In the closing chapter of JESUS AND THE VICTORY OF GOD, N.T. Wright acknowledges that locating Jesus within his second-temple Jewish world includes the risk of making him irrelevant.
My question for all interested is this. Since Jesus mission was the ushering in of the reign of God, and since for the last 2000 years it is apparent that the lion is not laying down with the lamb, that plowshares are beaten into swords, the nations are not streaming to the mountain of the Lord, and no little child is leading them, doesn’t it make more sense to conclude that the reign of Israel’s God has not begun, and that Jesus in consequence must be regarded as a failure at best, or a false messiah and false prophet at worst? Stuart
The relevance of Jesus
You have to look at the worldwide impact of Jesus and the message he brought in assessing whether or not Jesus has any contemporary relevance. It’s possible to have all kinds of discussions on websites and elsewhere which create an entire world of their own, but a survey of the spread of Christianity around the world today does not indicate failure.
On the other hand, there does need to be some dialogue between on-going experience and observation of what it means to be a follower of Jesus, and the biblical texts, prophetic texts especially. There is not only the issue of what kind of language is being used (metaphorical/literal?), but what kind of events are being described, in what ways did Jesus change the inherited narrative at key points (which Wright describes at some length and in detail), and especially at what stage in a historic continuum do we find ourselves (given that all sides to prophetic interpretation agree that the future shape of things has not yet been reached. The kingdom of God has a past, present and future shape).
This dialogue between experience and theology was taking place even within the biblical texts themselves. Peter had to revise his entire understanding of what defined a Jew in the light of the Jesus events when he had a vision on the roof of Simon the Tanner. His inherited understanding said one thing, his experience of what God was doing told him another.
Things might be confusing were it not for the existential common experience of believers around the world, which is more powerful than the variety of explanatory systems which arise as approximations to defining it. This argues powerfully to me that Christianity is not a linguistic phenomenon based on the shifting sands of words in literary texts, but a power which exists outside of texts, to which the texts nevertheless bear witness.
In the end, it seems to me that those who assert the irrelevance of Jesus (and I appreciate you are merely asking a question) are the very ones who find themselves marginalised.
They will say, "Where is this 'coming' he promised
patience Stuart ;) actually His reign has begun…the Kingdom is within many, and has been through the last 2000 years…changing things for the better within them…and around them… When the Kingdom is shown, by Christians, within and around them, by word and deed and sign…then it has come…there… One day (soon, many believe, for good reason) it will be here in full…the consummation… Every eye will see Him.
The relevance of Jesus
Stuart, it’s a good question. I have a few remarks in addition to Peter’s comments.
1. The problem of irrelevance created by the recovery of Jesus’ historical context is a real one and is not helped by the fact that Wright hasn’t yet properly followed the historical narrative through to the point at which the prophet from Galilee becomes the image of the living God. A narrative theology cannot stop arbitrarily at AD 70.
2. I’m not sure that the sort of irrelevance that Wright had in mind, however, is to be explained in terms of the failure of the kingdom. Wright’s argument is rather to the contrary - that the coming of the kingdom of God was more or less fulfilled in the war against Rome and the return of YHWH as king to a renewed Zion in the Spirit.
3. I would suggest that Isaiah draws on the motif of a new creation (11:6-9; 65:25) in the first place in order to describe the historical restoration of Israel following judgment. The language is therefore figurative (as Peter points out), but within biblical thought as a whole it reflects the hope that in the end there will be a new creation from which wickedness and death are finally banished.
4. But the kingdom language in the New Testament also draws on another Old Testament motif - the transfer of dominion or sovereignty from an aggressive and blasphemous political power to the oppressed saints of the Most. This is Daniel’s vision in the night: the fourth beast that made war on the saints is destroyed and the kingdom is given to ‘one like a son of man’ (Dan.7). I think that Jesus appropriates this vision to himself and to the situation of Israel under Roman occupation: he represents or embodies righteous Israel which will suffer but eventually be vindicated. Through the faithful suffering of those who trust God, who follow the path of Christ, the oppressor (Rome, Caesar, Nero, whoever) is overthrown, the nations that conspired against the Lord and his anointed are defeated, and YHWH is made king over his people. (This, obviously, is a rather different telling of the story to that alluded to by maz.)
5. This ‘salvation’ of Israel is interpreted in Isaianic terms: it is a restoration that anticipates the ultimate renewal of creation, the people of God are a ‘new creation’. In that sense Isaiah’s language can be read metaphorically, but the very existence of the ‘church’ should be a prophetic sign of a very literal renewal of creation that is still to come (cf. Revelation 21-22).
Relevance of Jesus continued
I’m interested in your comments in your first point above, Andrew. Especially that Wright hasn’t “properly followed the historical narrative through to the point at which the prophet from Galilee becomes the image of the living God.” You suggest that this is a development through the history of Jesus - that at some point (the implication being that it’s after A.D.70), Jesus becomes the image of God, from being the prophet of Galilee.
I’d have to wade through ‘Jesus and the Victory of God’ to check this out - but I’ll assume you have done that. There is quite a bit in Wright’s shorter works (Eg a whole chapter in ‘The Challenge of Jesus’) which argues for Jesus’s self-identification with Jahweh through the course of his earthly ministry, and I guess this is similar to the point made in ‘Jesus and the Victory’ - eg that Jesus enacts JHWH’s return to the temple, and in doing so identifies himself with JHWH.
For me, the key to the whole issue is the extended way in which Jesus acts as a substitute temple, and in the granting of forgiveness of sins, healings, deliverances, cleansings etc, does what the temple was supposed to do, but more or less includes all the categories of people who were excluded from temple worship by the holiness code. In this he rewrites the code itself, and presents himself as the true temple, the place where heaven and earth met, the presence of God was experienced etc. Hence the reality of God in himself being written all over the gospels.
But this is me, not Wright. (And a little help from Jeffrey John).
In the meantime, how do you see things? Do you visualise a process by which Jesus assumed the ‘image of God’ - which led up to and went beyond A.D.70? Or am I misreading your comments?
Prophet from Galilee, image of God
Morning, Peter - so how’s the sabbatical going?
