The Glory of Kings: A Festschrift for James B. Jordan

Fyodor Dostoevsky
(Christian Encounters Series)

Athanasius
(Foundations of Theological Exegesis and Christian Spirituality)

The Four: A Survey of the Gospels

Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom

From Behind the Veil: The Epistles of John

Deep Exegesis:The Mystery of Reading Scripture

Jane Austen
(A Biography)

Solomon Among the Postmoderns

The Baptized Body

1 & 2 Kings
Brazos Theological Commentary

The Promise Of His Appearing: An Exposition Of Second Peter

A Great Mystery: Fourteen Wedding Sermons

Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, And Hope In Western Literature

Miniatures & Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen

The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism

A Son To Me: An Exposition of 1 & 2 Samuel

Against Christianity

From Silence to Song: The Davidic Liturgical Revolution

Ascent to Love: A Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy

Blessed Are the Hungry: Meditations on the Lord's Supper

A House For My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament

Heroes of the City of Man: A Christian Guide to Select Ancient Literature

Brightest Heaven of Invention: A Christian Guide To Six Shakespeare Plays

Wise Words: Family Stories That Bring the Proverbs to Life

The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church

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Theology - Christology Theology - Soteriology: Exhortation, Easter Sunday

Christ is Risen!  With those words, we enter a new season of the church calendar. We move from the preparatory, penitential season of Lent to the festive celebration of Jesus’ resurrection.

The transition is real, but we can easily misunderstand it.  We misunderstand Lent if we think that Lent is defeat and Easter victory, for Lent too is about the victory of the cross.  We misunderstand Easter if we think that it leaves the cross behind.

Easter doesn’t cancel the cross.  On the contrary, the resurrection imprints the cross on our flesh, like the permanent scars on the glorified flesh of Jesus.  “I was crucified with Christ,” says Paul.  And, “the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance.”  And then, “I bear in my body the brand marks of Jesus.”

Easter is Pentecostal in this precise sense.  The Spirit Jesus breathes is the Spirit of the Crucified Messiah.  Filled with that Spirit, we share in the afflictions and the glory of Jesus; we share His glory by sharing in His afflictions, share in His resurrection power by bearing the cross after Jesus for our brothers.

Jesus’ resurrection didn’t eradicate the cross.  By breathing out His Spirit of resurrection, Jesus has crossed the whole world.

Bible - NT - Acts Theology - Soteriology: Mosaic justice

Stephen’s brief summary of Moses killing the Egyptian returns again and again to the dik- root, “justice.”  Moses acts when he sees that one of his brothers is suffering adikia, injustice (the verb is adikeo, Acts 7:24).   Moses intervenes by doing ekdikesis, by avenging justly; if we may etymologize, he brings justice out of (ek) an unjust situation by punishing the offender (v. 24).

This is the just visitation Moses wants to bring to all Israel.  The next day he finds an Israelite doing injustice to another Israelite (vv. 26-27; the verb is again adikeo).  The unjust Jew will have none of the justice of Moses, and asks, Who made you dikastes?

Though rejected by the Jews, Moses returns and does justice for them b becoming their “ruler and deliverer” (v. 35).  The plagues and exodus finally fulfill Moses’ original plan to do ekdikesis on behalf of those who had suffered the adikia of Egyptian slavery.

Stephen’s summary of the story of Moses anticipates the denunciation of the Jews who are trying him.  What they did to Moses they have done to every prophet who brings the justice of God, and finally they did it to the Dikaios, the Righteous, Jesus (v. 52).

Now: What import does all this have for our understanding of justification (dikaiosis)?  Discuss.

