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.

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.

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.

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]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.