My statement about the historical development of Jesus from prophet to image of God was ambiguous, if not misleading. Historically we can only really say that people’s understanding of him developed over time - though having said that, there is certainly a narrative about Jesus that includes moments of appointment, vindication, exaltation, enthronement, etc. Perhaps the point here is that we need to think in terms of a narrative rather than ontological/metaphysical christology.
The question then is whether that (apocalyptic?) narrative can account for the high christology of, for example, Colossians 1:15-20. Wright’s Christian Origins project has only got as far as the resurrection (I’m sure he has touched upon the matter elsewhere: The Climax of the Covenant? What St Paul Really Said?). I think it would be very interesting to ask from a historical point of view about the experiences and reflection that gave rise to the affirmation that the ‘Son’ to whom the kingdom was given (Col.1:12-13 - Dan.7 is in the background!) is the image of the invisible God, first-born of all creation, first-born of the dead.
I suppose we could say that the entry into Jerusalem anticipates this up to a point - Jesus implicitly claims to be the one to whom the kingdom will be given and through whom the people of God will find peace. But insofar as this was a prophetic statement about what YHWH was about to do, couldn’t Jeremiah, or any Jew for that matter, have done the same thing? I think the self-identification with YHWH can be overstated here.
The argument about the temple is also limited. The temple was the place of God’s dwelling and the means of reconciliation but it was in no sense identified with God - so God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. But those who identify themselves with Jesus are also the temple of God, the place where God dwells on earth through his Spirit. That does not identify us with God.
Prophet or God?
The sabbatical seems to have gone out of the window. There’s so much in your post to mull over, Andrew. Just on the temple issue - there is a distinction between Jesus’s self-identification with the temple, and that of his followers, the church; the church can only be the temple where Jesus is the chief cornerstone. So we are taken back again to the question of who Jesus was.
I personally don’t think it is possible to differentiate between a divine power acting through Jesus, and the person of Jesus himself - insofar as he took on himself the functions of the temple. Certainly this was how John saw it - Jesus as the glory of God dwelling amongst us - the key verb ‘dwelling/tabernacling’ drawing attention to the temple/tabernacle as the place where the presence of God was manifested.
I would say the same of Jesus’s ‘triumphal’ entry, enacting YHWH’s return to the temple. I’m not sure a prophet would have presumed to act the role of God.
I doubt if a prophet or anyone else would have had the authority which presumed to adopt the temple role; nor to rewrite the holiness laws; nor set himself up as Lord of the sabbath; nor to forgive sins. Jesus said ‘Now one greater than Jonah/Solomon is here.”; but the question is, who was it?
The issue intensifies when taken to John’s gospel, where Jesus’s divine self-identification is unmistakeable.
I identify with the narrative approach; I just think there has to be too much cutting and pasting of the gospel accounts if the divinity of Jesus in the pre-exaltation phase is excluded.
Even Jesus’s cosmological significance is there in the gospels: the ruler of the wind and waves etc.
Even if you differentiate
Even if you differentiate between Jesus as temple and church as temple, I don’t see how identification with the temple equates with identification with God. I agree that John offers a different perspective - but it is his perspective, constructed with theological hindsight, not Jesus’ perspective.
What do you mean, exactly, when you talk about a ‘divine power acting through Jesus’? Is it the Spirit which came upon him at his baptism? But every believer is baptized in the Spirit and may, in principle, perform the same ‘signs and wonders’. Is it the sort of intimacy and unity of purpose that we see in John’s gospel? But the intimate relation of a child to a father is open to all of us in the Spirit (Gal.4:6-7).
Why shouldn’t a prophet symbolically act the role of God? A prophet speaks the words of God - John the Baptist prophesied verbally the return of YHWH to Zion. The Old Testament prophets in all sorts of ways acted out symbolically what God was about to do in Israel. Even I might act out the love of God towards a person by embracing them.
I do not wish to say that Jesus did not regard himself as merely a prophet. I am probably overworking the apocalyptic argument at the moment, but I certainly think that he took upon himself a unique eschatological role which he interpreted for his followers in different ways, one being the figure of replacing the temple with his own body.
I am also very interested in how within the New Testament this eschatological role became overlaid with other christological motifs. To what extent this overlay has its origins in Jesus’ own self-awareness is always going to be difficult to say. I don’t feel that this is a matter of cutting and pasting in order to exclude some notion of the divinity of Jesus from the gospel narrative. It is for me a question of understanding in what sense it is appropriate (historically as well as theologically) to think of Jesus as God. What I don’t want to do is over-simplify or distort Jesus’ self-understanding in the interest of preserving later christological formulations.
The stilling of the storm is interesting (Mark 4:37-41). There are, it seems to me, unmistakable echoes of Psalm 107:28-29, which is a psalm about the restoration of scattered Israel following judgment. I would suggest that the cosmological theme is less important in the story of the storm than the eschatological. Clearly Jesus does what YHWH does in Psalm 107 - he at least acts on behalf of YHWH, he is anointed. But just as with the entry into Jerusalem or the cursing of the fig tree the real point of the event may have been prophetic. This is not Jesus demonstrating his divine power to rescue the disciples; this is Jesus foreshadowing what God would do for Israel.
Jesus's vocation as YHWH
If I were to identify just one aspect of Jesus’s temple-identification which suggested his divinity, it would be the effortless authority with which he contravened and ‘rewrote’ the levitical holiness code. For instance the healing of the haemmorhaging woman: instead of uncleanness being transmitted to Jesus (which should also have resulted in her being stoned), healing (cleanness) was transmitted to the woman. My point is: who had the authority to do these things? Within a 1st century Jewish worldview, the authority could only be either demonic and blashemous, or divine. Nowhere is Jesus presented as a mere agent of YHWH. Nowhere does he attempt to ascribe the source of authority to YHWH and not himself. On the contrary, he seems to encourage the focus on himself rather than on a YHWH who was distinct from himself.
The point seems to me clear: in reconstituting the people of God by gathering them around himself, and providing for them through himself what had previously only been available through the presence of God and God-ordained means at the temple (in the ways I summarised in the previous post), Jesus was pursuing a vocation as none other than YHWH himself. His triumphal entry and judgement on the temple continued the theme of either supreme blasphemy or divinity.
