Blessed by Lucinda Williams

I've been listening today to Lucinda Williams new one. I can't listen to her everyday, but on gray days like this her voice and attitude are perfect. If you buy the itunes deluxe version you get the rough recordings of the songs--the kitchen tapes. Mostly her strumming chords and singing. Her voice is particularly striking over the light guitar strumming. And the song that jumped out the most is called "Blessed." Beautiful lyrics.

Here are some of my favorite phrases:

We were blessed by the poor man who said heaven was in reach

We were blessed by the neglected child who knew how to forgive

We were blessed by the lawyer who didn't need to win

We were blessed by the blind man who could see for miles and miles

We were blessed by the mystic who turned water into wine

We were blessed by the wounded man who felt no pain

We were blessed by the wayfaring stranger who knew our name

We were blessed by the homeless man who showed us the way home

We were blessed by the forlorn, forsaken, and abused

We were blessed
Yeah we were blessed
Yeah we were blessed
We were blessed

To which, I say "Amen."

Black on a Sabbath

I have a new playlist this week, inspired by the most recent Black Keys cd. It's simply titled "Black," and it has a mix of songs from groups with the word "Black" in their band name. Now, I teased you with the Black Sabbath reference in the title. Truth is, I don't own any Black Sabbath music. But I do own quite a bit of Black Crowes, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, and Black Keys music. And I'm a big fan of all three groups. So, I made a playlist of about 25 songs to aid my dissertation writing.

All three bands are blues-rock oriented. This might explain in part their common choice of the word "Black." Your song choices are somewhat limited when your band performs under the term black. No Barry Manilow covers here.There's a certain grittiness to what they do. All of them feature great guitar work and soulful vocals. All of its great played very loud.

A few years ago, in my previous job, I asked an English prof who had taken a sabbatical to study the blues to do a presentation on the gospel and the blues at our annual Bible lectureship. He not only made a presentation, he brought the best blues players in the region together to play live. We hosted the session in the commons area of the library. Yes, the library. The windows were rattling. I had students write letters of complaint about the old dudes who were rocking the library and keeping them from studying. It was one of my prouder moments as the Bible lectureship director.

The English prof made a pretty big point that the blues never really make the turn to good news. This is what makes them the blues. Their power was precisely in their ability to capture in unvarnished form the underside of life.

This might very well be right. It is certainly the most valuable contribution the blues make with regard to truth telling in the world. And I would add that this capacity to come alongside the sufferer, not to talk them out of their suffering, but to join them and to name it, is part of the redeeming work of God in the world.

Which is why I hesitate a little with the assessment that the blues, if they are the blues, never make the gospel turn. There is no question, for instance, that the music of the Black Crowes dips into the musical genre of gospel if not its content. And nearly the entire cd, Howl, by BRMC is devoted to not only a gospel feel, but gospel lyrics. When you listen to BRMC, you get the sense that they have positioned themselves on the razor's edge. They have placed themselves on the faultline between light and dark and for them it could go either way. For them, the black is black. It's the other side of light, not simply the color of the leather they wear as a biker band. It is the place of struggle, the place from which light must shine if light is to be any good at all.

So, I am attracted to these bands musically. They are good. They make my head bob, even though I know how dorky that looks. But I am also appreciative of the worlds they evoke. As I write, I am listening to my playlist. BRMC: "It's the weight of the world I know as I struggle to be whole. It is the weight of the world I know..."

The Failure of Discourse

I can hardly look at Facebook today. The passage of the health care bill has brought out the worst in us, both those in favor and those opposed. We are awash in words--bitter, angry, sarcastic words. We are only over/against the other. And because of this, we have the lost capacity to hear, to listen, to understand, and with this we have lost the capacity for discourse.

I am not naive about this. In a two-party system, the pressures on language are almost unavoidably negative. Both parties are locked in a language game which is aimed at getting things done. Jurgen Habermas calls this instrumental reasoning. It's a form of reason different than one designed to understand one another. For Habermas, instrumental reason too easily is objectifying, propagandist, and manipulative.

I'm not saying that people in politics are bad people. They aren't. And I'll give all of them a pass at the level of motives (this is naive, I know, but is part of what is required of me as one who follows a crucified God). But they are thrown into a system that forces them to play by a certain set of rules to get things done. They are beholden to principalities and powers that, for both good and bad, are a part of a representative democracy. (Twain's quip that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others comes to mind here. It was Twain, wasn't it?).

Habermas' hope for discourse lies in what he calls communicative reason--reason designed for understanding one another, not getting things done. And the place he hopes this will occur is in civil society--the public spaces in our society not governed primarily by the state or the economy.

One of my professors, Gary Simpson, sees the church as a public companion in the sphere of civil society. It is a place for the church to be public and moral without lapsing into the snares of partisanship. And part of its role in civil society is to keep the capacity for discourse alive through a posture of openness to the other--a mark of the Trinitarian life of God. I like this understanding of the church and think it corresponds to biblical understandings.

It is striking to me how often Scripture associates righteousness with speech ethics. Evildoers' throats are open graves, according to the Psalms. The righteous, in contrast, have the fruit of praise continually on their lips. And this goes beyond, for me, singing praise songs. This is about refusal of gossip, slander, slurs. Praiseworthy speech is for building up, not tearing down. One of the capacities Christians ought to be able to offer to the world is the ability to keep discourse alive, to stay in conversation without impugning motives or resorting to ad hominem attacks. To disagree without demonizing through sarcasm, sloganeering, etc.

(As an aside, read 2 Cor and notice how often Paul's experience of the death and resurrection is subsequently embodied in the way he speaks--openness, frankness, godly sincerity, not peddler's of God's word, etc).

I am convinced that without this capacity, we lack the ability to discern what it is that God might be up to in the world, and we certainly lose the capacity to say anything meaningful that might pass as "good news." Speech designed to accomplish things forecloses on other possibilities. Discourse designed to understand remains open as long as possible. And gospel as speech category is an open category, designed to open the world to the continuing voice of God. Speech ethics are crucial for this kind of openness.

Facebook is a place within civil society. I am not an idealist like Habermas. I don't think there's a societal "place" where we can retreat from the effects of state or economy, where our speech can be totally free from instrumental concerns. This week, Facebook suggests that instrumental reason trumps communicative even in forums like this, and that Christians are as implicated by this as anyone.

