About the topic, I think today, tomorrow
especially will be, for some of you if you're church
leaders, ministers, education ministers, pulpit
ministers, tomorrow will be really interesting
because we're going to connect a fairly complex
theological topic with the church and how
the church can function as the second incarnation.
But today we're focusing primarily on the life
of Jesus.
Let me review or offer a brief review from yesterday.
Yesterday I made the point that the challenge
of embodied spirituality is to see the integration
of God in humanity and some lopsided responses
to the challenge would be the first, what
I called theological determinism.
That is the idea that in terms of spirituality,
God is completely responsible for human well-being
and human beings essentially are incapable of
living out a life of spirituality.
That's the first lopsided approach in my book.
The second is deism.
That is to say that human beings are completely
and absolutely responsible for their well-being
and God is really some distant or unrelated deity.
And the third option that I think is obviously
the right one, I guess, is the logic of incarnation
where we see the blending of the human and
divine in one person, namely Jesus.
And so for me, spirituality must begin with the
life of Jesus Christ.
And in looking at the life of Jesus, we begin
to see a wonderful blend of the human and
the divine in the life of spirituality.
And the implications of this approach, as I
said yesterday, are at least two.
The first being that human responsible
decision-making is complex, it's wonderful, and
it's tragic.
The second is a spirituality that is rooted in
the life of Jesus cannot reduce human decision-making
to a scripted, predetermined spirituality.
That is to say that God is really open to
encountering humanity in fresh and meaningful
and new ways.
Now today, we're going to look at, as I
promised, the life of Jesus.
And unlike yesterday, if I had it my way, we
would be around a table having a discussion
rather than me standing here talking to you.
But this is the lectureship format and so we'll
stick with it.
But I will try to be brief and allow for
questions and interaction with you because I'm interested
in getting your response and perhaps even when
you disagree with me.
That may help me to nuance or to rethink some
of my assumptions.
Now we don't talk a lot about incarnation in
our churches, but I think we assume it.
I think we assume the idea of God taking on a
body in the form of a servant, namely Jesus Christ.
And I really believe we're at a wonderful time
in our tradition to think and rethink
the way we understand the life of Jesus and as
that relates to spirituality.
I think in the past we were pretty close to
being deistic.
That is to say spirituality was essentially
about the mind and somewhat disconnected from
the assistance and guidance of God.
And now I think unfortunately to some extent
we're moving to an opposite extreme which
is to say that God is absolutely responsible
for everything and human beings are essentially
relegated to a minimal amount of decision
making in terms of what happens in the world.
And I want to say today that I think the life
of Jesus is a wonderful place to begin the discussion.
All right, so what is the incarnation and what
is the function of the incarnation?
The incarnation in basic terms is the coming of
God in the flesh and the person of Jesus.
What does the incarnation do?
What is the function of the incarnation for
human beings?
First thing I want you to note on the outline
is that it ensures human well-being.
What do I mean by that?
Why did God become human?
Now this is a very standard classical question
that Christians for a long time have tried
to address.
Why did God become human?
Nature informs us that God became human in
order to rescue us from a path of self-destruction.
And okay, not just the rescue mission, it's a
mission of restoration.
That is to say restore humans or restore to
humans their dignity and honor as children
of God.
As John says in his prologue, the gospel
empowers us to be the children of God.
And I think it's fashionable for some unknown
reason, and I have a historical I guess, and
the seasons that I think explain it, for us to
say now that human beings are horrible.
They're rotten as dirt.
I think that's in this reading of scripture.
Yes, human beings have tendencies that can
actualize into some really horrible decisions
and consequences.
But if I remember Genesis 1, God says that he
made human beings and he said that his
creation was not only good but very good.
And if I recall, Jesus took on a body, which
perhaps I would want to say is not essentially evil.
Now human beings are tragic and yet wonderful creations.
And by taking on a body, God in the flesh
empowers us to be the children of God and
ensure our well-being. Why?
Because Jesus, in reclaiming us, also empowered
us to be the reflection of God's glory in
the world.
So essentially, the coming of God in the flesh
is a way of ensuring human well-being or what
we would call salvation.
The second, the incarnation functions as a reorientation.
In what sense?
Because the divine teacher or pedagogue of the
universe, God took on a body in order
to re-educate humanity about the nature,
purpose, and goal of human existence.
