Law, Reality, Gospel

I think it clarifies various aspects of Christian ethics to see the commands of God operating on three different levels.  This is more obvious in some cases than others, and may not hold true in every case at all, but the pattern of my thinking has been this.

At the first and most obvious level, a command of God is Law.  The Law says 'you must', or 'you must not'.  At the level of Law, the key consideration is the rightful authority of the One giving the command.  Because it is God the King who says 'you must' and 'you must not', the proper response of all who belong to God (and we all belong to God) is implicit obedience.

This is not the only way God's commands work on us, though.  At another level, the commands of God simply represent Reality.  That is to say, because God is the ultimate Reality, and all created reality depends upon him and is shaped by him, the command also says 'you can' or 'you cannot'.  There is a sense in which Christian ethics simply aims to describe the way things really are, and then to bring our lives into conformity with that reality.  (Note, by the way, that this must be a view of reality properly informed by God's own revelation; we as sinners are very bad at discerning what reality really is).

And then third, God's commands take the form of Gospel, good news.  Because he is our good and kind Father, the commands of God show the best way.  As well as 'you must' and 'you can', they tell us 'you may'; as well as 'you must not' and 'you cannot', they tell us 'you need not'.  The life of faith, the life that is founded on trust in God, brings us to green pastures and leads us beside still waters.  The commands relieve us of burdens - the burdens brought on by living wrongly in God's world, but also the great burden of having to define good and evil out of our own limited resources.

A worked example: the first commandment.  God says 'you shall have no other gods before me'.  At the level of Law, this commandment tells me that I must not worship other gods; this is a matter of loyalty to the God who has created and redeemed me.  At the level of Reality, the commandment tells me that there are no other gods to worship; not only am I told I must not worship other gods, I am also told that I cannot, since in reality there are none.  And finally, at the level of Gospel I am told that I need not worship other gods.  The one true God is all-powerful, and provides for all my needs, so that I need not placate or pursue other deities.  It is a liberation from the burden of polytheism.

Our culture tends only to think of the commands of God at the level of Law, and because it sinfully rejects God's right authority it hates his commands.  People imagine that doing away with the Law of God will bring liberty - no great authority telling us what we can and cannot do.  But here's the thing: in pushing away the Law of God it is increasingly clear that we have also lost touch with Reality.  If the point of escaping the Law is to allow me to be whatever I want to be, that of course must also involve pushing away from the way things are.  Reality, no less than Law, constrains my self-expression.  Therefore it must be rejected.  Just look at the treatment of gender for an acute example.

But what really strikes me is how we therefore lose commands as Gospel.  If you can really construct yourself, make your own meaning, rule the direction of your own life, decide your own values - well then, you must do those things.  Otherwise your life is without meaning, you  have no values (or value), and perhaps you do not even meaningfully have a self.  But this is to be as god - in terms of responsibilities, at least.  Can we fulfill those responsibilities, with our human resources?  Must we ourselves not become gods?

There is good evidence that young people today are increasingly unhappy.  Might not part of the reason be that they are carrying the intolerable burden of creating and sustaining themselves - and indeed the whole world, for what is a world but the projection of my internal consciousness out into the meaningless void?  Might it not be good to hear God say not only 'you must not be your own god', but also 'you cannot be your own god', and supremely 'you need not be your own god, for I will be your Father and will keep you to the very end'?

On Marriage and Christ

If you've escaped the recent controversy surrounding The Gospel Coalition and their publishing of an article on sex as an icon of the gospel, well done.  This post is a very limited response to a part of that controversy, but should make sense even if you didn't follow it at all.  The point I want to respond to is the claim by a number of people that the problem with the article was that it over-extended a metaphor.  That is to say, it is true that Scripture draws a metaphorical connection between marital union and the spiritual union of Christ and his people, but by reflecting explicitly sexual language the article had stretched that metaphor beyond its biblical usage, and thus invalidated it.

My response here is simple: I do not think the Bible presents marriage as a metaphor for the gospel.  As I understand it - and I confess freely that I am no literary theorist - metaphor is a way of relating two things or concepts which have no (or at least no necessary) real (that is, ontological or conceptual) connection; it is allusive, linking two things which are not directly linked in order to shed light on one or the other.  Metaphor is limited in what it implies, and is essentially linguistic.  It does not imply or establish any real or ongoing link between the two items.  Rather, it uses language to appropriate one thing or concept as a means of 'opening up' another.

My contention, then, is that this is not the sort of link Scripture envisages between human marriage and the gospel.  In Ephesians 5, the apostle Paul is not casting around looking for a great illustration of the gospel and arriving at marital love.  Nor is he looking about for some justification for the institution of marriage and chancing upon the gospel - that direction of thought would be impossible for him.  Look at the way he uses the quotation from Genesis.  His argument depends on there being a real link between human marriage and the relationship between Christ and his church.  It depends, in fact, on finding the primary application of the "one flesh" saying from Genesis in the gospel, with the obvious historical sense of the saying in its Genesis context becoming a secondary application.  This makes sense in a world where primary ontology is about God and his actions, and creation represents a kind of secondary ontology, a derived, contingent being which is dependent on the Lord God for both existence and meaning.  This latter is crucial.

The question, then, is this: is created reality inherently ordered towards the gospel?

There is another way of approaching this which asks a question which is similar, but in the end totally different: does created reality have inherent meaning and structure?  If we're asking this question, we're in the territory of natural law, and perhaps in territory which envisages a natural end to human life and created existence apart from the gospel.  I don't want to go into this territory.  I don't think it's a good place to be.  I am proceeding on the assumption that the heart of created reality is the Incarnation of the Son of God, and the underlying reason of human existence and indeed the whole created order is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

What is at stake here?