But I hope for more. I do think its possible for the goal of speech in forums like these to be understanding and not convincing. My sense is that people move most when they feel understood, not because they find a particular argument compelling, and certainly not because they've been subjected to fear, sarcasm, gloating, etc.

Gospel and Cultures, 6

When I began this series of reflections months ago, I was after the notion that gospel was a particular way of naming the church's engagement with the world. What is it that defines the church's relationship with the surrounding world? News. Good news. And this is a different kind of engagement than words like truth, mystery, law, etc. The question then is, how does the church stay in the mode of news?

A few weeks ago I suggested that because the gospel is related to the kingdom of God, a future reality that is breaking into the present, surprise is always a category of the gospel. The church stays in the mode of news by attending to surprises, particularly those related to hope.

But not all surprises are good surprises. Not all of them are connected to the in-breaking of God's future. This requires a certain judgment related to a particular way of seeing. Paul calls this way of seeing "the word of the cross." This "word of the cross," he says, "is foolishness to those who are perishing, but for those being saved it is the power of God" (1 Cor 1:18). This word is not obvious to all. It is a scandal to both Jews and Greeks--not a way of seeing at all. But for those who are being saved, it is the wisdom of God.

But what is this "word of the cross?" For Paul, it seems to be the capacity or ability to see the patterns of death and resurrection at work in life. "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live..." "I want to know Christ and the power of his rising, share in his sufferings, conform to his death..." "We carry in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our mortal bodies..." The death and resurrection are not for Paul simply a formula whereby we experience forgiveness of sins and a home in heaven. Death and resurrection is a script for our lives whereby the powers of sin and death are overcome. Death and resurrection is a way of life, a way of participating in the life of God which is coming for our salvation. It is a being saved, a way of living and seeing that has transformative power.

And this way of living and seeing produces a specific wisdom, a wisdom not of this age or of the rulers of this age, but a wisdom of the age that is continuously coming. It is a way of seeing through the things that belong to the future--faith, hope, and love. By attending to the world through faith, hope, and love, the hidden rule of God becomes manifest both in God's movement in the world and in our lives. We learn both to recognize and enact pictures of God's coming future.

To the extent that this discernment (discrimination, judgment) produces a unique wisdom, the church remains in the mode of news. The gospel is not another way of saying what already is the case. It is not simply a particular way of naming general human experience. The death and resurrection of Jesus, and all that surrounds the eventfulness of this way of God's being with and for us, is new. It is a resistance to the powers that be, a refusal of the status quo, and the embrace of hope, the possibility of a new, coming world, ordered by different powers.

This does not mean that other wisdoms based in other criteria of judgment are pointless or powerless or even evil. The news of God's way of being with us in death and resurrection is not an obliteration of all other categories, but a conversion within them. The strategy of the new age is not to overcome other perspectives through force or power. Rather, the power of the new age always comes through leaven and mustard seed, God's victory hidden in death, in the unsuspecting, and through passionate identification with what is passing away. The new comes not through obliteration, but through passionate, suffering engagement. The way of death and resurrection is not a way to avoid the world until heaven arrives, but a way of entering the world more completely with different eyes, serving different powers. God's desire, after all, is not to forsake creation, but to fill it, to be all in all, to transfigure it. Those who live through the resources of the new age, the word of the cross, learn to recognize the signs of God's coming and announce it as newsworthy.

Gospel and Cultures, 5

Theology should be about more than just the history of ideas about God. It should be about God. Think about that. This means, among other things, that it should be about God's engagement with the world. Which means, in turn, that theology should not be limited to the library or the minister's study, but should be primarily done in relation to the conditions of the world. The question, therefore, is how would you do that? And what would be your criteria for judgment? How would you know it was God?

For a good part of Western Christianity, questions about God began, not with God's engagement with the world, but with Greek notions of what God must be to be God. God was above history, established in a set of attributes that pertained only to God (omnipresent, omnipotent, etc).

Defining God apart from history, or God's actual engagement with the world, has certain advantages. The biggest of these is that it is really difficult to narrate a series of events that indicates God's continuing presence. God is tough to track in history. Israel found this out in relation to the exile. The long dislocation of Israel from the promise of land, king, and temple made it difficult to narrate a continuous story of God's steadfast love. Did God keep his promises? Had he forgotten Israel? Was Yahweh big enough to deliver on his promises?

Israel's theologians responded in at least two ways. One was to locate God, at least in part, in wisdom traditions (ontology?) that had little or no connection to the specific stories of Israel's past. Another, however, dislocated Israel's hope from a golden past working itself out in the present, and located it in the future (eschatology). Hope was still connected to actual social conditions, e.g. peace, joy, righteousness, but was now out in front of immediate history as a series of sequential events.

Jesus' announcement of the gospel of the Kingdom brings the question of God into the actual conditions of history. The Kingdom of God is about actual social circumstances. Sharing possessions, turning the other cheek, going the extra mile, lifting up the lowly. The question of God is a question related to history. Like Israel's prophets, however, the Kingdom of God for Jesus is a future reality. It is not the steady progression of a series of events from the past to the future (teleological). The Kingdom is the reality of the future breaking into the present (eschatological). Its precedent in the present is not the immediate past, but the future. God's primary relationship with the world is not above, uninvolved, but in front of the world, actively engaged.

OK, this may seem like a set of fine distinctions, deep theory that only some theologians talk about. But this is very practical, because it points to how we might meaningfully talk about God in the conditions of life, which is turn related to our concept of gospel. If God's involvement with the world is not strictly chronological from past to present--one event leading to the next, leading to the next--then it may often be experienced as surprise, disruption, disorientation--or news. Part of staying in the mode of gospel is openness to surprise. A lot of implications here. But for now let's say that the category of surprise allows us to speak of God meaningfully in the conditions of human experience without it being a story of continuous progress.

Gospel and Cultures, 4

So, what do we mean when we use the word culture? And how would that relate to what we've been describing as gospel?

