A river that could not be passed over...

Too often talk of redemption moves towards a pursuit of souls from an other-worldly after-life, or it speaks of the cancelling of theoretical debts, or it reduces works of redemption to only a few tasks. Either way, it stifles healthy imagination and deadens genuinely and redemptive God-given vocational callings. 

“The Word became flesh not to save our souls from this fallen world, but in order to restore us as lovers of this world—to (re)enable us to carry out that creative commission. Indeed, God saves us so that—once again, in a kind of divine madness—we, as an empowered, Spirit-filled people, can save the world, can (re)make the world aright. And God’s redemptive love spills over in its cosmic effects, giving hope to this groaning creation.

So our redemption is not some supplement to being human; it’s what makes it possible to be really human, to take up the mission that marks us as God’s image bearers.”

I’m getting to the end of Hauerwas’ The Peaceable Kingdom. 

After discussing the necessary instability that living Christianly creates in the world (the ‘tragedy’ that occurs when violence meets peaceableness) and the corollary of hospitality as essential to holiness, Hauerwas moves on to joy. It’s a short section, and worth a read!

Joy is not a momentary response to something unexpected with little staying power, as it is sometimes believed. But joy is something that remains, as a result of finding our true home in God and his peace. Thus, life is pervaded by this sense of gifted-ness as we learn to see the simple and most common aspects of our existence (friends, spouses, children, etc) ‘as sheer gifts to which we have no right but who are nonetheless present’. 

This joy beyond tragedy is born from the cross and resurrection. Quoting Reinhold Niebuhr: 

“The cross does not reveal life at cross purposes with itself. On the contrary, it declares that what seems to be an inherent defect in life itself is really a contingent defect in the soul of each man, the defect of the sin which he commits in his freedom. If he can realise that fact, if he can weep for himself, if he can repent, he can also be saved. He can be saved by hope and faith...

Repentance does not accuse life or God but accuses self. In that self-accusation lies the beginning of hope and salvation. If the defect lies in us and not in the character of life, life is not hopeless.” 1

Hauerwas concludes:

“Joy thus becomes the disposition born of a hope based on our sense that it cannot be our task to transform the violence of this world into God’s peace, for in fact that has been done through the cross and resurrection of Jesus. Our joy is the simple willingness to live with the assurance of God’s redemption.” 2

***

1. Reinhold Niebuhr, Beyond Tragedy (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1937), p. 169.

We can provide no theoretical answer to the question of suffering and evil. In the face of this question, silence is most appropriate. 

But our response doesn’t stop there. We lament. The Christian responds to evil in the world by bringing the pain before the Father; bringing it to expression and with emotion. He is our only hope; the power remains in His hands and He is good through and through. So we rightly cry, ‘WHY?’

Bonhoeffer hates Kantian timeless and universal perceptions of good and evil. Instead, he seeks an ethic that never moves away from the concrete and the historical. 

In his 1929 Barcelona lecture, he describes ethics as ‘a matter of earth and blood’, found only ‘within the bounds of history’. 

He goes on: those who ‘abandon the earth’ will similarly lose their strength and their connection to God, for ‘[t]he earth remains our mother just as God remains our father, and only those who remain true to the mother are placed by her into the father’s arms.’

For Bonhoeffer, being Christian means engaging with and in the world. In his manuscripts written from prison, he writes, ‘What matters is not the beyond but this world, how it is created and preserved, is given laws, reconciled, and renewed.’ In other words, the Christian life becomes an exercise of ‘living fully in the midst of life’s tasks, questions, successes and failures, experiences, and perplexities.’ 

Only by wholly belonging to the (’penultimate’) world - whilst also being wholly united to Christ’s ‘ultimate’ reality - can a person truly be conformed to the humanity of Jesus, sharing in his sufferings, and by extension, the sufferings of the world. 

As per my previous post, Bonhoeffer’s ethic arises from a deeply relational co-inherence with God. Knowing how to act ‘simply and wisely’ depends on Christ forming Himself in the believer, which leads him to argue that spiritual disciplines are vital for placing the believer in such a space where Christ’s form can act upon him/her. 

And whereas some might assume spiritual disciplines allow for a flight from reality, Bonhoeffer believes the opposite: 

“Moreover, we will see at this point whether Christians’ time of meditation has led them into an unreal world from which they awaken with a fright when they step out into the workaday world, or whether it has led them into the real world of God from which they enter into the day’s activities strengthened and purified. Has it transported them for a few short moments into a spiritual ecstasy that vanishes when everyday life returns, or has it planted the Word of God so soberly and so deeply in their heart that it holds and strengthens them all day long, leading them to active love, to obedience, to good works? Only the day can decide.”

