Resident Theologian
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The value of keeping up with the news
If you've been paying attention the last two weeks, an ongoing controversy erupted Saturday, January 19, and is still unfolding in one of the many seemingly endless iterations such controversies generate today through social media, op-eds, and the like. Last week, in Alan Jacobs's newsletter, he wrote this:
"On Tuesday morning, January 22, I read a David Brooks column about a confrontation that happened on the National Mall during the March for Life. Until I read that column I had heard nothing about this incident because I do not have a Facebook account, have deleted my Twitter account, don’t watch TV news, and read the news about once a week. If all goes well, I won’t hear anything more about the story. I recommend this set of practices to you all."
This got me thinking about a post Paul Griffiths wrote on his blog years ago, perhaps even a decade ago (would that he kept that blog up longer!). He reflected on the ideal way of keeping up with the news—and, note well, this was before the rise of Twitter et al. as the driver of minute-by-minute "news" content. He suggested that there is no real good served in knowing what is going on day-to-day, whether that comes through the newspaper or the television. Instead, what one ought to do is slow the arrival of news to oneself so far as possible. His off-the-cuff proposal: subscribe to a handful of monthly or bimonthly publications ranging the ideological spectrum and, preferably, with a more global focus so as to avoid the parochialism not just of time but of space. Whenever the magazines or journals arrive, you devote a few hours to reading patient, time-cushioned reflection and reporting on the goings-on of the world—99% of which bears on your life not one iota—and then you continue on with your life (since, as should be self-evident to all of us, no one but a few family and friends needs to know what we think about it).
Consider how much saner your life, indeed all of our lives, would be if we did something like Griffiths' proposal. And think about how not doing it, and instead "engaging in the discourse," posting on Facebook, tweeting opinions, arguing online: how none of it does anything at all except raise blood pressure, foment discord, engender discontent, etc. Activists and advocates of local participatory democracy are fools if they think anything remotely like what we have now serves their goals. If we slowed our news intake, resisted the urge to pontificate, and paid more attention to the persons and needs and tasks before us, the world—as a whole and each of its parts—would be a much better place than it is at this moment.
"On Tuesday morning, January 22, I read a David Brooks column about a confrontation that happened on the National Mall during the March for Life. Until I read that column I had heard nothing about this incident because I do not have a Facebook account, have deleted my Twitter account, don’t watch TV news, and read the news about once a week. If all goes well, I won’t hear anything more about the story. I recommend this set of practices to you all."
This got me thinking about a post Paul Griffiths wrote on his blog years ago, perhaps even a decade ago (would that he kept that blog up longer!). He reflected on the ideal way of keeping up with the news—and, note well, this was before the rise of Twitter et al. as the driver of minute-by-minute "news" content. He suggested that there is no real good served in knowing what is going on day-to-day, whether that comes through the newspaper or the television. Instead, what one ought to do is slow the arrival of news to oneself so far as possible. His off-the-cuff proposal: subscribe to a handful of monthly or bimonthly publications ranging the ideological spectrum and, preferably, with a more global focus so as to avoid the parochialism not just of time but of space. Whenever the magazines or journals arrive, you devote a few hours to reading patient, time-cushioned reflection and reporting on the goings-on of the world—99% of which bears on your life not one iota—and then you continue on with your life (since, as should be self-evident to all of us, no one but a few family and friends needs to know what we think about it).
Consider how much saner your life, indeed all of our lives, would be if we did something like Griffiths' proposal. And think about how not doing it, and instead "engaging in the discourse," posting on Facebook, tweeting opinions, arguing online: how none of it does anything at all except raise blood pressure, foment discord, engender discontent, etc. Activists and advocates of local participatory democracy are fools if they think anything remotely like what we have now serves their goals. If we slowed our news intake, resisted the urge to pontificate, and paid more attention to the persons and needs and tasks before us, the world—as a whole and each of its parts—would be a much better place than it is at this moment.
Remembering Nama (1921–2019)
My maternal grandmother passed away this afternoon, after nearly 98 years of life on this earth. She was born in Mississippi two and a half years after the end of World War I. She lived through the Great Depression, the second World War, and every other major event you can think of from the last 75 years. She gave birth to seven children and, after losing one in childhood, raised the other six—spread across 21 years—together with her husband, who worked as a mailman. She lived to see 15 grandchildren, 31 great-grandchildren, and four great-great-grandchildren. She was widowed in her early 70s, and never remarried. She suffered the loss of her oldest son in his 70s, but no one else; she outlived the rest.
She was an extraordinary woman in the most old-fashioned of ways. A dutiful wife and stoic mother, a quiet Catholic and yellow-dog Democrat, she believed in loving your family, working hard, and doing what you can, with what you have, while you're able. She took wry pleasure in informing young women who married into the family that "we don't have no crybaby girls in this family." One of her mottoes was "you can't do everything." She loved food, especially seafood, and most of all if she was cooking it for a house full of people.
But probably her favorite thing was simply to be there, in a chair, in the midst of an overcrowded house somewhere in Mississippi (or Austin, Texas, or Dothan, Alabama), just marinading in the hot loud hustle and bustle of a family gathering: kids running to and fro, cooks in the kitchen, grandpas asleep in recliners, a baby crying somewhere, all manner of shouting and laughing, a ballgame on in the background. If you were lucky enough to be there, and you glanced her way, Nama—that's what we called her, Nama—would be still, usually quiet (unless holding court: in which case, watch out), observing, taking it all in, with a small smile on her face.
And think of it: From this one woman's life, from the decades-long outpouring of love that she made her life to be, 57 human lives (and counting) have come forth into this world. Double it for their spouses. Now quintuple it and then some for the friends and in-laws and neighbors and others who've been touched in one way or another, directly or by proxy, by this single soul.
For her part, she was wise enough to sit back, to see it for what it was—a gift you can't force and can only ask for, but when it comes, you don't question it—to say a silent prayer of thanks, and to let it wash over her. She didn't need words for any of that. Her family, just by being there and being who they were, said all that needed to be said.
For such a one, we give thanks to God for a life well lived. May she, then, our beloved Nama, rest in peace; and may she, then, by the grace and love evident in her life across a century's time, rise in glory. Amen.
She was an extraordinary woman in the most old-fashioned of ways. A dutiful wife and stoic mother, a quiet Catholic and yellow-dog Democrat, she believed in loving your family, working hard, and doing what you can, with what you have, while you're able. She took wry pleasure in informing young women who married into the family that "we don't have no crybaby girls in this family." One of her mottoes was "you can't do everything." She loved food, especially seafood, and most of all if she was cooking it for a house full of people.
But probably her favorite thing was simply to be there, in a chair, in the midst of an overcrowded house somewhere in Mississippi (or Austin, Texas, or Dothan, Alabama), just marinading in the hot loud hustle and bustle of a family gathering: kids running to and fro, cooks in the kitchen, grandpas asleep in recliners, a baby crying somewhere, all manner of shouting and laughing, a ballgame on in the background. If you were lucky enough to be there, and you glanced her way, Nama—that's what we called her, Nama—would be still, usually quiet (unless holding court: in which case, watch out), observing, taking it all in, with a small smile on her face.
And think of it: From this one woman's life, from the decades-long outpouring of love that she made her life to be, 57 human lives (and counting) have come forth into this world. Double it for their spouses. Now quintuple it and then some for the friends and in-laws and neighbors and others who've been touched in one way or another, directly or by proxy, by this single soul.
For her part, she was wise enough to sit back, to see it for what it was—a gift you can't force and can only ask for, but when it comes, you don't question it—to say a silent prayer of thanks, and to let it wash over her. She didn't need words for any of that. Her family, just by being there and being who they were, said all that needed to be said.
For such a one, we give thanks to God for a life well lived. May she, then, our beloved Nama, rest in peace; and may she, then, by the grace and love evident in her life across a century's time, rise in glory. Amen.
Exorcising theological demons
Over the last few semesters, teaching both upper-level Bible majors, most of whom plan on going into some kind of formal ministry, and freshman non-majors, who are required to take a sequence of two courses on the New Testament, I've noticed a number of assumptions shared among them. My students are by and large low-church Texans: non-denominational evangelicals, Baptists, Church of Christ-ers, and the like. They are diverse in terms of race and ethnicity and socioeconomic background, but quite similar in terms of ecclesial and theological identity and commitments.
By the end of last year I realized there were two primary "isms"—but let's call them theological demons—I was implicitly seeking to exorcise in class: biblicism and Marcionism (or supersessionism). Upon reflection, as I plan to teach some upper-level majors this semester in their one and only Theology course before graduation (it all comes down to me!), I realized I have a lot more theological demons in view. Ten, in fact. Here's a brief rundown of what this pedagogical exorcist has in his sights this spring.
(I should add, before starting, that these are specifically intellectual-theological: they aren't moral or political. So, e.g., nationalism is ripe for mention, and that comes up in a different class I teach; but it's not in view here.)
1. Biblicism
By this term I mean the view that the one and only factor for any and all matters of faith and Christian life is the Bible. Think of this as sola scriptura, only with "sola" in all caps. It isn't that the Bible is sufficient for faith and morals, or the final arbiter of church teaching and practice. It's that, in a real sense, there is nothing but the Bible. This can lean in the direction of fundamentalism, but it can also lean toward hollowed-out, seeker-sensitive non-denominationalism: if teaching X or practice Y isn't explicitly commanded/forbidden in Scripture, then not only is it automatically permissible; there is no other relevant theological factor for consideration. The market wants what the market wants.
2. Primitivism
Here I mean the idea that the ultimate goal for Christians is to approximate whatever the church looked like during the time of the apostles. Just to the extent that our worship, doctrine, or practices look different from that of the "early church" (however plausibly or implausibly reconstructed), we are departing from what God wants of us.
3. Individualism
This is in the DNA of each and every one of us, so I don't fault my students for this. Nevertheless, I do my very best, across the 15 weeks I have them, to interrogate the received notion that the individual is the locus of ultimate significance, and propose alternatively that there is a way of being in the world that gives priority, or at least equal significance, to the community. They rarely bite, but the attempt is worth it. This particular demon manifests as religious autonomy: faith is a private business between me and my God, and the church is an optional add-on that I am free to accept or reject as I see fit.
4. Subjectivism
Each of these is cumulative, and subjectivism builds on the foregoing through the implicit belief that the primary, or even sole, criterion for an action is how it affects me, or how I experience its effect on me. So, e.g., certain styles of worship are self-validating because I, or the worshipers in question, self-report a positive experience. Combined with biblicism, this becomes the working principle that everything is licit that (a) produces reportage of positivity and (b) is not expressly forbidden by the New Testament.
5. Presentism
What I mean is twofold: on the one hand, the view that what is new is prima facie superior to what is old; and, on the other hand, a widespread historical amnesia to the church's past, bordering on an active, principled ignorance about and opposition to "tradition," understood as whatever the church has believed, taught, or practiced between the death of the last apostle and the day before yesterday. The former is often explicit: innovation and creativity are chief virtues in all areas of life, including religion. The latter is almost always implicit, merely inherited from church leaders and teachers who inculcated it in them, wittingly or not. I find a great deal of success in using this latter assumption as the point of entry for introducing students to a different way of thinking about the church, faith, theology, and tradition. It's hard to overstate how receptive students are to that conversation.
6. Constructivism
Here I mean what I describe for my students as "DIY Christianity." No one fancies him or herself a proponent of the view that "Christianity is whatever I make it to be," but an astonishing number belong to churches that come very close to suggesting it. As you can tell, all six of these theological assumptions are varying forms of anti-catholicity: the church is not a living community with a rich storehouse of wisdom, knowledge, and teaching built up across the centuries; it is the sort of thing a pastor with entrepreneurial ambition can found, alone, in a local abandoned warehouse, with not a single concrete connection to either actual existing churches or the manifold saints and doctors long departed. Doctrine, statements of faith, liturgical rituals: they're built from the ground up, each and every year, each and every generation starting from scratch.
7. Anti-intellectualism
Christian faith, for most of my students, is a matter of the heart, a feeling expressed in an intimate relationship with the Lord. So far, so good. But as such, it is adamantly not a matter of the mind. Theology might be relevant to pastors—though, on the evidence, their pastors disagree—but, at best, it is optional for the laity and, at worst, is a dangerous and irrelevant abstraction. "Irrelevance" captures the heart of it: if I don't have a clear answer to the question of what I can do with a doctrine, what its practical implications for daily life are, then what could it be good for? Practicality trumps the theoretical every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
8. Marcionism
Switching gears, it is perhaps my principal goal, in every one of my classes, to exorcise my students of this ancient, wicked demon. Again, rarely consciously held, the idea is nevertheless pervasive that there is some sort of disconnect or disjunction between "the God of the Old Testament" and "the God of the New Testament." Or, the church replaces the Jews as God's people. Or, Jesus came to save us from the Law (which was, hands down, the worst). Or, God is finally loving and forgiving rather than violent and wrathful. Etc., etc. The sheer volume of times I refer to Abraham's election, or "the God of Israel," or "Jesus, the Jewish Messiah," is meant as a rhetorical corrective to what I'm sure are years of marinading in supersessionist and even at times full-on Marcionite language in their churches.
9. Gnosticism
Just as all Americans, Christian or not, are individualists, so they are Gnostics of one variety or another. In this case it manifests in one of two ways. Either none of "this" (i.e., creation, materiality, the body) "matters," since we're all going to heaven anyway (and, as I say, putting words in their mouths, nuking the earth as we depart). Or what "really" matters in Christian faith and spirituality is "the heart" or "the soul" or "the inside," not the body or what we do with the body. Fortunately, this doesn't usually lead to flat-out libertinism, though I do think there's an element of that informing behavior outside of sex. But it does inform a kind of anti-ascesis, that is, the view that spiritual disciplines are dead routines, and the notion of self-imposed (not to mention externally imposed!) periods of self-restraint in food, labor, entertainment, or sex is a conversation-stopper. It's not even intelligible as an idea.
10. Anti-ritualism
Last but not least, building on individualism, subjectivism, and Gnosticism, hostility to ritual as such rules the day. Ritual means "going through the motions," which is always and everywhere a bad thing. Hence why innovation is so important, not least in worship: what we do needs to be new lest we slip into dead routines, which we would then do "just because" rather than because "our hearts are in the right place." One's relationship with God is modeled on the early courtship or honeymoon period of young lovers: it's always summer, always sunshine, and you only spend time together—doe-eyed, deeply in love—spontaneously, because spontaneity signifies the depth of true love. (Think about contemporary Christian worship songs.) Rituals, on this picture, are what middle-aged spouses do when they schedule dates and have "talks" and even "fights." That's not what faith is like—which means we know what's happening when it starts to look routinized and ritualistic. Something's the matter.
By the end of last year I realized there were two primary "isms"—but let's call them theological demons—I was implicitly seeking to exorcise in class: biblicism and Marcionism (or supersessionism). Upon reflection, as I plan to teach some upper-level majors this semester in their one and only Theology course before graduation (it all comes down to me!), I realized I have a lot more theological demons in view. Ten, in fact. Here's a brief rundown of what this pedagogical exorcist has in his sights this spring.
(I should add, before starting, that these are specifically intellectual-theological: they aren't moral or political. So, e.g., nationalism is ripe for mention, and that comes up in a different class I teach; but it's not in view here.)
1. Biblicism
By this term I mean the view that the one and only factor for any and all matters of faith and Christian life is the Bible. Think of this as sola scriptura, only with "sola" in all caps. It isn't that the Bible is sufficient for faith and morals, or the final arbiter of church teaching and practice. It's that, in a real sense, there is nothing but the Bible. This can lean in the direction of fundamentalism, but it can also lean toward hollowed-out, seeker-sensitive non-denominationalism: if teaching X or practice Y isn't explicitly commanded/forbidden in Scripture, then not only is it automatically permissible; there is no other relevant theological factor for consideration. The market wants what the market wants.