In her book, Theories of Culture, Kathryn Tanner notes a significant shift in how culture is thought of in relation to the postmodern turn. Earlier, modern understandings notions depicted culture like a piece of land. It is a fixed space, a conceptual whole, that informs all that we do. It's not so much that we think about our culture, but that we think with it (notice the culture as idea, or mental construct). It precedes us and determines us. From this perspective, a context holds still and translation is the cultural work of moving something from one place to another. Culture is one big thing with discernible features limited to a certain geography.

Postmodern theories see culture in less static terms. It's not so much a continent as a stream. It is always moving. In fact, it's not quite right to speak of culture in the singular. We are always impacted by cultures, several moving streams that pass through our lives. Cultures, therefore, are not a conceptual whole, but are in conversation. Tanner goes so far as to describe cultures as contested. Experiencing culture, therefore, is as much about the terms of discourse as the conclusions, as much about the process as the result (which is always moving).

If Tanner and others are right, then some of how we think about the church's relationship to the world is insufficient. If a culture is a static whole, then the world is simply a target for the church--a big dart board. Mission is often thought of as taking a static gospel to a stable world. The context becomes decorative, a matter of style ans tastes, that can be adornment for the gospel. God is completely on the side of the gospel, all the arrows pointing in the same direction.

As we have seen, gospel is not as static as we are sometimes led to believe. And if it is appropriate to refer to cultures as contested, fragmentary accounts of our lives, then we have two dynamic elements in play when we speak of gospel and cultures. Gospel is moving and cultures are moving. This changes, at least potentially, how we view the world and God's movement in it.

We've thought of gospel and culture as two fixed land masses. That tends to produce a certain kind of engagement. How would that change if we think of both as narrative structures, moving streams, that are mutually implicating? This is the question. I'm on this question and expect to be exploring it with congregations with whatever time and energy I have left. And here's the big thing for me at this point. Thinking of gospel and cultures these ways requires that God be active in both. And for many, that's a game changer.

Gospel and Cultures, 3

So, here's the proposal. Gospel has hermeneutical significance for the relationship between church and world. In other words, how does the church define its relationship with the larger world? Primarily around notions of gospel. Gospel frames a certain kind of engagement around the category of news. How does the church remain in the mode of gospel?

To answer that question, it is good to have a sense of what passes for gospel in the NT. I've blogged about this before, so won't go into great detail here, but I want to briefly notice three things. Whether in Jesus' announcement of the good news of the kingdom of God in Mark 1:15, or in Paul's summary of the gospel in 1 Cor 15, three things seem to characterize the use of this word. First, it is the announcement of an event. It is not first a theory of atonement or a set of explanatory images or metaphors. It is first the announcement of an event--something newsworthy. Second, this event has to do with the coming of God in the person of Jesus, and particularly the event of his death and resurrection. Third, this coming is a coming of the future. That is, what is being enacted is God's future. The gospel is fundamentally eschatological. The coming of Jesus marks a dramatic turn of the ages. The way of life ordered by the principalities and powers of this current age have been judged and found wanting in light of the coming future of God made manifest in Jesus. It is possible for humans to belong to, receive, and welcome this coming day of salvation.

These things all go together and are necessary for the the church to remain in the mode of news. The event, or story, nature of the gospel makes it news, as long as the event continues to unfold. If the event is a one and done, then it is yesterday's news. This is where the eschatological nature of the event becomes important. The Kingdom of God is near in Jesus, but it is still coming. The church always prays, "your kingdom come," expecting that God's future will continue to appear in the events of human history. The church is a community not looking backward to a golden past, but forward to God's coming future. It is a discerning community, constantly in search of the discovery of the inbreaking Kingdom. It always has news to report.

It is not always easy, however, to discern the work of God among other events. A good journalist knows where to look for news, and this is true of the church as well. Here, the particularity of the story of Jesus becomes important. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus are not simply variables in a formula that results in forgiveness of sins. The death and resurrection of Jesus becomes a way of attending to the world, a story to enact through faith, hope, and love, whereby those things that will endure in the age to come become manifest, or observable. Paul calls this the "logic (logos) of the cross" (1 Cor 1:18) which, for those who are being saved, is the power of God. It is a mind (Phil 2), or a renewing of the mind, that allows us to prove what is the will of God, what is good, acceptable, and perfect (Rom 12).

But the story of Jesus not only tells us how to look, it tells us where. Part of the eventfulness of the coming of God in Jesus is related to social location. It is not enough to know that God became flesh, it is important also to know where he did. The Jesus story is full of mangers, backwater villages, sick and suffering people, and crosses "outside the camp." The continuing eventfulness of the gospel is likely to be seen more at the margins than at the centers of human power. It is more likely to be found in a hospital room than a board room.

We've made some pretty big shifts here for most Christians. Most define gospel as a message, not an event, the death of Jesus as a theoretical transaction with limited ongoing significance, salvation as a private possession, and the future only related to reward or punishment. Not much in the way of news.

These fairly static understandings also tend to deliver a fairly static view of the world, and therefore of mission. In the next post, a view of cultures.

Moltmann and God as the Coming One

So, I've been swamped with travel and the end of a semester and so haven't gotten to my blog to continue the series on gospel and cultures. But I'm writing a paper on this for a class this semester and am using Jurgen Moltmann as a source. Moltmann is a hope guy, and I have a friend who recently and in very eloquent ways reinforced the importance of hope in everyday life.

So, here are some paragraphs from Moltmann's, The Future of Creation. It's not in any kind of form and lacks a setting to make it seem like an argument. But hey, this is an adventure in getting to the point. I like, however, how Moltmann defines God and ties God to the category of the new. Anyway, more soon. My semester ends next week.

While gospel was a word used primarily outside of religious circles, it is not a word without theological significance. Jurgen Moltmann, for instance, emphasizes the biblical descriptions of God as “the Coming One,” and in turn suggests the category of novum as a primary category for understanding God. Moltmann distinguishes the biblical view of God from the traditional Greek depictions of deity. God is not the one who “will be” (einai), but is the one who “is coming” (erchestai). “God’s being is in his coming,” and it follows that “the future is God’s mode of being in history.” The experience of God in history is one of advent.

This is important for Moltmann who distinguishes between futurum and adventus. Futurum develops out of the past. The future is latent in the “tendencies of process.” In contrast, adventus is a change in “the transcendental conditions of time.” Advent is an arrival, a coming, and the conditions of arrival carry the prospect of surprise, or of the astonishingly new. The future is not determined by the momentum of historical processes, but is open to the possibilities of the Coming One.

