When You Arrive...

Not an especially theological theme today—although there is plenty to be theological about. Still not quite done with Stricken by God? yet, but I finished Brita Miko’s chapter the other day and read it again. Even though her’s is a narrative approach and dramatic, I was moved by the way she wrestles with the call for us to forgive as Christ does. I think, for me, it speaks in this way: when I move to a theological position, part of the struggle is understanding and accepting the practical ramifications of the position. And the non-violent love and forgiveness of God is packed with practical application.

I guess tonight I feel a little more devotional and personal. Miko’s chapter realized in me my own struggle with forgiveness. Basically her point is if the point of the cross is forgiveness, then Christ’s call to pick up our crosses means he is truly showing us how to live (forgiving as we’re crucified) as Christians. In her essay she wrestles with God’s offering forgiveness to a serial killer in her town.

I’ve been preaching (I have to admit, some of my best work) through Matthew and focusing on the profound counter-cultural, counter-political, even counter-ethical impact of Jesus’ life. My point has been that Jesus life and teaching is a critique of the world’s ways of doing things and EVERYTHING he does challenges EVERYTHING we already think. Inherent in that is a call to love, forgive, and refrain from judgment as Christ did and does. On a daily basis, I’m getting there. But I’m realizing just how much I’ve struggled with the events of my recent past.

Let me put it this way…the other day my closest friend called and asked how I was doing. I told him our church is doing well, we’re growing, we’ve improved financially (drastically), and we’re moving into a bigger location. They’re open to my preaching and I’m free to explore the Bible the way I read it. I don’t know where I’d find this kind of freedom in the pulpit anywhere in the area we moved from. I couldn’t ask for a better situation.

Furthermore, I told him I’m doing some adjunct teaching and it looks like it’s only going to open into more. I’m doing Old Testament Survey and have developed the course into an online course, so I’ll be doing the hybrid AND online Old Testament Survey course. This November I’ll do Old Testament Survey AND Life of Christ (I’m excited about that one) and I’ve worked with the guy writing the curriculum to develop a postmodern approach to it. I’ve even developed a pretty decent beginning to a friendship with him. Next spring I’ll be doing Understanding the Bible, and later Biblical Theology. As an adjunct in a new program, I couldn’t ask for a better situation.

On top of it, I explained that I’m doing some writing. I’m even publishing an article in Christian Standard November 2. I love writing, but until now I hadn’t met anyone who was very enthusiastic about my writing. It’s an opportunity to explore that option, something I’ve always wanted to do. I couldn’t ask for a better situation.

As our conversation went on I finally said, “Paul, I don’t know. I seem to be at the beginning, having opportunities I always wanted. I think I might be happy.” He laughed and said it sounded like I was waiting for it to fall apart. It was then that I realized that he is right. I am waiting for everything to fall apart. I’m not saying everything is perfect all the time, but I’m beginning to realize some dreams and I’m truly enjoying using all my gifts to do kingdom work. So I had to ask myself, “Why AM I also so scared?” Why is it that I keep putting pressure on myself not to make any mistake? The truth is, when I do make mistakes, I find myself panicking, expecting people to lose respect for me and pull their support—expecting them to question me at every turn and to oppose me publicly. And yet, the people around me continue to show me patience and support. I’m just still unsure how to handle it.

I think I know why. My last work experience was a negative one. I dealt with being judged, being denied forgiveness, and being constantly questioned as far as my maturity, dignity, and faith. As a result, I’m constantly waiting for failure and struggling with self-doubt where I am now.

Here’s the problem. Even though I’m now realizing the three biggest dreams I’ve had, I still struggle to be Christlike about the men who passed judgment on me and who caused me and my family so much pain. I still struggle with hoping that they fail and that they run into the kind of barriers to their success that they threw up in front of me.

However, when Jesus was on the cross he looked down at the people who were torturing him to death and made this statement, “Father, forgive them, because they don’t know what they are doing.” Now that I understand that the cross is not about God’s anger, but about mine, I realize that he is talking also about me. He is offering forgiveness to me. He is offering it to everyone. And his call to those who would follow him is to pick up a cross and do likewise. That means that my call is to forgive even those men who crucified me.

Why is that a problem? They aren’t crucifying me now. They don’t even think about me now. And, truthfully, God’s taken that screwed-up mess and made it 1000x better than it would have been if I’d had what I wanted there! (The only drawback is that we deeply miss some of the relationships we had in that place.) I’m doing everything I wanted to do (I’m not saying I’ve reached the end, but that I’m on the way to being who I really want to be). My family’s ENTIRE situation is better now. My crucifixion is over. Why is it that I still haven’t repeated Jesus’ words of forgiveness for my torturers? Why do I still relive it? Why do I still sometimes hope for their failure?

So, here goes. I forgive them. I recognize in them what God sees—limitless worth. Are they perfect? No. Does God love them even so? Absolutely. Does he want me to? Um,………….. well……………..yes. I don’t trust them and don’t want a close relationship. But I love them and forgive them (forgiveness and reconciliation are just not the same thing--until you get to Miroslov's chapter, and one of his comments that stood out to me is that complete forgiveness isn't really possible until justice is at least recognized). At any rate, I hope they succeed in Christ.

But I’ve been here already. Many times. And here’s my real struggle. I have every reason to believe I will be again. Because the truth is that forgiveness is possible, forgetting isn’t. And I can’t forget. I can’t wipe it away. And there are moments when it still hurts. Floods of emotion return especially when I have victories. That’s the most bitter part of it. When I should be really happy because of a success, I find myself saying, “See, you were wrong about me. What did you know? I CAN do it. I’m NOT who you said I was.” And what should be great moments become bitter moments.

I think I’ve concluded that, even though I’m moving in this non-violent direction, I’m still a violent person at heart. But what Miko proved to me is summed up in this quote in which she wrestles with God’s forgiveness of someone who would destroy someone else over and against her own desire to enact revenge upon the destroyer. I’m changing it in brackets to reflect my own struggle.

