model of love, Jesus of Nazareth, the Anointed One, his spirit alive within us, his body, the ecclesia, is bedrock. Twins and diverse cultures therefore need not fight over fixed meaning. Jesus taught his disciples another way based on the bedrock of a personal identity: “Who do you say that I am?” [14]

There is still time and opportunity to approach all personal and political differences in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness—in true unity and freedom—not leaning on our own understanding, distinctions, and naturally opposed external identities. The real world has always implicitly subjected us to violence, but real-world freedom and diversity no longer necessarily lead to violence. When we start with a common identity grounded in the spirit and not in the letter of the law, the thin layers of futility crumble to expose bedrock. On that foundation, the oneness of a single human cell is a oneness that pales in comparison to what twins may experience after seventy-five or a hundred years of living. The entire human race and cosmos united through the Spirit of Christ as one body with many members may take a little longer than that. Either way, eight years of futility are a blip on the screen.

[1] Alissa Wilkinson, “Here’s Why ‘The Matrix’ Is More Relevant Than Ever”, The New York Times, July 31, 2024. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/31/movies/the-matrix-ai-film.html?unlocked_article_code=1._U0.YHLw.h0jchd2X93p-&smid=url-share

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Romans 8:4.

[9] Romans 2:28-29.

[10] Romans 7:6.

[11] 2 Corinthians 3:6.

[12] Hebrews 8:5; 9:24; 10:1.

[13] Jeremiah 31:31-34; 2 Corinthians 3:4-6.

[14] Matthew 16:15; Mark 8:29.