Abusing Jesus' Divinity

Looking back at the concerns surrounding the person of Christ in the third and fourth centuries, one notices that the debates are oddly slanted in one direction. Most career heretics, such as Nestorius and Apollinaris seem to be fine with the divinity of Christ, but his full humanity was questionable. For some reason spirituality was tenable, but physicality put real a burr in their saddle. How could God– omnipotent, sovereign, and holy– mingle with the messy materiality of stuff?

I am of course, being very simplistic. It wasn't that they hated the idea of the Incarnation, but that the Incarnation is by definition a very hard thing to get one's second-order skull around. But there is still this curious trend. The divinity of Christ was taken for granted seemingly by the majority, orthodox and unorthodox alike, while His humanity was the main point of contention.

Zoom ahead to the enlightenment and one notices that the trend is reversed. Suddenly the humanity of Christ is found to be very palatable while His divinity is untenable. It became easier to conceive of Jesus as a good moral teacher than it was to believe he was God. Without going into the reasons for why Schleiermacher's offspring have such a problem with this, I will merely suggest that the locus of contemporary theology is centered on this problem, and perhaps increasingly in Evangelical circles.

How? Let's take ecology for example. The lack of Christology has been my only beef with Wendell Berry. Don't get me wrong, I love Berry and will recommend him and his organic tobacco til' the unclouded Tennessee sun goes down, but Christ is all but absent in his ecology. It is for this reason that, in spite of all of his wonderful insight that his view ultimately appears unrealistic and untenable (and his fiction a bit soapy). It can contrast a redeemed world with the fallen one, but it cannot tell us how to get from one to the other. It is in the bridge of Christ that the fallen and the redeemed are linked and the fallen is given any real hope. Douglas Moo, however, even in spite of the relatively small writing he has produced so far, finds the locus for ecology more or less in the Shema of love for God ad love for neighbor, both of which draw in a robust Christology and consequently a realistic means of caring for the earth.

Ecology is just one example, but I have begun to notice this in Feminist Theology as well and I am sure that it would be easy to find other examples. All of this goes to show that Karl Rahner was right when he said that most Christians today live as functional monotheists to whom the Trinity in all of its distinctive unity is of no consequence. So much is at stake when we neglect the daunting task of developing our theology within the framework of the persons of the Godhead, and since Christ is the most visible member, he is the easiest place to see this happen. It is imperative to insist on a robust Christology.

VanDrunen's Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms Part 1

David VanDrunen's newest book Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms looks to be an impressive read. His project is to take on a subject that has been recklessly bandied about all over obscure Reformed blogs and journal articles. This subject is the two social/theological doctrines of the two kingdoms and natural law. VanDrunen limits the scope of his study to the way these doctrines have been espoused historically rather than defending them from an exegetical or biblical theological starting point. Therefore, he examines the way the doctrines have been either embraced or rejected throughout Reformed ecclesiastical history. Who is Reformed will be decided strictly on confessional grounds (those who affirm the Heidelberg or Westminster confessions according to "something like their original meaning").

VanDrunen does an excellent job at giving clear definitions for the two terms he is going to trace out. The two kingdoms doctrine asserts that, "God rules all human institutions and activities, but rules them in two fundamentally different ways. According to this doctrine, God rules the church (the spiritual kingdom) as redeemer in Jesus Christ and rules the state and all other social institutions (the civil kingdom) as creator and sustainer, and thus these two kingdoms have significantly different ends, functions, and modes of operation" (1). VanDrunen is aware that this is commonly thought of as a distinctively Lutheran doctrine, and posits this as a good enough reason for his study. Right off the bat he shows the vast throng of pastors and scholars who deny the two kingdoms in their work. This is demonstrated in anyone who seeks to critique secular culture from a Christian standpoint. In this view, God is redeeming all things. The Christian then ought to be looking for ways to advance this redemption by seeking to "transform all activities and institutions in ways that reflect the kingom of God and its final destiny" (4). "All activities and institutions" is taken in the plainest sense with these folks, apparently including forming goat-breeding societies on a 'Reformed basis' and developing football programs in accordance with a 'Reformed world and life view' (4). The list of shout-outs received in the one kingdom camp ranges from Herman Dooyeweerd to Richard Hays (also included are the likes of Alisdair MacIntyre and John Milbank). It is this take on Reformed social life that VanDrunen wants to show as ahistorical.