2. Primitivism
Here I mean the idea that the ultimate goal for Christians is to approximate whatever the church looked like during the time of the apostles. Just to the extent that our worship, doctrine, or practices look different from that of the "early church" (however plausibly or implausibly reconstructed), we are departing from what God wants of us.
3. Individualism
This is in the DNA of each and every one of us, so I don't fault my students for this. Nevertheless, I do my very best, across the 15 weeks I have them, to interrogate the received notion that the individual is the locus of ultimate significance, and propose alternatively that there is a way of being in the world that gives priority, or at least equal significance, to the community. They rarely bite, but the attempt is worth it. This particular demon manifests as religious autonomy: faith is a private business between me and my God, and the church is an optional add-on that I am free to accept or reject as I see fit.
4. Subjectivism
Each of these is cumulative, and subjectivism builds on the foregoing through the implicit belief that the primary, or even sole, criterion for an action is how it affects me, or how I experience its effect on me. So, e.g., certain styles of worship are self-validating because I, or the worshipers in question, self-report a positive experience. Combined with biblicism, this becomes the working principle that everything is licit that (a) produces reportage of positivity and (b) is not expressly forbidden by the New Testament.
5. Presentism
What I mean is twofold: on the one hand, the view that what is new is prima facie superior to what is old; and, on the other hand, a widespread historical amnesia to the church's past, bordering on an active, principled ignorance about and opposition to "tradition," understood as whatever the church has believed, taught, or practiced between the death of the last apostle and the day before yesterday. The former is often explicit: innovation and creativity are chief virtues in all areas of life, including religion. The latter is almost always implicit, merely inherited from church leaders and teachers who inculcated it in them, wittingly or not. I find a great deal of success in using this latter assumption as the point of entry for introducing students to a different way of thinking about the church, faith, theology, and tradition. It's hard to overstate how receptive students are to that conversation.
6. Constructivism
Here I mean what I describe for my students as "DIY Christianity." No one fancies him or herself a proponent of the view that "Christianity is whatever I make it to be," but an astonishing number belong to churches that come very close to suggesting it. As you can tell, all six of these theological assumptions are varying forms of anti-catholicity: the church is not a living community with a rich storehouse of wisdom, knowledge, and teaching built up across the centuries; it is the sort of thing a pastor with entrepreneurial ambition can found, alone, in a local abandoned warehouse, with not a single concrete connection to either actual existing churches or the manifold saints and doctors long departed. Doctrine, statements of faith, liturgical rituals: they're built from the ground up, each and every year, each and every generation starting from scratch.
7. Anti-intellectualism
Christian faith, for most of my students, is a matter of the heart, a feeling expressed in an intimate relationship with the Lord. So far, so good. But as such, it is adamantly not a matter of the mind. Theology might be relevant to pastors—though, on the evidence, their pastors disagree—but, at best, it is optional for the laity and, at worst, is a dangerous and irrelevant abstraction. "Irrelevance" captures the heart of it: if I don't have a clear answer to the question of what I can do with a doctrine, what its practical implications for daily life are, then what could it be good for? Practicality trumps the theoretical every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
8. Marcionism
Switching gears, it is perhaps my principal goal, in every one of my classes, to exorcise my students of this ancient, wicked demon. Again, rarely consciously held, the idea is nevertheless pervasive that there is some sort of disconnect or disjunction between "the God of the Old Testament" and "the God of the New Testament." Or, the church replaces the Jews as God's people. Or, Jesus came to save us from the Law (which was, hands down, the worst). Or, God is finally loving and forgiving rather than violent and wrathful. Etc., etc. The sheer volume of times I refer to Abraham's election, or "the God of Israel," or "Jesus, the Jewish Messiah," is meant as a rhetorical corrective to what I'm sure are years of marinading in supersessionist and even at times full-on Marcionite language in their churches.
9. Gnosticism
Just as all Americans, Christian or not, are individualists, so they are Gnostics of one variety or another. In this case it manifests in one of two ways. Either none of "this" (i.e., creation, materiality, the body) "matters," since we're all going to heaven anyway (and, as I say, putting words in their mouths, nuking the earth as we depart). Or what "really" matters in Christian faith and spirituality is "the heart" or "the soul" or "the inside," not the body or what we do with the body. Fortunately, this doesn't usually lead to flat-out libertinism, though I do think there's an element of that informing behavior outside of sex. But it does inform a kind of anti-ascesis, that is, the view that spiritual disciplines are dead routines, and the notion of self-imposed (not to mention externally imposed!) periods of self-restraint in food, labor, entertainment, or sex is a conversation-stopper. It's not even intelligible as an idea.
10. Anti-ritualism
Last but not least, building on individualism, subjectivism, and Gnosticism, hostility to ritual as such rules the day. Ritual means "going through the motions," which is always and everywhere a bad thing. Hence why innovation is so important, not least in worship: what we do needs to be new lest we slip into dead routines, which we would then do "just because" rather than because "our hearts are in the right place." One's relationship with God is modeled on the early courtship or honeymoon period of young lovers: it's always summer, always sunshine, and you only spend time together—doe-eyed, deeply in love—spontaneously, because spontaneity signifies the depth of true love. (Think about contemporary Christian worship songs.) Rituals, on this picture, are what middle-aged spouses do when they schedule dates and have "talks" and even "fights." That's not what faith is like—which means we know what's happening when it starts to look routinized and ritualistic. Something's the matter.
New essay published at Comment: "The Church and the Common Good"
I've got an essay up at Comment today titled "The Church and the Common Good." Go check it out.
Writers who read their mentions
There may be nothing more poisonous for the quality of a writer's work than "reading your mentions." You can tell immediately when reading or listening to someone (say, in an interview or podcast). Everything is couched, defensive, anticipating the inevitable "ur the wurst" tweet-reply or comment at the end of the article. It doesn't matter the style of writing, or the subject. It's present in politics as much as in sports journalism. I suppose in certain sub-cultures of theology, it might actually be muted, because while the rabies theologorum is a vast, multi-headed beast, it feasts on numbers and passion. So you find it in evangelical arguments and intra-Catholic skirmishes—both of which communities are large enough to have sizeable Extremely Online contingents.
But academic theologians? Now that's a small group of folks. And surprisingly friendly online, at least in the corners I frequent.
Regardless, though, we're all susceptible to it. And by far the best writers, whatever their expertise, whatever their genre, whatever their politics or ideas, are those who write simultaneously for an imagined audience—you can't write for no one—yet an audience in no way represented by the writer's experience on social media. An audience of readers who aren't likely to tweet or comment, but who are there nonetheless, reading and thinking with the author.
They exist. Write for them. Don't read your mentions.
But academic theologians? Now that's a small group of folks. And surprisingly friendly online, at least in the corners I frequent.
Regardless, though, we're all susceptible to it. And by far the best writers, whatever their expertise, whatever their genre, whatever their politics or ideas, are those who write simultaneously for an imagined audience—you can't write for no one—yet an audience in no way represented by the writer's experience on social media. An audience of readers who aren't likely to tweet or comment, but who are there nonetheless, reading and thinking with the author.
They exist. Write for them. Don't read your mentions.
The coronation of Jesus
Sitting in church yesterday, listening to an account of Jesus's baptism, it occurred to me that there is a good analogy that works against the adoptionist overtones historically seized upon both by critics and by heretics (but I...). All agree that the use of Psalm 2 paints the scene in royal colors: this is a coronation. The adoptionist reads this in line with Israel's long-standing practice of suggesting that, in some important but mysterious sense, the king of Israel is or becomes God's son upon succession, for to be the human king under the divine king implies a relationship of intimacy and representation analogous to human paternity and generation. The anti-adoptionist reads the scene as both the fulfillment and the archetype of such a practice, for Jesus is uniquely God's Son, naturally and from all eternity. The Gospels (not least Mark) all bear out this distinct status and relationship, from which derive all that Jesus is, says, and does.
How, then, to explain the scene as one of confirmation rather than adoption? By analogizing the event, not with prior coronations in Israel, however similar, but to ordinary coronations. For what happens when the son of a king is himself made king? Does he thereby "become" the king's son, having not been so prior to that point? No. The prince is always the king's son; what remains is for the prince to be crowned king, like his father.
In the same way, the antecedent and eternal Sonship of Jesus is revealed, not bestowed, at his baptism by John in the Jordan. The one and only Son of YHWH is manifested as what he is, not as what he may or could or does become.
Now, does that mean Jesus was not King prior to his baptism? No and yes. No, in the sense that the divine Son, incarnate in and as Jesus, has, as true God from true God, from all eternity, reigned as Lord. But yes, too, in the sense that the human life of Jesus enacts in time what is true beyond and apart from time. Jesus's baptism-coronation crowns him King in the same way and to the same degree that, at the beginning of his life, the Magi pay his royalty homage and, at the end of his earthly career, he is garlanded with crowns and, after being raised from the dead, he ascends to the right hand of the Father in glorious power. Each is a temporal moment in the one revelatory sweep of the royal Son's fleshly rule in and over all creation, precisely as a fellow creature (better: through assumed creaturely nature). None of the moments "make" the Son king; yet without any of them he would not be the incarnate King he is.
Such is the mystery of the economy of the sovereign incarnate Son of God.
How, then, to explain the scene as one of confirmation rather than adoption? By analogizing the event, not with prior coronations in Israel, however similar, but to ordinary coronations. For what happens when the son of a king is himself made king? Does he thereby "become" the king's son, having not been so prior to that point? No. The prince is always the king's son; what remains is for the prince to be crowned king, like his father.
In the same way, the antecedent and eternal Sonship of Jesus is revealed, not bestowed, at his baptism by John in the Jordan. The one and only Son of YHWH is manifested as what he is, not as what he may or could or does become.
Now, does that mean Jesus was not King prior to his baptism? No and yes. No, in the sense that the divine Son, incarnate in and as Jesus, has, as true God from true God, from all eternity, reigned as Lord. But yes, too, in the sense that the human life of Jesus enacts in time what is true beyond and apart from time. Jesus's baptism-coronation crowns him King in the same way and to the same degree that, at the beginning of his life, the Magi pay his royalty homage and, at the end of his earthly career, he is garlanded with crowns and, after being raised from the dead, he ascends to the right hand of the Father in glorious power. Each is a temporal moment in the one revelatory sweep of the royal Son's fleshly rule in and over all creation, precisely as a fellow creature (better: through assumed creaturely nature). None of the moments "make" the Son king; yet without any of them he would not be the incarnate King he is.
Such is the mystery of the economy of the sovereign incarnate Son of God.
Audience age for Star Wars films
Over the last year or so I've re-watched nearly every Star Wars film. My sons (6 and nearly 5) have been making their slow initial journey through the Original Trilogy and into the prequels. (We're currently paused between Episodes II and III. The former is even worse than you remember.)
Reflecting on these repeat viewings in conjunction with the recent new entries and the conversation surrounding them (not to say controversy, though whether that term calls for scare quotes is an open question, given the heavy doses of bad faith and trolling involved)—anyway, upon reflection, I've noticed one way to slice up all ten films: by the implicit age of the film's target audience. Let me show you what I mean:
IV: All ages
V: Adults
VI: Children
I: All ages
II: Children
III: Adults
VII: All ages
RO: Adults
VIII: Adults
Solo: Adults
These designations are arguable, obviously. And audience age doesn't in itself correlate with quality (though I suppose that's arguable, too): Solo is middling affair, though aimed at adults, while both IV (all ages) and VI (children) are superior films.
But disaggregating the SW series in this manner is helpful in a few ways, I think.
First of all, it can clarify some of the arguments about which films are "best" (or one's "favorite"). Most kids who grew up with the OT on VHS or DVD have VI as their favorite, for example. Why? It's the only one exclusively aimed at them! They don't mind the silliness and character flatness and narrative problems that bother adults; they ignore such things, focusing on what's fun; and since there's a lot of fun to be had in VI, it's their favorite. (Kids also love series' conclusions, so there's that, too.) My boys also enjoyed II, which is a categorically awful film, and at least part of the explanation is that it, too, is aimed squarely at them.
Whereas many adults have plausible arguments about which they prefer most, IV vs. V and/or VII vs. VIII (or even opposing one of the latter group to the former). At least part of what that's about, in my view, is whether one is judging the film simply as a species of the genre film, or instead as a species of the sub-genre universal myth/hero's journey/space opera (or even the smaller sub-sub-genre, Star Wars film). Part of the appeal of the latter two sub-genres is precisely their catholic appeal, uniting people from a variety of backgrounds, ages, cultures, etc., in affection and appreciation of George Lucas's far-away galaxy, which sweeps along all who give themselves to it. But neither Empire nor Last Jedi has this sort of appeal, not (as the erroneous opinion has it) because they are inferior films, but rather because they lack the universality of the originals to which they are sequels. They are relatively stand-alone (ironic, given their in-the-middle status), subtly crafted works of visual art aimed at adults who appreciate the formal as well as the material aspects of the medium. Even if one's opinion of either V or VIII is lower than this high judgment, the thoughtfulness and craftsmanship behind both are undeniable. (They are together, by the way, the only films out of the 10 to feature a more than superficial relationship between a male and a female character, romantic or otherwise.)
The fact that VII is very nearly a remake of IV, by the way, also suggests why some people prefer it to VIII or any of the other new films, even when they grant its redundant qualities: catholicity in blockbuster fun covers over a multitude of sins.
(I should also add that there's a good argument to be made that Phantom Menace is a children's film, and I would have agreed until I re-watched it. Jake Lloyd and Jar Jar Binks certainly bend it that direction. But I was shocked by how well directed, how well acted—at least, that is, by McGregor and especially Neeson—and how thematically adult and not-stupid it was. Subtract child-Anakin, JJB, Midi-Chlorians, the casual racism, the stiff acting by others ... okay, that's a lot ... but still, the themes of decadence, self-mastery, obedience, elite insouciance—plus the surprisingly lovely compositions by Lucas—and it could have added up to something good. All of which is to say, Lucas was aiming for all ages, old and young alike. He failed, but his failure was laudable in a way that Attack of the Clones manifestly was not.)
Finally, the fact that all four of the recent SW films have been aimed at either all ages or adults helps to explain why none of them has been panned critically or bombed commercially (reports of the contrary being false in both cases). No one hated Solo, though it was simply fine, and Last Jedi was an enormous success with critics and audiences, even if a small segment of fans didn't care for it. Now why is that? One possibility is that none of the four is a kids movie. This reminds me of Ta-Nehisi Coates' remark, after VII was released, in response to Ross Douthat's confusion about the film's positive reception: that The Force Awakens was, at long last, an actual, bona fide movie, unlike the prequels. Expanding that point, I think people, critics included, appreciate going to a SW film and not being treated like children; not being condescended to cinematically, that is. (No Ewoks—yet!) Even when the results aren't A-level (as with VII's plot replays, Rogue One's script issues, and Solo's shrug-inducing, unimaginative checklist of greatest hits), they're not meant for 7-year olds. Movies made for adults can be mediocre, or just good, or controversial. But they're still for adults, or at least for adults and kids.
So my theory goes, at least. Let's just hope J. J. Abrams keeps it in mind for Episode IX.