Theology - Christology Theology - Soteriology: Active and Passive Obedience

TF Torrance in a selection from the anthology noted in an earlier post describes the rationale for the distinction of active and passive obedience in Reformed theology.  They don’t differ with regard to time – Christ begins to suffer His passive obedience with the incarnation.  Jesus is the Subject of both.  Torrance says, “They are set in mutual unity in the whole life of Christ.  Since this is so we must speak of the active obedience as actio passiva and the passive obedience as passio activa.”  He goes on to say that this implies that both the active and passive righteousness of Christ is imputed to us, so that “justification means not simply the non-imputation of our sins through the pardon of Christ, but positive sharing in his divine-human righteousness.”  He died an atoning death, but Torrance speaks also of “his atoning and justifying life.”  The distinction thus serves to emphasize that “the whole course of Christ’s active obedience is absolutely integral to his work of reconciliation.”

This is helpful because it shows that it’s possible to include a notion of “imputation of active obedience” without treating active obedience as an entity in itself, or treating imputation of active obedience as any kind of distinct act from imputation.  Torrance speaks of “sharing in [Christ's] divine-human righteousness,” which is only possible if we are sharing in Christ Himself.  By sharing in Christ Himself, we have Him as our righteousness, actio passiva et passio activa.

Theology - Liturgical Theology - Soteriology: Exhortation

The church calendar teaches us about Jesus, so we can be faithful disciples.  In Epiphany, we focus on the manifestation of Jesus, culminating today in His glorification the Mount of Transfiguration.  On Wednesday, we enter the season of Lent, when we re-focus on the suffering and sacrifice of Christ.

Lent is not just an opportunity to learn about Christ’s sacrifice.  It is an annual removal of the leaven of Egypt, and thus a practical expression of our participation in the sacrifice of Christ.

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Bible - NT - Revelation Theology - Soteriology: Judgment given

At the beginning of the millennium, the saints sit on thrones and “judgment is given to them” (Revelation 20:4).  The phrase is ambiguous: Does this mean “the power to judge was given them” or “they received a favorable judgment from the court?”  The context of Revelation doesn’t decide the issue, but the phrase comes from Daniel 7, and that source text provides an answer.  The phrase occurs in Daniel 7:22, in the midst of the angel’s explanation of the vision that Daniel has just witnessed.  He is explaining the “little horn” who “wages war with the saints and overpowers them” (v. 21).  But at this point the Ancient of Days arrives, and “judgment was given to the saints of the Highest One,” with the result that the saints “took possession of the kingdom” (v. 22).

In context, “judgment given” means that the Ancient of Days gives the saints victory over the horn.  That is an act of judgment insofar as the war between the horn and the saints is imagined as a judicial contest, a struggle over the right, which the Ancient of Days decides.  Thus, “judgment is given” in the sense that the Ancient of Days decides in favor of the saints in their real-world struggle with the horn.  This is the “deliverdict” declared by the Ancient of Days, His enacted justification of His holy ones.

But the text immediately goes on to say that the saints receive a kingdom and as the text proceeds it is clear that they are given power to rule (vv. 27-28).  Revelation has the same sequence: The martyr-saints who are “given judgment” reign with Christ for a thousand hears.  Justification by the Ancient of Days takes the form of victory in a historical struggle, but also results in the elevation of the justified to rule.

Theology - Christology Theology - Soteriology: Shame of the cross

Gregory of Nyssa (Against Eunomius 3.3) recognizes that the crux (!) of the debate between Arian and orthodox is the cross: “we say that the God who was manifested through the cross must be honored in the same way as the Father is honored while they consider the Passion as an obstacle to glorifying the only-begotten God equally with the God who begot him. . . . For it is obvious that the reason why he places the Father above the Son and exalts him with superior honor is that the shame of the cross does not pertain to him. And the reason why he insists that the nature of the Son is different and inferior is that the disgrace of the cross is attributed to him alone and does not pertain to the Father. . . . So then who is ashamed of the cross?  The one who even after the Passion worships the Son equally with the Father or the one who even before the Passion degrades him, not only by counting him among the creation but by asserting that his nature is passible on the premise that he could not have come to experience his sufferings if he did not possess a nature susceptible to such sufferings?”

