Category: Theology

This quoted by Gorman, (page 97), from one of the most profound and important theological works of the last 20 years.

From Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace. A Theological Exploration of
Identity, Otherness and Reconciliation. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996),
71, 92.

Miroslav Volf lived with his family through the violence, ethnic cleansing and orchestrated hatred of the Balkan conflicts in the 1990's. He is one of the Christian church's most authoritative and persuasive voices on the subject of living humanely in a pluralistic world, fragmented by fear, hatred, guilt, religious demonisation of the other, and the deep memories that can embed such toxic responses in nationalist and ethnic conflict.

His book Exclusion and Embrace is hard reading – (1) Volf doesn't have an easy style and can be like a mountain guide, sometimes impatient with those who don't keep up;  (2) he is dealing with areas of human experience not many of us are ready to examine, such as the origins of hate and enmity, the relations between fear and prejudice, our capacity to turn on our neighbour, the terror of community validated violence against some of its own members who happen to be different; (3) he isn't content with social and psychological analyses of the problem of ethnic conflict and religiously driven hatreds. He insists on a Christian theological exploration of the root causes in sin, communal and individual, banal and radical, and the even more radical cure of new creation in Christ; and he does so by constructing a theology that centres on what God has done, is doing and will do in Christ by the power of the Spirit.

The book is a theologically determined, philosophically sophisticated and biblically insistent study of the existential collision between the Gospel of Jesus Christ and our all too human addictions to the preservation of the self, the will to power and personal security, and thus the elimination of any "other" perceived as threat. Volf is a frequent conversation partner in chapter 4 of Gorman's book entitled 'While we were enemies. Paul, the Resurrection and the End of Violence'. I'll do a separate post on that chapter where Gorman makes an explicit link between non-violence and kenosis. That's a connection I hadn't before made, but now seems so obvious – turning the other cheek as a kenotic act?

In his comment Tony notes the important link between the nature of God the Creator and the redemptive response to the fallenness of creation by God. Self emptying and other-giving love is the characteristic and outward movement of God. In the gift of life, created and redeemed, self-emptying love reveals what is eternally true of the heart of the Triune God.

The central thrust of Gorman's book is that kenotic love is characteristic of God, Father, Son and Spirit, and such kenosis is not passive surrender but takes intentional cruciform shape. Christian existence, defined by our being in Christ and Christ in us, and thus by the indwelling of individual Christian and Christian communities, is therefore shaped around the reality of the Cross. "To be truly human is to be Christlike, which is to be Godlike, which is to be kenotic and cruciform." (Gorman page 39) Gorman understands Philippians 2.6-11 to be Paul's master story about Christ, and with others such as NT Wright, Stephen Fowl, Richard Bauckham, translates "though he was in the form of God" as meaning not only "though" but "because". Kenosis, self-emptying love, is not a one off act of unilateral obedience – it is of the very nature of God. Heaven is not surprised by the self-emptying love of the Son – kenosis is only to be expected in a Triune relationship of self giving love in eternal communion. It is human beings whose default view of God insists power, sovereignty and exalted status are of the essence, the core realities of who God is; on the contrary, "divinity has kenotic servanthood as its essential attribute" (Gorman, 31).

The cross and resurrection of Jesus, as actions of self-emtpying love and its vindication, reveal the heart of God through a narrative of surrendering love absorbing rather than inflicting violence, loving enemies rather than destroying them, but yet doing all this in a way that absorbs finally and fully, the fatefull consequence of sin and negating them by God's great Yes in Christ. The political and ecclesial implications of Christian witness being shaped by such cruciform kenosis, vindicated and energised by God's raising of Jesus, are yet to be worked out by the 21st Century Church often obsessively concerned about its own relevance, influence and even survival. Such a theology of cross and resurrection, as self-emptying love, points to a radically different discipleship, and in our time, a radically different way of being the Body of Christ.

Recognising some will be uneasy at the apparent loss of power and majesty implied in the notion of a self-emptying cruciform God, Gorman approves an important comment by John Webster( Professor of Systematic Theology in Aberdeen – and for me essential reading):

"Webster rightly defines God's holiness, not as pure majesty, but as "majesty in relation". Because God's majesty and God's relationality cannot be separated, we must understand  God's majesty in light of God's revealed relationality. We do not simply hold the majesty and relationality of God in tension; with Paul, we must see them in concert, a unison revealed in the power of the cross. God is not a God of power and weakness but the God of power in weakness…we must always keep the divine activity and divine atributes together: God's actions  are self revelatory, the expression of God's essence and character. Thus if the cross is theophanic [God revealing], God must be understood as essentially cruciform." ( Gorman page 33)

I'm not finished with this book yet!

One of Von Balthasar's greatest books is his early monograph on The Theology of Karl Barth. That these two theological opponents were also deeply respectful allies in their search for an articulation of Christian faith more adequate to the mystery and majesty of divine grace, means that to read either or both of them, is to discover theology that is deeply satisfying, if occasionally frustrating, and often congenial if now and then contentious.

