There have been a couple of discussions recently that have had to do essentially with the clash between the biblical narrative and the sort of ‘liberal’ values and sensibilities that are often shared by the emerging church (see ‘Getting frustrated by An Emergent Manifesto of Hope’ and ‘Belief in traditional Christianity’). My argument has been that the emerging church has not yet really addressed the texts with sufficient seriousness or imagination and should certainly think twice before consigning large parts of the biblical narrative to the cutting room floor.
In response to some challenging comments from Paul Hartigan with regard to Philippians 2:5-11 I want to give some thought to the relation between the weakness represented by the cross and key historical events that I think the New Testament foresees as decisive and critical acts of God. We are barely scratching the surface here, but I hope this will go some way towards illustrating the point that many of the moral and theological problems highlighted in these discussions have been exacerbated by a faulty reading of the texts and might even be resolved by a better understanding of how the texts interact with history.
The conception of the divine Jesus in Phil. 2:5-11 is indeed the way I should want to understand God- a God of weakness rather than power. This is the way Bonhoeffer conceived God in his final period in prison and the idea receives profound and radical treatment at the hands of Simone Weil.
I think the significance of Phil. 2:5-11 is not simply that it makes weakness and humiliation the path to exaltation or divinity - so that for us the character of God is essentially defined by the Jesus story. We also need to understand how this confessional statement is made in opposition to the deification of a human figure who imagined that equality with God was indeed something to be grasped. The point is that Christ does not take the path of the blasphemous imperial figure who opposes the saints of the Most High, who will ‘exalt himself and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak astonishing things against the God of gods’ (Dan. 11:36). He is given the name which is above every name because he first humbles himself, taking the form of a servant. In simple terms, Christ is Lord and not Caesar because he took the path of weakness and suffering.
You will recall in our previous discussion on this point that I could not see how this idea of God could be consistent with Jahweh’s interventions on earth in pursuit of his own purposes. It also seemed to me that your conception of the AD 70 destruction of Jerusalem as being divine judgement on Israel recapitulates this God.
Once we take this polemical context into account, I think we can see that it is precisely by way of weakness that God pursues his ‘political-religious’ purposes: first, the coup d’état by which Jesus is made ‘king’ in the place of the wicked tenants, the corrupt shepherds, the chief priests and elders of Israel; secondly, the concrete vindication of the community in Christ over the powers of Roman imperialism.
Given, on the one hand, the theological conviction that God will remain faithful to his promise to Abraham to preserve a righteous people amidst the nations of the earth, and on the other, the historical fact of the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 and the eventual victory of the church over Greek-Roman paganism, it is not surprising that the early church put 2 and 2 together and concluded that these events were signs of God’s active intervention in history.
How were they not going to think that the destruction of the temple was a judgment on a ruling elite that had made it a ‘den of robbers’? How were they not going to believe that God would sooner or later overthrow a political system that deified its ruler and persecuted the saints of the Most High? As Paul says in Romans 16:20, ‘The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.’ Jerusalem fell. Rome fell. How would the early church not have interpreted these events, which were so critical for its own identity and future, theologically - that is, as acts of judgment? This was the world in which they had to make sense of their trust in Jesus.
We also have to take into account the fact that when the Old Testament tells stories of political-religious crisis, it attributes the salvation of the people to the suffering of a righteous community in Israel - the suffering servant of Isaiah 53 in the context of the exile and the oppressed saints of the Most High in Daniel 7 in the context of the crisis provoked by Antiochus Epiphanes.
Jesus foresaw the war against Rome and the destruction that would result. He saved Israel by anticipating that destruction, which he would have understood as a manifestation of the ‘wrath of God’, in his own body. He deliberately took upon himself the story of the servant who suffers because of the transgressions of the people and the story of the Son of man against whom the Gentiles make war, knowing that these archetypal figures provided the key to unlocking the door of Israel’s captivity. That act of self-giving, a sacrifice for the sins of the people, determined the ‘Way’ that the community in him would have to follow if they were to survive the coming crisis.