The prophets represent an advent posture toward the future. Israel’s hope in exile is not for a restoration of Israel’s former glory, but rather lies in God’s ideal future. Moltmann cites Isaiah as typical of this postexilic prophetic hope: “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. For behold, I purpose to do a new thing” (43.18f). The “new thing—is the historical side of their eschatological openness to the future.” God, as the coming one, is bringing new possibility, an alternative to the inevitable forces of history.

The category novum (new), for Moltmann, possesses two characteristics. First, it announces itself as a judgment on what is old. This is not simply the improvement of the old, but the announcement of its end or futillity. The new makes the old obsolete. This does not mean, however, that the old has no place in the new. The second feature Moltmann cites relates the new to the events of the past. The new is like things that have happened before—for example, the Exodus—but the new is always more. It resembles roughly the former, and, therefore, is recognizable as God’s faithfulness. In this sense, one might say that the former is not in linear continuity with the new thing, but is related typologically, the former thing to be understood now in relation to God’s coming. These same characteristics are true, for Moltmann, of the advent of Jesus. It possesses surprise and judgment, but also a resemblance to prior things.

Moltmann does not notice here that the prophetic emphasis on newness is also the place where the word gospel appears in the LXX (Septuagent, the Greek Old Testament). “How beautiful upon the mountain are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns’” (Is. 52:7-8, italic added). The announcement of the rule of Zion’s God is not obvious to all. It is hidden in the disfigurement and suffering of the servant who bears the announcement. “Who has believed what we have heard? To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” (53:1). It is precisely the surprise of this announcement, however, that awakens observers that the suffering of the servant is a suffering on their behalf. If the term gospel as used in the New Testament has biblical antecedent, it is surely here in relation to God’s new work.

Moltmann’s description of God as the Coming One brings us back to the question of news. News is related to the identity of God and corresponds to eschatological notions of God’s saving reign. Novum, therefore, is descriptive of God’s engagement with the world. And the two characteristics of novum that Moltmann cites provide clues as to how the church might remain in the mode of news. Surprise and Wisdom.

Gospel and Cultures, 2

In the last post I ended with the question, "What does it mean to define a relationship in terms of news?" This question followed the observation that for the earliest Christians, gospel was a mode of engagement with the world. It is significant that they chose the word "gospel" to define in primary ways their relationship with the world around them. What is it that Christians offer the world? News. Good news.

James Brownson, a New Testament scholar, was the one who started me thinking down this road. Brownson, in Speaking the Truth in Love, talks about the significance of choosing gospel, a fairly secular term, over other more typically religious words readily available for Christian use. Words like law, or instruction, or mystery, or truth. Christians use these words, but not in the same way that other religions use them, and certainly not with the broad significance of the word gospel. These words establish different types of relationships. They have different modes of relating and create different social realities. If this is the case, then it stands to reason that gospel would also form a different kind of cultural engagement.

Truth, for instance, tends to manage itself in certain ways. It tends to be argumentative (in a good sense). It is interested in nailing things down with precision. It seeks norms and justifications. The common mode of relating is teaching. Experts rule.

Or take mystery. Mystery is for the initiated. It is unveiled for the enlightened, and it typically requires some sort of secret process to decode. You have to get inside the walls to figure out what it is all about. (A modernist version of this might be scientology).

The category of news has some places of overlap, but is very different in others. News is public. While it typically is about something new, this new thing is for all, not just for the initiated. And its primary mode is witness, not teaching. It is concerned with the eventfulness of situations, not just the universal principles. News cares about truthfulness, but in terms of the authenticity of the source, less in terms related to certain indubitable ideas or notions.

News is related to events. Something happened or is happening or is going to happen. It is not about getting certain ideas in place in an argument. I like the way that Amos Wilder describes early Christian speech. "It is naïve, it is not studied; it is extempore and directed to the occasion, it is not calculated to serve some future hour. This utterance is dynamic, actual, immediate, reckless of posterity; not coded for catechists or repeaters" (Early Christian Rhetoric, 12-13). It is news.

This news is related to what God is doing in the world, and in particular what he is accomplishing in and through Jesus and the Spirit. For the NT writers, the advent of God in Jesus and the Spirit signals a turning of the ages. The old ordering of things is judged and found wanting; a new ordering rooted in God's future salvation is appearing. This appearing is always in a sense a new thing. The gospel is not simply that God did something in the past that matters to us today. The gospel is ongoing news of an emerging new creation. Jesus is risen and his reign established. The Spirit is active. This is always newsworthy in an ongoing way.

Staying in this mode (gospel) requires certain practices and perspectives. It requires certain aesthetic or journalistic instincts. It requires participation in the ongoing eventfulness of the gospel, which we will turn our attention to in future posts.

This is first order business for a faith that believes in an active God. This is not to say that there isn't need to nail down things propositionally from time to time, or unlock a few mysteries along the way, or clarify moral or ethical standards. But these are not the primary ways the first Christians sought to define their relationship with the culture as a whole. And that's a pretty big deal.

Gospel and Cultures

There are few conversations in Christian theological circles these days more full of energy than the one concerning gospel and cultures. There are many reasons for this, some external and some internal to the dynamics of the Christian experience. Some of the energy is simply around defining terms. For instance, what do we mean by culture, or as you'll see in my use, cultures. Several, notably Kathryn Tanner, have traced the shift in the meaning of this word. It once referred only to the achievement of a particular society, or more precisely, the achievement of a certain class. Only some were cultured, namely the elite.

Now we refer to culture as a whole way of life, as a web of significance, as something in which all of us participate and find a common life. In fact, culture is no longer simply something we achieve or produce. It precedes us, shaping our identities to a large extent through language, convention, rituals, and images.

One more shift, one under way in my opinion, is to see culture less as a spatial category, and more in temporal terms. Culture precedes us because it is moving, like a stream, which means it is also eluding us in some ways. We can no longer speak of it as something fixed. It is less a continent to explore and map (spatial), but more a stream to navigate (temporal). And because it is moving and not fixed, we also recognize that culture(s) is both plural and specific. Some have stopped using the word culture at all, preferring cultural. We can say something is cultural without nailing something down as the culture. Others talk about cultural flows, a variety of streams in which we find ourselves. No matter how you speak of it, notions of culture are still being explored.

