Reformation 500

It is 500 years to the day since the Augustinian Friar Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, in an attempt to start a debate about the sale of indulgences which led to the revolution in the Church which we call the Protestant Reformation.

I have been remembering the Reformation by pondering the logic of the first few verses of Galatians 3:

O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?

The background to this passage is that the Galatian churches planted by Paul have been visited by other teachers, who have sought to persuade these Gentile believers that they must keep the Law of the Old Testament.  Of course we don't have their side of the argument, only Paul's, but my guess is that the Law was being offered as the path to growth in godliness - faith in Jesus is a great start, and gets you in to God's family; but to stay in, to grow, to make it to completeness, to enjoy perfect righteousness, pursue the Law.  We can see what Paul's response is by working backwards through these verses.

The central question is this: having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?  Given that the beginning of your Christian life was all from God, all his doing, are you now going to push on to complete godliness by means of human effort?  The Galatian believers would doubtless have wanted to answer in the negative; so would the mediaeval Catholic Church.  No, in keeping the Law the Galatians saw themselves as continuing in dependence on God's grace.  So, to, did the Church of Luther's day.  In fact, what would continued dependence on God look like, if not regular penance, indulgences, the sacramental economy?  No, Paul, we're not seeking to be perfected by the flesh.

But Paul wants to know: how did you receive the Spirit?  Was it by works of the Law, or by hearing with faith?  This sharpens the question.  What does it look like to depend on grace?  What did it look like, Galatians, when you first became Christians?  Did it look like the Law?  No, it did not.  It was faith in what you heard that first brought the Spirit to you.  God's grace came to you as you believed.  Now, do you suppose that God works inconsistently with himself?  Did he first bring you in through faith, so that he could keep you in through the works of the Law - or indeed, the works of the Church's penitential system?  Paul's point here is that God is certainly not inconsistent: as your Christian life began through hearing with faith, so it must continue.

So we might ask: well, what is it that we must hear with faith?  Paul is not here extolling the virtue of faith in general, and neither was Luther, despite what some secular observers of the Reformation might think.  It is faith in something particular.  It was before your eyes, says Paul to the Galatians, that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.  It was in Christ crucified that the Galatians had trusted; this was the message which they had heard with faith.  The content of that message matters.  By trusting in Christ crucified, the Galatian Christians identified with him in his death, and confessed that it was their death too: the death of their old selves, the judgement on sin which they deserved now executed in the Messiah.  And as they heard this message with faith, so the Spirit was given, and they lived - the new life of Christ living in them.  (For all which, see Galatians 2:20).

How did you get in?  By hearing the message of Christ crucified and believing it.  How will you stay in?  By hearing the message of Christ crucified and believing it.  How will you grow?  By hearing the message of Christ crucified and believing it.  What will keep you to the end?  Hearing the message of Christ crucified and believing it.

This is what the Reformation was all about.  Not really faith in and of itself, but the Word - the Message, the Good News: that God in Christ was reconciling sinners to himself, that in Christ the old has gone and the new has come, that my sinful self was nailed to his cross so that I can live in new life.  Lots of people have lots to say about the Reformation on this anniversary, good and bad.  Much can indeed be said.  At its heart, this movement was about the message of Christ crucified, and that is worth celebrating.

Galatians: a hard question

Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?

Paul doesn't seem to think that this is a hard question.  He obviously expects the Galatians to be aware at once that the Spirit came upon them as they heard and believed the good news about Jesus.  It's foundational to his argument, not only that this was the case in the past, but that it continues to be the case in the present - does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law or by hearing with faith?  He clearly expects that the Galatians will be able to give a straightforward and unequivocal answer: the Spirit is communicated to us, and works powerfully amongst us, as we hear and believe the message.

What do we do when the answer to that question no longer seems obvious?