This, I think, is the prior eschatological narrative out of which we may construct our more abstract theologies of the weakness of God. The New Testament tells the story of how the people of God is saved from destruction through the faithfulness of Jesus to the point of death. This is an act of powerless on Jesus’ part, but historically it brings about a radical transformation of the circumstances and status of the people of God which cannot be reduced to spiritual terms.
The New Testament conception of Jesus’s power is puzzling to me. He heals the sick, raises the dead, reads men’s minds, manipulates the events that lead to his suffering, commands the elements- all supernatural or divine powers. On the other hand, there are also the suggestions that Jesus is a servant, the least of all, the washer of feet. He refuses to use his powers in pursuit of Jewish national interests or against the Romans, his confrontation with the devil in the desert is a stand-off (would Jahweh have done that?), he declines to call on the legions of angels to protect him from those who want to kill him.
I would suggest that the way to understand this puzzle is to make a distinction between the restoration of the community and the means by which that restoration will be achieved. When Jesus heals a sick person, it is a prophetic sign that the kingdom of God is at hand, that forgiveness of sins is available for Israel, that the people is being restored to wholeness. But the sign of restoration is not the means by which it is achieved. Salvation for Israel is to be found through a narrow gate and along a difficult path that leads to life - again that is at the heart of the prophetic vision, at least as Jesus reinterprets it. Israel will be saved from the powerful by the powerlessness of those who trust God.
Re: The divinity of Jesus and the weakness of God
The most common way I've heard this expressed is something like this—when Jesus first came, He came as a servant. His parents were low-born but of the kingly line, his place of birth was not a palace, his life was not remarkable for things common to royalty. Even He Himself said that He "did not come to be served, but to serve". Near the beginning of Revelation, John writes of seeing him "as a lamb that had been slain", which seems to indicate the relation between Christ as the ultimate sacrifice for sin.
The language of the second coming, though, is different. Again in Revelation, John sees Him on a war horse, crown, and with the title "King of Kings and Lord of Lords". In this coming, He seems to be coming as the King, not as a servant.
Concerning Israel's salvation, I guess I would point a passage in Zechariah 12, where the prophet says that at a certain time God would pour on them a spirit of grace and supplication, when they look to Christ the one they had pierced, and repent. The language of Zechariah seems to indicate this would occur at a time of very intense conflict.
Concerning weakness, I think it was Paul who made received the message from the Father that "my (God') strength is made perfect in weakness", and Pauls concludes that "when I am weak, then I am made strong". Perhaps one way of seeing that has to do with faith—we trust God more in our weak areas then in what we think are our strengths.
I don't know how much those thoughts are helpful. Perhaps they're simply some observations.
Weakness and power
Andrew
My argument has been that the emerging church has not yet really addressed the texts with sufficient seriousness or imagination and should certainly think twice before consigning large parts of the biblical narrative to the cutting room floor.
I agree with this, in a way. But is the enterprise merely to rescue the texts from difficulties or is it to arrive at a more authentic understanding of them. If what we are doing is merely a rearguard action, then…………?
There are, it seems to me, two broad sorts of problems with the intervention of God in earthly affairs, as described in the scriptures.
The first problem is about what God has done in history: how are we to make sense of the bellicose and vengeful God who so often appears in the Old Testament and of whom there is an echo in the New Testament?
The second problem is about what God has not done. Why, if God has the power to intervene in our earthly affairs, has he stood idly by while people have had to endure the most appalling suffering?
In my earlier comment I suggested that Philippians 2:5-11, by identifying the weakness of Christ in the world, allows us to understand why God does not intervene in catastrophes such as Auschwitz- in other words I was addressing the second kind of problem.
