Roadside Spirituality

I'm still in the midst of my road trip which has not been without spiritual content, but today's event was definitely worth sharing.

We spent the day driving along I-44 and I-40 (which have usurped the infamous Route 66) through Oklahoma and Texas, not intending to stop and see anything in particular. Then, toward the end of the day, as we were appoaching Groom, Texas, I saw a sign that said "Biggest Cross in the Western Hemisphere". I just had to see that.


I could see the cross from the spot on the road where I saw the sign, and my first reaction was, "That's not so big." It was still four miles away. It turns out it's only the second biggest cross in the western hemisphere (having since been copied and slightly enlarged in Illinois), but it's a pretty impressive sight.

Driving toward it, I expected it to be basically roadside kitsch. To my suprise, I found it to be a place of prayer.


I don't mean that I saw people praying there. I don't think I did. Neither do I mean simply that it's intended for prayer, though it is. What I mean is, as I viewed the display, I was moved to prayer. I experienced this as a holy place. It caught me off guard.

Around the 190-foot cross are bronze sculptures of the stations of the cross -- nothing particularly original (the Pieta below should look familiar), but very well done. The cross in each station was wood, which is a nice touch, and they were all life-size. (Jesus was even a bit shorter than me, contrary to traditional embellishments.)

As you make the circle around the cross, you end up at a tomb, which is empty except for an angel. All of it is surprisingly tastefully done.



And just to put the icing on the cake, a building near the tomb contains a precise replica of the Shround of Turin and some related information. If you ever find yourself in the Texas panhandle, make your way to Groom and see this cross.

A Simple Gospel?

In Searching for God Knows What, Donald Miller wrestles with gospel tracts based on the Four Spiritual Laws. Being an evangelical, Miller lines up along side those who use these tracts and he values them, but he isn't unaware of their limitation. Miller writes:

While the ideas presented in these pamphlets are certainly true, it struck me how simply we had begun to explain the ideas, not only how simply, but how non-relationally, how propositionally. ... The greater trouble with these reduced ideas is that modern evangelical culture is so accustomed to this summation that it is difficult for us to see the gospel as anything other than a list of true statements with which a person must agree.

It makes me wonder if, because of this reduced version of the claims of Christ, we believe the gospel is easy to understand, a simple mental exercise, not in the least bit mysterious.

This is something like what I would like to have said a few months ago when I complained about what is wrong with the Four Spiritual Laws.

On the Road

Just as I've revealed my secret identity, I may seem to b going back into hiding. Actually, I'm just on vacation. I packed up the family and we're headed across the country.

If you're curious, you can follow our progress here

With Unveiled Face

For a little over a year now I've been writing this blog under the name Melancthon. I started it that way because that was my Beliefnet member name, and it made for a fun blog title. But I've never really liked the idea of pseudopigraphical writings, and more and more I've been feeling like I'm the only person at a party wearing a costume, so I've decided to unveil myself as it were.

Hi. My name's Andy. Nice to meet you.

A Gift From Whoever

Last night on Fresh Air Andrew Revkin was talking about his book on an expidition to the North Pole to monitor the polar ice cap. It was an interesting interview relevant to the hot topic of global warming, but I don't have anything to say about that.

Instead I want to ponder a phrase Revkin used toward the end of the interview. He was talking what it feels like to be at the North Pole when he referred to the earth as being, and I quote, "a great gift from...uh...whoever."

This is fascinating to me -- especially the pause. Normally, I wouldn't include such a hesitation in quoting what someone said, but in this case it strikes me as being full of significance. We moderns -- people who use electricity -- haven't lost, are unable to lose, the appreciation of the world around as a great gift. But a gift from whom? We still know the answer, but it embarasses us. We think it sounds foolish to say it. So we say it is from "...uh...whoever."

But if not God, who else could give us such a gift. No matter the name you put with it, by the very fact of being the giver of this gift, the benefactor is, inescapably, God.

Anotioch and Alexandria

History is always instructive and Church history especially so. A lot of noise has been made in recent years about the fallacy of viewing early Christianity as a homogenous whole with one theology. Fingers get pointed at Irenaeus as the architect of orthodoxy, but even that is a gross oversimplification.

Those of us who haven't been raised to mistrust the Church have inherited a romantic notion of the early ecumenical councils from Nicea to Chalcedon where the bishops all came to agreement and the Church as one taught and practiced the orthodoxy they defined. Of course, it never happened that way.

The Council of Ephesus (431) is a particularly interesting case in point. We're told that the Council of Ephesus is the council at which the term "Theotokos" ("Mother of God") as a title for Mary received official Church blessing, and Nestorianism (the teaching that Christ existed as two persons -- a human person and a divine person) was condemned. But if you scratch just below the surface you discover that Ephesus was all about resolving a dispute between Antiochene Christianity and Alexandrian Christianity.