On the one hand, the grounding of Christian ethics is at stake.  I mean this is in a very particular way.  The essential ground of Christian ethics is the command of God.  As believers we ought to wholeheartedly commit ourselves to being impaled on one horn of the Euthyphro dilemma - the morally good is determined by the will of God, and God himself is bound by no external standard of goodness.  In that sense, when we are asked about sexual ethics and why we hold particular positions we can simply respond 'God says so', and point to the relevant commands in Scripture.  But the doctrine of creation means that we can say something more about the particular way in which Christian ethics is grounded.  The divine commands do not hang in the air, because the God who commands is also the God who structures reality.  What he commands is morally good because he determines moral goodness, but we can also say that this goodness reflects the structure of created reality - or more accurately, perhaps, that it is reflected in the structure of created reality.  Once we pull in the doctrine of redemption - that the God who commands and creates is also the God who save - we can argue that the divine command is reflected in creation which is itself oriented toward the gospel.  The gospel, then, reveals the significance of created reality, and thus of the divine commands.  Far from being arbitrary rules, they reflect both creation and redemption, because God is one and his goal and purpose is one.

Grounding Christian ethics in this way binds it together with the gospel, in a way which seems to me central to New Testament thinking.  The Christian sexual ethic is good news because it signifies The Good News.  We joyfully submit to this ethic and call others to do so because the end goal of created reality is the marriage supper of the Lamb.

On the other hand, our ability to think and speak about the Christian life in a way which reflects the full richness of Scripture is at stake.  When Scripture tells us that the 'one flesh' relationship of husband and wife is oriented towards the relationship between Christ and the church, that opens up the reading of - for example - the Song of Songs as a beautiful representation of spiritual communion with Christ.  The question 'is this about marriage or is it about Christ' is, in the end, a non-question if human marriage is itself always related to Christ and his gospel.  We can read the Song in a perfectly natural way as a collection of beautiful human love songs, and indeed as a celebration of erotic love, and therefore as having reference to the relationship between Christ and his people.  And in fact we can see this latter as in a sense primary for a canonical reading of the book.

Simone Weil points out that real things exist in three dimensions, and can therefore be viewed from different perspectives.  If there is a real, ontological link between human marriage and the gospel, then it becomes legitimate to look from different perspectives at both.  I think the Song legitimates us in seeing the sexual as one such perspective.  The 'one flesh' union of marriage is enacted in sexual intercourse; the spiritual union of Christ and the church also has moments of 'enacted' reality, most notably perhaps in the sacraments.  I don't intend to particularly develop this here, but just to note that the real link between marriage and the gospel enables and perhaps even mandates this sort of reflection, whereas a metaphorical link would shut this down.

One warning: we must always continue resolutely to say No! to natural theology.  (Should we so desire, we can say it in German).  That means that revelation, the Word of God, Christ as witnessed by the Scriptures, remains in control.  I take it this was one of the key complaints against the TGC article: that the direction of thought which is so obvious in Paul - from the gospel to marriage first, and only subsequently and indirectly from marriage to the gospel - was in danger of being reversed.  Revelation interprets created reality, not vice versa.  Wherever spiritual reflection on marriage and sex approaches this line - and it must in a sense approach it - we need to be on our guard that the line is not crossed.  If it is appropriate to describe marriage as an icon of the gospel - and I think it is - we need to be careful that we are looking 'along' the icon to the reality and not stopping short at the content of the image, or worse projecting aspects of the image into our thinking about the reality in an uncontrolled way.

Another warning: we know marriage and sexuality only in a fallen mode.  There is a sense in which everything we experience of it is tainted.  This introduces a sad requirement for theology: just at the point at which we would like to speak rapturously of Christ and his love for his people, we must stress very carefully the limitations of our thoughts.  We know it is easy for people to abuse the Scriptures - to take, say, the teaching in Ephesians 5 and twist it to abusive ends.  How much more so our secondary spiritual reflections on marriage and sexuality!  In one sense this is just the movement of all theology: we draw analogies, show that Christ is like something in our experience, but then immediately have to qualify it, because he is also unlike anything in our fallen world.  This is also true of the icon of marriage.

All of which is to say, these are dangerous waters - but beautiful to sail if navigated carefully!  What a wonderful bridegroom is our Lord Jesus.  What grace it is that he should welcome us, sanctify us, call us his bride.  What a high privilege it is to enjoy spiritual communion with him.  (And husbands should love their wives).

Gospel, philosophies, cultures - disconnected thoughts

1.  The only culture to which the gospel is bound is that of Israel, as that culture is created and witnessed through the Scriptures of the Old Testament.  That the gospel is bound to this culture is no comment on the suitability of Israel per se, but relies on the fact that the Word of God has taken Jewish, Israelite flesh into personal union with himself in Christ Jesus.  The pre-existence of Israel, before the coming of Christ, is already founded on his future incarnation.  So the gospel is bound to the culture of Israel as expressed in the OT because God has bound that culture to himself in Christ.

2.  No philosophical or cultural background other than OT Israel is inherently more suitable for receiving or expressing the gospel than another.  The gospel has power to express itself in a variety of cultural and philosophical settings, but this power does not come from or depend on the cultural or philosophical milieu.  The power is all in the gospel, in God's Word, to take conceptual, linguistic, and narrative worlds which are in themselves merely human (and therefore incapable of being vehicles for God's revelation) and use them to express divine truth.  Or to put it another way, Jesus can speak many languages.

3.  Every culture and philosophy - and I am not clear in my own mind whether this includes OT Israel or not! - has a tendency to distort the gospel.  Maybe it's the tendency of classical philosophy towards freezing god; maybe it's the Hegelian tendency to bury god in the processes of history.  Maybe it's the modernist assumption that salvation means progress; maybe its the postmodern assumption that salvation means individual liberation from all norms.  Whatever it is, there is always a particular ditch, or several particular ditches, into which any cultural and philosophical framework threatens to drive the gospel.  This does not prevent the Word of God from speaking into and even through those frameworks; nor does it imply that in all, or any, other respects those frameworks are inherently suitable for the gospel (see point 2 above).  But we are not excused from trying to discern the weak points and the danger areas.

