#348 Together They Have Become Worthless

As I was reading through the United Methodist Church page on Wikipedia I came across the following statement in a section on the church's doctrine regarding the visible and invisible church:

"Nevertheless, it also upholds the concept of the "visible and invisible Church," meaning that all who are truly believers in every age belong to the holy Church invisible, while the United Methodist Church is a form of the Church visible, to which all believers should belong as it is the institution where worship in the name of Jesus is conducted and the sacraments are administered; nonetheless, there may be many unworthy members in the visible church."

Emphasis mine.  There may be many?  Surely the idea that there are any worthy people at all in the UMC is not official church doctrine is it?  This is an especially odd statement to see coming from a denomination which puts such an emphasis on the unmerited grace of God through faith.  Take it away Herman Melville:

"Heaven have mercy on us all - Presbyterians and Pagans alike - for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending." -- Moby Dick, p. 73

If Melville doesn't help, perhaps Romans 1-4 could assist.  Barth's commentary can drive the point home if needed.

#347 The Synoptic Problem and The Canonical Jesus

Mark Goodacre is puzzled:

"I must admit to being somewhat baffled by those who find the Synoptic Problem boring.  It is so basic to so much of what we do in studying the New Testament that saying that it is boring is a bit like saying that New Testament study is boring.  It's a literary enigma, it's a historical puzzle, it's a theological essential.  What is not to enjoy?"

He then lists reasons why students might find it boring.  Michael Bird, in an unconnected post, has a few thoughts on the historical vs. the canonical Jesus that I think nicely address some of the inconsistencies in the gospel narratives.  The canonical Jesus, being what the apostles and early church believed about Jesus, is different from "the Christ of faith," being what the faithful in any era believed about Jesus.  The canonical Jesus stands between the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith.  For me, it's the true and only knowable Jesus.  Here are a couple highlights:

"The historical Jesus is not the untheological Jesus. Our only access to Jesus is through the faith and theology of the early church. The Gospels contains a mixture of fact and faith, history and hermeneutic, authenticity and artistry. Jesus himself was theologically grounded and his message was about God (i.e., his message about God addressed the socio-political circumstances of Palestine and the position of Israel vis-a-vis God) . So we can expect to find theological matter (not abstract theology) in the historical Jesus and in the memory that Jesus himself generated."

That's a nice summary and Bird draws out its implications further:

"The Gospel's may be the authorized witnesses to Jesus, but they are not the only witnesses to Jesus. The church fathers were more than aware of other legitimate traditions (oral traditions, agrapha, sayings in non-canonical Gospels) that relayed reliable or relevant information about Jesus and they utilized it accordingly.  The church fathers had to wrestle with the historical character of the Gospels and were aware of claims of fiction and alleged inconsistencies, and endeavoured to read the Gospels theologically and historically. Origen wrestling with Gergesa or Gadara is a prime example (Mk. 5.1 and par.)"

#346 Culture and Character

Rod Dreher summarizes some thoughts on the importance of culture in shaping us:

"I would no more put my kids in a school full of rich white kids who carry with them a culture of hedonistic materilistic values than I would a school full of poor minority kids who carried with them the same culture. I would rather put my kid in a school full of Asian kids who carried in their heads a culture of hard work, self-discipline and diligent study than a nominally Christian school whose kids carried in their heads a culture of privilege and well-upholstered suburban decadence. Bottom line: when it comes to schooling for my kids, I don't care about the race, the family income or the professed faith of the student body. I am most interested in the quality of the culture that dominates the school and its students, because that is going to be the greatest determinant in the quality of life, and the content of the character, of my children. And money can't buy that."

#345 Provisional Status

Ben Myers reads Jacob Taubes:

"In Barth’s interpretation of Paul, Taubes finds a recovery of the ‘nihilistic’ impulse of apocalyptic politics. The illegitimate nomos of the world is passing away. Neither quietism nor revolutionary zeal counts for anything; what the world needs is neither conservation nor reform, but annihilation and recreation."

He concludes:

"Taubes’ political appropriation of Barth/Paul should therefore also be modified: what his political nihilism lacks is a good dose of ecclesiological nihilism – or in Barthian terms, the (politically charged, but never secularised) concept of witness. The church’s witness to divine action is always simultaneously a gesture to its own provisional status, an acknowledgment of the abyss of judgment over which it is suspended – and thus also a witness to that strange anarchic grace by which God’s people are gathered into being out of nothingness."

#344 Colossians 1:24-29

Paul has now set the stage by recounting the Colossian church's testimony.  He has warned them against losing hope in the one true gospel.  He now delineates his role and theirs in what is to come next:

Now I rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh whatever is lacking of the sufferings of Christ for the sake of his body, which is the church.  I have become a minister of the church according to the stewardship of God given to me with you in view, to make the word of God fully known.  This is the mystery which has been concealed for ages and generations, but has now been manifested to his saints.  To them God chose to make known the glorious wealth of this mystery among the Gentiles - it is Christ in you, the hope of glory.  It is he whom we preach, as we instruct everyone and teach everyone in all wisdom, so as to present everyone perfect in Christ.  This indeed is the end for which I labor, contending according to his power which operates mightily within me.