The doctrine of natural law gets a little less attention at the outset, but again VanDrunen gives a clear definition. Natural law concerns, "knowledge of God's moral requirements obtained through nature" (15). Interestingly, VanDrunen claims that Abraham Kuyper was one who maintained the original focus on natural law, and was later misinterpreted by some of his followers. The primary culprit for the reworking of natural law is, of course, Karl Barth. Barth abandoned the doctrine of natural law and sought to develop a worldview based on a Christological redemption of all things. Though many in the later Reformed (neo-calvinist) camps had other theological disagreements with Barth, they followed him closely in his transformationalism. While natural law doesn't get singled out in this first chapter much it is clear that VanDrunen sees it as intertwined with the two kingdoms doctrine.

There isn't much to say by way of review thus far. VanDrunen is clearly going against the grain here, though. If he makes his case there are going to be a lot of drywallers, painters, playwrites, and the rest trying to find new motivation.

Response to Chris Little's "What Makes Missions Christian?"

This is my abbreviated response to Chris Little over his article "What Makes Mission Christian?" in the most recent issue of International Journal of Frontier Missions (ijfm.org):

First, it does sound like you were “set up” in this issue and that is not right. At the same time I was taken aback by much of your language aimed at the opposition. You warned of the “horizontalization in mission” (67) and urged “recovering the doxological theme in mission” (69), reminding us that “mission is not undertaken for the welfare and glory of man” (70). Are you really willing to assert that “there is nothing particularly Christian about humanitarian work” (68)? That Oprah Winfrey and Bill Gates are indistinguishable from Compassion and World Vision? Furthermore you drew several hard, fast lines between holism and a host of evangelical boogey-men: liberalism, Liberation Theology, annihilationism, inclusivism, and rice Christianity. I’m sure you could point to holistic ministries in each camp but to resort to over-generalized name calling is unfair, unhelpful, and will certainly break down lines of communication.

Second, and more to the point of the actual argument, I am uncomfortable about your portraits of Jesus and Paul. What do you really make of the nature of Jesus’ work? We cannot get around the fact that his miracles are almost entirely centered on restoring bodies. To try and distance him from that central, prophecy-fulfilling work is in danger of making his miracles into arbitrary magic tricks exclusively meant to draw crowds to hear his words – as if pulling a rabbit from his kippah would have worked just as well. As a side note, that brought out two interesting comments in your article. The first is that Jesus never did a miracle which did not lead to words. In reality, wherever you find a couple of paragraphs of black print together in the Gospels it’s usually Jesus doing without saying. The second statement was that ‘poor’ is not “simply a socio-economic term” (69). Granted poor, deaf, blind, dumb can all have spiritual meanings, they also have very literal, very powerful meanings as well including the Isaiah prophecy you referenced (Lk 4:18-19) which was literally being fulfilled by Jesus (Lk 7:21-23). We can safely assume literal poverty was what their money bag was for. I am not trying to play Jesus’ works off his words but simply saying the picture is far more complex than either side has a tendency of painting it.

Briefly on Paul, it is not true that he “seems purposefully to have avoided…personal charity” (67). He made much of his humanitarian aid to Jerusalem (Ac 24:17; Rom 15:25ff; 1 Cor 16:1-3; 2 Cor 8:1-4; 9:1-2, 12). Very interestingly, when he goes to compare his gospel with the apostles the thing James, Peter, and John challenge him on is not Romans Road but to “remember the poor”, which he is quick to assert is the “very thing I was eager to do” (Gal 2:10). Of course, Paul’s calling and gifting distinguished him from the Stephen, Cornelius, Lydia, James, and Lukes of the NT but we cannot make the case that he did not capture God’s concern for the poor nor consider it fundamental to his mission – he did.

