The New Testament barely ever talks about “going to heaven when we die,” but it talks a lot about the hope for bodily resurrection to everlasting life in a renewed and glorified creation. Yet the popular understanding today is that “going to heaven” is the central promise of the Christian Gospel. How did this happen? Well, it was a long and involved process of historical development, but here is a simplified summary: As Christianity spread beyond the Mediterranean to the Franks, Goths, Celts, etc., of Europe, theological attention to the resurrection hope faded in favour of hope for a heavenly afterlife. Unlike the Greeks, Jews, Egyptians, Mesopotamians, etc., who believed that all the dead descended to an underworld of some sort, these peoples tended to believe that at least some people (e.g. brave warriors) would be taken to the heavenly dwellings of the gods. Whether by intentional evangelistic strategy or by steady cultural osmosis, the focus of both theology and popular piety shifted from resurrection by the grace of God in Christ to going to heaven through the grace of God in Christ. This became entrenched in the Middle Ages as the veneration the saints became established and spread, since such veneration and the associated practices only made sense if the saints were both enjoying the full blessedness of heaven and fully aware of events transpiring on earth. After one medieval Pope tried to correct the distortion and earned for himself a whole bunch of infuriated pushback, the next Pope issued an edict that rejected what the previous Pope had taught and instead made it official church teaching that each person after death faces “particular judgement” to determine their fate, upon which they are sent either to hell, purgatory, or (if one was already holy enough) straight to heaven. The Protestant reformers rejected the purgatory element that official Catholic doctrine taught, but most kept the rest of the rest of the framework. (Luther notably rejected the whole thing and instead taught that the dead essentially sleep until the resurrection. However, he was not followed in this by later Lutherans.) Throughout all of this no theologians who were even remotely orthodox ever rejected the hope for resurrection and cosmic transformation when Jesus returns. The problem was rather that the final hope was relegated to the status of a nearly forgotten appendix. As more and more of the theological work that rightly belongs to the resurrection hope was transferred to a hope for a blessed disembodied existence in heaven, preachers and teachers found less and less reason to talk about the resurrection, and so the public came to believe that going to heaven when they died was the entire hope.

On Feb 3, 2017, Jonathan Merritt published “Is AI a Threat to Christianity?” in The Atlantic. Merritt suggests that “AI may be the greatest threat to Christian theology since Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.” Merritt’s argument is built on several, not entirely consistent presuppositions, and it is only their confluence that makes AI an alleged potential problem. These presuppositions are: The idea that a soul is a “component” of a human being. The idea that the defining trait of human beings is our intelligence. The idea that a collection of algorithms could become the same sort of being that humans are if we just make the algorithms sophisticated enough. The idea that “salvation” means the preservation of the human soul beyond death. Presuppostion (1) is one possible interpretation of what a soul is in Christian theology, and even the dominant one during the medieval and early modern periods, but hardly the only one. In today’s theology (and more importantly, since we are thinking in terms of futurology here, tomorrow’s theology) that interpretation is considered dubious at best. Presupposition (2) isn’t a Christian notion to begin with. It’s a modern Western notion, born out of and feeding back into our technologically driven cultural narrative. Presupposition (3) presupposes (2) and adds the belief that the human mind is at its root a complex math equation calculating itself. Leaving aside the question of whether there’s any good reason to think that it is true (I don’t think there is), this idea not only makes intellect the defining human trait, but reduces the human being to the human mind. Finally, presupposition (4) is rejected by many Christian theologians, as Merritt himself acknowledges. And as Merritt appears to recognize, if one understands salvation in terms of the redemptive, eschatological transformation of creation as a whole, AI does not pose a grave theological problem. If a self-aware AI ever became a reality, it would simply be another participating component in God’s overall creation that is to be redeemed. It is worth noting that (1) and (2) are actually inconsistent unless and until one adds (3). If the soul (whatever that is) is a component of the human being, then it isn’t what defines a human being any more than a thumb or a vestigial appendix is, for the very simple reason that it’s a part, not the whole. Adding (3) implies that the human being is “really” just the human mind. That makes it possible to reconcile (1) and (2), but only at the cost of treating the human body as superfluous to the definition of the human being and ultimately something that could be set aside without any significant effect on the “real” human being. Of course, the idea that body and spirit are distinguishable and even separable has a long (and fraught) history within Christian theology. If one treats spirit, soul, and (in a further step) mind as synonymous, then one can open the way for the idea that human mind = human being—although just opening the way is still not enough to justify taking the step. But suppose one does think there is reason to take that step. To reduce the human being to only the human mind in this way is, of course, a reduction. Every orthodox Christian theologian, even those medievals most fixated on the enjoyment of the Beatific Vision by disembodied Christians in the afterlife, still insisted that the physical resurrection of the body had to take place in order for the salvation of the complete human being to occur. Indeed, Christian theology has a word for the idea that the human body is ultimately superfluous to the human being: heresy.1 1 To be clear, I am not calling Jonathan Merritt a heretic. He is just being inconsistent in his ideas and presuppositions. I expect that if pressed, Merritt would acknowledge that the human body is integral to the human being. Rejecting any of (1) through (4) would make AI a non-threat to Christian theology. But in the case of presupposition (3), not only can we reject it, but we must reject it. Christian theology insists that human beings are not just human minds. It might be fun to imagine human minds being swapped between bodies, or “digitally copied,” or, reaching further back, reincarnated, but it isn’t a Christian idea. Since the idea that artificial intelligences could become beings commensurate with human beings in religiously significant ways is based on a concept of humanity that Christian theology would reject—and indeed, already explicitly has rejected—it doesn’t seem that any AI development could ever amount to a threat to its consistency the way Merritt supposes it would. Put simply, Christianity would first need to abandon utterly the concept of physical resurrection before the development of AI could even pose a theological conundrum, let alone a threat.

Barth’s insistence on only the analogia fidei and rejection of the analogia entis, by which he rejects that revelation can happen in terms of the creaturely reaching towards God, seems to be incoherent with viewing the incarnation of the Son as revelatory. If the Son’s self-revelation happens in and through his becoming a creature as well as Creator, then the creaturely would appear to be capable of serving as a means of revelation. Conversely, if revelation could happen only by divine speech and could only be received by “faith” (and what exactly does faith mean for Barth is its own question), then it is difficult to see how the incarnation could really be revelatory.

Ever been confused about the different academic disciplines broadly grouped under the umbrella of “theology”? Here’s an (over)simplified orientation to what they are and what questions they address. Biblical studiesWhere did the scriptural texts come from, how did they get to be what they are, and what do they say? Biblical theologyWhat did/do the Scriptures mean? Systematic theology (a.k.a. constructive theology)How do we make sense of our Christian beliefs in a way that is meaningful for our lives today? Applied theologyHow do we put our theological understanding into practice? Practical theologyHow do our actual practices inform and illuminate our beliefs? Historical theologyHow have Christians understood and practiced their faith in the past, why did they do so, and how has that shaped our understanding and practice today? The borders between the different theological disciplines are open. Each one feeds into the others, sometimes obviously and sometimes subtly, but always and inevitably. The trick is to be aware of how each one does so, so that we can engage consciously and well in that inevitable interdisciplinary cross-pollination, rather than unconsciously and therefore usually poorly. Of course, this not a complete list. All these disciplines can be broken down into sub-disciplines. All of these disciplines and sub-disciplines involve interaction with other, independent academic disciplines.1 And how to group and categorize different sub-disciplines is often debatable.2 Neither are the summaries of the essential questions very fulsome—representatives of any of these disciplines would probably want to give a richer and more nuanced description.3 1 Archaeology, sociology, anthropology, literature, linguistics, philosophy, history, and organizational studies are just a few obvious examples. 2 Even whether some theological disciplines should be counted as sub-disciplines or separate categories unto themselves is often debatable. I suspect that a number of Christian ethicists and philosophical theologians, for example, might take umbrage at my failure to list their disciplines as separate categories. 3 If anyone wants to offer a better but equally succinct phrasing of their discipline’s question(s), I’d be more than happy to consider a revision.

After discussing the modern notion of history, which assumes that all the events that transpire in time and space are fundamentally similar and therefore always to be understood in terms of analogy with other events with which the historian is already familiar, Moltmann notes that such a view of history is essentially incompatible with the Christian belief that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. Orthodox Christianity very much believes and proclaims that Jesus’ resurrection was an event that occurred in time and space, but not one analogous to other events. Therefore, an authentically Christian understanding of history must set aside the presuppositions of the modern, Enlightenment view and build instead on very different ones: Only if the whole historical picture, contingency and continuity and all, could be shown to be in itself not necessary but contingent, should we come within sight of that which can be called the eschatologically new fact of the resurrection of Christ. The resurrection of Christ does not mean a possibility within the world and its history, but a new possibility altogether for the world, for existence and for history. Only when the world can be understood as contingent creation out of the freedom of God and ex nihilo—only on the basis of this contingent mundi—does the raising of Christ become intelligible as nova creatio. In view of what is meant and what is promised when we speak of the raising of Christ, it is therefore necessary to expose the profound irrationality of the rational cosmos of the modern, technico-scientific world. By the raising of Christ we do not mean a possible process in world history, but the eschatological process to which world history is subjected.1 1 Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 179–180. Moltmann is correct here, and the implications are significant. Placing history (and thereby our experiences of the world) within a larger, eschatological framework relativizes and limits the authority of experiential similarity as a guiding principle. It is not the case that all things must be like what we already know. It is not the case that the world is now already fundamentally the way it will always be. Rather, the world is still on the way to its final form and final dynamic. Now, we can also look at Jesus’ resurrection and see that there is much continuity between what was and what will be. The new creation is not a different creation but a transformation of this self-same creation we are part of now. The radical newness of the resurrection does not negate history and historical processes. Instead, it becomes part of history from the moment of its unprecedented occurrence. Moltmann does not address this latter aspect in this quotation (indeed, it is not a theme he pays much attention to in general, preferring as he does to emphasize the “otherness” of the eschatological intervention into history rather than the integration of that intervention into the history it invades), but the implication remains. If history is subjected to an eschatological process, then history has been, is now being, and will continue to be shaped by the eschaton. Conversely, therefore, the eschaton does not simply stand over against history. Eschatological reality becomes integrally involved in history any and every time it occurs. Whenever and in whatever way God acts in history to create conditions that more closely resemble his ultimate, eschatological goal for creation, those eschatologically directed events become part of the shape and course of history. Thus we see the essential dynamic of Christian faith: God must act in history, but also God acts in history. Christians, however devoted we may be to God’s purposes, cannot bring the eschaton to pass in this world by our efforts. But when he acts and as he acts, Christians are able to participate in the reality that his actions bring into being, and even to further their effects. Only God can enact his reign in our world, but when he does, he calls us to help.