“I need you [she’s speaking to God] to be like me. We cannot be gracious to the one who annihilates the vulnerable. We cannot be gracious to these destroyers. Do you understand me, God? Do you know what you do? What is inside [them], is inside me. I could kill. I could kill even God, because of my beliefs.

“I do not want to have only these two choices.

“Your forgiveness would mean I either satiate my need for justice by killing you, or I forgive [them] with you and die myself. Your forgiveness leaves me with only two options. I become like [them] or I become like you. This is not what I want. I want a third option to be that we damn [them—or rather that they fail the way they set me up to fail]. You and I survive and [they fail]. (pg. 246, Brita Miko’s chapter in Stricken by God?).”

Of course, I can’t hope for their failure. That’s not forgiveness. Isn’t that what Jesus meant when he told his followers to deny themselves, pick up their crosses, and follow him? Doesn’t following him to the cross mean following him ON the cross? Doesn’t it mean that I MUST, somehow, move past these feelings that return all the time to me, and find a way to love them even though they STILL don’t recognize how they hurt me and my family? I think it does. But, honestly, I don’t even know if it’s possible. Somehow I’ve got to respond to them with the part of me that they didn’t damage, the part that God is using even now. And I’ve got to heal from all of that.

I feel like I’m finally arriving now. It’s like I’m finally becoming what I might actually be best at. And I’ve wondered for years what it would be like to have the options just open up and things start happening. I never dreamed it would be so bittersweet. And what makes it that is not what is good and noble and true, but the damage done to me from the past. Jesus, however, when he rose from the dead didn’t walk around with a chip on his shoulder towards the people who crucified him (me). He simply forgave them. He showed me how to get past it. I know I need to. I think I want to. I just don’t know if I can.

My prayer, Jesus, is just please help me be more like you.

Stricken by God?

I have to admit that I have different reactions when I open up a new book and start to interact with it. For instance, I’ve been using a book for my Old Testament class at ACC by Ronald Youngblood. When I first opened it and read the chapter titles, the book told me what to expect—and as I plodded through it, it did not surprise me. It’s the same old classic Calvinistic approach to sovereignty and election—and it makes the classic mistake in Old Testament studies of assuming you can understand it in its own context apart from a Christocentric emphasis. Even my students have commented that it has very little to do with my class.

The book I’m reading right now, Stricken by God? Nonviolent Identification and the Victory of Christ, is providing exactly the opposite experience. The book is deconstructing the classical Anselmian view of the atonement (propitiation), also known as the Penal Substitution view. That view states that God, in response to sin, is full of wrath. This wrath is the kind that can only be satisfied through violent retributive justice towards those who have incurred it. Thus, God is violently angry at sinners—but has mercifully offered the solution to that situation in the suffering of his son. In that event, God fully unleashed his wrath upon Jesus—Jesus stood in the way and “took our punishment” on himself. Few verses provide more impetus for this view than the suffering servant passage of Isaiah 53:4.

I’ve had the book on my currently reading list for several weeks, but have only just now had time to really open it. And I was looking forward to it. But having only competed one chapter, not only am I looking forward to it—I believe it may be a life-changing type of read for me (similar to what happened when I began reading the open theists). And the list of authors (including N.T. Wright, Richard Rohr, C.F.D. Moule, and Miroslav Volf) intensifies the anticipation of the great things to come (not to mention the blurbs from René Girard, Stanley Hauerwas, Brian McLaren, and my favorite, Gregory A. Boyd). It is doubtful I could find a book with as many exciting theologians.

Brad Jersak—editing with Michael Hardin, opens up with a chapter explaining the title of the book beautifully. He defines the theological stakes, “In the midst of our wondering, we run into a relatively recent dogmatization of penal substitution as the evangelical atonement creed. No longer content to call it a theory, many preach it as the required content of belief in order to be ‘saved.(18-19)’” And songs like “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us” and “In Christ Alone” ("and on the cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied") emphasize how deeply this doctrine has been ingrained in our theology. But should it be?

Jersak establishes these three themes in the book as a challenge to penal substitution: 1) God’s nonviolence in Christ at the cross—this is especially relevant when one considers how much nonviolence is a part of Jesus’ teaching, 2) Christ’s identification with humanity in incarnation and suffering, 3) the victory of Christ over Satan, sin, and death (19).

To me, the most exciting of those themes is identification, as this has been a theme of my own theology and teaching for some time. Later in the chapter, Jersak discusses the notion of God “turning his face away” from Jesus on the cross as he cried “eloi, eloi, lama sabacthani.” For some time, I’ve been teaching that Jesus is not responding to God’s absence from him but is identifying with the human condition as it is expressed in Psalm 22. Jesus is fully experiencing death, suffering, and the violence of our sinful world. Jersak defines that thought on page 37-38.

Most exciting, however, is his treatment of the suffering servant passage. On page 29 he begins to deconstruct the traditional juridical understanding of sin and punishment. He charges that sin is NOT something that God cannot see or look at—this would remove God’s knowledge of MOST of history! Hence, the cross is not a case of God’s punishment, but of his healing of our sin (31). God is not acting his violence out on his son instead of us—he is suffering in an experience of our situation in order to defeat it and heal it. He is identifying with us this way:

• “At the Cross, Christ identifies and unites with all humanity in his incarnation and identifies with every victim (crying, ‘My God, my God’ with all who have experienced abandonment) and perpetrator (‘he numbered himself with the transgressors’).
  
• “We begin appropriately by identifying with those who crucified him. We put him there. Isaiah 53—we thought he was smitten by God, but it was our sins that put him there.
  
• “We repent by choosing to identify instead with Christ in his commitment to actively resist the powers, but in his way (nonviolently and with forgiveness). Not the substitution of him dying instead of us or experiencing God’s active punishment for us, but rather, dying with him (Romans 6) so that we might also live with him… (32)”

In the cross, rather than the violent retribution of God , we see the response of humanity to the message of God’s love. As Irenaeus said, God “does not use violent means to obtain what he desires…(34).” It is people who are violent. And the Bible is very clear that it is not God who is crucifying Jesus, it is humanity!

