This Holy Saturday, between Good Friday and Easter, I was reflecting on the idea of Jesus as the slain Passover lamb.  The association is certainly Biblical, not only in the obvious context of Jesus’ death taking place on Passover, but also in the testimony of the Apostle Paul in 1:Cor. 5:7.  Paul doesn’t go into detail what he means about Jesus being the Passover lamb, but if we look carefully I think there are some helpful hints to be gleaned … hints that suggest Jesus’ shed blood means a great deal besides forgiveness of sins.

The Passover sacrifice is, of course, introduced in Exodus 12.  In this account, God instructs Moses to tell the people of Israel to slaughter a lamb and do two specific things with it:  mark their doorposts with its blood, and eat the flesh for dinner.  In stark contrast to the usual Christian narrative of sacrifices being for sin, I find it notable that the concept of sin does not appear in the entire tale from Exodus 11-13.  Both actions–the blood and the flesh–have a very specific purpose, and  neither is related to sin at all.

First, the Israelites were to mark their door frames with the lamb’s blood “as a sign.”  Those whose houses were so marked would not suffer the death of their firstborn, as happened to the rest of the households of Egypt.  It’s important to recognize that God didn’t “need” the label; some (though not all) previous plagues specifically spared the Israelites in Exodus 8:22 (flies), Exodus 9:24 (livestock died), Exodus 9:26 (hail), and Exodus 10:23 (darkness).  So the sign of the blood clearly was intended for the Israelites themselves, not so much for God and the angel of death.  Nevertheless, the sign was clearly one of identification.  The blood on the door marked a household not only as of the people of God, but people who had deliberately obeyed God’s command.  It was not the shedding of that blood–the sacrifice itself–that spared the Israelites from the death plague, but rather the application of that blood according to God’s instructions.  Might this be consistent with a God who prefers obedience to sacrifice (1 Sam. 15:22, Hosea 6:6)?

Second, the Israelites were to eat the roast flesh of the lamb.  No symbolism is given for this in the Exodus text, and in fact the only instructions are that it should be roasted not boiled, that it be eaten in haste and with unleavened bread, and that any leftovers be burned.  Without trying to extrapolate too much, I honestly wonder if this may not have been a highly pragmatic command for the simple reason that the people were about to travel on foot out into the desert, and they simply needed a good protein-and-carbohydrate meal to fortify them for the journey.  God’s commands can get downright practical at times.

We Christians pay too little attention to the Passover links to Jesus, I think.  Passover is the time when God called his people out of a foreign place, saving them from slavery, and in a very real way making them into “his people” in a way they had not previously been.  On the eve of their salvation, on the threshold of a new life as a newly-created  nation, God’s people were labeled by blood and strengthened by flesh of a sacrificed lamb.  Paul says something quite similar in Ephesians 2:13-14, where even we Gentiles have been “brought near by the blood of Christ,” and separate peoples have been made into one “in his flesh.”  Jesus told his disciples to eat of his flesh and drink of his blood at the Passover meal.  Just as God initiated a feast of remembrance on the eve of delivering the people of Israel, Jesus instituted a new meal of remembrance as he set in motion the new kingdom of his Body.  The body of Christ as well as the blood; the bread as well as the cup, is given to humans to unite and seal us as the people of God.  In his broken body and shed blood, we are marked as different, set apart from the death that rages around us, and ushered into a new kingdom.

There is much more in the Bible about the blood of Christ, and I don’t suggest for a moment that the Passover narrative is the whole story.  Still, it is one we should remember.  This “day of remembrance,” this “festival to the LORD,” is to remind us of our deliverance, our calling, our unification as the people of God.  Let us not forget.

When I first heard that Tony Campolo and Shane Claiborne were doing a book on Red Letter Christianity, I was pretty excited.  I have a great deal of respect for both men, and while I don’t always agree with either, I think their prophetic voice in the church is beyond any reasonable dispute.  So I actively sought a review copy of the book, and the kind folks at redletterchristians.org obliged. As a consequence, it’s with more than a little regret that I have to tell you that I found Red Letter Revolution a disappointment. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still worth reading the conversation between Shane and Tony, and there are plenty of spots to get the reader thinking. But considering the authors and the title, I frankly expected a lot more. Red Letter Revolution contains far too few of the red letters (that is, the recorded teachings of Jesus in the gospels, often printed in red), and what’s more, it’s not all that revolutionary.

Longtime readers of this blog will know that I’ve repeatedly suggested Christian theology spends too much time bringing extrabiblical questions to faith. Much of my objection to the traditional creeds is that they create a priority of emphasis that is discordant with scriptural priorities. Part of my own attraction to so-called “Red Letter Christianity” is that, if we approach the gospel accounts, not only for their raw content, but to see what Jesus did–and just as important, what he did not–emphasize, we find areas of focus that differ radically from those taught in most churches, and studied by most theologians. I had hoped Tony and Shane’s book would illustrate this approach, as I believe much of their teaching and living to date has done.

Herein lies my principal disappointment with “Revolution.” The topics chosen for Shane and Tony’s discussion seem to me to have been pulled largely from the agenda of those some might call “liberal” and others “progressive,” not from the gospels. The first eight chapter headings, under the rubric “Red Letter Theology,” illustrate my point: History, Community, the Church, Liturgy, Saints, Hell, Islam, and Economics. Each of these subjects is treated with an interesting and worthwhile perspective, but it’s often one that only tangentially references Jesus’ words–the red letters–at all. And quite frankly, I’m unconvinced that some of these topics, such as liturgy and the saints (that is, those saints recognized and canonized by an official church) would even figure at all in a gospels-sourced curriculum. Others of the eight are more vital, I think, and we certainly can find among the red letters, guidance for how to approach them. But absent the foundation of Jesus’ actual teaching on his kingdom, even these lose their context and much of their power.