I agree that we should seek to avoid reading into Jesus’s own self-awareness the theological (christological?) formulations of a later age. It’s here that I find Wright very helpful: that Jesus’s sense of vocation was worked out through Jewish symbols, not later metaphysical Greek substitutes. It’s here that the temple significance is so telling; it accompanied Jesus throughout his earthly ministry, culminating in his pronouncement of judgement on the Jerusalem temple. In the imagery of the passover meal Jesus enacted his own sacrifice and deliverance, accomplished on the cross - again, paralleling, but contradistinguished from, the Jerusalem temple where the passover lambs were offered.
Having said all this, I’m actually rather uncertain of the precise line of thought you are aiming for. If the aim is to identify a narrative which forms the basis of a worldview, within the historical terms of 1st century Judaism, I can’t see why the divine nature of Jesus should not be part of that. In fact, I think the evidence is compelling that it should be part of the narrative. Given that this divine nature is worked out in 1st century Jewish thought forms, I don’t really see the objections.
As regards the stilling of the storm, isn’t it rather striking that the Jesus in Mark 4:35-41 is identifiable with the YHWH of Psalm 107:28-29? One might go further and identify other things Jesus did with works of YHWH in the psalm, eg the Gerasene healing, Mark 5:1-20, with Psalm 107:10-16. To say that Jesus only acted on behalf of YHWH is being rather evasive, and not suggested at all in the text. And whatever levels of significance we can unearth in the story - Jesus is still presented as one who has authority over the elements of the created world, just as he has over sickness, demonisation, infirmity, raising from the dead etc. It’s true that miracles of various kinds had previously been performed by merely human agents, (and were subsequently) and that the miraculous in itself does not prove a divine nature. So for me, it’s what the miracles signified that is compelling, embedded in the context of Jewish thought forms and belief.
And it is writing
But the point about these linkages is not some autobiography, even if Jesus did act in the fashion of the scriptures he knew. It is that afterwards, to the Christian community, the writing was done to legitimise him as Messiah, by making these connections backwards. There is no available memoir, and there is no record comparable with say Muhammad (and certainly with Gandhi, whom we know in recorded detail). The gospels are faith documents that have an appearance of biography in order to make a point. You see this particularly in the details, and in the shift of perspectives that happen in the texts regarding each community being served by these texts.
http://www.pluralist.co.uk
Faith and history
No one’s saying that the gospels are autobiography. I agree that they are the product of subsequent reflection and that they were written from particular points of view and with different objectives. But I don’t see how that makes them ‘faith documents’ rather than historical documents. All historiography is done from a certain perspective and reflects the interests of the community that it serves, but that doesn’t entirely invalidate its output. I would say again that the story of Jesus coheres far better with the worldview and historical circumstances of first century Judaism than the old liberal critique realizes. This is not to say that there is no ‘faith’ perspective - it is a perspective, after all, which the church is called to indwell. But it is not a perspective that is incompatible with a strong sense of the historical realism of the gospels. If you think the details consistently show otherwise, I suggest you start a new thread giving some examples.
Faith & history continued
The kinds of linkages referred to between Mark 4,5, etc and Psalm 107 do seem, from one perspective, to add grist to Pluralist’s mill! The main problem, as I see it, with the kind of ‘reading back’ into the life of Jesus he espouses is that it just runs into too many improbabilities on a historical level. It rests essentially on the perpetration of a fraud - that a cultivated myth which contradicts actual events governs what people have come to believe. Some of the problems with this line of thought have already been suggested on the site in a previous post. They are fairly substantial.
Pluralist is restating in a different way the old split between the Jesus of history and the Jesus of faith of Reimarus, cultivated by various theologians through the 19th century, but tellingly questioned by Albert Schweitzer, whose perspective has been taken up again by N.T.Wright, with different conclusions. From the point of view of historical criticism, it is no longer tenable to accept the old ‘faith/history’ split in the way that Pluralist so unquestioningly seems to do. At least there should be some reference to the problems which have arisen over the old ‘certainties’.
But Pluralist has another agenda, which is the anti-historical (structuralist?) view teasingly suggested in a previous post, that God is dispersed across language. So any attempt to anchor Jesus in history is foreclosed as an a priori.
On the other hand, some discussion of historiography seems to be coming in by the backdoor in the posts - eg that Mohammed and Gandhi can be historically validated in a way that Jesus cannot. I suspect that there is some inconsistency here in applying one set of rules to some cases, but not the other.
I enjoy all the debate that is going on - if it is debate. I don’t get any hint that Pluralist is prepared to concede that viewpoints apart from his own can be entertained, let alone explored (even if they are misconceived - which surely would become apparent by examining them). Then again, maybe we’re all a bit like that.
As regards Psalm 107 and Mark - the other point of view is of course that hints were dropped in earlier texts which found a fulfilment in events surrounding Jesus. The biblical worldview rests on such possibilities. To deny validity to such a worldview would require further discussion of the respective assumptions and merits of other worldviews which were being brought forward to oppose it. That would also be an interesting discussion.
Entertaining
Of course I entertain them, and admit a contradiction. There is one debate of a historical Jesus. That debate is knowing about what he did - if it is possible. Well I agree that:
Jesus coheres far better with the worldview and historical circumstances of first century Judaism than the old liberal critique realizes<Indeed, and it is the worldview that is a faithview that matters. One method of finding out about Jesus is fitting him into a worldview by going about the secondary sources that may indicate what he did preach about and heal about and what he did not, despite the claims of the scripture. But what we do not have is a history in the way that we do with Muhammad and more so with Gandhi. We know what Gandhi did on certain days. We also fit Gandhi into his faithview, a Hinduism heavily influenced by Jainism.
But theology, when it comes to the faithview, and Jesus lived within a faithview… well that is the thing that is dispersed into writing. So history is a writing, of course, but this is because we act culturally. So when it comes to the diary, we have Jesus in a bit of a missing amount of information, which goes into some reconstruction, but when it comes to culture, we have a faithview, and that is about how we look and see and change.
I entertain the possibility of a critical realist faithview. It does not go very far. It is usually based on historical shifts that move away from Jesus the Jew and Jesus the rabbi (which is that cultural world view) to make some sort of cosmic claim about the linear history of the world. I don’t believe it.
http://www.pluralist.co.uk
History, faith and entertainment
‘But what we do not have is a history in the way that we do with Muhammad and more so with Gandhi.’