Often people ask me about the relationship between our bodies and our souls or spirits. The explicit or implicit reason for the question is usually that people are wondering about what happens when we die, but sometimes there are other reasons. The following is an attempt to give an accessible explanation of this profound and complex matter. First, for orientation, it is helpful to describe at least briefly some of the major views that circulate in our culture. The default assumption in Western culture, including for many Christians, is that humans have two parts, the body and the soul. Some Westerners are materialists, believing that there is only the body and that the mind, will, emotions, etc., are simply the byproduct of neurological processes. Others take the opposite tack and say that the material reality is only an appearance whereas the spiritual is the truly real. Some Christians argue that we are made of three parts, body, soul, and spirit, with soul and spirit considered to be as distinct from each other as either one is from the material body. Yet others (including me) take the view that material and immaterial are not two separate parts of reality, but rather two real aspects of one, unified reality. There are all sorts of Scriptural, theological, and practical reasons to consider this latter view the best one for Christians to hold, but the task for now is to describe this view, rather than to explore its warrants and implications. This idea of material and spiritual as a unified reality is a bit difficult for Westerners to understand, so a few analogies might be helpful. This first analogy illustrates some key ideas that will be helpful in thinking about this subject. It isn’t a full-scale model of the relation between body and soul/spirit, and we will need to leave it behind once we’ve used it for its limited purpose. But within this limited scope, it is helpful. Imagine a sheet of paper. You can pick it up, turn it around, fold it, write on it, curl it into a tube, whatever. It’s just a piece of paper. Now pick a number between, say, one and five. Tear the paper in half that many times. Now your sheet of paper is in broken little pieces. This is similar to what happens to us when we die. While we live, we are a seamless whole. There is no division between our bodies and our souls. Instead, the material and immaterial aspects of our being are thoroughly integrated with each other. We will our bodies to move; a soothing touch calms our anxiety; excitement makes our eyes dilate and our pulse quicken; ingesting certain substances alters our mood or thought patterns; etc. There is no barrier, no disconnect, no discernible line between the two. But when we die, this integrated whole is torn asunder. What God intended to be whole is broken, and what remains are only scraps with ragged edges showing where the wholeness used to be. Once a person has been torn asunder by death, it becomes possible to perceive body and soul as separate parts of that person, just as we can see that two halves of a torn sheet of paper were both parts of the whole sheet. But while we can apply that mental abstraction to ourselves and others, it is only an abstraction so long as we live. This is true regardless whether we distinguish into two parts (body and soul), three parts (body, soul, spirit), or any given number of parts (arm, hand, stomach, brain, mind, will, emotion, heart, lungs, spirit, femur, humours, memories, veins, nerves, feelings, impulses, perceptions, etc.). While we live, we are one, integrated whole; only dead things are actually separated into parts. But our paper analogy isn’t enough to fully explain the relation of body and soul. When we tear a sheet of paper in two, the two torn halves are fundamentally the same sort of thing. This is not the case with the material and immaterial aspects of a human being. To go further in our understanding, we need another approach. You have probably seen a building that was partially or wholly demolished for whatever reason. Maybe it was a barn struck by a tornado, or an office tower collapsed in a controlled explosion, or a house that was being gutted by workmen in the process of an extensive reconstruction. What was the difference between the barn before and after the tornado? Simple. It was smashed to pieces. Likewise the office tower was reduced to rubble. The workmen at the half-demolished house carefully and methodically took it apart piece by piece, tossing the scraps into a bin to be carted away. In each case, though, the pieces didn’t stop existing. They remained, but they no longer formed a building. The building, meanwhile, ceased to exist in part or in whole because the structural relationship of its pieces was undone. The difference between a house and a pile of materials is order.1 Order is immaterial. Order can’t be touched or seen or measured—not directly. But order can be discerned through the things we can touch and see and measure. We can even measure order by proxy to a limited degree.2 It takes work to create and sustain order, and the effects of order and disorder on our lives are clearly perceptible. Order is immaterial, but it is a very real part of this world. 1 Long ago, the philosopher Aristotle spoke of this in terms of “matter” and “form.” Plato talked even more about matter and form (or rather, Matter and the Forms), and he did so before Aristotle. But Plato’s thoughts on this subject were pretty far out there, and for the purposes of this discussion they can and should be discounted. I prefer the term “order” over “form” because it has a broader semantic range and more easily suggests dynamic activity and relationships than “form” does to contemporary English speakers. 2 The concept of entropy in thermodynamics is very useful for measuring order in terms of energy distribution in a physical system, for example, though it is rather less useful in the realms of politics and poetry. The relationship that matter and energy have with order sheds some light on the relationship that the body has with the soul or spirit. There is a certain sense in which the presence of spirit within us makes us what we are. In Hebrew, it was having ruach (spirit; literally, breath) that made one a nephesh (a living being) and to lose ruach was by definition to cease to be a nephesh.3 The immaterial aspect of our being plays an indispensable role in shaping our material-spiritual existence. 3 Some older Bible translations tended to render nephesh as “soul” rather than “living being.” In modern English, this is simply wrong translation, which is why modern translations don’t do it. However, this analogy is also limited and potentially misleading if we don’t note some major caveats and qualifications. First and foremost, the spirit is not itself the ordering principle of the body. Rather, the interrelatedness of body and spirit is part of the overall order that makes us whole beings. The relationship between spirit and body has some analogy with the relationship between ordering principles of our existence and the overall structure of our being that includes both our material and spiritual aspects and their interrelation, but there is at least one key difference. Order is about the necessary structures and patterns for a thing to exist. Spirit, in contrast, is about the dynamic impetus that makes a living thing be a living thing. Our spirits are what animate us. Explaining what our spirits are is only possible by metaphorical extension from a description of the role it plays in our being and the literal, concrete effects it has in that role. Spirit is what enables and impels us to live, to move, to breathe, to desire, to respond, to think, to imagine, to choose, to act, to love, and all the other actions that mark out a living creature from an inanimate object. Because we are a single, material-spiritual reality, we can analyze the processes by which we perform these actions—physical, chemical, biological, psychological, social, etc. We can explain the means by which we act, describe the patterns according to which we act, the reasons why we act in one way and not another. Such analysis of how we engage in all these actions is immensely helpful, but in the end we are still faced with the question: Why do we act at all? Why are we not inert like rocks? From where does all the action ultimately arise? In answer we find only the raw and irreducible fact that the spark of life is in us. As a Christian, I believe that God, who is himself the self-existent Source of all Life, all Being, and all Action, gave us this spark of life. Even so, the fact remains that we have in us this fundamental spark, this source of action that’s just there in us and that we can never get around or see behind. This spark of life, this spontaneous source of action, is the core of our spirits. There is much more to our spirits than this—whole ordered structures that shape and form us as the people we are—but this is the key. While we live and our bodies and spirits are one, this spark can be expressed in the world that God has created. At death, our spirits are deprived of the means to act in the world we were made for. And we look forward to the resurrection because then, and only then, we will get our bodies back, which will allow us to become whole human beings again and to engage in the joyous, everlasting, life-giving, spontaneous activity that we were made for.

In 2012 at the Society of Vineyard Scholars annual conference, Matt Croasmun and Todd Kennedy described some problems with the notion of “original manuscripts” in regard to Scriptural texts. They suggest that the distinction between textual criticism and redaction criticism is based on a modern scholarly construct that we have imposed on the past—specifically, a distinction between licit and illicit revision of Scriptural texts, which happened in earlier and later periods, respectively. Croasmun and Kennedy suggest that the process of textual development is continuous, with no discernible transition from one phase to another, and therefore that we should set aside any attempt to distinguish between licit and illicit textual development on the basis of such phases. Instead, they suggest that identifying the authoritative Scriptural words among textual variants should be a matter of theological and spiritual discernment—and indeed that this is always already the case anyway, and that we should honestly embrace this reality. They make a lot of good points and their analysis is helpful. I agree that there is continuity across the process of textual development, and that we should acknowledge and embrace the role of theological and spiritual discernment in the task of identifying the inspired words of Scripture. I especially agree with their position that the concept of “original manuscripts” is flawed and misleading because there never was any such thing. However, I am not convinced that we should abandon textual criticism so blithely. If the meaning of a text resided only in its reception, such a proposal would make sense, but this is not the case. The intentions of authors and of our forebears in the faith are not transparent to us, but neither are they opaque; we can have an approximate yet reliable sense of those intentions. This means that both what the various authors and redactors intended to communicate and what the recipients of that communication understood and passed on are significant factors for our own understanding. This in turn means that we should redefine the goal of textual criticism in terms of canonical manuscripts rather than original manuscripts. Despite the rhetorical justification of finding the “original manuscripts,” textual criticism has always in fact been aimed at reconstructing the initial versions of the texts that were circulated in the early church. It was only a misguided assumption that “initially received” and “original” were synonymous that caused this. But once we lay aside the misleading notion of “original manuscripts,” we become able to see textual criticism’s purposes and value correctly. The results of textual criticism have been quite reliable. There is always a certain amount of uncertainty and room for scholarly debate over some passages, of course, but there are good reasons for confidence that our critical texts closely approximate the documents that the early church read, exposited, circulated, etc. But why should the version of the Scriptural documents used by the early church be our standard? Put simply, because we follow a Lord and Saviour who was born at a certain time and place, and because such is the nature of tradition. Our faith has been handed down to us from our predecessors, and those closest to Jesus are the only ones we can look to to convey his words and deeds to us. The Spirit of God has never stopped communicating with us, but because we are imperfect listeners we need a κανῶν by which to gauge what we hear and from which to learn the characteristics and patterns of his behaviour. Unguided discovery is a poor pedagogical practice in a case like this; Jesus spent three years teaching his closest disciples in the ways of his Spirit, progressively releasing them into ministry as they gained competence in hearing and following the Spirit. He could not send them out to follow the Spirit’s lead until they had learned how to do so. So likewise for us today. We need guidance to learn the ways of the Spirit. We have nowhere to look for this guidance but to our forebears in the faith, and they all look back to their forebears. The Scriptures that guided the earliest Christians are therefore the Scriptures to which me must look, too. Of course, the Scriptures would be lifeless apart from the Spirit working in and through them. And even with the Spirit working through them, they are only every instrumental towards the larger goal of bringing us into union and communion with God. But as the Spirit works through the Scriptures, we learn to recognize him. We need this Scripturally mediated revelation in order to learn how to recognize him, and we need this κανῶν to be handed down to us from the earliest days so that we can trust it even when we cannot trust our own discernment of his voice. And so, the work of textual critics is legitimate and valuable. We need our Scriptures to align with the earliest canonical versions of the Church so that we can put our trust in them as reliable guides to learning to discern the word of the Spirit of God. It is important to consciously bring theological and spiritual discernment into the process of textual criticism, but we cannot reach the requisite level of theological and spiritual maturity to do so without first being formed by the Spirit through the Scriptures and the community of God’s people.

St. Cyril giving a theological smackdown to anyone who would hesitate to say that the Second Person of the Trinity suffered: Why, then, our opponents, who in their extreme folly do not forbear to hold or express the views of Nestorius and Theodore, must answer our question: ‘Do you refuse to allow him who is of the holy Virgin his being God and true Son of God the Father? Do you allot suffering to him alone, fending it off from God the Word to avoid God’s being declared passible?’ This is the point of their pedantic, muddleheaded fictions. In that case, the Word of God the Father on his own and by himself should not be called ‘Christ’; for just as suffering is out of character with him when he is considered in isolation from the flesh, so is anointing an inconsistent feature alien to him. For God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost, but the Word of God is utterly complete in himself and required no anointing through the Holy Ghost. In which case, deny God’s plan, banish the Only-begotten from any love toward the world! ‘Christ’ you must not call him. Was not his created existence within human limitations a lowly thing? In which case, seeing that that is out of character with him, nobody must acknowledge that he has become man, with the result that Christ can tell them: ‘you err, knowing neither the scriptures nor God’s power.’ Cyril, Saint, Patriarch of Alexandria, Cyril of Alexandria: Select Letters (Edited and translated by Lionel R. Wickham. Oxford Early Christian Texts. Oxford: Clarendon, 1983), 131.12–30. Quoted in O’Keefe, John J., “Impassible Suffering? Divine Passion and Fifth-Century Christology,” Theological Studies 58:1 (1997): 51.

