The death of the sinner

As we approach the end of Holy Week, I've been thinking again about the significance of the death of Jesus Christ.  I've noted before that a central element of the New Testament presentation of this significance which I think is often missed in contemporary reflections is the death of the sinner in the death of Christ.  That is to say, when Jesus died on the cross, sinful humanity died a warranted, judicial death in him.  To unpack that a little:

-A real thing happened when Christ gave up his spirit and died.  It is not 'as if' we sinful people died there; we actually really did.  In God's sight, we died in his death.  The reality of this is, so to speak, crucial.  The foundation of the believer's response to the death of Jesus is faith expressed in baptism, and in baptism we are said to be buried with Christ.  But this can only be the case if antecedent to our recognising and entering into this being dead in Christ we had actually died with him.  In Christ, we really died.  (That might mean we need to rethink what death actually means!)

-The death of Christ was the death of sinful humanity per se.  The Lord Jesus took on our nature (not, note, an individual human being, but human nature).  He carried that nature through temptation and cross, and ultimately to the point of death.  Though he was not a sinner, it was the nature - the flesh - of those who were sinners which he had vicariously assumed.  There is no future, then, in sinful humanity.

-The death which was carried out in Christ was a death sentence, a warranted judicial death.  It was, in fact, the execution of God's just sentence on sinners.  I've been thinking a little, provoked by this post from Ian Paul, about the extent to which we can say, with the hymn, that in Christ's death 'the wrath of God was satisfied'.  This sits at the heart of the understanding of the cross as penal substitution - the idea that Christ bore the punishment merited by sinful humanity.  I think we can and should say, and sing, that God's wrath is satisfied, but amongst other qualifiers I would add that this only makes sense if we understand that God's wrath was satisfied by the removal of the object of his wrath.  It is not that there is a conflict in God - he really loves humanity, but he is wrathful against sin - and so to resolve the conflict he exhausts his wrath on Jesus, like a child punching a pillow until they've let out all their anger.  No, God's holy love and holy wrath are one and the same, and in his holy love for sinners he pours out his holy wrath on them (in the person of Christ) until sinful humanity is done away with.

-The heart of the gospel is that all this happened in him.  That he voluntarily assumed our place, identified with sinners, and carried their case through to death - this is amazing.  When we recognise who he is - the very God against whom we had offended, the God whose holy wrath burns with all the heat of his infinite holy love - well, then it is simply breathtaking.  That my death took place in him, that the death which awaits me is merely the shadow of death with nothing of judgement in it, this is the wonderful significance of the cross.  The key question, I think, which it provokes is: if all this happened to me in him, what then is to happen in me?  And the answer to that is essentially that being dead in him to sin, I ought to (and must) die in me to sin; that by the Spirit I am to be enabled to make real in my life and experience what is already real in my very being, because real in him.

The Bible preserves the church

The church is desperately fragile and vulnerable.  It could be destroyed at any time.  Karl Barth, dwelling on this theme in Church Dogmatics IV/2, reflects on the multiple threats to the church: from the outside, the threat of outright persecution and also the threat of just being ignored; from the inside, the threat of secularisation (where the church becomes alienated from its own basis in Christ) and sacralisation (where the church assimilates to the methods of the world and seeks to glorify itself).  Given it's vulnerability to the world and to its own sin, how is it that the church has not in fact disappeared?

The big answer that Barth gives is that the church is upheld.  But how is it upheld?  Barth's first answer is that the Bible has continued to speak within the church.  The Scriptures "have continually become a living voice and word, and have had and exercised power as such."  (673)  The Bible has, of course, often been submerged beneath church traditions, "or proclaimed only in liturgical sing-song", or contradicted by philosophy and ideology.  "But they have always been the same Scriptures and the community has never been able to discard them."  (674)

So what is it, then, that has upheld the church?  "A mere book then?"  No, says Barth.  The Bible is "a chorus of very different and independent but harmonious voices."  It is "an organism which in its many and varied texts is full of vitality within the community."  The Bible is "something which can speak and make itself heard in spite of all its maltreatment at the hands of the half-blind and arbitrary and officious."