As I said, I am excited for what this book has in store. Jersak’s deconstruction of the classical interpretation of Isaiah 53:3-5 (36) is a simple yet brilliant reason why I think this book is going to be life-changing! Highly recommended!

The Cost of Discipleship

Not a very theological theme today. But here’s what you get after a week of vacation.

Leaving vacation at the beach last Saturday was, as usual, inevitable yet excruciating. For me, the bottom line had as much to do with returning to work and reality as anything else. The rhythm of the waves, salt air, and near constant breeze of the Atlantic was invigorating. I didn’t want to return.

For me and my family, though, the real problem was leaving family. We stayed at Myrtle Beach with my in-laws, my kids' grandparents, aunts, and uncles. We hadn’t seen most of them for over a year—and one of them for over two years! Spending the week with them was wonderful, though not without all those little family hiccups that we’re all familiar with. And I’m willing to admit that the family hiccups are one of the things that make the experience so great.

Yet the time came, once again, to leave. As the week wore on we could feel it coming. By Friday, even the fun activities we did were tinged with sadness. We made statements like, “well, it’s our last trip to the beach,” and, “let’s hit the hot-tub one more time before we leave.” And by Saturday, we sort of waited for the inevitable moment when we’d drive away in different directions, not knowing when we’d be together again.

Myself…I’m used to it. I grew up a preacher’s kid, so I know what it is to say goodbye to family. In fact, I was always surprised to meet people who’d lived near their grandparents their whole lives. As a child, I learned little tricks for how to survive those sad goodbyes. You make jokes, tell yourself you’ll see them again, and talk about how much fun you had. Then you cry silently on the way home.

My kids, however, are still rookies at it. And between the two, my son is the most expressive. I watched this time as we tore them away from grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. My son’s face reflected a sort of depressed acceptance. He tried hard to control his sadness and, eventually, simply lost. He cried with each goodbye hug and nodded at whatever words people tried to comfort him with. My daughter, a few years younger and less comfortable expressing her sadness in public, resolutely held her ground—refusing to cry. She smiled, told silly jokes, hugged everyone , and avoided eye contact. I had to say, between the two I probably behave more like Grace. But Christian expressed my feelings.

When we got in the car and started to drive away, Christian could barely contain himself. He was crying hard. We looked back at Gracie and she had finally given in . Her face was contorted and sad and she was genuinely sobbing. Finally, Christian’s grief turned to anger. He slammed his fists down and he screamed, “I’m sick of living away from my family! I hate it!” We’ve moved them now twice, ripping them from family and friends in our desire to minister.

I didn’t want him to feel that way. But what could I say? Was he wrong to feel that way, if only for a moment? And, did I feel any differently? I didn’t. In fact, Christian and Grace were expressing what we were all feeling. It was the natural pain that comes with being ripped away from people you love. It shreds you inside and tears your heart to pieces. And it begs the question: why? Why walk away from family and friends to pursue a job, a few of the descriptions of which might read:

Little to no job security
Low pay
Unlimited hours
Travel required?

Now, I love my job and I love the church I serve. I am glad to be here and many of my dreams are coming true! But I have to admit that, sometimes, it seems like it would be easier to just quit and go home. It would be financially easier to just get a secure job doing something I’m not crazy about but that paid well. Why do it? Why agree to break our hearts over and over? Why pursue this crazy lifestyle?

I guess, the bottom line is, Jesus promised we’d suffer as Christians. And he promised that doing ministry would hurt. It calls for sacrifice. It calls for pain. It calls for risk. It’s the cost of following. Jesus said that whoever does not hate his father and mother for his sake was not worthy of his kingdom. I don’t hate them. But I’m willing to lose them if he wants me to. And in Philippians 3:8 Paul said that he considered all of the things he gave up when he came to Christ to be skybalon, which literally means crap. He considered everything he lost to be nothing—it’s all sewage—compared to knowing Jesus. And, I believe Paul was right. Even though it hurts to leave, it’s really no sacrifice at all. Jesus is worth it. He deserves it. He deserves a whole lot more than that. So, I guess bring it on. I’m ready to give more.

Jesus for President

Just a note to the faithful few who still check up on this blog. As you can see, I've been a bit too preoccupied with other things to do much blogging. In fact, I'm not getting a whole lot done very quickly any more. My reading is at a slow crawl right now. I've found that the preaching/teaching thing is pretty time-consuming.

I'm reading a book I picked up at BN last week, Jesus for President. It's not especially heavy reading (not compared to some of the other stuff I'm reading). It's also put together in a format that is postmodern and visually interesting. Dare I call it "emegent?" The book is a critique of contemporary American Christian idolatry. Here are a few quotes. To find the book, look in my currently reading list and click the link.

"So can you pick up what we're putting down, smell what we are stepping in? Jesus would make for a bad president. It's hard to imagine Jesus wearing a 'God bless Rome' T-shirt and promoting his campaign with stickers and buttons and a hundred-million-dollar campaign. And he would be considerably uncomfortable as commander in chief of the largest military in the world. Nevertheless, he was political. All of his titles granted him political authority. Calling hm Messiah or Lord is like acclaiming him--unlikely as it is--as president. He was the president who did not want to be a president. His politics aspired to something different from state power (86)."

"Author and professor Walter Wink does brilliant work exploring Jesus' creativity in his teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, especially in the familiar 'turn the other cheek' verses (Matt. 5:38-42). Wink points out that Jesus was not suggesting that we let people sadistically step all over us. Jesus taught enemy love with imagination. He gave three real examples of how to interact with our adversaries. In each instance, Jesus points us toward disarming others. Jesus teaches us to refuse to oppos evil on its own terms. He invites us to transcend both passivity and violence a third way (92)."

At any rate, it's been an interesting side read so far.

Jason

Sorry No New Posts

If you're one of the few who checks back on the Abyss every now and then, you've probably noticed I haven't posted anything for a while. I've been really busy with a part-time teaching gig I picked up on top of my ministry. Also, I'm going to be teaching this Summer as an adjunct at Atlanta Christian College, so I'm going to remain busy.

But I have a few thoughts about things I've read recently and I'll probably post something soon!