We should not overlook the role of technological advances and their effect on notions of canonicity. In specific, the invention and proliferation of the codex (a.k.a. book) that displaced the scroll had a tremendous impact on what canon means and thereby on whether questions about its being open or closed even make sense. Up to and even during the New Testament period, the various Scriptures were kept each in its own scroll. The typical Jewish classification of the Scriptures, with the Law as the most central, through the Prophets, and out to the Writings as the most peripheral (and then the various texts now termed the Talmud beyond that) makes sense in that context. These texts were a plurality. There wasn’t a clear demarcation line between canonical and non-canonical. The codex allowed multiple texts to be compiled into a single collection. This raised the question of what should be included and what should not. Rather than the concentric circles model of canonicity that was facilitated by the plurality of scrolls, the codex by its very nature required all the texts to be either in or out of the official canonical collection. The texts thus became a unit, the Bible. Everything outside the Bible came to be seen as simply uninspired and everything in it as simply inspired. In this new situation, the concept of “canon” inevitably took on a new form. In the concentric circles model of canonicity the concept of “open vs. closed” never arose because canonicity was a matter of relationship between texts. Now, however, canonicity became a status that certain texts had. Being canon defined only the relationship between the Bible and everything outside of it, and no longer applied to the internal relationship between its constituent texts. I suppose some might find this disturbing, since it could be viewed as unsettling our commonly held understanding of canonicity. I’m not convinced that we should see it that way, though. There’s no reason to say that this development wasn’t also guided by the Holy Spirit. The knee-jerk assumption that all post-1st c. developments are uninspired, which is (ironically enough) abetted by the in-or-out understanding of canonicity, is incorrect. This development is arguably a positive one. For my part, I’m inclined to think that both ways of thinking about canonicity are useful and both are limited. What is needful is wisdom to know which way of thinking about canonicity is most appropriate in any given circumstance.

Some posts in reply to the discussion topic, “Strongest skeptical responses to NT Wright?” which discussed Wright’s historical arguments about how the first Christians came to believe that Jesus had been resurrected from the dead. Ooo, this is a fun topic! :) I think part of the problem here is that Wright’s argument is more subtle and robust than the attempted summary you’ve given above, @Daniel L Heck. In The Resurrection of the Son of God, Wright argues using a version of the double criterion of similarity and dissimilarity. On the one hand, resurrection was indeed a prevalent concept in Second Temple Judaism and was therefore available to the first Christians as a tool to try to explain what they believed they had experienced regarding Jesus after his death. The dissimilar bit, on the other hand, was the idea that one person might be resurrected in advance of everyone else. That’s the unprecedented and incongruous part, which we see the early church struggling to make sense of in their earliest traditions and writings. So, Wright says, the fact that they used the notion of resurrection makes sense and is not very remarkable—indeed, if that were all that was going on here, the counter-arguments you bring up would be patent. In contrast, the notion of one being resurrected when everyone else has not (yet) been was evidently so disruptive and required so much reconfiguration of the eschatological schema that it strains credulity to suggest that it arose as a development out of pre-existing ideas about the resurrection. Wright does not claim that this proves that the resurrection of Jesus actually happened, but he does demonstrate quite convincingly that “It’s just a permutation of the existing ideas,” doesn’t hold water. To my knowledge there hasn’t been a solid refutation of this argument published yet, although I will confess that I haven’t been actively looking recently. The fact that Wright hasn’t felt the need to write anything more significant than that one essay in order to rebut counter-arguments suggests to me that I am probably safe in this assumption. The questions addressed in that essay all appear to be targeted at ancillary issues or to make attempts to circumvent the core argument, rather than refuting the argument itself. Does that help? There are basically three credible alternative scenarios set forth by sceptics to explain the early Christians’ proclamation that Jesus had risen from the dead: fraud, self-delusion, or miscommunication.1 1 The fourth, that Jesus didn’t exist and so everything is made up, is not normally counted on the list of credible options. The first is that his disciples (or some subset thereof) invented the story for whatever reason: charlatanism, attempting to avoid public shame, or something along those lines. This falls down because what we know of the apostles lives and deaths is inconsistent with their testimony being fraudulent. Fraudsters have the goal of attaining and/or keeping something they desire. Maintaining a fraudulent claim when doing so will cost you your life makes no sense: renounce your claim and you lose whatever that something is, or refuse to renounce it and you still lose it and everything else, too. The second scenario is that his disciples deluded themselves into believing this. The idea that the disciples had visionary experiences which they came to interpret as concrete resurrection fits into this category, though there are other variations. This is generally seen to be the most credible of the sceptical options these days, since it allows one to say that the disciples really did believe Jesus was raised from the dead and acted consistently with that without admitting that they were correct to believe so. As you note, Wright focusses his attention primarily on this objection and has done a pretty good job addressing it. His reply to the objection that this is simply an instance of substantial human creativity is that such creativity is usually deployed in order to resolve problems and questions, whereas this served to create them. The Gospels show us the disciples responding exactly as we would expect humans to respond, variously staying in dejected fellowship or wandering off on their own as they all try to deal with the recognition that “Well, I guess we were wrong to think he was the Messiah.” The introduction of “Wait, he’s alive again,” knocks everything out of whack and puts them into a position where very little makes sense anymore. It doesn’t resolve the tension between their experience and their theological categories. It just deconstructs more of their categories and makes them more confused. Sure, they are happy, but as much if not more terrified and bewildered. It is a solution to their crisis of faith in Jesus as Messiah about as much as a gas explosion is a solution to not being able to squeeze your new couch into your living room. Yes, you can get it into the space now, but is it really a living room anymore, or the tangled remains of a half destroyed house that needs to be rebuilt from the ground up? The third option is that the apostles really only ever meant to teach that Jesus’ was “spiritually raised” in incorporeal form, and that the transmutation of this idea to a physical resurrection was a subsequent development born out of misunderstanding, wishful thinking, aggrandizement, or something of that sort on the part of their hearers. The idea of a split between Pauline Christianity and Jewish Christianity over this matter is one variant of this. This option falls down quite quickly when subjected to historical examination, since the universal attestation of the early Christian documents is to belief in Jesus’ physical resurrection. One has to suggest that Gnostic Christianity (which was certainly not Jewish) preserved the original tradition whereas the rest of the early Christian documents were subject to massive, conspiracy-theory level of revision. While an ardent supporter of the authenticity of the Gospel of Thomas might make a move towards the first part of that, the second part is on par with The DaVinci Code. Not surprisingly, this option has few adherents, and it barely even counts as a credible option. I forgot to mention the option of denying that Jesus died. In this category there’s the old swoon theory, which is based on the notion that both the Romans, who were quite expert at killing people by crucifixion, and the disciples, who prepared and entombed his body, were incompetent to tell the difference between an unconscious man and a dead one. And there’s the theory that Simon the Cyrene or a thief or somebody was crucified in Jesus’ place, which is only an issue if one is engaged in apologetics with Muslims rather than sceptics. Ah, now I see what is going on. I was thinking of this in terms of what Wright is actually trying to do, not in terms of the use some Christian apologists might want to make of his argument to prove that the resurrection is the more probable explanation. Wright isn’t trying to make a probabilistic argument about what happened, and it is an abuse of his arguments to try to press them into such service. Wright is fending off some of the sceptical arguments and instead positing one that seems to do a very good job of accounting for all the historical data available. He is arguing that the Christian claim is historically plausible and coherent, and indeed more so than the alternatives, if one does not rule out the possibility of the resurrection to begin with. If one has already ruled that out, then discussion of the history is moot. At that point, the Christian apologist really needs to be dealing with the Humean argument against the possibility of miracles and go consult the likes of @Jeffrey Koperski. It is only once the philosophical a priori arguments have been cleared away and the possibility that the resurrection is a real option on the table that one can then ask which explanation does the best job of explaining all the data. And that brings us to the main flaw in the sceptic’s probabilistic argument. The issue is not one of probabilities, but of what really happened. The most plausible explanation is the one that does the best job of explaining all the available data. Having a plurality of alternative views, none of which can account for all the data, does not amount to besting the one that does. Neither singly nor together (in the case of ones that are not incompatible) do these alternatives provide a better, fuller explanation for the actual events in the development of early Christianity. One can invent alternative scenarios to any claimed historical event ad infinitum, but their sheer number doesn’t render the truth any less convincing. When one encounters alternative accounts that both seem plausible prima facie, one has to investigate them to see which is best able to account for everything and remains coherent under extended scrutiny. Because as police detectives, border security officers, and insurance adjusters, and other such investigators will tell us, even the best constructed fictions eventually unravel, but the truth is bottomless. Looking at the stories of the apostles and their martyrdoms, for example, reveals that they don’t actually resemble the stories of, say, prisoners maintaining their innocence or people giving up their lives for a “noble lie” (e.g. a national myth) when one gets into the details. It is only by abstracting away from the details that one can build an argument that the cases are similar. The apostles’ actions do not look like those of people protesting that they shouldn’t be in the situation they find themselves in. They didn’t claim that they shouldn’t be in this situation, but fully acknowledged why they were in this situation and refused to recant regardless, which makes them like a political prisoner who candidly and fervently acknowledges her “crime” and insists that she would do it again because it was the right thing to do. Neither do their actions look like those of people sacrificing themselves to protect a greater good that they value from a harmful revelation of truth. A vassal sacrificing himself under false pretences in order to prevent his lord’s honour from being besmirched by an unpleasant revelation of the truth does so because he considers the lordship of said lord to be real and worth preserving, or that having him as lord is better for the nation, which is real and worth preserving. In contrast, whether or not Jesus was had in fact been vindicated by God as the Messiah was precisely the matter at issue in this case. If Jesus was not raised, there was no lordship to sacrifice oneself in order to protect. Neither was there some great ideal from his teaching that required this kind of protection. “Love your neighbour as yourself,” for example, had a long history before Jesus ever came on the scene and hadn’t required such measures to safeguard it. No, the key, driving theme of Jesus’ proclamation was that the kingdom of God was coming in and through his ministry, and if that proved false by his death, there was nothing else in it that required a noble lie to preserve. Neither was the community of disciples itself worth saving in this way. With neither a lord nor an ideal to serve, the community as such had no raison d’être and therefore nothing about it that would warrant lying and then dying to preserve. None of these counter-counter-arguments proves that something along these lines didn’t happen, but to say “or something along these lines” is not to give an explanation. In order to unseat the claim that Jesus really was resurrected from its position as the best possible explanation of the historical data, it will be necessary to find and articulate an alternative scenario that really does a better job than that claim even when the possibility that it is true is taken seriously. It is perhaps worth pointing out that I consider it one of the great strengths of the Christian faith that it is truly susceptible to historical falsification. I really do think it is possible to show Christianity to be false and remain always open to the possibility that someone might one day produce the necessary evidence to falsify it. To date I have not encountered any evidence or argument that has done so, but if someone does produce that one day, I want to know. The fact that no one has yet produced any does lend a weight of credibility to the Christian claim in my mind, and so I acknowledge that if such evidence or argument comes to light I will probably respond with suspicion at first, but I think that I would accept it if it proved true. So for me, the possibility of historical falsification is a real point of vulnerability of the Christian faith. Yet as I said, this is also one of its great strengths. It means that Christianity’s truth claim is not just to be the best interpretive grid to explain reality with, but that it is also a fundamentally factual claim that needs to be explained. This means Christianity can never just be true in our heads, but is also either concretely true or concretely false as part of reality “out there”—and therefore offers a concrete hope for reality out there. Being possibly historically false means it is also possibly historically true. To this, I should add that the Biblical witness itself comes into question among most skeptics, so you can’t unproblematically say that it gives us a clear sense of what really happened. So I think that if you accept the terms of the critical-historical apologetic game, you need to proceed from a more minimal set of facts than you use here. (For example, Wright’s argument has the apologetic virtue of proceeding from nothing but the empty tomb and the post-resurrection sightings, both of which are much more widely accepted than the Biblical narrative as a whole). — Daniel L Heck, December 11, 2014, 09:30:09 PM Perhaps I didn’t communicate clearly enough. I wasn’t building on the biblical testimony here. I was suggesting that human responses to situations where one’s faith is shattered invariably do look like what is described there and so it is reasonable to suppose that something much like it did happen because these are human being we are talking about. I should have tagged @Jeffrey Koperski sooner! :) I suppose I’ve been talking about probability in a fuzzily defined way, and I’m glad to have our resident analytic philosopher improve on that. Returning to the key point about Hume, the arguments our imaginary sceptic keeps deploying here are precisely those of Hume. The argument again and again is that there are other more probable scenarios available and we should always favour the more probable over the less probable. Hume wanted to turn this into a maxim so that miracles were always outside the bounds of credibility. The problem here is that probability on its own is not a sufficient criterion to evaluate a claim by. One should use the criterion of probability in a secondary capacity to judge between claims of equal explanatory power, not as the primary criterion. I’ll grant that our sceptic is not ruling out the possibility of Jesus’ resurrection a priori, but her use of probability as a primary criterion to evaluate truth claims is functionally equivalent. (As an aside, if she were being consistent in her use of criteria above, she should not have granted that a DaVinci Code-style conspiracy was less likely than that a man came back to life, walked through walls, and then flew away; the conspiracy is highly improbable but still less so than the resurrection.) If probability can outweigh explanatory value as she seems to suggest, then one ought always to choose the most probable scenario even if that doesn’t explain our actual experience well. But that’s absurd. Followed through consistently, it would lead to the conclusion that one ought to expect a homogeneous reality and that one should reject as incredible any experience that disturbed our expectations that actual events will always be the most probable events. Returning to Wright, my recollection is that somewhere in Resurrection he briefly addresses this subject, just enough to contextualize his own argument as taking place within the assumption that the occurrence of Jesus’ resurrection as a historical event is a valid option not already ruled out by its improbability. Assuming my memory is correct, then it is fair to assume that when Wright makes comments about the relative strengths of the various alternatives, he means them within that context even if he doesn’t spell it out every time. I think his vacillation between caution and confidence can be explained fairly consistently within that context: cautious when facing the fact that a more powerful explanation could appear, confident when arguing that none of the currently available alternatives are so.

