I was reading Luke the other day and was struck by the parallels that exist between Jesus and Moses. Jesus, like Moses (only more so), is the great liberator of Israel. Jesus provides the people with a New Torah, he provides them with nourishment in the wilderness, and, ultimately, on the cross, he brings an end to exile and the wilderness wanderings of Israel. Of course, the fact that the bondage of exile has ended is confirmed at the beginning of Acts with the outpouring of the eschatological Spirit.
However, I was struck by this idea: if Jesus, in Luke, is like Moses yet greater than Moses, surely Paul, in Acts, is like Joshua, yet greater than Joshua. After Moses liberated the Hebrews and led them through the wilderness, Joshua conquered the land that God had promised them. However, with Paul as Joshua things are significantly revised. The land is now the world, and the means by which one conquers are radically different. Whereas Joshua conquered by the sword, Paul conquers by the Gospel proclamation — by the sword of the Word. Whereas Joshua conquered by inflicting violence on others, Paul conquers by allowing violence to be inflicted upon himself. Whereas Joshua conquered by force, Paul conquers by serving others in the power of the Spirit.
Furthermore, I suspect that those who wish to appeal Old Testament conquest narratives in order to justify Christian violence today have not sufficiently grasped the way in which Paul's model of conquest completely subverts and replaces any and all violence with cross-shaped living.

Well, over the last two days I have had the privilege of attending a series of lectures presented by Miroslav Volf. The lecture series, offered as the 2006 Laing Lectures at my school, was called “A Voice of One's Own: Public Faith in a Pluralistic World.” The first lecture was entitled, “The Malfunctions of Faith: Idleness and Coerciveness,” the second lecture was called, “A Faith that Makes a Difference” and the final lecture was called “A Peaceable Faith.” Part of what made the lectures so interesting was the fact that a few profs from my school were able to respond to Volf's lectures and then engage in a panel discussion with him.
There was one exchange between Volf and my professor Hans Boersma that I find particularly interesting. Volf had concluded his first lecture by emphasizing that the Church must exist as a counter-culture for the common good. Boersma challenged the term “counter-culture” and argued that the Church should be understood as a complete and unique “culture.” Volf then expressed some discomfort with the notion of the Church as a culture and the example that he provided was intriguing. “For example,” he said, “I do not think that the Church speaks her own language.”
This caught my attention, given the fact that “postliberal” theologians, in light of Wittgenstein's notion of “language-games” and Lyotard's notion of “petit recits [small stories],” have been emphasizing the uniqueness of the language of the Church.
Consequently, at the end of the third lecture when I had an opportunity to speak with Volf I pressed him on this point. If the Church does not speak her own unique language, what language does she speak? Indeed, could it not be argued that a further “malfunction” of the contemporary Church in the West is precisely the fact that she has lost her own unique language and capitulated to other language-games, allowing her world to be shaped by words and meanings that are foreign to her?
Unfortunately, Volf did not have time to respond in full. He began by expressing his discomfort with any approach that understands language as strictly functional and then went on to affirm the argument that the Church is, inevitably, caught speaking the language of those around her — how can she not?
I then attempted to take the question from another angle and asked, taking Barth as a guide, whether or not the Word of God could be described as the truly unique Language of the Church; indeed, is it because the Church is ever only a witness to the Word, that the language of her proclamation is not unique?
Volf began by expressing his discomfort with Barth's approach to language (analogy in particular) and, alas, this is about as far as we got. He noted that this topic is one that is particularly important today, but also noted that such things were difficult to discuss briefly and the night was late and others were coming and going, getting books autographed and expressing their thanks.
So I am left hanging. Anybody want to pick up on these questions?

A few thoughts inspired by dialogue with the New Perspective on Paul.
Properly understood, it is not my faith in Jesus that saves me. Rather, it is the faithfulness of Jesus that saves me.
My faith does not defeat the power of sin, nor does it atone for my sins. Rather, it is the faithfulness of Jesus that has defeated sin and atoned for the sins of us all.
My faith does not recapitulate humanity, nor does it inaugurate the new age. Rather, it is the faithfulness of Jesus that recapitulated humanity and birthed the new age.
Therefore, it is the faith of Jesus that is salvific, not my faith in Jesus. My faith in Jesus simply shows that I have been saved by Jesus. My faith is not what gets me into the covenant people of God, it is that which shows that I am already in the covenant people of God. Faith in Jesus is not that which saves Christians, rather it is that which is an identity marker of those who have already (in the here-and-now) realized that they have been saved by Jesus. Faith simply sets apart those who have already realized that Jesus is Saviour and Lord of all, until the day when Jesus returns and God becomes “all in all.”