I’m having a whole lot of fun researching for a paper on Bonhoeffer’s theological (Christological) ethic. So far, I’m coming to see how intensely relational his ethic is: living Christianly is all about an encounter with God in Christ. It’s all about hearing and obeying; it’s all about participating in the relation between Father and Son by the Spirit, so that Jesus’ simple obedience in a complex (’penultimate’ world) becomes ours. And this involves the formation of Christ in us, just as we are in Him. 

“A prophet and teacher would not need followers, but only students and listeners. But the incarnate Son of God who took on human flesh does need a community of followers who not only participate in his teaching but also in his body.” [DBW 4:215]. Through participation in Christ one occupies a space where the process of conformation can occur. It is not that Christians conform themselves by listening to a sermon or partaking of the sacrament, but they put themselves in a position to encounter Christ and allow his form to take shape within their lives...

‘The transformation into the divine image will become ever more profound, and the image of Christ in us will continue to increase in clarity. This is a progression in us from one level of understanding to another and from one degree of clarity to another, toward an ever-increasing perfection in the form of likeness to the image of the Son of God.’ [DBWE 4:286]’.

Gregory Naz., Or., 1.5.

I’m preparing a study in Hosea 4 for a small group tonight, and so I’m reading a commentary to get up to speed with Hosea’s prophecy. In chapter 2 Hosea looks ahead to the day when YHWH will betroth Himself to His people. Back in the day, a betrothal involved the groom to pay the bride’s father approximately 50 shekels of silver. But YHWH, instead, promised to pay in righteousness, justice, mercy, faithfulness and steadfast love (v19-20). 

Who gets these attributes? The father of the bride? (who’s that?!)

The people get them, so that they can properly engage in the intimate relation God so desires. 

God’s people will be gifted by God the ability to be seeking the good of those who are dependent (mercy); they will act appropriately to the multitude of relations they find themselves involved (justice); they will be unswerving in their commitment in their devotion to YHWH (righteousness and faithfulness).

In her commentary, Elizabeth Achtemeier expresses it:

“Thus, these are the qualities that Yahweh gives, not to the father of the bride, but to the bride herself, so that henceforth the relation between God and his people Israel will be characterized by mutual righteousness, justice, devotion, mercy, and faithfulness. Here is the promise that the Israelites will be transformed in their inner selves to live with their God in that relation of intimate love and faithfulness for which God so yearns... By transforming the people from the inside out, and by altering their circumstances in the world, God will usher in a new age of righteousness and justice, covenant love and mercy, in which Israel will be forever faithful to the God who has been everlastingly faithful to her.”

God’s gifts don’t stop with His people but overflow into all creation, gifting the lands with rain from the heavens. This sets off a mutual giving and receiving between the heavens and earth, the earth and grain and grain and oil- each one calling for the other to share the plentitude. This is a picture of creation flourishing in its interconnectivity, and so comes creation’s response to God’s provision- “the exultant cry of nature, celebrating the God who fructifies it”- ‘Jezreel’, meaning ‘God will sow’. 

I’m currently reading Robert Jenson’s ‘Theology in Outline: Can These Bones Live?’, and so far, it’s a great read! The book is, pretty much, a transcript of lectures he gave to undergraduates at Princeton on an intro to Christian Theology. The lectures have a casual feel about them, as if he’s reclining back to tell the story of Christian theology through history, as we enjoy our cup of tea, engrossed by the story of God with his people. 

Here’s a short quote, describing the end result of centuries of cognitive dissonance between Aristotle’s deified ‘it’, unaffected by anything, and the God of Israel and the risen Lord Jesus. Thank God for Athanasius and the Cappadocians, for now we can answer the question:

“Who is this God? Well, he is God the author of the story with his people. Who is this God? He is God settled into that story and an actor in it. Who is God? He is the wind of God that moves history. Or in the language that came to be standard, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And any one of them is a perfect and complete identification of the one God”

“Jesus’s command to follow him is a command to align our loves and longings with his—to want what God wants, to desire what God desires, to hunger and thirst after God and crave a world where he is all in all—a vision encapsulated by the shorthand “the kingdom of God”...

...To follow Jesus is to become a student of the Rabbi who teaches us how to love; to be a disciple of Jesus is to enroll in the school of charity.”