_awakening

Heaven Here.

So has this:

"A fundamental mistake of the conservative side of the American church today, and much of the Western church, is that it takes as its basic goal to get as many people as possible ready to die and go to heaven. It aims to get people into heaven rather than get heaven into people." [Dallas Willard from Renovation of the Heart]

[HT: John Chandler]

Creation.

This has spoken to me over the past few days:

“How do we live in creation? Do we relate to it as a place full of “things” we can use for whatever need we want to fulfill and whatever goal we wish to accomplish? Or do we see creation first of all as a sacramental reality, a sacred space where God reveals to us the immense beauty of the Divine?

As long as we only use creation, we cannot recognise its sacredness because we are approaching it as if we are its owners. But when we relate to all that surrounds us as created by the same God who created us and as the place where God appears to us and calls us to worship and adoration, then we are able to recognise the sacred quality of all God’s handiwork." [Henri Nouwen]

[HT: JR Woodward]

Participants in the New World.

Last night I finished Jesus, the Final Days: What Really Happened, by Craig A. Evans and Tom Wright. It's a quick read, only three chapters long, which represents lectures given at the Symposium for Church and Academy at Crichton College. The three chapters deal with the death, the burial, and the resurrection of Jesus, The first two come from Evan's lectures, while the third comes from Wright's - and covers quite familiar territory for those who have read Wright's thoughts on the resurrection. All in all, it was a great read, with the bibliographies giving me a few more books to investigate... [as usual].

Here's the money quote from Wright on the meaning of the resurrection:

The fourth and final strange feature of the resurrection narratives, which may call into question many of the Easter sermons that I and others regularly preach, is the absence of any mention of the future Christian hope. Almost everywhere else in the New Testament, where you find people talking about Jesus' resurrection, you find them also talking about our own future resurrection, the final hope that one day we all will be raised as Jesus has been raised. But the Gospels never say anything like, "Jesus is raised, therefore there is life after death" (not that many first-century Jews doubted that there was); or, "Jesus is raised, therefore we shall go to heaven when we die (most believed something like that anyway); or better, "Jesus is raised, therefore we shall be raised at the last." No:insofar as the event is interpreted in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, it has a very "this-worldly" meaning, relating to what i happening in the here and now. "Jesus is raised," they say, "therefore he is the Messiah; he is the true Lord of the whole world; therefore we, as his followers, have a job to do: we must act as his heralds, announcing his lordship to the entire world." It is not, "Jesus is raised, therefore look up into the sky and keep looking  because one day you will be going there with him." Many hymns, prayers, and Christian sermons have tried to pull the Easter story in that direction, but the line of thought within the Gospels themselves is, "Jesus is raised, therefore God's new world has begun, and therefore we, you, and everybody else are invited to be not only beneficiaries of that new world but participants in making it happen."

Classic Wright.

MLK.

His final speech, given the night before he was assassinated. Still fresh and vibrant. Still needed.


[HT: Andrew Sullivan]

Interview with Tom Wright.

Trevin Wax recently posted an interview with Tom Wright about his latest book, Justification: God's Plan and Paul's Vision, which is a response to John Piper on the issue of justification. Here's a sample, and some of the money quotes from the interview:

Trevin Wax: What would you say are the key differences between you and Piper on justification?

N.T. Wright: Well, I set justification within the larger Pauline context, where it always comes, of God’s purposes to fulfill his covenant promise to Abraham and so to rescue the whole creation, humankind of course centrally included, from sin and death. Piper holds that Abrahamic context at arm’s length.

Second, I understand justification as basically a law-court term, where it means the judge’s creative declaration that a person is ‘in the right’ in terms of the lawcourt, whereas Piper holds that justification involves the accrediting to a person of the moral, not the forensic, ‘righteousness’ of Christ – something Paul never says (as J. I. Packer admits).

Third, I understand Paul’s doctrine of justification as eschatological, that is, the justification of the faithful in the present time is both the fulfilment of the long story of Israel and the anticipation of the eventual verdict to be delivered on the last day, as in Romans 2.1-16 and 8.1-30.

Fourth, in line with many Reformed readers of scripture, including Calvin, I understand Paul’s doctrine of justification to be of those who are ‘in Christ’, whereas Piper and others don’t make that a central element in justification itself. Conversely, for Piper the center of justification is the ‘imputation’ of ‘the righteousness of Christ’, seen in terms of ‘righteousness’ as a kind of moral achievement earned by Jesus and then reckoned to those who believe. I believe that this is an attempt to say something close to what Paul actually says in Romans 6, namely that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is ‘reckoned’ to those who are ‘in him’. Putting it the way Piper (and one part of the Reformation tradition) puts it is a pointer to something which is truly there in Paul, but one which gives off misleading signals as well.

Finally, for Piper justification through Christ alone is the same in the future (on the last day) as in the present, whereas for Paul, whom I am following very closely at this point, the future justification is given on the basis of the Spirit-generated life that the justified-by-faith-in-the-present person then lives. In fact, the omission of the Spirit from many contemporary Reformed statements of justification is one of their major weaknesses.

Closing out the interview, Wax ask the question:

Trevin Wax: What is at stake in this debate over justification? If one were to adopt Piper’s view instead of yours, what would they be missing?

N.T. Wright: What’s missing is the big, Pauline picture of God’s gospel going out to redeem the whole world, all of creation, with ourselves as part of that.

What’s missing is the big, Pauline view of the church, Jew and Gentile on equal footing, as the sign to the powers of the world that Jesus is Lord and they aren’t.

What’s missing is the key work of the Holy Spirit in enabling the already-justified believers to live with moral energy and will so that they really do ‘please God’ as Paul says again and again (but as Reformed theology is shy of lest it smack of smuggling in works-righteousness again).