As I said yesterday, I find it strange that God
would create a world and expect absolutely
nothing from his creation because his creation
is absolutely incapable of doing anything.
It seems to me a bit strange to create a being
and expect absolutely nothing from that being
because that being is incapable of fulfilling
anything related to God's will.
I think the coming of Jesus is a reaffirmation
of the Imago Dei, which is the image of God,
let me pass that up, the image of God.
That is to say, it is the bringing together of
creation and redemption, and in my book,
redemption simply is the reaffirmation of the
goodness of creation.
That's why Jesus is called the new man or the
second Adam.
God created us to commune with him and to
reflect his glory in the world, Genesis 1,
Philippians 2, Ephesians 1, Romans 12, I'm not
going to read all the passages, they're
in the outline.
Though we have turned away from God in terms of
our thought and behavior, God continues
to prod us to reconsider the reason for which
we were created.
The proper way of living in the world is rooted
in the very life of God, which has been presented
to us in the coming of the Son of God.
However, now this is a quote from an orthodox
theologian, however, humanity's role in the
created world can be fulfilled only if it keeps
intact the image of God, which was part
of its very humanity from the beginning.
We could spend the rest of today, perhaps the
rest of our lives, trying to figure out
what it means to say that we're created in
God's image, or at least as far as I can tell,
five to seven different interpretations of that.
But it's very clear that God left a part of
himself in humanity.
I like this last part from John Mayendorf.
The notion of image implies participation in
the divine nature.
And if you want to reference 2 Peter 1:4, where
Peter says we are participants in the
divine nature.
My argument, as I said yesterday, was to be
human is to be like God.
To be like God is to be human.
God created us to be human in order to be like him.
Now the last thing I want to say, or at least
it's not the last, but perhaps for today,
the incarnation also, as I've said, connects
redemption and creation.
In light of our destructive tendencies, God in
Christ attempts to renew the image of God
in us so that we might come to know him and to
act accordingly in the world.
There are several passages, and I don't have
time to go through them.
But if I had the time and I read the passages
to you, you would be amazed of the amount
of times in which Paul says essentially that
the goal of the Christian life is to be conformed
to the image of God, which is essentially to
get back to what God intended for us to
be in creation.
He did not intend for us in creation to be
ghosts, spirits.
He intended for us to be human beings, and
that's why he took on flesh.
In other words, Jesus Christ points us to the
true sense of what it means to be created
in the image of God.
My argument is that Jesus did not come only to
save us from our sins.
He came to show us what it means to be human,
and what it means to be human is to be like God.
In 1 John 3, one of my favorite passages, verse
1, how great is the love the Father
has lavished on us, that we should be called
children of God, and that is what we are.
The reason the world does not know us is that
it did not know him.
Dear friends, now we are children of God,
listen to that, and what we will be has not
yet been made known, but we know that when he
appears, we shall be like him.
See, the goal of life is to be like Jesus, and
if you think about that, Jesus
is God in the flesh, but that scares us,
because I think the call to be human, which is the
call to be like God, scares us because
essentially the distance between God and
humanity makes
us feel pretty good, autonomy.
But see, when you look at the life of Jesus,
you see a rich, complex blend of the divine
and the human in such a way that we begin to
see or have a glance at what it really
means to be human.
Jesus Christ, in my estimation, is the new man
or new person through which we find the
renewal of the purpose for which God created us.
The incarnation in this sense is the lens, the
lens through which we see God in a new
pattern for living in the world.
Tomorrow, I'm going to talk about some very
concrete ways in which the church, as the
extension of God in the world or the extension
of the presence of Christ in the world, is
a very concrete manifestation of God's activity
in the world.
What we tend to do is we tend to see God's
activity in the world in very individualistic
and personal ways.
For some reason, it makes us nervous to talk
about God working in a corporate and collective manner.
We want to hear the stories about God sort of
gliding through space and hitting one person
in some miraculous and strange way, rather than
in some very mundane and concrete ways,
which would be through human communities.
I find it fascinating when I read Paul, he
typically talks about the Spirit dwelling
in the church, which is not to say he doesn't
dwell in individual Christians.
But I want to talk tomorrow about incarnation
in terms of how it affects church life.
Now the next point I want to make is restoring
human spirituality is a risky business.