A few days ago, Steve Hamilton asked: If we were to explore it, what is the political theology or public theology of the Vineyard movement? I replied thus: It is probably no surprise that my initial response is to suggest that the word “the” is problematic in that question! But that just means that exploring it would be all the more interesting. :) With @Thomas John Creedy, it seems to me that focus on issues of the common good, justice, and poverty relief are likely to be central themes in any Vineyard political theology. Something I’ve often found myself wondering, though, is how much that takes the form of seeking to help “them/the world/society out there” and how much it takes the form of seeking to help “us/everyone/our society.” Oftentimes Christians speak of ourselves in contradistinction to those we seek to help, whether this be in terms of helping (those) poor people, providing prophetic/ethical/whatever guidance to the surrounding society (outside the church), or what have you. Other times we will speak in terms of identification with whatever and whoever we want to see the betterment of, so that the poor aren’t “them” but “us,” or that the society in need of justice is our society, etc. And sometimes we will try to do both at once by talking about solidarity with whomever. Now, both contradistinction and identification can be used well or badly in developing a political theology, so I’m not suggesting that one of these is good and the other is bad. Rather, it seems to me that each will produce its own sort of political theology with its own strengths and weaknesses. My curiosity is to learn what sorts of political theology are used in the Vineyard in which contexts, when, and by whom. Is there a difference between, say, the political theology of an inner-city Vineyard, a Vineyard in a prosperous small town, and a Vineyard in a struggling small town? What about the political theology articulated by an AVC’s national leadership in comparison to the political theologies articulated by local congregations? What about between AVC’s in different nations? How do the commonly shared values work out in these different contexts, what does that mean, and what does that imply for how we all (collectively and severally) ought to move forward in this area in the future?

Diversity, including theological diversity, is a gift to the people of God, so long as we allow ourselves to see it for the gracious means of multifaceted revelation that it is. It is only when we let our fears control us that diversity appears as a threat, driving us to demand uniformity even though it will cost us our unity. But in love there is no fear, and so in love there is unity, there is trust, and there is joy.

Words like “heresy” and “orthodoxy” often trigger a distrusting response when people hear them, and for good reason. Many people have abused them as bludgeons, as though orthodox meant “I’m right and good” and heretical meant “You are wrong and evil.” But there are other ways to use those terms that are better, proper, and truer. Maybe the following will be helpful. Orthodox doesn’t mean “this idea is right.” It means “this idea helps us stay rightly oriented toward Jesus.” Gregory of Nazianzus (old dead guy, pretty important in the history of Christian theology, but don’t worry if you’ve never heard of him) once said it this way: “To be only slightly in error is to be orthodox.” Orthodoxy isn’t “right,” it is just “getting close(r).” The truth remains still mysterious and beyond our ability to fully grasp. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.1 1 Indeed, it is common in the Christian tradition to say that any claim to fully comprehend the truth of God is not only ridiculous but downright blasphemous, because that would be claiming to have a mind greater than God. If you hear someone saying that, or using the term “orthodox” as if it meant that, back away, because whatever they’re teaching has a deep flaw somewhere in its underlying agenda. Heresy likewise doesn’t mean “this idea is wrong,” let alone “this idea is evil.” It means “this idea interferes with one’s ability to follow Jesus well.” It means there is something about the idea that is fundamentally incompatible with the gospel of Jesus, and so holding that idea will trip us up as we try to follow him. For example, the idea that Jesus was the first creature God made is a problem because it distorts the gospel fundamentally. If Jesus is God (the orthodox view), than all the things Jesus did were the gracious acts of God to save us. We receive them as his lavish gifts of love that he poured himself out to give so that we could receive abundant life, not as something we earn by our efforts. And so following Jesus’ way means pouring ourselves out, even and especially when it costs us, in order to lovingly benefit and give life to others. But if Jesus is the first creature, then salvation is precisely something earned from God by a creature. It isn’t God’s gift, but a reward. To be like Jesus then is nothing other than a matter of being perfectly righteous (in the worst sense). It is no longer matter of love and gift, but a matter of rights and rewards. So, don’t think of “orthodoxy” and “heresy” as weapons—and call people out if they are using them that way!—but rather as terms indicating “helpful for fostering Christian discipleship” or “unhelpful for fostering Christian discipleship.” I think you’ll find this to be a much more life-giving way to engage with the matter. [Slightly modified from the original here]

Recently, Daniel Heck made this statement: My problem with the sinner’s prayer really is that it is functionally super-Pelagian, even though it acts all anti-Pelagian. Funny the way we tend to become what we hate. When I’ve heard people use the sinner’s prayer for evangelism, they usually say a bunch of anti-Pelagian stuff about how nothing you do can set you right with God, etc etc etc, and then they say, actually, you know, there is exactly one thing you can do. Say this prayer. I responded thus: Regarding the sinner’s prayer and its associated problems, the underlying issue is the warped concept of salvation that it rests on. If one thinks that “being saved” means God saying “OK, when you die you’ll get to go to heaven,” and therefore that one “gets saved” in some punctiliar event—whether that is saying a certain prayer, or being baptized, or whatever—then this problem inevitably arises. Either we are in some irreducible sense responsible for causing that all-important event to occur, or else we have no role or responsibility because God just does it all himself. (Evangelicals are used to thinking of this dilemma as Arminianism vs Calvinism, but that is just one among the many permutations it has taken.) In contrast, things get much better when one recognizes that salvation means “everything being made good.” In one real sense we are still looking forward to our salvation, when Jesus returns to raise the dead and renew all things. In another real sense our salvation has already been won for us, because everything Jesus did the first time he came has enabled and initiated the salvation we are looking forward to. And in another real sense, we are in the midst of being saved now as the Holy Spirit acts among us today bringing specific instantiations of transformation and renewal into life now on the way toward the final transformation. In this past-present-future structure, there is no single moment when a person moves from a state of being unsaved to a state of being saved. There may be moments of conscious decision, of course. But those are moments where one decides to become an active participant in God’s ongoing project of saving the world and therefore becomes part of that group of people who reasonably expect to see salvation coming to pass in their lives and world now and ultimately in the future. They are moments of consciously entering into the ongoing salvation story. But if this is the case, then no one event is the cause of anyone’s salvation. What Jesus did is the cause, what Jesus will do is the cause, and what the Spirit is doing now is the cause. Our actions are caught up into this process and contribute in real ways to the result as he weaves them in, but our actions do not cause the process to occur any more than the threads cause the weaving to occur.

In response to Robby McAlpine’s comment on this blog post by Brad Blocksom. Robby wrote: One thing I’ve seen from the academia side that bothers me is when some church leader asks whether or not they take the Bible “literally”. The academics have a great deal of semantic fun with this one, talking genre and form and how the questioner is clearly an uneducated dolt, and generally have a great snort-n-chortle amongst themselves. But the questioner wasn’t asking for a dissertation on genre; they were just wondering if the academics consider the Bible authoritative in our lives today. And I suspect the academics knew that (they are supposed to be the smart ones, after all). They could have just answered the query that the questioner was actually asking. :) ——— It can actually be pretty hard for an academic to answer such a question well, Robby. I’ve been asked before whether I “take the Bible literally,” and it quite often isn’t just a matter of whether I consider the Bible authoritative that they want to know. That usually is the heart of their concern, but very often the other person’s is working with assumptions about the nature of truth, of revelation, of language, and of meaning that they think everyone must agree to in order to consider the Scriptures to be authoritative. Often the use of the term “literally” is connected to some specific issue that the person considers to be a litmus test. Im my responses, I am certainly not laughing up my sleeve. I do my best to find a way to answer that will be at once truthful, trust-building, and edifying to the other person’s faith and discipleship. When possible, I like to engage in conversation for a while, asking them questions in order to get a better understanding of where they are coming from, including whether there are any burning issues that are bothering them. This enables me to figure out the best and most helpful answers to give them. Ideally, the conversation stops being a matter of questions and answers and becomes a matter of “Hey cool, we’re having fun thinking and learning together.” But this is not always possible, and it is rarely easy. It is especially hard if the question whether I “take the Bible literally” is coming out of the blue from someone I don’t know well or at all. In such a situation, the question is often originating from a stance of distrust, which means I have only a few sentences in which to establish both (a) that we are on the same team, and (b) that we have alternative understandings on how Jesus intended certain aspects of the game to be played. I can’t simply say “Yes,” or “No,” without being disingenuous in either case, since the real answer is more complicated. But there is also a human tendency to hear “It’s complicated,” as “No,” in situations of distrust, so that isn’t a good one-liner, either. Moreover, giving a one line answer would amount to a missed opportunity to help someone grow deeper and stronger in their faith and understanding. Giving a simple, probably misleading, short answer might be tempting if I’m feeling too tired or lazy to help someone grow in Christ, but if I want to take seriously my calling to be a theologian for the sake of the church, then I need to give answers that will be at once encouraging and challenging, and that will ideally lead to richer conversations, deepening insight, and long-term growth. If I just answered the query the questioner (thought that they) asked, I wouldn’t actually be helping them much at all.

A quick interjection regarding the Christological question: The post-Chalcedonian period settled quite decisively that Jesus did indeed have to grow in knowledge exactly like all humans do, including potty training and all the rest, that he could get ill and so on, and that he was generally subject to all the consequences of human finitude that we all are. He had to learn to read, learn to walk, learn not to poop in his pants, etc. He got colds. He yelled in pain when he hit his thumb with a hammer. He could have died of thirst, starvation, asphyxiation, exposure, dismemberment, or whatever if the situation arose. He had to double-check his measurements before cutting a board to make sure he didn’t screw it up. To say otherwise is to slide into monophysitism. So whether we feel comfortable with it or not, we Chalcedonians need to affirm that  Jesus’ knowledge as a human being was as finite, as provisional, and as culturally conditioned as anyone’s. ——— [After further interaction in Was Jesus’ knowledge finite and limited? on the SVS forum] Part of what makes this question so tricky is the assumption that human knowledge and divine knowledge are the same sort of thing. This assumption puts us into the position of having to decide whether he has one mind1 with access to a single, shared pool of divine-human knowledge (which in practice would involve the drop of human knowledge being lost in the ocean of divine omniscience), or has two minds that operate in some sort of tandem, each accessing their own pool of knowledge. The first of these leans toward Apollinarianism, and the second towards Nestorianism. 1 Or whatever we want to call the faculty by which we know things. We can mind break down into, e.g., reasoning, memory feeling, etc., if we want, but it won’t make a material difference to this matter. We do better when we recognize that the word “know” does not have a univocal meaning in the sentences, “Bob knows the height of Mt. Everest,” and “God knows the height of Mt. Everest.” There is similarity between our knowing and God’s knowing, but there is always the ever greater dissimilarity, as the Fourth Lateran Council nicely phrased it. So when we talk about Jesus knowing things as a human and him knowing things as God, we are talking about analogous but nevertheless different actions. This is much like the analogy between how he created tables as a carpenter and created the cosmos as the Word. Now, it is impossible for us to understand what divine knowing is like since, as humans, we can only know what human knowing is like. This in turn makes it impossible for us to imagine the way divine and human knowing relate to one another in him. But based on the observable evidence of Scripture, it seems not to involve negating or overwhelming the finitude of his human knowledge.