However, there are another dimension to Christian faith in Christ. Indeed, Christian faith is perhaps better described as in Christ faith. That is to say, it is the faith of those who are in Christ. Indeed, one of the the most central elements of Paul's writing is the notion of Christian existence “in Christ.” Christians are those who members of Christ's body, they are baptized into Christ's death so that they will be resurrected with Christ, they share in Christ's sufferings so that they may also share in his glory, therefore Christian living can be summed up as “Christ” (as Paul says in Phil 1.21: “For me, to live is Christ”). Therefore, because all that we are and do is now “in Christ” this means that our faith is “in Christ faith.” Understood in this way, it is possible to see our faith as participation in the faith of Christ.
Realizing this also opens the door to revisit the notion of type of righteousness possessed by Christians. Certain New Testament scholars have raised a significant critique of the Reformed doctrine of “imputed righteousness.” This doctrine asserts that God gives his own righteousness to believers and thus considers them innocent. However, the critics of this doctrine have argued that to suggest that believers are granted God's righteousness is to make a category mistake. What they mean is this: righteousness language in the New Testament is best understood against two backgrounds, the forensic (i.e. law court) and the covenantal. Now, in the law court there can be more than one type of righteousness. There is the righteousness of the judge, who judges impartially and justly, and there is the righteousness that is granted to the defendant when he or she is vindicated. Thus, when righteousness language refers to God as judge and to humanity as the defendant, one must not suggest that one can share in the other's righteousness for that would confuse the categories. The defendant is not declared righteous in the same way that the judge is righteous. Furthermore, the same distinction holds within the covenantal context. Here God's righteousness is understood has his faithfulness to the covenant he made, and to suggest that human's receive this righteousness is to confuse the covenant partners with one another. This critique, I think, is quite convincing.
However, there is a sense in which the notion of “imputed righteousness” still holds true, but it does so in a significantly reworked manner. Stated succinctly: because the in Christ faith of believers is participation in the faith of Christ, believers also participate in God's righteousness because they then become the agents by which God remains faithful to his covenant with humanity and the rest of creation. The notion of “imputed righteousness” is therefore all about vocation, commission, and mission, and not about some sort of static status. One can be said to share in God's righteousness to the extent that one shares in God's mission. Indeed, this is also then a participation in God's righteousness as judge over the world, and perhaps this view of imputed righteousness makes good sense of Paul's enigmatic statement that “the saints will judge the world” (cf. 1 Cor 5-6). Christian's share in God's righteousness as judge when they go into the world with the embodied announcement of the forgiveness of sins.

Hollywood's a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss, and fifty cents for your soul. I know, because I turned down the first offer often enough and held out for the fifty cents.

A short while ago, I read Kim Fabricius' “Ten propositions on hell” which is quoted in full on Ben Myer's blog (cf. http://faith-theology.blogspot.com/2006/09/ten-propositions-on-hell.html). I thought I would provide 10 alternate (but not necessarily contradictory) theses on hell.
Let us begin by asserting that:
(1) Jesus saves us from hell in the same way that he saves us from death.
This can then be rephrased in a more provocative manner:
(2) Jesus does not save us from hell any more than he saves us from death.
Yet:
(3) Our salvation from death does not prevent us from dying. Rather, our salvation from death is a salvation that leads us through death.
Consequently:
(4) Our salvation from hell does not prevent us from “descending into hell.” Rather, our salvation from hell is a salvation that leads us through hell.
If this is the case then:
(5) What we mean by the word “hell” must be reconsidered.
As we do this we must note that:
(6) The references to hell in the early creeds (the Apostles' Creed and the Athanasian Creed) occur within the domain of Christology (and they are not a part of the assertions about the final end state of humanity — which only speak of the “resurrection of the dead” and the “life everlasting”).
Therefore:
(7) “Hell” must be understood within the framework of Jesus' mission.
When this occurs:
(8) “Hell” is best understood as the place where Jesus' ultimate, and salvific, solidarity with “sinners,” with the god-forsaken, and with those who experience the utter extremes of exile comes to its fullest expression.
Furthermore, it must be remembered that:
(9) Christians are called to participate in the mission of Jesus, not because Jesus' victory was incomplete, but so that Jesus' victory can be implemented in the present.
Therefore:
(10) Christian's are not saved from hell, if that is taken to mean a complete escape from hell. Rather, Christians are saved so that they can participate in Jesus' descent into hell, and share in his mission of salvific solidarity with the god-forsaken.

