Curate’s Chronicles

A while ago I mentioned 3 talks by Simon Gathercole on the Pre-existence of Jesus. I have now listened to them myself, and here is a very brief synopsis.

Talk 1 presents the dominant scholarly view, which is that at first Jesus’ followers considered him a merely human figure, albeit the Messiah, or some grand Prophet. Later he was viewed as a semi-divine figure, and only later (John’s gospel, Hebrews) is Jesus considered fully divine. The Synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) stand mid-way along that progress of thought, which is why (it is said) they don’t really present Jesus as God. They have no doctrine of Jesus’ pre-existence, namely that a Person existed who was incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth. Simon Gathercole starts showing the weakness of this viewpoint.

Talk 2 focuses on various ‘”I have come” + purpose’ sayings. In the synoptic gospels there are 10 such sayings e.g. Matthew 10:35, Mark 1:24. Simon makes the point that “I have come” implies an existence before the coming. Now, perhaps this could be simply “I was in Galilee, but now I have come to Jerusalem to do…” However, the purpose sums up Jesus’ whole life - so the natural reading is that “I have come to do…” means “I was once not in the world, but now I am, and I have come to…”. I.e. Jesus exists before his birth. Talk 2 focuses mainly on “I have come + purpose” sayings in the OT and other ancient Jewish literature, showing that they refer to heavenly beings (e.g. Angel of the LORD or various angels in Jewish literature) who are sent / have come to do certain things. A heavenly existence prior to the event of coming is always assumed.

Talk 3 then looks in detail at the 10 sayings in the Synoptic gospels, showing that they indeed read most naturally as implying Jesus’ pre-existence and his coming into the world to achieve / do certain things.

Okay, fair enough - for many people it is transparently obvious that Jesus existed before his birth. But many theologians / scholars do enjoy writing about silly stuff, and it does filter down into the local church, so it’s good to be aware of their nonsense and a Biblical response.

One bit I enjoyed was a passing comment about some of the gospel passages that may be “the tip of the iceberg” of the view that Jesus is the incarnation of the Angel of the LORD. (NB just read Genesis to discover many appearances of the Angel, and remember that ‘Angel’ means ‘Messenger’ or ‘Sent One’ so it doesn’t have to mean shiny creature with wings and harps.)

Matthew 10:34 “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword” could be an allusion to Joshua 5:13-14 (the commander of the army of the LORD who Joshua sees with drawn sword) and/or 1 Chronicles 21 (the Angel of the LORD who stands between heaven and earth with drawn sword) and/or Numbers 22:31 (Balaam and his donkey see the Angel of the LORD standing with drawn sword).

Also, Luke 12:49 “I came to cast fire on the earth, and would that it were already kindled!” could be alluding to Genesis 19:24, where the LORD on earth rains down fire on Sodom and Gomorrah “from the LORD-out-of-the-heavens.”

Simon didn’t really explore these in detail, although I’m very curious to know what he thinks.  Having done a lot of thinking about the Trinity in the Old Testament, I find it obvious that the gospels frequently identify Jesus as the Angel of the LORD / the Visible LORD who was so active throughout Old Testament times.  But it’s still lots of fun finding more passages to prove my case!

Now and again I find myself reading blogs / articles to do with the “Federal Vision” and people such as Doug Wilson, Peter Leithart, James Jordan and others. These names may mean nothing to you, but don’t stop reading. They are a group of church leaders in America, all Presbyterian (I think), who are promoting certain doctrines and practices such as:

• Postmillenialism, i.e. the Church will grow and grow, discipling the nations, before Jesus returns;
• Liturgical renewal e.g. lots of (vigorous!) psalm singing, weekly communion;
• Strong view of baptism i.e. someone who is baptised must be considered a Christian unless they are excommunicated.

This is a hopeless summary of a big issue! But it’s all introduction to the main point, which is to say: go here and read these articles! If the names I’ve mentioned make no sense, you will feel like a stranger entering into a strange debate. That’s okay, don’t let it worry you. The once sentence summary is: a big debate within Presbyterian circles about whether the “Federal Vision” represents honest Reformed / Biblical Christianity, or whether it’s a great big danger. Even if the details go over your head, read the articles and enjoy some delightful paragraphs and intriguing ideas. I’ve enjoyed listening on the debate because I enjoy discovering Christians who a) love Jesus and b) uphold a very ‘high’ view of the Bible, but whose practices are often very different from mine, or at least what I’m used to.