If Paul hasn't massively misjudged the Galatian Christians - if they are in fact able to provide the answers which he expects to these questions - then it becomes baffling that they would be looking to work out their day to day godliness by way of the law.  And indeed, Paul seems pretty baffled and perplexed throughout the letter.  Obviously they don't see the law keeping which they are considering adopting as contrary to faith, and don't see clearly as Paul does that working out your holiness by the route of law is incompatible with reliance on the Spirit.  But at least they know, or should know, that it is the Spirit, received as they've heard and believed the gospel, who has provided the energy of their holiness thus far.

What if we're not even sure of that?

It seems pretty clear that spiritual experience is not an optional extra in the Christian life for Paul.  If you can't testify that you received the Spirit when you believed, and that the same Spirit continues to be poured out in your church community as you gather around the gospel with faith, then of course you will start to look around for another way to power the holiness engine.  But the engine of genuine godliness only runs on the Holy Spirit.  If you pour your own efforts into that fuel tank, whether shaped by the law of Moses or any other scheme, it will break down your Christian life, as surely as filling my diesel car with unleaded will lead to going nowhere fast.  It is the Spirit or nothing.

At this point, it's easy to get caught in sort of meta-law.  I can't get holy by my own efforts, I need the Spirit - now, what technique or discipline can I follow that will ensure that I experience the Spirit's power?  How do I do it?  How do I do it?  Bang, you're keeping the law, you're holiness engine blows up.

I can only think that the answer is, at least in part, waiting.  We have a hope of righteousness - certain, because grounded in Christ, but only very uncertainly worked out in our experience.  Wait for it - that active waiting which involves prayer and faith and watching for God's work.

Day to day godliness

The tragic irony in the book of Galatians is that those who are encouraging the new Christians to shore up their righteousness and their status as God's children by getting circumcised are actually directing them away from the only source of holiness.

In Galatians 6, the apostle Paul launches a last sally against these people, whom he regards as agitators.  They are not genuine, he says; their concern is not real godliness, but just fleshly appearances and the avoidance of persecution.  They do not keep the law themselves.  (They perhaps did not consider themselves obligated to keep the whole law, but Paul sees the logic of their position: if you are making your righteousness dependent on things you've done, you'd better make sure you've done all the right things!)  Paul has no interest in such a position.  The cross of Christ means the death of that fleshly way of doing things.  Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision count for anything, but only a new creation.

The point, I think, is that trying to seek righteousness by fleshly methods - by which Paul means anything that is driven by human effort or works, although obviously circumcision is a very literally 'fleshly' example! - is futile because the fundamental tendencies of the flesh are towards sin. Trying to get righteous using tools which are inherently biased against righteousness is pretty foolish.  The cross of Jesus puts an end to it; he has done everything necessary, and we must trust in him.

But it seems that the question in Galatians is mainly about lived experience.  How does the righteousness we're given by faith in Christ live its way out in daily experience?  Surely at this point human effort has to come in?

Fundamentally the answer is no.  Not that there isn't hard work involved, but it flows from the same Spirit who began the new creation in us.  Since the Spirit gave us life, let's live in a way shaped and directed by the Spirit.  And how is that Spirit given and received?  Through the preaching and believing of the message of Christ.

So anything that takes us away from hearing and believing the message that Jesus alone is our righteousness also takes us away from the engine that drives practical, day to day godliness.

Being wrong about things that are real

When you read Galatians 1 you can't escape the fact that there are people in Galatia saying things about God which are wrong, at least as far as the Apostle Paul is concerned, and that he is not best pleased about it.  (As an aside, Martin Luther maintains in his commentary that Paul addresses the Galatians here "patiently", "fairly excus[ing] their error", "with motherly affection".  One suspects that Luther was measuring Paul against his own standard of harsh address here...)

Clearly what we are dealing with in Galatians is heresy.  That is to say, it is an error about God and his gospel which is sufficiently drastic to constitute a desertion of grace and a loss of the gospel.  I think that is as helpful a description of heresy as any: it is an error which makes the good news impossible.  In the case of the Galatians, who are tempted to think that righteousness comes by the law, Paul ripostes that if this were the case "then Christ died for no purpose".  In other words, if things stand as the Galatian heretics think, then the good news of Jesus makes no sense.  That is what marks their position out as heresy.