Hi Chris⁠. Reading your thoughts and questions here and thinking back to our conversation the other night, I think I’m starting to get a better sense of where you are coming from and what you are trying to wrestle with. Hopefully this will be helpful. :) In Western culture (meaning, basically, European and European-derived culture), we have tended for the last several centuries to think of our world as having two “levels” or “spheres” or whatever: the natural and the supernatural. Some people think of these two spheres as overlapping or interacting a lot, some think that they do so only a little, some think that virtually never do, and some even think that the supernatural level doesn’t exist at all (this would include atheists, for example). In most Pentecostal and charismatic circles, this two-storey view of reality is the starting point for understanding how God interacts with us. Pentecostals and charismatics will insist that there is lots of interaction between the natural and the supernatural, and therefore that we should seek to interact with God supernaturally as much as we can. In this way of thinking about things, revelation from God obviously needs to be categorized as a supernatural event, an intervention in which something crosses over from God’s side into our side. Hearing God, therefore, should be a strange experience. One should be able to recognize “the real deal” in part by the how it is weird and doesn’t feel like our natural ways of perceiving, thinking, knowing, learning, etc. The Pentecostal understanding of receiving the gift of tongues, in which it is thought of as a distinct event when a person has this spiritual ability bestowed on them that they would not naturally have otherwise, is an example of how this plays out. However, this two-storey view of reality is actually very problematic for Christian faith and practice. Among (many!) other problems, it creates a relentless pressure towards expecting that God’s interactions with us will be rare and fleeting. If we consider God’s actions to be essentially alien to the natural world, then they are by definition abnormal and unusual. But Jesus didn’t think that God’s interactions with people were unusual. He taught his disciples to expect that God would interact with them, and that this would be NORMAL for them. Why? Because material and spiritual were not two separate sorts of reality existing in different realms or planes of existence or whatever; rather, they were simply aspects of one, single, unified reality. The Holy Spirit’s coming to the disciples was remarkable not because it indicated a metaphysical change, but because it indicated a relational change. The God from whom we had been estranged by our sin was now no longer a stranger to us. He has begun interacting with us all with a new intimacy and closeness, and so his people have begun to experience his Spirit with us in a way unlike before. This isn’t an incursion of the supernatural into the natural world, but a reconciliation with the God who has always been all around us. So, God’s interactions with us, including the sorts of interaction that we usually describe as him speaking to us, are how things are supposed to work. We human beings were made for this sort interaction from the very beginning. Our physical and mental processes are designed precisely AS the way for us to interact with God. He always intended to interact with us using the equipment he gave us, and as we become reconciled to him, he does that. So, imaginative impressions (e.g. visions and dreams), reading and pondering (say, the Bible, but also other things), experiencing stuff for ourselves, listening to the stories and wisdom of those who have gone before us in the Christian journey, and all the other human things we do to learn are EXACTLY how we learn from God. Heck, even when God does some astounding thing—burning bush, dramatic healing, pillar of fire in the desert, whatever—we still have to perceive and understand it with the same physical and cognitive faculties that we use to perceive and understand the presence and meaning of a hamburger on a plate. It is based on this kind of understanding of how God interacts with us that the Vineyard adopted the practice of using expressions like, “I’m seeing this image…” or, “I think God wants to say…” when sharing what we feel God is revealing to us. We know that we are all of us in the process of learning to hear him well, and that even though he speaks infallibly we are fallible listeners. It is also based on this kind of understanding of how God interacts with us that we say, “Everyone gets to play,” meaning that everyone can hear from God, pray for God to act, and participate in whatever God is up to. All human beings have the natural capacity to interact with God. We need only be reconciled with him and start relating to him in an interactive way. The upshot is that learning to hear God isn’t about him overriding or bypassing our normal ways of knowing, but about learning to recognize his guidance, direction, and revelation in what we see, think, imagine, hear, and feel. It is a matter of the content, not the form.

When my daughter was three years old, I realized that it was time to start explaining the gospel to her. But how does one explain the gospel well to a child that young in a way that will actually make sense to them? It isn’t easy! But I recognized that if I, with all my years of studying theology, could not explain the gospel to a preschooler, then I didn’t really understand myself. So I set my mind to it and thought a long time about how I could express it in a way that made sense to her. In the end, I came up with this formulation, which I like to call “the gospel for the preschooler”: Jesus died and came alive again, so that one day he can make everyone who dies come alive again. He is going to make the whole world good, and he wants us to help! That’s what the gospel really is, once you get right down to it. Everything else is elaboration, implication, and details. And the gospel for the preschooler seems to have worked. When I told my daughter the gospel this way, she understood it. It took hold in her and has continued to grip her soul to this day. She gets it. But let’s look a little more closely at the gospel here, and take notice of what its foundation is. “Jesus died and came alive again so that…” The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus are the basis for all the gospel. Everything depends on them. This is a holy night. It is a strange and terrible holy night. On Easter Sunday we will gather here again to celebrate the holiest day of the year, the day of Resurrection, the day when hope and joy arise victorious. But it is not yet Sunday. This is Good Friday. And it is indeed Good. But not Good like we usually think of good. This is a Good whose goodness runs too deep and too strangely for any of us to grasp fully even after a lifetime of contemplation. For the goodness of Good Friday is the goodness of the Cross. When I was a young Christian, I was presented with two ways of thinking about the Cross and what it meant that didn’t always seem to fit well together. Sometimes the focus would be on the awfulness of the Cross. This might involve concentration on the physical agony, or on the profound irony that this was happening to the Son of God. Other times the focus was on how the Cross was good news for us, because it was done in order to make our salvation possible. So far, so good; all of this is true. But where things went off the rails was when people treated the Cross as happy news, joyful news, straight-up reason to smile and laugh, like the Resurrection. In fact, it often seemed like the Cross was the whole gospel, that the sum of the gospel was “Jesus died for me, therefore I’ve been set free.” You’ll notice how something has dropped out in that version of the gospel. There is no Resurrection in it. And because of that, the Cross has been forced to do the job that belongs to the Resurrection. And when that happens, we can no longer understand the Cross for what it really means. “Jesus died and came alive again,” is the foundation of the gospel, and when we remember all of that, we will begin to be able to understand the true, full, terrible, and wonderous meaning of the Cross. Let’s take a moment and imagine two alternative possibilities. First, imagine the Cross without the Resurrection. Imagine if Jesus had died and had not been raised. Then the Cross would have been nothing more than one more example of meaningless suffering, just some bad thing that happened. It would have been the death of the Son of God, true enough, but it would only mean that God had lost and death had won. And we wouldn’t even know about it, anyway. Jesus would have been forgotten, except maybe in some footnote in some massive dusty tome on the history of the Roman Empire. God would have failed, and we wouldn’t even notice. Now imagine the Resurrection without the Cross. Suppose Jesus had lived to a ripe old age and then died reclining on a couch, talking and drinking wine with his disciples until he slipped off into sleep, and had then been resurrected. That would still be a source of hope, because it would still be God overcoming death with life. But it would be a very different hope. That would mean nothing more than that life goes on, and sure, sometimes some bad things happen, but it’ll all work out okay in the end. There would be no hope in that for the restoration of the broken. “It’ll all work out okay in the end,” is not much of a gospel. “Jesus died and came alive again” is the foundation of the gospel, and we need both parts to understand the gospel properly. The Resurrection is the source of the hope, while the Cross is what shapes and forms that hope. The Cross is what gives the Resurrection hope its character. The Cross tells us how the Resurrection hope works. The Cross is why we can trust that the Resurrection really will be a hope for the healing and transformation of even the worst. So then, if we want to understand the Cross, we need to see in it the ultimate expression of how God deals with evil, with suffering, with pain and violence and fear and cruelty and hate. We often ask ourselves, when faced with some evil thing, “Why?” We try to deal with evil by explaining it. If we can just make sense of it, we think, then it’ll be okay. We try to turn evil into a philosophical problem, because philosophical problems are abstract and take our minds away from the concrete. This doesn’t really help, of course, but it is what we keep trying to do. But God does not treat evil like a philosophical problem to figure out. God treats evil as a practical problem to solve. The Cross is the ultimate demonstration how God deals with all that is wrong in this world. The Cross shows us the answer to the question: “In what way is God present in the midst of this suffering and evil?” Or better, “How is God acting in the midst of this suffering and evil?” You see, the Cross requires us to see God himself nailed to it, God himself surrendered to death and submitted to it. Our God does not negate evil. He does not make it as if it never were. No, he takes it, goes into it, and from the depths, he changes it! He rises from the grave not as a negation of death, but as the subversion and transformation of death. He rises with the nail scars in his hands and the gash in his side, but now they are wounds of glory. They have not disappeared; they have not ceased to be wounds inflicted on him by nails and spear. But they no longer hold the power of death, for they have been transformed into wellsprings of life. The life that flowed out of those wounds into the void, the chaos, the darkness has proven to be inexhaustible, and now the void is changed. Resurrection life arises where there was only death, new life where there was only destruction, because God is there, too. This is why the Cross is good news. Suffering begins as meaningless. It has no ultimate reason behind it. It doesn’t belong in this world. But the Cross shows us that God will take our suffering and make sense out of it, literally make sense where there was none before, by creating good out of it. The Cross, that unspeakable horror that we ourselves inflicted on the Son of God, is, thanks to the Resurrection, now the sign to us that all the suffering, evil, fear, hate, cruelty and pain that afflict us in this world will be changed and transformed. Your suffering will become a wellspring of new life. Nothing is beyond hope. Our pains will not be washed away as if they had never happened. The Cross signifies that we, in all our brokenness, will be made whole.