Third, (and I hate to use an over-played word you are probably exhausted of hearing) I am afraid that this might lead to a reductionistic view of mission (at least I didn’t say Platonic, Gnostic, or post-Enlightenment). True mission has always been more but certainly never less than answering the question of how one gets saved. At its best, mission must entail the full council of Christ, the message of resurrection and reconciliation, and planting communities who live as a powerful, subversive force here and now in light of the resurrection. It should come as a shock to our over-programmed senses that the only two formal offices in an institution bent on reaching the world are elders and deacons. How can we make mission any less than that?

Honestly I think prioritism is a bad question that has generated a hopeless debate. I would liken it to asking, Which is more important, evangelism or holiness? Or evangelism or theological education for that matter? You might be able to make a great case for one or the other but you are not going to be happy with the results. True, giving someone a loaf of bread is not the same as sharing the gospel (as George Verwer reportedly said), but sharing the gospel is not the same as giving a loaf of bread. Both neglectful Christians are disobedient.

At the end of the day I don’t have a problem with a clarion call to include the gospel at the forefront of all endeavors. It’s our lifeblood. But the way there cannot be through denigrating something so dear and so oft-repeated throughout the Scriptures.

Review of Surprised by Hope

Wright’s newest title and growing theme in his writing and teaching of late is an attempt to connect the elusive dots between Christ’s resurrection and ascension, the end of the age, and their implications for the individual, the church, and the cosmos in the present. He outlines his framework primarily as a critique against mainstream, post-Enlightenment, Western Christianity which views salvation as “‘my relationship with God’ in the present and about ‘going home to God and finding peace’ in the future’” (196). This gross misunderstanding, according to Wright, is committed generally to life after death without working out the specifics (6), begets an escapist piety without quarrels with the injustice in our day (27, 66), skews proper exegesis (199), smacks of Gnosticism in which “the created world is at best irrelevant, at worst a dark, evil, gloomy place” (90), and places personal eternal security at the center of everything and “the hope of creation as mere embroidery around the edges” (80).

Emphatically distancing himself from evolutionary optimism (things will get better and better as we build heaven on earth) or transitional souls (things will get worse and worse until we finally abandon this wicked earth), Wright seeks to answer “the major, central, framing question” of both Testaments: “God’s purpose of rescue and re-creation for the whole world, the entire cosmos” (184). The bodily, in our space-time continuum, resurrection of Jesus “is the decisive event demonstrating that God’s kingdom really has been launched on earth as it is in heaven” (234). By rising bodily (not spiritually) from the dead, death has been defeated (not redefined), and we have witnessed the inception of the inevitable trajectory of God’s good earth (our present space) meeting God’s perfect heaven (God’s present space) as depicted in Revelation. Believers are signposts here and now of the goodness of creation and its eventual renewal by championing the Lord’s present dominion over all the earth – spiritually, socially, politically, economically – and anticipating when we are resurrected bodily and creation is “set free from its bondage to decay” (Rom 8:21). “We do not ‘build the kingdom’ all by ourselves but we do build for the kingdom…what is done in the present in the body, by the power of the Spirit, will be reaffirmed in the eventual future, in ways at which we can presently only guess” (143, 156).

As always there are so many things Wright does exceptionally well. His opening chapters prove that he remains a premier apologist and one of few theologians with refreshing, exciting things to say about the resurrection and new creation. In a lot of ways, his critiques are penetrating and demand attention. Biblically, we cannot deny social action, political involvement, environmental concern, the integrity of secular work, or the stuff of life but neither can we support their weight under the present ambiguity about a temporary earth and eternal heaven. He has caught the evangelical hand in the cookie jar trying to retrieve treats of present relevance while balancing precariously on a rickety step-stool of escapism.