About four months ago my parents separated. My parents had been “married” for nearly thirty-three years, when I received a call from my mother informing me that she had left my father. A great variety of emotions passed through me in those first weeks.
After speaking with my mom, I sort of broke down and had a good hard cry. It's not that the separation was entirely unexpected, it's just that the inevitable can still knock the wind out of us when it arrives. It's like watching a cancer patient get more and more ill: we still cry when that patient dies. We cry because of the thread of brokenness that runs through creation; we cry because death, even when we know it is coming, is still something worth mourning because God desires a world where death no longer has any power. And we cry because separation, even when it is inevitable, is still something worth mourning because God desires a world in which all of us are reconciled with one another. (Note that in all of this I am not saying that the separation was the event which broke my parents' relationship, I think that the relationship was broken year before, and that's why I use the analogy of a terminal illness that results in death [and that's also why I put the word “married” in quotes in my first paragraph]). And so my first response was to mourn our communal brokenness.
My second reaction, which is still ongoing, and which is the focus of this post, was to try and think through these things Christianly. To begin with, I quite firmly believe that separation can be a genuinely Christian event. I very much believe that separation can be exercised within marriage in a way that is analogous to the way in which excommunication should function within the Church.
Excommunication is not an action that kicks people out of the corporate body of Christ, rather it is a (last, desperate) action that reveals that the excommunicated person, through his or her own ongoing activity, has already separated him or herself from the covenant people of God. Excommunication thus makes that fact clear to all the parties involved (and to all those who observe people who call themselves “Christians”). Furthermore, excommunication is practiced with the goal of reconciliation. A person's self-chosen separation from the body of Christ is made manifest so that that person can become a true member of God's covenant people. Stated in an overly simplistic manner, excommunication reveals that a person who thought that he or she was “in” the people of God is actually “out” and thus it simultaneously shows that person what he or she must do to be truly “in” — indeed, it encourages that person to do precisely what it necessary to be truly “in” (note that my use of “in” and “out” language here does not refer to the status of a person's “eternal salvation.” Rather I am simply speaking of a person's membership within the confessing body of Christ as it exists in the here and now).
Similarly, I believe that separation can be a (last, desperate) action through which one person in a marriage reveals that the other person in the marriage has already separated him or herself from the marriage covenant due to his or her ongoing actions. Therefore, separation makes this clear and, like excommunication, is also simultaneously a (last, desperate) attempt at genuine reconciliation.
This is, of course, the ideal.
In reality, things are, alas, much more messy and, yes, broken. The Christian ideal is for the reconciliation of all creation and all people but that ideal will never be fulfilled until Christ returns and makes all things new. Alas, even the Church, God's new creation body, God's forgiven and forgiving people, will never perfectly manifest this ideal. Therefore, another part of thinking through this topic Christianly is recognizing that some threads of brokenness will always remain within us, some wounds leave scars and others never fully heal. This is true of us physically (or are all Christians in perfect physical health?), and it is just as true of us relationally and emotionally. Thus, although our ideal is for reconciliation in all things, we also embrace those who are unable to be reconciled with all people (who among is is truly reconciled with all people?). Sure, our ideal is to see all of creation reconciled, but that doesn't mean we are encouraging lions and calves to lie down together, and it also doesn't mean we're encouraging our children to play with vipers (cf. Isaiah's vision of the new creation in Is 11). Of course, I'm not saying that either person in my parent's relationship was “a viper” or “a lion,” I'm simply pointing to the fact that sometimes our ideal of reconciliation is impossible in the here and now.
This means that living Christianly sometimes means accepting that threads of brokenness and separation will always be present even within the people of God, and it means that sometimes we must accept that brokenness and recognize our desperation for (and distance from) the time when God will be all in all.
This conclusion is a difficult one for me to draw. Indeed, I don't think I would have been able to draw this conclusion were it not for my study of Miroslav Volf's writings (cf. Exclusion and Embrace and Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace). It is a conclusion I draw with some regret and with some hesitation. With regret because, even though this is the reality, it is a sad reality. With hesitation because I think too often people use this sort of argument as a way to avoid engaging in necessary reconciliations. Arguments, like this one, which are premised upon “realism” and “practicality” are too often used by those who look for the “minimum requirements” of a self-serving discipleship. We should never be looking for the “minimum” but should rather be asking how we can go deeper into a God-and-other-focused discipleship. I worry that people could read this argument and think “see, I knew I didn't have to forgive or reconcile with so-and-so” when really that's not what I'm arguing for at all. Forgiveness and reconciliation should be the de facto position of all Christians. Yet there are situations of brokenness that challenge that position, and that must be taken seriously. Of course, the objection can be made that God can heal all brokenness, no matter how deep, and this is true. The response to this objection is simply that God does not, here and now, heal all brokenness, and we must create room within the people of God for those God does not fully heal. We must welcome such people with open arms until such a time as God chooses to heal them fully — even if that time does not come until after the resurrection.