If I understand you correctly, your comments relate only to the second half of the first kind of problem: namely, the exercise of divine power as it appears in the NT; and in particular how we might understand the AD 70 destruction of Jerusalem as God’s judgement on Israel.
You suggest that Philippians 2:5-11 is an implicit contrast between the divine status grasped illegitimately by Caesar and the divine status to which Christ was entitled but which he declined.
Christ humbles himself by taking on the role of the Isaiahan suffering servant. However his willingness to suffer, even to death, paradoxically leads to his exaltation as Lord. You go on to say that Christ’s Lordship over those who had opposed him was taken by the early Christian community as having been revealed in the destruction of Jerusalem and subsequently in the fall of Rome.
You conclude
“This… is the prior eschatological narrative out of which we may construct our more abstract theologies of the weakness of God. The New Testament tells the story of how the people of God is saved from destruction through the faithfulness of Jesus to the point of death. This is an act of powerless on Jesus’ part, but historically it brings about a radical transformation of the circumstances and status of the people of God which cannot be reduced to spiritual terms.”
So Christ is weak in the sense that he suffers but this has the paradoxical result that the Christian community’s material circumstances and place in the world changes.
The advantage of your interpretation is that it explains how God is a God of weakness but also a God of power
I have several questions
1. I cannot find anything in Philippians 2:5-11 which implies a contrast between Jesus as divine of right and Caesar as divine illegitimately- or indeed any reference to Caesar at all.
2. You avoid saying that Christ’s suffering led to the destruction of Jerusalem and subsequently in the fall of Rome- you say only that that was the way it was interpreted by the early Christian community. If so, I cannot see that this line of thinking can establish God as a God of power in the world
Paul
Re: Weakness and power
Well, obviously the latter, though 'authentic understanding' cannot be reduced to 'exact interpretation' - it is an art rather than a science, a conversation rather than a conclusion. I am still confident that an 'authentic understanding' will resolve - or at least reframe - many of the difficulties. But one of the advantages of a narrative theology is that the objectionable stuff can - and should - be left in the narrative. I tend to see it as a matter of integrity that we do not disown the stories of a 'bellicose and vengeful God' - they are somehow (and I don't have particularly good explanations of how) part of the story that makes sense of Jesus.
I'm not sure myself how to connect Auschwitz with the weakness of God theme as it is developed Philippians 2:5-11. I can see that there is the potential for a connection, but I see Paul's passage as relating primarily to how God's people deal with the temptation to respond aggressively or militantly or politically to the challenge of an 'imperial' ideology. Perhaps there is a sense in which we learn to be servants for the sake of others, vicariously, so that the people in Christ mediates the weakness and suffering of God to others. This demands more thought.
The argument about Christ and Caesar in Philippians 2:5-11 is admittedly a little speculative, but I think it makes a lot of sense within the eschatological narrative of the New Testament. I have written a brief commentary on the passage, though it needs developing. Perhaps it can be discussed there.
With regard to your second question, I don't think it makes sense to say that Christ's suffering led to the destruction of Jerusalem. If AD 70 was God's final judgment on temple-based Judaism, it is because the law condemned a disobedient people - that is part of Paul's argument in Romans. Christ's suffering - the faithfulness of Jesus - led to the emergence of a new community that would survive, first, the opposition of official Judaism and, secondly, the hostility of paganism as it sought to fulfill the Isaianic vision of the inclusion of Gentiles in the worship of YHWH.
Perhaps my earlier comments were misleading, but the point is that the early church gained these victories over its 'enemies' not through force but through the sort of faithfulness to death (and a love for enemies) that is modelled in the story about Jesus (as told, for example, in Phil. 2:5-11). That is, in the first place, an eschatological narrative - as I said before. But I see plenty of scope for drawing broader conclusions from it for our theology or theodicy.
Re: Weakness and power
Andrew
The issue as I see it is how to understand the apparent inactivity of God in the face of great evils like Auschwitz.