What’s missing is an insistence on Scripture itself rather than tradition . . .

[HT: Chris Marlow]

Revelation as a Critique of Empire.

Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology has posted their most current journal issue online in its entirety for download. The theme is Revelation as a Critique of Empire and includes articles from Craig Koester, David Barr, Warren Carter, and Allen Dwight Callahan. You can download it here.

Just passing along the good stuff when you find it...

[HT: Mark Goodacre]

Being the Covenant.

From yesterday's Advent reading, Isaiah 42.1-7:

Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
     my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my spirit upon him;
     he will bring forth justice to the nations.
He will not cry or lift up his voice,
     or make it heard in the street;
a bruised reed he will not break,
     and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
     he will faithfully bring forth justice.
He will not grow faint or be crushed
     until he has established justice in the earth;
     and the coastlands wait for his teaching.

Thus says God, the LORD,
     who created the heavens and stretched them out,
     who spread out the earth and what comes from it,
who gives breath to the people upon it
     and spirit to those who walk in it;
I am the LORD, I have called you in righteousness,
     I have taken you by the hand and kept you;
I have given you as a covenant to the people,
     a light to the nations,
     to open the eyes that are blind,
to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,
     from the prison those who sit in darkness.

I keep being brought back to the phrase "I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations." I've been pondering how Jesus embodied this kind of calling. How was he a gift from God, a covenant to the people? I've also been thinking about my own life. How am I being "a covenant to the people?"

Advent Conspiracy.

Jamie and I have been talking lately about what Christmas has become. Perhaps it is remembering the past, when as kids you used to approach Christmas with a sense if wonder and awe. Perhaps it is the state of the economy. Perhaps it is something deeper...

I think what we are longing for is something more from the season - to not miss the essence of what the advent is all about by being blinded by all the season has become. It is refreshing to see things like the Advent Conspiracy.

It is a reminder that we are not alone in our hope for something better this season.

Readings and More.

Here's a collection of essays, articles, and lectures recently posted here and there on the web. Enjoy.

Paul's Understanding of the Death of Jesus by James D.G. Dunn
[from BiblicalStudies.org.uk]

How Christian is the Book of Revelation? by G.R. Beasley-Murray
[from BiblicalStudies.org.uk]

Khirbet Qeiyafa: Sha'arayim by Yosef Garfinkel and Saar Ganor
[from the Journal of Hebrew Scriptures]

In Search of the Ancient Name of Khirbet Qeiyafa by Nadav Na'aman
[from the Journal of Hebrew Scriptures]

Reconstructing Hope [a series of three lectures given by Tom Wright at the Harvard Graduate School Christian Fellowship]

The Gospel.

Scot McKnight posted some thoughts today on the gospel in relationship to Romans 1.16-17. First he notes some of the nuances thoughts on the nature of "salvation":

What does "salvation" mean?

1. Common Evangelicalism - Personal forgiveness of sins through the death of Christ and very similar, then, to justification.
2. Fitzmyer - Rescue in a comprehensive sense through the cross and unto the eschatological destiny. Parallel to justification.
3. NT Wright - Not the simple notion of heavenly bliss; rescue from death and ultimate destruction and "from Rome" in a concrete sense.
4. Jewett - Deliverance from the present evil age and restoration unto wholeness and preservation from the wrath to come and not present in Rome's rule but in the powerless communities who believe in Jesus.

He then added some of this own thoughts on the nature of the "gospel," noting:

First, the gospel is (1) God's (2) power. The gospel is the work of God.
Second, God's gospel power works toward "salvation."
Third, God's gospel power works toward the salvation of all people - Jew and Gentile.
Fourth, God's gospel power brings salvation to those who believe.
Fifth, in the gospel God's "righteousness" is made manifest: that is, God's right-making work on earth (and in the future new heavens and new earth) becomes manifest.

This has once again started me thinking more about the nature of "salvation" and the "gospel." As I have mentioned here before, I think the great travesty of modern evangelicalism is to be reductionistic when it comes to "salvation" and the "gospel." As McKnight noted, common evangelicalism posits that salvation is more akin to justification, and further, to a personal, individualistic justification. [It follows then that the "gospel" is therefore seen as, and often limited to, the mere presentation of personal justification.]

For us to reduce salvation and the gospel to merely the reality of justification and the proclamation of it is to not only cheapen the richness of the gospel, but leads to an easy believism and shallowness. I think this is the point that Daniel Radosh is getting in the quote I posted yesterday.  If the central message of the gospel is all about personal justification, then the focus is upon a moment of belief and not the "the hard work that it must take to bring somebody to a genuinely meaningful faith."

However, the nature of the gospel and salvation is so much larger than what is expressed in what McKnight notes as "common evangelicalism." Salvation is note merely personal, it is also corporate and even cosmic in its reach. Salvation involves restoration - what Tom Wright has spoken of as "putting the world to rights again." In being saved, we are invited to become a part of a community that has been called to live the resurrected life through the Spirit. We are called to not only personally experience resurrection and restoration, but to be a part of a restoration movement. It is this kind of movement that Jesus spoke about when told his followers to pray "Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." In other words, salvation is an invitation to not only be freed and made whole, but to be involved in being the answer to the prayer Jesus taught his followers to pray. It is living the "kingdom come" here on earth, bringing light into darkness, justice into places of unjustness, and goodness into places of evil.

All this has incredible ramifications on the gospel as proclamation. The gospel, or the good news, is that God is about making all things whole and right again. It is the proclamation that God has inaugurated a restoration movement - which includes justification and reconciliation, but moves well beyond it. It is about "Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." It truly is the victory of God, through Christ. It is a victory that is cosmic in its nature and scope.

This is the kind of gospel that can change the world.