The remaining major sections of the book, “Red Letter Living” and “Red Letter World,” continue the pattern established by the first, selecting topics of great interest to progressives (Christian or not) in a manner that I would have expected from Jim Wallis, but I did not anticipate from Campolo and Claiborne. As before, what the two say about the topics so selected is worth reading. But instead of walking the reader through a fresh exploration of life directed by a focus on Jesus’ priorities, I found a book that lays out a decent left-wing alternative to right-wing Evangelicalism. That’s not a bad thing…In fact it’s quite worth doing. But that is not Red-Letter Christianity…it’s Blue-State Christianity. They’re not synonymous.

So in the final analysis this book, though full of interesting insights from two godly men, fails to deliver what it’s title promises. I sincerely hope that the authors will try again.

Disclosure: I received an advance review copy of the book from the publisher; however the opinion expressed herein is my own and (obviously) not that of the publisher or the book’s authors. No consideration regarding the content of this review was asked or offered.

Step 1: Watch the video.

Step 2. Read the text below the video.

And on the third day He rose from the dead, and He…just…smiled.

Christus Victor indeed!

For years, the abuse of Scriptural passages to justify the aggressive exploits of nations has driven me nuts.  Whether it’s the the account of the conquest of Canaan, used by European colonists to take the New World and exterminate or marginalize its indigenous population, or the same story repeated by the Afrikaaner Dutch in South Africa, it’s always repulsed me.  And when revisionist American Christians use the covenental and missional language of the Bible to justify –even advocate for– the interventionist behavior of the United States, I positively want to scream.  Now Braden P. (Brad) Anderson has published a theological response to this abuse, and it’s an important work.

Chosen Nation is the product of Brad’s doctoral dissertation.  In this book, Brad takes on the topics of nationalism and faith through the discipline of theopolitics…an academic focus that looks at how theology is worked out in political frameworks…and does so with a rigor that few have bothered to master.  In doing so, Anderson makes a compelling case that we need to understand both Biblical claims and nationalist narratives before we all-too-lightly mash the two together.

Drawing on the work of William T. Cavenaugh, among others, Anderson takes a hard look at the American notion of exceptionalism, in which the United States is perceived by many to be chosen and ordained by God to perform a special function in the world, typically one that involves the projection of American power and the replication of American-style ideals and governance through the exercise of that power.  Already in the nineteenth century, but also seized upon by modern theologian Stephen H. Webb, Anderson describes a nation that arrogates to itself the role God intended for the church.  Quoting Cavenaugh, the nation “does not simply seek to follow God’s will, but acts as a kind of substitute God on the stage of history.”  The nation, Anderson says, “worships its freedom to worship, which is inherent to its identity, and thus worships itself.”  The resulting nationalism, he writes in his preface, “…is a challenge that rewrites the Christian salvation narrative, reconstructs Christian politics, and reorients disciples of Christ away from solidarity with each other and with those suffering around them.”

One of Anderson’s most important contributions in “Chosen Nation,” I believe, is his analysis of the meaning of God’s covenant with Israel in the Old Testament.  Beginning with the Puritans coming from England to the New World, right through the nineteenth century and into the nationalism of Evangelical Americans today, there has been a tendency to claim elements of that covenant language, and appropriate them to bless–even to promote–American hegemony.  But as Anderson leads us through the Biblical account, he shows us how God established Israel as a set-apart people with himself as the sovereign.  As the prophet Samuel testified, when the people of Israel chose to emulate the nations around by demanding a king and taking on the role of a nation-state, they willfully abandoned God’s sovereignty and abrogated the terms of God’s covenant with them.  “With the expansion of empire [under King David] and its attendant utilization of foreign alliances, slavery, and a standing army, realpolitik becomes institutionalized in the state, and Israel becomes that from which it had been delivered in the exodus.” (emphasis mine)

Paradoxically, then, as Americans (and others) appropriate to their own nations the covenantal language of the early Old Testament, they fail to recognize that the structures and conduct of the nation state are themselves incompatible with the God-directed people for whom that language was intended.  As Anderson says, “To the degree that Christians residing in various nations seek to (1) identify themselves according to a syncretized theopolitical narrative of identity, and (2) secure that national identity through the political ways of the powers, they participate in a form of Israel’s own error, directly altering their identity in the church of Jesus Christ.”

Later in the book, Anderson looks at the Biblical case for the church of Jesus Christ being the heir to God’s divine covenant with Israel (see 1 Pet. 2:4-10 among other foundational passages).  Since the church, rightly seen, is a transnational entity, it is therefore a fundamental error to apply to any modern nation-state that sense of chosenness that rightly belongs to the church.  The church, Anderson writes, “cannot be supplanted from this role without fundamentally altering the salvation narrative it proclaims.  Insofar as nationalists claim for their nation the mantle of the definitive community witnessing to God’s salvation and prefiguring the kingdom of God on earth, they distort the Christian gospel and make their nation a simulacrum or parody of the church.”  More pointedly, he later states about several Christian Right authors in the US that “…by misappropriating biblical Israel as they do, that is, by making the nation America the extension of Israel as central to God’s plans for global salvation, these authors supplant the church, and by implication, Jesus Christ as Lord.” (emphasis mine)

Anderson’s concluding chapter is not so much a conclusion as a challenge for the church to re-engage with its own identity as God’s chosen people on a transnational level.  As an American, his questions are directed particularly at his own people:  “What does it mean to be American when the very origin of the country is rooted in the act of Christians killing other Christians?  What does it mean to be American when the United States constitutes an earthly empire by most measures of the term, that is, military, economic, ideological?”  And perhaps most challenging of all:  “Can we be American as we live in robust solidarity with non-Americans (or even anti-Americans), especially as Christ has rendered any such divisions or exclusions null and void?”

