Archive

Cruciform

The Bible as Sacrament

26/10/2011
Bible, Cruciform, Hermeneutics, Karl Barth
1 Comment

What is the Bible?

In The Bible Made Impossible, Christian Smith lays a withering critique at the feet of popular and academic approaches which treat the Scriptures as a handbook to life, or an encyclopedia of timeless doctrines.

Though these approaches are often framed in the language of a “high view” of Scripture, they tend to ignore the Bible we actually have in favor of the Bible we think God ought to have given us. In the process we end up making the Bible something other than what it testifies about itself – focusing on it as a sure foundationalist starting point on which to build watertight theological systems and “biblical” guidelines for relationships or politics.

But when Jesus explains the meaning of the Scriptures to his disciples he describes the text as a witness, a written word that points to the Word.

“Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.” – Luke 24:26-27

And, if the function of the Bible is to point to Christ, then perhaps talking about it as a handbook or encyclopedia is missing the point. Perhaps a better way to speak of the Scriptures is with the language of sacrament.

In the same way that the Eucharist and baptism ultimately point to and reenact the story of Jesus Christ, so too Scripture is not an end to itself but a witness to that Story.

So the text does not call us primarily to systems of theology or directions for life (though both may be there), but rather calls us to tell once more the story of the cruciform victory of Israel’s Messiah over sin and death – the resurrected Messiah who is mysteriously God-in-flesh.

We then read the rest of Scripture through the lens of that Gospel story. Not in a simplistic “every verse is about Jesus” sort of way, but in a Christotellic way where every text is read with the climax of the story in the crucified-and-risen Christ shaping our understanding.

The Bible then is not made less important, it is the inspired witness to the Word of God, but its role is clarified. Like the Eucharist and baptism, the Scriptures are a vital part of the Christian faith, but like the other sacraments it points not to itself but to Jesus Christ whose Story it tells.

“It is therefore true that Holy Scripture is the Word of God for the Church, that it is Jesus Christ for us, as He Himself was for the prophets and apostles during the forty days.” – Karl Barth

The Wiki Gospel

28/09/2011
Community, Confession, Cruciform, Gospel, Jesus, Theology
4 Comments

I want to try something a little different today, and I hope you might take part in it.

Yesterday I shared my off-the-cuff “Gospel by Text Message” and asked you to offer your own summaries of the good news.

I found the resulting conversation fascinating, and it got me thinking about how I would define the Gospel if I had a bit more time to think about it than a one off text message.

This was the result. 

The Gospel Is: The proclamation that the story of Israel, and by extension the world, has come to its climax in the Messiah.

In the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, apparent defeat was revealed to be the victory of God over sin, Satan, and death.

By means of this victory God is setting all things to rights, and now God sees us, not as we are in ourselves, but as we are in Jesus Christ.

Or, in short, Jesus is Lord.

In some sense this definition is yours as much as mine. Yes, I wrote it, but in doing so I collected all your statements about the Gospel and did my best to amalgamate them into one succinct confession.

But it’s not finished, and that’s where you come in.

The reason I explicitly used every entry was because we do not approach this good news alone, it will always be something worked out in community. And, today, I want to engage in an exercise in collaborative theology.

Here is my idea – lets create a Wiki Gospel.

And here is how it will (hopefully) work – the first editor cuts and pastes this summary, edits it as they see fit, and then post it in the comments. Then, the next editor takes that edited summary, and does the same, so that each version is a revision of the one immediately before it.

Feel free to add new content, take parts out, add them back in, rephrase the wording, whatever you think would make it a better summary of the Gospel message.

Tomorrow morning I will post the result.

That is the idea, but the direction it goes relies on you. So, I hope you will take a moment to join in on this experiment in collaborative theology! 

Coming Soon – The Story of Jesus

27/09/2011
Cruciform, Film, Jesus, Story, Teachings of Jesus, Theology
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If we are going to re-imagine our theology and praxis in light of the story of Jesus [see yesterday’s post Cruciform Questions], then gaining a better understanding of that story is crucial.

This fall PBS will be broadcasting The Story Of Jesus, and from what I’ve seen this could be an excellent resource for telling that story.


Originally aired on the BBC, this three hour docudrama is now available for pre-order as well.

I was happy to see serious scholars like Ben Witherington and N.T. Wright will be involved, as that seems like an encouraging sign that it’s not going to be a sensationalist Dan Brown-esq “Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene” sort of film.

Too often the Jesus of the Western church has been a dehistoricized figure who serves merely as a mechanism by which God forgives sin or ensures us a place in heaven. That Jesus was a man, and that this man’s life is as much the focus of the Gospels as his death, is then easily forgotten.

But if the Gospels are called that because their story is the Gospel, the good news proclaimed by the first Christians, then studying the historical Jesus may serve to draw us closer to that proclamation of the early church.