Not the Arians but the Orthodox are the true theologians of the cross.  Classic theism is no metaphysical speculation, but a defense of the suffering God.

Theology - Soteriology: Belief

Thomas (ST II-II, 2, 1) offers this neat spectrum of varieties of “acts of intellect” that have “unformed thought devoid of a firm assent”: Thos that “incline to neither side” are doubts; those that “incline to  one side rather than the other, but on account of some slight motive” are “suspicions”; those that “incline to one side yet with fear of the other” are “oipinions.”

Belief differs from each of these. It “cleaves firmly to one side, in which respect belief has something in common with science and understanding; yet its knowledge does not attain the perfection of clear sight, wherein it agrees with doubt, suspicion, and opinion.

Theology - Soteriology: Merit and Atonement

Merit, Jonathan Edwards said, is “anything . . . in one person . . which appearing in the view of another is a recommendation of him to the other’s regard, esteem and affection.”

On this definition of merit, Edwards is able to insist that imputation is not “unreasonable, or against nature,” since nothing is more common than that “respect should be shown to one on account of his . . . conntexion with another.”  Jenson (America’s Theologian) explains the point this way: “what ‘recommends’ person A to person C should also recommend B, A’s ‘connexion,’ to C.”

Union with Christ is also central to Edwards’ atonement theology.  When one “that is very dear to any person, and of great merit in [his] eyes . . . not only stands in a strict union with another, but also does particularly express a great desire of that other’s welfare . . . it is agreeable to nature, that the welfare of the person united to him should be regarded . . . as if it were his own.”  Jesus in other words has “that which commends Him to the Father’s affection,” and when He in turn commends us, His closely united friends, to the Father, the Father accepts us on the basis of Jesus’ “merits.”  He goes on to characterize the atonement to a rescue of a client by a patron: It is as “when the patron’s heart is so united to the client, that when the client is destroyed, he from love is willing to take the destruction on himself.”

Theology - Soteriology: Regensburg Reclaimed?

In an article evaluating RC Sproul’s teaching on justification in a 2004 issue of JETS, Matthew Heckel concludes that Sproul’s work is misleading and misses the opportunity of the moment:

“Sproul’s assertion that  the Reformers considered sola fide  t he essence of t he gospel is not fundamentally wrong. Yet it is unqualified and dangerously misleading. Why? Sproul’s thesis fails to interact with t he doctrine of justification in  its pre-Reformation forms and in  its post-Reformation developments.  Without input from Augustine,  the pre-Reformation church and a whole host of  saints become  the victims of Sproul’s polemic, because he does not distinguish between justification by faith alone as  an experience and justification by faith alone as an article of faith. Sproul does not seem to allow for faith alone to save apart from believing it as a formula. The Reformers themselves provide an antidote to this narrowly confined approach, since they applied their doctrine throughout church history and did not make explicit knowledge of sola fide a necessary condition for the experience of sola fide. Sproul also fails to appreciate that our own context today is not polemical but largely ecumenical. The Catholic Church has officially moved beyond its rejection of Luther, accepting many if not the most important aspects of his theological reforms of the doctrine of justification. The closest the Reformation ever came to this kind of experience was at Regensburg, where  the uncompromising Calvin believed convergence had been achieved on  the doctrine of justification. Based on this Reformation model, could evangelicals not strike a similar pose toward Roman Catholics today? Sproul’s vision is limited to a sixteenth-century polemical context. Does Sproul’s treatme nt of the Reformation doctrine lead to the wrong approach today?  Could evangelicals come to regard Roman Catholicism as genuinely Christian and at least achieve unofficial unity and mutual recognition as ECT proposed? If so, then Regensburg might not only be revisited but reclaimed.”