At the end of the day, despite talk of the middle way, we are still left out of focus when we approach the New Testament with Wright’s prescription. At the heart of the problem is his rendition of the gospel: “the gospel, in the New Testament, is the good news that God (the world’s creator) is at last becoming king and that Jesus, whom this God raised from the dead, is the world’s true lord” (227). Though this is absolutely true and cannot be said enough in our wishy washy private spiritualism, this narrow definition demands he shy away from (not deny) talk of the role of sin in individuals and Christ’s solution (which really fuels talk of his lordship), a deafening theme in the Scriptures. By emphasizing the former aspect of the gospel at the exclusion of the redemption of humanity is really the false dichotomy that looms large behind the social action versus evangelism debate. Both are about as helpful as giving priority to Jesus as Savior or to Jesus as Lord.

Not surprisingly, when you tease out the implications of a Jesus more Lord than Savior you end up with incredibly helpful insights and incredibly bizarre exegesis. To cite a few of the latter: 1 Corinthians 5:17’s warning that without Christ’s resurrection “you are still in your sins” becomes “not simply a private experience; it is a fact about the cosmos” (247). Similarly, he draws a curious analogy: “He wanted to rescue Israel in order that Israel might be a light to the Gentiles, and he wanted thereby to rescue humans in order that humans might be his rescuing stewards over creation. That is the inner dynamic of the kingdom of God” (202). That is Wright’s paradigm speaking, not the Scriptures and certainly not 1 Peter 2:9-12 which labels believers with all the titles of Israel and gives them the same marching orders, “that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness…[that Gentiles] may see your good deeds and glorify God”. A final example is his esteem for the church’s mission for beauty. Because Christ is Lord over a good creation beauty joins the ranks of social justice and evangelism as the duties of every believer. Though we cannot deny its relevance, it is infused by Wright a priority the New Testament simply does not give it.

Wholism and Prioritism: Rather Gnosticism, Materialism, and Wholism

"Perhaps we all awaited a resurrection." Housekeeping

The light of the eyes rejoices the heart,
and good news refreshes the bones. Pr. 15:30 ESV

“A twinkle in the eye means joy in the heart,
and good news makes you feel fit as a fiddle”. MSG

Where does the body end and the spirit begin? This is not a new discussion. There are many many ways of looking at this. Does the ministry of preaching (word) have a greater seat in the Kingdom than feeding and clothing (deeds)? Are practical works a means to an end? Or are they an end in themselves? I think some more fundamental questions must be asked to answer these questions about wholism and prioritism.

These are not merely questions about practice but about the Gospel that we preach. Peter Leithart’s Against Christianity's, whole thesis is this point, the Christian Gospel is not a set of truths, propositions, or statements that people affirm, that would be Christianity. The Gospel is, as N.T. Wright says, “Jesus is Lord, and one day every knee shall bow..." Therefore Leithart can say that the Gospel is economics, art, and anything else. Not merely something that you can extract principles about economics from. The Gospel is a redemptive and healing work to all things.

When someone says that the preaching of the Gospel is prioritized over ministry of deeds, what they are saying is that the Gospel is a set of truths orally communicated that people must know, we feed people so that they might be alive long enough to pray the sinners prayer and await the rapture.  I am personally confused that the same people who fight for a literal and historical account of the Bible seem to see only the spiritual world ahead of us.

(Enter Leithart stage left)

If Leithart is correct, then we need a new vocabulary. Christianity, and it’s red headed step child prioritism, are more correctly known as Gnosticism. The Gospel is wholistic; everything on this earth will be made new by the resurrection of Christ. What then are we preaching? Did Christ appear as a spirit? Was his body or his spirit crucified? We do not want to run to the other extreme of materialism. Rather the whole Gospel must be preached to the whole person.

To return to the objection at the beginning, what is at stake is not where does money go? To the pastor or to the shovels to dig the well? The questions are:

How do we see God working?
What kind of Kingdom is coming?
What kind of Kingdom are we proclaiming?
What kind of King do we serve?

Richard Pratt on End Times

2nd Presbyterian in Memphis's Christian Life Conference featured Richard Pratt and others speaking on the end times. All lectures are downloadable even previous ones with Tim Keller. Sorry if this is too much like Justin Taylor. I thought I would save the email to all of you.