The council was precipitated by a feud between Cyril of Alexandria and Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople and former prodigy of Antioch. Nestorius asked the emperor to call a council to resolve the issue. The Alexandrian contingent got there first, quickly condemned Nestorius, upheld the Theotokos title and called it a day -- all this before the bishops from Antioch arrived. This is the official council of record. When the representatives from Antioch did arrive, they held their own council which condemned and excommunicated Cyril.

So far, it sounds a good bit like modern denominationalism. And I think it is. I contend that Antioch and Alexandria represented the major feature of the types of denominations that emerged from the Reformation -- namely, they each had their own theology which they held to be sacred. And in a manner worthy of the 16th century, they named anyone who disagreed with them as anathema.

But the really interesting thing about the Ephesus controversy is that they worked it out more or less to everyone's satisfaction. The leaders in Antioch agreed to dispense with the two persons doctrine while acknowledging two natures in Christ. The leaders in Alexandria agreed to dispense with their monophysite tendencies while acknowledging that Christ is one in person. The result was the formula of Chalcedon which though dressed up as dogma is really compromise. No doubt Alexandria and Antioch continued to practice and teach their distinctives, but the unity of the Church was also recognized and preserved.

Notably, many of the Alexandrian Christians felt Cyril had betrayed them by accepting this compromise and the result was one of the earliest schisms in the Church as the Coptic Orthodox Church became distinct from the rest of Eastern Orthodoxy (and still maintain that they are the ones preserving the purest apostolic tradition). I believe a similar thing happened on a smaller scale on the Nestorian side.

All of this provides a lesson that could be useful in our modern ecumenical situation. Conservatives in all branches of the Church maintain that we cannot budge on our traditional distinctives. But perhaps if we really look at what our fellow Christians in other denominations object to in our dogma we can discover that they have a point and we may even find a better way to affirm what it is our tradition is intending to preserve.

At the same time, we have the unfortunate reminder that there will be those who refuse to go along with even the best of compromises. Yet we can see that this is pretty much OK.

Theology and Psychology

Believe it or not, my previous rambling topic on free will represented the result of effort on my part to bring some focus and organization to my thoughts on the matter. At several points I had about three different and mostly unrelated directions I wanted to go with the ideas. Eventually I thought I had said as much as a reasonable person would read so I quit writing.

One thing I left out that I'd like to go back for now is the relationship between theology of free will and modern psychology. Now I don't think psychology can responsibly claim to have solved the problem of free will, but it does have some interesting things to say on the subject.

When I was a freshman in college I had to read a selection from B.F. Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity. I was absolutely horrified. It was my first hint that maybe I wasn't as free as I thought I was. I took comfort in hearing that Skinner's assessment wasn't universally accepted, but the world was changed. Gradually I became indoctrinated with the view that most of our decisions are heavily conditioned by our past experiences, if not completely determined, and today I still accept this as a basic fact.

It seems to me that there is a natural application of this idea to the theology of free will, yet I don't think I've seen anything written bringing the two together.

Christians tend to have a reflexive revulsion to the idea of behaviorism. Christianity would seem to be completely invalidated if it turns out that human beings are basically just machines. And yet we have Calvinism.

Constantly lurking in Christian tradition is the idea that God is present in the world, not just where we have performed religious acts to "make" God present, not even just in the places where God has promised to meet us, but everywhere. And if we could but grasp it, there must be a connection here between the theology of free will, grace and providence on the one hand and behavioral psychology on the other.

Ramblings on Free Will

Martin Luther is said to have looked back at his body of work late in his life and decided that his Bondage of the Will was one of the few things (along with the catechisms) he wrote that was worth preserving. Calvinists like to point this out. Lutherans have to live with it.

It's true that lack of free will is a cornerstone of Lutheran theology. How many times is Luther's explanation of the third article of the Creed quoted? "I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him..." This is a cornerstone of our theology. It's also a bit of an embarassment.

When I was in college a friend and I used to get together in various bars and talk about philosophy. It became a joke between us that no matter what topic we talked about it always came down to the question of free will. At the time, I was an unapologetic defender of free will -- completely free will to the point of making every human decision practically arbitrary. My friend, a dyed-in-the-wool post-modernist, found my position absurd (which of course it was).

Later I became a dogmatic Lutheran (really...I was). I took it as a given in theological matters that the human will is absolutely bound in matters related to salvation. This is where I now think it's a bit weird. The official Lutheran position has always been that our wills are free with regard to "things below" but that they are bound with regard to "things above" -- that I can make whatever choices I like with regard to civil righteousness, but that I cannot, apart from the Holy Spirit, come to God.