Reflecting on these repeat viewings in conjunction with the recent new entries and the conversation surrounding them (not to say controversy, though whether that term calls for scare quotes is an open question, given the heavy doses of bad faith and trolling involved)—anyway, upon reflection, I've noticed one way to slice up all ten films: by the implicit age of the film's target audience. Let me show you what I mean:
IV: All ages
V: Adults
VI: Children
I: All ages
II: Children
III: Adults
VII: All ages
RO: Adults
VIII: Adults
Solo: Adults
These designations are arguable, obviously. And audience age doesn't in itself correlate with quality (though I suppose that's arguable, too): Solo is middling affair, though aimed at adults, while both IV (all ages) and VI (children) are superior films.
But disaggregating the SW series in this manner is helpful in a few ways, I think.
First of all, it can clarify some of the arguments about which films are "best" (or one's "favorite"). Most kids who grew up with the OT on VHS or DVD have VI as their favorite, for example. Why? It's the only one exclusively aimed at them! They don't mind the silliness and character flatness and narrative problems that bother adults; they ignore such things, focusing on what's fun; and since there's a lot of fun to be had in VI, it's their favorite. (Kids also love series' conclusions, so there's that, too.) My boys also enjoyed II, which is a categorically awful film, and at least part of the explanation is that it, too, is aimed squarely at them.
Whereas many adults have plausible arguments about which they prefer most, IV vs. V and/or VII vs. VIII (or even opposing one of the latter group to the former). At least part of what that's about, in my view, is whether one is judging the film simply as a species of the genre film, or instead as a species of the sub-genre universal myth/hero's journey/space opera (or even the smaller sub-sub-genre, Star Wars film). Part of the appeal of the latter two sub-genres is precisely their catholic appeal, uniting people from a variety of backgrounds, ages, cultures, etc., in affection and appreciation of George Lucas's far-away galaxy, which sweeps along all who give themselves to it. But neither Empire nor Last Jedi has this sort of appeal, not (as the erroneous opinion has it) because they are inferior films, but rather because they lack the universality of the originals to which they are sequels. They are relatively stand-alone (ironic, given their in-the-middle status), subtly crafted works of visual art aimed at adults who appreciate the formal as well as the material aspects of the medium. Even if one's opinion of either V or VIII is lower than this high judgment, the thoughtfulness and craftsmanship behind both are undeniable. (They are together, by the way, the only films out of the 10 to feature a more than superficial relationship between a male and a female character, romantic or otherwise.)
The fact that VII is very nearly a remake of IV, by the way, also suggests why some people prefer it to VIII or any of the other new films, even when they grant its redundant qualities: catholicity in blockbuster fun covers over a multitude of sins.
(I should also add that there's a good argument to be made that Phantom Menace is a children's film, and I would have agreed until I re-watched it. Jake Lloyd and Jar Jar Binks certainly bend it that direction. But I was shocked by how well directed, how well acted—at least, that is, by McGregor and especially Neeson—and how thematically adult and not-stupid it was. Subtract child-Anakin, JJB, Midi-Chlorians, the casual racism, the stiff acting by others ... okay, that's a lot ... but still, the themes of decadence, self-mastery, obedience, elite insouciance—plus the surprisingly lovely compositions by Lucas—and it could have added up to something good. All of which is to say, Lucas was aiming for all ages, old and young alike. He failed, but his failure was laudable in a way that Attack of the Clones manifestly was not.)
Finally, the fact that all four of the recent SW films have been aimed at either all ages or adults helps to explain why none of them has been panned critically or bombed commercially (reports of the contrary being false in both cases). No one hated Solo, though it was simply fine, and Last Jedi was an enormous success with critics and audiences, even if a small segment of fans didn't care for it. Now why is that? One possibility is that none of the four is a kids movie. This reminds me of Ta-Nehisi Coates' remark, after VII was released, in response to Ross Douthat's confusion about the film's positive reception: that The Force Awakens was, at long last, an actual, bona fide movie, unlike the prequels. Expanding that point, I think people, critics included, appreciate going to a SW film and not being treated like children; not being condescended to cinematically, that is. (No Ewoks—yet!) Even when the results aren't A-level (as with VII's plot replays, Rogue One's script issues, and Solo's shrug-inducing, unimaginative checklist of greatest hits), they're not meant for 7-year olds. Movies made for adults can be mediocre, or just good, or controversial. But they're still for adults, or at least for adults and kids.
So my theory goes, at least. Let's just hope J. J. Abrams keeps it in mind for Episode IX.
Party spirit distorts vision
This is an old story, but it's one worth reiterating nonetheless. Partisanship mitigates the analytical clarity necessary for deep understanding, of oneself, of the situation (whatever that may be), of those one disagrees with, of strategic action. That is, the drive to win itself becomes the obstacle to winning. But even if that were not the case, winning is not understanding; practice is not theory. And time and again one sees would-be analysts—thinkers, whether in the political-cultural sphere or the academy—blinded by their all-consuming focus on defeating their opponents, to the point that they simply cannot offer a plausible account of the situation beyond "they're bad, we're good, Must Vanquish All Enemies."
A good recent, and ongoing, example of this is the NYT podcast The Argument, co-hosted by David Leonhardt, Michelle Goldberg, and Ross Douthat. Listen to any episode in which Goldberg and Douthat talk to each other directly, not about a normative ethical or policy matter, but about what's going on in the world, in U.S. politics, in American culture, whatever. More often than not, Goldberg's "analysis" consists of value-laden, normative, typically denunciatory rhetoric. Which is to say, she offers judgments about what ought to be the case, and the extent to which the status quo fails to measure up. A perfectly fine and laudable thing to do, but not, alas, analysis. Whereas Douthat prescinds—again, as a matter of understanding what's going on—from constantly offering thumbs up or thumbs down, and seeks instead to engage in a bird's-eye view of whatever latest crisis or question has arisen, noting the landscape and what has happened or is likely to happen given a range of factors. To which Goldberg usually responds with a very eloquent, passionately argued, "But—bad!"
One sees this in the academy no less than in politics. I was once part of a group of junior scholars considering a recent book by a senior theologian. Most everyone in the group was socially and politically progressive; if we were assigning gradations of Leftness, they'd range from L5 to L10. The theologian in question is probably, on this made-up scale, L3ish. But instead of discussing the content of the book—some of which I agreed with, some of which I did not, but all of which I kept trying to get the group to consider—the entire time was spent hashing out the not-progressive-enough-ness of the theologian. Some in the room voiced their suspicions that the theologian probably wasn't left of center at all; perhaps he was moderate or even (horror of horrors) an R1 or R2. None of this, naturally, arose from a close reading of the text. The text might as well have not been in the room (in each of our hands, actually). There was a right team to be on; the thinker in question wasn't as committed as one ought to be to that team (if he was on it in the first place: enthusiasm as sign of true membership); what matters is the right team winning, understanding be damned; thus, no need to read what one already knows to be wrong, since it's (probably) from the wrong team anyway.
When winning trumps all, might makes right, and understanding—true, perceptive knowledge, as much of others as of oneself and one's ideas—falls by the wayside. Partisanship has its times and its uses, but it is poison for the mind.
A good recent, and ongoing, example of this is the NYT podcast The Argument, co-hosted by David Leonhardt, Michelle Goldberg, and Ross Douthat. Listen to any episode in which Goldberg and Douthat talk to each other directly, not about a normative ethical or policy matter, but about what's going on in the world, in U.S. politics, in American culture, whatever. More often than not, Goldberg's "analysis" consists of value-laden, normative, typically denunciatory rhetoric. Which is to say, she offers judgments about what ought to be the case, and the extent to which the status quo fails to measure up. A perfectly fine and laudable thing to do, but not, alas, analysis. Whereas Douthat prescinds—again, as a matter of understanding what's going on—from constantly offering thumbs up or thumbs down, and seeks instead to engage in a bird's-eye view of whatever latest crisis or question has arisen, noting the landscape and what has happened or is likely to happen given a range of factors. To which Goldberg usually responds with a very eloquent, passionately argued, "But—bad!"
One sees this in the academy no less than in politics. I was once part of a group of junior scholars considering a recent book by a senior theologian. Most everyone in the group was socially and politically progressive; if we were assigning gradations of Leftness, they'd range from L5 to L10. The theologian in question is probably, on this made-up scale, L3ish. But instead of discussing the content of the book—some of which I agreed with, some of which I did not, but all of which I kept trying to get the group to consider—the entire time was spent hashing out the not-progressive-enough-ness of the theologian. Some in the room voiced their suspicions that the theologian probably wasn't left of center at all; perhaps he was moderate or even (horror of horrors) an R1 or R2. None of this, naturally, arose from a close reading of the text. The text might as well have not been in the room (in each of our hands, actually). There was a right team to be on; the thinker in question wasn't as committed as one ought to be to that team (if he was on it in the first place: enthusiasm as sign of true membership); what matters is the right team winning, understanding be damned; thus, no need to read what one already knows to be wrong, since it's (probably) from the wrong team anyway.
When winning trumps all, might makes right, and understanding—true, perceptive knowledge, as much of others as of oneself and one's ideas—falls by the wayside. Partisanship has its times and its uses, but it is poison for the mind.
Blogging in 2019
It has been a slow—and I mean slow—year on the blog. In the last seven months of the year, I think I wrote a single "real" post, by which I mean a post that wasn't a list or a quote. I wrote nine similarly "real" posts in the first five months of the year. Oof.
I did write "real" things for other venues (more on those here in the next few days), but that is not what I'd been hoping for or planning when I revived this blog in a new form two summers ago. Teaching 10 courses in 12 months and welcoming our fourth child into the world had a lot to do with that; I very much doubt I had the time to give to writing the occasional post on here, much less a couple posts per week.
But in 2019, I'd like to get back into the habit—especially of the 2-3-paragraph, bloggy sort of reflection that this venue's made for. I'm prolix in writing and talking both, and drafting a blog post always sounds time consuming, even if in reality it would take fewer than 15 minutes.
So here's one resolution of many for the coming year: less deferring and time-wasting, more mezzo-blogging (somewhere in between lengthy posts and micro-blogging). As always, thanks for reading.
I did write "real" things for other venues (more on those here in the next few days), but that is not what I'd been hoping for or planning when I revived this blog in a new form two summers ago. Teaching 10 courses in 12 months and welcoming our fourth child into the world had a lot to do with that; I very much doubt I had the time to give to writing the occasional post on here, much less a couple posts per week.
But in 2019, I'd like to get back into the habit—especially of the 2-3-paragraph, bloggy sort of reflection that this venue's made for. I'm prolix in writing and talking both, and drafting a blog post always sounds time consuming, even if in reality it would take fewer than 15 minutes.
So here's one resolution of many for the coming year: less deferring and time-wasting, more mezzo-blogging (somewhere in between lengthy posts and micro-blogging). As always, thanks for reading.
Scialabba, Jacobs, and God's existence: where the real problem lies
Alan Jacobs is right about George Scialabba's latest review essay, in this case of John Gray's new book, Seven Types of Atheism, for The New Republic. Scialabba is always great, but his theological instincts fail him here. As Jacobs observes, Scialabba wants to speak up for nonbelievers who wish God—if he does in fact exist—would simply make himself known in some inarguably clear way. But since, apparently, he does not and has not, that in itself is evidence that no such thing as an all-wise, all-good, all-powerful deity exists; or that, if he does, our knowledge or beliefs about or relationship with God is a negligible matter, and all will be sorted out in the hereafter.
Jacobs takes Scialabba to task for both the unthinking glibness on display (frivolous speculation about our ancient ancestors; writing contemporary mystics and charismatics out of the picture; etc.) and the more serious inattentiveness to what a truly incontrovertible divine self-revelation would mean. Jacobs uses the work of David Bentley Hart to remind us just what we mean, or rather do not mean, when we use the word "God," and how Scialabba is functionally reverting to a mythical picture of god-as-super-creature who yet inexplicably remains opaque to us here below. Jacobs then (being Jacobs) draws us to a speech of Satan's in Paradise Lost, bringing the existential point home.
Let me piggy-back on Jacobs' critique and suggest an even deeper problem with Scialabba's musings, one I've reflected on before at some length. The problem is twofold.
On the one hand, it cannot be emphasized enough that the kind of skeptical atheism that Scialabba sees himself standing up for here is vanishingly small in human history, both past and present. So far as we can tell, nearly all human beings who have ever lived have taken it for granted that reality is more than the empiricists suggest; that there is some Power or Goodness or Being that transcends the visible and tangible, preceding and encompassing it; that human life, though brief and sometimes terribly burdened, carries more weight and has more depth than those features would suggest on their face, and that it may or will in one way or another outlast its short span on this earth. Even today, the overwhelming majority of people on this globe "believe" in what we in the West call divinity or practice what we in the West call religion. The anxious queries of skeptical atheists, while worth taking seriously at an intellectual and emotional level, could not be less representative of humanity in general's relationship with "the God question."
In short, the sort of defeaters Scialabba offers as evidence of God's lack of self-revelation bear little to no relation to the average person's thoughts or experience regarding God's existence. Most people don't need God to write his name on the sun. In a sense, he already has.
Such a response doesn't go very far, though, in responding to Scialabba's true concern. Perhaps most human beings, past and present, are just not philosophically rigorous or serious enough to ask the tough questions that inexorably lead to atheism. Or perhaps it's not "religious belief" in general but the challenge of revelational certainty, i.e., which religion/deity to believe in, that's at issue. Here's what's most deeply wrong with his argument then.
The Christian tradition does not teach, nor has it ever taught, that the most important thing to do is believe that God exists, or even that the Christian God exists. Instead, the most important thing is to love this God with all one's heart, soul, mind, and strength. What God wants from you—demands, in fact—is not affirmation of a proposition about himself or mental assent to the facticity of his being. Rather, it is the totality of your being, the absolute and unconditional lifelong allegiance of your very self. What God wants is faithfulness.
And it turns out, according to the painfully consistent testimony of Holy Scripture, that faithfulness is a lot harder than faith. By which I mean: total devotion to God is far more difficult than belief that God exists. As the epistle of James says, the demons believe that God is one—and shudder. Israel at Sinai doesn't lack the belief that YHWH exists; there's evidence aplenty for that: lightning and thunder and a great cloud and the divine voice and Lord's glory; everything Scialabba wants from God! But what do the Israelites do? They make a golden calf and worship a false god. In doing so, they do not subtract belief in YHWH; they add to that belief "belief" in other gods. Which is to say, they add to worship of the one God the worship of that which is not God.
Our problem, therefore, isn't belief that God exists in the face of a thousand reasonable doubts. Our problem is idolatry. When the one true God comes near to human beings, when they hear his voice and see his face, they know it to be true—and they turn away. They know God—and sin. They believe "in" God—and disobey him. They lack doubt—and hurt others.
For Christians, this problem is illustrated most of all in the Gospels. Time and again the apostles see with their own eyes the identity and deeds of the incarnate Son of God, and time and again they misunderstand, mis-hear, mis-speak, fall away, to the point of deserting him in his hour of need and even denying ever knowing him.
Scialabba wants God to make it impossible to disbelieve in his existence. But even if God were to do that, it wouldn't change the fundamental problem—our sinful, wicked hearts, prone to evil and violence from birth and a veritable factory of idols—one bit. Or rather, what we would need is the kind of belief, the sort of knowledge, that went to the root of that problem, transforming us from the inside out. Making true worship possible; ridding us of idolatry; supplying us the power to do what we could never do for ourselves; making faithfulness a reality, that we might finally and wholeheartedly love God and love our neighbors as ourselves.
Christians believe God has done just this for the world in and through Christ. No dispositive evidence will persuade a Scialabba that this is the case. But the gospel isn't meant to answer such a request. Contained within the solution it offers is an entirely different diagnosis of our situation and thus of our greatest need. If the gospel and the faith it proclaims are to be rejected, those are the terms on which to do so.