As I said yesterday, and I'm sure that some
would disagree with me, I believe that when
God became human, it was conceivable that God,
in the form of his son, could have rejected
the will of God.
I really think that Jesus experienced life as
human beings experience it.
I really believe Philippians too, when it says
he emptied himself.
It did not use his divine prerogatives to his
own advantage.
He did not use his divinity to his advantage.
He really did suffer, he really did humble
himself, he really did die on a cross.
So I want to say restoring spirituality for God
is a risky business.
It's an open enterprise.
It's a radical commitment to the well-being of
humanity in such a way that God himself
takes on the very experiences of humanity.
In this regard the incarnation then does at
least three things, probably more than three,
but the first it models for Us collaboration of
the divine and the human.
In Jesus we see the divine and human working
toward a new humanity, showing us in very
real ways a new way of living in the world.
The journey is filled with struggles and real
decisions, for example Jesus prays for other
possible ways of securing salvation, but
eventually accepts the call.
It seems to me that this implies choice.
Jesus is just wonderful and if the church could
ever just understand a fragment of this,
when it comes to for example religious
ceremonies and institutions, Jesus always puts
the well-being
of human persons first because he understands
that human beings were not created for the Sabbath.
He's criticized on several occasions because
he's sitting on the Sabbath, or he's doing
this or he's doing that.
Jesus tries to help I think not only the
readers of scripture in that context, but today what
he tries to help us to see is that
collaboration of the divine and the human is a wonderful
and complex and dynamic process and at the
heart of it, it is a reaffirmation of the
goodness of creation, the integrity of being a
human person.
And that's why it seems to me to be
incarnational as a body of believers, we, it
seems to me,
are challenged to infirm the integrity of human beings.
Yes, they're tainted, okay, I'll give you that,
but it seems to me if you take the incarnation
model seriously, it's very difficult to hate
someone because of how they seem to appear
and how they sound, how they look, and so on,
because essentially what the incarnation
does is it brings us back to the fundamental
premise of creation, that is to say we are
in some sense an imitation of God.
Secondly, the incarnation engages concrete
moments of human existence.
In the incarnation, it becomes clear that God
enters and submits to the contingencies
of history and showing us again what it means
to be human in that context.
The coming of Jesus Christ reveals the extent
to which God longs to restore dignity and
honor to human beings even with risk and
rejection in mind.
And that for me, I didn't grow up in the church.
When I was in the Air Force, I was 22 and
probably I'd say from 16-22, I told you
some of this yesterday, but I would say for all
practical purposes an atheist.
My affirmation was cowards follow God and
cowards are religious.
People that are, I didn't know this, but sort
of Friedrich Nietzsche back when I was 16.
Cowards are the people that look for hope in
some pie in the sky religion.
You affirm death, you live radically without
fear of the unknown because there is no such
thing as the unknown.
And I'll never forget when I was in the Air
Force, I was a firefighter, believe that,
in Fairbanks, Alaska, and a friend from Eugene,
Oregon, gave me a pocket gospel, one of those
pocket bibles that has four gospels, and that's
the first time I've read the Bible like that.
And the thing that came to my mind more than
anything as a sort of new person was God really
is interested in healing broken people.
And I am a broken young man.
Put in prison four times when I was in high
school, got my jaw broken in a bar, beat up
by about 25-30 people.
I didn't fear.
I mean, you could take me to church and tell me
I'm going to hell and I would just kind
of look at you and say, okay, sure, I'll affirm
that, there's no such thing as hell.
But what attracted me to Christianity wasn't
fear of the unknown because I didn't know
this, but John says that love, perfect love
casts out fear, so I didn't know intuitively
that I got that point.
But what really stuck with me was that God
heals broken people, and he's more interested
in that than he is in making you feel like
you're some piece of dirt.
I mean, I knew I was a piece of dirt once I
recognized that.
And what brought me into an understanding of
the gospel was the wonder and the mystery
of God's involvement in the world, restoring
people, not just ideas, but people.
And I'll never forget when I went to a church
in Fairbanks, a log cabin church of about
85 people, mostly military, and the minister,
it was really cute, he was trying to explain
to me baptism, and I interrupted him and I
said, look, my question isn't the kind of
baptism, the modality of, I didn't use that
language, the modality of baptism.
My issue is, do I really want to give up my
present lifestyle and live a different way?