Don't laugh. The other night I was reading (in the bath!) Balthasar's small paperback Love Alone is Credible, and so liked the following passage I think it deserves its place as our thought for the day:

That phrase about God's love  – that we are "always already seen" as God's beloved children, is an example of why I love reading Von Balthasar. The picture is by Blake, Christ Accepting the Office of Redeemer. As a comment on Von Balthasar's words, it has for me that utter intensity of willing surrender that makes God's love cause for adoration rather than analysis.

On a lighter note, my ecumenical credentials nevertheless remain intact – I also have a paperback copy of Barth's Evangelical Theology, which has also seen better days due to repeated re-readings in the same leisurely locus!  I once had a remarkably fun conversation as a student with R E O White, then Principal of the Scottish Baptist College, and afterwards a lifelong friend. Asked if I'd read his notes on John's Gospel for class that morning, I had to be honest and confess that I had read them in the bath the night before! To which he replied – "Waste of time. I read Dickens in the bath, and have waterproof covers to do so!" 

One of my current research interests is kenosis, the theological term for the self-emptying love of Christ as, from all eternity, pardigmatic of the love of God. (Phil 2.1-11) It is sometimes the poet who for me, has articulated best the consequences of God's keonitc love. Theology at times places too much weight on doctrinal definition and philosophical precision – mystery more usually evokes wonder, adoration and the surrender of will that is the response of worship. Charles Wesley distilled essential elements of atonement theology in the famous double couplet that was preceded by the instruction, 'let angel minds enquire no more':

One of R S Thomas' poems contrasts the ego centred, clinging of the self even in prayer, with the self-giving love of God. It is a de profundis, a poem that recognises that in the love affair God has with a broken and fallen creation, deep calls to deep, and love demonstrates it will never give up on the redeemability of creation, even if it means love giving itself up.

Standing waiting in the breakfast queue at our annual ministers' fellowship I held the door open for a couple of our more senior ministers one of whom asked, with affectionate irony, 'Where did you find such graciousness, Jim?' To which I replied, 'I didn't – it found me.'

One of those too quick ripostes that can often and easily seem flippant. But actually, I meant it – I always mean it when talking about the love of God made known in Christ. That's why my favourite NT books are Colossians and Ephesians.

And alongside his magnificent commentary on Romans, Colossians shared a special place in the spirituality of James Denney, along with P T Forsyth, Scotland's premier theologians of the cross. In Colossians Denney found a portrayal of Christ crucified, on a scale adequate to his conception of the grace of God, the one "in whom all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell", and who was making peace through the blood of the cross". 

Which took me back to some of Denney's lucid passionate statements on the cost and consequence of God's love, words that resonate in the deepest places of my own faith, and perhaps where that instinctive answer 'grace found me', drew its energy.

Sin is only forgiven as it is borne. He bore our
sins in His own body on the tree: that is the propitiation. It is the
satisfaction of divine necessities, and it has value not only for us, but for
God. In that sense, though Christ is God’s gift to us, the propitiation is
objective; it is the voice of God, no less than that of the sinner, which says,
‘Thou, O Christ, art all I want; more than all in Thee I find.’ And this is our
hope towards God. It is not that the love of God has inspired us to repent,
but that Christ in the love of God has borne our sins.
(Christian Doctrine of Reconciliation, 162)

Grace is the attitude of God to man* which is
revealed and made sure in Christ, and the only way in which it becomes
effective in us for new life is when it wins for us the response of faith. And
just as grace is the whole attitude of God in Christ to sinful men, so faith is
the whole attitude of the sinful soul as it surrenders itself to that grace….
To maintain the original attitude of welcoming God’s love as it is revealed in
Christ bearing our sins – not only to trust it, but to go on trusting – not
merely to believe in it as a mode of transition from the old to the new, but to
keep on believing – to say with every breath we draw, ‘Thou, O Christ, art all
I want; more than all in Thee I find’ – is not a part of the Christian life,
but the whole of it.
(Christian Doctrine of Reconciliation page 8)

But for His death we should have died in our
sins: we would have passed into the blackness of darkness with the condemnation
of God abiding on us. It is because he died for us, and for no other reason,
that the darkness has passed away, and a light shines in which we have peace
with God and rejoice in hope of His glory. On the basis of the New Testament,
of Christian experience, and of a theistic view of nature…, the writer has done
what he can to indicate the rationale of this; but imperfect as all such
attempts must be, their imperfection does not shake the conviction that they
are attempts to deal with a fact, and that fact the one which is vital to
Christianity.
(Christian Doctrine of Reconciliation, page 301)

* Denney was a writer of his time, and even if he were a writer of our day, in the light of his anti-suffragette stance, it's unlikely he would have used more inculsive discourse.