4.  A philosophical or cultural framework can shift under prolonged 'pressure' from the gospel.  Classical philosophical concepts, for example, end up being reshaped as Christian content is 'poured' into them.  This can give the impression that here we have a 'Christian philosophy' or a 'Christian culture'.  Better to say that we have a philosophy or culture which has been affected by Christianity, but which still in itself stands against the gospel and in need of constant correction.

5.  Where the church has historically wrestled through particular theological issues using a conceptual and linguistic framework from the past, we may consider ourselves to be bound to their conclusions without being bound to that framework.  For example, we may (and I think should) hold that the church made an irreversible decision and definition at the councils of Nicea, Constantinople, and Chalcedon; but we are also at liberty to express that same conclusion in a different philosophical framework, and indeed we may have an obligation to do so.  In such cases, we can expect a degree of tough questioning as to whether we are really saying the same thing; and that is something to which we should be prepared to submit.

The Triumph of the Christian

A Triumph was a Roman celebration of victory, granted by the Senate, in which the victorious general entered Rome followed by the captive leaders of the vanquished, a display of captured booty, and his own victorious troops.  The New Testament contains, I think, four 'moments' which could be thought of as Triumphs, each of which is illuminating for understanding what victory as a Christian looks like.


The first Triumph is recorded in all four Gospels (Matthew 21:1-11; Mark 11:1-11; Luke 19:28-40; John 12:12-19), and of course we celebrated it yesterday on Palm Sunday.  Jesus enters Jerusalem, accompanied by his followers, who shout his acclaim.  Although it is not explicitly identified as a Triumph in the text, the echo of the Roman ceremony would surely have been picked up by the readers of the Gospels, as it has been by the church - hence the traditional description as the 'Triumphal Entry'.  Luke records that the disciples were prompted to their cries of praise by remembering "the mighty works they had seen"; I think it's not too much of a stretch to imagine that Jesus' followers saw his progress from Galilee to Jerusalem as a protracted running battle (consider the many encounters with demons), a battle which Jesus had won and which led to the victorious entry to the capital city.  At the same time, the humility of Jesus shown in his Triumph stands in sharp contrast to the self-aggrandising display of your typical Roman general.  There is something incongruous already in this Triumph.

The second moment of Triumph brings home this incongruity.  In Colossians 2:13-15, the Apostle Paul describes God's Triumph over "rulers and authorities" - spiritual powers of evil.  These powers are overcome and led in Triumphal procession precisely at the cross of Christ.  (Whether verse 15 should end with 'in him' [that is, Christ] or 'in it' [that is, the cross] the crucifixion is still in view from verse 14, and indeed the whole wider context).  The actual victory is won at the cross; the real Triumphal procession towards which the entry into Jerusalem could only point takes place on the first Good Friday.  It's a Triumph that looks like a defeat, a celebration of victory that looks like a crushing humiliation.  Jesus is dragged to Calvary carrying his cross, stripped, and lifted up to the mocking view of all, and yet it is precisely as this happens that the rulers and authorities are 'stripped' of their power to harm, exposed as the empty things they always were, and dragged in Triumphal procession behind the crucified Son of God.  The death of Christ is the Triumph of Christ.

It is because of this deep incongruity - the suffering and the victory - that the third moment of Triumph takes the shape it does.  The Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 2:14 describes his own missionary journeys as a Triumphal procession, led by Christ.  In this use of the image we are looking at a different part of the Triumphal parade; in Colossians it was the captive spiritual powers which were in the focus, but now it is the soldiers following the victorious general who come into view.  Paul's work is a Triumph, as Christ leads his Apostle through the world, proclaiming his victory.  But because it is his victory, won at the cross, this Triumph necessarily has a curious shape; read the rest of 2 Corinthians and it is clear that for Paul his ministry was primarily suffering.  He was weak, powerless, almost despairing - and yet this was a Triumph!  This is necessarily the shape of all faithful Christian ministry, and all Christian life; conformed to the cross of Christ, and yet in that cross sharing in his Triumph.

The fourth moment of Triumph comes at the end, when the kings of the earth lead the redeemed of the nations in to the New Jerusalem, every enemy having been finally vanquished and utterly destroyed.  Only at this point will the incongruity disappear, the tension resolve itself.  They were faithful to death, they lived the cross, and now they receive their reward.

So, victory.  The Christian life is a Triumph, a following in the path of the victorious General.  It is a celebration and a display of the victory he has won.  And yet that victory is the cross, which means that Triumph can never become triumphalism.  The victory parade is a parade of suffering, weakness, and foolishness.  Until he comes.

The word is a mirror

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.  For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror.  For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

I have wondered in the past how this passage (James 1:22-25) is meant to work.  Maybe I'm just slow.  Being accustomed philosophically to think of being and doing as two separate things, and being accustomed theologically to think of Law and Gospel as rather distinct, I found James' illustration baffling.  How is hearing the word, which in this context seems to be primarily about hearing God's commandments, like looking in a mirror?  Why is the person who doesn't do what he hears like someone who forgets the look of his own face?  What is going on here?

So, I think I've been baffled by this because I've been reading James as if he weren't a Christian, which is a ludicrous thing to do.  James is a Christian, and that means a particular way of reading the commands of God.  Here's how I think it works.

When we read God's commandments, we are not just looking at an abstract list of required or forbidden behaviours.  We are looking at a description of Christ, and what it means and looks like to live in Christ.  The perfect law of God, the law of liberty, shows us what it is like to be free, what it is like to live to God.  In other words, it shows us Christ, and it shows us our true selves as we are elected in Christ to live in him.  When we hear the word, we see ourselves as we are in Christ.  So if we fail to be doers of the word - if we neglect to let what we hear become active in our lives - we are like those who have been shown their true identity and yet forget it instantly.