(HT: Louis at BBHCC)

Cruciform Questions

26/09/2011
Cruciform, Faith, Theology
4 Comments

For our theology to be truly “Christian”, above all else it must have Christ at its center.

If this seems obvious, good, it ought to. But our practice often puts the lie to our profession.

It is entirely possible to do theology, or even to study and preach the Bible, with hardly a mention of Jesus. And it happens more than we might like to admit.

I think that, often, we set Jesus on a shelf because he terrifies us. We have our easy categories and our self assured view of the world around us, and Jesus turns it all upside-down, setting a question mark alongside everything we thought it meant to be pious or orthodox.

In last week’s reading from Common Prayer, I came across this quote, “Teach us the necessity and power of asking the right questions, and help us to live the answers.”

Yes. Exactly.

And the key question is this – what does it mean to be faithful, orthodox, loving, pious, forgiving, etc. in light of the story of a Messiah who died on a Roman cross and rose again from the grave?

If every word of our theology is not transformed by that story, the Jesus story, then whatever we are doing it has no claim to the name “Christian.”

So when we think about the death penalty, the value of life, the doctrines of heaven and hell, what it means to live out our faith in this time and place, the intersection of faith and science, how we treat those who are different from us, and the thousands of other questions we face in this life – let us always ask how the story of Christ transforms the way we see all other stories.

Let us ask the right questions, and let them be cruciform questions.

Re-imagining Justice | Shane Claiborne on the Death Penalty

25/09/2011
Cruciform, Justice, Love
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Shane Claiborne recently offered some thoughts on how we might approach the death penalty in light of the radical grace of Jesus.

The last 2000 years of Christianity have been filled with those interruptions of death. After all, many evangelicals believe that Jesus’ own death on the cross was an interruption (“the wages of sin are death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ” Romans 6:23) – according to conventional evangelical wisdom, our sin warrants the death penalty for us all were it not for Jesus. How then can we who have been spared death so quickly become people who are ready to dish it out?

Besides, much of the Bible is written by murderers who have been given a second chance — like David (who committed adultery with a woman and then had her husband killed to cover up his crime). How can we rejoice in death, even the death of a “terrorist” like Osama bin Laden when half of the new testament was written by a terrorist named Saul of Tarsus (who went door to door trying to kill the early Christians before his radical transformation), whose conversion was so radical it was as if “scales fell from his eyes” (Acts 9:18) and so fundamental that he changed his name.

The interruptions of death continue.

Seemed fitting to share this after our earlier discussion about what it means to be Pro-Life.

You can read the rest at Out of Ur.

May we continue to re-imagine what justice, forgiveness, and love could look like in light of the story of a crucified Messiah.

Do We Need God to Love?

01/09/2011
Atheism, Cruciform, Deism, Justice, Love
5 Comments

Drivers in Grand Rapids will now be greeted by a new sight as they head into the city.

A billboard from the Center For inquiry.

Not surprisingly, the billboard has already become a source of controversy in GR, as well as the handful of other cities where it has recently appeared.

So here’s my take – they’re right.

People who don’t believe in God (or gods) are perfectly capable of being as caring and loving as people of faith, and the sooner we acknowledge that the better.

Because we too often don’t acknowledge it, too often I’ve heard the argument made in churches and classes that without faith you cannot do anything truly good. So that while a Christian might help someone because of their faith, someone who doesn’t believe in God only helps because it makes them look or feel good, or because they want to receive some sort of acclaim.

You could just as easily make the opposite claim – that atheists ultimately stand to gain nothing by helping others if their beliefs are correct, or at least nothing that lasts, and yet they do it anyway.

Whereas the Christian could easily be motivated by religious convictions that have little to do with a real desire to love and care. Perhaps those motivations are eternal rewards, the soothing of guilt through good deeds, or the desire to show others how pious they are.

To put a finer point on it, it can be our religious commitments themselves that allow us to participate in injustice and apathy and exploitation, instead of love and caring.

We are involved in church, maybe even leadership, and so are able to tell ourselves a story about who we are as a person. We tell ourselves we are good, holy, righteous people, who occasionally have to get involved with unjust systems because that’s just how the world works, but it’s not who we are inside.

But maybe we are looking at this all wrong. Maybe the question isn’t whether people who do or don’t believe in God can do good, but what sort of God we are talking about.

If we’re talking about the god of moralistic therapeutic deism, the god who is detached from our lives except for when he steps in to open up a parking space or have his name used by politicians – then no, you don’t need that God to be good.

If however we are talking about the God who lays down his life on a cross, who loves and forgives his enemies even as they drive nails through his hands, if we are talking of the cruciform God we see in the man Jesus – then perhaps that God is mysteriously present in every act of love or caring, in every time injustice is opposed and grace is extended, whether we believe in him or not.

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