American culture will not tolerate any impingement on free will. We are, says the culture, masters of our destiny. And in the realm of religion this translates into theologies that Lutherans cannot tolerate because they are synergistic and semi-Pelagian. And most of these theologies are, in fact, objectively bad -- but not necessarily because they are synergistic.

Apart from being at odds with American cultural religion because of its position on free will, Lutheran theology is also at odds with the ancient faiths of Catholicism and Orthodoxy on these matters. Orthodoxy especially stresses cooperation with God in salvation. But Lutherans hear "cooperation with God," label it as "synergistic" and treat it as heresy.

I think this is a weakness in Lutheran culture.

I was leading a study of the Augsburg Confession once and one of the participants mentioned an idea he had heard once that the Sacrament of Communion is for Lutherans something like what altar calls are for Baptists. I liked that. A retired pastor who was in the class said that Luther wouldn't have liked that. "Why not?" I asked. He responded, "I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him...."

But that elipsis has content, right? It says, "but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith." We confess that we don't have the freedom to come to God on our own power, but when would we ever have to do it by our own power?

Typical Lutheran presentations make the believer (or believer-to-be) into a marionette. God pulls the strings, and we dance. We take the saying, "Apart from me you can do nothing" and make it into "You can do nothing."

The Orthodox believe that they have found the middle way between Augustine and Pelagius. Pointing to the writings of St. John Cassian, for example, the Orthodox teach that God works in and through our will to accomplish our salvation. This was judged in the West to be semi-Pelagianism.

But it's only semi-Pelagianism if you make a sharp division between the human will and the work of God and set them against one another. It seems to me that this involves a false view of the nature of God's presence in the world. If the work of God is seen as super-natural in the modernist sense of some outside action acting on nature, then you have this problem. But if you see God's work as the manifestation of God's immanent presence within the world ("in me deeper than I am in myself" as Augustine says), then the problem goes away.

It's common to here Arminians say something to the effect that God is a perfect gentleman and would never impose salvation on us against our will. That idea has always struck me as deeply flawed -- God is God and so on. But the real issue is that God doesn't need to do anything against our will, because our will is capable of being a vehicle for God's presence in our lives. And I think this is the essence of the Orthodox doctrine of synergism.

Verb: That's What's Happening

Well, it's taken me four months (this is what happens when I'm left to work at my own pace), but I've finally made my way through the nouns and pronouns, and I'm now ready to step into the brave new world of Greek verbs.

Deus Ex Machina

My last two posts have drawn on insights from Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, as found in his book Eyes Remade For Wonder. I have one last tasty morsel from the good rabbi that I'd like to chew on a bit before I let him move on.

Rabbi Kushner, reflecting on the story of Joseph in Genesis 37-50, observes that the whole purpose of this story is to get the Israelites into Egypt. If the Israelites don't get to Eygpt, the new Pharoah comes to power, but there are no Hebrew slaves there for God to deliver from bondage. No Hebrew slaves, no Exodus, no Passover, no Sinai, no Torah. So it's very important that the Israelites find their way to Egypt.

With this in mind, he calls our attention to a seemingly insignificant detail in the story of Joseph. Jacob sends Joseph to Shechem to check on his brothers who are pastoring their flocks in the field. When Joseph gets to Shecham, his brothers are nowhere to be found. Genesis relates the story thus:

He came to Shechem, and a man found him wandering in the fields; the man asked him, "What are you seeking?" "I am seeking my brothers," he said; "tell me, please, where they are pasturing the flock." The man said, "They have gone away, for I heard them say, 'Let us go to Dothan.'" So Joseph went after his brothers, and found them at Dothan.
-Genesis 37:14-17

So Kushner claims if this nameless man didn't happen to run into Joseph in the fields at Shechem and pass along this very helpful information, Joseph would have gone back home, his brothers wouldn't have thrown him in the pit and sold him into slavery, etc., etc., and there'd have been no Exodus.

Now this just happens to tie in with another bit of data that's crossed my inbox recently. In a theological brief issued last week, Ted Peters addresses the absurdity of the speculation that because Judas agreed (as per the Gospel of Judas) to hand Jesus over to the authorities he is responsible for our redemption. Peters uses reductio ad absurdum, claiming that he has purchased a manuscript of the Gospel of the Chief Priests from antiquities dealers, which argues that the Atonement would not have been possible if the chief priests hadn't been willing to meet Judas' asking price and that the chief priests therefore deserve credit for our redemption. But then he says he has also acquired from antiquities dealers a manuscript of the Gospel of Jesus which claims that Jesus did and said certain things that infuriated the chief priests, causing them to be willing to meet Judas' asking price. So maybe Jesus is responsible for our salvation after all.