Imagine there is only one true mirror in the world.  Oh, there are mirrors everywhere in this imaginary world, but all except this one true mirror are like fun house mirrors.  Every other mirror distorts, and only the one will show you what you really look like.  If you look in a bent mirror and conclude that you are absurdly thin, you might increase your diet; or of course if you look in a mirror that makes you look very fat, you might cut down on the old doughnuts.  But if neither of those mirrors is telling you the truth, your behaviour will be inappropriate (and harmful!)  Only the true mirror will help, and it will be important to remember what you saw there when you are confronted by the warped mirrors that fill the world.

Only the word of God - and let's be explicit, that means Jesus Christ, in whom God's Law and Gospel find their perfect unity - will tell you what you are really like.  Every other 'mirror', whether it be the mirror of other people's opinions, or of the prevailing philosophy and anthropology, or your own self-assessment, or even the record of your life to date - all of these are wildly inaccurate.  You are not, really, the person you seem to be to others or to yourself.  In the final analysis - and let's be explicit again, that means Jesus Christ, as the final measure of every man - you are who God calls you to be in Christ.  Trust this mirror, says James, and behave appropriately.

Contradicted

Whatever you think about the observance of Lent, it is helpful to have some occasion to remember that the good news of Jesus Christ leaves us standing contradicted.  I don't mean that we stand conflicted - though of course we do, each human being divided in innumerable ways against himself, and Christians experiencing the conflict between the old man and the new.  What I mean is that God contradicts us.  The good news of Jesus is also the news that God has spoken against our being and action, revealing it to be utter sin.  And because it is God who speaks, his powerful contradiction actually takes away and lays aside that sinful person, creating in its place the new person who stands in faith in Christ.

To approach it from a slightly different angle, sometimes we can lose the fact that salvation, when it occurs, is totally against the run of play.  It does not follow from anything that has gone before - no human thing, anyway.  None of the events of history led up to or caused Jesus Christ.  When light shines in the darkness, it has not in some way sprung from the darkness itself; someone has intervened.  Perhaps most clearly and decisively, in the death of Christ we see the putting to death of all human possibility.  It is clear that the cross is the end of the story.  That the resurrection follows - that death is contradicted and life brought in in its place - that is miracle.  It is the same in any individual experience.  There may be all sorts of things which in my human experience preceded my coming to faith in Christ, but you could hardly say that they caused it.  When it comes, it is always contradiction - gracious contradiction, but contradiction nonetheless - which sets aside even the apparently positive aspects of my fallen and broken self.

Of course, if you go deeper you'll find that the current was always flowing in this direction.  God does not contradict himself.  From eternity, this has been the destination - the resurrection of Christ, the life of humanity in him, my life (and yours?) caught up with him.  But we need to remember that everything we ever brought to the equation stood opposed to this direction of travel.  We, in so far as we could, contradicted God, and took up the cause of the Serpent ("you will not surely die").  And let's face it, we contradict him still.  A moments reflection shows that my life as a Christian is full of contradictions of the gospel.  My confessed beliefs and my behaviour, and the gap between them - the conflict I mentioned at the beginning - manifest something of that attempted contradiction.  I must be an acrobat, to talk like this and live like that.  Humanly speaking, everything points away from God, away from salvation, away from life.

So I will be remembering, during this Lenten season, that I stand contradicted.  And that is good news.

Purchased grace

A summary of John Owen's Communion with God, part 2, chap. VII

Christ, by his death and resurrection, has purchased for us:

1. Acceptance with God
1. by removing that which set us at enmity with God, namely sin and guilt, which he does by his death; and
2. by giving us that for which we are accepted, namely the obedience of his perfect life, imputed to us.
2. Sanctification (by which he "makes us not only accepted, but also acceptable"), consisting of
1. the removal of defilements, meaning
1. the cleansing of our nature of its sinful habit;
2. the removal of the pollutions accompanying our actual sins; and
3. the removal of the defilement accompanying even our best deeds ("so that the saints' good works shall meet them one day with a changed countenance, that they shall scarce know them: that which seemed to them to be black, deformed, defiled, shall appear beautiful and glorious; they shall not be afraid of them, but rejoice to see and follow them").
2. the bestowal of cleanness and purity by
1. giving the Spirit of holiness to indwell us;
2. giving habitual grace ("a principle of grace, opposed to the principle of lust that is in us by nature"); and
3. actually influencing us in particular cases for the performance of every spiritual duty.
3. Privileges to stand before God, being:
1. primarily, adoption as sons; and
2. consequentially, all the favours of the gospel which attend this adoption.

Jesus and reality

Reality is Jesus-shaped.

That really struck me a couple of weeks ago as I was preparing to talk about Christian views of sexuality.  (You can find the audio here should you so desire).  Reality is Jesus shaped.  By that I mean that the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus of Nazareth both undergird reality, and that the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus of Nazareth shape reality.  Here is part of Colossians 1:

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.  And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.  And he is the head of the body, the church.  He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be pre-eminent.  For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven,making peace by the blood of his cross.

Note, first of all, the subject of this paragraph.  It is Jesus Christ.  Specifically, it is the man Jesus Christ.  There is no room in this paragraph for a fleshless Logos.  He is the one who shed his blood on the cross, the one who was firstborn from the dead, and - most decisively - the one in whom the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.  We are talking here about Jesus of Nazareth.

But then note that it is through and for him that all things exist.  He is before all things.  He holds everything together.  Paul is not expounding some sort of odd theory about the eternal pre-existence of Jesus' human nature (although some others have done just that).  He is saying that the eternal Son of God created the universe as the one who would enter that universe and as the one for whose incarnation that universe exists.  The universe is about Jesus; it is about the coming into the world of the incarnate Son of God.

Which means that the central story of the universe - the beating heart of reality - is the good news of Jesus' death and resurrection.  That event is what reality is all about.  And that event shapes reality.