Difficult questions, indeed, and questions Anderson does not attempt to answer in any great detail.  The challenge is left for the reader to take up.  This book is not a quick read, and if you’re at all like me you’ll need to take your time to properly grapple with Anderson’s analysis and with the various theologians–conservative and progressive–with whom he engages.  It’s an important exercise, and well worth the effort.

Disclosure: This review is done on a copy of the book provided to me by the publisher.

For a while now I’ve been reading (and will soon review) the book Chosen Nation by Braden P. (Brad) Anderson. There are a variety of topics in the book that I’m going to want to engage, but one in particular caught my attention last night. In Chapter 7, Brad discusses the work of two writers, Stephen H. Webb and Richard John Neuhaus, both of whom are proponents of a popular notion in which the United States is somehow under a covenantal blessing from God rather as Israel was in the Old Testament. Consequently both, but particularly Webb, hold that the U.S. has not only the right, but even the duty, to act as sovereign on the world stage–and that the Church is duty-bound to support her.

Webb, as related by Anderson, builds much of his case on the notion of “Providence,” the notion that “God rules the world through the work of nations” (Webb, American Providence, 72, quoted by Anderson, 203).  Essentially, the idea is that the nations do what they do because God has so ordered it in order to accomplish his grand design in history. Webb sees a particularly providential role for America, says Anderson, in that “America has been chosen to fill the role of sovereign in the world today, as evidenced by its hegemony” (p.216). As characterized by Tim Beach-Verhey, “Webb argues that American religious, economic, and political institutions and values are dominating the world, which could not happen apart from God’s will, which means it must be in accord with God’s good and benevolent intentions for the world” (Beach-Verhey, as quoted in Anderson, 207).

Anderson does a good job of showing how the Biblical model of God’s kingdom is wrongly co-opted by Webb and others, but what he does not do is address the underlying philosophical assumption of Webb’s claim, which I suggest is a form (or at least a close cousin) of the “Is/Ought” problem first articulated by the 18th-century philosopher David Hume (here’s a brief summary). Hume’s own statement was this:

“In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark’d, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surpriz’d to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation,’tis necessary that it shou’d be observ’d and explain’d; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it … [I] am persuaded, that a small attention [to this point] wou’d subvert all the vulgar systems of morality, and let us see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceiv’d by reason.”

This statement has been reduced in philosophical usage to the statement “you can’t prove an ought from an is,” and numerous writers then refer to any such conclusion as an “ought-is fallacy” — essentially, the notion that what “ought to be” can never be derived through logic from empirical observations (what “is”) alone, and therefore any argument which does so is fallacious.  Google around a little, and you’ll find that philosophers (or at least those who presume to put philosophy on the web) fall into essentially two (vastly oversimplified) camps.  The first says that ought-is reasoning really is fallacious, and that consequently there is no such thing as morality derived from observation–that in fact, a prescriptive “ought” or “ought not” statement simply doesn’t fit into the categories of “true” and “false”.  These thinkers can come to the conclusion that morality is not, in fact rational at all (though by no means all conclude thus).  Another group disagrees, and says merely that one can’t get to a conclusion of morality (or perhaps any judgment of value) if all one’s premises are merely empirical.  In other words, if one’s inputs (premises) include a moral judgment, then it’s possible to infer further moral judgments from that set of premises (see this article by Dr. Charles Pidgin for an exploration of this).

Now all the discussions on the “Is/Ought problem” that I’ve found seem to circle around the concept of deriving imperatives or norms (what one ought to do) from some set of empirical premises.  What I see in Webb is actually a somewhat different type of inference–not one that (directly) tells us what we ought to do, but rather one which informs the “rightness” of what is.  For want of any source I can find on the subject, I’ll phrase it this way:

Thus it is, therefore it thus should be

which I think sounds cooler in Latin:  Sic est, ergo esse debet

(if anyone wants to correct my Latin I’d welcome it)

This is a far-more-comprehensive idea than simply whether or not one can make a value judgment on a particular action, norm, or command.  Rather than examining the basis for moral judgment, this position seems to be used largely as a foundation to silence dissent, to preclude any prophetic or moral evaluation of our nation’s actions.  If God has willed everything “we” do, then no one can challenge “us” without challenging God.

Now, I’m not entirely sure if the principle that what happens is what ought to happen necessitates any sort of Prime Mover who wills it (a position categorically different from mechanistic determinism), but maybe some of my readers can help me out here.  In any event, it is certainly true that many Christians (and, I rather suspect, theists of other faiths as well) do make this claim all the time.  As I have previously written (see here and here), I believe the assertion that whatever happens is God’s predetermined will is an error founded primarily on a misunderstanding of the meaning of God’s sovereignty, one that conflates sovereignty with absolute control or determinism.  But I don’t have to commit myself either to logic or to faith to call out Webb’s rationale as fallacious.  At the bottom, the claim that everything happens as it is destined or determined to happen does not follow from logic (Greg Boyd makes a nice case on this here); nor does it follow from the Biblical account of God, who for example, genuinely regretted having made Saul king of Israel (see this post on God’s immutability for more).