Barth expects the Bible to speak afresh, again and again, recalling the church to itself.  As the chorus of voices which harmoniously witnesses to Christ, the Bible is able to call the church again and again to him.  This cannot be prevented by the church, even when with its traditions and speculations it wants to keep the Bible under control.  Neither, actually, can Christians manufacture this "by their own Bible-lectures and Bible-study or even by the Scripture principle".  Rather, "it is something that Scripture achieves of itself" - and for Barth, that points to the fact that Scripture is the sword of the Spirit (Eph 6:17), the word by which the Spirit works in the church and the world.

This does not mean, of course, that it is a matter of indifference whether churches maintain a reverence for Scripture, or whether they hold the Scripture principle, or whether they strive to keep the Bible central in their common life.  It is critical that the church do this.  But where it is done, the church is nevertheless dependent on the Bible as the Spirit wields that Bible, not its attitude to the Bible or its arrangements concerning the Bible.  "The preservation of the community takes place as it is upheld by this prophetic and apostolic word, or as it is led back as a hearing community to this word."

"And so we can only say to Christians who are troubled about the preservation of the community or the maintaining of its cause that they should discard all general and philosophico-historical considerations... and hear, and hear again, and continually hear this word, being confronted both as individual and united hearers by the fact that the community certainly cannot uphold itself, but that all the same it is fact upheld, being placed in the communion of saints as this continually takes place in the hearing of this word."  (674-5)

Hear, and hear again, and continually hear this word.

Honouring your (venal and corrupt) leaders

The New Testament requires Christians to honour, submit to, and pray for their secular leaders.  These are commands, not options.  But how do you apply them when your leaders are clearly corrupt?  For those of us in the UK, this is obviously not a hypothetical question.

First up, let's think about the apostles' time and ours.  What is different and what is the same?  Well, the leaders of the Roman world were typically corrupt.  They abused their power hugely.  So not very much has changed on that front; we can't pretend that the NT commands are only valid when our leaders are good.  Leaders weren't good when the apostles wrote those commands.  On the other hand, there are differences.  The apostles urged believers to submit to their political leaders, but of course those leaders were autocrats.  Whether you honoured them or not, they were going to do whatever they wanted, and the average person had no means whatsoever to sway their decision making.  For those of us living in modern democracies, there is therefore a difference.  We actually have a responsibility towards our leaders which Peter and Paul did not have: to hold them accountable, and to exercise our suffrage to do that.  That is a real change.

So what does it look like to honour our leaders today, especially when they're just not great?  Here are some thoughts.

1. Honour your leaders by remembering that their authority comes from God.  The Lord Jesus told Pilate - Pilate! - that it was only God who gave Pilate any authority at all.  Our secular leaders are, whether they know it or not, God's servants.  They exercise a fundamental human calling in creation.  We are not called to honour them because they have earned our honour, or because they deserve it, but because they have authority from the Lord.  This does not mean that our secular leaders are above critique; the Prime Minister is not the Lord's Anointed, unable to be touched.  Consider that in his providence God sometimes give bad leaders to a nation; sometimes it is what a nation deserves.  Reflection on that might lead us to prayer for society more widely.  But whatever the reason in God's hidden providence, these people are in power.  Honour them.

2. Honour your leaders enough to critique them well.  In our cynical age, and with the facilitation of social media, it is very easy to respond to bad leadership by being dismissive and sarcastic.  A throwaway tweet, a shared meme.  This is particularly easy in our party political system if the current leadership is not of your tribe.  As citizens in a democracy we should critique our leaders; as Christians, we should do so in a way which properly engages the issues and doesn't just scoff.  It is worth remembering that political leaders have to make difficult choices, often with no obvious right answer.  Honour them enough to pray for them to have wisdom, even as you criticise constructively.

3. Honour your leaders enough to treat them as moral agents.  Take their choices seriously.  Don't assume 'they would do that' because of their ideology or their party.  Don't assume they are trapped in the machinery of government.  Don't just shrug, because we all know politicians are no good.  These are human beings, who are making real moral decisions.  Be shocked and appalled where necessary!  It does not dishonour our leaders to view them as people capable of doing good and evil.  Honour them enough to pray that they would make good choices.

4. Honour your leaders enough to consider their eternal destinies.  We mustn't fall into the trap of thinking of political leaders purely in terms of the impact their choices have on us or on others.  Think about the people in leadership themselves.  They will enter into judgement.  Eternal life is at stake for them.  Particularly where leaders are corrupt, honour them enough to pray that they would repent.  This may also means praying that they would resign, since that would surely be a part of repentance for a political leader.