History Religions Theology - Soteriology: Human sacrifice

You can feel the outrage when David Carrasco (City of Sacrifice: The Aztec Empire and the Role of Violence in Civilization) observes, “all significant theories of ritual sacrifice, from Robertson Smith through Hubert and Mauss, Rene Girard, Walter Burkert, Adoph Jensen, and J.Z. Smtih, completely ignored the most thorough record of real, historical human sacrifice while favoring either distant reports of animals sacrifices or literary sacrifices from Western Classics! Why does the physical, pictorial, ethno-historical, and sometimes eyewitness evidence of actual ritual human slaughter provoke so little interest among the major theorists of ritual violence? How can each theory parade right on by the sacrifice of Tezcatlipoca, Spanish soldiers, and horses, and the dismemberment of teenage warriors, adolescent girls, and infant children while constructing general principles of interpretation about human aggression?  . . . why is there such a lack of interest in the Mesoamerican cases while Christian and Jewish literary exemplum serve as ‘classic’ cases?”

American Religion Politics Theology - Soteriology: Sovereignty and Sacrifice

In his provocative 2005 study, Putting Liberalism in Its Place, Yale’s Paul W. Kahn argues that “we will never understand the character of the American rule of law without first understanding the way in which it is embedded in a conception of popular sovereignty.  More importantly, we will not understand the way in which the nation-state presents itself to the citizen as an ultimate value, that is, one for which the citizen may be asked to sacrifice his or her life.  Liberal thought, as well as liberal politics, believes claims for sacrifice are exterior to the purposes and functions of a legitimate political arrangement – a kind of unfortunate, historical accident.”  Kahn argues, by contrast, that “recognition of the possibility of sacrifice is at the base of our experience of the political and an adequate theory of our political beliefs must offer an explanation of sacrifice.”

Liberal theory cannot grasp the foundational character of sacrifice, nor can it grasp “the erotic character of the experience of political meaning.”  Kahn means that “attachment to the political community is a matter not of contract but of love.”  He clarifies that he is not advocating a new politics grounded in sacrifice and love, but rather showing that “our politics is already one of love and sacrifice; reason finds its place within this experience of self and polity.”

He makes his point about the limits of liberal theory with a theological analogy: It’s not enough for believers to attend to the content of God’s speaking; of equal importance is the fact that God speaks.  Similarly, “liberal theorists . . . focus on the content of the speech [of the popular sovereign], that is, on what the sovereign said or should say.  They do not reflect on the significance of the belief that it is the popular sovereign who does the speaking.”

Religions Theology - Soteriology: Jihadist sacrifice

Talal Asad has argued, uncharacteristically, that “none of the criteria [of] the Islamic tradition” allows anyone to describe suicide bombers as “sacrifices.”  Ivan Strenski (Why Politics Can’t Be Freed From Religion (Blackwell Manifestos)) demurs.  He finds plenty of evidence that there are contemporary Muslims who “represent an ‘Islamic tradition’ that conceives of human bombers as sacrifices.”

And, he adds, sacrifice confers authority, and this in two ways.  First, suicide sacrifice sacralizes: “Sacrifice is a kind of ritual machine for manufacturing the sacred,” as the etymology of sacrificium suggests.  The sacrificer himself is sacralized: “the bomber enters into the space of the religio-political imaginary: the human bomber is seen as ascending to heaven to be received by Allah.”  They become sacred figures within their communities:

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Theology - Soteriology: Imputed Verdict

I have been charged with deviating from Reformed orthodoxy for claiming that, strictly speaking, what is imputed to us in justification is the verdict that the Father pronounced in raising His Son from the dead.  This verdict assumes that Jesus obeyed the law completely and died in obedience to His Father, but Jesus’ “active” and “passive” obedience are imputed only indirectly.  The Father raised Jesus, and that was the Father’s enacted declaration that the Son is just; we are joined to the risen Son; therefore, the Father makes the same declaration concerning us.