There is, however, error which is not heresy.  Unless we are very arrogant, none of us will claim to have a perfect understanding of God and his ways.  Implicitly, when we confess this lack, we accept that we are wrong in at least some of the things that we believe about God and what he has done.  However, these errors need not be such as make a nonsense or impossibility of the central claim that God in Christ has reconciled the world to himself, not counting our sins against us.  We are wrong, but we are not necessarily heretics.  The distinction is important, because it allows us to get along together with all our misunderstandings without being in a state of constantly judging and condemning one another.  We can have sensible conversations about how we feel our own ideas may perhaps more accurately reflect reality than those of other Christians around us, without thereby anathematising any of those Christians.  Sometimes, of course, we must pronounce Paul's anathema - but not over difference of opinion.

The fact that there is heresy and the fact that there is error which is not heresy both rely on the fact that God is real and has really done things.  This is obvious in the case of heresy: if God has testified that he has sent his Son into the world and justifies us by faith in him, it is wrong and disastrously wrong to deny that he has done this.  If God is real, there can be error which is so serious that it just isn't the real God we're talking about anymore.

But the fact that there can be error which is not heresy also points to the reality of God.  If we were just talking about a form of words, we could learn them by rote, and all make sure we were saying exactly the same things.  But if we're talking about a really existing God, inevitably we will all have somewhat different perceptions of him.  This is true of any really existing person: different things about them strike different observers, and two descriptions of their character, whilst recognisably the same person, have some differences. If heresy is avoided, we can learn from each other's different understandings of God's revelation - and avoid anathematising one another.

Authority in Galatians 1

I've been doing some work in Galatians 1 ahead of the beginning of our new preaching series at CCC.  Rather than being introductory, the chapter plunges straight into the substance of Galatians, and especially the apostle's astonishment that the Galatian Christians are already in danger of abandoning the good news about God's grace in Jesus.  The focus of the chapter is the issue of authority - perhaps the new arrivals in Galatia have questioned Paul's standing as an apostle and his authority to preach, or perhaps Paul is moving to counter their own claims to authority.  Regardless of the cause, Paul is very clear: he has a divine commission to preach, and the message he preaches comes from heaven and was not learnt from any other human being.

What has particularly struck me from this chapter, though, is a little phrase in verse 8:

But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.

Even if we.  This is as radical a disavowal of personal authority as could be made.  If Paul, the commissioned apostle, returned to Galatia preaching a message which varied even by a hairbreadth from that which he had preached before, the Galatians should not only ignore him, but should regard him as cursed.  This makes sense: Paul's authority is his commission, and his commission is to preach this gospel, and not another.  If he switches his message, he loses his authority.  The authority goes with the message, not the messenger.

I've been thinking a little about what that means for our understanding of authority.  I suspect there is always a danger in the church of establishing church leaders and then assuming that they have authority by virtue of their office.  But this is not so.  Church leaders are appointed as ministers of the gospel; the authority goes with the gospel, not the people.  That means that the authority of the church leaders is very much curtailed: they have authority only in so far as they are serving the gospel.  It also means that, as with Paul, the authority of church leaders is much greater than we often think: in so far as they restrict themselves to their legitimate sphere, they minister to the church with the authority of heaven, of Christ himself.

I do also wonder whether this ought to have an impact on our doctrine of Scripture.  You sometimes hear expositions of this doctrine where the authority is vested in the formal, and thence flows to the material.  I mean something like this: the Bible is God's word and therefore has authority; therefore everything the Bible says is true.  Would this be parallel to Paul saying: I am God's apostle and therefore have authority; therefore everything I say is true..?  And would Paul say something like this?  Doesn't the rhetoric of Galatians 1 indicate that he would instead begin with the content - the good news of Jesus' death and resurrection - and then declare the Scriptures authoritative on the basis that they bring this message?