Romans 13:1 gets abused in one of two directions. On the one hand, some use it to legitimate whatever political power structure happens to be in force. This can be as blunt as the notion of “the divine right of kings” to the subtler (and more insidious) notion that one’s own nation’s constitution or whatever is an embodiment of “God-given universal principles.” In this version, the sinfulness of the ruler(s) is passed over in favour of the idea that they have been appointed by God. On the other hand, some use this verse to argue that the church ought to try to seize and wield political power in the service of God’s reign. This approach will acknowledge that existing power structures are imperfect and tainted by sin, but sees that as providing legitimation and motivation for one’s own political agenda (whatever that may be), on the grounds that what is really needed is some good, God-fearing ruler to set things right. Both of these approaches get it wrong, because both confuse God’s intentions with concrete reality. The best way to consider the meaning and import of Romans 13:1 is to step back and consider the political implications of the concept of (drum roll, please)… the kingdom of God. God made us to be social beings, and to have him as the actual, literal ruler of our universal social structure. So governance is good, as an inherent aspect of being social beings, which is good. But more specifically it is God’s governance that is the proper form. That appears to be the intention in Eden (although with only two humans it wasn’t yet very complex, and thus more resembles a parent-child relationship than a king-people one yet), God’s revealed will in Deuteronomy or again in 1 Samuel, and the way things are described in the eschatological and proto-eschatological promises, imagery, and visions in both OT and NT. Human self-governance (i.e. humans governing humans and claiming sovereignty for themselves), on the other hand, arises as a deformation of God’s intention. We have rebelled against God as our Lord and King. Nevertheless, we remain social creatures, and so we find ourselves needing to set up our own governments to fill in that role so that we can live and function as people groups. But our governments are created as part of and as a result of our rebellion against him, and so they are founded in sin. In their concrete reality, they are manifestations of our sin and rebellion. This is why Deuteronomy both says that God’s will is that he alone be their king and also does “damage control” by laying out rules for when the Israelites decide to have a human king while still making it clear that God does not think a human king is a good plan. Like all things human, our ways of existing as social beings together are good but fallen and sinful. To use a Calvinist term, total depravity really is “total” in its proper, intended sense of “all-encompassing” (as opposed to “utter,” as it is so commonly misunderstood) and includes our social existence within its compass. Thus, while social structure—and therefore governance—is good and intended by God, all social structures and governments we have made are malformed and shot through with sin. We therefore need our social structures to be redeemed and set right by the reassertion of God’s own rule—which will mean the end of our self-rule. One thing I find interesting is how it seems that every government in history has claimed to be founded on divine sanction—whether via deifying the emperor, or via claiming a “divine right of kings,” or via “inalienable rights” with which human beings are endowed, or via whatever else functions in a given culture as legitimation for its claims to sovereignty and power. Each one seeks to arrogate sovereign authority to itself by claiming that the Power(s) That Be (however conceived) have given the stamp of approval to said government. But every claim to sovereignty by humans is rebellion against God’s rule over all. And every government will face judgment when Christ returns. No claim to possess sovereign authority by any human leader, then, is legitimate. That God has decreed that there should be government of human social structures does not in any way mean that any human government that exists can claim divine approval, as though God was on their side. King David did better than King Saul only as long as and only insofar as he retained his sense of being merely the servant of Yahweh, obeying his commands. Whenever David stopped seeking God’s own commands and began to think of his kingdom and power as his own, he fell into trouble. For the same reason, when Rome occasionally threw the Christians to the lions, it wasn’t because Rome wildly misunderstood the Christian gospel’s sociopolitical implications. The early Christians and their Roman persecutors both understood this better than we modern Western Christians who over-spiritualize God’s kingdom—if Jesus is King, then Caesar is nothing more than a mere man holding a temporary position who is subject to being judged (and dethroned) according to his obedience to the will of Christ. And if we stop and think about it, that is precisely what the real import of Rom 13:1 is. In light of the inevitably sinful and fallen nature of our actually existing governments, it is incoherent to claim that they, in their concrete reality, enjoy any sort of divine endorsement or that they can be the instruments of God in any straightforward manner. It certainly is not possible for a Christian to coherently think that political victory within our sinful governmental systems could ever bring about God’s goals for the world. And it most certainly is not possible for a Christian to coherently believe that any actually existing government will enact God’s justice or even protect it. At best, it will enact and protect a warped and distorted version of it. This is, true enough, still better than for a government not even to try to do so. But woe to those who imagine that Caesar is a good and faithful servant of God, or that he will carry out properly the job his position entails, or that winning influence in his court will allow one to make the policies of the empire mirror the policies of God. Christians working in the political sphere can do some good, in a piecemeal fashion, when they chose qua politicians to act as obedient servants of God subject to his sovereignty. But when Christians allow themselves qua Christians to become a power block in the political machinery of the state, the only appropriate words are those of Rev. 18:4. (Don’t forget, after all, that Rom. 13 is not the only sort of statement about human governments that the Bible makes. The threat of judgement and wrath against them for their failures to follow God’s will and for the blasphemy of claiming their own sovereignty hangs over them.) When we become a political power bloc, we are then doing the opposite of what Jesus modelled in John 18:36, where he insisted that his royal authority had a fundamentally different source than any worldly power’s and therefore refused to let his kingdom become another vying faction within the political system.

One should not seek to receive divine glory and blessing lightly. We want and need to be glorified like Jesus, which means the glory we seek looks like getting one’s head kicked in. It is a path suitable only to the desperate and the brave.

McMartin argues for an understanding of the image of God as the capacity for a (certain sort of) relationship with God. This, however, is not just a relational understanding of the image, but is in fact an ontological and relational and functional model. This is because capacities are structural (i.e. properties of beings, like the capacity to think, to hear, to jump, etc.) but moreover are teleological. Furthermore, McMartin notes that this teleological aspect means that capacities need to be understood in terms of potentiality and actualization. Defining a “nature” as (at least in part) a set of capacities, McMartin therefore is able to conclude that natures have this teleological potentiality/actualization multivalence. McMartin also notes that capacities have a hierarchical structure, giving the example of the ability to see. A lower level capacity for sight deals with whether one has a functioning set of eyes, whereas a higher level has to do with whether one’s brain can process visual stimuli. A loss of functioning eyes de-actualizes the capacity to see, but the higher level capacity remains intact; if the eyes can be healed, the ability to see will be restored because the higher level capacity remained. Building on this teleological and hierarchical understanding of natures as a set of ultimate capacities, and in particular the idea of the image of God as the capacity for relationship with God, McMartin offers a Christological discussion of how the two natures and their union in one person could be understood in this light. First, he says the Son qua Son and thus qua divine is the true image of God (Col 1:15) and “exact imprint of his nature” (Heb 1:3) because he fully actualizes the capacity for relationship with God—indeed, he says that this is why he is called the Son, since it is the result of having the divine nature. I am a bit leery about this, since it seems to be inadvertently setting up an almost Arian collapse of God with the Father while the Son is a separate being from God who is related to God. Perhaps this could be salvaged with some more carefully Trinitarian language. Second, he talks about this image bearing capacity in terms of Christ’s humanity. This, I think, is on more solid ground, although he actually does not develop this part very much. He jumps straight ahead to the soteriological implications this has for us in terms of growing in Christlikeness. I would have suggested here that the passages he cited earlier (Col 1:15, Heb 1:3) should be interpreted under this heading. That he is the image of the invisible God and the exact imprint of his nature does highlight his divine nature, it is true, but the whole point is that he is now the human being that is this. He is the “very image” because he is the culmination and perfect actualization of what human nature was made to be. This, of course, ties in with the supralapsarian view I take regarding the incarnation. Where things get interesting in this essay is where he turns to consider Christ’s person as capax Dei. Now he leverages the hierarchical and teleological aspects of capacities to suggest several things. First, he suggests a mildly kenotic Christology in which all the divine capacities are fully retained on the level of ultimate capacities (i.e. on the level of what is constitutive of a nature) but inevitably not all are fully actualized in the concrete particularity of the human being, Jesus Christ, since the finitude of a human body cannot fully actualize all divine capacities: “One positive and remarkable capacity comes at the expense of another. Christ’s full, embodied humanity may limit the expression of his divine capacities while not diminishing his full divinity” (147). I’m not convinced that this really is much of an advance; the notion that some divine attributes were retained but not exercised in the incarnation is not new, and is not without problems. Second, and more usefully, McMartin uses his ideas about capacities to turn aside the criticisms of an/enhypostasis. All the capacities of human nature are actualized by him—though of course, the finitude of human nature means that the actualization must be particular (e.g. he must be this height and not every possible height)—so there is nothing Docetic about an/enhypostasis. Third, and most interestingly for me, McMartin comes close to suggesting what I want to propose as a way past dyo- vs. monothelitism. As McMartin puts it, “The model may allow for two ultimate volitional capacities pertaining to each of the natures, but a single will in actualization of the capacities” (148). McMartin’s last section before concluding is a brief one drawing out some soteriological implications of his ideas. I particularly like what he has to say about the soteriological implications of the relationship between potentiality and actuality: First, Christ’s example shows that in our pursuit of Christlikeness, we need growth, process, and the movement from potentiality to actuality; even Jesus was not immune from these things (Luke 2:40, 52). This slow and often tortuous movement contrasts starkly with the desire inculcated in us by our culture. We are impatient; we want technological, immediate solutions. We want nonpersonal, nonmessy, less-than-human ways of solving our problems, even with respect to our growth in Christ. We long for supernatural, immediate intervention, in the manner of one of Christ’s healings, rather than long-developed strength of character. (149)

In response to the statement that “If God’s presence was fully with us then surely the evil and alienation and suffering would end.” That depends on what “fully” means. Does it mean “concretely,” “observably,” “manifestly,” etc.? Does it mean “deeply,” “intimately,” or “in the heart”? Does it mean “transformationally”? “Gloriously”? “Victoriously”? “Ubiquitously”? Something else? If we are using quantitative metaphors (fully, partially) to talk about how concretely or manifestly God is present, then no, God being fully present doesn’t mean the end of the old order. It doesn’t get any more concrete and manifest than the incarnation—one could literally see, hear, and touch God in Jesus—and that did not bring the old order to its end. If we are describing God’s presence with quantitative metaphors as a way to discuss how he relates to us, then once again, no. The Holy Spirit dwells in us already (corporately and individually) and is “closer to us than our own hearts,” but the old order is not ended thereby. Paul does use quantitative metaphors to talk about how the Spirit’s presence now functions soteriologically (i.e. as a downpayment on our future inheritance of glory), but this indicates how our salvation is not yet fully realized, not that the Spirit is only partially present to us. The Holy Spirit’s real, full, and true presence in us today is precisely what enables us to face the ongoing reality of the old order with faith that evil, alienation, and suffering will end. If “fully” means “gloriously” or (more to the point) “victoriously,” then the statement is true. God’s ultimate triumph over evil will mean the end of the old order of things. ... But does God’s “full” presence properly mean his being triumphantly present? Was God less present at the stoning of Stephen than at Peter’s healing of the lame man outside the gate called “Beautiful”? Was God less present on the cross than at the transfiguration? Perhaps we need to understand the relation between God’s presence and the existence of evil in a different way. I suggest that it’s not a matter of how much God is present vs. how much evil and suffering there is. “How much” is not the right sort of relation at all; it isn’t a matter of degree, but of mode. The right question is “In what way is God present in the midst of this suffering and evil?” Or better, “How is God acting in the midst of this suffering and evil?” The cross requires us to see God himself nailed to it, God himself surrendered to death and submitted to it. Our God does not negate evil. He does not make it as if it never were. No, he takes it, goes into it, and from the depths, he changes it! He rises from the grave not as a negation of death, but as the subversion and transformation of death. He rises with the nail scars in his hands and the gash in his side, but now they are wounds of glory. They have not disappeared; they have not ceased to be wounds inflicted on him by nails and spear. But they no longer hold the power of death, for they have been transformed into wellsprings of life. The life that flowed out of those wounds into the void has proven to be inexhaustible, and now the void is changed. Eschatological new life arises where there was only death, new life where there was only destruction, because God is there, too. So, do we still see suffering and evil in our world because God is not fully present? No. Our world still contains brokenness because God is currently present in a mode of kenotic redemption, subverting evil into good and transforming suffering into new life. We look forward to the day when this work will be complete and he will be present in the mode of glory, having won his victory via transformation rather than negation. But in the meantime, we suffer not because he is only partially present, but because he is not yet finished the work he is doing in us and our world.