Steven Wedgeworth writes to tell me that I am (somewhat surprisingly to me) in the welcome company of R. L. Dabney: ”It may be said, without affecting excessive subtlety of definition, that by imputation of Christ’s righteousness, we only mean that Christ’s righteousness is so accounted to the sinner, as that he receives thereupon the legal consequences to which it entitles. . . . All are agreed that, when the Bible says, ‘the iniquity of us all was laid on Christ,’ or that ‘He bare our sins,’ or ‘was made sin for us,’ it is only our guilt and not our moral attribute of sinfulness which was imputed. So it seems to me far more reasonable and scriptural to suppose that, in the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, it is not  the attribute of righteousness in Christ which is imputed, but that which is the exact counterpart of guilt – the title to acquittal” (Lectures in Systematic Theology, Lecture LIV).

Theology - Soteriology: Christus Victor

Sacrifices are a “memorial of sin” (Hebrews 10:3).  Every morning and evening, Israel’s sins were memorialized before Yahweh, even as they were atoned for.

Satan accuses “day and night” (Revelation 12:10).  He is the accuser, and at every morning  and evening sacrifice, he has fresh grounds of accusation.

Satan cannot be cast from heaven until the memorials cease.

Memorials cannot cease until there is a sacrifice that actually removes sin.

Christus Victor is not an “addition” to a “sacrificial” theory of atonement.  A sacrificial theory of atonement is a Christus Victor theory.

Theology - Soteriology: Divine seduction

In a well-known passage in De catechizandis rudibus, Augustine explains the purpose of the whole Scripture and of redemptive history:

“Thus, before all else, Christ came so that people might learn how much God loves them, and might learn this, so that they would catch fire with love for him who first loved them, and so that they would also love their neighbor as he commanded and showed by his example – he who made himself their neighbor by loving them when they were not close to him but were wandering far from him. And all of the divine scripture that was written before the Lord’s coming was written to announce that coming; and everything that has since been committed to writing and invested with divine authority tells of Christ, and calls to love. If this is so, then it is plain that on the two commandments of love for God and neighbor hinge not only the whole law and the prophets – the only holy scripture that existed when the Lord spoke these words – but also all the other books of divine writings which were later set apart for our salvation and handed down to us. Hence, in the Old Testament is concealed the New, and in the New Testament is revealed the Old.”

The old covenant is the Lord’s long courtship, designed to seduce us to love the God who loves us.

Theology - Soteriology: Election as Gospel

With deceptive simplicity, Eberhard Jungel (God’s Being is in Becoming: The Trinitarian Being of God in the Theology of Karl Barth) neatly captures why Barth considers the doctrine of election to be the gospel:

“God’s being-in-act becomes manifest in the temporal history of Jesus Christ.  The temporal history of Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of God’s eternal resolve.  The fulfillment in time of God’s eternal resolve is God’s existence as man in Jesus Christ.  God’s existence as man is not only God’s existence as creature, but equally God’s handing of himself over to the opposition to God which characterises human existence.  The consequence of God’s self-surrender is his suffering of the opposition to God which afflicts human existence in opposition to God – even to death on the cross.”

Theology - Soteriology Theology - Trinity: God and Election, Fitt the Second

Barth’s doctrine of election feels incarnational because it is the determination of the Son to be the incarnate Son.

Traditional Reformed dogmatics always insisted, as Richard Muller has shown, always election in Christ.  But, again, the fact that in electing the elect in Christ God the Son determined Himself to be the elect One has been implicit rather than explicit.

Barth brings it to the forefront: God the Son elects because He is God with the Father and Spirit; but if God the Son elects in Christ, then He elects Himself, determines and commits Himself, to be that Christ in whom the elect will have life; He is thus not only the electing God but the elect man.  And that means that election itself is a self-determination, a self-commitment of the Son to become flesh.  Election is the Son’s self-giving, His determination to be the Crucified One.

Theology - Soteriology Theology - Trinity: Election and God

Traditional Reformed dogmaticians place the decree of election in the doctrine of God.  So does Barth.  But they do it very differently.