Now I realize I'm broken, but the next move is
the move of the will, am I really going
to do this?
And he was kind of stunned because he thought I
was going to argue with him about infant
baptism and it was just fascinating.
Then we went to church and saw the piano, no
piano, and I said, what gives?
And they said, well, we don't, I said, okay,
whatever, that's fine.
Okay if it's piano or not, for me that wasn't
the issue, the issue was, am I willing to
let God work in my life and bring me to a
different state?
And I remember calling my girlfriend, she was a
student at FIT, which is a fashion institute
in New York, and said, I'm a Christian, and she
said, well, you know, I mean, it was kind
of a silence, and I said, I don't think we can
continue to live the way we are.
She hung the phone up on me.
That was my first, I think, experience of what
it really meant to understand a different
way of living.
But for me, the gospel, through the logic of
incarnations, and I didn't use this language,
I'm doing this retrospectively, but what it
really made me understand was that God is
not annulling my humanity, he's not taking it
away from me, he's providing me with a
richer and better understanding of what it
means to be human.
It means not to be a slave to what you
understand to be the best way to live in the world.
It means that life can be enhanced by being in Christ.
It's not, and what scared me, eventually, about
becoming a member of Church of Christ,
I didn't know, for example, our view on human
sexuality, because I'd heard the sort of dirt
myths about sex, and I realized that sometimes
we get into, or at least affirm, an understanding
of Christianity that seems to denigrate what is
human, to denigrate what is, in fact, good.
And I realized, through Jesus, and even to this
day, that was 17 years ago, and I thank
God for this, that it's okay to be human, in
fact, it's a good thing.
But what we've settled for is a truncated
version of humanity called secularism, which
was really basically a plagiarism of Christian
humanism in the 16th and 17th centuries.
We've allowed people to redefine humanity for us.
And what I find fascinating is that
Christianity says humanity is wonderful.
It's been reaffirmed in the coming of Jesus.
It is not detrimental to your well-being, it's
very important to your well-being.
Okay, last point, that was a minor sermon, I
apologize if it is.
But that's my story.
As an academic, I've, you know, I write for
audiences that are not always within Churches
of Christ, but I write with, excuse me for
using this word, with an existential awareness
of my change of identity.
That really, my life has radically been altered
because of the Incarnation.
Okay, the last point, the Incarnation reveals
the heart of true spirituality, or our true
spiritual identity, while calling us to extend
the presence of God to others in the world.
We fulfill our divinely created purpose when we
allow God to shape and transform our character.
When we fail to accomplish this task, the
Incarnation remains merely an abstract idea.
See, right now we're speaking about racial reconciliation.
And Sunday night we had the Lord's Supper, and
some people I'm sure were troubled by
that, but I think that was a wonderful physical
manifestation of the unity that is found in Christ.
We have to put a face on an idea.
We have to put flesh on a body.
When we stray from our divinely intended
purpose, it seems to me, and we contribute then to
the existing problems of society, racism,
violence, and sexism.
Because what we essentially say to that person
is, you're not a person, you're an object.
You're not a human being.
That's pretty presumptuous for us to say that,
since God says every person is a human being.
The Church remembers the primary message of the
Incarnation by pursuing God's will which
involved, as I said yesterday, loving God with
all of your being and loving your neighbor
as yourself.
Essentially, it seems to me, when we get to the
whole thing about God's will and spirituality,
those are the two basic principles.
Love God and your neighbor.
The latter, and even the former, are pretty
difficult and complex to flesh out.
But I think if you can keep those two
principles, if you err on the side of loving
your neighbor,
you're in good shape.
If you err on the side of loving God, you're in
good shape.
These two commandments provide the basis upon
which the Church discerns God's will and lives
accordingly, in Galatians 5:14, and other
passages in the Old Testament and other places,
where it seems to me, essentially, the coming
of God in the flesh is a reaffirmation of
human well-being or the goodness of creation.
Okay, that's it.
I tried to keep it to about 25, 30 minutes, and
I want to open it up for questions. Yeah.
God's Spirit will be with us and will act with
us and collaborate with us.
In continuity, this is for the tape, in
continuity with yesterday, another member of
the audience
agrees with me.
I had a psychologist yesterday, so I'm in good shape.
But I think you're right.