Jacobs takes Scialabba to task for both the unthinking glibness on display (frivolous speculation about our ancient ancestors; writing contemporary mystics and charismatics out of the picture; etc.) and the more serious inattentiveness to what a truly incontrovertible divine self-revelation would mean. Jacobs uses the work of David Bentley Hart to remind us just what we mean, or rather do not mean, when we use the word "God," and how Scialabba is functionally reverting to a mythical picture of god-as-super-creature who yet inexplicably remains opaque to us here below. Jacobs then (being Jacobs) draws us to a speech of Satan's in Paradise Lost, bringing the existential point home.
Let me piggy-back on Jacobs' critique and suggest an even deeper problem with Scialabba's musings, one I've reflected on before at some length. The problem is twofold.
On the one hand, it cannot be emphasized enough that the kind of skeptical atheism that Scialabba sees himself standing up for here is vanishingly small in human history, both past and present. So far as we can tell, nearly all human beings who have ever lived have taken it for granted that reality is more than the empiricists suggest; that there is some Power or Goodness or Being that transcends the visible and tangible, preceding and encompassing it; that human life, though brief and sometimes terribly burdened, carries more weight and has more depth than those features would suggest on their face, and that it may or will in one way or another outlast its short span on this earth. Even today, the overwhelming majority of people on this globe "believe" in what we in the West call divinity or practice what we in the West call religion. The anxious queries of skeptical atheists, while worth taking seriously at an intellectual and emotional level, could not be less representative of humanity in general's relationship with "the God question."
In short, the sort of defeaters Scialabba offers as evidence of God's lack of self-revelation bear little to no relation to the average person's thoughts or experience regarding God's existence. Most people don't need God to write his name on the sun. In a sense, he already has.
Such a response doesn't go very far, though, in responding to Scialabba's true concern. Perhaps most human beings, past and present, are just not philosophically rigorous or serious enough to ask the tough questions that inexorably lead to atheism. Or perhaps it's not "religious belief" in general but the challenge of revelational certainty, i.e., which religion/deity to believe in, that's at issue. Here's what's most deeply wrong with his argument then.
The Christian tradition does not teach, nor has it ever taught, that the most important thing to do is believe that God exists, or even that the Christian God exists. Instead, the most important thing is to love this God with all one's heart, soul, mind, and strength. What God wants from you—demands, in fact—is not affirmation of a proposition about himself or mental assent to the facticity of his being. Rather, it is the totality of your being, the absolute and unconditional lifelong allegiance of your very self. What God wants is faithfulness.
And it turns out, according to the painfully consistent testimony of Holy Scripture, that faithfulness is a lot harder than faith. By which I mean: total devotion to God is far more difficult than belief that God exists. As the epistle of James says, the demons believe that God is one—and shudder. Israel at Sinai doesn't lack the belief that YHWH exists; there's evidence aplenty for that: lightning and thunder and a great cloud and the divine voice and Lord's glory; everything Scialabba wants from God! But what do the Israelites do? They make a golden calf and worship a false god. In doing so, they do not subtract belief in YHWH; they add to that belief "belief" in other gods. Which is to say, they add to worship of the one God the worship of that which is not God.
Our problem, therefore, isn't belief that God exists in the face of a thousand reasonable doubts. Our problem is idolatry. When the one true God comes near to human beings, when they hear his voice and see his face, they know it to be true—and they turn away. They know God—and sin. They believe "in" God—and disobey him. They lack doubt—and hurt others.
For Christians, this problem is illustrated most of all in the Gospels. Time and again the apostles see with their own eyes the identity and deeds of the incarnate Son of God, and time and again they misunderstand, mis-hear, mis-speak, fall away, to the point of deserting him in his hour of need and even denying ever knowing him.
Scialabba wants God to make it impossible to disbelieve in his existence. But even if God were to do that, it wouldn't change the fundamental problem—our sinful, wicked hearts, prone to evil and violence from birth and a veritable factory of idols—one bit. Or rather, what we would need is the kind of belief, the sort of knowledge, that went to the root of that problem, transforming us from the inside out. Making true worship possible; ridding us of idolatry; supplying us the power to do what we could never do for ourselves; making faithfulness a reality, that we might finally and wholeheartedly love God and love our neighbors as ourselves.
Christians believe God has done just this for the world in and through Christ. No dispositive evidence will persuade a Scialabba that this is the case. But the gospel isn't meant to answer such a request. Contained within the solution it offers is an entirely different diagnosis of our situation and thus of our greatest need. If the gospel and the faith it proclaims are to be rejected, those are the terms on which to do so.
John Lukacs on what makes history
"This short history of the twentieth century is not a philosophical treatise. But at this point I am compelled to add two brief digressions. The first is a summary of my view of history, which goes contrary to the still very widely accepted categorical beliefs of why and how history happened and happens, of course including that of the Second World War. The current, often deemed 'scientific' belief is that history, perhaps especially in the democratic age, is the result of great material and economic factors, of which the lives, acts, and thoughts of people are largely the consequences. That is less than a half-truth. In 1933, Hitler came to power in Germany not just because of the economic crisis of 1930–1933, but because of the political mood of many Germans at that time. It was not the state of the British economy that made the British government reluctant to resist Hitler in the Thirties. It was not inferiority of materials or armaments that led to the collapse of France in 1940. There was no economic reason for the Japanese to plan and then make war on the United States. Of course, it is true that the tremendous material power of the United States (and the enormous size of the armies of the Soviet Union) made the war winnable against Germany and Japan. But there, too, what mattered was the resolution and the near-unanimity of the American people, and the unwillingness of the Russian people to oppose Stalin. What people thought (and think), what they believe, what they choose to think, what they prefer to believe—that is the main essence of their lives, of which their material conditions and economics desires are most often the outcomes, and not the other way around."
—John Lukacs, A Short History of the Twentieth Century (Belknap, 2013), 126-127. Lukacs, who will be 95 in January, was born in Hungary to a Jewish mother and a Roman Catholic father. Since the 1940s, he has lived in the United States and taught and written as a historian. Much of what he writes in this brief but enthralling book he lived through himself—sometimes up close. There is nothing quite like reading a truly independent mind, as evidenced in the quote above. As it happens, to make an odd comparison between two authors, I am currently reading Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, whose founding premise is the idea of "psycho-history," what Asimov calls "the quintessence of sociology." By its precise mathematical formulas, it can predict (in the novel) what will happen hundreds and thousands of years in the future, treating masses of human beings the way scientists treat elements and atoms. Lukacs, for his part, stands against the materialists and the determinists alike. It's a breath of fresh air.
—John Lukacs, A Short History of the Twentieth Century (Belknap, 2013), 126-127. Lukacs, who will be 95 in January, was born in Hungary to a Jewish mother and a Roman Catholic father. Since the 1940s, he has lived in the United States and taught and written as a historian. Much of what he writes in this brief but enthralling book he lived through himself—sometimes up close. There is nothing quite like reading a truly independent mind, as evidenced in the quote above. As it happens, to make an odd comparison between two authors, I am currently reading Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, whose founding premise is the idea of "psycho-history," what Asimov calls "the quintessence of sociology." By its precise mathematical formulas, it can predict (in the novel) what will happen hundreds and thousands of years in the future, treating masses of human beings the way scientists treat elements and atoms. Lukacs, for his part, stands against the materialists and the determinists alike. It's a breath of fresh air.
Ian McFarland on the doctrine of creation from nothing
"In short, if the doctrine of creation from nothing means ... that even prior to being created, creatures are not absolutely nothing insofar as they are grounded in the Word, it also implies that creatures, as created, are absolutely nothing apart from God. The richness of divinity not only lies behind creation's diversity as its presupposition (nothing but God), but also is an active presence that underlies and sustains every feature of that diversity at every moment of its existence (nothing apart from God). Not can this perspective be charged with compromising the integrity of creatures' relationship with God, as though that which has absolutely no existence part from God is reduced to the status of a puppet. Once again, the Trinitarian framework of the Christian doctrine of creation is crucial here, since the existence of creatures is rooted in the Word, whose very being establishes, within the divine life itself, a set of relationships whose constituent terms (viz., Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) also have no existence apart from God. From this perspective, the idea that ontological independence from God is a necessary condition of genuine relationship (and more particularly, of love) fails to reckon with the character of God's own being as relationship."
—Ian A. McFarland, From Nothing: A Theology of Creation (WJK Press, 2014), p. 94
—Ian A. McFarland, From Nothing: A Theology of Creation (WJK Press, 2014), p. 94
The most stimulating works of systematic theology from the last 20 years
On Twitter yesterday I made an observation followed by a question. I said that Paul Griffiths' Decreation is, in my view, the most thought-provoking,
stimulating, exhilarating work of systematic theology written since the
first volume of Robert Jenson's systematics was published in 1997.
Then I asked: What are other plausible candidates from, say, the last two decades?
I thought of half a dozen off the top of my head, then started adding others' replies to the list. See the (lightly curated) resulting list below.
A few preliminary comments, though. First, everything on the list was published (for the first time) in 1998 or later. That's arbitrary, but then, all lists are; that's what makes them fun.
Second, your mileage may vary, as mine does; I think some of these books are in a league of their own compared so some of the others. But I've tried to be broader than just my own preferences.
Third, candidates for this list are works of Christian systematic theology. As ever, the genre is loose enough that you know it when you see it. But I had to make some choices. So comparative theology is out, as is moral theology—excellent examples of the latter might be Cavanaugh's Torture and Eucharist and Herdt's Putting on Virtue. The same goes for historical theology: Ayres's Nicaea and Its Legacy, though laudably normative in many of its proposals, and arguably one of the handful of most important theological books in recent decades, is not itself an instance of systematic theology. I've similarly ruled out works of theology primarily interpreting a single theologian, past or present; so books with Augustine or Barth or whomever in the title are excluded. (I imagine this is the most contestable of the criteria. I'm only half persuaded myself, as evidenced by the exception I allowed.) Works of practical or popular or narrative theology are out too; whereas Cone's God of the Oppressed is certainly systematic theology at its most bracing, The Cross and the Lynching Tree belongs to a different genre (which, lest I be misunderstood, is not a judgment of value). Biblical scholarship is excluded from consideration as well; N. T. Wright and Richard Hays and John Barclay and Paula Fredriksen are brilliant and theologically stimulating writers, but their work is not systematic theology. Oh, and I suppose I should add: I'm limiting this to works originally written in English, if only to narrow the purview of the list (while lessening its potential hubris).
Fourth, this is not intended as a list of the "best books" from the last two decades. My words about Decreation were sharp and specific: it's a knock-your-socks-off kind of book, the sort of work you can't put down, that leads to compulsive reading, that changes your mind 10 times in as many pages, and makes you rethink, or refortify, what you always thought about this or that major topic. A book on this list should not be boring, in other words; and there are good works of scholarship that are undeniably boring. Such works are not included here.
Fifth, some might quibble with the choice of book for a given author. Should Tanner's book be Jesus, Humanity, and the Trinity or Christ the Key? Should Rowan Williams's be On Christian Theology or The Edge of Words? John Webster's Holy Scripture or God Without Measure? I've opted for my own idiosyncratic preference or gut sense for what made a bigger "splash" at the time of its publication. Again: your mileage may vary.
Without further ado (ordered alphabetically):
I thought of half a dozen off the top of my head, then started adding others' replies to the list. See the (lightly curated) resulting list below.
A few preliminary comments, though. First, everything on the list was published (for the first time) in 1998 or later. That's arbitrary, but then, all lists are; that's what makes them fun.
Second, your mileage may vary, as mine does; I think some of these books are in a league of their own compared so some of the others. But I've tried to be broader than just my own preferences.
Third, candidates for this list are works of Christian systematic theology. As ever, the genre is loose enough that you know it when you see it. But I had to make some choices. So comparative theology is out, as is moral theology—excellent examples of the latter might be Cavanaugh's Torture and Eucharist and Herdt's Putting on Virtue. The same goes for historical theology: Ayres's Nicaea and Its Legacy, though laudably normative in many of its proposals, and arguably one of the handful of most important theological books in recent decades, is not itself an instance of systematic theology. I've similarly ruled out works of theology primarily interpreting a single theologian, past or present; so books with Augustine or Barth or whomever in the title are excluded. (I imagine this is the most contestable of the criteria. I'm only half persuaded myself, as evidenced by the exception I allowed.) Works of practical or popular or narrative theology are out too; whereas Cone's God of the Oppressed is certainly systematic theology at its most bracing, The Cross and the Lynching Tree belongs to a different genre (which, lest I be misunderstood, is not a judgment of value). Biblical scholarship is excluded from consideration as well; N. T. Wright and Richard Hays and John Barclay and Paula Fredriksen are brilliant and theologically stimulating writers, but their work is not systematic theology. Oh, and I suppose I should add: I'm limiting this to works originally written in English, if only to narrow the purview of the list (while lessening its potential hubris).
Fourth, this is not intended as a list of the "best books" from the last two decades. My words about Decreation were sharp and specific: it's a knock-your-socks-off kind of book, the sort of work you can't put down, that leads to compulsive reading, that changes your mind 10 times in as many pages, and makes you rethink, or refortify, what you always thought about this or that major topic. A book on this list should not be boring, in other words; and there are good works of scholarship that are undeniably boring. Such works are not included here.
Fifth, some might quibble with the choice of book for a given author. Should Tanner's book be Jesus, Humanity, and the Trinity or Christ the Key? Should Rowan Williams's be On Christian Theology or The Edge of Words? John Webster's Holy Scripture or God Without Measure? I've opted for my own idiosyncratic preference or gut sense for what made a bigger "splash" at the time of its publication. Again: your mileage may vary.
Without further ado (ordered alphabetically):
- Marilyn McCord Adams, Christ and Horrors: The Coherence of Christology (2006)
- John Behr, The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death (2006)
- J. Kameron Carter, Race: A Theological Account (2008)
- Sarah Coakley, Powers and Submissions: Spirituality, Philosophy, and Gender (2002)
- Paul J. Griffiths, Decreation: The Last Things of All Creatures (2014)
- David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth (2003)
- Willie James Jennings, The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race (2010)
- David H. Kelsey, Eccentric Existence: A Theological Anthropology (2009)
- Matthew Levering, Scripture and Metaphysics: Aquinas and the Renewal of Trinitarian Theology (2004)
- Alan E. Lewis, Between Cross and Resurrection: A Theology of Holy Saturday (2003)
- Bruce D. Marshall, Trinity and Truth (1999)
- Eugene F. Rogers Jr., Sexuality and the Christian Body: Their Way Into the Triune God (1999)
- Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ (2015)
- Katherine Sonderegger, Systematic Theology: Volume 1, The Doctrine of God (2015)
- Kathryn Tanner, Jesus, Humanity, and the Trinity: A Brief Systematic Theology (2001)
- Linn Marie Tonstad, God and Difference: The Trinity, Sexuality, and the Transformation of Finitude (2016)
- Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Remythologizing Theology: Divine Action, Passion, and Authorship (2010)
- John Webster, Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch (2003)
- Rowan Williams, The Edge of Words: God and the Habits of Language (2014)
- Frances Young, God's Presence: A Contemporary Recapitulation of Early Christianity (2013)
Genre lists: the best science fiction authors and series
All right. I've written about my crime fiction list and my fantasy list; here, rounding out the genres (at least those in which I'm interested), is my chronological list of the authors and series in science fiction that I have read or aim to read. Far from exhaustive, and not aiming to be "completist." I want to read the best. What should I add to it? [NB: The list has now been expanded with suggestions.]