The more I think about it, the more I think it's vitally important for our churches to get this right.  If we forget that reality is about Jesus, our religion may become disconnected from life.  We will just be a club, holding our distinctive beliefs - perhaps very sincerely - and carrying out our worship - possibly with great devotion - but without any of it really touching real life.  We will lose contact with the world, and be unable to communicate our message (I say this as if it were hypothetical; of course, sadly it is not).  We will not know how to speak as Christians into the different situations of the world, because we do not understand that those situations are already part of a reality that is driven by the gospel.  Our theology will stop being about articulating the gospel in the language and culture of today, and become merely a repeating of the Bible.  And our lives will become barren because only 'spiritual' things will be valued.

The end result of a massive disconnect like this can only be that we will abandon the faith (because reality is so much more... real - and Jesus doesn't seem to have anything to do with it), or we will abandon the world (because Jesus is so much more important, and he doesn't seem to have anything to do with reality).  We will become atheists or pietists.

And neither will do.  Because it is all about him.

Sloth

Sometimes sin is described in Scripture as a rebellion, a terrible insurrection, a rising up against God.  But sometimes it is not that.  Sometimes "sin is merely banal and ugly and loathsome", having nothing of that human (and damnable) pride and self-confidence, but only the failure to act, only the resolute determination to be nothing and do nothing.  "The sinner is not merely Prometheus or Lucifer.  He is also - and for the sake of clarity and to match the grossness of the matter, we will use rather popular expressions - a lazy-bones, a sluggard, a good-for-nothing, a slow-coach and a loafer" (CD IV/2).

Because the Gospel not only liberates us from our action - our desperate attempts to make something of ourselves - by telling us that all is done in Christ, it also liberates us from our inaction - our no less desperate attempts to evade responsibility and action - by telling us that we can proceed on the secure basis of the righteousness of Christ.  The good news of Jesus is that in him we are really new people, who do not need to work to make ourselves something, but are already made something and therefore can (and must) work.  Our sinful self with its sinful actions is put to death, but we are not left as a vacuum.  Rather, we are created in Christ Jesus for good works.

So, no more inaction through despair - our work is not good enough, but it is ordained and blessed.  And no more inaction through laziness - our work is necessary because it is ordained and blessed.

When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and live!

3D Jesus

"...transposition is a criterion of truth.  A truth which cannot be transposed isn't a truth; in the same way that what doesn't change in appearance according to the point of view isn't a real object, but a deceptive representation of such."

Simone Weil, The Need for Roots, p 68

In context, this is part of Weil's discussion of how culture can be transmitted, especially across boundaries of class and education.  She is against popularising, which loses the essentials of culture in trying to create something that can be successfully transmitted.  Transposition, by contrast, involves the hard work of so understanding the essential heart of a thing that it can be put across in a different way to different people without losing its essence.  The end result may outwardly look very different from the idea with which one started, but inwardly it will be the same.

Which is all interesting, but isn't what I wanted to say off the back of the striking quote above.

Ever wonder why there are four gospel accounts, each with their own details and ways of telling the story, and containing between themselves a number of irreconcilable differences?  I think it is just because the gospels are not flat, painted scenes; they are viewpoints on a three-dimensional object, which looks different from different angles.  Which is to say, behind each of the gospel accounts lies a real life - the life of Jesus.  Jesus is real, and so one can (so to speak) move around him and view him from different angles and in different ways.


It is an essential criterion of gospel truth that it work like this.  The reason the gospel message can be transposed into different cultures and situations is that it was never dependent on one particular form of words or way of telling the story; rather it is dependent on the reality of the Person who stands behind those words and stories.

This obviously doesn't mean infinite flexibility; some ways of telling the story would clearly be views of a different object, an invented person.  There are criteria for thinking this through, but in the end a lot will come down to whether the person behind this account seems to be the same as the person behind the canonical accounts.  In Weil's terms, some attempts might look to much like popularising; that is to say, editing the story to look like what we think people will accept.

In practice, we need to be careful about tying ourselves too closely to one way of viewing Jesus.  There are a number of indicators that this is happening - for example, if we're not satisfied that the gospel has been explained unless certain particular words or formulations are used...  But perhaps the biggest indicator would be that we wouldn't know how to introduce Jesus to people who did not share our culture, background, or education.  There's a challenge.

True and True-er

Consider with me, for a moment, the Magnificat - Mary's song of praise to the God who lifts up the humble and puts down the proud and mighty.  The song is prompted by Mary's realisation, in conversation with her cousin, that God is really doing this.  The Messiah is coming, and she, Mary, will be his mother.

Here are two things you could say about the theme of the song in the context of the gospel:
1.  God always works by turning things around - putting down the mighty and lifting up the humble - and he shows that supremely in Jesus;
2.  In sending Jesus, God works to put down the mighty and lift up the humble - and as we see that in Jesus, we see that it is also how God has always worked.

I would suggest that statement 1 is true.  It moves from a consideration of God's general providence to a consideration of the incarnation, and sees the latter as the high point of all God's dealings with his creation.  He has always worked like this, and here - in Jesus - we see the mountain peak of his working, standing out above all his other providences and provisions.

But statement 2 is true-er.  It moves from God's action in Jesus, and sees it not just as the pinnacle but as the source  of all God's dealings in providence.  The incarnation is not only the mountain peak, but it is also the fountain-head.  It is true that we see, in the light of the gospel, that God's general providence also has this character of reversing the apparent status of human beings; but now we see that providence as the outworking of an inner logic, and that inner logic is the gospel itself.

I suppose I would see the relationship between statement 1 and statement 2 as the relationship between a true statement on the one hand and the statement of the truth on the other.