If we say that God could have intervened but did not we turn God into a monster. Alternatively we can say that God could not intervene but this threatens God’s status as God (because it limits him); and as well seems completely inconsistent with the picture of God in the Old Testament and to a lesser extent the New Testament.
I interpreted you as trying to develop an understanding of the scriptures, or at least the NT, which shows Christ as weak, suffering, in some sense unable to intervene in the world; but whose patient suffering has the paradoxical effect of causing the triumph of the Christian community over its enemies.
However in your latest comment you seem to be deny any connection between the two
Since you also look on AD 70 as God’s intervention in the world, by way of judgement on temple-based Judaism, I do not see how this line of thinking helps with the problems outlined above.
Paul
Re: Weakness and power
I have to stand with Paul on this one. Andrew, this is where Walter Wink’s interpretation of AD 70 as the inevitable fruit of an ideology that seeks the way of redemptive violence makes more sense. Wink, of course, interprets the cross as an event that exposes “The Powers that Be” so that they can be seen as absurd and ever-failing in their goals of deliverance through violence.
I can make sense of Auschwitz in this latter paradigm.
Re: Weakness and power
I agree with this, in a way. But is the enterprise merely to rescue the texts from difficulties or is it to arrive at a more authentic understanding of them. If what we are doing is merely a rearguard action, then…………?
While I agree with this comment, more or less, there are some things which, in my opinion, deserve some qualification.
Are their apparent tensions in scripture? Undoubtedly, there are. However since I believe that essentially Christianity makes sense, there is no reason why I should not attempt to make sense of the difficulties. This is how we investigate reality: One makes a hypothesis, a global scheme of understanding, and then tests it against the available data. Different hypotheses will, of course, accommodate various bits of data in ways that are very different. As one test the hypothesis, the data will either fall into place, or it will so obstinately refuse to fit that the hypothesis must modified to accommodate it. Upon modification, all the data must be rechecked to see that it fits within this scheme. I'm not actually certain that this is possible (though I think it might be), but going through the process is one of the things that makes forward motion in natural sciences, theology, philosophy, etc.
To say that Andrew is just trying to make the data fit his hypothesis (or perhaps he would prefer it be called his 'meta-narrative') is absolutely correct. What else should he do? That is how humans experience the phenomena of knowledge.
What we may not do is dismiss his findings on the basis that they fit too well into his overall scheme, when such is a actually the evidence that he has done some smart work. Making sense of one's position is the task of any serious thinker.
The concerns you raise with Andrews position are legitimate (though I tend to agree with him more than you), but the argument that a position is invalid because it works within a persons preconceived way of thinking doesn't carry any epistemological weight. This is how thinking is done.
Of course, I could be reading too much into your statement.
Aaron Christianson
Re: The divinity of Jesus and the weakness of God
The mainstream perspective has always been that the physical stuff in the old testament changed to the spiritual stuff in the new. I have believed this most my life, but if we are true to the text maybe this change never occurred as we have often assumed. There should be continuity, God is the same yesterday, today and forever. Also, as regards judgment on Isreal, lets not forget that in a way they had a huge role to play in their own judgment that was attributed to God. There continous revolting eventually led to their destruction. So things things in heaven and earth play out in a very complex, mysterious and integrated way. But then sometimes the innocent seem to suffer for no apparent reason and God doesnt intervene. I dont know if we will ever understand all this but the best start is being true to the text before being true to our traditional understandings of God and reality like the idea that everything is now spiritual like the past wasnt.
Material and spiritual, old and new
Ryan, I’m with you here. The biblical story, it seems to me, is essentially and consistently the story of the concrete, tumultuous historical existence of a people, created originally in Abraham to embody in its communal life the outrageous notion or dream of a unique creator God. It is always, therefore, the story of a community in the fulness of its createdness, and salvation is in the first place a matter of how that community survives the hazards of rebellion and geopolitics, the crises that threaten its existence as God’s alternative humanity - slavery in Egypt, exile in Babylon, imposed Hellenization under Antichus, Roman occupation of Palestine, or pagan opposition to the emerging churches.