- H. G. Wells, Time Machine + Invisible Man + War of the Worlds (1895–98)
- Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars (1917)
- Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932)
- C. S. Lewis, Space Trilogy (1938–45)
- George Orwell, 1984 (1949)
- Ray Bradbury, Martian Chronicles (1950) + Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
- Isaac Asimov, The Foundation Trilogy (1951–53)
- Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood’s End (1953) + 2001 (1968)
- Richard Matheson, I Am Legend (1954)
- Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination (1957)
- Walter M. Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959)
- Stanislaw Lem, Solaris (1961)
- Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) + The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966)
- Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle (1962)
- Frank Herbert, Dune (1965)
- J. G. Ballard, The Crystal World (1966)
- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) + The Dispossessed (1974)
- Joe Haldeman, The Forever War (1974)
- Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, The Mote in God's Eye (1974)
- Alice Sheldon (as James Tiptree Jr.), The Girl Who Was Plugged In (1974)
- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979)
- Gene Wolfe, The Book of the New Sun (1980–83)
- William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984)
- Connie Willis, Fire Watch (1984) + Doomsday Book (1992)
- Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game (1985) + Speaker for the Dead (1986) + Ender’s Shadow (1999)
- Michael Crichton, Sphere (1987) + Jurassic Park (1990) + Timeline (1999)
- Iain M. Banks, The Culture Series (1987–2012)
- Dan Simmons, Hyperion (1989)
- Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash (1992) + Anantham (2008)
- Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower (1993) + Parable of the Talents (1998)
- Kim Stanley Robinson, Mars Trilogy (1993–96)
- Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow (1996) + Children of God (1998)
- Ted Chiang, Story of Your Life (1998/2002)
- Margaret Atwood, MaddAddam Trilogy (2003–13)
- Theodore Judson, Fitzpatrick's War (2004)
- Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go (2005)
- John Scalzi, Old Man's War Series (2005–2015)
- Liu Cixin, Remembrance of Earth's Past Trilogy (2008–10)
- Max Brooks, World War Z (2006)
- Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 (2010)
- Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers (2011)
- China Miéville, Embassytown (2011)
- Ann Leckie, Imperial Radch Trilogy (2013–15)
- Pierce Brown, Red Rising (2014–)
- Jeff Vandermeer, The Southern Reach Trilogy (2014)
- Adam Roberts, The Thing Itself (2015)
Genre lists: the best fantasy series
Last year I wrote about how I worked my way back into regular fiction reading through genre, specifically the genre of crime novels. I also keep separate genre lists for fantasy and science fiction. Each scratches a particular itch, and I slowly make my way through each one, as the mood strikes me. But I'm a novice, using either my own eclectic interests or the lists of others as guides. I thought I'd open myself up to others to build out my current fantasy list.
NB: I'm not looking to be a completist for completion's sake. I don't want to read just-fine or so-so series in order to comprehend the genre. I want to read the very best series, for nothing but pleasure. Having said that, I do enjoy (as my chronological listing below shows) understanding the relationship between different fantasy novelists and series, tracking the influence going forward and the reactions, revisions, and subversions looking backward. I find that endlessly fascinating.
So: Having said that, if you were to add 3-5 must-read books or series to this list, what would you recommend? [NB: The list has now been updated with suggestions.]
NB: I'm not looking to be a completist for completion's sake. I don't want to read just-fine or so-so series in order to comprehend the genre. I want to read the very best series, for nothing but pleasure. Having said that, I do enjoy (as my chronological listing below shows) understanding the relationship between different fantasy novelists and series, tracking the influence going forward and the reactions, revisions, and subversions looking backward. I find that endlessly fascinating.
So: Having said that, if you were to add 3-5 must-read books or series to this list, what would you recommend? [NB: The list has now been updated with suggestions.]
- E. R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros (1922)
- Robert E. Howard, Conan the Barbarian (1932–36)
- J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit (1937) + The Lord of the Rings (1954)
- T. H. White, The Once and Future King (1938–58) + The Book of Merlyn (1977)
- C. S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia (1950–56)
- Alan Garner, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (1960)
- Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time (1962)
- Lloyd Alexander, The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–68)
- Ursula K. Le Guin, Earthsea Cycle (1968–2001)
- Richard Adams, Watership Down (1972)
- Stephen King, The Stand (1978) + The Dark Tower (1982–2004)
- Mark Helprin, A Winter’s Tale (1983)
- Terry Pratchett, Discworld (1983–2015)
- Guy Gavriel Kay, The Fionavar Tapestry (1984–86)
- Tad Williams, Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn (1988–1993)
- Robert Jordan, The Wheel of Time (1990–2013)
- Robin Hobb, The Farseer Trilogy (1995–97)
- Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials (1995–2000)
- George R. R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire (1996–)
- J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter (1997–2007)
- Jim Butcher, The Dresden Files (2000–)
- Neil Gaiman, American Gods (2001)
- Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (2004)
- Gene Wolfe, The Wizard Knight (2004)
- Scott Lynch, Gentlemen Bastard Sequence (2006–)
- Joe Abercrombie, The First Law (2006–)
- Brandon Sanderson, Mistborn (2006–)
- China Miéville, Un Lun Dun (2007) + The City & The City (2009)
- Patrick Rothfuss, The Kingkiller Chronicle (2007–)
- Lev Grossman, The Magicians Trilogy (2009–2014)
- Justin Cronin, The Passage Trilogy (2010–16)
- N. K. Jemisin, Broken Earth Trilogy (2015–17)
Paul Griffiths on the liturgy anticipating heaven
"[A]ttending to the liturgy is the closest we can get, here below, to attending to heaven. In examining it, we approach as close as we can get to examining the life of the saints in heaven as it is once they are resurrected and enjoying both sensory and nonsensory modes of knowing and seeing the LORD. This is because most of the elements of the life of the world to come are present in nuce in the worshiping assembly: the ascended LORD is present in the flesh; the gathered people is an assembly of those who know and love him as he is, at least to some degree; and the fabric of the event is woven from the threads of love exchanged—love given preveniently by the LORD, whose creature the church is, and love given responsively by the people, who have collectively and individually been brought into being by the LORD. The leitmotif of the words and actions of the liturgical gathering is adoration. All this is also true of the gathering of the resurrected saints around the LORD's ascended flesh in heaven."
—Paul Griffiths, Decreation: The Last Things of All Creatures (Baylor Press, 2014), pp. 67-68
—Paul Griffiths, Decreation: The Last Things of All Creatures (Baylor Press, 2014), pp. 67-68
Why there's no such thing as non-anachronistic interpretation, and it's a good thing too: reflections occasioned by Wesley Hill's Paul and the Trinity
Programmatically: The fundamental hermeneutical first principle of self-consciously historical-critical study of the Bible is that such study must avoid anachronism. Two hermeneutical values underlie or spin off this principle: on the one hand, what makes any reading good is whether it is properly historical; therefore, on the other hand, all reading of the Bible ought to avoid anachronism—or to say the same thing negatively, anachronistic readings of biblical texts are by definition bad.
Enter scholars like Hill: supple interpreters, subtle thinkers, careful writers, sophisticated theologians. What Hill aims to show in his book is that the conceptual resources of trinitarian theology may be used in the reading of biblical texts like Paul's letters as a hermeneutical lens that enables, rather than obstructs, understanding. More to the point, such understanding does not stray from the canons of historical criticism, which is to say, it does not fall prey to anachronism. Thus, his project "plays by the rules" while bringing to bear doctrinal resources otherwise considered anathema by historical critics (both Christian and otherwise).
Consider his language:
"I need to clarify in what ways the grammar of trinitarian theology will and will not be invoked, and to specify the methodological safeguards that will protect my exegesis from devolving into an exercise in imaginative theologizing." (31)
"The methodological danger that lurks here is one that may be described as a certain kind of 'projection'... To avoid this pitfall, I will adopt a twofold approach: First, the readings of Paul I will offer ... will be self-consciously historical readings, guided by the canons of 'critical' modes of exegesis. At no point will a trinitarian conclusion be allowed to 'trump' what Paul's texts may be plausibly shown to have communicated within his own context. Second, trinitarian theologies will be employed as hermeneutical resources and, thus, mined for conceptualities which may better enable a genuinely historical exegesis to articulate what other equally 'historical' approaches may have (unwittingly or not) obscured." (45)
"[Paul's theology's] patterns and dynamics may be newly illumined and realized within new contexts and by means of later conceptualities, which are to some degree 'foreign' to the texts themselves." (46)
"...the use of trinitarian theology in the task of reading Paul in an authentically historical mode..." (46)
"my goal is not to 'find' trinitarian theology 'in' Paul so much as to use the conceptual resources of trinitarian doctrine as hermeneutical aids for reading Paul afresh. [This book addresses the] question of whether those trinitarian resources may actualize certain trajectories from Paul's letters that he would have expressed in a different idiom." (104-105)
"[Recent] studies are rightly concerned to respect the linear unfolding of historical development, rather than anachronistically imposing later theologies back onto Paul's letters. But my thesis ... has been mostly taken up with demonstrating the converse: that trinitarian doctrine may be used retrospectively to shed light on and enable a deeper penetration of the Pauline texts in their own historical milieu, and that it is not necessarily anachronistic to allow later Christian categories to be the lens through which one reads Paul. ... I have tried ... to show that the conceptual categories of 'persons in relation' developed so richly in the fourth century and in the following theological era, may enable those who live with them to live more deeply and fruitfully with the first century apostle himself." (171)
"Is it possible ... that a kind of broad, pluriform trinitarian perspective, far from being an anachronistic imposition on the texts of Paul, may instead prove genuinely insightful in a fresh look at Paul?" (169)
Let me be clear: Hill masterfully demonstrates his thesis. Anyone who knows my theological interests knows that Hill is preaching to the choir. The concepts, categories, and modes of reading developed in the 4th and 5th centuries by the church fathers constitute a hermeneutic nonpareil for faithful interpretation of the Christian Bible, the epistles of Paul included. And Hill shows us why: positively, because that hermeneutic was constructed precisely in response to the kinds of challenge for talk about God, Christ, and Spirit found in Paul's letters and elsewhere; negatively, because contemporary historical critics have not learned the exegetical-theological lessons of trinitarian doctrine, and thus largely replay the terminological debates from the side of opposition to Nicaea (e.g., distinction obviates unity, derivation implies subordination, etc.).
But when I say that Hill demonstrates his thesis, I do not mean that he succeeds in offering a reading that avoids anachronism. He does not. But the fault is not with him. The fault is with the criterion itself. His only fault—and it is a minor one, but an instructive one nonetheless—is to play by the rules set for him by biblical criticism. Because the truth is that avoiding anachronism is impossible. The act of reading is itself irreducibly, unavoidably, essentially anachronistic. In particular, reading any text from the past, indeed a religious text from the ancient past, just is to engage in anachronism.
So the issue is not that Hill's trinitarian hermeneutic for Paul is anachronistic. It's that the non-trinitarian hermeneutics of every one of his peers—Dunn, Hurtado, McGrath, Bauckham, whomever—are equally anachronistic.
Hill gestures toward this fact in his critique of the use of "monotheism" as a category applied to Paul, as well as the language of a vertical axis on which to plot the relative divinity of God and Jesus. But the critique goes all the way down. And this cannot be said forcefully enough, given the depths of historical criticism's rejection of anachronism, both for its own exegesis and that of anyone else, and given the extent of its influence not only over the academy but over the church. In a word:
Historical-critical exegesis is fundamentally, inescapably anachronistic.
What do I mean by this, and on what grounds do I say it?
First, and most basically, because historical criticism is itself a contingent, lately constructed mode of reading not universally found among all communities of reading. Put differently: the attempt to read without anachronism is a parochial idea—created at a certain time and place, and therefore present in some cultures and not others. So that the suggestion that non-anachronistic reading is what it means to read well is self-refuting, if reading was ever a successful practice outside of Western culture in the last few centuries.
Second, because all reading is anachronistic, as I said above. Let's limit that claim to the readings of texts not written in one's own immediate time and place and/or addressed to oneself (i.e., not emails received moments after sending). To read a text outside of its original context and audience means to read that text in a new, different context, by or with a new, different audience—in this case, you, the reader. That means that the language, customs, assumptions, beliefs, practices, background knowledge, relationships, intentions, and so on, that pertained to the original setting of the text are no longer present, or present in the same way, and that you bring to the text entirely different customs, knowledge, experience, etc. To read a text in such a setting invariably changes how the text is read. And however much one tries to mitigate such contextual factors, resistance is futile; indeed, resistance is itself a sign of doing something different—engaging in a different practice, through different means, with a different end—than the original audience in its original context.
Now, third, the objection might arise: Does that mean we simply cannot arrive at historical understanding? Not at all. My point is the opposite: True historical understanding is always anachronistic. Because historical self-understanding, historical consciousness, is itself a historical achievement, a contingent event. The way that we late moderns "think" history is not native to history's actors; "putting ourselves in their shoes," trying to think their thoughts after them, in just the way they thought them, ruthlessly identifying and trying to eliminate any stray intrusions of modern thoughts and even modern applications—that is, strictly speaking, something our forebears did not do. We can do it, we can play the game, but it's a game we're playing (just like chess or basketball, which are real games with real rules we can really play in the present, but which have not always existed, even if analogous games existed in other cultures, past or present); it's not a sort of time machine of the mind. Even that metaphor fails, since the trouble with time machines, as with observation of nature, is that they don't leave the past untouched. The same goes for historical investigation. You bring the future with you.
Fourth, the insight of Gadamer is key here: Historical understanding is a possibility, but lack of anachronism is neither possible nor desirable. That would entail leaping over the history in between the text in question and the present. But that history has, quite literally, made the reading of that text now, in this setting, possible; furthermore, texts bring with them the histories of their reception that have attended them ever since their inception. Those histories not only inform our interpretations in the present, however historically rigorous: they set the conditions for them. To make the claim, "Paul's conception of God and Christ is binitarian," is to locate oneself on a timeline; it is not a claim that was made, because it could not have been made, prior to a certain moment in our history. And, as a claim, it would be no more intelligible to Paul than to Anselm. That is what makes it anachronistic.
Fifth, the most important reason why historical-critical reading is essentially anachronistic is the way that it uses—quite explicitly and without apology—resources outside the text, resources foreign to the text's original audience, as a means of interpreting the text. Examples are obvious: monographs and articles, concepts created long after the text's composition, archeological findings, data regarding life and neighboring cultures prior to and contemporaneous with the text's original setting. Historical-critical exegesis often proposes readings of ancient religious texts (say, Genesis 1) that would have been impossible in the original context, because no one at the time had, or could have had, the kind of comprehensive knowledge about their own time and place that we have since amassed. (It is worth noting that this exegetical procedure is not different in kind than reading Genesis 1 in light of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, or scientific theories about the origins of the universe.) In a manner of speaking, the best historical-critical interpretations are self-consciously maximalist in just this way: they are so exhaustive in searching out every possible detail, contour, allusion, and influence that such an interpretation in the text's original setting would have been unthinkable—indeed, no such interpretation would have been possible until now, this very moment in time. Undertaken in that sort of self-conscious way, anachronism would be welcomed and readily admitted as the very occasion and goal of historical reading.