This is an important conversation for Christianity because of its unique relationship through the centuries to cultures. Christianity has proved fairly nimble in crossing cultural boundaries. Imagine, for instance, the boundary crossing impulse in telling the story of Jesus in a language other than the one he spoke. Islam and Judaism, generally speaking, are much more wed to a particular cultural expression rooted in a particular language. Christians are eager to translate the Bible into as many languages as possible and do not require adherents to read the Bible in its original language. This is a pretty big deal.

It is also striking to me that the New Testament is comprised of documents representing a season of transition in the life of the people of God. It is a missionary literature propelled by the impulse that there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female. This universalizing tendency in Christianity has to take into account every culture it encounters.

There is much to say here, and perhaps over time we can say more. But what I think is still largely lacking in the contemporary conversation is a rigorous discussion of gospel.

I often hear people say that the gospel is a constant, but the tactics, methods, or modes that we use are cultural. The gospel, here, is a fixed content. Like spatial understandings of culture, it is a fixed container. The way to make the gospel relevant is to give it a contemporary facelift, communicate it in ways that are meaningful to a particular culture. The relationship is kernel and husk. The gospel is the kernel, the seed that never changes. The husks are the cultural elements that can be peeled away. They are temporary, simply a matter of expediency. Relevance here is using movies or U2 concert footage to make the gospel more culturally accessible.

This is to be preferred to a view of gospel that overidentifies everything we do as the gospel. Some churches won't change at all because they think of everything as fixed. They think of Christianity in spatial terms. It can be identified completely and finally through certain characteristics, or marks of the church, that are immutable.

The problems here are numerous. Most critique from a theological perspective focuses on the naive understanding of the relationship between content and form. How we do something is just as much content as what we say. Form is meaning, and the adoption of cultural forms is a risk, perhaps inevitable, that threatens the particular formfulness of Christianity.

I appreciate this critique and have said things like this before. But I am coming to think that the greater problem in a kernel-husk view of gospel and culture is that it always makes the world a secondary concern to church. The church has the kernel, the world the husks. The world is only valuable as an illustration. The church can settle the gospel and its own identity beforehand in some kind of pure form, without any engagment with the world. This tempts theology to think of its task as settling certain topics related to certain notions of God (primarily owing to a substantialist ontology, i.e. spatial), rather than tracking the leading of a living God in the world he loves (more temporal?).

So, I want to see if there might be a similar gain for the term gospel to the one that delivered notions of culture from a fixed, spatial understanding.

And gospel is the place to start, I believe, for this reason. It is the term coined by the early Christians to indicate the mode of relationship they had with others. What does it mean to define a relationship in terms of news? In distinction to law or instruction or mystery or even truth? This is a vitally important question.

Believe the Good News, Yet Another

I've been attempting to show that salvation is less a status that you possess and more the manifestation of a new age belonging to God in which you are invited to belong. The death and resurrection is the axial event of this new age, allowing us to see what it is that God is up to and providing a way for us to attend to the world in a way that saves us. "Save" here refers to more than just the forgiveness of our sins. It also involves the overcoming of death and powers that diminish us and distort the world that God has called us to love.

This is bigger than limiting salvation to a theory of atonement. This does not mean it is wrong to develop theories as a way of talking about the significance of the death and resurrection of Jesus. It does mean, however, that we need to develop new ways of talking about salvation that don't rely fully on partial explanations.

My sense is that most of our language related to penal substitutionary atonement has primary roots in the letters of Paul, albeit a fairly narrow reading. So, I want to do some imagination therapy by focusing on Jesus' announcement of the gospel in Mark 1:15, "The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God has come near, repent and believe the good news." Four movements here as I see it. 1. The time is fulfilled, 2. the Kingdom is near, 3. repent, and 4. believe the good news. I am convinced that by attending to these four movements a new way of seeing and speaking can emerge over time. Here's the quick overview.

The time is fulfilled. A new age has dawned, the age of God's future salvation. The status quo is no longer the only game in town. God is acting to pull back the curtain, to reveal, the way the world ordered by his concerns appears. Christian life, in this sense, is learning to tell time, learning how to discern the distorting patterns of this present age which is fading away, and to discern the things that will endure in the age to come. Telling time requires a deep engagment with the world for the sake of the world and God's coming range. This is not a call to huddle on a mountain top somewhere until God pulls us out of the world, but to engage the world more deeply according to the pattern of the emerging age.

The kingdom of God is near. So much to say here. But two things for today. Jesus not only announces the new age, he embodies it. We recognize the kingdom of God by following Jesus, by taking up our cross and following him. But we also know that the Kingdom is near. It is already, but not yet. It is near, not in our possession. We continue to pray, "your kingdom come, your will be done... ."

Repent. The announcement of the kingdom of God is one of life under new management. Regime change. The kingdom is not simply the necessary outcome of the way things are going. It is an alternative future. And we cannot remain the same and belong to God's alternative future. Repent here is not scolding, but opportunity. It is the gracious call of God to align our lives with his coming reign. Repentance is a way of attending to life in belief that God's future kingdom is what is most real. It is repentance that allows something newsworthy to emerge as we learn to see life in a new way.

Believe the good news. It is not always easy to see how God's power is being manifest in the world, how his reign is the one that will ultimately prevail. After all, Mark prefaces Jesus' announcement of the kingdom by reminding us that John the Baptist is shut up in Herod's prison (Mk 1:14). The victory of God is hidden in the cross of Jesus. It is not always easy to believe. We are always tempted to half-measures, to going back to Egypt, to giving the concubine to Abraham, to making our peace with the way things are. Believe the good news!

Believe the Good News, 5

Sorry for the gap in posts here, but I've been otherwise occupied. But if you'll remember...

We have seen from both Paul and Jesus (via the gospel of Mark) brief statements about what constitutes gospel. And we have noticed that for both, the gospel is the announcement of an event. In 1 Cor 15, Paul describes that event as the death and resurrection of Jesus. In Mark 1:15, Jesus announces that event as the coming near of the Kingdom of God. At first glance, these announcements don't seem to be exactly the same. And I want to honor that distance a bit, let each have their own unique claim to the definition of gospel. We would find neither of these emphases in the Gospel of John. The diversity of the New Testament is part of its genius, and also part of what makes what Christians bring "good news."