Thanks!

Jason

Deconstructing an Anti-modern

One of the most important classes I took in my Master's degree dealt with modernity and postmodernity as meta-mindsets. The instructor, my advisor, demonstrated a brilliant understanding of postmodernism's root in modern rationalism.

As I went through that class, he presented a V-shaped chart to explain the progress. Across the top were five "mindsets." First was the naive premodern, second the premodern (or willful premodern), third the modern, fourth the anti-modern, and fifth, the postmodern. Moving down from the top left of the chart, a line shows the progression of philosophical thought through these columns as those who began as naive premoderns came to embrace the enlightenment experiment and modernity as a philosophy. However, as modern philosophies (such as logical positivism) took their toll, postmodernism was the end result. The line moves to the bottom of the page, past the point of despair to complete postmodernism. This line downward remains under the label of the modern mindset.

From there, he posits that many people reconstruct a metaphysic and move from the position of postmodernism under the modern mindset to a postmodern mindset which no longer holds to that complete subjectivity. The postmodern mindset still recognizes the questions and issues of modernity, but no longer trusts modernity to solve the problems it claims to solve. The class was brilliant!


However, I think one of the most interesting concepts I encountered in the class was the mindset of the "antimodern." To my instructor, the antimodern was the Christian who, because he had dealt with the questions posited by modernity, could no longer be a premodern. But in many ways, the anti-modern should be seen as someone who embraces the mindest of modernity in order to break down its foundation. The study of apologetics is an anti-modern endeavor, it attempts to call into question modern philosophy on its own basis and prove Christianity according to modern standards.


When I first went to Bible college, apologetics was one of my most passionate interests. Without really knowing what it meant, I had embraced the mindset of the anti-modern. My goal was to provide rational and empirical evidence which would be undeniable and would compell reasonable people to believe. I really intended to construct a modern argument proving why the gospel message was absolutely compelling and impossible to deny. As anyone who has read my blog can see, I abandoned that endeavor some time between my junior year of college and my first year of graduate school. At some point I acknowledged that it isn't possible to work in the realm of "knowledge." That being said, I really consider my change in this area to be growth.


One of the apologists who I have listened to and appreciated for years is Ravi Zacharias. In fact, for a few years I had pipe-dreams of doing something similar to what he does, as much of his work is an anti-modern critique of postmodernism as a philosophy. There is no question that he understands postmodernism and sees its faults. However, I no longer feel that the apologetic approach is the way to get at postmodernism. Here is why: the whole notion of apologetics, to me, is an attempt to prove that scripture measures up to modern thought when, in truth, modern thought ought to be measured against scripture. The anti-modern mindset really is rooted in modern rationalism more so than in scripture, in that it takes seriously enough the claims of modernity to force scripture to measure up to it.

A two-part message on Ravi's podcast, which was actually delivered several years ago, was called Cultural Relativism and the Emasculation of Truth . In it, Ravi began unpacking the issue of truth in our time. He delivered three reasons why the world has been led into falsehood in our time. The most wonderful was the first: that reason has replaced revelation. He, correctly, traces the beginning of the enlightenment experiment to Kant, who set in motion the wheels of modernity in his claim that all that can be known is phenomena. Of course, Kant still believed in the noumena. But as modernity went on, those who followed gradually removed the supernatural from the discussion altogether. At the end of the 19th century, it was Nietzsche who came out and blatantly said that it was now up to mankind to deliver an ethic apart from any supernatural influence. God was dead, we had killed him. Now it was time for the superman to come forward and create a new world.

Ravi, also, correctly pinpointed the real issue in that point. It is that Kant really isn't the forerunner of that line of thinking. In fact, it goes all the way back to Genesis 3. The fundamental mistake was to look inward for a sense of right and wrong rather than to trust what God had said was true. This is why the serpent asks, "Did God really say you would die if you ate from this tree?"

Ravi's first point in this lecture was, I think, brilliant. The goal is to move to scripture, to begin with scripture as a starting point in theology. From there, it is possible to build a system which is, really, self-authenticating. In this way, I thought Ravi was consistent with a most post-modern of all theological movements, Radical Orthodoxy.

However, his second point disappointed me because it displayed a massive anti-modern influence. The first problem was that reason had replaced revelation. The second was that truth has been subverted by agnosticism. Here is why I find this interesting. In a sense, Ravi's first point is an attempt to abandon Kantian thinking and begin with scripture as a foundation rather than rationalism. It doesn't really try to address Kant as much as to leave him behind. To my mind, however, the second point is really an abandonment of the first point.

His goal in the second is to prove that we CAN have knowledge. Of course, the Kantian definition is that knowledge is "justified, true belief." In this definition, especially in metaphysics, knowledge is really impossible. This is why agnosticism has become so popular. In this, I don't think Ravi is far off. The Kantian idea about knowledge has caused problems. But, is the solution to insist on our ability to "know?"

Scripture, of course, uses the word "knowledge" a lot, even in reference to our knowing God. However, I think the line is blurry between the relational and rational notions of knowledge in scripture. Is the Bible referring to our ability to know God or know of him? The first is relational, the second rational. To my mind, the Bible concentrates on the first, the relational knowledge. The second, the rational, I think is exemplified in the cry one man made to Jesus, "I believe...help my unbelief!" It really isn't possible, in a modern sense, to come to knowledge about God. This is what faith is: belief even in the admission that "I don't know with certainty."

What I thought was strange about Ravi's second point was how often he equivocated rational knowledge with belief. His point was that when we rule out rational knowing, we have ruled out the ability to believe in anything. But I think he's wrong! Postmoderns, those moving from modernity (especially from postmodernism), are re-embracing faith but still affected by modern ideas about knowledge. In other words, just because I claim it isn't possible to KNOW something, doesn't mean I can't BELIEVE it! In fact, I think faith is only possible in the absence of knowledge!

Oh, anyway...I'm not sure that came across. I guess my point is that I can see that the anti-modern may never really click with postmodern culture. While Ravi, in his genius, will continue to be a favorite of mine, I have to admit I don't think he and I would ever be on the same page. Interestingly, where I now live is about 40 minutes from his headquarters! If ever the opportunity came to meet him, I now have it. But, interestingly, I feel further now from his thinking than I ever did.