Problem: Human suffering. God is all powerful. God is all loving. Choose one or the other. Is it a paradox? A Mystery? Is God ‘hidden’ behind the work of Jesus? Go, theologians. —Posted by Roger Flyer on Tuesday, July 2, 2013, at 5:12pm What kind of problem of suffering are you really asking about, Roger? The philosophical problem (or rather, some version of it), or the concrete problem? To the philosophical problem, I’ll contribute two points: 1) Attempts to make sense of the existence of evil in God’s creation are doomed to failure. This is because trying to make sense of evil’s existence is equivalent to trying to find a reason why it is here, which is to try to give it a rational, proper place in God’s creation. But evil has no rational, proper place in God’s creation. It doesn’t belong here—that’s what makes it evil. It is fundamentally irrational and fundamentally should not be, and so it cannot be explained. The moment we find a way to make sense of suffering and find a proper place and role for evil in creation, we can be sure that something has gone horrifically wrong in our thought process and that we should stop, back up, and figure out how it was that we came to point of calling evil good. 2) The philosophical problem is built on the unstated (and false) premise that the creation of the world has already been completed. If the world is “all done” then there are obvious reasons to criticize the Creator’s handiwork as the result of incompetence and/or indifference. However, if the world is even now “under construction” then complaining that it isn’t perfect doesn’t make sense. Of course it isn’t perfect yet; it’s not done yet. The world is still on its way from the tohu vabohu (Gen 1:2) of its initial chaos to the good, glorious, life-filled order of its final completion (cf. Rev 21 & 22’s New Jerusalem imagery). A lot of good has been accomplished already, but there are still parts where the destructive forces of chaos and nothingness have yet to be driven out. With this, we have now come to the concrete problem of evil. This is the part where we stop treating evil as an perplexing intellectual conundrum, and start treating it as a problem that needs to be fixed. My two points to contribute here mirror those above: 1) If the process of creation isn’t complete yet, then the proper question isn’t “Why would a loving and omnipotent God allow evil in his creation?” but rather “Why did he put us into this world before he was done perfecting it?” And the answer is “To help.” Both the Gen 1 and the Gen 2-3 accounts tell us, each with their own imagery, that the purpose of human beings was to go out and tame the wilderness that still remained in the world. (We are talking Middle Eastern, nasty, scrabbly, desert wilderness here, not beautiful North American forests and rivers; wilderness = bad.) Our task was to be one of the means by which God would make all things into a garden. Our sinfulness means that we have become cooperators with the forces of chaos, but that hasn’t negated our God-given calling. Instead, it means that we have to look to the Spirit of God to push back the encroaching chaos/desert/wilderness within us and thus to enable us to contribute (despite our sin) towards the eventual perfection of the world that he will bring to pass in the end no matter what. 2) This means that, on the concrete level, suffering can become meaningful. Suffering’s origins and causes provide no meaning, but when God takes up our suffering and transforms and heals it in such a way that he brings forth new good from the evil—then it becomes meaningful. By being changed into the seedbed of new good, it comes to have a proper place in the God-intended order of things. Based on the cruciform glory of Jesus, with its pattern of death-unto-resurrection and kenosis-unto-exaltation, we can see that the eschatologically oriented creative power of God is such that he takes our suffering, in all its horror and senselessness, and changes it such that the evil is displaced and new good comes into being. This isn’t a matter of making sense of the senseless in the way that we usually mean that term. Instead, it is a matter of God using his creative-redemptive power to actually make sense where there was none before. A good example of this can be found the contrast between the way the disciples tried to make sense of the man’s blindness in John 9 and Jesus’ way of doing that. The disciples expected an explanation for the disability in terms of its cause, and were simply arguing about what that was. They were therefore trying to find a way to make the occurrence of this evil fit rationally into their understanding of the universe—in other words, to give evil a home in the proper order of things. Jesus, on the other hand, rejects their attempts to make sense of the disability in terms of a causal reason. Instead, Jesus says that the reason for this affliction is to be found in the way God will act in response to it. In other words, the affliction becomes reasonable—i.e. comes to have a proper place in the God-intended order of things—by being transformed and healed by God. It is when God brings forth good out of the suffering that it is changed from senseless suffering into redemptive suffering. In sum, the answer to “Why did this bad thing happen?” is not found in the cause of the situation, but in its transformation.

On Dec 16, 2012, Dan Wilt posted this on the SVS Facebook group (now available on the SVS forum): I need some clear, benevolent, instructional statements from as many as possible for our Vineyard worship leaders. Worship leaders tend to have a more romantic, idealistic approach to other movements, and particularly the music that flows from them. For them, everything is simply a “style difference,” rather than a core theological or philosophical difference. In your own words, could you help us recover why music created from a uniquely Vineyard vantage point is so vital for us, and for the Body of Christ. (In moments, feel free to graciously compare that ethos to Bethel, Hillsong, and Passion). We’re trying to inspire our worship leaders to write well, and choose well, in their worship work. I gave a couple of responses in the ensuing conversation: ——— Phew, Dan, that is a big question! I can’t give as full an answer as I might like right now, but I would first point to the way that our congregational musical worship times function sacramentally for us. The chief function of the worship music is to create a sacred time and space for encounter with our God. The music serves in our church culture as the signal for the gathered community to focus attention on the Spirit, who is then faithful to respond. The result is often a heightened awareness of and interaction with the Spirit. This time of musically driven worship is thus one of the chief means—or perhaps even the chief means—by which we “partake of divine grace,” as older sacramental theologies might phrase it. This is a rather unique way to think about worship music within Western Christianity, but there are some interesting parallels with certain aspects of Eastern Orthodox sacramental theology (for example, the Orthodox use of icons and Vineyard use of music seem to have some common elements in terms of practice, if not necessarily in the theological language used to explain and support those practices). But regardless whether it is unique to the Vineyard or not, the importance of this sacramental function cannot be overstated for our spiritual life. Since this is the chief vehicle through which we experience the presence of God (rather than through, say, the Eucharist ritual or something else), losing a strong and intentional focus on this role would be terribly destructive to the spiritual health of any Vineyard church that did so. My charge to Vineyard worship leaders, if I could give one, would therefore be to make creating that sacred space for entering into the presence of God their chief concern at all times. Every other concern we might have about doing worship well flows from, and is therefore subordinate to, this. If there has been a reduction of lament, repentance, confession of weakness, exhortation to take up the cross, etc., in recently written Vineyard worship music, the first place I would look for an explanation would be the encroachment of non-Vineyard worship theologies and priorities. The same goes for any loss of intimacy and vitality. If musical worship becomes reduced to sung theology, or a collective expression of devotion and prayer, or (due to lack of any better theological reflection) merely a means of making church more appealing, the damage inflicted on our spirituality will always be immense, because we will find ourselves bereft of our chief means of connection with the life-giving Spirit of God. But when we keep the goal of creating a space and time for encountering the divine presence foremost in our theology of worship, then all the rest will fall into place. Good sung theology, the full range of devotional response (repentance, lament, and struggle as well as praise, joy, and excitement), and a truly attractive church environment will all follow from worship that centres on the sacramental function of entering his presence. That was how Vineyard worship became a driving force in the growth of our movement in the first place, and why so many others have sought to learn from it and to attempt to re-create it in their own traditions. If we lose this sacramental theology of worship music in favour of the theologies at work in traditions that have taken on the musical form without the undergirding theology, we will harm ourselves and moreover lose the ability to share this vital insight with those other traditions—which would be a sad loss for us and for the Body of Christ as a whole. Also, Vineyard metal and punk would be awesome. I was involved for several years in running a Vineyard electronica (dance, trance, techno, etc.) service, and it was FANTASTIC. Everyone always assumes that it would have appealed only to “the young people,” but this was not the case at all. Our attendance at these special events always reflected the full demographic range of our congregation. There is something quite marvellous in seeing a church grandmother, a 50-something seeker, a young mother, and a teen all lost in worship to the sound of throbbing DJ beats. Did that grandmother normally listen to electronica? No. But the Spirit of God was there, speaking through these finite sounds, and so we all bathed in his glory. ——— Okay, so here’s a more nuts and bolts approach than I took in my previous comment. Perhaps it is more in line with what Dan is looking for. I’ll take Casey Corum’s “Dwell” (2003) as an example of excellent, relatively recent, Vineyard-to-the-bone worship music. Lyrics: Dwell in the midst of usCome and dwell in this placeDwell in the midst of usCome and have Your wayDwell in the midst of usWipe all the tears from our facesDwell in the midst of usYou can have Your way Not our will, but Yours be doneCome and change usNot our will, but Yours be doneCome sustain us I consider this to be theologically an excellent representation of Vineyard’s heart and soul. First, the real meaning of maintaining the tension of the already and the not yet is well embodied here. This is not simply declaring that the eschatological power of God is here and available, as is typically emphasized in the songs of some of our more “kingdom already” brothers and sisters. Rather, this is asking for his presence in this moment. This entails the dual recognition that we do not have his presence the way we would like, but that if he should choose to come, we very well could. Neither does it only look forward to a glorious “some day” for the fulfillment of the kingdom promises, as is often emphasized in the songs of our “kingdom yet to come” brothers and sisters. The very same eschatological realities which will one one day be given their ultimate fulfillment when Jesus returns are truly able to be given fulfillment here and now, too. Note how the cry to have the Spirit “wipe all the tears from our faces,” which is drawn directly from Rev 21’s final vision, is asked in expectation that it can be given a fulfillment both now and not yet at the same time. In this song we see the true understanding of the already and the not yet at work, because it contains the absolutely vital recognition that the content of the kingdom’s enactment is not split into some pieces already and others not yet, but all of it now and all of it not yet. Asking for God to come dwell among us in this place, to have his way, and to wipe the tears from our faces, is simultaneously asking for the Spirit to come among us to do these things and for Jesus to return and do these things, because these are at once different things and the very same thing. Second, the lines about “Come and have your way” and “Not our will but yours be done” reflect the attitude of obedience that does (or should) characterize Vineyard in its search, not for spiritual power, but for God’s reign to be enacted in our world. This attitude of surrender and obedience, even at personal cost (think of who first uttered the line “Yet not my will, but yours be done, and in what circumstances), disappears altogether too quickly, and altogether too unnoticed, when triumphalist, “kingdom already” theologies are in play. In triumphalist traditions, the focus shifts subtly to the spiritual power given to us so we can do the works of the kingdom, and thereby away from seeing the works of the kingdom take place, for which we may, when necessary, be given access to the Spirit’s power. Closely connected with this is the pointed confession of dependence on God’s continuing, moment by moment grace. We do not simple have his power that sustains us, but rather we need him to come exercise his own power to sustain us. But then again, we also are not looking only to a future manifestation of his power to redeem us, as would occur if we leaned too far towards the not yet. That would recognize that our ultimate salvation is dependent on his loving presence and power, but would leave the matter of living today to be carried out under our own steam. The call, “Come sustain us,” is the recognition that our life now is entirely dependent on him and also graced and empowered by him. Of course, no one song can do everything. (For example, the sociopolitical implications of “Wipe every tear from our faces,” which are powerfully present in the original Revelation passage, are present only as resonances with the original and are not developed in any explicit fashion. The concern for social justice remains embedded within the song, even if dormant, and it could be drawn out without much difficulty, but the song doesn’t proactively lend itself to that purpose.) Nevertheless, I believe this song provides us with an excellent example and model for how Vineyard’s theological presuppositions and tradition can and should produce worship songs that differ subtly but profoundly from those of other, superficially similar groups.