While these statements are not exactly the same, neither are they opposed to one another. And in fact, they carry many shared commitments. I will argue in a later post (its not like I have a plan here, but the nature of a blog is bite-sized portions and so there's always left-overs) that the announcement of the Kingdom in the synoptic gospels necessarily points us to the death and resurrection of Jesus, Paul's emphasis. But first, I want us to notice the eschatological dimensions that Jesus and Paul share.

in Mark 1:14-15, Jesus comes proclaiming the gospel of God, and the first bit of that gospel is "the time is fulfilled." This is an announcement of a dramatic turning of the ages. The great day of God's salvation is coming into view. Now we can see a world not given to us by the reign of Herod or Caesar or even Moses. This is a world not given to us by the principalities and powers of this age, but a world according to the ultimate purposes of God. With the announcement of the fullness of time, it is possible in the present age to participate in the realities of the age to come when God's reign will be complete and fully enjoyed.

It is this perspective, that the coming of Jesus marks a dramatic turn of the ages, that may hold the diverse literature of the NT together more than any other. For Paul, the eschatological announcement is not so much in the language of the Kingdom of God, but the new creation. Christians for Paul are "those upon whom the end of the ages has fallen" (2 Cor 10:11). As Richard Hays puts it, "(Paul) believes himself, along with his churches, to stand in a privileged moment in which the random clutter of past texts and experiences assumes a configuration of eschatological significance, because all has been ordered by God to proclaim the gospel to those who read what Paul writes" (Echoes of Scripture in Paul, 165).

We see this sense of eschatological privilege in other NT texts as well. The familiar opening words of Hebrews tell us that God spoke previously in many and various ways, "but in these last days he has spoken to us through his Son" (1:2). Or, we read in 1 Peter about the salvation now being revealed specifically to us, "things in which angels long to look" (1:12). The coming of Jesus has inaugurated a new age.

And this new age is not simply the logical outcome of everything that has gone before. It is not simply a matter of human enlightenment, the God-inspired culmination of the best of humanity. This new age is an alternative to the one offered by the principalities and powers of this age. It is an invasion from the future, a dramatic reordering of life. The Kingdom of God is about a reign, a way of life, an alternative to the status quo. Jesus' announcement of the fullness of time bears the possibility of life under new management, of regime change, of a changing of all the labels. The first will be last, and the last first. The hungry will be filled, and the satisfied sent away.

Because our life is always negotiated in relation to powers, the effective reign of God can only come in God's power, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the resurrected Christ. Salvation is the offer of God to belong to his future reign, and to live in it now through the power of the Spirit.

This announcement is not always easy to believe. Mark let's us know that Jesus makes his announcement of God's Kingdom in the backwaters of Galilee (not in Jerusalem or Rome) while John the Baptist is shut up in Herod's prison. It takes a different way of seeing to discern the presence of the Kingdom. After all, the victory of God is hidden in the death of a peasant on a shameful Roman cross. And we cannot recognize the way of God's alternative future if our lives are facing in the opposite direction. This is why Jesus' announcement of the good news includes the words "repent and believe the good news."

All this to say, eschatology is an essential aspect of anything that passes for gospel in the New Testament. It is at the heart of both Jesus and Paul's notions of the gospel. The gospel is the announcement of a dramatic turn of the ages, and we have the opportunity in light of that announcement to belong to God's glorious future. The implications of this are numerous. At the very least, we have a dynamic sense of salvation. It is not simply a status, but an ordering, an unfolding, a way of life. We have salvation as a participation in the life and pusposes of God.

Believe the Good News, 4

Ok, I've been pretty hard on penal substitutionary atonement the past few posts. And I know some of you have read these posts (sheesh, I'm actually assuming people read these) and think, what other way of looking at this is there? I am guessing that both of you who read my blog might think this because that's the reaction I often get from angry students who wish they heard some of this a bit sooner in life.

I'm tempted here to pile on a bit more, to unpack the ways psa as the only thing that passes for gospel distorts our notions of God. Like, for instance this unbiblical notion that the only way God can forgive is for someone to be punished--and with capital punishment no less.

But, let's let that alone, at least for now, and begin to explore what alternatives might look like. I've been exploring for a long time different ways to say this. Here's one way. Salvation is less a transaction, and more participation in an event. It is less a set of ideas to be believed and more a story in which to participate. It is more than just a change of status, but the offer of participation in a God-empowered way of life.

You'll notice the repetition of the word participation here. Participation, for my money, is the key word to describe the primary way the Bible talks about salvation. There are various benefits to this participation, including forgiveness of sins. Salvation is a multi-faceted thing. Beyond the language of participation, these facets have to be described or explained by way of pictures--metaphors and images, even theories (e.g. justification, redemption, reconciliation, sanctification).

Some authors who have noticed the limitations of psa have suggested that the correction is to simply use more metaphors or theories. Some even suggest using one image to kind of govern the others, for instance reconciliation. To me this misses the point. The images or pictures are always partial and contextual. There is no complete set of pictures that exhausts the meaning of salvation for all time and in all places. But salvation always involves participation in the life of God.

Remember, the two passages we noted in an earlier post (Mark 1:15, 1 Cor 15) that define gospel do so as the announcement of an event. Neither provides an explanation of the meaning of that event, a reticence associated also with early Christian creeds. But what would it mean to say that salvation is a participation in this event?

Notice Paul's pervasive use of participation language. "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ lives in me." Or, "I want to know Christ, the power of his rising, share in his sufferings, conform to his death so that somehow I might obtain resurrection from the dead." Or, "But we have this treasure in clay jars...always carrying in the body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus might also be made visible in our mortal flesh." 

These kinds of statements could be multiplied and represent, I think, Paul's notion of the "word of the cross"--a logic, or mind, that sees the death and resurrection of Jesus as a script for Christian life. "The word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but for those who are being saved, it is the power of God" (1 Cor 1:18). This also accounts for Paul's language concerning baptism, a joining or participating in the death and resurrection of Jesus. It's big stuff, and its all over the place.