Here’s a few sentences to whet your appetite…

1. The Bible is given to help us mature and grow up as images of God so that we take dominion wisely over all of life.

2. The Bible is also given, because of Satan’s rebellion, to teach us holy war against principalities and powers.

3. The Bible is also given, because of Adam’s rebellion, to show us the history of redemption.

4. Because God is Three and One, so is human society, and so the history of redemption is not just about the salvation of individuals but also about the salvation of societies.

5. Jesus Christ has been given all power and authority, and has commanded His people to disciple all nations, promising to be with them and strengthen them by His Spirit until this has been accomplished. There can be no question that Jesus will successfully accomplish this programme, and at the end deliver all to the Father.

Now, these five aspects are rejected by many if not most modern Calvinists…

———————

When Descartes says, “I can doubt that I exist, therefore I exist,” he reduces everything to the individual. When Rosenstock-Huessy counters, “Others speak to me, and that’s how I know I exist,” he is rejecting that individualism in favor of a Christian view of reality.

———————-

Here are the themes of this essay:

1. Theology today is done in the academy, by academics. The Reformed churches are pastored by academically-trained men, more than a few of whom wish they were seminary professors.

2. Almost none of these men has ever seen any military service.

Now, let us consider the men who wrote the Bible and the context in which the Bible was written. The Bible was written by warriors and by men engaged in warfare. It was not written by academics. The academy is not the right context for understanding the Bible.

————————

The Calvinistic churches are little more than extensions of the academy. The black robe is the robe of the scholar, not the angelic white robe of a worship leader. The heart of the meeting is the long lecture-sermon. Candles? No! Colored paraments on table and pulpit? No! Flowers? Maybe. The darkest part of the room is the center where the dark wood table and the dark wood massive pulpit and the black-robed preacher are. It’s like looking into hell itself.

But let us consider what a Christian view of the Church would be. It would be a place of transformation, not merely of information. Marshaling the people into an army of psalm chanters would be at the top of the list. Indeed, in seminary several psalms would be chanted every day in chapel. The music in the church would be loud, fast, vigorous, instrumental, martial. There would be real feasts. People would be taught that when God splashes water on you, He’s really doing something: He’s putting you into His rainbow.

———————-

(Note: “Calvinistic” is clearly a negative term here, but the author very much likes Calvin and is in fact claiming to be more authentically ‘Calvinist’ than those who are “Calvinist”. So don’t get worried if you think Calvin’s okay!)

Thanks to Byron (via Glen) I found an awesome quote I’ve been looking for for some time.

But it needs some introducing. A vital question in theology is this: does Jesus accurately reveal God to us?

Obviously: yes! After all, in Jesus Christ “the fullness of deity lives in bodily form.” (Colossians 2:9)

But so many theologies actually assume that Jesus is kind of “God-lite” - a diet version of God - all the taste but 95% power reduced. You see it whenever people say that Jesus’ humility / weakness / sorrow / emotional-life is only true according to his human nature… because God could never be humble / weak / emotional / etc.

Whenever you see this you should ask, “Okay - but how do you know this? How do you know that God could never be such things?” It’s the problem of deciding what God is like (based on what is reasonable) before actually approaching the One who is God Revealed.

Karl Barth argued passionately that this approach is wrong. We must let God speak first - because he has in fact spoken first. We must let Jesus define what God is like.

When we do this, we realise that the true God is utterly different from all false gods. All false gods are a projection of our own ideas. The REAL God is proved real because no human would ever imagine a god like him. No human would imagine a Creator God who stoops to be born as man, a man who would glory in the cross. So Barth writes:

What marks out God above all false gods is that they are not capable and ready for this [humility]. In their otherworldliness and supernaturalness and otherness, etc., the gods are a reflection of the human pride which will not unbend, which will not stoop to that which is beneath it. God is not proud. In His high majesty He is humble.

- Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1, 159.