A carefully qualified statement - but we nevertheless do have a history. All histories are interpretations. I’m not sure, in one sense, that we have any critically unbiased history of Gandhi or Mohammed. Then again, an attempt to be ‘critically unbiased’ is itself introducing a whole range of assumptions, which would need to be identified and weighed. As somebody said, there isn’t a view from nowhere.
One of my main questions about your approach would be that to dismiss the gospels as reliable history because they are theologically reflective is too sweeping. ‘Scripture’ does not mean ‘non-history’, as you imply in your use of the word. To say then that the gospels radically contradicted actual events, and developed a myth which was quite different from those events, runs into huge problems, some of which have been alluded to in previous posts. It’s also part of the somewhat discredited ‘faith/history’ divide which has dogged theology for the past 200 years - and which for long was held to be unquestionable orthodoxy.
Part of your argument seems to rest on an ‘everybody knows this to be true’ assumption. (I notice this in your statement about meteorological phenomena - the assumption that we live within a closed system governed purely by natural laws). These assumptions are in themselves indicative of a worldview. Since postmodernism rests on the recognition of serious shortcomings in the worldview of modernism, which had presented itself as unassailable truth in its time, it becomes less straightfoward to dismiss competing worldviews - such as the biblical worldview.
A worldview is not detached from ‘the world’ because it is held by faith. All worldviews attempt some sort of interpretation of the world ‘out there’, and evaluations of worldviews can be made by looking at the strengths/weaknesses of their interpretations. To some extent that is what is taking place in these conversations. But in a postmodern culture, a worldview which sets itself up as unquestionable truth needs to look around at the ruined edifices of systems which have tried to make that claim in the all too recent past.
More entertainment
Postmodernism does give more breadth, and does expose histories towards stories and does mean we should be careful of grand metanarratives that are subject to change and do not necessarily rule the roost. I think the stance I have is one likely to change in the future, but I doubt it will be changed into the kind of supernaturalism and end of the worldism of Jesus’ time. This remains distant and strange. There is still translation to be done, and interpretation is interpretation. The amount of translation regarding Gandhi is much less. Of course a history of him needs interpretation and context, but it is one that resonates with much else (for example, colonialisation and the reaction of militant Islam through to today), but it starts from a base of knowing the days and dates he did things, and the quotation book I have of his words are very close to his actual words. It is rather different with Jesus - and I do use interpretation of his time to get at a history.
So the faith base that comes with having Jesus as a central figure is bound to be more of an imaginative exercise and more selective and even fictional, in the sense of a good story.
http://www.pluralist.co.uk
Agency, authority and at least
Isn’t this a bit of an overstatement? Isn’t it precisely what ‘Christ/anointed’ means - to be an agent of YHWH? Doesn’t the term ‘Son of God’ designate one who acts or speaks or rules on behalf of YHWH? No first century Jew would have understood these terms as implying identity with YHWH. When Jesus says to the Pharisees that he casts out demons by the ‘Spirit’ or ‘finger’ of God (Matt.12:28; Luke 11:20), doesn’t that suggest some sense of being an agent or instrument of the power of God?
I agree that Jesus acted and spoke with divine authority, but it still seems to me that within the synoptic gospels at least this is an authority that has been bestowed upon him. He is the Son of man to whom all kingdom and authority have been given in anticipation of the eventual victory over the enemies of the people of God.
I’m not saying it isn’t. I’m just not sure how to think of it. I don’t know quite how one moves theologically and historically from the eschatological narrative, shaped critically in my view by the Son of man motif, to simple statements about the ‘divine nature’ of Jesus. No doubt your argument about the temple, about Jesus acting the part of YHWH, will come into play, but as far as the theological enquiry goes, I don’t want to short-circuit the process. We have to understand the narrative properly in order to understand the christology.
Heh, not fair! I did not say ‘only acted on behalf of…’. I said ‘at least acts on behalf of…’. That’s very different.
Messiah, King and God
I had a feeling you’d pick me up on that first statement - but I still think, broadly, it’s true of the synpotics: if we’re looking at the unfolding presentation of Jesus. Your statement that Jesus was, as Christ, solely an agent of YHWH, is not something I see Jesus implying about himself (or being described as such by narrators). That he is guarded about explicitly identifying himself is one of the main characteristics of the synoptics. ‘Son of man’ is a self-description that Jesus uses ambiguously - it is far from being an open reference to his messianic credentials, though that is part of the guessing game we are invited to play. Maybe it is easier to take the view which the narratives ultimately seem to be implying - that Jesus’s self-identification was threefold: Christ/Messiah, King, and God. That fits the data well to me, especially from the perspective of a 1st century Jewish worldview.
Of course, if you jump to John’s gospel, it’s a different matter. You really have to immerse yourself in the ‘later (mythologising) reflections of the church’ view, and push the narratorial interpretation line as far as it will go, to avoid some rather more obvious conclusions that Jesus identified himself with YHWH, and which were certainly understood as such by his hearers, eg John 8:58-59. Which raises the cutting and pasting issue again - which aspects of Jesus’s self-identification (as portrayed by the narrators, of course) are we going to include/omit?
I guess you did cover yourself with Psalm 107 - apologies for the misquotation. But what about the issue - that Jesus takes up so directly and without qualification the YHWH identification? And this is right in line with how biblical allusion operates.
Before Abraham was, I am
If this is an allusion to God’s words to Moses in Ex.3:14, it is again interesting that the narrative context is eschatological: just as YHWH revealed himself to Moses as the one who would rescue the people from their affliction in Egypt (Ex.3:17), so Jesus reveals himself as the one who will save Israel from its sins. The new exodus will be brought about through Jesus, or Jesus reveals God as the one who will again rescue Israel. If this amounts to an identification of Jesus with God, it is still important to note that it arises out of the eschatological narrative. It has to do with revealing the purpose of God - I would hesitate to say that Jesus meant it ontologically or metaphysically as a statement about his divine nature.