More importantly from a Biblical standpoint, it is instructive to compare 2 Kings 24, in which a variety of Chaldaeans, Syrians, Moabites, and Ammonites all attack Judah (see 2 Kings 24:1-4), and yet these very groups are punished for their actions (see Amos 1 & 2).  If one accepts that the wars of nations are tools in God’s hands, as a literal reading of 2 Kings would suggest, then Amos informs us that being God’s tool may not be such a great thing after all.  If, on the other hand, one holds that God works around and through evil human actions (that is, actions that in themselves run counter to God’s will) for his own good purposes, one cannot then conclude that because God used a situation, he willed it or (more to the point) God’s people ought to support it.  Yet this is precisely what Webb does.  Simply, Webb’s claim that what the United States is doing on the global stage is the right thing (and the church should therefore support it without question) just because whatever the nation does is God’s will, is completely fallacious (and somewhat circular) whether you believe in the God of the Bible or not.  I’m a little surprised Anderson didn’t call him on it.

Disclaimer:  in case any true academic student of philosophy comes across this post, let me say that I do not claim any credential in this regard.  I’m trying to make reasonable inferences from some philosophical literature, but I am a layman and claim nothing else.  If you want to clarify or correct my reasoning, I welcome it, but please understand that I freely admit to being an outsider in the discipline.

I was asked a question, through email, recently about N.T Wright’s view of Justification. Since I wrote a long answer, I figured I would post it as well on our blog.

N.T Wright has a great book that I though was extremely useful called The Climax of the Covenant. In this book he outlines how Jesus and the cross were the climactic event of God’s covenant with Israel. The law was there simply to point out sin (the wrong) and provide insights on how to truly bear and steward the image of God. God’s covenant with Israel, in this perspective, is not that Israel as a people, nor the law, nor sacrifices, etc., were the answer or solution to sin, only that the answer and solution to sin would come through Israel. N.T. Wright’s analogy for this was that Israel is like the bomb squad whose job is to manage the bomb until the time is right then lay it at the foot of the cross. His point was more often than not Israel believed they were also to diffuse the bomb and this is not the case. So covenantal theology that understands the covenant and how Jesus fits as the story of Israel’s climax is a core point.

The second is a more holistic understanding of sin (the wrong). For this the law court metaphor works quite well and I think brings even deeper understanding than most evangelicals allow it to. To fully understand the law court analogy we have to have the judge (God), the defendant (humanity) and the plaintiff (satan) all present. For this an analogy from The Lion, The Which and the Wardrobe is helpful. I think C.S. Lewis was onto something with how he presented this scenario.

When Edmund, representing humanity, comes into the camp Aslan takes him and speaks with him. Aslan then comes out and announces that the matter with Edmund has been settled (between Aslan and Edmund), Aslan had forgiven him. All of this without a sacrifice and without a substitution (yet)… Then the White Witch enters and says not so fast Aslan there is a matter that needs to be settled according to the law, she (the law and satan) still had a claim against Edmund. As we all know Aslan takes his place thus dealing with the claim the White Witch (satan) had on Edmund (humanity) once and for all.

This view I think is a much more biblical presentation of penal substitutionary atonement. It is penal only in the sense of the matter of the law, and substitutionary in that Jesus took our place in the matter of satan’s claim on humanity thus setting us free once and for all. But it does not present an angry God or one where we are starting off on the wrong foot with and someone needs to take the punishment to fulfill God’s wrath. It is more about settling the matter with the one who brings the claim up because of the law.

So back to the courtroom setting. Because of the scenario above, the matter has been dealt with. Satan has accepted the substitution once and for all and released his claim thus acknowledging the matter has been resolved and he will not bring it up again. There is to be no re-trial.. Satan believed that the Son of God who is the only person who can threaten his Kingdom was going to be killed (and not raised again) and was a fair trade for all of humanity.

So Justification in light of all of this is simply God finding humanity to be in the right and of no wrong doing. N.T. Wright points out what is different from most evangelical views, including those like John Piper, which is that justification is not about imputed righteousness in that we somehow become or attain righteous attributes from God. It is simply only that we are found in the right and to be not guilty (even though we still are because we still sin) God does not even acknowledge it is there, it is gone, forever, not just covered, transferred, etc. There is no longer any claim against us because of Jesus because the accuser lost the right to accuse us any more in accepting the substitution.

This, I would contend, even when reading Paul’s covenantal theology and even his understanding of sin, law, courtroom, etc., that this view is the way Paul understood all the Jewish heritage, with the amazing act of the cross and now into the Kingdom where God is becoming King through Jesus (his words) because of the resurrection (Jesus’s coronation) of the Kingdom that is inaugurated but not yet consummated.

The concept and ideas around heaven is one of things that has been hijacked and subverted from its original understanding. I once heard N.T Wright eloquently say it like this: “heaven is great but its not the end of the world.”

Unfortunately most Christians believe that heaven is simply a destination and that death then heaven is what eternal life means. Of course there is something eternal to this thing we call life but the more profound understanding comes when we realize that an eternal kind of life is meant to be started right now in the here and now while we live on this earth.

When we begin to strive to live today as if all was right in the world as God originally intended, it is as if our veil is lifted and we see this world differently. This theme fits nicely into the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven reality. If only Christians would be taught more often what it looks like to be used a vessel to usher in heaven into the here and now. This I believe will be the challenge to the church over the next decade and longer.

The church has focused so much on the inner transformation that it has forgotten how to pair that vision with the transformation of the world vision as well. For some strange reason God has chosen to use his people to re-build his Kingdom on earth as it is heaven. Jesus was the first fruits of this vision and now it has been extended to his people through the profound presence of God’s Holy Breath (AKA Spirit).

I love how N.T Wright articulates this in that through Jesus God became King. When you pair that profound way at looking at how the heavenly realm and earthly realm are working toward becoming one with the Christus Victor view of the cross, you end up with a Kingdom citizens vision and mission. Loosely, to not just be recipients of new creation but to be agents of it as well. We are of course to shape ourselves into living an eternal kind of life now but we are too also look for places where the powers have strongholds and through prayer, sacrificial love, non-violence, etc tear down those strongholds and re-claim for the Kingdom what the powers have taken on this earth.