While Dr. Peters' treatment does make clear his point that we cannot elevate anyone other than Jesus as the focus of redemption, the event inextricably involves a web of people. And this is exactly what we should expect. God's work in the world involves people, often lots of people, and many of them doing things that they probably have no idea are parts of God's work in the world. This is the way God works.

Jesus' redemption of the world is God's greatest work, and so we are naturally against attributing any part of it to anyone but Christ himself (with the exception of those bold enough to celebrate what God worked through the fiat of a young virgin in Nazareth).

This is certainly a fitting way to think of our redemption, but it can obscure our view of just how God works in the world if we use this as our template for what to expect in rest of our experience. We're looking for a glorious angel from heaven to appear and give us some message that will put us on the divine path, and so we disregard the commonplace words of a nameless man who finds us wandering in the field.

The Greeks gave us this great concept of deus ex machina. We tend to see it as a cheap plot trick to get a desired result, but it seems to have been a large part of how the Greeks viewed the world. In The Odyssey, for instance, we are told about Athena coming to speak to Telemachus disguised as Mentor. It would be easy for us to "demythologize" this and understand that Mentor just gave Telemachus some sound advice. But Homer saw divine intervention in it.

Christianity is quite content with the fact that it does not imagine superhumans on Mount Olympus intervening in our daily lives. We don't ever suspect that some god has spoken to us disguised as someone we know. We don't have that sort of superstition. But lets hope that in the process we haven't forgotten how to see God acting in the ordinary events of the world around us.

If we are to truly catch a glimpse of God in the world today, it will almost certainly be by noticing God emerging from the machine that is Creation.

The Omnipresent Word

I concluded my previous post on awareness of God with the somewhat tongue-in-cheek observation that knowledge of God is impossible because until you become aware of God in the world you will pay no attention to sacred texts and religious ceremony and until you receive special revelation of God through Word and Sacrament you can't see God in the world.

I alluded to Xeno because just as Xeno's proof of the impossibility of motion is immediately disproven by observation, the claimed impossibility above is also disproven by experience. But it leaves open the question of just how it is the we encounter God. Again, I turn to a pair of stories from Jewish tradition as related by Rabbi Kushner.

There is a story, Kushner says, of a group of rabbis debating just what exactly the Israelites heard at Mt. Sinai. The first rabbi says that they heard the entire Torah, from Genesis to Deuteronomy. This is a solid, orthodox answer. The next rabbi said, "No, all they heard was the ten commandments." An answer much closer to the Biblical story. A third rabbi claimed that they heard only the first of the "ten words": "I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt." A fourth rabbi said that they heard only the first word of the first "word" -- "I" and the rest of the Torah was clear from that. Finally, a fifth rabbi argued that they heard only the first letter of the first word, aleph, an almost imperceptible sound, the sound of the opening of the throat as one is about to speak, and that this alone spoken by God was enough for them to understand all that was to be revealed.

The second story is related to this one. The second story seeks to resolve the question of whether what happened at Sinai was unique. According to one tradition, it happened only there, never to be repeated. According to another tradition, it is repeated constantly and what God spoke at Sinai, God is always and everywhere repeating. Kushner cites a Jewish source which resolves the question by saying both are correct. The revelation at Sinai was unique AND it is always being repeated. The resolution is that while this revelation is always and everywhere being spoken by God, it was only at Sinai that God allowed those present the clarity of mind and soul to hear the revelation. Kushner says it was as if God turned on the Dolby noise reduction for a moment to stop the usual hiss that deafens us.

These are nice stories. I like these stories.

So here is my Christian interpretation. The Word that God speaks everywhere and always is Christ. And so Kushner is right that through an awareness of the world around us we can meet God, and Barth is right that we can only come to know God through Christ.

But it is important to notice here, and I think Kushner would agree with this, that we do not learn about God by looking at the world. Instead, while looking at the world, we discover God in the world. God meets us in, with and under Creation.

Awareness of God

Rabbi Lawrence Kushner begins his book Eyes Remade for Wonder with an analysis of the story of Moses and the burning bush. Rabbi Kushner rejects the idea that the burning bush was a miracle God performed to get Moses' attention. He says you could probably buy this trick in a Manhattan joke shop -- "Bush burns but isn't consumed, amaze your friends, life of the party, $20."

Instead, Kushner suggests, the burning bush is a test to see how well Moses can pay attention. You have to watch a burning bush closely to know it isn't being consumed. So because Moses notices, God says, "To him I would speak."

The point of all this, finally, is that the first step of spirituality, according to Kushner, is becoming aware, deeply aware, of the world around us. And then, being aware, we will see God in the world. Having become aware of God's presence around us, we will at last turn to sacred texts to seek understanding.