The event announced in Mark 1:15 is the nearness of the kingdom of God. I want to spend more time looking at this event in future posts, but let's just say that the death and resurrection of Jesus functions centrally here as well. And the call of the kingdom is a call to participate in this event, "take up your cross and follow me."

Ok, we've dipped our toe into the water. We've pulled on a thread, and it has shown some initial promise. Let's see how far this thing might go. But I need to read Gadamer for class on Wednesday, so this will have to wait.

Believe the Good News, 3

Lets do a little archaeology today. Let's do a little digging around this theory of atonement we have identified, penal substitutionary atonement (psa). In my first post, I suggested that psa in the form we know it is only about 150 years old. There are much older theories of atonement (Christus Victor, moral theory, recaptiulation theory, theosis), and even ways of talking about salvation that do not require a theory (the primary way the Bible talks about it in my opinion). So, what is the history of psa?

(While my sources here are numerous, a good place to get after this is in Joel Green and Mark Baker's book, Recovering the Scandal of the Cross).

Certainly, there are biblical pieces that are gathered up along the way into what eventually becomes psa. The Bible talks about the wrath of God. The Bible talks about the forgiveness of sins. The Bible talks about sin as transgression. New Testament writers refer to Jesus as an atoning sacrifice, and even as taking our place. PSA has been built with biblical components, but they've been put together in a way that the Bible doesn't.

For instance, is the wrath of God related to my individual sin? Is it God's wrath that is "satisfied" by the death of Jesus? Can God only forgive if someone is killed? Is personal guilt and justice as retribution the best way to understand the relationship between God and humankind? PSA assumes a "yes" answer to these questions, but these aren't necessary connections. The fact that Christians did not put them this way for a long time is exhibit "A".

So, how did these strands begin to be woven together? It's complicated, but I want to identify four movements. The first movement I want to associate with Augustine (354-430). Augustine set the course for much of the subsequent theology of the West. Through his involvement in defending the church in two doctrinal controversies (Pelagian and Donatist: there will be no quiz), he strengthened the roll of the church as the dispenser of salvation through an elaboration of the sacraments. He also developed what became known as a "psychological" explanation for the Trinity. The Trinity and the interior of the individual were in some way analagous. I know this is all very complicated, but the point is that Augustine did much to individualize salvation. The focus of salvation became less on the ultimate purposes of God at the end of history, and more on the status of an invidual understood psychologically.

Phew. I know that's thick, but let's just say that the phrase "I accepted Jesus into my heart" wouldn't have emerged apart from the moves made by Augustine.

Our second move is related to Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109). Anselm moved the focus of satisfaction from the Devil to God. In other words, before Anselm Christians thought of Jesus' death as satisfying Satan's rightful hold on humanity. We were in bondage to the Devil. Jesus' death was the ransom that freed us from his rightful claim on us. Anselm suggested instead that it was God's sense of honor that was being satisfied by the death of Jesus. This is a huge move in the development of satisfaction theories of the atonement. Note here, however, that is God's honor, not his sense of justice, that requires satisfaction.

For our third move, we look at Martin Luther (1483-1546). Luther is known for the central place that justification by faith through grace played in his understanding of the gospel. Since Luther, Protestants have read Romans and the rest of the New Testament through this lens. The major metaphor for salvation in the popular Christian imagination became a legal one--justification. Luther's own journey toward sola fidei (faith alone) was intensely personal. He struggled mightily with his own personal standing before God. For those of us Protestants who have read the NT since Luther, the issue of our personal legal standing before God has become almost the exclusive way in which salvation is understood. Still, with Luther we do not have psa.

Our final move could be represented by many. We will simply point to Charles Hodge (1797-1878). Hodge was an influential theologian at Princeton. He was one of the authors of the The Fundamentals and his multi-volume systematic theology was widely read. A major portion of Hodge's work was devoted to substitutionary atonement. For Hodge, the issue in salvation was satisfying God's wrath related to his sense of justice. Salvation was a legal issue, our rightful standing before God as judge. Jesus' death satisfies the wrath of God and allows us to be judged innocent. Hodge keeps Anselm's focus on God as the one requiring satisfaction, but shifts the issue from honor to justice.

This shift is not surprising. It's in the water for Hodge. It coincides with the rise of Western legal theory. It fits well notions of personal morality and responsibility that develop after the "turn to the subject" in philosophy. Hodge's exhaustive treatment of this theme carried the day and we can scarcely think of any of these issues differently.

So, in a very simplified way, that's the archaeology of psa. Let me say here that just because its a fairly recent theory doesn't mean its wrong. This is the way of theology. The church is always making sense of the death and resurrection of Jesus in light of its own cultural raw materials. Theology is always improvisational in that sense. The problem is making psa more than one expression of how Christians have understood salvation. To make something partial or imcomplete stand in for the whole distorts all the elements of the theory involved. The character of God, the meaning of Jesus' death, the human condition, and the scope of salvation are all distorted if this is the one way the gospel is understood.

There are real problems with psa. And as a script for church life--worship, evangelism, fellowship--it's severely limited. Again, the good news is that we've got options.

Believe the Good News, 2

I went to hear the great Shawn Colvin last night. It made me want to be a better guitar player. It made me want to play a better guitar as well (her Martin had such an amazing tone. Don't get me wrong, I love my Breedlove, but it has to be so great to play a high end guitar from one the great brands--Martin, Taylor, Breedlove, Gibson).

The evening also brought several opportunities to think about the gospel. Shawn Colvin's songs are up to their neck in the messines of the world. Her own life story is marked by drug use, mental illness, and homelessness. Her songs stick to the ribs of the world. They mean something. And none of them are about guilt.

For Colvin, the human condition revolves around the issue of emptiness. Her songs are about the difficulty of finding and maintaining identity. One of my favorite Colvin songs is "If I Were Brave." Two of the verses use the word "saved" in relation to emptiness.

"But I have this funny ache and it's burning in my chest
And it spreads just like a fire inside my body
Is it something God left out in my spirit or my flesh
Would I be saved if I were brave and had a baby

And what the hell is this? Who made this bloody mess?
And someone always answers like a martyr
Is it something you should know, did you never do your best
Would you be saved if you were brave and just tried harder"

Penal substitutionary atonement isn't exactly on point when it comes to the actual details of Colvin's life. And my experience is that most people don't have guilt as their presenting life issue. We might wish that were different, especially since that tends to be the only human problem our version of the gospel answers. Fortunately, however, the gospel addresses a far broader set of human concerns.