Much more could be said; Lord willing, I'll say it in print here in a few years. For now, recall Hill's rhetorical question in the book's conclusion: "Is it possible ... that a kind of broad, pluriform trinitarian perspective, far from being an anachronistic imposition on the texts of Paul, may instead prove genuinely insightful in a fresh look at Paul?" (169). Let me take a lesson from Hill and apply it to his own work: these are not competing claims; it is not an either/or situation. Bringing trinitarian doctrine to bear on the letters of Paul is both anachronistic and richly insightful. Whether or not it is more insightful than non-trinitarian readings, whether or not it does greater justice to the texts considered as a whole and in all their literary-theological diversity, is a separate question, one not governed exclusively by historical concerns. I happen to side with Hill's answer. But even if we were wrong in our judgment, it would not be because our reading was anachronistic. An ostensibly superior reading would be, too.
The Lord Reigns: A Sermon for the Feast of the Ascension
A sermon preached at the Round Rock Church of Christ, Sunday, 6 May 2018.
Opening reading
Hear this word from the book of Acts, chapter 1, verses 1-12:
In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when he was taken up, after he had given commandment through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. To them he presented himself alive after his passion by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days, and speaking of the kingdom of God. And while staying with them he charged them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, “you heard from me, for John baptized with water, but before many days you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”
So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.” And when he had said this, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” Then they returned to Jerusalem…
Prayer
Almighty God,
whose blessed Son our Savior Jesus Christ
ascended far above the heavens
that he might fill all things:
Mercifully give us faith to perceive that,
according to his promise,
he abides with his Church on earth,
even to the end of the ages;
and now, by your grace,
pour through me the gift of preaching,
that what is heard this day through human lips
might be the word of God for the people of God;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.
Introduction
I’m not sure if you know this, but in four days there is a special day on the Christian calendar.
It isn’t Easter, which was only last month. It isn’t Christmas, which is still a long ways away. It isn’t one of those days or seasons you might have heard about but never celebrated, like Advent or Lent or Ash Wednesday, or for the especially church-nerdy, the Feast of the Annunciation.
No, this Thursday is Ascension Day. It is the day on the church calendar when, for millennia, Christians have remembered and celebrated the ascension of the risen Jesus to heaven. You may have already put together why it is celebrated on a Thursday: because, as Acts tells us, Jesus appeared to the apostles over a 40-day period, at the end of which Jesus was taken from their sight. And this Thursday marks 40 days since Easter Sunday. In the same way, Pentecost Sunday is two weeks from today, since Pentecost is a Jewish festival of 50 days following Passover—and Pentecost is the time when Jesus, having ascended to heaven, poured out the Holy Spirit on his disciples.
So when I was asked to preach this Sunday, I looked at the calendar and realized I had to preach about the Ascension. Not only because of the timing, between Passover, Easter, and Pentecost, but also because—when was the last time you heard a sermon on the Ascension
Now the Ascension doesn’t always play the most prominent role in our retellings of the work of Christ. When we summarize the gospel, we say, “Jesus is risen,” not “Jesus is ascended.” Or when we stretch it out, we say, “the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.” Or we say that Christ died on the cross for the forgiveness of sins, not that he ascended to heaven for our salvation. And that’s perfectly fine: the New Testament certainly emphasizes the cross and the resurrection as the fundamental focal points for understanding the significance of what Jesus has done for us.
But what I want to talk about this morning is how pivotal, in fact, the Ascension is to the gospel story. If you leave it out, the story remains incomplete. And not only does the New Testament not leave it out; once you’re on the lookout for it, you realize it’s everywhere. Just as Paul says in 1 Corinthians that, if Christ is not raised from the dead, we are still in our sins, and our faith is in vain—the same applies here: if Christ did not ascend to heaven, the gospel is no good news at all, and we of all people are to be pitied. Why is that?
Well, here’s a question to ask yourself. Where is Jesus, and why is he there? Hold that thought.
Where Jesus is
As many of y’all know, I have two boys. And when you have a theologian for a dad, conversations about God can get really interesting, really fast.
Now Sam and Rowan have a very strict three-tiered understanding of reality. First, there is our world. Second, there is God’s world. Third, there is Pretend World. Pretend World is where they assign anything and everything that isn’t real, or doesn’t really happen in our world. So they regularly ask me, “Is that in our world? Or Pretend World?” Unfortunately for all of us, Captain America and Luke Skywalker and Scooby-Doo are all part of Pretend World. Pretty much anything we read about in a book or watch in a movie is a part of Pretend World, even if it’s real people acting as if something Pretend is real.
So one day we were reading a children’s Bible together, a story about David. And Sam casually referred to David as belonging to Pretend World. I looked at him, and said, “Sam, David isn’t in Pretend World.” He looked back at me as only an all-knowing five-year old can, and said, “Dad, he’s in the Bible. That’s Pretend World.”
At which point I questioned everything I’d ever said or taught about God and the Bible.
And I said, “Sam, everything in the Bible is in our world. It’s not Pretend World, it’s real!” His and Rowan’s eyes got bigger and bigger as I explained to them that, not only were David and Elijah and Jesus and Peter all not pretend, but I’ve been to where they lived. Israel is a place just like Austin and Abilene are places. Now, David died a long time ago, but he lived in the very same world that we live in. The same for everyone else in the Bible.
Having blown their minds, and corrected for all my fatherly shortcomings, I thought my work was done. But then Sam said, “Okay, but since they died, they’re in heaven with God, so now they’re not in our world, they’re in God’s world.” Yes, correct. “Then where is Jesus?” Remember, Sam, he went to heaven after he rose from the dead, so he’s in heaven with God, too. “But Dad, didn’t you also tell us that, just like God, Jesus is everywhere—even in this room with us? But if Jesus is in heaven with God, how can he be here with us too? Is Jesus in God’s world, or is he in our world?”
To which I said, with rich paternal wisdom and years of deep theological training: Time for bed.
Where is Jesus?
Let me back up and situate the Ascension in the broader context of the gospel story.
In his great love, God sends his Son into the world, to become a human being. Jesus proclaims the good news of God’s kingdom in Israel, teaching and healing and caring for those overlooked by society. He is a prophet mighty in word and deed, bringing judgment and repentance and promise of healing to God’s people. He is a king, the son of David, anointed by the Spirit as the long-awaited Messiah. He is a priest, who through the offering of himself on the cross, makes atonement for sins, and through his resurrection triumphs over the power of death once and for all.
He appears to his disciples, and once they realize they don’t have anything to fear from him—they did abandon him after all—they finally, finally realize who he is and what he has done. So naturally, they ask him if what’s next is what they imagined all along: Kick out the pagan occupiers, mop up the godless nations, and restore the glory to Israel, God’s chosen people of old.
And it is at this point that there is a second twist in the story.
The first twist was that Israel’s Messiah would be a suffering servant, yielding to the sword rather than wielding it. The second twist is that, after his victory over sin and death, he still doesn’t take up the sword to decimate the evil powers of the world—not least Rome, which crucified him. Instead, the risen Jesus says to his disciples: “It is not for you to know when the final victory will come. But wait for the Holy Spirit, who will make you witnesses about me to the ends of the earth.” And he was taken from them.
So the Ascension continues this pattern, so common in Scripture, of an unexpected turn in the narrative, yet one that, in retrospect, is perfectly fitting. It’s true that the Ascension answers a question: Where is Jesus? Sam was right about that. But that’s the least significant part of it. And even then, teaching about Jesus being in heaven can come to signify something entirely negative, or passive: the Ascension explains Jesus’s absence; his invisibility; his silence; even, perhaps, his impotence. It can make it sound as if God left us alone after saving us, and we’re stuck here, helpless, until he decides to show up again.
But that is not what Jesus says here, nor is it what the rest of the New Testament says. So why did Jesus go to heaven? What is the meaning of the Ascension? And why is it good news? I want to focus on six aspects of the Ascension that help to answer these questions, and most of all why it is central to the gospel story.
1-2: Spirit & Presence
Back to Acts 1.
Jesus directs our attention to two consequences of the Ascension: the gift of the Holy Spirit, and the mission of the church. These are intertwined; you don’t get one without the other. The ascended Christ will pour out the Spirit of God on the disciples, and filled with that Spirit, they will be Christ’s witnesses not only in Jerusalem and Judea, not only in Samaria, but in every direction: south to Africa, east to India and China, north to Turkey and Russia, west to Greece and Rome—and, centuries later, the Americas.
So why does Jesus return to heaven?
First, so that the Holy Spirit might be poured out on all flesh. This is the promised gift of God, long prophesied in the Old Testament. In the Gospel of John, Jesus tells the apostles, “I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate [the Holy Spirit] will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.” (16:7)
Why is it better for Jesus to go than to stay? Because for Jesus to go means the coming of the Spirit. And what does that mean? It means God himself abiding in us, both together as a community and in each and every one of the baptized. Once God took up residence in a temple, a house made by human hands; now God takes up residence in the hearts of the faithful, temples made of flesh and bone, created in the image of God himself. The Spirit of God convicts, gives life, and liberates; where the Spirit is, there is life and power: life from the dead and power to live free from sin. The Spirit directs us in the way we should go; the Spirit holds us in the mercy and grace of God; the Spirit gives us words to pray and makes the Father of Jesus our Father—through the Spirit we are sisters and brothers of Jesus and therefore sisters and brothers of one another. The Spirit is the power of God for salvation, the unconquerable divine love who puts fire in our bones to take up our crosses and follow Jesus. The Spirit makes us holy as God is holy.
The Spirit, in short, is the very presence of the living God—and though he is a consuming fire, he does not burn us to a crisp, but like the leaves of the burning bush, like the flesh of Jesus on whom the Spirit descended like a dove—the Spirit’s presence purifies and remakes us, but does not undo us.
This is the second aspect of the Ascension. Even after the resurrection, Jesus was embodied; Christians confess the resurrection of the body, including the body of Jesus. The thing about bodies is that they are located in one place. Jesus appeared to his disciples in Galilee, Emmaus, and Jerusalem. He didn’t appear in Rome or Nairobi or Moscow. What Luke reveals to us in Acts is that Jesus’s Ascension, far from initiating Jesus’s absence from the world, is the beginning of a far more radical and intimate presence to the world. When I teach Acts to students, I do a kind of call-and-response about this to drill this into their heads. The Ascension is not about Jesus’s absence, but rather another mode of his presence. The Ascension is not about Jesus’s absence, but rather another mode of his presence.
That is the essential thing. The Holy Spirit is the means by which Jesus Christ, risen in glory in heaven with God the Father, is present in grace and power at all times, in all places, to everyone who believes. Where two or three are gathered in the name of Jesus, there he is with them—because of the Ascension. Because of the Ascension, through Jesus’s own Spirit, he is present to you and to me, to each and every one of us: speaking, guiding, convicting, calling, justifying, sanctifying, glorifying. Sam asked me how Jesus could be in heaven with God and everywhere else at the same time, including here with us now. The answer is Pentecost. The answer is the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead, who has been shed abroad in our hearts, through faith. The answer is the Ascension.
3: Mission
The risen Jesus tells the disciples in Acts 1 that they will be his witnesses to and among the nations. The third aspect of the Ascension, therefore, is mission. For what does the outpouring of the Spirit create? The church of Jesus Christ. What is the church’s primary purpose? To make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the triune name and teaching them all that Christ commanded.
Had Jesus restored the kingdom at a moment’s notice, only days after the resurrection, guess who wouldn’t be included? You and me. As the apostles slowly came to understand, partly through the ascended Jesus’s special calling of Paul to be the apostle to the gentiles, Jesus goes away not only to become near to all who believe through the Spirit; more specifically, it creates a new time in the world’s history—the time of mission, of witness, of the church. And that time is, as Paul puts it in Romans 11, the time for the gentiles to come into the people of God.
It turns out the good news of Israel’s Messiah wasn’t meant exclusively for Israel. It was meant for the whole world.
The Ascension of Jesus creates the time necessary for the gospel to be proclaimed in every tongue and in every nation on this planet. The Ascension of Jesus is an act of extraordinary generosity on God’s part: it wasn’t time to wrap up the world’s history; it was time to get the news to every corner of the globe, and as time unfolded, to spread the word to each new generation as it arose.
If you aren’t a Jew, and if you weren’t born in the land of Israel in the first century—which means everyone in this room—then the Ascension of Jesus means that God wanted to include you in his story. Let me say that again: The Ascension of Jesus means that God wanted to include you in his story. God wanted to wait for all of us to have a share in the kingdom of his Son.
As 2 Peter 3 says, God isn’t delaying. What seems like Jesus taking a long time to return is actually a matter of divine patience. God has all the time in the world for us. He’s not going anywhere.
4-5: Exaltation & Reign
In the second chapter of Acts, after the Spirit has been poured out, Peter stands up and preaches to the crowd. Here is what he says at the end of his sermon: “God raised up [Jesus from the dead], and of that we all are witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this which you see and hear. For David did not ascend into the heavens; but he himself says, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, till I make your enemies a stool for your feet.’” (2:32-35)
Just a few chapters later, Peter preaches again in Acts 5: “The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.” (5:30-32)
In Philippians 2, Paul writes: “And being found in human form [Jesus] humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (2:9-11)
Finally in Hebrews, we read this: “When [Jesus] had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high… For a little while [he] was made lower than the angels, [but] now [is] crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death…[and he is] exalted above the heavens…” (1:3; 2:9; 7:26)
Here is the fourth, and perhaps central, aspect of the Ascension: It is the exaltation of Jesus.
Above every name, above every power, far superior to angels, far more excellent than all the fathers and mothers and heroes in the faith who preceded him—far surpassing every measure of excellence and standard of beauty and seat of power we can imagine—above the heaven of heavens, there stands Jesus, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the slain Lamb, the author and perfecter of our faith, the Messiah of Israel, the eternal Word of God, the One with the keys of death and Hades in his hands—Jesus, son of Mary, son of David, son of Abraham, son of Adam, Son of God—there he stands, enthroned in heaven, bearing the name that is above every name, victor and vanquisher of sin and death, of the devil and all his works—the Holy One, Emmanuel, the Crucified, the Creator himself, our brother, Incarnate, the Alpha and Omega, the One who was and is and is to come, God blessed forever—him, that one, Jesus, he is exalted, raised not just from death to life but from earth to heaven, to the right hand of the Father, to reign forever and ever, world without end, amen.
That is what the Ascension means. That is why Jesus returned to his Father and ours. Because when death could not hold him, this universe itself could not hold him. He returned in glory to the Father’s side, now in the body he assumed for our sake, there to rule not just as God’s Son and Word, but as the Crucified and Risen One, the Messiah and Savior of the world.
To reign, to rule: that is the fifth aspect of his Ascension. Who reigns, who rules? Who is enthroned? Who stands at the head of a glorious procession of victory?
The king. Jesus is the king. The son of David is David’s Lord. Israel’s king reigns, now, over all the earth. He is king of Israel, king of the cosmos, king of heaven. Not for nothing did Paul’s opponents in Thessalonica in Acts 17 accuse Christians before the authorities of “all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus.” (17:7) There is another king, and his name is Jesus!
The Roman Empire called Caesar “lord” and “savior” and “son of god.” So what titles did the early Christians confess of Jesus? Lord! Savior! Son of God! Why were believers persecuted so often? Because they constituted a threat to the powers that be. Why were believers so willing to suffer and die for the faith? Because they knew who was in charge—they knew the name of the one true King, and his name wasn’t Caesar.
The Ascension means that Jesus is Lord, Jesus is King, and he reigns on high over the affairs of earth. Does that mean that life on earth, for believers or nonbelievers, is easy or painless? Not at all. What it means is this. At all times, in all circumstances, no matter how bad things are or how bad they appear to be—the Lord reigns; Jesus is in charge. The Lord Jesus reigns: He will be with you, because he is with us now, by his Spirit. No power or authority on this earth compares with his power and authority. Nor will any power that stands against him triumph. We know with whom, on whose side, heaven stands, because we know those with whom heaven’s king stood during his time on earth. He stood with the poor, the needy, the sick, the overlooked, the beaten-down, the downtrodden, the meek, the tax collectors and prostitutes and little ones whose weaknesses the powerful exploited. That’s where the king of the universe stands: with the least of these, the sisters and brothers of Jesus.