Today is a depressing day for British politics.  We can still honour our leaders, even if right now that honour looks like criticism and a call for repentance and resignation.

The truth as it is in Jesus

The Lord Jesus says that he is the truth.

It is normally sensible when someone says 'I know the truth' to ask 'the truth about what?'  What aspect of truth have you stumbled across?  What particular truth is it that we're discussing?

We could, I suppose, ask this question of Jesus.  He is making a rather different claim: not merely to know the truth, but to be the truth.  But we could ask: what truth exactly are you?  What subject are we discussing? What particular truth is it that you are claiming to embody?

We could even probably start to sketch an answer to this question.  It is the truth about God.  In claiming to be the truth, Jesus is making a claim to reveal God.  Yes.  But when he makes this claim, it is linked to his claim to be 'the way' and 'the life'.  It is linked to the idea of 'coming to the Father'.  A way joins two points; a life stretches from one time to another.  So when the Lord says he is the truth, we should think in terms of two things.  He is not just embodying the truth about God.  He is embodying the truth about the relationship of God to creation and specifically to humanity.  The Lord Jesus speaks in two ways throughout his ministry.  In one way, he calls people to himself, as if he is their destination; in another way, he points people beyond himself to the Father, as the place where they will find their rest.  He does this because he is the truth of God's relationship with humanity, and vice versa.  He does not teach this truth or show this truth.  He is this truth.  His life is this truth as he obeys the Father, trusts him, and prayerfully depends on him.  This lived life, this life in communion with God, is the truth.

At this point we ought to realise that we've burst through the limits of our question.  What particular truth?  In trying to answer we realise that we've stumbled onto something more: the universal truth.  It is true of creation, because it is true in Jesus, that it exists in relationship to God.  It is true of humanity, because it is true in Jesus, that it exists in dependence on God.

Every particular truth is, in an obvious or concealed way, a species of this truth.

There is no escaping this reality, even in the human absolute of contradiction.  It is possible to live in ignorance of this truth.  It is possible to live against this truth (to one's own destruction).  But the truth cannot be evaded.

Catholicism and Sectarianism

In the Creed, we confess our faith in "one holy catholic and apostolic church".  This phrase is a stumbling block for some, because when they hear the word 'catholic' they immediately think Roman Catholic, and of course they don't believe in the Roman Catholic Church in that sense.  For that reason, the word 'catholic' is sometimes dropped and replaced with 'universal'.  I have no particular problem with that switch, although I would on the whole prefer to retain the word 'catholic' and explain its meaning.  It is true that in the Roman Church, the word 'catholic' is thought to refer to the universal validity of that church which is in communion with the Pope, with its clerical hierarchy and congregations.  To be outside the Roman communion is to be (to some extent; the line has become a little more fuzzy for post-Vatican 2 Roman Catholicism) outside the catholic church.  But I don't think we must, or should, accept the Roman construal of catholicism.  Let me try to offer an alternative.

To believe in the catholic church is to believe that Christ has but one people, one body.  This is the church.  It is one across the centuries, and it is one throughout the world.  It's unity is not direct, but indirect; by which I mean, the members are not joined directly to one another, but are all joined in the one Holy Spirit to Christ.  The catholicism of the church, therefore, does not rest on any human organisational scheme, whether that of Rome or anything else; it rests in a common faith in the Lord Jesus.  This commonality may well be only imperfectly expressed, or even sometimes completely hidden, in this world, but since it is grounded in Christ it cannot be ultimately broken and will be ultimately revealed.

That's how I understand catholicism.  But to get at what it means in practice, it is perhaps more useful to ask what a catholic spirit looks like, and to illustrate that by contrasting it with its opposite, sectarianism.  In essence, the catholic spirit draws the boundaries of the church as broadly as possible, where the sectarian spirit tends toward narrowness.  There are lots of ways in which this plays out.

The catholic sees an essential unity between the church of the past and the church of the present, and looks on the theological and creedal decisions of the past as having (relative) authority within the church.  The sectarian, by contrast, is free to reject the past, and tends to be disparaging of the church in past ages.