My last observation from last night has to do with the venue. We saw her in the The Dakota, an intimate jazz club in downtown Minneapolis. The audience sits at tables and can order food and drinks before, during, and after the concert. Nancy and I sat at a table for four and found ourselves with a couple about our age who had lived in Minnesota for a long time. We admitted that we were newcomers and even temporary residents of the area. They were curious about the temporary part and I let on how I had gone back to school. At that point, I left the table to find a restroom.

When I got back, my identity as a seminary student had been revealed and the woman at the table was confessing her agnostic/Buddhist perspectives. Great. Now we're in for an awkward evening.

It turned out, however, to be a great conversation. He was a lapsed Catholic, she a former Lutheran. They asked me about my program and were parituclarly curious about the research I would be doing with congregations. I would cautiously tell them what I was doing, and they would want more detail. Finally, I let it out of the bag, I wanted to address the relationship between views of salvation and congregational practice by way of imagination. Deal breaker, right.

No, the conversation went deeper. They wanted to know how I was going to address soteriological imagination. Seriously, they were interested. I explained to them my read on penal substitutionary atonement. They recognized the theory, though with a little fuzziness, and were puzzled by the notion that Christian salvation could be conceived of in different ways. This was simply the only way they had encountered it. They were shocked that this theory was of a recent vintage. This was clearly a part of Christianity that bothered them and they were definitely interested that the Christian story could be understood differently.

So, I kid you not, we had an energizing conversation about eschatology, the Kingdom of God, and the end of scapegoating. I kept thinking each new subject would lead to the end of the conversation, but it kept deepening and their enthusiasm kept growing. Who knew?

The night was rich with possibilities for the gospel, but poor with regards to the relevance of penal substitutionary atonement. It was a great night.

Believe the Good News

I teach an undergraduate course called "Teaching Good News." (I've written about this before on the blog, but I want to visit it again to preface a series of posts). I ask the students to write the same paper three times through the course of the semester, "The Meaning of Salvation." This turns out to be a challenging exercise. Many cannot form a meaningful set of paragraphs. This could be because the habits of college students do not exactly keep the brain in full firing capacity. But mostly, I think, its because for them salvation is the end result of a theory, or a formula, that is difficult for them to sketch with any confidence.

To the extent that they do have a coherent answer, they always give me penal substitutionary atonement--"He paid a debt he did not owe, I owed a debt I could not pay. . ." God's wrath demands punishment for sin. Jesus takes my place, takes my punishment, averts the wrath of God, and allows me to stand forgiven before God. It's a courtroom scene, complete with judge, verdict, sentence, and the like. With my students, this account is ubiquitous. It is the gospel without remainder.

There is a Baptist church in the area that evidently sees our Christian college campus as prime evangelistic real estate. They leave fliers from time to time all over our campus warning students and others of our impending doom. I've found them under the windshield wiper of my car, under the lid of a photocopier, even (I kid you not) strategically rolled up in the toilet paper roll in the bathroom. I guess they figure that's one place you're likely to be looking for something to read. The content is classic penal substitutionary atonement.

This makes for great classroom discussion. What assumptions are at work if this is how you do evangelism? What is the human problem if you can present this in a disembodied way--in a flier, not in a person or a community? How would you know if this worked? What would that look like? What view of God is assumed here? What is the significance of Jesus? For instance, why is his resurrection never mentioned? Why are the deeds of his life conspicuously absent?And what does this assume about the person reading this? What is our problem? What is this trying to do, to accomplish, with the person who finds it? And what do we make of this idea that forgiveness can only come through capital punishment? 

My students have no problem identifying the problems. Thing is, they can't imagine talking about salvation in any other way.

As gently as possible (and many of them don't experience this as gentle), I try to widen their horizons. They are stunned to find out that this is a fairly recent explanation of the meaning of the death of Jesus. While the historical development is long, their version is circa 19th-20th century. I point out that this is old as far as sea turtles go, but with theories of atonement this is a Johnny-come-lately.

More to the point, there is no detailed theory of atonement spelled out anywhere in Scripture. Nor did the church that decided what needed to go in the Bible feel the need to define atonement. While creeds like Nicea and Chalcedon go to great lengths to define the divinity of Jesus and the identity of God as Triune, they made no effort to explain the "how" of salvation.

This does not mean that theories have no place in understanding salvation or in helping others understand why Jesus' life, death, and resurrection bears saving significance. But these theories are always secondary. They came after something else. And no single theory can every explain the full meaning of salvation. It takes a multiplicity of pictures, sometimes in metaphor, sometime in theories, to get at all the dimensions of salvation. If we identify any of them as equivalent to the gospel, we are straightway into distortion.

It is interesting in this regard to see what passes for gospel in the New Testament. In 1 Cor 15, the gospel is the announcement that Jesus died in accordance with the Scriptures, was buried, and raised in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to witnesses. It is the announcement of an event.

Mark 1:15 also has a clear and concise statement about the gospel. Jesus comes proclaiming the gospel of God. Namely, "The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is near, repent and believe the good news." While there are differences in vocabulary between these two texts, they share one important thing in common (among others we will delineate in future posts). They both define gospel in terms of the announcement of an event.

Before the gospel is an explanation, a theory, or a metaphor, it is an event. And in light of this, my reading of NT texts indicates that the primary language of salvation is the language of participation. We are saved as we participate in this event. The implications here, I believe, are massive, and would change not only the way we do evangelism, but would also change our understandings of worship, doctrine, koinonia, ethics and morality, etc. Another way of saying this is that our practice of the Christian life is inextricably embedded in what we believe salvation to be. And by extension, our understandings of mission are tied to our notions of salvation.

I don't think that most churches who want to move beyond "a place where" church to a "people sent" church will make much headway without some shift in soteriology (the meaning of salvation). Missional travels on certain theological themes, and the missional church literature has opened up in essential ways the theme of Trinity, and to a certain extent eschatology. More focus needs to be given to soteriology. So, hang on, and let's see if we can do some thinking about this together. Are you up for it?