One reason why this is important is that it helps us to read providence correctly.  Because, let's face it, we often see the proud and the mighty remaining pretty lifted up all around us, and the humble being ground into the dirt.  We could not actually write the Magnificat off the back of providence alone.  But if the gospel is true, then all of those occasions when we do see something that looks like this become little reminders of the great reversal that lies at the heart of the meaning of creation - the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

Not strategic

I wonder whether we should just ban the word 'strategic' in church.  It pops up all over the place.  We have strategic ministries, there are strategic people groups, there is a strategic decision waiting for us.  For me, this is all a massive turn off.  I like my business speak to be confined to business, which church isn't.

But more than that, I think it is anti-gospel.

Strategic thinking works in actions and consequences.  It follows logical connections.  If we do this, we will be able to reach many more people.  This group is well connected, so if we make some gospel inroads here we will see the gospel spread more broadly.  This guy is gifted, so investment in him is likely to have a knock-on effect on society more broadly.

Is this not viewing people and situations according to the flesh?

When you consider that the sequel to the cross was the resurrection - and that the necessary precursor to the resurrection was the cross - what room is left for this sort of thinking?  The cross does not lead logically to the resurrection; the resurrection does not flow naturally from the cross.  God is in the business of turning dead ends into glorious triumphs, and plucking victories out of apparent blind alleys.

In a world where the gospel is true, and in a sphere in which the gospel is our model for thinking and action, we have to admit that we don't know what the connections are.  God doesn't move in straight lines, and so neither can we.  We don't know what he will do.  The only thing we can say for sure is that his modus operandi seems to involve, as an integral part, throwing things away, spending effort on apparently worthless things, sacrifices which don't seem to have pay-offs.

No more strategy, please.  Just preaching, loving, living.

Thanks.

(Super)historical Jesus

One of the great things about the annual remembrance of the Passion is that it forces us to recall that Christianity is about events.  That is to say, what we remember is an occurrence, a thing that happened.  The Gospel is not a message based on someone's enlightened thoughts about God; it is not even a message sent straight from heaven.  It is a message about things that took place, in real space and real time.  The Paschal celebration helps us to remember that.  There is time before it, leading up to it, and there is time afterwards, leading away.  We celebrate in a particular place, with particular people - a space that is next to other particular places, inhabited by other particular people.

This is a long-winded way of saying that Christianity is historical.  When Jesus died and rose, he did so in reality, in a moment contiguous with other moments and forming part of a series that includes this moment now, in a space located within that same space in which we live.  The Gospel is a report of that occurrence, coupled to an explanation of its significance.  It is about history.  That is why the only worthwhile apologetic for the Christian is a historical one.  Did this happen, or did it not?  It is this sort of apologetic which is used by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, and before Agrippa.  This stuff happened.  (If it did not, then Christians are pitiful, pathetic creatures).

Having said that, how do we avoid Lessing's ditch?  Lessing's problem was that as a good child of the Enlightenment he felt a universal could not be proved by a particular; specifically, reports of particular miracles, which reach me by perfectly ordinary and non-miraculous testimony, cannot establish the truth of the Gospel.  If all that matters is history, how can I get over the intervening centuries and believe in a report of a thing the like of which I have never witnessed?  If the Gospel is a report of a historical occurrence, why should I believe it when it resembles nothing else in history?

I think part of the answer is to recognise that when the apostolic testimony asserts that these things happened, it does not mean to maintain that they happened in just the same way as all other things.  Perhaps a useful way to put it would be this: the events reported in the Gospel happened within history, but they are not themselves historical events; that is to say, they are not events which stand in an ordinary relation to the other things happening around them.  They are not explicable by reference to their setting, or to the other events occurring at the time.  In fact, whilst at one level the resurrection of Jesus is something that happens in history, at another level it is a thing that happens to history.  This one point in space and time brackets and encompasses all the other points, including this one now.  If there is an epistemological ditch, there is no ontological one.  A historical apologetic can get us to the point of saying: there is a hole here - a thing that does not fit into history.  We cannot explain what came before and after in terms of the ordinary historical sequence.  And at that point, a lot will depend on whether we are willing to consider that history is neither so impregnable nor so linear as we thought.

Marriage, etc.

Those who move in Christian circles can hardly fail to have become aware of the Coalition for Marriage, a pressure group seeking to prevent the government from giving legal sanction to homosexual marriages.  I imagine even if you don't move in such circles, you will have heard rumblings in the media.  I have to say, I find the Coalition off-putting.  It is partly the slightly shrill tone with which they pronounce their warnings, and partly it is the sorts of arguments they use - the argument from tradition, the slippery slope argument (and I quote: "If marriage is redefined once, what is to stop it being redefined to allow polygamy?"), and the 'rest of us' argument ("Same sex couples may choose to have a civil partnership but no-one has the right to redefine marriage for the rest of us").  These are not good arguments.  But the whole thing has got me thinking more about what I think.

Firstly, I don't think government or anyone else can define or re-define marriage.  Human sexuality is not something which is given to us to define.  It takes its definition from creation, and ultimately from the gospel.  I do not uphold 'traditional' sexuality or morality, or 'traditional' definitions of marriage, but I will hold to gospel definitions.  The Biblical witness makes it plain that marriage derives its existence and its meaning from the union of Christ with his Church; moreover, it is clear to me, on the basis of this witness that only lifelong, monogamous, heterosexual marriage devoted to Christ's service or celibacy devoted to Christ's service adequately point to this spiritual union of Christ and Church - the former as a picture of what the union is like, the latter as a symbol of the over-riding importance of the union.  That is where my definition of marriage comes from.

Secondly, because this definition is rooted in the gospel, I do not and cannot expect people who do not believe the gospel to accept it.  I don't think it is wise for Christians to fall back on arguments from sociology or tradition in order to support their view of marriage, which if it is of value at all is derived not from tradition or sociology but from Christ.  That will make it harder for us to make the public case, but then I wonder whether that is my job as a disciple.  Is there any way to make the case for marriage other than preaching the gospel of Christ?