Christmas is approaching - and we remember the King of the world born in humility: Jesus - the most humble man ever to live (Daniel 4:17).

(For another good quote, try here, and spend some time at Christ The Truth also.)

Head over to christthetruth.wordpress.com for a chance to worship God with your mind. You will find some awesome theology to get you thinking and get you praising! It’s written by Glen Scrivener, one of my best friends since we lived and worked together at All Souls, Langham Place back in 2000-2001.

The name of the blog - “Christ The Truth” expresses its core conviction: that Jesus Christ IS The Truth. Just as there is no Way to God outside of Jesus, and we cannot experience the Life of God outside of Jesus, so also we do not know the Truth about God unless we begin with Jesus Christ. Yet very often we use the G word: G-O-D as if by simply using it everyone knows who we’re talking about. This is not the case. If I were to say I enjoyed watching 11 men kicking a leather ball around a pitch, and you said the same, it could be that we support the same team but more likely we don’t! It’s the same in theology - which is to say it’s true for all of life - the true meaning of G-O-D is discovered as the Spirit brings us into union with Jesus the Son of the Father.

So go and have a read. As you’ll discover, one obvious point of relevance is in the whole issue of inter-faith dialogue, which I wrote about here.

A bonus for those who came to “Foundations for Life” - here is a very good introduction to Leviticus. I’ll quote a little bit, but go to David Field’s blog for the full piece.

With the building of the tabernacle, a new stage of God’s dealings with his people arrives. It’s like a new world – which is why there are “sevens” everywhere and why the tabernacle is like Eden in many ways. And at this point God has come to live nearer to his people than before – which is both wonderful and dangerous. Leviticus is, therefore, a book of house rules for God’s young children at that stage in history and it teaches them how to keep clean and tidy and how to grow in character like their father.

…

The uncleanness laws of chapters 11-15 relate to death and the curse. It is not that uncleanness is itself sin but rather that God gave his children a picture system to teach them how to make distinctions. This would help them grow to be like their Father who also makes distinctions (as in Genesis 1). Clean animals, in chapter 11, are those which keep away from death and curse-dirt by wearing shoes and by digesting their food extra-thoroughly. Chapter 12 talks about childbirth and chapters 13 and 14 about ‘leprosy’. Chapter 15 shows that what comes out of us is death until we are made new in Jesus.

It’s always a favourite conversation among church leaders - what do we think about Baptism (infant or otherwise), the Lord’s Supper (how often, at what age) and liturgy (why having it is wrong, even though we do everything the same way each week…). This post here - “Conversations with Nathan” - is a fantastic read - a true conversation between a teenager and father who visited one particular church in America. Even if you disagree with the teenager’s point of view you will enjoy it.

A sample:

Nathan: Why are they so afraid of liturgy? We could explain that it isn’t hard to mean it when you say it.

Papa: But they won’t want to do it anyway. They want to be different every week.

Nathan: Really? Different every week?

Papa: Yes.

Nathan: What do they do differently? Do they sometimes take the offering at the end of the service instead of in the middle?

Papa: No. That’s always at the same time.

Nathan: Do they sometimes have the preaching at the beginning?

Papa: No, that’s at the same time too.

Nathan: Then what do they do that’s different?

Papa: They sing different songs.

Nathan: So does our church.

Papa: Well, it really comes down to the fact that they don’t have prayers and responses for the congregation to read.

Nathan: Why not?

Papa: They think that reading prayers and responses keeps people from worshiping.

Nathan: Really? What do they think the people should do instead?

Papa: Just sit there and do nothing.

Last Wednesday I attended some lectures about the challenges and opportunities of Christian Mission to the Muslim and Hindu communities in this country. It was a useful reminder that Christians should be engaging with these communities, showing friendship and hospitality, listening to what they believe (not just what we think they believe!) and also listening to their fears. For example, I didn’t know that the Hindu community currently feel very marginalised: both government and Church are bending over backwards to engage with Muslims (for obvious reasons) but very little is heard about making such Hindus have their say.