Contextualization and Presuppositions

We have much ground to cover as we awaken to the growing global conversation of the two thirds of the church not in the West. “Contextualization” brings to mind trite conversations on superficially packaging western theology with colorful, cultural trimming – e.g. Africans will want to dance during church, the Japanese will maintain a more authoritarian ecclesiology. But at its core, contextualization calls into question the nature of truth as well as what Andrew Walls has dubbed the ‘infinite translatability’ of our faith.

In his excellent essay, “One Rule to Rule Them All?”, Kevin Vanhoozer helpfully outlines three poor attempts at contextualizing Christianity. First, the belief (soundly refuted in The Drama of Doctrine) that truth is supracultural, able to be decoded from concrete expression and encoded into a new one – “Instead of profitable pastoral instruction, theologians begat system after system, exchanging their ecclesial birthright for a mess of propositionalist pottage”. The second attempt is an uncritical, syncretistic drawing from a supposed united backdrop of philosophy and religion for shaping faith. The third pitfall is “going local”, making one’s primary allegiance to context rather than text as if they were at odds.

Western theology has borrowed heavily from philosophy. In fact the two become eerily indistinguishable in many discussions on systematics. Now third world theologians are replacing philosophy with the social sciences serving the hermeneutical function of acknowledging the interpreter and the practical function of addressing present-day injustice. I am seeing this firsthand in Ghanaian theologian Kwame Bediako’s Jesus and the Gospel in Africa. Quoting J. V. Taylor he asks, “But if Christ were to appear as the answer to the questions that Africans are asking, what would he look like?” He finds confidence in the answer because “we are not introduced to a new God unrelated to the traditions of our past, but to One who brings to fulfillment all the highest religious and cultural aspirations of our heritage”. Why, Vanhoozer asks, “can theology borrow from Plato but not from primal religions”?

There is indeed a supra-cultural, supra-chronicle, supra-linguistic true God, but he will never be known as such. Instead he has determined to make himself known in time, space, and language, an act riddled with its own presuppositional complexity (e.g. N. T. Wright’s “three worlds” of Paul). And here is where Christianity parts ways with Islam, which is only at its truest form in Arabic: this complex text has since been disseminated and Spirit-accompanied into tens of thousands of language, people, socio-economic groups and in turn blossomed into multi-faceted expressions. The dirty details of Babel notwithstanding, this is God’s plan that charts its course through the promise to Abraham, the commission of the church, and the worship of the new earth.

How do we faithfully expose, sharpen, and embrace presuppositions in this light? How do we maintain malleable yet still breakable doctrines? How might new voices grow our Christology rather than shrink it to the least common denominator? And how do we hold fast to the rule of faith by which all gospel expressions are accountable?

Genesis 30: A Postpropositional Attempt Part II

Admittedly it is easier to smell a rotten egg (propositionalism) than lay a fresh one (postpropositionalism). Kevin Vanhoozer is helpful in the realm of doctrine, but what about exegesis? If there is any miscarriage between the theory and a responsible reading of the text it must be scrapped.

Genesis is notorious for vociferous narratives seemingly disproportionate to their content (67 verses on finding Isaac a wife – more than the Fall and Flood combined!). Unless we are willing to enter the story on its terms and not a search and rescue effort for timeless truths, few are fit for the fifty-chapter marathon that lies ahead. True to the exacerbating promise made to Abraham where people and land never seem to join hands to jumpstart a “great nation”, Jacob finds himself hundreds of miles from home on the verge of fostering a massive family. What ensues is a 30-verse account of a fertility war waged between sisters of one husband.

Because the Word employs such violent metaphors concerning itself, we ought not expect stepping into its world will be a costless, comfortable endeavor. Our modern world of egg donors, in vitro fertilization, surrogate motherhood is subverted by the opening line: “When the Lord saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb…” This Creator God has developed a habit of breaking into his creation-set-in-motion (“sprout”, “yield”, “seed”, “fill”, “multiply” in Genesis 1) to act.