Later.

William Hasker, "Persons as Emergent Substances"

One of the issues I have been most interested in the past few years has been the theological understanding of anthropology. How does one define a human being scripturally and philosophically? My fascination and opinion on this began in my undergraduate studies, when I wrote a paper on the dichotomy vs. trichotomy issue for a theology class. The options presented to me in that class for a biblical anthropology were dichotomy (human beings are made up of body and soul/spirit—two separate things) and trichotomy (human beings are made up of soul, spirit, and body—three separate things). As I recall, the battles were heated, though in retrospect there is precious little difference between either of those views. They are both rooted in Cartesian dualism.

In my paper, I actually began to depart from that thinking. I proposed a third possibility, which really began as little more than a redefinition of terms but actually set me on the road to thinking about anthropology from a radically different perspective. I proposed that the term “soul” was a reference to the “whole person,” which is how man can become a “living soul” in Genesis. The term “spirit” was a reference to the spiritual part of a human, and the body was the body. At the time, I had not radically departed from the dualist interpretation, but the definition of the terms paved the way for my departure.

In the Christmas series I preached in December of 2007, I proposed a radically different understanding of the incarnation of Christ based on a completely different anthropological understanding (you can go here to subscribe to those podcasts—the series was called “The Theology of Christmas”). My understanding of anthropology, though, was not born in December of ’07, but evolved over the years from my original dualism.

My current concept of humanity is that people can only be understood properly in the context of the physical body. The notion that who we really are is our “souls” or “spirits” (loosely thought of as a kind of “ghost” which animates our physical shells) does not really seem like the understanding developed in scripture to me. We are created to be physical, we live physically, and we are destined to be in eternity physically. We are physical people. Hence, while the terms in my paper did begin my journey toward this view, they did not encapsulate it. In my anthropology, based largely on the creation account of Genesis, man is primarily physical (God formed man of the dust of the earth) with a “spirit” breathed into him. The “spirit” must be defined, and it really never is in the Bible. I have defined it to myself as “personality.” God “breathed” personhood into the man when he animated the lifeless body. The “spirit” isn’t really a ghost, but the ability to think, feel, and relate. It is something special which not every physical body (as in the animals) has in equal proportions, but it is not a ghost. This spiritual body is called the “soul” in Genesis. It is not two parts, but a single entity. It is a physical body which operates on a spiritual level.

I think this view is not only a better understanding scripturally, it is also a better understanding from the view of modern science. Scientifically, the function of the brain for thought, emotion, and even ethics has been empirically verified. This article in TIME magazine is a great example of the physiological root of human ethics. My graduate advisor at LCS has also done a lot of research into this topic. He has published his own conclusions about this, and has influenced my thinking as well.

This, of course, does not fly with many, many people! But, it is the view I have. Until very recently I had not read a lot that interacted with it, and then I opened up a book I’d been putting off for some time. A few Christmases ago, I’d gotten the book edited by Kevin Corcoran, Soul, Body, and Survival: Essays on the Metaphysics of Human Persons. It is a collection of essays from primarily three perspectives: Cartesian dualism, physicalism, and the unity view. I have to admit, I am glad to have finally explored this book.

Interestingly, the chapter I enjoyed the most was by William Hasker, who has written a lot from the perspective of Open Theism (is it any wonder I like him?). He did a chapter called “Persons as Emergent Substances.” His argument is that, basically, physicalism (materialism) and dualism are up against series crises. He proposes a third option, the Middle Way.

The purely physicalist interpretation, which might be what my view above sounds like—though I don’t mean it to—is seen as inadequate. It doesn’t account for “the phenomena of mind (108).” Furthermore, he feels the view is going to be completely out of vogue very soon as “ethics, religion, metaphysics, and science all go about their business largely untroubled by the positivist assault, which is well on its way to becoming a distant memory (108).” In other words, logical positivism (empiricism) is on its way out. So goes materialism. Perhaps.

His critique of dualism is much more fun. I’m including some quotes which may help outline some of his thought.

“My complaints against Cartesian dualism are basically two. The first is that it cannot plausibly account for the extensive and intimate dependence of mind on brain that we find to exist. Some forms of dependence, of course, are readily understandable on Cartesian assumptions. The immaterial mind will be dependent on the brain as the channel for sensory information, and as the control center for bodily movement. It is therefore to be expected that sensory and motor capacities will be brain-dependent, and that impairment of brain function will interfere with those capacities. But why should consciousness itself be interrupted by a blow to the head, or dose of medication? And why should a personality be drastically altered—sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently—by injury to the brain or chemical inbalance in the brain? (112)”

“the functioning of the brain, and indeed of quite specific regions within the brain, is required for and intimately involved in some highly sophisticated mental processes; we do not have a situation, as Cartesian dualism might lead us to suppose, in which the body and brain merely serve up raw perceptual data which is then understood and interpreted by the immaterial mind. I believe, therefore, that an adequate theory of mind must allow for the dependence of mental activity upon brain function in a way that is stronger than Cartesian dualism can readily accommodate (112).”

“Cartesian souls, of course, cannot be replicated through biological reproduction; they must be directly created by God. And, given the universal divine activity of conservation, they are ‘naturally immortal.’ This fact seemed to Descartes good reason to deny souls to the beasts; thus his infamous doctrine that animals are mere atomata. Surely we cannot follow Descartes on this; a contemporary Cartesian must assign souls to the animals as well as to human beings (113).” Interestingly, I think scripture does as well. Genesis 9:10 refers to the animals as “living creatures” in the English translations, but the Hebrew is “nephesh” or “souls.” Also, I think Romans 8 paints a picture of the realm of nature waiting for its redemption. There will be animals in heaven, I think. They, too, are souls. Yet, I am not tempted to become a vegetarian, yet.

I began to be uncomfortable with Hasker at this point, “There is need, in short for a middle way in the philosophy of mind, a perspective which reduces the gulf between mind and matter without doing violence to the nature of either (114).” At first I thought he was looking for some type of “hypostatic union,” which is an idea about Christology which I have largely abandoned. But, I was pleased to read a much different idea.