But at this point, a lot of Christian theologians will stand up and shout, "Nein!" Only through God's self-revelation in Christ can we know God. Before Barth, we have Luther telling us, "That person does not deserve to be called a theologian who looks upon the invisible things of God as though they were clearly perceptible in those things which have actually happened." Luther here is directly relying on St. Paul's words in Romans 1:20ff where Paul says that those who sought to know God through creation became foolish and did not truly know God.

And so we must have a special revelation of God before we can know God. God must come to us in Word and Sacrament. Only then (if even then) can we rightly see God in the world.

And so we have a paradox. On the one hand, before we become aware of God's presence around us, we will have no regard for sacred texts or religious ceremonies. On the other hand, until God comes to us in Word and Sacrament, we cannot perceive God in the world.

And so, after the manner of Xeno, I conclude that knowledge of God is impossible.

Christ, Our Righteousness

I said in a previous post, "the key insight of the Reformation was that Christ is our righteousness." Some interesting discussion followed along the lines of just how far the word "our" could be stretched here.

In the new Finnish interpretation of Luther, this idea that Christ is our righteousness is pushed to its uttermost limits. In saying that Christ is present in faith itself, the Finns are claiming that our standing with God is a result of the presence of Christ in and with (and under?) the believer. The believer is treated as righteous by God because the believer, finally, is Christ.

This is taken to have some connection to the Orthodox doctrine of theosis. Athanasius said, "God became man so that man might become God." Luther said (in his lectures on Galatians), "Faith makes a man God."

One of the big difficulties with the Finnish position is that it requires us to believe that while Luther held these pseudo-Orthodox beliefs, they immediately disappeared with nary a trace in susequent Lutheranism. But there is one trace. Tuomo Mannermaa in Christ Present in Faith points to the Osiandrian Controversy.

For those without an obbsession with 16th century Lutheran dogmatics, the Osiandrian Controversy was one of the disputes meant to be settled by the Formula of Concord. Andreas Osiander disliked the idea of imputed justification. Against this idea, Osiander taught that God actually makes a Christian just through the indwelling of Christ. He was apparently opposed in this by everyone from Phillip Melancthon to Martin Chemnitz. The controversy is addressed in Article III of the Formula of Concord.

According to Mannermaa, the Formula got it wrong and thus led to the disjunction between Luther and later Lutheranism.

But Article III of the Formula of Concord provides some interesting material for reflection, particularly with regard to my claim above that "the key insight of the Reformation was that Christ is our righteousness."

In the Epitome, the FC does state clearly that "Christ alone is our Righteousness" (Article III, paragraph 1), but it is concerned with the question of what this means. This article rejects the idea that either Christ is our righteousness only according to his divine nature (the view attriubuted to Osiander) or that Christ is our righteousness only according to his human nature. The article says that Christ is our righteousness according to both natures, but then it adds "in His obedience alone." That is, it is our righteousness consists in have Christ's obedience imputed to us. At the risk of having my Lutheran membership card taken away, I'm not sure I buy this.

The Formula claims that "our righteousness before God is [this very thing], that God ... presents and imputes to us the righteousness of Christ's obedience." This has solidified into dogma in some circles. For instance, Reformed teacher Michael Horton can be heard to propound that we are saved by works, but we are saved by Christ's works not our own, Christ having fulfilled the "covenant of works" which Adam did not. This strikes me as very non-Lutheran (which is fine for Dr. Horton), but this section of the FC would seem to support it.

On the other hand, this same article of the FC-Ep says that "faith alone is the means and instrument whereby we lay hold of Christ, and thus in Christ of that righteousness which avails before God." Now this I like, and I think it has much ressonance with the Finnish idea.

The idea that we are accounted as righteous because Christ's obedience is imputed to us strikes me as theological bookkeeping. I dare say it is a theology of glory sneaking into the Lutheran confessions and becoming dogma. Against this, I much prefer the proclamation that in faith we "lay hold of Christ."

I confess to being somewhat wary of the language of Christ being present in me. There's a problem of scale here. I know that in the Sacrament we see that the finite is capable of bearing the infinite, but there would seem to be a danger here of slipping into what Mark Allan Powell calls "the image of the Microscopic Jesus" -- the idea that I may have "a very tiny Jesus inside me (sitting on that throne in my heart)." Or, much worse, the idea lends itself to the gnostic idea of a "divine spark" within each of us.

I prefer, instead, the perspective of finding myself in Christ (Col. 3:3). But I think this amounts to the same thing as the Finnish idea. And so, I would like to say (against the Formula of Concord) that our righteousness before God is this very thing, that we are found in Christ and Christ in us.