The characters at least acknowledge, if they are not always in agreement with, God’s interaction with the created order. Rachel’s barrenness is God withholding fruit of her womb (30.2) and her fertility is God’s remembrance (30.22). The names of Leah’s sons become Ebenezer’s to this seeing and hearing God: “Because the Lord upon my affliction…Because the Lord has heard…” Imagine a world in which the birds and the bees is still the rule of the day but all stands or falls by the will of God. The relationship that follows between God and the sisters is not unlike Brueggemann’s dialectic of self-assertion (complaint) and self-abandonment (praise) – sinful motives not withstanding, neither woman is slavishly self-effacing nor ignorantly self-determining. Both lay claim to God’s ability to provide and give thanks when he does.

God’s outpouring of blessing on Abraham’s seed is effectual but not efficient – effectual because he has a chosen nation in view, but not efficient because in his mercy he remembers Rachel. On paper her fertility is expendable. Judah, the royal offspring, is born along with nine other boys. Leah, Bilhah, or Zilpah seem perfectly capable of producing another two for a rounded twelve. But despite the tinge of idolatry Rachel carries with having children (or her overt idolatry elsewhere, 31.19), God graciously ‘remembers’ her and grants her two strong tribes. Rachel acknowledges this as nothing less than God removing her reproach.

More than just a reminder of the reality of our world, this reproductive explosion is a building block in a nation that will culminate in the Messiah. Rachel and Leah’s walk with God is only partially exemplary. There is covenantal ambiguity here – the promise to Abraham stands but remains unfulfilled, the Law has yet to come. An age is inaugurated in this Messiah with a new paradigm of God’s breaking into the created order. We have received lavish, ludicrous promises that the believer’s self-assertion has the ear of the King (Jn 14.13-14) in a way that has never been done before (16.23). His effectual but still not efficient answering now follows not the trajectory of building a nation Israel but bringing a kingdom. In that day, the Messiah declares, “you will ask nothing of me” (16.23, interestingly our present sorrow turned to that joyful day is compared to a woman giving birth).

If we love by obeying (Jn 14.21), we demonstrate faith by working (Jas 2.18), we walk in deed and truth (1 Jn 3.18), where else do we expect to gain understanding except by doing (Lk 11.28; Jn 7.17; 13.17; Rom 12.2; Eph 4.15; Heb 5.14; Jas 1.22)? To file this devotional on a cognitive shelf, even an easily accessible one, is to fail to grasp what it says. Faithfully inhabiting such a world, sharpening one’s longings by it, disciplining one’s prayers for it, imagining new ways to obey in it requires “constant practice” (Heb 5.14). Embodiment is the purest form of exegesis. This is why the author to the Hebrews commended the flock to “imitate their faith” (Heb 13.7; 6.12) – i.e. a flesh and blood performance of what the text says.

How do we believe, obey, and practice Genesis 30? My world is not the closed system crafted by my fog of unbelief. My Creator sees, hears, and remembers and then moves to act. One facet of such a world highlighted here is the role of prayer – appealing to God both for what is scientifically inevitable (conception) and improbable (overcoming barrenness). What materializes in the Christian life is a dual-dialectic of prayer. I approach the throne for that which is effectual but not necessarily efficient. Do my requests keep the mounting momentum of time in view – “that the Father may be glorified in the Son” (Jn 13.13)? Do they also vigorously defend the Son’s delight of granting abundant life (Jn 10.11)? The road from the cross to the eschaton is not a straight one. God liberally takes leave of it to deliver blessing and suffering that may fail to amount to any direct kingdom fruit. But I also approach the throne with self-assertion as well as self-abandonment. Refusing to make my requests known is at best faithless, false humility and at worst outright disobedience. Refusing to lay them down however is faltering under the weight of the cross.

Above all the chapter as well as the book is a solicitation to believe. Eight of the ten stories of faith told in Hebrews 11 are found in the book of Genesis. Inasmuch as I acknowledged my alien status and bank my life on the heavenly country, I walk the road of Genesis.