“Cartesian dualism simply accepts the chasm, postulating the soul as an entity of a completely different nature than the physical, an entity with no essential or internal relationship to the body, which must be added to the body ab extra by a special divine act of creation. This scheme is not without initial plausibility from a theistic point of view, but I believe it carries with it insuperable difficulties. (paragraph break) In rejecting such dualisms, we implicitly affirm that the human mind is produced by the human brain and is not a separate element ‘added to’ the brain from outside. This leads to the further conclusion that mental properties are ‘emergent’ in the following sense: they are properties that manifest themselves when the appropriate mental constituents are placed in special highly complex relationships but which are neither observable in simpler configurations nor derivable from properties which are thus observable (115-116).”

I like this idea, but it is still not complete. “A conscious experience simply is a unity, and to decompose it into a collection of separate parts is to falsify it. So it is not enough to say that there are emergent properties here; what is needed is an emergent individual, a new individual entity which comes into existence as a result of a certain functional configuration of the material constituents of the brain and nervous system (116).”

The problems Hasker claims to solve are these: “This theory makes intelligible, as Cartesian dualism does not, the intimate dependence of consciousness and mental processes on brain function. And, finally, it is completely free of embarrassment over the souls of animals. Animals have souls, just as we do...(117)”

Hasker is becoming one of my favorites. A look at my wish list reveals a few of his books I’m looking for. I really feel that in this chapter all that is needed is a re-deployment of terminology and he would be very close to the anthropology I have posited. The “soul” which is commonly used in philosophical theology, and which he also uses, for “mind” I think should be the “consciousness” or the “unity,” the whole person. What he calls “soul,” I call the “spirit.” If the brain produces mind or spirit, what emerges then is “soul” or the unity.

One last implication before I trudge off to go to sleep. If the Cartesian view of creation of new people is true, one wonders why God participates in giving souls to people born to terrible situations. It seems to me that when two people produce a child, they are in fact producing a new soul completely apart from the decision or will of God. God gave us the ability to create new people entirely. They are souls without his immediate participation, but he participates by creating the system in which they can be created by people. Furthermore, if technology is developed which would clone humans, I believe the cloned humans would be genetically similar to their hosts, but would be different souls—not soulless creatures similar to the “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” scenario. In this way, this anthropological view is more closely in line with Open Theism. Perhaps this is why Hasker and I are intrigued by it.

Anyway, it is an interesting idea. I still wonder if Hasker’s view doesn’t differ very strongly from my view of unity. If it does, I’m tempted to move to Hasker’s view. The bottom line is I don’t think we are as much a mixture of different parts as the dualists have made us out to be. We are a unity of things, and that unity is really inseparable. The dichotomy/trichotomy issue is an internal struggle of the dualists. I have abandoned that discussion.

Much of the book deals with the ramifications of these ideas on resurrection. Truthfully, I don’t really have a lot of questions about that, but I do think the contributors have adequately defended the resurrection value of my view.

At any rate, I heartily recommend this book to those of you who are dealing with this topic in your thinking.

Boyd, Prayer, and God's Will

I was visiting with a dear, sweet lady from our church who has been dealing with cancer for many years. Recently she underwent a very drastic surgical procedure in an attempt to remove the cancer from her body. She has been recovering for weeks but is still in a nursing home. The surgery caused a minor stroke, she lost use of one of her arms, a leg, as well as a portion of her personal dignity. For what it's worth, I think she's been wishing that she had not done the surgery at all.

On one of my first visits to her since she was transferred form the hospital to a nurshing home, she looked up at me and asked me, "Jason, you don't think God did this to me, do you?" Wow, what an interesting question. How to answer?

Well, I have to admit the answer wasn't difficult for me at all. I have a lot of thoughts on this, and a very strong opinion. At the nursing home that day was not the place for a passionate theological treatise, I knew my answer needed to provide comfort and help. So I told her, "No, God did not do this to you. But the wonderful thing is, he is experiencing it with you and loving you. He knows what it is to endure pain and indignity." Of course, God did NOT do this to her. To my mind, the answer is simply that God has created an open system in which free choice can happen, has happened, and has introduced evil and suffering into the system. From there, bad things happen because people choose to do them and because nature responds according to its programming, which allows for random evils like sickness and tragedy. There are coincidences! God is working within that system, but not in any way which overrides human free will. God does not have a specific reason for allowing suffering or causing it--instead he accepts it as a part of the situation and works within those events to bring good out of them. The ultimate answer, of course, is that he deals with the situation of our pain and suffering by enduring it--on the cross.

Let me try another explanation. In a system in which people are free to make decisions, if person a and person b both desire to be in one place at one time, without knowing the other is there or wants that, there will likely be an accident. This does not mean that God decided for there to be an accident, but that those people, coincidentally, decided to be there. Think about it. In a system in which there are billions of free agents and a natural system in which natural things operate according to programming among those free agents, why must accidents and problems be attributed to divine will? Existence really a chaos of sorts. So is it surprising that things happen which are good and things happen which are bad?

This makes it impossible to know with certainty that God has acted in a certain situation. I heard a guy on a Christian radio station the other day telling a story about a man who sold his home--shortly before the land was taken over by the government. The preacher insisted that this was a proof of God's involvement, that God's plan was working out for this person. Perhaps! I have to admit it could be the case. But must it necessarily be? Not to mention the fact that in saving this man from the problem, God subjected another to it. What about the fact that in a system in which sometimes people buy, sometimes people sell, and sometimes the government takes over land--in a large system in which these things happen all over the place on a daily basis--is it really so hard to believe that it might be a coincidence that the man sold his house shortly before the government took it over (and another bought his house shortly before the government took it over--the same house)? There simply MUST be a capacity for coincidence in an open system. There CANNOT be freedom if there are NO ACCIDENTS.