The DaVinci Code

If you haven't seen it already, check the current issues of Sojo Mail to read their interview with Brian McLaren about The DaVinci Code. You can read it online here:

http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=sojomail.display&issue=060509
(free registration required)

McLaren has a refreshing take on the DVC. Rather than seeing it as an attack on Christianity or as an opportunity for evangelism, McLaren addresses it primarily as an opportunity for the Church to reflect on how we are presenting Jesus to the culture and, as such, an opportunity for self-critique. Here's a sample:

I think a lot of people have read the book, not just as a popular page-turner but also as an experience in shared frustration with status-quo, male-dominated, power-oriented, cover-up-prone organized Christian religion. We need to ask ourselves why the vision of Jesus hinted at in Dan Brown's book is more interesting, attractive, and intriguing to these people than the standard vision of Jesus they hear about in church.

For a while now there's been something that vaguely bugged me about the parade of books, videos and Sunday school classes "decoding" The DaVinci Code, and I think I know now what it is. In part, I just don't like anything that comes from the conservative evangelical camp (a personal bias that I realize is unfair). But it was harder to see what the problem was in this case, because I was in agreement with them that the "history" in the DVC was attrocious, and I agreed that it was worthwhile setting the record straight. So I thought my irritation was just that I didn't like the people who were writing these books.

But after reading McLaren's thoughts on the matter (as well as recent remarks from the LutherPunk), it seems to me that the public reaction of Christianity has been (surprise, surpise) self-righteous arrogance. Yes, Brown's (or more precisely, the fictional Teabing's) version of early Christian history is wildly inaccurate, but we're not going to win many friends by saying "we're right, as always, and we'll prove it."

A "just-the-facts" proof-from-history isn't what people are interested in, not least because postmodern people (rightly) don't believe that "just-the-facts" versions of history exist. I remember once when I was explaining to some non-Christian friends how the early Church determined which books should be in the Bible. When I got to the part about the rule of faith, my friends literally laughed out loud. "You mean they only picked the books that they agreed with?!" they asked. "Of course," I answered. It seemed like the most obvious thing in the world to me, but I saw why this would seem ridiculous to them, and I think it is largely because Christianity has promoted the Bible as a sort of magic book that is the standard for what's true and what isn't rather than presenting it as a book of faith. I don't think the Lee Stroebel/Hank Hanegraaff school of apologetics prepares people to really talk (and think!) about things like this. Instead, it just assures us that we are right.


In other DVC culture, did you see this week's Saturday Night Live? Tom Hanks was hosting and the intro segment was hilarious. "Audience members" including a priest and the Pope were questioning him about the DVC movie, finally culminating in a cast member dressed as Jesus who stood up for this exchange (slightly paraphrased):

Jesus: I've seen your movie and I forgive you.
Hanks: You forgive me for making The DaVinci Code?
Jesus: No, I haven't seen The DaVinci Code. I'm talking about The Terminal. I forgive you for making The Terminal.

I was ROFL, as they say.

Christ and Justification

As is often the case, there is some good theological discussion going on over at Without Authority, stemming from Thomas' post of some thoughts on Eberhard Jüngel's view of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification,

Most recently, in the comments on that post, D.W. has questioned the influence that Tuomo Mannermaa and the new Finnish interpretation of Luther have had on the JDDJ and whether Lutherans should be willing to accept the Finnish interpretation at all.

As I said there, I am a big fan of the JDDJ. I also happen to be quite intrigued by the Finns' proposal, not just as it relates to Luther but also as it relates to Lutheranism as a way of thought. I think it's possible that they go too far in attributing the views they do to Luther, but quite apart from whether Luther believed what they claim, the ideas themselves are quite interesting and useful.

In one of the posts on Pontifications that turned Thomas' attention to the JDDJ and the question of justification, the Pontificator quotes John Henry Newman as asking, "what is it in a man, which God seeing there, therefore calls him righteous?"

I think there's a reflex temptation in Protestantism to give "faith" as the answer to this question. This precise answer caused a lot of problems in American Lutheranism during the predestination controversy at the end of the 19th century. But historically, Lutheranism knows better. We confess that we are saved by an alien righteousness, not because of anything which is in us. We confess that "Christ is our righteouesness," which necessarily means that faith is not.

And so, in answer to Newman's question, "what is it in a man, which God seeing there, therefore calls him righteous?" I think a good Lutheran answer is, "It is Christ!" (Interestingly, Newman gives the same answer: "This is really and truly our justification, not faith, not holiness, not (much less) a mere imputation; but through God’s mercy, the very Presence of Christ.")

But the difficulty lies in the fact that I was willing to accept Newman's question at all. I might just as well have said, "There is nothing 'in a man' which God seeing there therefore calls him righteous. It is all about Christ." The very question smacks of infused righteousness, and sets off ancient Lutheran trip wires. But is this really essential? I wonder if there isn't a danger of leaning on the extra nos formulation so much that we, ironically, separate ourselves from Christ.