The catholic sees their own church as part of a greater whole, and is therefore free to draw upon liturgical and theological resources from around the world, throughout time, and across a broad ecclesial spectrum.  The sectarian tends to make use only of resources from their own particular tradition, or in more extreme cases only things tailor-made for their own congregation and situation.

Again, the catholic sees their own church as part of a greater whole, and therefore wants to bring the particular insights and strengths of their tradition to the rest of the church in service.  The sectarian is happy just doing their own thing.

The catholic can't be content with the divided nature of the church, but seeks a clearer expression of the essential unity of the church.  This will involve entering into controversy - the catholic is not content to see parts of the church affected by theological error.  The sectarian, on the other hand, either adopts a 'live and let live' attitude to churches of different traditions (i.e., indifference), or writes off any church which significantly disagrees with his own position as outside the church altogether.

Examples could be multiplied, but you get the idea.

Be more catholic.

Be courageous

Jesus said to his disciples, shortly before he was betrayed: "You will have suffering in this world.  Be courageous!  I have overcome the world." (John 16:33)

It is striking what he does not say.  It is not: "I have overcome the world, so you won't suffer."  In the context of John's Gospel, that could never be right.  Christ overcomes the world by his own suffering; his glory is revealed at the cross.  How, then, could there be no suffering in the world for Christ's followers?

The point is how we respond to the suffering that must be encountered in the world.  That suffering, I think, includes the temptation which the world throws at the follower of Jesus, and of course the dislocation that comes from not belonging any longer to the world.  The natural human reaction to being in a minority, to not belonging, is fear; that fear may be expressed as a defensive retreat from the world, or as an offensive assault on the world.  Fear can motivate both the closed Christian community that harks back to a (mythical) vanished golden age, and the zealot moral crusader (or even evangelist).  The world as enemy, to be fled from or perhaps attacked.

The world, then, as decidedly not overcome.

Christ has overcome the world.  "The world" in John's Gospel is not so much the created reality in which we live, but the social reality of humanity organised without reference to, or in rebellion against, God and his purposes.  It is the world of Psalm 2, and the desperate (and vain) attempt to throw off God's rule and the rule of his Christ.  It is the world we live in.  Sometimes the world disguises its godlessness (and can indeed put on a good show of religion); sometimes the world displays its true colours.  But always it is the world.

Christ has overcome the world.  This does not mean that the world is done away with.  Of course the world as sinful dominion is ended.  But far from being destroyed, the kingdom of this world becomes the kingdom of God and his Christ.  In his cross and resurrection, the Lord Jesus overcomes the world by establishing the world; he upturns the apparent reality of human existence in order to found human existence again on the basis of his righteousness.  He takes his throne.  The world, then, despite appearances is overcome, to its own great blessing.  The defeat of the world is the world's great victory.

When Christ calls us to courage in the face of suffering in this world, it is simply a call to faith.  This is the victory which has conquered the world: our faith.  Not that faith in and of itself has any power, but faith it is which sees the world as it really is, as overcome.  Faith sees the victory of Jesus, his glory in his suffering on the cross.  Faith sees the world as changed, even though the world itself does not know that it is changed.  Faith therefore enters in to the victory of the Lord.

Fear of the world runs through so much our Christian living.  The simple fear of what folks will think.  Fear for our children - to what depths of godlessness will they be exposed?  Fear of being tainted, fear of being tempted.  Fear, fear, fear.

Be courageous!  He has overcome the world.

Philosophy and Gospel

"Is the philosophical statement 'man is the measure of all things' nearer or further from the metaphysical implications of the gospel than 'human beings are dependent on something greater than themselves'?"

It's an interesting question, the answer to which sheds light on different Christian approaches to philosophy and specifically metaphysics.  It seems to me that for many who are involved in theological retrieval - that is to say, the project to recover for the church the classical theology of history - there is a conviction that ancient philosophy (broadly Platonist or Aristotelian) provides the underpinnings of much Christian theology, such that theological retrieval cannot really go ahead without philosophical retrieval.  There is a sense in which this is obviously true.  If we are reciting the Nicene Creed, we are dealing in categories which derive ultimately from the metaphysical world of late antiquity - we cannot say 'of one being' without to a certain extent entering that world.  Moreover, an implication of this is that it will indeed be crucial for Christian teachers to have a grasp of those classical philosophical terms.  How else could we be sure that when we recite the Creed we mean the same thing as the Fathers who framed it?