But I have to admit also that I don't think a lot of the people I know would have been able to answer it the same way I did. Good Arminian theologians, raised and educated in Arminian tradition have prescribed to the position which says that everything which happens has a specific pre-ordained purpose in the plan of God. They say that either God "allowed" it for a purpose or "caused" it for a purpose. Both of these, I think, are biblically and intellectually unintelligible. How do you tell someone that God's plan and intention was for them to suffer in this way to bring about some good? Why do you tell them that? What is the purpose?

I know I mention him a lot, but it always amazes me how often I listen to or read Greg Boyd and discover our similarity on an issue. He has been preaching on the Lord's Prayer in Luke and has done three sermons (as of the writing of this post only two have been podcasted, but I assume the third will be available this week). They are available on the Woodland Hills Church podcast (follow the link on the left under Theo's Podcast Picks). The first message, "The Insane Importance of Prayer," introduces the ideas. But it is "Scorpions, Eggs, and Prayer" which really begins to get at the heart of this issue.

He asks, "Why is it that Jesus promises that if someone asks for an egg the Father will not give them a scorpion but that sometimes it looks exactly that way?" Sometimes bad things happen to us even when we pray that they do not. He examines two classic answers in that message. The first is that it was God's will for us to endure the problem. The second is that our faith was insufficient. In Greg's words: "The first is God's fault, the second is our fault." Both of these answers he finds insufficient.

Boyd's answer is that both of these answers are too simplistic. They attribute all causes of effects to only one variable. In the first case, that everything which happens is the will of God, the only variable is God's will. This means that there is no freedom and the system is closed. This is Calvinism at its worst--but it is still the answer of choice even for many of my Arminian friends. In the second case, that everything which happens is dependent on my faith, the only variable is FAITH.

Here is a great example he uses. Say that a parent prays that his child, who has grown to adulthood and left the faith, is saved--or comes to the Lord. Say, then, that the child never does. He rejects God his entire life and finally dies in a cruel accident. The parent had prayed for years, but now there is tragedy. Why did God say "No?"

The one influenced by Calvinism will say that either we can't understand it, or there are things we don't see, or we must simply trust God. His ways are not our ways. The Lord works in mysterious ways.

But is this the only answer? Why not answer that in an open system it isn't only God's will that decides what is to pass? God has created a system in which the child could always choose which way he could go. As much as God may work on an issue, it may be that his will was thwarted by the free decision of the child.

The bottom line is that in an open system, God's will is not always the one that comes to pass. It can't always be. Sometimes what God wants to happen DOESN'T happen! People often say to me, "If God wants it to happen, it will happen." Well, sin happens, did God want that to happen? If someone sins, does that mean God wanted it to happen? If someone rapes someone, does God want THAT to happen? I think not. God's will is not the only variable. Furthermore, the interconnectedness of events makes knowledge of why any event happens absolutely impossible.

Now, I know this smacks of a theodicy. And maybe it is. And, in strictly theological circles I would affirm that theodicy-making is not always an appropriate endeavor. Yet, on a practical level, when Christians endure these things, the questions cannot be avoided. There must be an answer which arises from scripture to comfort people in the face of their suffering. To my mind it is the suffering Savior. To many Christians, it is the ultimate plan of God. To others, it is the absence or presence of faith among the believers. If this post is a theodicy, so be it. But I think it is the only TRUE theodicy. The other answers are speculation and defense. I am appealing to the cross, not to a speculation about "God's ultimate plan!"

I highly, HIGHLY, recommend Boyd's recent sermons on prayer. Go download them today.

A Moltmannian Agreement to My Last

I wrote my last post on certainty quickly and without a lot of research. Blogging I find to be very much about saying whatever happens to be on my mind. It's not like writing a research paper or anything.

That being said, I found a quote in Theology of Hope which I think is relevant to my thoughts. Moltmann's section is "The Historical Question of the Resurrection of Christ and the Questionableness of the Historical Approach to History." In the initial paragraphs, he is making a point about the epistemological standpoint of the writers of the NT and how they perceived the resurrection narrative. In it he says this (the emphases are mine):

"They did not merely wish to tell of their own new self-understanding in the Easter faith, but in that faith and as a result of it they reported something also about the way of Jesus and about the event of the raising of Jesus. Their statements contain not only an existential certainty in the sense of saying 'I am certain,' but also and togeteher with this objective certainty in the sense of saying, 'It is certain.' They did not merely proclaim that they believe, and what they believe, but therewith and therein also the fact they have recognized. They are 'selfless witnesses' so to speak (Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 172-173)."

Is the Claim to Knowledge a Product of the Fall?

Earlier in 2007, I wrote four blogs on the concept of epistemological certainty (see May and June). The conclusion I came to was that it isn't really possible to have "knowledge" of the existence of God in a modern sense. That kind of knowledge requires an empirical certainty which is not really available to any metaphysical concept. Of course, many of the discussions I had with people who disagreed, or didn't understand exactly what I was saying (due chiefly to my inability to articulate it properly), indicated that the problem this would produce was an inability to believe. They said that if you cannot say "I know God exists" you might as well say "There is no reason to believe." In fact, it has produced the opposite. I no longer feel the need to PROVE God, I am free to believe. The Bible itself has been opened up to me as a self-authenticating system.

Recently, some reading I've done and thoughts I've had in other areas (specifically ethics, the fall, and anthropology) have shed a new light on the discussion which, I think, supports my conclusion on the issue. Unfortunately, I'm not really sure how much of this will stem from my reading and discussions with friends and how much is really from my own mind. And, I'm not really certain how relevant these thoughts are to those topics.


I've begun rethinking this issue by breaking down the sentence "I know God exists." In the sentence, the subject is "I" and the object is, really, "God's existence," or "God." This means that, when someone claims to have knowledge of God's existence they are not really saying anything about God or the certainty of his existence but are chiefly speaking of themselves. In other words, the sentence "I know God exists" speaks chiefly of the knower, not the thing known. It's claim is that "I have God figured out and am beyond the capacity to be wrong about him. I own that knowledge by virture of my own ability to understand, perceive, and prove this." The claim to knowledge of God's existence is a claim to have within oneself the answers.