Which means that’s where we must stand, if we want to be where Jesus is.
6: Intercession
So—summing up so far: The exalted Jesus, reigning from God’s right hand, powerfully present by the Holy Spirit in and to his body, the church, as it continues its mission to spread the gospel to the ends of the earth—that, so far, is what the Ascension means, what it enables.
Remember that Jesus is prophet, priest, and king. We have seen how he rules as king and speaks as prophet, through the Spirit. The sixth and final aspect of the Ascension is Jesus’s intercession for us before God, as priest.
The book of Hebrews teaches us that Jesus is both priest and offering; the offering he made was himself, his own body and blood, a once-for-all sacrifice for sins. In chapter 7 we read this: “For it was fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, blameless, undefiled, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens.” (7:26)
Hebrews goes on to say that, as the one, final, permanent priest, Jesus “appears in the presence of God on our behalf,” for “he is able for all time to save those who approach God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.” (9:24; 7:25)
Similarly Paul writes in Romans 8 that “it is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.” (8:34)
Finally 1 John 2 says that, “if anyone sins, we have an advocate before the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous, and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (2:1-2)
What does this mean?
It does not mean that the Father is against us and the Son is for us, the one angry and the other merciful, as if one Person of the Trinity were divided against another. What it means is that Jesus, our mediator, at once both God and man, fully divine and fully human—Jesus is, now and forever, on our side. He is for us. He is for you. He is Immanuel, God with us. Only now he is human-with-God. On earth, God-with-humans. In heaven, human-with-God.
Our brother, the Galilean, he is in the highest of heavens, the unapproachable, ineffable sphere of beauty and blessedness—he is there, he has as it were taken us with him there, and from everlasting to everlasting he has our best interests at heart.
What sins we commit in the meantime, though we should repent of them swiftly and sincerely, they should not trouble or grieve us, they need not weigh us down: for we have an infinitely patient, infinitely merciful, infinitely willing advocate and priest at God’s side, one who, as Hebrews puts it, “became like his sisters and brothers in every respect, so that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God. And because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.” (2:17-18)
Jesus ascended to the right hand of God in order to serve, eternally, as our advocate, priest, and intercessor. Your brother Jesus is not just there with you in the dock; he has the ear of the judge. Now and forever, the verdict is Not Guilty.
Conclusion
After the Ascension, Acts tells us that two angels appear, who say, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” In other words: Jesus will return as he left, coming on the clouds of heaven. So long as the earth and the church’s mission on it endure, we wait for our royal priest, Israel’s Messiah and heaven’s King, to appear, once and for all. The Ascension inaugurates the time of hope, of faith’s patient waiting for the final fulfillment of the promise of the kingdom to come at last, for the New Jerusalem to descend from heaven like a bride adorned for her groom.
Until then, I can do no better than to conclude by quoting Paul in Colossians 3 and Ephesians 1:
“If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” (Col 3:1-4)
“[This is] the immeasurable greatness of his power in us who believe, according to the working of his great might which he accomplished in Christ when he raised him from the dead and made him sit at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come; and he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.” (Eph 1:15-23)
The church’s head is the risen Jesus, and the risen Jesus is Lord, and the Lord reigns from heaven. Thanks be to God.
Prayer
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God:
You reign from heaven
With your Father and Spirit.
We beg you, by your grace,
To strengthen us in faith, hope, and love,
That you would raise the eyes of our hearts
To you, glorious in power and love,
Ruling on high with mercy and justice.
Rule us, too, as your body,
As we proclaim your kingdom here on earth,
Awaiting with patience your heavenly appearing,
When the will of your Father will at last be done
Here, in the new creation of your marvelous work,
Where peace will dwell forever.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit: Amen.
Opening reading
Hear this word from the book of Acts, chapter 1, verses 1-12:
In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when he was taken up, after he had given commandment through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. To them he presented himself alive after his passion by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days, and speaking of the kingdom of God. And while staying with them he charged them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, “you heard from me, for John baptized with water, but before many days you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”
So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.” And when he had said this, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” Then they returned to Jerusalem…
Prayer
Almighty God,
whose blessed Son our Savior Jesus Christ
ascended far above the heavens
that he might fill all things:
Mercifully give us faith to perceive that,
according to his promise,
he abides with his Church on earth,
even to the end of the ages;
and now, by your grace,
pour through me the gift of preaching,
that what is heard this day through human lips
might be the word of God for the people of God;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.
Introduction
I’m not sure if you know this, but in four days there is a special day on the Christian calendar.
It isn’t Easter, which was only last month. It isn’t Christmas, which is still a long ways away. It isn’t one of those days or seasons you might have heard about but never celebrated, like Advent or Lent or Ash Wednesday, or for the especially church-nerdy, the Feast of the Annunciation.
No, this Thursday is Ascension Day. It is the day on the church calendar when, for millennia, Christians have remembered and celebrated the ascension of the risen Jesus to heaven. You may have already put together why it is celebrated on a Thursday: because, as Acts tells us, Jesus appeared to the apostles over a 40-day period, at the end of which Jesus was taken from their sight. And this Thursday marks 40 days since Easter Sunday. In the same way, Pentecost Sunday is two weeks from today, since Pentecost is a Jewish festival of 50 days following Passover—and Pentecost is the time when Jesus, having ascended to heaven, poured out the Holy Spirit on his disciples.
So when I was asked to preach this Sunday, I looked at the calendar and realized I had to preach about the Ascension. Not only because of the timing, between Passover, Easter, and Pentecost, but also because—when was the last time you heard a sermon on the Ascension
Now the Ascension doesn’t always play the most prominent role in our retellings of the work of Christ. When we summarize the gospel, we say, “Jesus is risen,” not “Jesus is ascended.” Or when we stretch it out, we say, “the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.” Or we say that Christ died on the cross for the forgiveness of sins, not that he ascended to heaven for our salvation. And that’s perfectly fine: the New Testament certainly emphasizes the cross and the resurrection as the fundamental focal points for understanding the significance of what Jesus has done for us.
But what I want to talk about this morning is how pivotal, in fact, the Ascension is to the gospel story. If you leave it out, the story remains incomplete. And not only does the New Testament not leave it out; once you’re on the lookout for it, you realize it’s everywhere. Just as Paul says in 1 Corinthians that, if Christ is not raised from the dead, we are still in our sins, and our faith is in vain—the same applies here: if Christ did not ascend to heaven, the gospel is no good news at all, and we of all people are to be pitied. Why is that?
Well, here’s a question to ask yourself. Where is Jesus, and why is he there? Hold that thought.
Where Jesus is
As many of y’all know, I have two boys. And when you have a theologian for a dad, conversations about God can get really interesting, really fast.
Now Sam and Rowan have a very strict three-tiered understanding of reality. First, there is our world. Second, there is God’s world. Third, there is Pretend World. Pretend World is where they assign anything and everything that isn’t real, or doesn’t really happen in our world. So they regularly ask me, “Is that in our world? Or Pretend World?” Unfortunately for all of us, Captain America and Luke Skywalker and Scooby-Doo are all part of Pretend World. Pretty much anything we read about in a book or watch in a movie is a part of Pretend World, even if it’s real people acting as if something Pretend is real.
So one day we were reading a children’s Bible together, a story about David. And Sam casually referred to David as belonging to Pretend World. I looked at him, and said, “Sam, David isn’t in Pretend World.” He looked back at me as only an all-knowing five-year old can, and said, “Dad, he’s in the Bible. That’s Pretend World.”
At which point I questioned everything I’d ever said or taught about God and the Bible.
And I said, “Sam, everything in the Bible is in our world. It’s not Pretend World, it’s real!” His and Rowan’s eyes got bigger and bigger as I explained to them that, not only were David and Elijah and Jesus and Peter all not pretend, but I’ve been to where they lived. Israel is a place just like Austin and Abilene are places. Now, David died a long time ago, but he lived in the very same world that we live in. The same for everyone else in the Bible.
Having blown their minds, and corrected for all my fatherly shortcomings, I thought my work was done. But then Sam said, “Okay, but since they died, they’re in heaven with God, so now they’re not in our world, they’re in God’s world.” Yes, correct. “Then where is Jesus?” Remember, Sam, he went to heaven after he rose from the dead, so he’s in heaven with God, too. “But Dad, didn’t you also tell us that, just like God, Jesus is everywhere—even in this room with us? But if Jesus is in heaven with God, how can he be here with us too? Is Jesus in God’s world, or is he in our world?”
To which I said, with rich paternal wisdom and years of deep theological training: Time for bed.
Where is Jesus?
Let me back up and situate the Ascension in the broader context of the gospel story.
In his great love, God sends his Son into the world, to become a human being. Jesus proclaims the good news of God’s kingdom in Israel, teaching and healing and caring for those overlooked by society. He is a prophet mighty in word and deed, bringing judgment and repentance and promise of healing to God’s people. He is a king, the son of David, anointed by the Spirit as the long-awaited Messiah. He is a priest, who through the offering of himself on the cross, makes atonement for sins, and through his resurrection triumphs over the power of death once and for all.
He appears to his disciples, and once they realize they don’t have anything to fear from him—they did abandon him after all—they finally, finally realize who he is and what he has done. So naturally, they ask him if what’s next is what they imagined all along: Kick out the pagan occupiers, mop up the godless nations, and restore the glory to Israel, God’s chosen people of old.
And it is at this point that there is a second twist in the story.
The first twist was that Israel’s Messiah would be a suffering servant, yielding to the sword rather than wielding it. The second twist is that, after his victory over sin and death, he still doesn’t take up the sword to decimate the evil powers of the world—not least Rome, which crucified him. Instead, the risen Jesus says to his disciples: “It is not for you to know when the final victory will come. But wait for the Holy Spirit, who will make you witnesses about me to the ends of the earth.” And he was taken from them.
So the Ascension continues this pattern, so common in Scripture, of an unexpected turn in the narrative, yet one that, in retrospect, is perfectly fitting. It’s true that the Ascension answers a question: Where is Jesus? Sam was right about that. But that’s the least significant part of it. And even then, teaching about Jesus being in heaven can come to signify something entirely negative, or passive: the Ascension explains Jesus’s absence; his invisibility; his silence; even, perhaps, his impotence. It can make it sound as if God left us alone after saving us, and we’re stuck here, helpless, until he decides to show up again.
But that is not what Jesus says here, nor is it what the rest of the New Testament says. So why did Jesus go to heaven? What is the meaning of the Ascension? And why is it good news? I want to focus on six aspects of the Ascension that help to answer these questions, and most of all why it is central to the gospel story.
1-2: Spirit & Presence
Back to Acts 1.
Jesus directs our attention to two consequences of the Ascension: the gift of the Holy Spirit, and the mission of the church. These are intertwined; you don’t get one without the other. The ascended Christ will pour out the Spirit of God on the disciples, and filled with that Spirit, they will be Christ’s witnesses not only in Jerusalem and Judea, not only in Samaria, but in every direction: south to Africa, east to India and China, north to Turkey and Russia, west to Greece and Rome—and, centuries later, the Americas.
So why does Jesus return to heaven?
First, so that the Holy Spirit might be poured out on all flesh. This is the promised gift of God, long prophesied in the Old Testament. In the Gospel of John, Jesus tells the apostles, “I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate [the Holy Spirit] will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.” (16:7)
Why is it better for Jesus to go than to stay? Because for Jesus to go means the coming of the Spirit. And what does that mean? It means God himself abiding in us, both together as a community and in each and every one of the baptized. Once God took up residence in a temple, a house made by human hands; now God takes up residence in the hearts of the faithful, temples made of flesh and bone, created in the image of God himself. The Spirit of God convicts, gives life, and liberates; where the Spirit is, there is life and power: life from the dead and power to live free from sin. The Spirit directs us in the way we should go; the Spirit holds us in the mercy and grace of God; the Spirit gives us words to pray and makes the Father of Jesus our Father—through the Spirit we are sisters and brothers of Jesus and therefore sisters and brothers of one another. The Spirit is the power of God for salvation, the unconquerable divine love who puts fire in our bones to take up our crosses and follow Jesus. The Spirit makes us holy as God is holy.
The Spirit, in short, is the very presence of the living God—and though he is a consuming fire, he does not burn us to a crisp, but like the leaves of the burning bush, like the flesh of Jesus on whom the Spirit descended like a dove—the Spirit’s presence purifies and remakes us, but does not undo us.
This is the second aspect of the Ascension. Even after the resurrection, Jesus was embodied; Christians confess the resurrection of the body, including the body of Jesus. The thing about bodies is that they are located in one place. Jesus appeared to his disciples in Galilee, Emmaus, and Jerusalem. He didn’t appear in Rome or Nairobi or Moscow. What Luke reveals to us in Acts is that Jesus’s Ascension, far from initiating Jesus’s absence from the world, is the beginning of a far more radical and intimate presence to the world. When I teach Acts to students, I do a kind of call-and-response about this to drill this into their heads. The Ascension is not about Jesus’s absence, but rather another mode of his presence. The Ascension is not about Jesus’s absence, but rather another mode of his presence.
That is the essential thing. The Holy Spirit is the means by which Jesus Christ, risen in glory in heaven with God the Father, is present in grace and power at all times, in all places, to everyone who believes. Where two or three are gathered in the name of Jesus, there he is with them—because of the Ascension. Because of the Ascension, through Jesus’s own Spirit, he is present to you and to me, to each and every one of us: speaking, guiding, convicting, calling, justifying, sanctifying, glorifying. Sam asked me how Jesus could be in heaven with God and everywhere else at the same time, including here with us now. The answer is Pentecost. The answer is the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead, who has been shed abroad in our hearts, through faith. The answer is the Ascension.
3: Mission
The risen Jesus tells the disciples in Acts 1 that they will be his witnesses to and among the nations. The third aspect of the Ascension, therefore, is mission. For what does the outpouring of the Spirit create? The church of Jesus Christ. What is the church’s primary purpose? To make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the triune name and teaching them all that Christ commanded.
Had Jesus restored the kingdom at a moment’s notice, only days after the resurrection, guess who wouldn’t be included? You and me. As the apostles slowly came to understand, partly through the ascended Jesus’s special calling of Paul to be the apostle to the gentiles, Jesus goes away not only to become near to all who believe through the Spirit; more specifically, it creates a new time in the world’s history—the time of mission, of witness, of the church. And that time is, as Paul puts it in Romans 11, the time for the gentiles to come into the people of God.
It turns out the good news of Israel’s Messiah wasn’t meant exclusively for Israel. It was meant for the whole world.
The Ascension of Jesus creates the time necessary for the gospel to be proclaimed in every tongue and in every nation on this planet. The Ascension of Jesus is an act of extraordinary generosity on God’s part: it wasn’t time to wrap up the world’s history; it was time to get the news to every corner of the globe, and as time unfolded, to spread the word to each new generation as it arose.
If you aren’t a Jew, and if you weren’t born in the land of Israel in the first century—which means everyone in this room—then the Ascension of Jesus means that God wanted to include you in his story. Let me say that again: The Ascension of Jesus means that God wanted to include you in his story. God wanted to wait for all of us to have a share in the kingdom of his Son.
As 2 Peter 3 says, God isn’t delaying. What seems like Jesus taking a long time to return is actually a matter of divine patience. God has all the time in the world for us. He’s not going anywhere.