The difference, of course, is that Paul genuinely could have turned up in Galatia preaching another gospel, whereas the content of Scripture is established and fixed, meaning that the question mark raised by Paul over his own authority never applies to the Bible.  Still, it does make a difference to see things this way.  It overcomes the felt apologetic need to prove the formal authority of the Bible before looking at its content.  It breaks the 'because the Bible says so' circular reasoning.  And perhaps it helps us to remember that the authority of Scripture is the authority of Christ, because it witnesses to him.

Times and Seasons

As I sort of semi-observe Lent, I've been holding in my mind two themes from the Apostle Paul.  On the one hand, in Galatians, Paul frets over his converts observing "days and months and seasons and years"; he sees it as evidence that they are turning back from their profession of faith in Christ and returning to old pagan ways.  I don't imagine that the Galatians are actually being tempted back into paganism.  Common consensus is that they were just being encouraged to add some Jewish distinctives to their Christian faith.  But for Paul it is all the same.  They are turning back to slavery under the weak and beggarly elements of the world.

On the other hand, in Romans, Paul sees the observance of particular days as a non-issue.  It is indifferent, in so far as it does not become a badge of some superior spirituality.  If seasons are observed in honour of the Lord, fine.  If they are not observed, because of the Lord, great.

Of course, in neither of these cases is Paul thinking of the seasons of the Christian year, which were centuries away from being thought of.  His target is primarily Jewish observance, and some of his anti-observance rhetoric comes from his clear desire to maintain the truth that there is no need for Gentile Christians to become Jews.  But the flexibility in his approach does, I think, point to something deeper.

For Paul, the important change in time and season is not in any annual round of fasts and feasts.  For him there are only two times: this age, and the age to come.  In Christ, the age to come has already invaded this age, and by the Spirit more and more people (even as they live out their lives in this age) are participating in the age to come.  The decisive change in time has already occurred, and is now being applied through Spirit-empowered gospel proclamation.

So long as that central truth about time is not obscured, Paul does not care whether his converts observe yearly festivals.  Perhaps that is a helpful way for us to think.  As human beings, we naturally mark the passage of time.  In some way, we are always going to structure the day, the week, the year.  This is a natural phenomenon.  But it can be pressed into gospel use, in so far as we relate our time - the thoroughly relative and relatively unimportant changes in the passage of time which we are compelled to mark - to the real time, the fulfilled time, the arrival of the age to come in Christ.

If I observe Lent to the Lord, as a way of remembering him, then I am blessed.  If I turn it into a way of acting as if the new day had not dawned, then I am heading back into slavery.

The problem of Galatians

Galatians is not the place to go to if you want to get a full-orbed understanding of Paul's view of the Law of Moses.  It is, I think, an angular book, with lots of sharp edges.  Any attempt to fit it into a systematic framework seems to fail - I have taught through it five or six times now, and every time I think I have it sorted I notice another corner poking out through a tear in my systematic theology.  Over time, I've decided I'm okay with it.  The purpose of Galatians is not, I think, to teach systematically about the relationship between Law and Gospel, but to burst through all our thinking and disrupt it - just as the Gospel itself bursts through all our human activity and disrupts it.

I think Galatians is primarily about cutting through one particular understanding of the relationship between human and divine activity.  The link that the Apostle wants to sever is the one leading from human action to righteousness in the sight of God - where that righteousness is understood to include not only legal justification, but also the right relationship with God and with his covenant community that such justification entails.  In Paul's world, the most obvious and most aggressively supported form of this link from human action to righteousness is the Law of Moses.  The Gentile Galatians are being urged to accept it.  Paul, I think, advances two arguments to explain why Gentile Christians should not adopt the Law of Moses:

1.  An argument about the function the Law always served.  The issue in Galatia seems to be that the Christians are being tempted to believe that they must pursue the Law of Moses in order to be righteous.  This expresses itself in table fellowship - incidentally showing how corporate and communal the concept of righteousness in the NT, against our individualistic understanding.  Elsewhere, Paul makes it clear that observance or non-observance of the Law of Moses is irrelevant - he is indifferent as to whether you observe or not.  Only you must not make the Law a matter of righteousness, because to do so is to confuse the Law with the Gospel.  Righteousness comes by faith in Christ - Christ as promised, for those who lived before his advent; Christ as present for those of us who live after his incarnation.  The Law never was meant to bring this righteousness.

2.  An eschatological argument.  To adopt the Law now is particularly perverse, because the Law of Moses had a time-limited role.  It was about keeping Israel looking forward to the Messiah, to bind them closely to the promise.  Paul's argument here is complex, and there are parts which I think no-one understands, but the basic point is simple - the role of the Law was to keep the heir looking forward to the inheritance, which is now given in Christ.  The Law is therefore passe.  It will not do, incidentally, to try to find some part of the Law which is not subject to this argument - either by dividing it into ceremonial, civil, and moral or by any other means.  The Law is in the past; Christ is the present and the future.

All well and good, and this seems to suit the Lutheran positioning of the Law very well - the Law comes first and prepares the way for the Gospel.  Except for two things.  The first is Paul's insistence that the Gospel came first in time.  This is clearly very significant for Paul's argument, because it shows that the Gospel was always the point of the Law - the former did not replace the latter, because it came before it and always underpinned it.  (One is reminded of John the Baptist - he is before me (in rank) because he was before me (in time) - Paul's argument is formally similar).

The other thing is that when it comes to positive instruction about the shape of the Christian life, Paul is happy to quote the Law of Moses.  Is he saying that Christians are, in fact, bound to keep the law of Moses?  Absolutely not.   But he is pointing to the fact that the Christian life is not one of shapeless freedom.  It is one of fulfilling the Law of Christ.

I submit, then - with the reservations that must follow from my first paragraph - that Galatians breaks the link that moves from human activity (according to the Law) to righteousness in order to forge a link that moves from righteousness to human activity (according to the Law, although not that of Moses).  And this, I contend, is the pattern of all Scripture.

Old self/New self

I've been mulling over the relation between the gospel and holiness.  On Sunday I preached an inadequate sermon on the Holy Spirit in Galatians, the main point of which was that Paul really seems to expect that we will be made holy in our actions by the Spirit (not our own efforts), and that we receive the Spirit as we hear the message of Christ crucified and respond in faith.  Therefore, the key to practical, lived-out holiness is focussing on and believing the gospel.

I think there is something similar going on in Ephesians 4:20-24.  Paul has just told them to change their behaviour - "you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do".  Then he refers them back to their experience of hearing the gospel - "assuming that you heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self... and to put on the new self..."

Three things that I see going on here:
1.  They heard about Jesus - that is to say, they heard the message about what happened to Jesus in his death and resurrection.  They heard that Jesus truly died, and rose again.
2.  They were taught in Jesus - which I take to mean that they were taught about what it means to be in Jesus, to be joined to him in his death and resurrection.  In him, they also died and rose.
3.  They put off the old self and put on the new - which simply means bringing their behaviour into conformity with what is true about them because of their unity with Jesus in his death and resurrection.

The key, again, is the mind - thinking and believing the gospel.  But this is not just CBT.  It is not just thinking ourselves into holiness.  The foundation of it all is the little phrase "as the truth is in Jesus".  This is not sanctification by wishful thinking; it is sanctification by the fact that my old self is really dead, and I have a newly created identity.  I am a new man (note that old self/new self is old man/new man in Greek - this is literally the abolition of the person I was and the institution of a whole new person).  This has happened to me, because of what has happened to Jesus.

The struggle of sanctification is the struggle to see myself "in Jesus", and therefore as dead and raised again.