The categories of infused righteousness and imputed righteousness are dusty artifacts of medieval theology, and the fact that we continue to drag them around may itself be a barrier to making progress in understanding the mystery of justification.

They key insight of the Reformation was NOT that we are saved by imputed righteousness. The key insight of the Reformation was that Christ is our righteousness, and I find Mannermaa and the Finnish school to be exploring this idea in a thoroughly Lutheran way.

In Support of Immigrants

I would guess that about a third of the people I work with are immigrants. All of them are certainly in this country legally. About half are upper-middle class white-collar workers. The other half are service workers at our facility. So today, as immigrants throughout Oregon (and other parts of the country I believe) were proclaiming a "day without immigrant workers," I was very eager to see what the workplace would be like. Can you guess?

I didn't notice any conspicuous absences among the white-collar crowd, but the cafeteria (which is run by a fairly progressive outside vendor) was running with a skeleton crew AND was serving all the food on paper plates. There was no one to wash the dishes.

Having grown-up in a community that made the ELCA look as culturally diverse as it wishes it were, I really value the diversity in my workplace and in my daughters' school. And it pains me to see America deciding that we need to clamp down our borders and only let "useful" people in.

I actually saw a newscast where "people on the street" were claiming that migrant workers from Mexico posed a threat to national security!

On Lutheranism

The Lutheran Zepher asks, "What does it mean to be a Lutheran?"

Let me first answer, "Why am I a Lutheran?"

The first and most basic answer is that I'm a Lutheran because my grandparents were Lutheran. I was baptized into Lutheranism when I was three months old. My parents didn't drag me to church often, but we had enough of an identification with one congregation that when I wanted to play in the Sunday School basketball league, I knew where to go. And so I also joined the youth group there and went to annual LCA youth retreats (anyone else go to Crossways in Baltimore in the mid 80's?).

I don't remember what they taught me when I was a youth. I went to college with (1) a personal identity as a Lutheran and (2) the conviction that it didn't really matter if I went to church or not (I've learned as a parent that children rarely get the message you intended). So I drifted away from the Church and embraced the liberal arts mantra of the foolishness of Christianity.

But something more than that stuck somewhere deep in my sub-conscious mind. Years later, when I rediscovered Christianity, I checked out a number of denominations and their theology, and the superiority of Lutheranism was clear to me. I'd like to think, based on this, that I chose Lutheranism freely, but I'm a post-modern so I can't do that. I know too well why I chose it.

Still, regardless of what has led me to be a Lutheran, I really do like it, and so I'll return to the original question, "What does it mean to be a Lutheran?"

Obviously, what I've said to this point has some relevance to that. Being a Lutheran is something that gets into your blood and stays there. It's not just like being handed a hat that you continue to wear your whole life. It shapes you. It makes you who you are. Being a Lutheran makes you a Lutheran.

And so, for me, what it means to be a Lutheran is mostly about the way you see God. While Lutheranism can be gathered up into a tidy set of doctrines, I think it's more about a sort of intuitive feel that you develop toward Christianity. I suspect that a lot of Lutherans can't (or at least don't) even articulate precisely what this means, but when you hear something said about God, you can respond "No, that's not right!" or "Yes, that's the Gospel!" I think this is why I came back to Lutheranism. It's where I recognized the Gospel.

So what is this "je ne sais quoi" of Lutheranism? I think it's about seeing Christ as one who sets us free. We can make definitions about Law and Gospel or about Justification by Faith Alone or what have you, but if we don't see that Christ is setting us free, we aren't Lutheran.

I'm a theology geek, and I'd love to add something about the Theology of the Cross and God always coming down to us and so forth. And I think those are requisite elements of Lutheran theology, but I don't think all Lutherans are theology geeks (there's a chance I'm wrong about that), and I think the essence of Lutheranism is simpler than that.

I think there's something to the German nomenclature of Lutherans calling themselves "evangelische." Lutheranism, at its heart, is nothing more than a deep-seated passion for the Gospel, the good news that Christ sets us free.

A Human King

One of the most surprising things I found in Luise Schottroff's book on the parables was her translations including the phrase "a human king", as in Matthew 22:2, "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to the reality in the following story of a human king who made a wedding supper for his son" (a translation of Schottroff's German translation).

I'm pretty sure the bit about "may be compared to the reality in the following story" is paraphrase on Schottroff's part, and simply there to emphasize what she takes "may be compared" to mean. So I was also skeptical about "a human king." I thought this too must be a gloss. Checking a number of translations I found "a king" or "a certain king" but no "human king."