Shockingly in all of those battles Jesus has already won. All we have to do is remind the powers that they lost and send them packing. Because we are image bearers it will be our physical work and words / prayers that will accomplish this feat.

I want to end this post with an image and some reflections on it.

I have to say this image makes an interesting point. Of course it is entirely a generalization and deeply flawed, however, if the Church and God’s people were being loyal to their calling as also being agents of new creation, I believe the words describing Christians would be as follows.

Christian:
Takes care of the sick
Cares for widows and orphans
Advocates for the poor and those on the underside of power
Brings food to the hungry
Brings water to the thirsty
Provides shelter for homeless
……

And many more things rooted in sacrificial love. Believe it or not that list above, and more, is actually what I consider “evangelism.”

Grace and Peace.

Tom (N.T.) Wright recently gave a lecture at Calvin College that I appreciated very much.  In it, he drew attention to an important issue I’ve written about here before: the over-simplification of faithfulness to Christ that takes place when creeds and statements of faith occupy a central position.  I know my own position is more extreme than Wright’s…he suggests putting the creeds in their rightful place while I suggest that the creeds themselves are part of the problem.  In context he still “loves” the creeds, while I accept the Apostle’s Creed as true though incomplete, and consider the Nicene Creed to be partially in error (a topic I intend to address in detail soon).  Nevertheless, I found Tom’s lecture to be refreshing in the extreme and I heartily commend it to you all.  You can read a bit of the background here.  The full audio of the one-hour lecture is also downloadable and though I usually don’t post podcasts, this is well worth a listen.

To whet your appetite, I transcribed one of the most salient (to me) passages which occurs between 8:20 and 10:34 in the audio:

The creeds were drafted in order to highlight points on which the church resolved major difficulties. But when the creeds began to be used as a teaching syllabus (as they often are to this day), then the problem begins, because of course the creeds jump straight from Jesus’ birth to his death … and I have a mental image at that point, of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John standing there saying ‘Excuse me, we spent a lot of time and effort telling you about all that stuff in between, and you just skip over it?  What’s that about?’

Now, I have nothing against the great creeds.  I love them, and I say them or sing them ex animo.  But they have accidentally encouraged—or the way they have been used has accidentally encouraged—a reading of the New Testament in which the main body of the four Gospels is not theologically load-bearing.  For many Christians, it would have been quite sufficient if Jesus of Nazareth had been born of a virgin, died on a cross, and never done anything in between except, perhaps, lived a sinless life.

The four Gospels then, function for many as the dispensible back story for the Gospel as preached by Paul … this is the de facto position of many Protestants and many Evangelicals—many conservative Evangelicals—the irony being, of course, that it’s the exact same position as that of Rudolph Bultman, with the only difference being that Bultman thought most of the stories were pious fictions.  But the reason why most Evangelicals would differ is not that the stories are doing anything theologically, in themselves, but simply to shore up a view of the inspiration of Scripture.  Not for the only time, swaths of Evangelicals are more anxious to protect a theory of Scripture, than to hear what Scripture actually says.

And toward the end, one more excellent quote (55:40 in the audio):

We have substituted the static belief in Jesus’ divinity for the active belief in what the Incarnate Son was actually doing.  It is possible to check the credal boxes, and miss the larger reality to which they are the signposts.

There’s much more to hear.  Take your time and give it a listen!

Scot McKnight’s latest book The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited, is a worthwhile read and I commend it to all who believe that the message of Jesus is, can be, or ought to be genuinely “good news.”  McKnight has done an excellent job of analyzing what Jesus and the first-century Apostles meant when they spoke of the “gospel” (gospel being derived from the old English godspel or “good news,” is equivalent to the Greek εὐαγγέλιον “euangelion” from which we also get our English words “evangelize” and “evangelism”).  Before I complete this review I’ll examine a significant issue where I think Scot missed the boat, but this is a place for extension of the dialog, and does not in any way temper my recommendation of the book.

The King Jesus Gospel sets out to answer what in my view may be the most breathtakingly misguided question ever asked in modern Christendom.  As McKnight tells it, “John Piper…at a big conference in April of 2010 asked this question: ‘Did Jesus preach Paul’s gospel?’”  Scot’s more charitable than I would be.  He states that he “would defend the legitimacy of Piper’s question,” based as it is on the notion that Paul’s gospel is essentially the doctrine of justification by faith, and that’s not a topic upon which Jesus seems to have spent much (if any) time. Obviously (and I’m sure Piper would agree) any biblical “gospel” must rest entirely on Jesus, and that most certainly includes the “gospel” of justification by faith.  The mere suggestion that Jesus, who himself IS the gospel, might not have preached the gospel, blows my mind.

But I digress.  While McKnight is kinder to Piper’s question than I would be, he quite properly points out that such a question suggests that our very definition of “gospel” may need reexamination.  I absolutely agree with his statement:  “When we can find hardly any instances of our favorite theological category in the whole of the four Gospels, we need to be wary of how important our own interpretations and theological favorites are.”