Of course, in making these observations there is a line I am drawing between brokenness and obstinance. Some are incapable of reconciliation because their wounds never fully heal, and such people should be welcomed in the way that I suggest. Others are incapable of reconciliation because they are obstinate, and such people should be challenged. Hence the need for discernment, and hence the reason why it may seem like, in this post, I am giving with one hand what I take away with the other.
So, these thoughts on excommunication, separation, brokenness, and our distance from God being “all in all” lead me back to the situation of my parents and one final thought.
I have come to the conclusion that the Church must more fully embrace the notion of separation as a form of excommunication. Because the Church, especially the Conservative streams of the Church (of which my mother is a part) is so opposed to divorce, and also tends to see the woman as subservient to the man in marriage, separation is rarely practiced in the way that it should be practiced. Instead, women (and men) end up staying in relationships that are destructive and consequently, when separation occurs, they do not separate with the goal of reconciliation — they separate because they are so shattered that they cannot possibly stay within that relationship. When this occurs, full reconciliation often becomes a remote possibility, or a complete impossibility. Thus, if we are really to hope to see broken marriages reconciled, we must embrace the place of separation instead of continually counseling women (and men) to stay within destructive relationships.
Finally, because I began by speaking about my reactions to my parents' separation, I should note one other reaction — one that shames me, and reveals my deeply rooted selfishness. Early on I could not help feeling angry at my mom. I was not angry that my mom separated from my dad (for reasons that should now be obvious) — I was angry that she separated for the reasons that she did! As I have mentioned before, I was kicked out of my parents' house by my dad when I was 17. Thus, when I heard that my mom had left, and when I heard why she left I thought: “what? You leave because of that, but you never left because of what happened to me? You never left when I got thrown to the wolves, so why are you leaving now?” Of course, I knew that there were all sorts of things in my mom's life that enabled her/drove her to leave when she did but I still felt that knee-jerk selfish reaction for a little while. I am ashamed of that reaction and thank God that I never said anything about it to my mom. Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
And have mercy on all of us as we struggle to follow you, even as we discover old scars that still ache. And please, Lord, hasten the day when you will be “all in all” and we will live in shalom with one another. Amen.

In the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Ludwig Wittgenstein argues that there are significant limitations as to what language can actually say. Language, Wittgenstein argues, is only meaningful when it is used descriptively, as a model of reality. Any attempt to say anything beyond such things is nonsensical (i.e. lacking in meaning, having no sense). Consequently most of philosophy and theology is revealed as just that sort of nonsensical language. What we say when we speak theologically cannot be described as true or false, it simply lacks meaning altogether.
Naturally, this seems to strike the Christian reader as a disturbing conclusion. Surely we want to be able to say something meaningful about God, or about ethics, or about metaphysics, or whatever. However, just as we must wrestle with Wittgenstein's argument, and his conclusion (part of which is: “whereof one cannot speak, about that one must remain silent”), we must not also be too hasty to suggest that Wittgenstein intends his argument to be an assault on Christianity or on faith. Wittgenstein actually has no desire to limit human imagination, yearning, feeling, or thinking, he is simply suggesting that there are limits on the meaningful expression of thought.
In this way, it could be argued (indeed, it is argued by Alfred Nordmann in his introduction to the Tractatus) that Wittgenstein is following the trajectory of critical philosophy established by Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason. Kant argues against the ability to gain certain knowledge about God because knowledge is always knowledge of objects or appearances. Thus, to attempt to gain knowledge about God would transform God into just another object. Consequently, Kant draws the limits of knowledge so narrowly that God is beyond them. Kant concludes: “I had to deny knowledge to make room for faith.”
Wittgenstein does not deny knowledge of God per se, but he does deny that any such knowledge could be expressed meaningfully. Nordmann aptly summarizes Wittgenstein's position when he writes: “Those who believe that they can talk just as sensibly about absolute or ethical value as they can about cars an cookies are actually conflating them.” The problem, according to Wittgenstein, with taking an absolute (whether that be an Absolute Being, or an absolute Value) and making it “just a fact like other facts” is that everything absolute is then drained from that Being or Value, because all facts are necessarily contingent. Therefore, Wittgenstein denies meaningful expressions of the absolute, not in order to deny faith, but in order to make room for faith. Therefore, by drawing a line which language cannot cross, Wittgenstein situates God beyond language, and allows God to exists as God.