Forgive the gender exclusive language in the quotation below. James Denney was a man of his time and Edwardian Scotland was hardly an oasis of political correctness. It was however singularly blessed with theological correctness, even theological correctives. One of the most lucid and influential was James Denney.

The condemnation of our sins in Christ upon His Cross is the barb of the hook. If you leave that out of your Gospel, I do not deny that your bait will be taken; men are pleased rather than not to think that God regards them with goodwill; your bait will be taken but you will not catch men. You will not create in sinful human hearts that attitude to Christ which created the New Testament. You will not annihilate pride, and make Christ the Alopha and Omega in man's redemption. (Quoted in God Loves Like That! J R Taylor, London: SCM, 1962), page 165.

In College I'm teaching a course on Jesus Through the Centuries. So far we've been working through the course text book by Jaroslav Pelikan. In its illustrated edition it's a sumptuous collection of artistic representation accompanied by the kind of text only a ridiculously erudite church historian could have written. But it's getting us thinking, talking, disagreeing, suggesting, questioning and wondering.

As we've watched films, read poems and hymns, gazed at paintings and read our text book, what's become clear is the way the image of Jesus can be captured and skewed, exploited and distorted, manipulated and marketed (see the picture above, used in the 2001 US elections!). But also how that same image can be represented so differently by artist and sculptor, poet and film director, and portrayed with heartbreaking beauty or heart-rending anguish, with playfulness or poignancy, with festal joy or fearful suffering.
The fun and challenge of the class is in negotiating the differences of taste and subjective response, as one student's revulsion is another student's approval; or the surprises we give each other as we see what was there to be seen but we never noticed till it was pointed out; and then those 'aha' moments when for the first time we are confronted with an image and we 'get it' – or better, it gets us.

In this Victorian painting, the Returning Knight is embraced by the crucified Christ, whose loving embrace is only possible because he has broken free from the cross – it isn't nails that held him there anyway, but a love more piercing. The sword is surrendered, the hands are in prayer, the helmet that hides the face is removed, and the once proud warrior is embraced by One whose hands are torn, whose arms are open and whose feet are still nailed to that place where all human suffering converges in the pain and cost of atoning love. Of course you  might read the picture differently – and that exposes the rich suggestiveness of artistic representation. It allows us to be content with ambiguity, to be responsive to those hints of beauty and transcendence that bypass our rational exclusion zones and touch us in the deep places of the soul.

Or the Ladybird style of idyllic picturebook theology, like this picture from the mid 20th Century illustrated bible often given in Sunday School prizes. Easy now to mock, dismiss it as sentimental kitsch, and turn to those grittier or more oblique images of postmodern culture, from the brutalised Christ of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, to the Black Crucifixion (see below), painted by the Mexican Jesuit protesting against the anguish of the black urban poor.

What is clear is that Jesus
continues to fascinate and disturb, as enigma or dogma, as global icon or personal saviour, and as one whose message and significance transcends the limitations and specific contexts of culture and religious claims. It's one of the challenges to the Church in our own time to find its own ways of embodying attractively and communicating faithfully the Gospel of Jesus.

A Christian community that lives the Gospel of redemption by actively engaging with situations which are going wrong; which practices reconciliation and peacemaking as non-negotiable imperatives for followers of Jesus; that goes against the grain of consumer driven anxiety by demonstrating irresponsible levels of generosity; that insists on the value and beauty of each human being because it has learned to look on the world with the eyes of God; that so believes in resurrection that hopefulness is no facile optimism but the set of the heart towards the future. Whatever representations of Jesus are produced in art and film, poem and icon, – the real and the actual representation of Jesus is the Body of Christ living in the world, acting in the name of Jesus, in ways persuasively reminiscent of that fourfold witness we call the Gospels. As Paul would say – this is a great mystery – but none the less true and real for that.
 

In 1974(!), in a wee second-hand bookshop in Woodlands Road Glasgow, I bought Emil Brunner's Our Faith, in the small SCM Religiious Book Club edition. Ever since I've valued and gone on learning from the writings of Emil Brunner. Others like to dip into Barth and come away with a recovered sense of the importance of things, and of God. I do that sometimes, and it works for me as well.

But reading Brunner is different – not only because Brunner is usually easier to read, but for myself there is a stronger sense of being personally addressed by this writer, of being taken into the confidence of someone for whom to encounter the transcendent God is to find oneself identified, defined and called into a new being.

Here is a long sentence (typed out on that old manual typewriter – and the punctuation is Brunner's) describing the self-discovery of each individual called into being and purpose by the Creator God. This is theology not quite rising to doxology, but certainly embedding anthropology and the human future in the eternal election of God. In Brunner's hands, divine election (predestination) is not the negation, but the context of human responsiveness to God's call and offer of grace. Has a theology of assurance ever been more warmly stated and rooted in the good purposes of God?

Emil Bruner, Man in Revolt, (London:Lutterworth, 1957), page 283