So what is “the Gospel?”  McKnight goes into a detailed–and, I think, entirely correct–study of the church’s use of the term “gospel.”  His approach is best defined, I think, in his own words:

I want now to make a stinging accusation.  In this book I will be contending firmly that we evangelicals (as a whole) are not really “evangelical” in the sense of the apostolic gospel, but instead we are soterians.  Here’s why I say we are more soterian than evangelical: we evangelicals (mistakenly) equate the word gospel with the word salvation.  Hence, we are really “salvationists.”  When we evangelicals see the word gospel, our instinct is to think (personal) “salvation.”  We are wired this way.  But these two words don’t mean the same thing…(p. 29)

(note for those who don’t play with Greek…”soterian” comes from the Greek σωτῆρ “soter” which means “savior”.  That is, a “soterian” is one who preaches–or emphasizes–salvation)

In this point, Scot is solidly on track.  I have before suggested that salvation gets too much focus within the Christian message…not because salvation is irrelevant or incorrect, but because it’s not the main event in God’s story.  He then spends a significant and important portion of the book refocusing the “good news” preached by both Jesus and the Apostles (as related in Acts), within the story of God’s redemptive work through Israel, and eventually, beyond Israel to the world.  Jesus, according to his own preaching and later that of Peter and Paul, is the culmination of all that God was doing through the nation of Israel up to that point in history.  When Jesus declared the Kingdom of God, he was declaring “good news” on a myriad of levels, of which salvation from sins was definitely one, but only one and not necessarily the greatest.  There was (is) a new king on the throne…the one God promised for ages past.  If that’s not good news, what on earth could be?  (for more on this, see my advent meditation on Jesus’ announcement of Jubilee).  One more quote of note:

My summary point of comparison: gospeling declares that Jesus is that rightful Lord, gospeling summons people to turn from their idols to worship and live under that Lord who saves, and gospeling actually puts us in the co-mediating and co-ruling tasks under our Lord Jesus.  When we reduce the gospel to only personal salvation, as soterians are tempted to do, we tear the fabric out of the Story of the Bible and we cease even needing the Bible.  I don’t know of any other way to put it. (p. 142)

There is much more to glean in the pages of Scot’s book, not least as he discusses the methods by which Christians over time, have attempted to persuade others to consider and accept the claims of Jesus (hint, it hasn’t always been about hell).  Without getting into all of it here, let me commend his perspective to you as well worthy of consideration.  In short, it’s worth looking at how the Apostles evangelized, and contrasting it to the sales pitches we adopt today.

But I want to turn to one area in particular where I part ways fairly substantially with McKnight’s arguments, and that is the credence he gives to the church fathers.  Fairly early in his book (chapter 5), Scot makes the argument that the early church creeds, in particular the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds, are a direct outgrowth of, and a faithful characterization of, the gospel Jesus and the Apostles preached.  He states directly that the creeds are “an articulation” of Paul’s gospel summary in 1 Corinthians 15, and even that “…denial of the creeds is tantamount to denying the gospel itself because what the creeds seek to do is bring out what is already in the Bible’s gospel.” (emphasis in original)

McKnight returns to this notion in Chapter 10 “Creating a Gospel Culture” when he suggests that following a traditional church calendar can focus the church on a fuller view of the gospel than that embodied by soterians.  He may be onto something when he says that “focusing on these events in their theological and biblical contexts… [will expose the church] …every year to the whole gospel, to the whole Story of Israel coming to its saving completion in the Story of Jesus.”  He continues later to advocate knowing “our creeds,” because “the wisdom of the church is on the side of the value of creeds and confessions of the faith.”

I’ve disagreed with Scot on this before.  In fact, though I doubt he’d remember me, I engaged him a bit on his own Jesus Creed blog a couple years back when he did a series on the historical heresies of the early church.  My point then, which remains a concern today, is that he seems to have given the 3rd- and 4th-century “church fathers” a complete pass from critical examination.  This is unfortunate, as I believe it is precisely in those periods, and in the creation of the creeds themselves, that the seeds of this entire misapprehension of the gospel has its ultimate roots.  Go back and take a look at the actual text of either of the Apostles’ or Nicene creeds (Google is your friend…there are lots of sources).  What’s the operative declaration in every phrase? I believe.  It’s a propositional issue.  Discipleship is at best implicit, though even to say that is being generous.

Look again at what is being stated that one must believe.  God’s nature, Jesus’ origin, his suffering, death, burial, resurrection.  All important stuff, and to deny it is certainly to be talking something other than Jesus’ gospel.  But the whole “Story” that Scot does such a good job of describing in the rest of his book is completely absent from either the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed.  The Nicene Creed even says that Jesus’ incarnation was “for us men and for our salvation,” a soterian statement if I have ever encountered one.  If he’s right (and I think he is) that the soterian message overtook the gospel in error, then the creeds were (and are) part of the problem, not the solution!  It is precisely the reduction of discipleship to a set of propositions to be believed, that is the very essence of the creeds.  It may have taken a while to get from the Nicene Creed to the Four Spiritual Laws, but the arc was inevitable.

So while McKnight has done an outstanding job of characterizing certain of the symptoms of a deep malady within today’s Evangelical church, I think he’s stopped short of the roots of that malady.  Those roots, I would submit, are firmly embedded in the power struggles of the third and fourth centuries (possibly earlier), and in the whole process that took the Way of following God’s anointed King and reduced it to a “religion” filled with propositions to be “believed.”  Here, at last, the Gospel must be rescued from the religion that has for so long held it captive.  Scot gets us on the road, and for that, his book is worth the purchase and the reading.  I hope we all go further.

(The following is a lesson I taught for our Advent series at my church Dec. 18th)

When Jesus announced the beginning of his ministry, the first prophetic reference he made was to the book of Isaiah:

The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,
because the LORD has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor;
he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor,
and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn;
to grant to those who mourn in Zion—
to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit;
that they may be called oaks of righteousness,
the planting of the LORD, that he may be glorified.
They shall build up the ancient ruins;
they shall raise up the former devastations;
they shall repair the ruined cities,
the devastations of many generations.
Strangers shall stand and tend your flocks;
foreigners shall be your plowmen and vinedressers;
but you shall be called the priests of the LORD;
they shall speak of you as the ministers of our God;
you shall eat the wealth of the nations,
and in their glory you shall boast.
Instead of your shame there shall be a double portion;
instead of dishonor they shall rejoice in their lot;
therefore in their land they shall possess a double portion;
they shall have everlasting joy.