Just a quick thought

So I've been thinking a lot about good old Reformed theology and about how much trouble people have with predestination and the Elect. Then I was thinking about the Old Testament and how obvious it is that Israel was God's chosen people. I was reading Malachi today and was again reminded of this when God reminds Israel (through Malachi) that "I have loved Jacob but Esau I have hated. I have laid waste his hill country and left his heritage to jackals of the desert" (1:2b-3).
For some reason it is easier for me to think of God in the Old Testament choosing Israel then to think of God today only saving the Elect. But God's sovereignty in this issue is not a new concept. Just as God chose Israel and saved them and loved them, He today chooses whom he will save from death. I'm so thankful for God's goodness to save sinners such as us!
I love that Paul uses this thought in Romans 9 when describing election. Anyway this is nothing new but it just hit me in a new way. Its not that God has changed and now lets some perish, He has ALWAYS been faithful to save whom He chooses. As Paul says, there is NO injustice on God's part!

The Hermeneutics of the Emmaus Road

Rather than putting this in the comments section I wanted to synthesize some of the responses and thoughts that have been simmering in my mind with all of this discussion. Luke 24:13-35 contains some insights into hermeneutics that pertain to our recent discussions.

On the morning of the resurrection, the disciples were walking along the road discussing and talking about all that happened. When a man whom they did not recognize joins them and inquires as to what all the commotion is, they retell in their own understanding what had transpired. This man, Jesus, rebukes them for their disbelief in all that the prophets had foretold. Jesus then gives them a lesson starting with Moses and the prophets and showed that all of those writings point to Him. Jesus proceeds to share a meal with them, upon breaking bread their eyes are opened and he “vanished from their sight”.

A few observations,

1. The disciples did not recognize Jesus physically (their eyes were kept from recognizing him) or spiritually (they were looking for the “one to redeem Israel”)

2. The disciples had misread and therefore disbelieved in the Scriptures

3. Jesus gives them an OT survey with Himself as the central protagonist

4. After breaking bread their eyes were opened

This pertains to our recent discussion in a few ways. Like the disciples we see Jesus on our own terms. As this story shows, Jesus is most fit for the task to correct our views of Him and as we saw in Mark 8, only Jesus can decide who is and is not fit to preach. Misunderstanding is form of disbelief. This next point is perhaps the most slippery exegetically. I think that hermeneutics must be sacramental. As Jesus broke the bread and gave it them their eyes were opened. Internalization of these stories is a form of hermeneutics. As Flannery O’Connor pointed out, the point is the story. Reading scripture must develop a Christ-as-the-protagonist internalization.

Jesus, Peter, and Theological Precision

One of Jesus' most bizarre statements in the gospel of Mark comes in its eighth chapter. He has just finished feeding the four thousand, has rebuked the Pharisees and the disciples for their unbelief, and has healed a blind man at Bethsaida. While on his way to the villages of Caesarea Philippi with the disciples he asks them the loaded question, "Who do people say that I am?" They answer with a litany of venerable, but inferior spiritual leaders. Immediately, Jesus narrows his focus. The disciples are now forced to account for their understanding of the identity of Jesus. Peter, always a tad bit impetuous, gladly answers for the whole. He declares Jesus to be the Christ, the Messiah. Jesus then says the unthinkable. Something that would no more be said from an American evangelical pulpit than a Hillary Clinton campaign endorsement. "He strictly charged them to tell no one about him."

Most likely, Jesus knew that the disciples' presuppositions about the nature, and mission of Messiah were so skewed that propagation of them would be disastrous for his ministry. In the next verses Jesus demonstrates that the Son of Man would not lead another Maccabean revolt, this time one with eternal sustenance. No, the Son of Man would not only not end imperial control of the people of God, but he would even be rejected by Israel itself. Peter, once again in flagrant grandiosity takes Jesus to school on the historic, orthodox doctrines of Jewish messiahship. Abruptly then, Jesus silences him on this once and for all.

It is clear that the disciples' theological imprecision was caused by the burden of their presuppositions. This was completely unacceptable to Jesus, and limited their participation in his cause. They did not remain in this state, though, by the sixteenth chapter Jesus gives the go-ahead for the eleven to “proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.” Therefore, in the time between the eighth chapter of Mark, and the sixteenth the disciples had gained enough theological accuracy for Jesus to grant them the privilege of proclamation.