However, as you may recall, I am trying to learn Biblical Greek, one of the chief benefits of which is I it gives me confidence to look at the Greek text and see what's there. So I did. And at Matthew 22:2, I found "anthropo basilei." Hmmmm.

Now I know that a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing, but in my limited Greek vocabulary, I do know both of these words -- human and king.* What's more, I'm told that word order in Greek conveys emphasis rather than meaning. So if "anthropo" is possibly being emphasized, why is it dropped from most translations?

My guess is that most translators think it's unnecessary. Of course this is a human king. What other kind of king would it be? Well, in most interpretations it would be God.

But, what if the king in this parable isn't meant as a picture of God, just as the judge in the parable of the persistent widow wasn't a picture of God?

This is a prime example of the traditional intpretation being a horror show. Is this really a parable about how God will kill and torture those who insult him by refusing his invitation? Surely a human king might do that, but God?

We've touched now on the mystery of hell. This parable certainly seems to suggest something about hell, but I don't think we must see God as choosing to destroy those who reject his call like a monarch throwing a temper tantrum.

The parable speaks very clearly of how people disregard the invitation to God's feast. We make light of it. We go about our business. And even if we "go to the banquet" we may not take it seriously (the guest without a wedding garment). All these things, Jesus tells us, are going to get us into serious trouble. This is, I suppose, more a starting point for reflection than an interpretation.

I must also mention here Luise Schottroff's critique of the "ecclesiological" interpretation. There's a temptation here to anti-Jewish interpretation. It sees those first invited as the Jews, and those who subsequently go to the banquet as the Christian Church. Because those "first" invited rejected the invitation God "sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city." Some would even say that the author of Matthew took this slant and interjected this message into Jesus' parable.

Against such interpretations we must ask, who are "those who have been invited"? Are the Jews "those who have been invited" while the Gentiles are those in the street? I don't think so. It seems to me that "those who have been invited" is a broad and inclusive term.

Who is invited to the wedding feast? All are invited! This is the very heart of the Gospel. And if the parable tells of a two-part invitation, it is only so it can teach us of two perspectives of the invitation. I also agree with Schottroff that it we would be missing Jesus' point to limit our understanding of those who accept the invitation to Christians. To say otherwise is to reduce the Gospel to a mere transaction. The Gospel is surely bigger than that.

Out of Touch with the Blog World

I've been mostly out of touch with the blog world for the last couple of weeks. Besides not posting on my own blog, I've not kept up with the many quality blogs I usually read. Has anybody posted an encapsulation of the best of what's going on recently?

This week I went to Las Vegas for my neighbors' wedding. Most people get married in Vegas with just themselves and Elvis, but my neighbors invited lots of people. I love weddings, and this one, performed by a "ship's captain" on one of the boats at Treasure Island was fun, even if missing a bit of the sanctity of marriage.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who have continued to drop by in my absence. It turns out that some pretty good conversation developed in the unjust judge comments while I was away.

The Unjust Judge

This and a few other parables unique to Luke's gospel stand out as daring examples. It seems so impious to use an unjust judge as the centerpiece of a story to teach us about God. Who would dare it? Yet for this very reason, this parable offers insight into all the parables. It offers insight into the nature of parables.

First, despite the traditional name of the parable, the unjust judge isn't the centerpiece of this story, the widow is. Yet, by Jesus' own words we see that what we learn about God in this parable, we learn from the unjust judge.

The parable is quite clear and the application is clearly specified in both introduction and conclusion. Even so, because of the daring juxtapostion of God with the unjust judge, some interpreters have balked at the interpretation. For example, Thomas Keating (following, I believe, Bernard Brandon Scott) suggests that Luke has misapplied the parable and that it is really the widow who Jesus intends to use as the figure for God. As much as I like that idea, it isn't what the text says.

The key is this: just because the unjust judge in the parable corresponds to something Jesus is teaching about God, we need not apply all of what the parable tells us about the judge to God. This is what scholars mean when they emphasize that parables aren't allegories. For instance, while the parable surely teaches that God will answer when we persistently pray, it absolutely does not teach that God only answers to get us to be quiet. I think most of us intuitively understand that about this parable, so it serves as a useful starting point for thinking about the other parables.

The other interesting thing about this parable is that it pictures a widow asking for justice. The Old Testament prophets are constantly railing against people who refuse to give justice to widows and orphans. Because these weakest members of society are denied justice, God will act.

Imagine how different the message of this parable would be if it were about a teenager pleading with her father to buy her an iPod! But that isn't the sort of image it presents, and so I must adjust what it teaches me about prayer accordingly. Jesus says, "And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night?" This parable doesn't promise that God will grant me a comfortable life, it promises that if I pray for justice in the world, God will answer.