Thirdly, I find myself looking to draw a line between issues where I can believe a thing to be wrong, but not want to legislate, and issues where I think we must campaign for legislation.  For example, I think it is desperately wrong, hugely damaging, and ultimately leading to hellfire to blaspheme.  I do not think, however, that anyone should legislate against blasphemy (and such antiquated laws as remain should be repealed).  On the other hand, abortion - I think we should do everything possible to make this illegal in almost all situations.  The difference is that if I campaign for legislation against blasphemy, I am really only campaigning for my right to live in unoffended, unchallenged comfort; whereas if I campaign against abortion, I am campaigning for the right of another human being to live.  Where does the marriage campaign fall?  Do I think the government's plan are ill-advised, ungodly, and ultimately a reflection of sin rampant in our society? Sure I do.  But is it the sort of thing that we ought to be campaigning against, or the sort of thing that should prompt us to preach Christ and his grace, and to pray much more?  I think I incline toward the latter, although the issue is certainly complex.

Fourthly, I think we Christians need to be ready to suffer on this front, and we need to be ready to do it well.  The race analogy keeps cropping up - saying that gay people shouldn't be allowed to marry is like saying that black people shouldn't be allowed to ride in the front of the bus.  As a Christian, I can't accept the analogy; Biblical anthropology stands against it.  But I can understand where it comes from, and it has a certain rational (and a great emotional) force.  We will be hated for what we say, or at least what we say will be hated.  How we react will matter.  Here is a question: what rights of gay people and couples could we stick up for?  How could we try to bless people whose lifestyles and choices we reject?

Fifthly, we are equipped with three ultimate weapons which will make a difference in this situation, and they are all prayers: agnus dei, kyrie eleison, and maranatha!

Jesus the Judge

One profitable way to read John's gospel is as a lawsuit.  In sending his Son, God prosecutes the world, beginning with his own people.  The unfolding story of the gospel is the story of a sharp division, which is brought to light by (caused by?) the presence of God's Christ.  This could be unpacked at length, but for now I just want to point you to John 3:16-21.

A few things:
v16.  Jesus was sent to save the world, at great cost to himself.  Of course, John 3:16 is the most famous verse in the Bible, and the basic concept is very familiar.  But it is useful, devotionally and theologically, to be reminded of it.  The reason Jesus came into the world was to save the world.
v17.  This is explicitly contrasted with condemnation, for which Jesus did not come into the world.  The condemnation of the world was no part of the goal of Jesus' sending, which was aimed wholly at the salvation of the world through him.
v18.  Nevertheless, the result of Jesus' coming is a division.  Those who trust in him are not condemned; those who do not are shown to be "condemned already".  Is this the bringing to light of a pre-existing condemnation?  Not quite, because the reason for the condemnation is explicitly that they have not trusted Jesus.  He is the dividing line.
v19-20.  The rejection of Jesus is in line with people's prior behaviour - having always loved the darkness, they hate the manifestation of pure light which draws near in Christ.  Desiring to continue in evil deeds, they retreat from the light.
v21.  Those who do not retreat, but who come into the light, show in so doing that they are drawn by God, and that their good deeds are to be attributed only to his working.

So, Jesus' coming is all gospel, and Jesus' presence is all light - no alien God, no hidden God, in this passage. Jesus Christ is pure saving revelation of the one good God.  He divides the world, not by turning towards one part in love and another in rejection, or by showing one part his gospel face and another part his law face.  He divides the world by being the gospel - by loving with an everlasting love, and going to Calvary.

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.

Under the law of Christ

When Paul describes his evangelistic strategy in 1 Corinthians 9, one of the things he is keen to point out is his flexibility with regard to the Jewish Law.  He is content to keep it, if doing so will win a wider audience for the gospel; and he is content to ignore it, if that is the best way to get a hearing for the good news.  However, he is very clear that he is essentially free from the Law of Moses - "To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews.  To those under the Law I became as one under the Law (though not being myself under the Law) that I might win those under the Law".  I take it that the second sentence is just an amplification and explanation of the first - to win Jews, who are or at least regard themselves as being under the Law, Paul, who is not under that Law, acts as if he were under it.

This is remarkable enough in itself, given the faultless legal obedience of which the apostle feels able to speak elsewhere.  It shows how completely Paul's outlook has changed with his conversion.

But to understand the direction in which it has changed, we need to read on.  "To those outside the Law, I became as one outside the Law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ)..."  Paul has not become lawless in his conversion.  Rather, he has moved from the domain of the Law of Moses into the domain of the Law of Christ.  The latter is, of course, different in many ways - it is not codified but based on the gospel, it is not a burden but based on the completed work of Christ - but still, it absolutely claims Paul.  In fact, his very chameleon like quality as an evangelist is an outworking of that Law of Christ - he must serve as Christ served, and he must take the gospel out to all because that is simply the logic of the good news.

Law in Deuteronomy

Not long after I was baptised, my Pastor at the time advised me to get stuck in to the book of Deuteronomy, on the grounds that this book is the key to the OT.  Great advice.  Since then I've spent a lot of time in this foundational charter of the life of Israel.  This covenant document explains the history of Israel and underpins the prophetic critiques and warnings of Israel's national life.  So what does Deuteronomy have to say about the Law?

1.  The relationship between Yahweh and Israel is not fundamentally based on Law.  The historical preamble to the covenant (chapters 1 to 3) makes it clear that if this were the case Israel would be doomed - it is a sorry history of rebellion, focussed on the idolatry committed at the very foot of Horeb.  That Israel's entry into covenant with Yahweh is in fact based on a unilateral elective action of God is made clear in, for example, Deut 7:6-11 and Deut 9:4-12.  This is good news for Israel, because it extends hope for restoration after the prophesied exile which will follow their neglect of the Law - Deut 30:1-10.

2.  The Law which is given to Israel is good for them.  In Deut 8:1-10, for example, a description of the blessing which Yahweh has showered on Israel in the wilderness, and which he will multiply to them in the land, is intermingled with the a description of the Law.  The Law will be the foundation of Israel's reputation for greatness and wisdom amongst the nations - Deut 4:6-8.  Moreover, the keeping of the Law is repeatedly associated with rejoicing, for example the giving of the tithe.