Is there then possibility for theological precision? In measure, yes. Although, it comes almost always gradualy, and almost always (because of sin, and pressupositions) includes a significant paradigm shift. The Spirit, in the divine discourse that has been discussed, must help us take our minds off the things of man, and set them on the things of God, just as Jesus did for his disciples. That, I am assured, comes to us often accompanied by abrupt, and unsettling rebukes when we realize that we have come to Jesus trying to force him through our own rubrick. It seems that after this, though, we are left with a measure of truth.

If this is true, it is not presumptuous for our ministers to tell those outside the covenant that they must be born again. It is not presumptuous for us to encourage one another to specific forms of love, and good deads. It is not presumptuous for us to come boldly before the throne of God in prayer. We have the mind of Christ, and this of all things secures for us the potential for accurate theological reflection.

Genesis 30: A Postpropositional Attempt Part I

The fertility war of Israel’s founding women is a preacher’s nightmare. Not even NT writers, for all their fantastically imaginative exegesis, will touch it (outside acknowledging that it really happened, Mt 1:2; Ac 7:8). But that makes this story the perfect postpropositionalist attempt. After all, the more time-bound the details of the story are the more broad the timeless principle must be to bridge the historic, societal, cultural, economic, scientific, linguistic gap between “them” and “us”.

Traditionally the timeless truth of this text might be, ‘God is sovereign over all things’ (or moralistically Jacob’s treatment of Leah or the sisters’ treatment of each other). Without demonizing propositionalism, several things are troubling about this interpretation. First, what becomes important is the timeless principle and not the narrative fluff – Genesis 30 is a verbose, round about way of saying what I’ve been able to say in six words. Second and similarly, it has the adverse affect of flattening the text and sucking the wonder out of it. Third, as comments in the previous blog have pointed out, it is not entirely clear what single, “juicy” timeless principle lurks behind the story. And fourth, it treats doctrine like an object suspended in air for which we can all slip out of our pesky cultural skin to examine it from no particular vantage point. If a timeless principle is preached in the woods and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a meaningful sound? To say, ‘God is sovereign over all things’ in a vacuum is to say nothing at all.

For the sake of brevity but hopefully not simplicity I suggest at least a three step process to embody the text. First, in narratives like this one the story is the message. We are not being invited to harvest it but indwell it. Flannery O’Connor says it well about her own writing when people ask for the story’s main point: “And when they’ve got a statement like that, they go off happy and feel it is no longer necessary to read the story. Some people have the notion that you read the story and then climb out of it into the meaning, but for the fiction writer himself the whole story is the meaning, because it is an experience, not an abstraction”. Genesis 30 taps into a running theme of the whole book of a God who has created the world and then engages in its affairs, here down to the minutia of sperm and egg. What does life on the ground in Paddan-aram look, sound, feel, and think like with such a God? – an exercise Vanhoozer calls “not mastery [of the text] so much as apprenticeship”.

The through-line of the divine drama conceived in a series of building promises to humanity will not allow us to reduce this work to personally embodying the story alone. It is not a snippet of daily life in the Ancient Near East that proves helpful but a building block in a very carefully crafted redemption. Thoughtfully opening and closing wombs creates a genealogy the Gospel writers found worth celebrating and ties God’s sovereignty in creation and our lives to a very specific end.

The second step requires the hard work of faithful imagination. The reality of the world of Genesis 30 looks different in the Ancient Near East than it does in modern America. How do we as children of this God take our cues from His Word and learn to live, love, and pray in our world? The third step challenges the notion that much understanding has happened up until this point. It is not an application of understanding then doing but understanding by doing. It is, as my pastor pointed out, the circularity of Paul’s prayer for the Colossians: filled with spiritual wisdom to walk in a worthy manner to gain more spiritual wisdom. At the end of the eschatological day it’s not our talk of blueprints but our house that faces the floods.

* I am indebted to Wright, Doriani, and Vanhoozer for prompting me in this direction.