4-5: Exaltation & Reign
In the second chapter of Acts, after the Spirit has been poured out, Peter stands up and preaches to the crowd. Here is what he says at the end of his sermon: “God raised up [Jesus from the dead], and of that we all are witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this which you see and hear. For David did not ascend into the heavens; but he himself says, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, till I make your enemies a stool for your feet.’” (2:32-35)
Just a few chapters later, Peter preaches again in Acts 5: “The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.” (5:30-32)
In Philippians 2, Paul writes: “And being found in human form [Jesus] humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (2:9-11)
Finally in Hebrews, we read this: “When [Jesus] had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high… For a little while [he] was made lower than the angels, [but] now [is] crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death…[and he is] exalted above the heavens…” (1:3; 2:9; 7:26)
Here is the fourth, and perhaps central, aspect of the Ascension: It is the exaltation of Jesus.
Above every name, above every power, far superior to angels, far more excellent than all the fathers and mothers and heroes in the faith who preceded him—far surpassing every measure of excellence and standard of beauty and seat of power we can imagine—above the heaven of heavens, there stands Jesus, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the slain Lamb, the author and perfecter of our faith, the Messiah of Israel, the eternal Word of God, the One with the keys of death and Hades in his hands—Jesus, son of Mary, son of David, son of Abraham, son of Adam, Son of God—there he stands, enthroned in heaven, bearing the name that is above every name, victor and vanquisher of sin and death, of the devil and all his works—the Holy One, Emmanuel, the Crucified, the Creator himself, our brother, Incarnate, the Alpha and Omega, the One who was and is and is to come, God blessed forever—him, that one, Jesus, he is exalted, raised not just from death to life but from earth to heaven, to the right hand of the Father, to reign forever and ever, world without end, amen.
That is what the Ascension means. That is why Jesus returned to his Father and ours. Because when death could not hold him, this universe itself could not hold him. He returned in glory to the Father’s side, now in the body he assumed for our sake, there to rule not just as God’s Son and Word, but as the Crucified and Risen One, the Messiah and Savior of the world.
To reign, to rule: that is the fifth aspect of his Ascension. Who reigns, who rules? Who is enthroned? Who stands at the head of a glorious procession of victory?
The king. Jesus is the king. The son of David is David’s Lord. Israel’s king reigns, now, over all the earth. He is king of Israel, king of the cosmos, king of heaven. Not for nothing did Paul’s opponents in Thessalonica in Acts 17 accuse Christians before the authorities of “all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus.” (17:7) There is another king, and his name is Jesus!
The Roman Empire called Caesar “lord” and “savior” and “son of god.” So what titles did the early Christians confess of Jesus? Lord! Savior! Son of God! Why were believers persecuted so often? Because they constituted a threat to the powers that be. Why were believers so willing to suffer and die for the faith? Because they knew who was in charge—they knew the name of the one true King, and his name wasn’t Caesar.
The Ascension means that Jesus is Lord, Jesus is King, and he reigns on high over the affairs of earth. Does that mean that life on earth, for believers or nonbelievers, is easy or painless? Not at all. What it means is this. At all times, in all circumstances, no matter how bad things are or how bad they appear to be—the Lord reigns; Jesus is in charge. The Lord Jesus reigns: He will be with you, because he is with us now, by his Spirit. No power or authority on this earth compares with his power and authority. Nor will any power that stands against him triumph. We know with whom, on whose side, heaven stands, because we know those with whom heaven’s king stood during his time on earth. He stood with the poor, the needy, the sick, the overlooked, the beaten-down, the downtrodden, the meek, the tax collectors and prostitutes and little ones whose weaknesses the powerful exploited. That’s where the king of the universe stands: with the least of these, the sisters and brothers of Jesus.
Which means that’s where we must stand, if we want to be where Jesus is.
6: Intercession
So—summing up so far: The exalted Jesus, reigning from God’s right hand, powerfully present by the Holy Spirit in and to his body, the church, as it continues its mission to spread the gospel to the ends of the earth—that, so far, is what the Ascension means, what it enables.
Remember that Jesus is prophet, priest, and king. We have seen how he rules as king and speaks as prophet, through the Spirit. The sixth and final aspect of the Ascension is Jesus’s intercession for us before God, as priest.
The book of Hebrews teaches us that Jesus is both priest and offering; the offering he made was himself, his own body and blood, a once-for-all sacrifice for sins. In chapter 7 we read this: “For it was fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, blameless, undefiled, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens.” (7:26)
Hebrews goes on to say that, as the one, final, permanent priest, Jesus “appears in the presence of God on our behalf,” for “he is able for all time to save those who approach God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.” (9:24; 7:25)
Similarly Paul writes in Romans 8 that “it is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.” (8:34)
Finally 1 John 2 says that, “if anyone sins, we have an advocate before the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous, and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (2:1-2)
What does this mean?
It does not mean that the Father is against us and the Son is for us, the one angry and the other merciful, as if one Person of the Trinity were divided against another. What it means is that Jesus, our mediator, at once both God and man, fully divine and fully human—Jesus is, now and forever, on our side. He is for us. He is for you. He is Immanuel, God with us. Only now he is human-with-God. On earth, God-with-humans. In heaven, human-with-God.
Our brother, the Galilean, he is in the highest of heavens, the unapproachable, ineffable sphere of beauty and blessedness—he is there, he has as it were taken us with him there, and from everlasting to everlasting he has our best interests at heart.
What sins we commit in the meantime, though we should repent of them swiftly and sincerely, they should not trouble or grieve us, they need not weigh us down: for we have an infinitely patient, infinitely merciful, infinitely willing advocate and priest at God’s side, one who, as Hebrews puts it, “became like his sisters and brothers in every respect, so that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God. And because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.” (2:17-18)
Jesus ascended to the right hand of God in order to serve, eternally, as our advocate, priest, and intercessor. Your brother Jesus is not just there with you in the dock; he has the ear of the judge. Now and forever, the verdict is Not Guilty.
Conclusion
After the Ascension, Acts tells us that two angels appear, who say, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” In other words: Jesus will return as he left, coming on the clouds of heaven. So long as the earth and the church’s mission on it endure, we wait for our royal priest, Israel’s Messiah and heaven’s King, to appear, once and for all. The Ascension inaugurates the time of hope, of faith’s patient waiting for the final fulfillment of the promise of the kingdom to come at last, for the New Jerusalem to descend from heaven like a bride adorned for her groom.
Until then, I can do no better than to conclude by quoting Paul in Colossians 3 and Ephesians 1:
“If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” (Col 3:1-4)
“[This is] the immeasurable greatness of his power in us who believe, according to the working of his great might which he accomplished in Christ when he raised him from the dead and made him sit at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come; and he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.” (Eph 1:15-23)
The church’s head is the risen Jesus, and the risen Jesus is Lord, and the Lord reigns from heaven. Thanks be to God.
Prayer
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God:
You reign from heaven
With your Father and Spirit.
We beg you, by your grace,
To strengthen us in faith, hope, and love,
That you would raise the eyes of our hearts
To you, glorious in power and love,
Ruling on high with mercy and justice.
Rule us, too, as your body,
As we proclaim your kingdom here on earth,
Awaiting with patience your heavenly appearing,
When the will of your Father will at last be done
Here, in the new creation of your marvelous work,
Where peace will dwell forever.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit: Amen.
On Paul, apocalyptic theology, and the rest of the New Testament
I'm nearing the end of a full
academic year teaching the New Testament to freshmen. Many of my
students are new to the Bible, or at least to reading the Bible. I
taught the Gospels in the fall, focusing primarily on Mark, and this spring I've
taught the rest of the New Testament, without skipping any books.
Usually, the way the spring course works is revealed by its traditional title: Acts to Revelation. Both sequentially and substantively, the class is defined by the history Luke tells of the church's mission after the ascension of Jesus, which crystalizes around Paul's work among the gentiles; this, naturally, is followed by an extensive reading of Paul's letters, beginning with Romans. Then the catholic epistles and Revelation invariably find themselves scrunched together at the end.
On a lark, I decided to try to de-center Paul from the course structure, and to see what would happen. Here's how I've taught the course:
Acts (2 weeks)
James, 1–2 Peter, Jude, 1–3 John (2 weeks)
Hebrews (2 weeks)
Revelation (2 weeks)
[Spring Break]
1–2 Thessalonians, Philippians (2 weeks)
1–2 Corinthians (1 week)
Galatians & Romans (2 weeks)
Colossians, Ephesians, Philemon, Pastorals (2 weeks)
As you can see, my students don't even read a letter from Paul until the second half of the course; and they don't read Galatians or Romans until Week 12—in the final quarter of the semester.
Usually, the way the spring course works is revealed by its traditional title: Acts to Revelation. Both sequentially and substantively, the class is defined by the history Luke tells of the church's mission after the ascension of Jesus, which crystalizes around Paul's work among the gentiles; this, naturally, is followed by an extensive reading of Paul's letters, beginning with Romans. Then the catholic epistles and Revelation invariably find themselves scrunched together at the end.
On a lark, I decided to try to de-center Paul from the course structure, and to see what would happen. Here's how I've taught the course:
Acts (2 weeks)
James, 1–2 Peter, Jude, 1–3 John (2 weeks)
Hebrews (2 weeks)
Revelation (2 weeks)
[Spring Break]
1–2 Thessalonians, Philippians (2 weeks)
1–2 Corinthians (1 week)
Galatians & Romans (2 weeks)
Colossians, Ephesians, Philemon, Pastorals (2 weeks)
As you can see, my students don't even read a letter from Paul until the second half of the course; and they don't read Galatians or Romans until Week 12—in the final quarter of the semester.
I was prepared for this plan to backfire in a serious way, not least with so many students (all of whom are majoring in something other than the Bible) unfamiliar with the basic stories, persons, terms, and concepts of the New Testament. As it happens, the result has been better than I could have imagined. What my students have been exposed to—at least from my vantage point as the teacher—is a picture of the profound cultural, geographical, and theological diversity of the apostolic church in its first three generations of life. They have been asked to think about Peter's leadership in the early church; about the teaching of James Adelphotheos, in Acts and in the epistle that bears his name; about the gospel according to Hebrews; about the vision of Jesus and the church found in the Apocalypse; and so on. We spent a full six weeks basically not thinking about gentiles, concerned instead with specifically Jewish Christianity, its faith, its relationship to Israel's scriptures, its understanding of the Messiah, etc.
Put differently: My students didn't hear the phrase "justification by faith" until after they had read 19 other books in the New Testament: all four Gospels, everything Paul didn't write, and a few letters that he did. They weren't introduced to the Jesus of the Gospels plus Pauline Christianity. They were introduced, over the course of a year, to 27 different texts bearing witness to a dizzying display of distinct (though—a topic for another blog post—impressively complementary and unified) modes of approaching, understanding, and presenting the story and meaning of the good news about Jesus. It's true that 13 of those 27 texts bear Paul's name—though they are far from the majority of the New Testament in terms of overall length—and it's true that some of those 13 texts have been very important in the history of Christianity in the West. But they aren't the sum total of the gospel, either historically or theologically. And there is a way of teaching the New Testament that permits, even encourages, a certain selection of Pauline literature to dominate: to serve as a filter on everything else, as the master hermeneutic for the figure of Jesus, the early church, and the definition of the euangelion. My experiment has proven to me, at least, that that is neither necessary nor beneficial.
Which brings me to the topic of apocalyptic theology.
I read a fair bit of apocalyptic theology during my Master's work, and some of it made quite an impression on me. And I just got Phil Ziegler's book in the mail yesterday, which I am very much looking forward to reading. I have the highest respect not just for Ziegler but for all his compatriots in the apocalyptic vanguard.
As I read the introduction, however, it raised the following question. What do the apocalyptic folks do with those parts of the New Testament—in my view, a clear majority—that are not apocalyptic? Or at least, are not apocalyptic in the way that Romans and Galatians are? More to the point, is there a worked-out bibliological claim that positively asserts and defends the thesis that (a) the non-apocalyptic portions of the New Testament ought, normatively, to be read through apocalyptic Paulinism, and (b) those non-apocalyptic portions are, in some profound way, inadequate to the gospel?
I'm aware that there are vaguely supersessionistic, semi-Marcionite, and/or anti-Catholic modes of biblical scholarship and hyper-Protestantism that more or less explicitly cut out "the later catholic epistles" along with Hebrews, the Gospel of Matthew, Luke-Acts, and huge swaths of the Old Testament. I'm going to assume that the people I have in mind steer clear of those (alternately dangerous and silly) theological dead-ends.
But granting that assumption, does there exist a sustained, theologically robust answer to this set of questions? One that makes sense of, or constitutes, a doctrine of Scripture that isn't a pick-and-choose canon-within-the-canon, much less an arbitrary Paul's-the-only-one-who-really-truly-got-it-right?
If you know of resources, essays, books, etc., or if you yourself have an answer, holler. I'm all ears.
Jon Levenson on the costs and limitations of historical criticism
“Historical criticism has indeed brought about a new situation in biblical studies. The principal novelty lies in the recovery of the Hebrew Bible as opposed to the Tanakh and the Old Testament affirmed by rabbinic Judaism and Christianity, respectively. Jews and Christians can, in fact, meet as equals in the study of this new/old book, but only because the Hebrew Bible is largely foreign to both traditions and precedes them This meeting of Jews and Christians on neutral ground can have great value, for it helps to correct misconceptions each group has of the other and to prevent the grievous consequences of such misconceptions, such as anti-Semitic persecutions. It is also the case that some of the insights into the text that historical criticism generates will be appropriated by the Jews or the church themselves, and they can thereby convert history into tradition and add vitality to an exegetical practice that easily becomes stale and repetitive. But it is also the case that the historical-critical method compels its practitioners to bracket their traditional identities, and this renders its ability to enrich Judaism and Christianity problematic. There is, to be sure, plenty of room in each tradition for such bracketing. There are ample and long-standing precedents for Jews to pursue a plain sense at odds with rabbinic midrashim and even halakhah and for Christians to interpret the Old Testament in a non-Christocentric fashion. But unless historical criticism can learn to interact with other senses of scripture—senses peculiar to the individual traditions and not shared between them—it will either fade or prove to be not a meeting ground of Jews and Christians, but the burial ground of Judaism and Christianity, as each tradition vanishes into the past in which neither had as yet emerged. Western Christians are so used to being in the majority that the danger of vanishing is usually not real to them; after all, the post-Christian era will still be post-Christian, not post-something else. But Jewry, none too numerous before the Holocaust, has now become 'a brand plucked from the fire' (Zech 3:2). And most Jews with an active commitment to their tradition will be suspicious of any allegedly common ground that requires them to suppress or shed their Jewishness.
“Bracketing tradition has its value, but also its limitations. Though fundamentalists will not see the value, nor historicists the limitations, intellectual integrity and spiritual vitality in this new situation demand the careful affirmation of both."
—Jon D. Levenson, The Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and Historical Criticism (1993), p. 105. That line about Christians in the West not feeling the danger of vanishing, by contrast to Jews after the Shoah, is worth ruminating on. God be praised for Levenson, who is peerless and unflinching in his insights into and critique of historical criticism.
“Bracketing tradition has its value, but also its limitations. Though fundamentalists will not see the value, nor historicists the limitations, intellectual integrity and spiritual vitality in this new situation demand the careful affirmation of both."
—Jon D. Levenson, The Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and Historical Criticism (1993), p. 105. That line about Christians in the West not feeling the danger of vanishing, by contrast to Jews after the Shoah, is worth ruminating on. God be praised for Levenson, who is peerless and unflinching in his insights into and critique of historical criticism.