For I the LORD love justice;
I hate robbery and wrong;
I will faithfully give them their recompense,
and I will make an everlasting covenant with them.
Their offspring shall be known among the nations,
and their descendants in the midst of the peoples;
all who see them shall acknowledge them,
that they are an offspring the LORD has blessed. (Isaiah 61:1-9)

So reads the prophecy in Isaiah.  Now take a look at how Jesus quoted it:

And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read.  And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:16-21)

Jesus Proclaimed Who He Was

The first important thing to recognize is that by appropriating this passage from Isaiah, Jesus was making an unmistakable declaration.  The word translated “anointed” in the Isaiah passage is the Hebrew מָשַׁח֩, which I’ve seen transliterated as either “masah” or “mashach” (sorry, I have to depend on others for the Hebrew as I’ve never studied it).  The Greek word for “anointed,” in both the Septuagint Old Testament and the Greek New Testament, is ἔχρισέν, “echrisen.”  It doesn’t take much squinting to see (correctly) that we get our English words “Messiah” and “Christ” from those two words.  It’s a simple realization, perhaps, but when Jesus states in Luke 4:21 that “today this Scripture has been fulfilled,” he is making an unequivocal claim to being Israel’s Messiah…the Anointed King.  This is not just a label that others laid on Jesus…according to the gospel of Luke it’s a title he claimed for himself from the beginning of his ministry.

Jesus Also Proclaimed Who He Wasn’t

Things get interesting when we compare the Luke and Isaiah passages.  Take a look at them side by side, and at first one would think Jesus was simply quoting Isaiah 61:1-2 with the bits slightly rearranged…but then we notice a glaring “omission.”  He completely left out “the day of vengeance of our God.”  As if that wasn’t “bad” enough, read the rest of the story in Luke 4:22-30.  Jesus’ claim of Messiahship was warmly received at first (v. 23), but then Jesus went on to foretell that his hometown folks were going to be unhappy with him for not doing more for them.  He even had the gall to point out two specific instances in which Gentiles received miraculous intervention from God to the direct exclusion of needy Israelites (v. 25-27).

An uncomfortable element of Jesus’ message was also unmistakeable:  The Messiah you are looking for is not the Messiah you’re getting.  The Messianic passage in Isaiah 61 looks like a restoration of the kingdom of Israel, complete with God’s vengeance (v. 2), the restoration of destroyed ruins (v. 4), foreigners serving Israel (v. 5), Israel serving God as priests (v. 6), and the world finally acknowledging Israel’s greatness (v. 9).  But not only did Jesus leave out all of that, he explicitly told of Gentiles getting blessings that his hearers would have expected to be reserved for Jews.  No wonder the crowd tried, for the first of many times, to kill him!  Jesus was spoiling all their restorationist, exclusionary dreams!

Jesus Announced His Purpose

In selecting from the first two verses of Isaiah 61, Jesus gave his hearers a master plan of the work he was sent to do:

• Preach good news (Greek “evangelize”) to the poor
• Proclaim liberty to the captives
• Proclaim sight to the blind (Septuagint; Hebrew scripture “release from bondage”)
• Liberation of the oppressed
• Proclaim the “Year of the LORD’s favor”

Although the order varies between Luke’s account and Isaiah’s original, the combination of these elements occurs in both places, and we can see in these elements a powerful theme.  If Isaiah and Jesus had only mentioned liberty to captives and those who are oppressed, and maybe even the release from bondage part, then the notion of God’s Anointed One coming to throw off Roman rule and lead Israel to political greatness, might even make sense.  But taking all five of Jesus’ bullet points, and particularly the “Year of the LORD’s favor” reveals a decidedly different focus.  Though he was not blowing a trumpet, Jesus was announcing that God’s Jubilee had finally arrived.

Jubilee and God’s Economics

Jubilee is a concept we don’t think about too much.  We Christians like to talk a lot about the parts of the Jewish Law that provided for atonement (though we usually get those wrong too in my opinion), and we occasionally look at the more arcane bits about sexuality or ritual purity, but the economics of ancient Jewish law aren’t often examined.  They should be.  The two key passages for understanding Jubilee economics are Leviticus 25 and Deuteronomy 15.  Let’s have a look, starting with Lev. 25:1-7.  In this section we learn that God declared a seventh-year “Sabbath year” in which the land and the vines are to be given rest and neither cultivated nor harvested.  The practical implications of this are teased out in Lev. 25:18-22, in which God promises a bumper crop in the sixth year, enough to sustain the people through the seventh year and up till the harvest of the eighth year.

Deuteronomy 15:1-11 adds to the provisions for the Sabbath year:  “At the end of every seventh year you shall grant a release” (sound familiar?).  The release described in Deuteronomy is a cancellation of monetary debts, particularly any loan to “a brother who becomes poor.”  Deut. 15:12-18 further provides that in the the Sabbath year any Hebrew debtor slave must be released (in other words, it was not so much slavery but rather indentured servitude which was permitted for economic reasons).  “Good news to the poor” indeed!

Back to Leviticus 25:8-17.  Here we have the introduction of the Year of Jubilee itself.  The “sabbath of sabbaths” is to follow on the fiftieth year…a special year of Jubilee in which even land must return to its family owners.  Not all real estate, as Lev. 25:29-31 states that a house in a walled city is not subject to Jubilee release; however the means of production (that is, agricultural land) and homes in rural areas were to return to their familial owners.  As Lev. 25:15-17 makes clear, it is not productive land, but rather potential crop-years, that may be sold in the rural areas.