I think the challenge is for us to be centered
in the life of Christ, which is very, I mean,
to talk about how the divine and human are
melded or blended, it has been a Christi- well,
Christological problem for some time, and I
think we do it with a lot of things.
We do it with scripture.
Scripture is fully a divine book, not written
by human beings, or scripture is only a human
book, not written by God.
And I think those tendencies are, in my
estimation, the church's struggle to understand
how the
divine and human work in a process, Providence
is another example of that.
How does God work in the world?
Does he work at the expense of human beings or
with human beings?
And I think there are multiple ways to
understand that.
But I think when you look at the life of Jesus,
he made decisions.
He consulted with God, too, which seems to me
to be a rejection of deism.
But also, in some sense, I don't think Jesus,
everything was sort of etched in stone.
I think he really made decisions and had to
experience life in that way.
But I'm sure in the wilderness praying for 40
days and 40 nights, I think, was a preparation
and a cultivation of some habits that really, I
would imagine, gave him strength and empowered
him for situations that were pretty difficult. OK.
I'd like to personally explore a tendency that
we make it a tendency, but I kind of
don't think I've ever done that before.
Thank you.
There was a way of pitting Paul and Jesus
against one another because the
assumption is that Jesus is the fighter for the
individual and Paul is the
protector of the status quo and I think there
is a tension and I don't think we
should ignore that. It's the strange thing
about that is the Gospels are
also written to communities and so I can't
imagine 1st century Christians
looking at it and saying oh yes Jesus is an
American and he is into the autonomy
of the individual but it's very clear that
Jesus I think provides a very
important mechanism for Christian communities
which is to say never
subsume an individual into the collective
consciousness and I think
that's what we've done sometimes as I would say
it's kind of like the Borg
mentality on Star Trek where you have this sort
of collective consciousness
and we subsume personalities and
individualities into that and
their distinctive personalities are sort of
blurred. It's similar to
what happens in cults. That is a struggle I
think when you read Paul
there are certain things that he seems to not
criticize perhaps and I think some
have mentioned that for example slavery the
treatment of women occasionally
there's a debate now I mean in our churches
about that right. At the same
time I think Jesus is showing that
institutionalized religion when it's
gone awry is problematic and in that sense I
think what he's saying is you
miss the basic message of creation. You miss
the basic message of the
Exodus. I mean what do they want to do with him
in Luke 4 when he announces
that he's coming to provide peace and
liberation to oppressed and marginalized
people. They want to throw him off a cliff. Now
there are probably reasons for that
maybe not that they're all evil in nature but
perhaps they have a different
understanding of the message of God to Gentiles
but it's very clear that I
think that we should not in this example David
I think of Scripture we cannot it
seems to me or should not blur or silence the
many voices in Scripture
that remind us of our tendencies to perhaps
miss an aspect of Christianity.
That makes us nervous because we say well then
the Bible is not a unified
message. No it's the Bible explores so many
aspects of human life that if
there weren't a part of Scripture that talks
about the protection of the human
human person it seems to me it would be very
easy for us to read Paul and say
forget the individual to plume people into the
collective you know what I mean
that's that's a real struggle I think and I
think it's a temptation. At the
same time I think Paul's a wonderful reminder
to us that when we come to
church we don't come to church as individuals
on a journey of
self-fulfillment. The church largely is about
communal well-being for example
Philippians 2:12 the passage I heard I've not
heard many sermons on this I'd
like to where Paul says work out your salvation
with fear and trembling now
when I heard that and read that in the English
I assumed that met you as an
individual well in the original language it's
in the plural work out is in the
plural and then Paul says this is how you work
out your salvation with fear
and trembling in chapter 2:14 you stop
grumbling you stop complaining you
consider what is best for the other person you
know chapter 2 3 4 you're not
an arrogant person you work with humility and
boy I think of churches that I'm
going to talk about that tomorrow a little bit
I wish churches could
understand the communal dimension of what we
call salvation it's not just you
standing before God as an individual it's you
as a community functioning as
the ongoing presence of God in the world so you
know I would say that those are
two examples of I think a tension but yet a
really important tension right
yeah that's a good question I've spent a good
amount of time thinking about the
Trinity I am a Trinitarian Christian I believe
that God is Father Son and Holy
Spirit and I understand in our tradition we've
not said that it's formally but I
think you can connect the Mago Dei in the
Trinity let me give you an example
there's I'll give credit to the author of the
famous author of John Zazoulis who