Recently, much of my preaching has dealt with the concept of the fall and its nature. I've concluded that the real temptation of the fall of man was not about eating a piece of fruit from a tree in the garden but it was a seeking of "knowledge of good and evil" within oneself and not in God. In fact, all sin is really concerned with seeking within oneself what can only be found in God, whether that be life, joy, peace, happiness, fulfillment, whatever.

Prior to the fall, God was the subject and man was the object. The Bible begins with the sentence, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Pronouncements about God and his existence begin, scripturally, with his existence and draw conclusions from there. In fact, the central theme of scripture is that God is always the subject.

It seems to me that the central theme of Christianity has always been to orient Christians away from themselves and toward God. Epistemologically speaking, this means that the goal of Christians is to arrange the sentence so that "I" am not the subject, but "God" is. In other words, it really is a fallen idea to claim that "I know God exists." I was never really created to own the knowledge of God or to have that kind of understanding. I am to begin with God and move from there. As soon as I put myself at the beginning, I am guilty of committing the same sin that Adam did at the beginning of time.

Furthermore, the notions of apologetics or the classical arguments as starting points of theology are also fallen. The attempt to begin with the cosmological argument (the universe exists and has a beginning, therefore we know God exists) is to base belief in God on the existence of the universe and (really) my own existence. It is as if we are changing Genesis 1:1 to say, "Right now our existence necessitates God's existence." It is exactly the opposite statement because the foundation has moved. The foundation for God is the universe, whereas, in scripture, the foundation for the universe is God.

Hence, it really is appropriate to abandon that knowledge or the pursuit of that knowledge and adopt as the starting point for theology God himself. This means that the burden of "proving God" is no longer upon me. Instead, I can start talking about God by looking to revelation.

I guess that this blog isn't really about certainty at all. Of course, it isn't possible to say with certainty, "Yes, I know God exists." That question, from an enlightenment standpoint, is still resolved in my mind. What this blog does say is that the concept of knowledge from an enlightenment viewpoint is not the goal of Christianity at all. Faith in God is exactly that--belief in what we cannot prove. So, my goal is not to prove it but to believe it. That I can do.

An Anthropological Case for Annihilation

Every Christian has been faced with the question, and most have actually wrestled with it themselves. The question is, “How could a loving, benevolent God punish people in an eternal Hell?” Of course, there are several theodicies which attempt to solve this seeming contradiction. But, to my mind, the recurring weakness in all is that each makes God the defendant and assumes his actions need to be justified. That is one of the troubles of a theodicy. They are based on human reasoning and fallen ethics rather than scripture.

As a theodicy, Annihilationism (the doctrine that those who are not saved do not suffer eternally in Hell but are annihilated) is among the worst offenders. Most of the arguments I have heard for this viewpoint have centered on the notion that God’s love is inconsistent with eternal judgment. Passages which discuss judgment in terms of eternal destruction are interpreted literally, perhaps rightly. But I have never been tempted to accept the Annihilationist viewpoint for its value as a theodicy.

I have, however, become more open to it from an anthropological standpoint. Some years ago I began to reanalyze dualism as a legitimate anthropology and came to the conclusion that the biblical understanding of humanity is that a human is a UNITY of body and spirit. The model described in Genesis is that God created the body, breathed life (spirit) into the body and man BECAME a soul. So that, people don’t have souls, they are souls.

Going one step further, most Christians accept, without much reflection, the idea that the spirit is a ghost-like being that lives inside their bodies and that the real person is the spirit, the body is just a shell or cloak which the spirit “wears.” This is easily more compatible with 2nd and 3rd century Gnosticism than biblical theology. In fact, the silly Gospel of Judas states that Christ’s goal was to shed the physical body so that the real person underneath could be free. This is why Judas is seen as the hero, because he freed Jesus from “the man that clothes me.” This view necessarily separates “mind” from “brain.”

Phenomenologically speaking, science seems to be coming to the conclusion that the brain and thought and feeling are inseparably linked. The recent Time article a few weeks ago was about how it may be possible to link a person’s moral viewpoint with problems in their brains. (Who knows whether there is a causal link one way or the other?) But it seems to me that this view is much closer to biblical anthropology than any other. We were created physical and meant to live physically. We are physical people with spiritual application.

To my mind, the spirit is literally our personality. It is that part of us which thinks, feels, loves, and wills. It is inseparably linked to our body. That being said, if my view is the most scriptural (and I believe it is—I should be presenting a lot more research and scripture, but I’m in a hurry and want to get this on today…I may add more later), this has massive implications on eschatology.

It seems to me that Romans 8 describes the “redemption of our bodies,” vs. 23. Someday, those who are in Christ will be raised from the dead and have their bodies renewed, just as their spirits had been renewed, redeemed, and reconciled to God in life. The new, glorified body will be like Christ’s, vs. 29. We will have physical bodies which are incorruptible. This is the only way we can continue life—it is not possible for us to be as God designed us and live outside of our bodies. We are not spirits who happen to be in bodies but can live apart from them. We are soul-units!

The implication this has on Hell is also plain. If Hell is a place of eternal destruction—the picture is always fire—how can it be that our bodies would survive in such a place? The question is then, does God resurrect the unsaved into glorified bodies for the sole purpose of torturing them for all of eternity? It certainly doesn’t make sense to believe that a spirit can live forever without the body—because humans are souls, not ghosts trapped in machines. If my anthropology is correct, and if I’m understanding Hell as an eternally destructive place, then it does not make sense to see the punishment of Hell as being an eternal place of pain and suffering.

What, then, is Hell? Certainly it is a place of suffering. And, certainly it represents eternal separation from God—and ultimate separation from others and within ourselves. To the unsaved, death would represent the ultimate destruction of the body. Those who survive until the return of Christ would be destroyed in the final judgment, sent to the final separation of Hell. But the suffering would only last until the body was destroyed. At that point, the being is completely and eternally separate from God and unable to continue on.

I’m just sitting on this right now. I’ve had difficulty motivating myself to blog lately and am working on beginning a new project exploring the implications of the incarnation on divine immutability. But I may return to this to beef it up and add things later.