Jubilee and the Sabbath years were not merely occasional interruptions on the calendar, as the latter part of the chapter makes abundantly clear.  In Lev. 25:35-42, Israelites are commanded to care for their poor brethren.  Though there are a variety of provisions, the most stunning is v. 36-37:  Take no interest from him or profit, but fear your God, that your brother may live beside you.  You shall not lend him your money at interest, nor give him your food for profit (see also Deut. 23:19 and Exod. 22:25).  In powerful counterpoint to the economics by which we live, in God’s economy the poor are not an acceptable profit center.  Period!

It is of course a cause of some concern to many readers, and was deeply abused in our own country, that the Levitical law does provide for slavery of non-Hebrews.  A closer examination of these provisions is still worthwhile.  Lev. 25:42 explains why Hebrews could not be enslaved:  because God himself had already bought them (or redeemed them, see Deut. 15:15) from Egypt.  And this is where Jesus’ extending the “good news” of Jubilee to the Gentiles comes into play:  Now that God through Jesus has redeemed all of humanity, there are no longer any “strangers and aliens” available to be enslaved.  In Jesus, all of humanity has been purchased by God and is no longer for sale to anyone else!

Tragically, most of the provisions of God’s law of Jubilee may never have been practiced.  We certainly have no record in any Biblical account of a year of release–Sabbath or Jubilee–ever happening.  A few rabbinical websites I’ve been able to find do describe the way of counting the Jubilee year and imply that some elements may in fact have been practiced, though as this site explains, rabbis and Talmudic scholars seem to agree that the land provisions of Jubilee only apply in the land of Israel proper, and that none of it now applies since the majority of Jews do not live in Israel.  We do know that there was at least some historical awareness of the prohibition of interest, since more than once the people of Israel are criticized by the prophets for charging interest of their brethren (see Neh. 5:10, Prov. 28:8, Ezek. 18:8-13 and Ezek. 22:12).

Part of why much of this law may never have been practiced is a harsh reality:  actually doing Jubilee is not practical…in fact, absent God’s provision it’s economic suicide.  That’s why the promise of provision in Lev. 25:18-22 is so crucial.  Jubilee is impossible except by depending upon God to keep his word.  And it’s much harder for most of us to “have faith” in God when it comes to our homes and our stomachs than it is for something as amorphous as our “souls.”  ‘Twas ever thus, I suspect.

Recognizing Jesus’ Jubilee Kingdom

Any good Evangelical can tell you that the Law has been fulfilled in Jesus the Anointed One (Messiah/Christ).  What we are far less likely to recognize is that the Kingdom Jesus declared is not devoid of laws.  These laws aren’t the way we are “saved” (though that question isn’t as relevant as it is often preached), but there is nonetheless a character and conduct expected of Jesus’ subjects, quite different from that of the world in which we live.  In his declaration of Jubilee, I believe Jesus aligned himself and his followers firmly with the testimony of Moses and the prophets for thousands of years before:  there is a radical, decidedly material, economic component to living in his Kingdom.

I can’t describe with certainty what this economic component ought to look like.  That’s something that needs to be worked out with prayer and much dialog within the local body of believers.  But I think we can glean some universal truths that must be part of Jesus’ economy:

1. God’s people are to see the poor as the objects of God’s particular concern and love, and to use our abundance to help them.  There is nothing wrong with business in God’s economy, but Jubilee Christians may not conduct business whose profit is derived from the poverty of others.  (for more on this you may want to check out my post Would Jesus Occupy Wall Street?)
2. Most of us are no longer farmers, so it’s harder to think what the sabbath of the land might look like.  I do think it suggests a balance to the notion popular among some, that when God granted humanity “dominion” over the earth, he gave us a blank check to exploit it for all it’s worth.  Rather, trusting in God to provide our needs, we should be gentle in our use and stewardship of the natural resources with which we’ve been entrusted, and learn to let those resources have a rest from time to time.
3. We do not live in a place with hereditary land ownership as Israel did.  But within the seven-year debt forgiveness cycle and the fifty-year land return cycle, I see a general principle that the aggregation of wealth must have limits.  Both the poor and the rich need some sort of periodic reset button to prevent the permanent marginalization of some and the permanent aggrandizement of others.
4. Bondage comes in many forms.  We Christians like to concentrate on spiritual bondage, and it’s a real thing…not for one moment do I mean to minimize it.  But there’s still real physical slavery in this world (check out this post and the links on it for just a few examples), and we ought to be doing everything in our power to fight it.  There are also many who are in bondage precisely because of their economic poverty.  We need to look closely at how our lifestyles may add to (or at least enable) that bondage, and what we can do to proclaim liberty to the captives, whatever form their captivity may take.

Luke 19:1-9 gives us an interesting insight into what Jubilee can look like.  This is the story of when Jesus went to the home of wealthy tax collector Zaccheus.  Ol’ Zach must have really gotten smitten by the notion of Jesus kingdom, as his response to Jesus was to give away half of everything he owned, and to pay quadruple damages to anyone he’d ever wronged.  That, my friends, is Jubilee in action!

Jubilee is as radical an idea today as it was in Moses’ time, and in Jesus’.  Spiritual, yes in some ways, but with a nuts-and-bolts practical application that we cannot ignore.  God has always had a different economy than the world’s.  God’s people have rarely, if ever, trusted him enough to follow it.  But just maybe, this is part of what Jesus meant when he said:

Seek first the Kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.  (Matt. 6:33)

May we welcome the advent of Jesus Christ not just with Christmas bells, but with the ram’s horn of Jubilee!  The Kingdom of God is at hand!