wrote a book called Being as Communion and in
this book he says there are two
aspects of life there's biological existence
and there's ecclesial existence
okay biological existence is the basic aspects
of human life almost an animal
life survival autonomy ecclesial existence is
being incorporated into the
life of God through the sacrament of baptism
and the continuity of the
Eucharist of the Lord's Supper and what I find
fascinating is that Zazoula says
that God in his very essence is communal okay
relationality is a very essence and
core of God's nature the Mago Dei is in fact
for humanity to be like God which
is to be essentially relational and that can
only be found for him in the church
until you're incorporated into that you're not
really fully living out the
Mago Dei which means essentially to be human is
to be relational now that that
challenges some of our assumptions about
autonomy but his point is if God is
relational and we are called to be like God
then we're called to be relational
which would make sense of Paul's arguments in
his letters and even the
Gospels where Jesus will definitely say in
terms of his approach to human beings
that relationality is essentially probably more
important than one episode
of one aspect of human life so that's how I
would connect relationality or the
idea of God being triune and the Mago Dei if
God is relational we're called
to do that and you know the idea of a body is
never absent from scripture
human beings are you know right yeah that's
where the integration comes in
that's why I called this embodied spirituality
it's not spirituality
without a body and Paul talks about one day we
all will have a new body and
they'll be conformed to the image and the
likeness of the body of Jesus
whatever that means and whatever it means for
Jesus to come back and eat
fish and be grasped and to be seen I don't know
I mean but it's fascinating
that God seems interested in human beings
living on an embodied spirituality
yeah but that's how I would connect the Trinity
which I think is compatible any
other question yeah
yeah I guess I would not the word impose is the
word I probably would change I'm
a big fan of the idea of catechesis instead of
imposing on people about a
set of beliefs I think we induct them into a
set of practices and after a
period of time when they experience these
practices and are sort of get it
they see the minister rather than usurping
authority over a non-believer
they see a minister as an incarnation of Christ
and so you incorporate people
into a community of now here's where I differ
from some of the narrative guys
they say it's not a set of propositions I do
think narratives are undergirded by
some propositions but the difference is you
don't throw the propositions out
there without flesh without a story and so I'm
a big fan of the virtue approach
to Christianity which is to say you essentially
model for people what it
means to be Christian instead of setting up and
clearly when they come into the
community and this is where I maybe I'm not
seeker friendly I don't know I don't
know the language that well I think it's time
for the church to
unapologetically say this is what it means to
be a Christian and if you want
to be a part of this community it doesn't mean
we're going to get rid of
your individuality we're not going to tell you
can't be a town you can't be
an order you can't be from the northwest you
can't listen to certain music you
can't do this what we're going to say is
essentially this is what it means to be
Christian and these practices are fundamental
to your Christianity for
your well-being but instead of sort of getting
into an apologetic posture where
we sort of do get out with people it seems to
me it's better for us to model
and clearly I would argue that there will be
some distinctive beliefs but
I would want them to be central and not
marginal beliefs I think sometimes we've
done that we've somebody else had their hand up
over here and then I think two
things number one I did mention this but I
think that the Holy Spirit works on
humanity in wonderful ways I didn't tell the
rest of my story but the night of the
fireman's ball in Alaska I went to this event
and Bruce Kutchall from Eugene
Oregon was there and I don't know how to
explain this but prior to that I had
some ideas I might want to change my life when
I saw him I had this
overwhelming experience of alienation went up
to him and said Bruce I'm gonna
change my life he took me in the bathroom
prayed over me poured out the
wine and after that probably within two or
three months my life was radically
changed so I think God what I would say is I
think God works through people
which is a part of his creation and I think
sometimes perhaps non-human I don't
know much about that I mean that's a really
interesting thing there's a big
debate about whether natural disasters are
caused by God is not caused by God
or permitted by God certainly September 11th
whether it was my argument is that
was mainly a human event certainly got our
attention I'm not sure about whether
I would want to explain the causality of that
in terms of exclusively divine
activity but certainly things like that get our
attention you know Oklahoma
bombings 14,000 people were killed in Turkey
because of an earthquake many
things like that certainly get our attention I
just don't know about
connecting the divine always in terms I don't
know mark and that I'm sorry yeah
Well, in terms of evil, let me start with
humanity first and then get to the second part.