I would make the same argument with regard to Psalm 107: the allusion tells us about the intention of God, the eschatological significance of Jesus as Israel’s messiah; it is reading too much into it to draw express conclusions about the divine nature of Jesus - unless we can think of ‘nature’ in narrative rather than ontological terms.
All I want to do is ask how far the historical-eschatological / critical-realist approach will take us in restating a full, authentic and orthodox New Testament theology. At the moment, Peter, I feel that you are trying to jump over some difficulties, but it could equally be the case that I am in danger of not seeing the wood for the trees.
Before Abraham was, I am
Why did the Jews pick up stones to stone him (John 8:59)? Why did they not understand the distinction you are making, between Jesus as messiah, and Jesus as God? Or why did Jesus not make that distinction clear? He probably wasn’t given to careless use of words - especially when it came to YHWH.
The relevance of a worshiped Jesus
I’m not sure if this is the appropriate place to throw this in… but it looks like it might be…
In regard to Jesus’ self understanding and how this applies to YHWH, what think ye of Jesus’ approval in receiving worship? Clearly, he understood that only YHWH be worshiped (LK 4:8), and yet he took this on himself. I don’t recall this area of exploration in “Victoy of God” but I may have missed it alltogether.
del dominus
church vs. the kingdom
A fascinating discussion and getting back to one of the earlier points on the content of Jesus’ kingdom teaching, a reassessment of B. Gerhardson, Memory and Manuscript might be very useful.
That aside, a central problem has always been that the church itself is very uncomfortable with the ethics of the kingdom. Any organization has to be! Most of our theology comes from within the church and as such this discomfort has become institutionalised.
Live to serve : Serve to live
His revolution was an inner one
I hope I’m not just baldly missing the point here, but wasn’t the apparent failure of Jesus to usher in a temporal kingdom also an obstacle to the Jews of His time? The cross offended centuries of their expectations of the Messiah. The Messiah was to come as a conquering hero, raise the flag of a powerful worldly kingdom, and trample the brutal empire of the Romans under his feet. But instead of the Messiah victorious, they saw the Messiah apparently defeated, condemned, beaten and nailed to a cross and left to die.
It’s still tempting to look for Jesus to usher in his kingdom by giving his followers power and authority in this world and smiting our enemies in our time, as many evangelicals here in the U.S. believe. But I personally feel that if we reduce the Savior to a source of earthly victory in the material world, then he is no longer the Jesus of the cross. His revolution was and is an inner one.
Obstacle
Assuming Jesus could live after his death, would it not also have been an obstacle to him? I would say yes.
http://www.pluralist.co.uk
An inner revolution?
The problem with this line of thought, if I’m following you, is that it seems to suggest that the kingdom of God is still an unfulfilled reality - we are still waiting for it to happen, and we are therefore susceptible to the sort of critique levelled by Pluralist. My argument would be that from a NT point of view the coming of the kingdom, like the coming of the Son of man, was closely bound up with ‘victory’ over Rome achieved through the suffering of the messiah and the messianic community, the saints of the Most High. Insofar as this came about through faith - ie. trust in God to deliver and vindicate - rather than through military force, it could be described as an ‘inner’ revolution. But in its scope and effects it was thoroughly external - political. The people of God globally is no longer under another kingdom - the kingdom has been given to Christ and we are free to acknowledge him as Lord.
The question is what are we going to do with it. Jesus has overcome the world, the enemies of the people of God, even in principle death; the satanic power that might once have killed off the whole ‘Christian’ movement has been bound. Now we just need to stop fretting about when the bus is going to come back and pick us up and take us all home and just get on with the work of being God’s people in the midst of the nations of the earth.
a different kingdom.
Surely Jesus taught that the kingdom of G-d is of an entirely different nature to that of earthly kingdoms when he states in John18:36: "My kindom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place".
if we judge his mission in terms of the overthrow of the political oppressor, then we must come to the conclusion that he failed in his mission - which is why i have such a problem with the dominion theology so popular amongst George Bush’s supporters. Jesus subverted and subverts the methodology and values of the current world system by teaching a Kingdom based on love, humility and service. He washed the disciples feet and taught us to do the same.
Maybe such a kindom appears non-existent, foolish or a failure compared to the might of Rome or those in power today. sometimes the wisdom of G-d is foolishness to the rational mind and while i am getting a lot out of the emerging conversation, i feel i need to keep this in mind.
Kingdom and power
My argument is that the kingdom here is speaking about in John 18:36 is - or is analogous to - the kingdom which is given to the Son of man figure in Daniel 7. What Daniel describes in the vision is not a purely spiritual or internal conflict - it is quite literally a ‘war’ between an oppressive political power (specifically the little horn on the head of the fourth beast) and the people of God. The beast is overthrown and the kingdom, etc., is given to saints of the Most High represented by the one like a son of man who comes on the clouds of heaven.
The important point about this kingdom is that it is achieved not through military or political force but - certainly as Jesus retells the story - through faithfulness, self-giving, suffering and death. This is the sense in which it is a very different kingdom - and you are absolutely right to say that Jesus continues to subvert current political systems through self-giving love, humility, weakness, ‘foolishness’, and so on.
But, I would argue, nevertheless, that there was a real historical outcome for the early church: the eventual overthrow of the political-religious system that had oppressed and corrupted Israel, and which so virulently opposed the proclamation of the gospel in the ancient world. I don’t see that Jesus failed in this mission: through his suffering and death he overcame the satanic power that lay behind the imperial cult: Rome did not have the final say, was unable to extirpate the Christain atheists, and in the end collapsed. To put it crudely, in the end Christ as Lord and Saviour won out over Caesar as Lord of Saviour.
What?
You mean via Constantine, repression, the Holy Roman Empire, Byzantium, the Middle Ages. What are you on about? Rome destroyed Jerusalem, it went on, it continued one way or another many hundreds of years.
http://www.pluralist.co.uk
Rome
My argument is that in order to understand New Testament eschatology you have to look at the future from their point of view. As the early believers took the gospel out into the Graeco-Roman world, what most clearly and powerfully opposed them - symbolically, ideologically and politically - was imperial Rome, which made Caesar god, lord and saviour. A crucial part of the early Christian belief system was the conviction that sooner or later the gospel would overcome this opposition. The conviction was drawn, I think, primarily from Daniel’s visionary story about the overthrow of a blasphemous and destructive pagan power and the vindication of righteous Israel. In the end not powerful Caesar would be acclaimed as god, lord and saviour but the crucified Christ.