3.  Israel can keep the Law.  When Moses says 'What does Yahweh require of you..?' and proceeds to list a series of things including keeping all the statutes and commandments of the Law (Deut 10:12-13), it is clear from the context that we are meant to think that this is only the minimum which ought to follow from the goodness of God which has been recounted in previous chapters.  By the time we get to chapter 30, Moses is able to say "this commandment is not too hard for you".  Nothing too difficult has been asked of Israel.  They can keep this Law, and moreover it makes no sense for them not to do so - it flows logically from the grace they have been shown in the past, and carries with it promises of future blessing.

4.  Israel will not keep the Law.  Moses' last recorded words are a blessing on the tribes of Israel; but before this he has seen into their future, and given them a song which predicts their future apostasy.  Indeed, Moses knows that after his death Israel "will do what is evil in the sight of Yahweh" (Deut 31:24-29).  Why?  Not because the Law is too hard for them, but because their hearts are not right - they have not yet been given a heart to obey (Deut 29:4).  This is a promise for the future (Deut 30:6), after the exile.  A time is envisaged when Israel will be changed and will keep the Law.

As well as helping us to understand the OT, isn't this important for our understanding of the NT?

Gospel, Law and the structure of Biblical narrative

I think we sometimes (often?) get the relationship between the Biblical narrative and our systematic theology quite badly wrong.  I suspect that our forebears were even worse at it than us.  We often assume that systematic theology must embody 'timeless truth'; narrative by definition is not timeless.  We also often assume that systematic theology takes priority over Biblical narrative; that means that we read the latter through the former more often than not.  I think something like this is going on when people say that the Law takes priority over the Gospel - whether they mean that temporally, logically, or evangelistically.

I would argue that close attention to the Biblical storyline indicates that Gospel always comes first.

Let's take as our main exhibit the foundational narrative of the OT, the Exodus from Egypt and the journey to Canaan.  It seems pretty clear from the narrative that there is no Law involved in the initial Exodus.  The people cry to Yahweh, who hears and rescues.  There is no record that they have to do anything to secure their rescue.  As they head out of Egypt (and my mind goes to the rather dramatic scene in The Ten Commandments) all they can do is rejoice that God has delivered them.  However, it is equally clear that their rescue was not without a purpose.  Israel was being delivered from slavery in Egypt in order to serve Yahweh (thus Exodus 3:12, 7:16 etc).  So Sinai is the logical destination, the place to go after the Exodus.  Once you get there, of course you get the Law - Israel was not being set free in order to wander aimlessly, but in order to receive a new and infinitely better Master.

The point is, structure-wise, it is Gospel, then Law.

That basic structure is repeated throughout Scripture.  I think the first example is creation itself, which is certainly presented as a Gospel, and certainly has a Law which follows it.  And I am sure it is significant that when you step out of the realm of narrative, into, for example, the Pauline epistles, you so regularly have a structure of Gospel first, followed by instruction.  (I will argue at some point that Biblically this instruction is Law - but not in this post).  Not only is this clear structurally, but it makes sense of the relationship between Gospel and Law which is described in the OT - but more on this at a later date.

If at this point you're thinking either 'I'm not sure you can make this sort of doctrinal point from the shape of narrative' or 'but in the grand scheme of things, doesn't the Law of Moses come before the Gospel of Christ in the Bible?' - let me just point you to Paul's argument in Romans 4:9-12 and Galatians 3:15-18.  Paul makes a great deal of the order of events, and argues explicitly that the Gospel was preached to Abraham centuries before the Law of Moses was promulgated.

The storyline of the Bible is Gospel first, then Law.  What impact should that have on our doctrine?

Gospel and Law

In response to a few comments on an earlier post, I've been seeking to clarify my own thinking on the subject of the relationship between the law and the gospel - a subject which has seen much ink spilt over the years, and which sits on one of the major faultlines of historic Protestantism (the divide between Lutherans and the Reformed).  As I've thought about it, I've found that I have surprisingly strong opinions on the subject, which I think can be summarised under four headings:

1.  Gospel always comes logically before Law.
2.  The essence of Law is God's claim of a human being for his service.
3.  The NT uses 'Law' equivocally, that is, to describe different though related things.
4.  Law understood properly is Gospel.

I intend to write a little about each of those things over the next few days (or weeks, depending on how busy I am).  Let me just say something here about why it matters.

Our view of the relation between Gospel and Law affects our view of Christian obedience.  What does it mean to live the Christian life?  This is true not only in the small points (how does the detail of the Law of Moses apply to us today?) but in the big points (what does obedience look like?  To what extent are God's demands codified and objective - and to what extent individual and subjective?  What is to be my motivation?).

Our view of the relation between Gospel and Law affects our view of evangelism.  Does the Law, by laying out God's standard and highlighting our imperfection, prepare the way for the Gospel?  Should we therefore preach Law in our evangelism?  When we offer the Gospel, how freely can we offer it?  Does it entail the Law following on, and must we tell people so in advance?

Our view of the relation between Gospel and Law affects our reading of the OT.  What is the OT about?  Is it primarily a record of a legal covenant, pointing forward to the Gospel?  Or is there more to it?  How should we expound and apply it, in detail and in the big picture?  To what extent does the OT/NT distinction mirror the Law/Gospel distinction?

Finally, and to my mind most importantly, our view of the relation between Gospel and Law affects the way in which we understand the heart of theology.  There is a central question: has God revealed himself in one way, or two ways?  If the latter, which is the real God?  If the former, how are we to understand the distinctions within that one revelation?  What, ultimately, is the relation of the concepts 'Gospel' and 'Law' to the person Jesus Christ?

Meandering thoughts on all the above to follow shortly...