Of course, the notion of situating God beyond human speech should cause the reader to think of another major influence on 20th century thought — Karl Barth. Writing at the same time as Wittgenstein, Barth described God as God who is “distinguished from men and from everything human, and [who] must never be identified with anything we name, or experience, or conceive, or worship, as God.” God, he went on to say, “is that which lies upon the other side.” Consequently, when God is encountered, he is always encountered in his hiddenness, breaking forth like “a flash of lightening, impossibility and invisibility.”
Of course, there are some significant differences between Barth and Wittgenstein but it is interesting to begin by exploring where they overlap. Indeed, the differences only gain their proper significance once we understand the similarities (actually, it's pretty interesting to note the biographical similarities of these two men, but I'll save that for another time).

Recently I have found myself returning again and again to the parable of the sower and the seed in Mt 13 and Lk 8. I have been struck by how the odds are stacked against being the sort of seed that bears fruit. The seed that falls on the road (lacks understanding), the seed that falls on the rocky soil (too afraid of suffering), and the seed that falls among the thorns (too much money and worldly concerns), all of these seeds die. It is only the seed that falls on the good soil that bears fruit. It worries me that the absence of understanding, the fear of suffering, and an overabundance of money and worldly concerns seems to define much of the contemporary Western church. No wonder our churches are dying. However, this is a tangent to the point that has recently struck me, so I'll turn to that point now.
For the longest time I read this parable as though it contrasted abundant life (the seed that falls on the good soil) with the sort of life that is destroyed by the powers that are pressed into the service of death (all the other seeds). I have only just realized that this is a false dichotomy. I began to understand the parable differently when I began to read it in light of Jesus' words in Jn 12.24:
Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.
The seed that falls on the good soil has not escaped death. It too will die, just like the other seeds! The contrast between the seeds in Mt and Lk is not a contrast between life and death, it is a contrast between fruitful dying and fruitless dying!
Of course, as the context of Jn 12 makes clear, Jesus himself is the good seed, and his death produces many more seeds, it produces the crop that is “a hundred times what was sown.”
If we, then, are to live as those rooted in the good soil, we too must live a life that is oriented towards death. We too must set our faces towards Jerusalem. This orientation has nothing to do with morbidity, rather it is the inevitable outworking of the love commandment. Because we are so committed to loving God, and loving our neighbour, we choose to die to ourselves. Furthermore, this orientation is normative for Christians because those who are “in Christ” share in his death. To be in Christ is to be crucified with Christ (Gal 2.20). As Jimmy Dunn says, “[Paul's] gospel is not that the trusting sinners escape death, but rather that they share in Christ's death.” Naturally, the only way we can live with this orientation towards death is in the power of the holy Spirit that provides us with hearing, understanding, a true heart, and the ability to persevere (the characteristics of the seed that fell on the good soil).
Thus, the supposed contrast between abundant living and suffering death, that I first imagined existed in the parable of the sower, is revealed as a false dichotomy. All seeds will die. All of us will die. The question is what sort of dying we will experience. And we must remember that our type of dying determines whether or not we will bear fruit or remain fruitless.

In his latest book (Evil and the Justice of God), Tom Wright spends some time addressing how the crucifixion of Jesus is the climactic revelation of evil. The story of Jesus' death is the story of “how the downward spiral of evil finally hit the bottom.” As a part of this event, Wright also argues that the cross is the climactic expression of corruption within Israel. The Israel that has longed to become “like all the nations” (1 Sam 8.5, 20) is now reduced to declaring that it “has no king but Caesar” (John 19.15).
This movement from longing to be “like the nations” to declaring “no king but Caesar” is quite troubling. It seems to suggest that if one longs to be like the nations, one inevitably ends up so much like the nations that one now lives in a way that completely contradicts the true identity of the people of God (which is rooted in the proclamation that “there is no king but God“).
This movement should cause us to reconsider many of our contemporary desires for “Christian relevance.” I wonder: to what extent is our desire to be relevant simply a desire to be like the nations? If this is the case then we may have deceived ourselves into thinking we are living faithfully when we are actually decarling that we, too, have no king but Caesar. Indeed, I suspect that our scramble for relevance has lead us to serve the same lords as those around us, instead of leading us to proclaim the “there is one God, the Father almighty, and one Lord, Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 8.5-6).