I think human beings have the freedom to make
choices and as I said yesterday over a period
of time when you solidify certain habits you
become what you desire.
Now I don't know if I'd want to say that about
demons because we've tried to explain the
origin of demons, but it seems to me that
demons perhaps are the antithesis of the divine
and that is to say they are a sub-human level
of thinking and they draw us to a level that
is less than human.
And I would say for example Adolf Hitler and
what he did was less than human.
What it means to be human is to be like God and
anything that's not like God is in my
book less than human.
As far as the origin, but clearly I do think
that there are realities that are trying to
subvert and in some ways destroy the goodness
of creation and I think we're guilty of the
crime I mean in the 60s.
You might disagree with me, but I think there
is no justification for racism.
I think it is an inhumane attempt to squelch
and manipulate what is in fact a reflection
of God and I think that's how I would
understand the, see I don't want to use the
word spiritual
realm because that makes it sound like anything
here and the physical is not spiritual, but
the elements that live in a way that are not
always obvious to the naked eye seem to me
to be a distortion of God's intention for humanity.
You have experiences that echo that I think in
my gallery over here.
My parents and my children, most of them, I
tell them a lot of times, new Christians
sometimes really get it and we don't hear them.
Well and I agree with that as a new believer,
but I want to say something and I want this
to be on the record to all of you in this
audience that lived a proper life from birth
to the present and that did what your parents
said and were loving and obedient children.
You don't have to be like me to be a Christian.
Paul is not the only model for spirituality.
The idea that you have to be horrible before
you get into the water, there is nothing wrong
and this is where I think we have failed
largely in our churches.
We have assumed that children have to
eventually be led down the path of
self-destruction in
order to get them in the water and make them
feel like they are going to be baptized for
the redemption of their sins.
There is nothing wrong with continuity from
childhood to adulthood.
Certainly when they become Christian they are
realizing for the first time almost like
the idea of the bar mitzvah that they are now
responsible for living out the Christian
life and experiencing that.
My mom would love it if I were like you.
I put my mom through terrible pains by my
rebellion and that is why I don't tell my
story a lot because I think it will set
Christians up to assume and I have talked to
people like
this that until they have some conversion
experience which is radical in nature they
are not really Christian.
They don't feel Christian.
Sometimes you don't feel Christian, whatever
that means.
You are Christian.
Now we are past our time, I will be glad to
field a few more questions but I think Mark
wanted me to keep it to 45 minutes if that is correct.
Is that correct?
I believe.
Okay, we will go.
We will go.
We have got some more time.
Oh no, you were first.
I am sorry.
It is indisputable that in scripture it says
that God before the foundation of the world
called us to be his people.
Ephesians 1:3 and 4, Romans 8:28 and 29
conformed us to the image of Christ.
I think what we tend to do, I haven't read the
book but there is a book, an election
in the sun I think, what we tend to do is we
assume that that means that God before
the foundation of the world called you as an
individual to be a Christian.
The election is in Christ, not in you as an individual.
So your identification with Christ makes you
one of the elect.
Karl Barth, famous 20th century theologian went
as far as to say this, the church is
not the elect of God, Jesus is the elect of God
and by being incorporated into Christ
you become one of the elect of God.
I think what we've done is we've taken communal
language and we've applied it to individuals.
But when Paul writes his letters he does not
write to, what's your name, Chad, the church
at Chad, the church of Chad, he writes the
church of the Philippians, the church is in
Asia Minor, the church is in places, he doesn't
understand, I think if Paul were to come back
I can't speak for him completely and I think
that's absurd to do that.
But I would imagine if he came back and were
asked that question he would be confused.
And I think there are places for a difference
between what we would call being incorporated
into Christ and a function of your work in
Christ as an apostle, as a teacher.
Jeremiah said that also and I asked Mark
Hamilton, he's an Old Testament scholar, he
said we
tend to isolate passages and assume that they
represent all of scripture.
But my argument is that election is a communal
thing and it is found through incorporation
into the elect of God, namely Jesus.
What I find fascinating is in terms of the
election passages we want to talk about election
as almost an element of self-esteem that we're
one of the elect and what Paul says is we
were called to be in Christ which is to be
conformed to his image.