This is not Rome that became the Holy Roman Empire - I just don’t think the early church was looking that far ahead. It was Rome as it conformed to the outline of the monstrous and sacrilegious power described in Daniel 7, a power that exalted itself above the true God. I agree, though, that there is a dreadful irony in the fact that having won the victory through suffering, the church then dressed itself in the trappings of Roman imperialism.
70 AD The Victory of the Church
I have been following your thought on the importance of 70 AD in the history of salvation. Are you saying that since the church remained faithful to resist Rome, not through violence but by refusing to pick up arms with the Jewish zealots, they in effect defeated Rome? In other words, they were victorious through their faithfulness and endurance much like Jesus. From a narrative perspective, 70 AD was a moment of decision for the church. If they resisted Rome through violence they would have been defeated and the church would have perished. No church, no mission to the world, no us. If they endured, the church would reign over the kingdoms with Jesus. Is this storyline in step with what you are saying?
AD 70 and beyond
Yes, there are plenty of examples of violent or militant messianic movements that ended in brutal suppression by Rome. Jesus set his followers on the only path that would lead to life in the age to come. But this is only half the story. The prophetic or apocalyptic expectation is always that the power by which Israel is judged will itself come under judgment. By AD 70 the church had already moved out into Roman world and faced Rome on different terms - not as a people under judgment but as a holy people that challenged the hegemony of the pagan gods and above all of the Roman imperial cult. Having fled to the hills, so to speak, the church would survive the war of AD 66-70, but would it survive the confrontation with the satanic power that inspired Rome? For the people of God to have a future this enemy of the people of God also needed to be overcome through the faithful witness of those in Christ. My argument is that it is those who suffer as Christ suffered during this period who will reign with him at the right hand of the father.
An Inner Revolution ?
Right, I agree with your approach to Life, above….but where do I read in any Post ( or comment ) ” Well, you know Brother, God said to me yesterday… ” . Spiritual things should be spiritually discerned ; I see very little evidence of certainty on our Site.
We don’t find words like ‘maybe’, ’ perhaps ‘, ‘it could be possible ‘,’ it is uncertain that…’, ’ my tentative opinion is ’ , in the Scriptures.
I’ve seen many more convincing statements being given from a Spiritualist Platform to the gathering than I’ve ever heard coming from a pulpit. In fact ’ Spiritual Gifts ’ seem to be held as a thing of the past.
I think many of our respondents are too ‘sophisticated ’ for their own good. It’s all a head response. If they really believe and know this God why don’t they tell us what He’s telling them! re the Atonement, Heaven, etc.,
I can’t see unbelievers being impressed with the tortuous ramifications of issues like the Atonement, as presented by our intellectual friends ! nor the ” whole of Samaria going in fear of those modern ’ Apostles ! ’ ”
There are still far too many ‘spiritual’ unknowns after 2000 years, for them to take us seriously !
In defence of maybe...
But then we’re not trying to write scripture - we are trying to understand scripture and what it means to be God’s people. The cautiousness reflects a willingness to be taught by the Spirit and by each other.
In any case, scripture as we have it is at certain points a summary of lengthy discussions. For example, at the council in Jerusalem there is ‘much debate’ (Acts 15:7) before Peter stands up and gives an authoritative opinion. Presumably in that debate a wide range of opinions were expressed. Perhaps they were not expressed as tentatively as we postmoderns might like, but equally not every opinion would ultimately have proved correct.
I agree that the Holy Spirit appears to us (on this side of Pentecostalism and the charismatic movement) to have been eclised in the emerging church. In my view, the main reason for this perception is that the Holy Spirit is doing something quite deep in the body of believers that simply doesn’t show up in the form of the traditional gifts of the Spirit - though I would argue that there is a strongly prophetic element to it. The Holy Spirit, I believe, is orchestrating a fundamental and far-reaching renewal of the mind and purpose of the church in the aftermath of Christendom’s collapse.
My hope is that as we move through this process of renewal, we will recover a certain capacity to speak and act ‘authoritatively’ - though that word needs to be carefully defined.
One minor point in conclusion. God has given us minds, intelligence and education. I think it would be a gross offence against his creation not to use those minds to promote wisdom and understanding, as part of the larger work of the church and at all points in dependence on the Spirit who renews our minds.
This is not to say, of course, that we always think well - far from it. But it’s not all a head response. The people who discuss issues on this site have real lives in which they wrestle with all sorts of difficult spiritual, missional, moral and personal challenges at all sorts of levels. They come here to explore the intellectual and credal framework, the worldview, the belief system, the theology within which they do that wrestling - that’s what this site’s for. But we shouldn’t prejudge what God is doing simply on the basis of the filtered content of this site.
Putting our money where our mouth is
I think Ken points to the ‘spiritual yearning’ issue so prevelant today.
People find ideas fascinating but how do you apply them to create an actual spiritual experience for oneself, instead of always having to convert it to some interpretation of the Bible?
It is the two sides of the Church coin. On one side is the actual spiritual reality. On the other is practical everyday administration of the institution, including its mission statement. Business does this all the time as well. Constantly reviewing its goals and objectives, its processes, the output, mechanics, investments… its all quite similar in every civilized intstitution. It demands management by ourselves at some level.
This is the implications of mind culture. As much as we want to reach the ideal that Jesus lived, we are constantly compromised by the environment we have created to survive. To escape it would mean huge insecurities. Everything may fall apart. Consider those who accept Christ as their Savior. Many have their whole lives fall apart as the lies come out to be replaced with Truth. They lose their jobs, divorce, lose friends, become ill. That’s a spiritual thing, accepting the mystery of the Spirit and the Wisdom despite what is obvious and practical to everyone to stay in control of one’s life like everyone else. Letting go of control. What is theology? It is our attempt to get control of the Jesus Story. We don’t want to be manipulated. We want the real thing, and we will use our minds to perceive it. We don’t think it is a major issue because we have a relationship with God and Jesus. They’ll help us figure out the truth with our minds.