However, as with many things Church of England, there was a rather obvious lack of engagement with the main questions:

Do Muslims and Christians worship the same God? The speaker said yes. He mentioned one ‘faithful Muslim’ who loves going to Taize services - a display of unity despite ‘doctrinal differences’. It seemed to be taken for granted that Muslims at least partly honour Jesus by declaring him a prophet.

Is there revelation outside Christ and the Bible? The speaker said yes, in response to a question which insisted we shouldn’t ignore books such as the Bhagavad Gita. He mentioned approvingly church services in which there had been three readings: Old Testament, Gospel and Bhagavad Gita, although acknowledging that this would be difficult for some.

Although these main questions were touched on, as the examples show, there was no theological engagement with them.

One of Luther’s best contributions to the Church was his distinction between a “Theology of Glory” and a “Theology of the Cross”. Put simply, if we hold to a theology of glory we imagine God is rather like we think him to be. We claim to know intuitively what “strength” and “glory” and “power” are, and imagine God to be the most strong, most glorious and most powerful. (See here for a better, but still short, summary.)

Luther, like the apostle Paul (see e.g. 1 Corinthians 1-2), thought differently. Sin has darkened our minds so that we do not think straight. What God is like is not what we think him to be like, but he is as he has revealed himself, and this most clearly at the cross. God’s true strength, glory and power are revealed in the weakness, shame and humility of the cross.

In other words: a god without the cross is not the True and Living God. Muslims claim to honour Jesus while denying that he was crucified, but this is to deny all that Jesus stood for. It is in fact to mock and dishonour the true Jesus who came, he said, to give his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). Similarly, while the Bhagavad Gita may contain some nice stuff, it does not reveal Truth because it never takes us to Christ and him crucified.

Christianity does not sit well with self-belief. No religion or faith or philosophy is quite so negative about humanity’s propensity to be self-deluded, deceived, or just plain wrong!

“The heart is deceitful beyond all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” says Jeremiah 17:9

Occasionally, this is noticed by others. Here’s an article from www.lifehack.org saying “The Brain is not your friend”. A sample:

A mind is a terrible thing. Whether because of the brain’s internal structure or the way social and cultural pressures cause our minds to develop and function, in the end the result is the same: minds that are not only easily deceived and frequently deceptive in their own right, but when caught out, refuse to accept and address their errors. If you have a mind — or even half a mind — you might be best off losing it entirely. Barring that, though, there are a few things you should know about the enemy in your head. Before it hurts someone.

The article ends up a bit positivistic - thinking we may be able to fix it. The reality is we might be able to tweak ourselves, but only Jesus Christ can really sort us out. A life-time task completed only at the resurrection, I might add!

Many local churches have their share of people who turn up on Sunday, slip away before coffee and are not seen until next week. There may be all sorts of reasons for this, good and bad. Maybe one reason is because people have not caught a vision of what the Church is called to be. Is is simply a feeding-station as we wait for heaven? Or a place to carry out our religious duties?

Ephesians is possibly the book to read to get a fantastic vision of the Church. Time would be well-spent simply pondering the different titles and descriptions we are given, such as ’saints’ or ‘God’s household’.

A verse that continues to amaze me is Ephesians 3:10 -

God’s intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms…

It takes a bit of digging around Ephesians to work out what this means, but basically it is saying that as the church demonstrates the unity we have in the Spirit (a unity of different races and backgrounds) God’s wise plan (of bringing all things under Christ, see 1:10) is made known to the evil spiritual rulers and authorities (see 6:12). Go here to read a sermon by John Piper on this verse: it will transform the way you understand the purpose of church!

Today should be the biggest celebration of the Christian year… at least, that’s what Augustine thought. Without the ascension, Good Friday and Easter Sunday would have had no value. Without the ascension, Pentecost could never have happened.

The best way to understand the Ascension is to follow the example of Hebrews and get to grips with the Tabernacle and the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16). I’ve tried to do this in the post below, which I wrote a few years ago and added in the Ascension Day cards I sent to various friends (yes, I made the Ascension Day cards myself!). I’m still trying to work out the exact symbolism of the holy place and the courtyard - and had a very enjoyable lunch today discussing this - so this is by no means my final thoughts.

Maybe one day I’ll do some posts about the symbolism of the Tabernacle - and why it’s the ultimate visual aid for explaining the gospel!