Maria: Jon, my learned friend, do humans not come from spirit in your books… or is it from a terrible void that we arise… and is the robe of our genetics, animated solely by matter devoid of our eternal spirits or are our eternal spirits housed in the robe of our humanity? Jon: We are entirely both material and spiritual. Our origin lies in the act of God, creator of both heaven and earth, who formed us of both spirit and matter to be the image of God’s own being. Matter and spirit are not two different planes of existence, but one, single, unified reality. Rocks, angels, trees, demons, animals and humans are all part of one cosmos. Spirit cannot be reduced to matter, nor matter dismissed as illusion or whatever. Neither can they be separated. And as with the cosmos, so also with humans. We are utterly material and utterly spiritual. We are not merely spirits clothed in bodies, as if we could set them aside. My body is integral to who I am, and yours is to who you are. To separate body from spirit is to kill us, because to do so is to tear apart what is utterly one thing. What is left when we are torn apart like this is a rotting corpse and a mere shadow, cut off from the world and unable to participate in it any more. What we need is to be made whole, to be lifted out of this shadow state and put back together. This is why people are typically so surprised when they learn what the real hope of Christianity is: not to “go to heaven when you die” (the biblical texts say next to nothing about that), but rather to be resurrected (they talk about this constantly). This is to get our own, unique bodies back, to be reconstituted in wholeness once again, to have reversed the tearing asunder that we call death—and not only temporarily, but forever, so that death will never take us again, nor the powers of evil and chaos wreak havoc and destruction on the cosmos any more. This is important, because it means that this world of flesh and plants and mud matters for all eternity. What we do here and now, in the grit and particulars of real life, is utterly significant. Not just spiritual things matter in this world; so do the things that we think could never be important, because all of it is part of the story of this one, spiritual-material creation that has been made and will be made new and whole. Maria: Beautiful Jon. I’ve always thought that all would eventually arrive at the same place, though we walk different paths. I loved your first paragraph. I have alternative thoughts regarding your second, in that change is constant and the unique body you refer to emerges from the unique causes and conditions arising in our individual lives. It gathers about us, though the genetic tendencies and inclinations of our ancestors, in perfect resonance to the causes we’ve made, and is shed as a leaf in autumn... at least for now... and though imperfect, it is supremely precious, as is all life, and most wonderfully suited to our fundamental nature, and this moment, this now is incredibly powerful, a change in ones heart can transform everything. I don’t doubt that we are eternal and that the causes we make are essential to our joy, happiness, and well being. Ultimately, I imagine all phenomena are contained within one’s life, down to the last particle of dust... we encompass, sun, stars... all, from the eternal past to the eternal future, we are continuous. Our understandings, and fundamental nature can be translated into different cultures and times. I am a cosmic humanist, a fundamental humanist, and value every individual consciousness. I believe that we ourselves are fully enlightened ones... and our journey towards this truth is an endless odyssey into the innermost sanctum of our own lives. Jon: Yet that difference between us is significant, Maria. The first paragraph of what I wrote is the presupposition, while the second is the point for both Judaism and Christianity (and also Islam, albeit with some significant modifications). The world is a dynamic, growing thing, and we are made to be thoroughly part of it. But moreover, we are made to be part of it forever, not only for a time and then no more. When we are resurrected, we shall be part of its dynamic process again and without end. Now, we are clearly agreed that this world is precious, yet there remains a difference between us about that. From what you have said, it seems that for you the world is precious as something ultimately other from you, whether seen as something that gathers around you or as something experientially contained within you. The first image would suggest that the world, and even your own body, is precious to you in a way comparable to a precious stone: indeed valuable, but not ultimately vital to who you are in that you can set it aside without loss to your being. The second would suggest that the world, and even your own body, is precious to you in a way comparable to a meaningful story you have read: indeed valuable, but still something you can leave behind once you’ve experienced it. For me, the world is precious as something that I am fundamentally part of and that is not ultimately other to me, but rather greater than me. A good comparison might be to say that the world is precious to me in much the same way that my body is precious to one of the cells in my body: it is not part of me, but rather I am part of it; I cannot set it aside, for to be separated from it is my destruction. (Of course, this analogy is limited, and pressed too hard it will break down, but I hope it sheds light on the subject, so that we can understand one another better.) Who I am cannot be ultimately other from the rest of God’s creation, and I cannot find my identity by looking inwardly. Rather, I can find my own identity only by looking beyond myself, to the God who made me and the world God made me a part of. The only way to find oneself is to find oneself in the other. This is what is means when we Christians say that love is the ultimate reality and the ultimate truth and the ultimate goal. Indeed, for Christians this is the fundamental story of all. We believe that God literally became that which was other to God (i.e. one of the creatures God loves), and ultimately descended into that which is the very antithesis of God (i.e. death, the Nothing, Un-Being) in order to bring us out of it and so to reconcile all things to Godself. It is the very nature of the Source of all being to go out into the other and thereby increase the fullness of all being. This is love. And we are made, we are told, in God’s image, which means we must do likewise. Only by loving the other as ourself, by abandoning ourself to the other, by giving our life to see the salvation of the other, do we find our own life, receive back our own self, and come into the love that saves us. We must love God with reckless abandon, and therefore love what God loves with reckless abandon. Only thus can we and will we become who we truly are.

The Wesleyan quadrilateral is great. However, it needs a very important nuance (one which Frank has already pointed to). We do not have epistemologically unmediated access to any of the four elements. We can’t just access Scripture, but only our interpretations of Scripture. We can’t just access the tradition, but only our interpretations of the tradition, We can’t simply access even our experience, for it, too, is always already interpreted by the time we access it; even reason is not directly accessible, for what we have access to is always our interpretation of what is reasonable and how to reason. This is important, for it means that everything involved in our attempts to know and understand anything are always only provisional interpretations, and therefore never settled. Communal discernment, interpretation, and learning are our best ways to help make our knowledge as closely approximate to reality as possible, but even that is still only ever provisional. So I really don’t think we can ever assume something really is what we think it is, or aim to have exactly correspondent knowledge of the reality. We can only ever seek to approximate it as best we can through seeking coherence and testing whether our understanding works as an explanation of all that we encounter. And so as a result, often I find that my interpretation of one or more elements of the quadrilateral is at odds with my interpretation of some other element, I cannot surrender to the temptation to let one trump the others. Instead, I must keep wrestling until it all makes sense together, no matter how far down the rabbit hole I have to go. Anything less is intellectual suicide.

I loved a recent article on Not the Religious Type. The author (who appears to have left the Vineyard for an Anglican church) states that the Vineyard, like the Anglican church, has two sacraments... but they’re not baptism and eucharist. They’re prayer ministry and worship. He defines sacrament as something like an experience of the divine that transcends words, if I remember correctly. It’s an interesting proposition (full of problems depending on how you use the various words in there). I’ve enjoyed thinking about it. – Peter Benedict, 2012-01-05, in Facebook discussion (now available on the SVS forum) Peter, I have thought similarly myself about our Vineyard practices, in that worship and prayer ministry function almost sacramentally for us. This is interesting, given that officially we don’t have any sacraments, but rather describe baptism and Communion as ordinances. It seems to me that due to our being charismatic, we’ve actually moved from the Zwinglian view that we inherited, in which there are no sacraments, to something more akin to the Eastern Orthodox view, in which almost anything could function sacramentally. It is almost as though we’ve taken the normal spectrum of theology on this matter (Orthodox: undefined number of sacraments -> Roman Catholic: seven sacraments -> Lutheran: two sacraments [consubstantiation] -> Reformed: two sacraments [real, but perichoretic presence] -> Zwinglian: no sacraments, but rather two ordinances) and bent it around in a circle. We don’t consider anything inherently sacramental, but because the Spirit can do as he pleases, almost anything can become a means of operative grace. For us, worship and prayer ministry are chief modes of that operation of grace, but by no means the only ones. This is remarkably like what the Eastern Orthodox would say about baptism and Eucharist. It is perhaps not coincidental that the Orthodox traditionally have a much stronger pneumatology than most Western churches.

I think there is a connection between the development of eucharistic theologies like transubstantiation and consubstantiation and the loss of a future-oriented eschatology. As medieval Christianity turned from looking for a future hope to a transcendent hope, the expectation of meeting Christ shifted from the future parousia to the repeated sacrament. For all that certain traditions have much that is good to say about Eucharist, and I think low church Protestantism is deficient and rudimentary in its understanding, nevertheless it remains the case that certain forms of eucharistic theology are not consonant with the NT eschatological hope. Interestingly, it seem to me that transubstantiation is better off than consubstantiation here. Transubstantiation suggests that the elements somehow become the actual body and blood of Christ. Although this has odd and important ramifications for the nature of Christ’s body, at least it still keeps his body material. Consubstantiation, with its concomitant idea of the ubiquity of Christ’s body, effectively denies the materiality of Christ’s body, at least in its present exalted state. Now, one might of course reply that insisting on a material body for Christ now raises the problem of its current location. But it is one thing to say that his body is no longer part of our world the way our own bodies are, and quite another to say that his body is now a part of our world but in a very un-bodily fashion. The ascension certainly presents us with difficulties about Christ’s body, but ubiquity merely attempts to solve the problem by dispensing with any recognizable sort of body at all.

Evangelical theological method is so concerned to root revelation in the Bible because most of them in theory, and virtually all of them in practice, have lost any sense of the Holy Spirit doing anything beyond illuminating their reading of the text. Without any space in their theology for the idea that the Holy Spirit might say anything to them directly, evangelicals only have the Bible left as a locus for supernatural revelation. Yet since it is a text, the Bible is therefore suitable for rational investigation (thus the dominance of the historical-grammatical hermeneutic in Evangelical thought). Thus exegesis becomes the mode of divine communication today, and the role of the Holy Spirit is to guide and guarantee the correctness of that exegesis and the subsequent application. This fundamental shift to cessationism (whether doctrinal or merely practical) sets Evangelical thought into a very different situation from that of the patristic church. Both Evangelicalism and the early church saw the Bible (from which the early creeds and formulae were derived) as providing the rule of faith. However, the early church used this rule to guard against misguided readings that claimed to come from some kind of new, supernatural revelation of otherworldly wisdom, whereas Evangelicalism uses this rule to guard against encroachments of modern secularism. The former is guarding against heresy and syncretism, the latter is guarding against unbelief. The early church did not use the Rule of Faith (i.e. the creedal statements derived from and summarizing the Bible) to combat pagan religions, since it was completely inapplicable to them. It was no use to say to a worshipper of Mithras “Mithraism violates our Rule of Faith, so it must be rejected,” because he would not listen to such a claim. First he had to encounter Jesus and be converted before the Rule of Faith would have any claim on him. Only once he was a Christian could the Rule of Faith be applied to him and his theology. Evangelicals, on the other hand, seem to want to use the Rule of Faith (i.e. the Bible and statements derived from and summarizing it) to fight against secularism. They protest that secular culture does not conform to the Bible and insist that Western civilization needs to return the Bible to its proper place so that the truth of the Bible can be heard and thus people can encounter Jesus. This is, of course, madness and doomed to failure, since the modern non-Christian has no more reason to accept the Bible’s authority than the ancient Mithraite. The essential difference here is that the early church and the heretics it fought had in common a supernatural faith that included the ongoing speech of the Spirit, whereas the evangelical church has boiled all supernatural revelation down into Scripture and its interpretation and relies on this over against the naturalist assumptions of its opponents. The early church’s use of the regulating function of Scripture and creed was aimed to judge purported Spirit revelations to determine their true source. The Evangelical church’s use of this regulating function is conflated with the revelatory function (which itself has been constricted only to Scripture) and is used to resist and counter beliefs that do not claim the same source at all.

The resurrection is the main event and the ultimate point of the gospel. The crucifixion functions as the qualifier that shapes the meaning of the resurrection. By itself, the crucifixion would be meaningless. It would amount to nothing but the unpleasant but forgettable death of some wandering preacher long ago at the hands of the powerful. Jesus of Nazareth would appear in fewer footnotes than Bar Kochba. It is only because of the resurrection that the crucifixion becomes meaningful. Thus the crucifixion is dependent on the resurrection for its meaning. The resurrection is fundamentally meaningful, though its meaning is contextually qualified by the crucifixion. Resurrection requires death in order to become possible, and so its meaning is necessarily qualified by death; however, to require death is not to require crucifixion. If Jesus had lived to an old age and died with dignity reclining on a couch conversing with his followers (as Socrates did) and had then been resurrected by God, his resurrection would still be meaningful as Good News and therefore worthy of proclamation. But its meaning would have a different quality. Thus the relation between resurrection and crucifixion is like that between noun and adjective. The resurrection is the locus of meaning, and the crucifixion is the quality of the meaning. The resurrection is the sine qua non of Christian faith; the crucifixion is the sine qua aliter.