But you don’t need the mind to encounter the Truth. Wisdom is just Truth and Love. They are the same things. And events conform all on their own without us being in control, to bring out the meaning of our lives the way God intended. The Bible can echo your personal struggle, but its particular to you. And when your attention is drawn away from yourself into a theologians meaning of the Bible, you can get off-track about your own personal life story. It is ironic that the mind in the Church can be as distracting to our well-being as the secular distractions outside of the Church.
I have noticed in response to some of my posts a disparaging innuendo about ‘esoteric spiritual knowledge.’ It is to defend the practical applications of orthodox theology of Trinitarian Christianity. All we need is the Bible, the Church, God and Jesus. Let’s not complicate matters with spirit world stuff that may be great entertainment for the imagination, but is not tried and true like our theology is.
Yet when you look at the complexity of the debate in theology, it is all ‘esoteric’ but in the mind’s language, converting wisdom into knowledge for the purposes of the institution. The detail is remarkable, but how do you apply all this theory in any practical sense to your life? I understand that Emerging Church is in its embryonic stage, and is trying to sift through 2000 years of theological decipherment of the Jesus phenomenon to get at the kernel of Truth in it all. But at what point does it become the focus off the simplicity of Wisdom and the living Spirit? At what point does it feed the mind more than the spirit?
I am about to do something that my minister father will shreak in horror about. I am going to quit my job and not seek another one. I am going to pursue full-time what God has Given to me, just as He asked. I will have one, maybe two paycheques to live off of until the money runs out.
This goes against practical theology. We are here and have to live in this world based upon its principles. I have responsibilities to pay for. Does it show love to stress out my entire family? Am I flying off my lid? This is not what God asks of us! We must work, and in that everyday life live the principles of Jesus. In that we find the Spirit, not going off half-cocked because you think God has spoken to you to do something extreme.
Then there is the other side. God is basically saying to me, ‘haven’t I already shown you enough? Haven’t I been patient? You have been through so many impossible situations in your life that all practical knowledge showed you would end in disaster. But they didn’t. Not once. Not twice. How many times? I have shown you the key to the Kingdom, the difference between living from the spirit and living from the mind. The time has come to choose.’
Last night I went for a walk in the forest. The only animal I saw was a snake on the path. Odd I thought. Then I woke up and realized the truth of it. There was the snake in the garden. What do I choose? The security of knowledge, of the practical measures of this world for personal survival? Or the entire garden that has taught me so much since Father came to me out-of-the-blue five years ago? Odd how a Biblical image just appeared at the right time, pertaining to the right question, simply, plainly, without myself trying to effect it. Reality spoke. I could accept its truth or debate it til my grave. Was it real? Or am I mistaken in my interpretation? Or perhaps the snake meant something else? Should I trust the message that formed for me or should I study its implications?
How you respond to what I have just written will tell you where you are at in the civilized balancing act between knowledge and wisdom. Am I nuts? Do I misunderstand? Does it show you how much you trust God by the issues it raises? Could you do it? What are you saying to yourself right now that tells you something about the Spirit in your life now?
Adam and Eve is just a myth to explain Creation to a primitive people. You are civilized. You have to decide. You have free will. Which interpretation of reality do you choose?
Is Jesus relevant? To ask the question shows Jesus has become just another variable in the theological equation. That’s mind thinking.
Is Jesus relevant? The scant information suggests that Jesus had to choose to ‘Fall.’ He chose to go on a forty-day fast in the desert and stay there until almost the point of death. As His body deteriorated, His mind started to play tricks on Him. Everything He had come to know about who He was, was put into the mind-realm of control to survive. You’ve got the power, use it. You can control the world and live happily. You can restore Jerusalem, just like the Torah said. Options. Choices. Jesus resisted the mind even facing self-imposed death. His spirit ballooned and He began His ministry.
The truth of the Fall is that everyone on earth must choose to Fall as well. It is a question of your love and trust of Father. Do you have the courage and the strength to leap, not knowing what will happen, with all conventional knowledge telling you it will be disaster? That kind of step comes from the heart, not the head. It is who you are. It is your soul speaking. The truth of your soul.
Hermeneutics is fun. But when it overpowers who we really are, it substitutes our minds for God. We are falling prey to Adam’s fault. We will decide what the truth is. We can decide. We have the ability. We take a few shards of wisdom, the few pages of Jesus biography, and balloon it into a trillion pages in a billion books in a thousand libraries around the world. Is this how wisdom works? Or is this how the mind works? What works best? We have to choose.
Putting our Money....
Well ! Sun Warrior you’ve presented a choice/decision which will really rock this group !
Perhaps 1% of us could take the plunge/ throw ourselves out into space unprepared in our mind. I salute your intrepid spirit !
With great trepidation I would interpret your forest encounter as : ” You had decided to follow a certain track.. you are mulling it over ” …suddenly you find ” an enemy blocking your path “… What was your initial gut feeling at that exact moment ? That’s really important.
When the mind starts to analyse the experience later, confusion sets in.
Best regards, Ken.
Padayatra
Sun Warrior, I can vibe with a lot of what you say. In fact while you blame “mind” my favourite is “organization”. I think that in essence you may have a point and I apologise that my ‘esoteric’ comment hurt you.
I did not intend to hurt and it was not sarcastic. I really feel that you are looking at something that to me is esoteric when you speak of other spirits etc. That certainly does not mean that you are wrong, just that I don’t get it… I have been accused myself of being ‘out in left field’ and many of the things that I study are considered off the wall by my more conservative friends.
My response to friends whose love of the esoteric seems to be taking them away from Jesus is always to try to point to Jesus, for I don’t think that there is anything in the world of human knowledge or experience that is going to hold a candle to being in Him.
I would also agree with you completely that the gospel is radical and does call for a radical response. You say that you have a call from God, then follow that call. That is the essence of faith and He is faithful. But - I have a few comments or perhaps suggestions for you for I come from a place where what you are proposing to do is not that uncommon.
Please don’t take offence at my unsolicited advice! If you feel that I am overstepping and/or that an open forum such as this one is not the proper place for a discussion such as this, do let me know and I will delete this post.