I don't hear a lot of conversations about that.
For example, Romans 8:8.28, a pretty important passage.
And we know that in all things God works for
the good of those who love him who have been
called according to his purpose, okay, stop there.
For those God foreknew, he also predestined to
be conformed to the likeness of his son.
That's what I really would like to highlight
and that is to say that election really is
about being conformed to the image and likeness
of God's son.
So I'm sure my friend, he's a Presbyterian, we
were talking about this and I said what
do we do with the passage where it says that
God's desire is all to be saved, he said all
the elect.
Now, you know, he's trying to be consistent, I
think, but it seems to me very difficult
to make that move when you read passages like
Matthew and some other passages in scripture.
But however, we agree on one thing, it's about
the collection of the elect, the collective.
Well, I think if I were pinned, I would say to
be like God is to be relational.
And if I were to put some concrete flesh on the
bones, I would say to be relational means
that when you, for example, at ACU, I don't
think I have a choice to be collegial.
I think I think to be incarnational is to be collegial.
And I know that's part of our tenure process,
to be collegial.
But it's also another concrete skill is to hear people.
I think it's really difficult to do that
without a Christian perspective.
I mean, I know my outline indicates that I have
a pretty maybe one dimensional approach
to this.
But I'll be I'll be honest with you, I'm
willing to hear people if I even if I don't agree
with them, I need to hear what they're saying,
because it seems to me if I don't, I'm rejecting
the doctrine of incarnation, which is to
consider the well being of other people.
Others would be, you know, family, family
dynamics, Paul uses the illustration of marriage
in Chapter five of Ephesians, that is to say,
you're not your own.
And you are really to submit yourself to your partner.
Church work, oh, boy, ministers, it's easy to
get up there and preach a sermon.
And to see that as an act of power, and it is
in some sense an act of power.
But what about preaching incarnation, you know,
in which your church really sees through
you the gospel?
I think I was taught, you know, by a minister
that you don't do that, sort of keep your
private life to yourself.
And I can never figure that out, because I felt
really bad when I got up to preach, because
I thought, Wow, I don't really have anything to say.
I was incarnational before it was fashionable
to be incarnational, because I thought, you
know, I can only speak from my experience of
being a Christian.
And obviously, it's informed by the text,
informed by some things, eventually exegesis
and all this kind of jazz, but church
leadership, you know, it's not about usurping authority
over people.
It's about serving them.
It's about doing it with humility.
Even teaching here, you know, I try to always
consider what's in the best interest of the students.
That's why I get really mad when people talk
about pooling ignorance, you know, you shouldn't
let students talk, because it's just like
pooling ignorance.
I think that's presumption.
I think I have a lot to learn from this and
frame it.
So those are just some concrete habits that I
try to put into practice, perhaps imperfectly,
but those are things that I think we forget.
What's that?
Not at their expense.
Well, no, no, no.
I don't think, I wouldn't say that, you know,
destroying that person and their self-worth
to prove that, you know, they're wrong would be
essential, but what would be Christian,
but certainly you would agree that not
everything that somebody would oppose would be essential.
Now you're getting me into my primary love,
which is philosophy.
My argument would be for someone to say that
all propositions are equally compatible would
be absolutely incoherent.
Interest in truth is on my list of priorities
number one, but what I would say is interest
in truth can never be divorced from Virtue.
I'm Aristotelian, by the way.
I think virtue is a combination of the life of
the mind and habits and practices.
So I'm with you.
I would say sure.
I mean, you know, if you folks are paying
attention, it's very clear that I'm not a
theological determinant.
And I don't think theological determinism is
equally compatible with logical incarnation.
At the same time, as I prepared this, I tried
to the best of my ability not to misrepresent,
I probably oversimplified, but not to
misrepresent a view that perhaps I don't share.
But what I would say is what we've done
sometimes in our churches, and I think we've
all been
guilty of this, we've divorced the person from
the idea.
And when I see a person, I'm not dealing with
an abstraction.
I'm dealing with a person who has a history,
who has ideas, feelings.
I'm dealing with the whole, sort of a holistic
approach to ministry and to scholarship.
That is to say I don't divorce, like the
incarnation, I don't divorce the spirit from
the mind.
But no, I would agree with you.
Okay, well, it's an hour.
And tomorrow we'll focus on church as an
application of what we're talking about.