The difference, if I might be allowed a simplistic caricature, is in the question of whether election is a determination of creation or also a determination of the Creator.  For traditional dogmatics (especially of a supralapsarian variety), election and reprobation constituted God’s primal decision concerning the destiny of created beings.  There was no “reflex” back on God, such that God determined Himself to be God in a particular way.  God is the dread sovereign; election is His sovereign choice; once the decision has been made, God remains dread sovereign.  Implicitly, He has committed Himself to work out election and reprobation in history, but that point is left implicit.

Barth brings it to the forefront.  Election is a determination above all of God.  God is no less sovereignty in Barth’s doctrine, but Barth emphasizes that in election God determines Himself, commits Himself, to be God-for-us, God-for-creation, the God who saves and judges.  God’s decree is no less fixed in Barth than in earlier dogmatics, but the fixity doesn’t come from a static script for history but rather from God’s relentless commitment to the decision He made before the foundation of the world; the decree will out, because God has determined Himself to be the God who will ensure that the decree will out.

It is difficult to speak of this, but perhaps we can say that God’s “place” in relation to the world is conceived differently.  For traditional dogmatics, God appears as a sovereign who decides from a distance.  In Barth, election has the feel and form of incarnation: God is sovereign in the fact that He commits Himself before the foundation of the world to bring His purposes to pass.  For traditional dogmatics, God plans to move but remains unmoved in His deciding; for Barth, election is not only a decision to move at some time in the future, but is God’s own movement.

Theology - Soteriology: Repentance

In his epistle ad Donatum, Cyprian left this searching analysis of the challenges of converting from a luxurious and honor-driven aristocratic life to a Christian one: “While I was still lying in darkness and gloomy night, wavering hither and there, tossed about on the foam of this boastful age, and uncertain of my wandering steps, knowing nothing of my real life, and remote from truth and light, I used to regard it as a difficult matter, and especially as difficult in respect of my character at that time, that a man should be capable of being born again — a truth which the divine mercy had announced for my salvation—and that a man quickened to a new life in the layer of saving water should be able to put off what he had previously been; and, although retaining all his bodily structure, should be himself changed in heart and soul. 

“‘How, said I, is such a conversion possible, that there should be a sudden and rapid divestment of all which, either innate in us has hardened in the corruption of our material nature, or acquired by us has become inveterate by long accustomed use? These things have become deeply and radically engrained within us. When does he learn thrift who has been used to liberal banquets and sumptuous feasts? And he who has been glittering in gold and purple, and has been celebrated for his costly attire, when does he reduce himself to ordinary and simple clothing? One who has felt the charm of the fasces and of civic honours shrinks from becoming a mere private and inglorious citizen. The man who is attended by crowds of clients, and dignified by the numerous association of an officious train, regards it as a punishment when he is alone. It is inevitable, as it ever has been, that the love of wine should entice, pride inflate, anger inflame, covetousness disquiet, cruelty stimulate, ambition delight, lust hasten to ruin, with allurements that will not let go their hold.”

Theology - Soteriology: Insition and excision

In a nicely nuanced statement, Calvin notes that “there are three modes of insition” [entrance, or grafting] and “two modes of excision.”

The modes of entrance into the covenant are: “the children of the faithful are ingrafted, to whom the promise belongs according to the covenant made with the fathers;ingrafted are also they who indeed receive the seed of the gospel, but it strikes no root, or itis choked before it brings any fruit; and thirdly the elect are ingrafted, who are illuminatedunto eternal life according to the immutable purpose of God.”

As fare as cutting off: “The first are cut off, when they refuse the promise given to their fathers, or do not receive iton account of their ingratitude; the second are cut off, when the seed is withered anddestroyed; and as the danger of this impends over all, with regard to their own nature, it must be allowed that this warning which Paul gives belongs in a certain way to the faithful, lest they indulge themselves in the sloth of the flesh.”

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