However, many push further than this.  It is not merely that a working knowledge of ancient philosophy is vital for a deep understanding of classical theology.  For many, the loss of ancient philosophy as a functional view of the world leads inevitably to a distortion of the gospel.  Modern philosophy, on this reading, is the enemy.  This, it seems to me, is related to a strand of Christian thinking on philosophy which dates back to at least the second century, and sees Greek philosophy as in some sense a preparation for the gospel.  I think we ought to resist that idea.  It introduces a second revelation, to be co-ordinated with Scriptural revelation.  Frankly, I think in some cases the metaphysics of the ancient world is brought to sit in judgement over Scripture - the Biblical storyline bent and twisted to fit within philosophical categories.  But even absent this particular error, I think it's theologically wrong-headed to suggest that classical culture was a 'preparation' in this way.  It cuts across our theology of grace,  I've pondered this a little before.

So, my suggestion - and the thought which led to me being asked the question with which we started - is that the right motive for seeking to understand the philosophical and metaphysical underpinnings of classical theology is so that we can learn to express the same gospel in a very different philosophical climate.  This is not a proposal for metaphysical indifferentism, the idea that Christians should just shrug when it comes to issues of ultimate reality.  The gospel does have metaphysical implications.  My thought, rather, is that we ought to see how our theological forebears allowed the gospel to shape their use of the prevalent philosophical categories; I think we will find that they are basically subversive in their approach.  Take the Nicene Creed again, or perhaps the Chalcedonian definition.  The way in which philosophical concepts - like 'being', 'substance', 'person', 'nature' - are used in these contexts draws on classical philosophy for vocabulary and for conceptual matter, but the final formulation is hardly something which the classical metaphysicians would have endorsed.  Classical metaphysics has been subverted to express the truth of Christian revelation.  And if that was possible then, why not now?

Back to the original question: which is nearest to the metaphysical implications of the gospel, the statement that 'man is the measure of all things', or the statement that 'human beings are dependent on something greater than themselves'?  My answer would be: they're both close, and they're both infinitely far away.  Take the second statement, which my interlocutor of course wants me to endorse as rather closer to gospel thinking.  Unless we are saying clearly and unequivocally that 'something greater' here means 'the Triune God', I don't see how this statement is at all friendly to the gospel.  The Unmoved Mover of Aristotle is an idea utterly hostile to the Christian revelation.  The notion of 'something greater' is not in and of itself at all well placed to service the gospel, or to provide a metaphysical grounding for the Christian doctrine of God.  But on the other hand, we can certainly subvert this notion to express Christian doctrine.  If the prevailing philosophical and cultural climate were theistic in the sense of this statement, it would certainly be worth proclaiming to them that this 'something greater' which they honour despite not knowing what it is has a name, and a face, and he can be known in Jesus Christ.  But once you've filled out the statement with the Triune God is simply doesn't mean the same thing anymore - for the 'something greater' on which human beings depend is found to be the humble baby in the manger and the crucified Saviour.

But still, 'something greater' is better than man as the measure of all things, right?  I don't really see how.  Of course the metaphysics which Protagoras is proposing in this statement is hostile to the idea that there is any unchanging God above humanity.  Protagoras wants all value to flow from humanity.  But in a culture - such as ours! - which is saturated with this sort of unanchored humanism, why not subvert the statement?  For sure, man is the measure of all things, so long as we're talking about the right Man.  And of course, as soon as we've realised that Man is really Jesus Christ, the statement no longer means what it did, and becomes a vehicle for the gospel.

In both cases, there are likely misunderstandings that will emerge, and will have to be worked through.  Hangovers from the philosophical background will distort out theology and need to be carefully worked through.  I would humbly suggest that hangovers from the world of classical philosophical have in fact distorted classical theology, and seeking to express the gospel in different philosophical concepts might help to knock off some of the sharp edges that remain.  We will never get there; our theology will always be an approximation, theologia viatorum.  That's okay.  Better that than to be stuck in a philosophical and theological dead end because we've committed ourselves to metaphysical constructs which are not themselves part of the gospel.