1. Wherever you are coming from and wherever you are heading, you need to be in a community.
2. Being fed up with the church is not a good reason for ditching the church. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. The church needs people who are willing to be different because of Christ.
3. Don’t refuse the help of friends or family even if you feel that they don’t understand or that they disapprove. Understanding and approval take time and effort on both sides.
4. I know from personal experience that in any town or city there are people who will render hospitality and fellowship with no questions asked. I hope that there are such in the emerging church community too. Regardless, the Holy Spirit has been active and has been transforming people to do His will and you must seek them out as you go about the work that God has placed you here to do.
5. Don’t get so caught up with the new things in your experience that you forget the older teachings. Wisdom will help you to integrate but always, always focus on Jesus. You will bear fruit in His kingdom only if you are in Him and He is in you.
Live to serve : Serve to live
The Truth is whole, it cannot be broken up
As the ancient wisdom goes, the Truth is whole. It cannot be broken up. We seek wholeness in God. Yet taking the steps to that wholeness means facing yourself. Those around you may not understand the real you. And it is hard enough facing yourself.
I guess that’s why the greatest sin is self-pity. The reasons why we disagree with our relation to the world. God demands courage. The Truth in the unconventional view that God has a warrior heart. Can we handle the truth, or do we send it to committee?
When that first shocking week happened to me five years ago, when God showed up, not as my Christian God, but as the Great Spirit, I was told I had to choose a name. What in the world for? It was suggested ‘Wind Warrior.’ Why on earth ‘warrior?’ Isn’t that what we’re all against? It took a long time to understand where that came from.
Ken, you are quite right. What was my initial reaction to seeing the snake? It was the same explanation that occurred the next morning. Here was this tiny snake. Then I looked up and there was this massive forest. Compare the amount of life between the two. What is more convincing?
I’ve been seeing rats and possums a lot lately, where I never saw them ‘in the wild’ before. Why all of a sudden? Rats thrive on human garbage. Possums are experts at deception to manipulate a situation. I have always hated rats. Yet it occurred to me that I was one. Business makes us that way when you work for a wage. Our pay is feeding off what the company is willing to throw off to keep in business. And we have to act like possums to play the political game and keep our jobs to survive. You could get fired telling the truth at work. A truth that I didn’t want to accept because of the consequences in rejecting the lie about how it compromised me. Funny how animals can tell you something about yourself, if you suspend your practical ‘but.’ It just is.
I just came from a vacation to Gettysburg, the site of the Civil War battle, and Washington. Talk about having to face death, the battlefield, and the consequences that came after that death, modern Washington.
In the hotel where we stayed at Gettysburg, there was a military cooperation conference going on between the U.S. and Ukraine. Odd. The old enemies now friends. When we got to the White House, there was the Japanese prime minister. Weird. Old foes.
We ran into a ‘peace camp’ for kids at Gettysburg, put on by local churches. Walking around to the front of the school, there were Humvees and soldiers getting ready for a parade. We visited President Eisenhower’s home. Funny how he settled on a farm on the old battlefield that was the turning point that kept the United States together. Look what he did with that outcome!
We stopped at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. That huge towering Greek Temple staring down The Mall at the Washington Memorial and the Congress behind it. I never realized that the memorials to World War II, and the Korean and Vietnam wars were on the same site. Strange symmetries to the rest of the trip.
Are you the type who can sense ‘spirit’ through tingles on your skin, or even your hair standing on end? Walking the massive battlefield seemed like I stuck my finger in an electrical socket! Even my wife had them, and she doesn’t usually get them.
Alone after midnight, I walked the battlefield of Pickett’s Charge, the worst scene of slaughter at the Battle of Gettysburg. There were fireflies everywhere hovering close to the field. I could only sense myself in the darkness. I looked up into the sky and saw this cloud in the distinct shape of a dove. You know the emblem you see on many Church logos. When my eyes came back down, all of a sudden the fireflies stopped hovering and began to fly up into the altitudes.
Such massive suffering just to save the United States by killing the primary division that threatened to divide the whole, slavery. The meaning in the suffering. Those ghosts didn’t know the consequences in time of their actions. The wisdom in the warriors to make the Truth come out.
I have been shying away from this Truth in myself for quite some time. I haven’t exercised my ‘leap into the unknown’ muscle for a couple of years. Didn’t realize how atrophied it was. The pain and suffering to my family and myself for following blindly, with faith, what the Creator has asked doesn’t seem very Christian, and my heart is taking a beating. Yet everything that is presented to me by Creation lately forms into a whole, unless I want to bicker with it. But my experience with God in accepting instead of questioning has never once failed me.
The Church is supposed to be a ‘community of Truth.’ It contains the spectrum from literalists to mystics. It also has the spectrum of experience with God from those who believe from merely the pages of the Bible to those who live ‘in the Spirit.’ I sure do need community on my journey. But the Church is not the only place I find people living in the Spirit. When I speak my strange language, the hearts around me divide between those who can recognize and those who reject. I do not reject the Church. I seek those whose hearts speak the same language, but only in a different tongue. Marriage is about creating a common language between opposites genders. Becoming One through recognizing the truth of the other.
The Truth of the modern Church is that we are not seekers of Jesus, but seekers of the Christ. The Savior is a bright light standing in darkness. We walk toward the light, not knowing where our feet might land in the shadows. The Earth is in the same boat. It sits in darkness in relation to the light, the Sun. And God is in the same boat. He sits in the Void. He asks us to face the Void within ourselves and have the courage to listen to the shadow, our souls, instead of making our own candles to light the way. Void, darkness, to us, creates fear. Void is singular, like the snake. When I sit in the forest in the blackest night, all I know is that I exist, conscious. I cannot see what is all around me. My faculties fail me. I have to walk every night, knowing that every morning the Sun will come up with a new dawn. Then I can see what I was existing in. The Christ of my soul living within the radiance of God. There was life all around me, all the time. But before, I thought I was God, a singular consciousness only living in relation to the unconscious Void of matter. Then I realize once more that humans are not alone with just the ‘thought’ of God. We live ‘in’ God, surrounded by the living family of Creation. Every point in Creation speaking to us. We just have to accept the Truth of it, simply. Its hard to argue with God.
Courage, darkness… and the leap.