What changes existentially between the Old Testament and the New, I think, is basically the mode in which the community relates concretely to God.: not under the constraints of geography or hierarchy or law, but on a global, indiscriminate, egalitarian basis through the Spirit. This is what we should mean by ‘spiritual’ - not the ontological dualism of matter and spirit, but the recognition of how the Spirit of God has become a gift to the whole people.
The death of Jesus, the weakness & covenant faithfulness of God
In reading Ryan’s comment I traced the thread backwards to one that Andrew made above, as as starting point for my own response:
I understand God’s judgement to operate fairly exclusively within the bounds of or in connection to covenant relationship..
Personally, I don’t believe Adonai’s judgement was quite as directly upon "temple based-Judaism", as Andrew writes, since this can imply an ethnic judgement* that is unbiblical and lacking in grace (though I certainly don’t say that is what Andrew means by it, by any means.)
Rather the judgement was upon a Jewish ‘worldview’ and culture — and only, ultimately, indirectly upon those who clung to it — which refused to look beyond Jewish ethnic status as deserving of grace. The temple had merely become the primary corporate symbol of (even this idolatrous interpretation of) covenant (circumcision the primary individual symbol). How ironic, since the Temple was itself the symbol of Torah, itself a symbol of God’s election and grace. As Wright expresses well, Temple, Torah and circumcision, originally the Creator God’s peculiar gifts to his covenant people, were caught up in a renewal of covenant that demanded a more-true, more faithful, worship — "in spirit and truth" — than was presently being derived from the distorted Jewish culture of the day.
Those who embraced the new covenant of the Jewish Messiah, were liberated from either: the distorted, legalistically-defined, ethnically-centered Judaism, or unfulfilled, pre-Messianic grace-centred Judaism (the prophetic tradition, et al) or Gentile paganism, in order to form part of the new temple: the renewed covenant community of the Creator God. This framework explains the continual emphasis within Acts and the Epistles upon the inclusion of the Gentiles within the covenant community.
Those who would not abandon the distorted view of covenant which they had embraced — which was never God’s view of the Abrahamic, Sinaic or ‘old’ covenant — reaped judgement, as God "gave them over to what they loved," in this case the Temple and the commensurate destruction that accompanied it. Yet to warn them, to deliver them, he sent his beloved Son as their Prophet: to turn them away from their distorted worldview… their warped interpretation of covenant… their unfaithfulness to covenant… their idolatrous embrace of Temple and the other emblems of Torah…
But what of Auschwitz?
If Jesus, as Jewish Prophet, in the mould of, though exceeding the greatness of, Moses (Hebrews 3) embraced weakness as a sign of God’s mercy, then surely we must see that he did this, at least to some extent, for the Jews who suffered in the time of Auschwitz. As he demonstrated to Israel, even the wickedest of wicked principalities and powers cannot overcome God’s covenant faithfulness. Even by death, the covenant faithfulness of God cannot be overcome (“Though I walk through the valley of death…”). Thus, the people of Auschwitz are not those abandoned by ‘God the Monster’, but those for whom Jesus death — and resurrection — take on far deeper meaning than for most others.
I don’t claim a systematic or exhaustive explanation in saying this. These are mere shadows of understanding; overlapping circles which fade away as quickly as a those made by pebbles dropped into a lake… No doubts some will readily point to semantic weaknesses within my argument. Nevertheless, I do believe that if our theology or theodicy cannot or does not seek to embrace Auschwitz, except perhaps with *the mistaken notion that it happened simply because God abandoned the Jews, two millennia ago and that’s all there is to it (with more than a backward glance at Matthew 27.25) then I think we need to turn aside, like Moses did, and look more deeply into the "burning bush" of the Shoah.
shalom,
john
eternalpurpose.org.uk
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