It shouldn't be surprising that Paul identifies his own suffering with the messiah's.  As F.F. Bruce points out in his commentary, Paul's experience on the Damascus road taught him that the messiah himself identified the sufferings of his people with his own suffering.  Though Paul (then Saul) persecuted Christians, Jesus ask the question this way: "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?"  As Bruce puts it, "Christ suffered in his people."  Bruce also notes that Paul and Barnabas allude to the Isaianic servant passages when they turn their mission toward the Gentiles at Pisidian Antioch.  For Paul, "... the Servant's mission of enlightenment to the nations is to be carried on by the representatives of Christ."

The idea of filling up what is lacking is an eschatological concept.  Bruce says that a "quota of affliction" before the end could come is a rabbinical idea.  It is certainly a New Testament theme (here in Paul and I think in Revelation as well).  It is also an early church concept.  In The Shepherd of Hermas, a metaphor of a tower being built plays the same illustrative role.  When the last stone is placed in the tower, the end comes.

Verse 27 is grammatically odd.  Perhaps Paul's meaning was something akin to the following paraphrase: "God chose you to be his agents to make known the glorious wealth of the messiah among the rest of the Gentiles.  The hope of their glory is the messiah in you."  To the saints, God had given the task of making him known by putting Christ on full display.  Paul is calling on the Colossians to join him in this project of revealing the mystery to the broader Gentile world.  Certainly, the Jewish messiah being found in and revealed by a bunch of Gentiles from Asia Minor is a striking witness to the watching world that the salvation promised by the god of Israel is now opened to everyone.

Indeed, Paul's goal is nothing short of salvation for the entire world.  The threefold "...every man... every man... every man" in 1:28 drives the point home.  The mystery that had been hidden from the Gentiles (obscurely in the law and prophets) is now on display.  In Christ, revelation takes the place of apocalypse and the church must now bring to completion the suffering which Christ had begun.  In order to achieve the full eschatological measure, the Colossians will need to hold firm to reveal the Jewish messiah in them (oddly enough) to their fellow Gentiles.  The cross was not the end of pain, suffering, and death; it was only the beginning.  

#343 Melville on the Pulpit

Pastors and priests are in a unique position:

"Nor was the pulpit itself without a trace of the same sea-taste that had achieved the ladder and the picture.  It's paneled front was in the likeness of a ship's bluff bows...  What could be more full of meaning? -- for the pulpit is ever this earth's foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the world.  From thence it is the storm of God's quick wrath is descried, and the bow must bear the earliest brunt.  From thence it is the God of breezes fair or foul is first invoked for favorable winds.  Yes, the world's a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete; and the pulpit is its prow."

-- Moby Dick by Herman Melville, p. 35

#342 Three Year Old Theology

The other night when I was putting my son to bed, I mentioned something about Jesus in his heart.  Immediately, the whites of his eyes brightened the darkness of his room.  He lifted up his shirt, pointed to his chest, and said completely flummoxed, "In here?"  A lifetime of church, Christian schools and culture, and my own theological dabbling failed to prepare me for that moment.  I was speechless.  I'd gone and confused a not-yet three year-old and he'd gone and dealt my years of training a devastating blow.

My first instinct was to explain the concept of metaphor but I quickly remembered I was dealing with a two year-old and stumbled into another response.  I honestly can't remember how I answered, proving that there was nothing memorable about my answer.  Weeks later, I made the "mistake" of saying that God was in heaven.  The now three year-old pounced.  "Far away?"  This time I surrendered.  "Yes, far away."  Had I been given more time, I could've come up with something better.  But this time, I wasted no time tucking my tail in defeat.

In Jimmy Dunn's Colossians commentary he says, "That a person should be spoken of as indwelling another no doubt poses something of a conceptual difficulty, but the idea of divine immanence in an individual is simply an aspect of the larger concept of divine immanence (see on 1:19), and generations of Christian believers have evidently found no problem in using such language to describe the experience of personal communion with God understood in terms of Jesus Christ and the inner strengthening which comes through it."

No doubt indeed.  No problem?  Not so much.  This conceptual difficulty is not limited to toddlers.  Like my son, I'm perplexed.  Are Dunn's "generations of Christian believers" using Paul's language of indwelling properly when for them it describes an "experience of personal communion with God" through Christ?  If so, the language of indwelling as a metaphor is more palatable, though I'd wait to have that conversation with my son until a later date.  So in what sense can we speak of Christ being in us and God being in heaven without feeling absurd in front of our three year-olds?