The Spectrum Blog

Bloggin' the 28: Baptism as naturalization in a new community

Continuing our summer (and fall) Bloggin' the 28 project, pastor Ryan Bell applies the Seventh-day Adventist doctrine of Baptism  to contemporary life.

In my Bible studies to prepare people for baptism we use the metaphor of naturalization.

Baptism as Naturalization
The scripture uses explicitly political metaphors to speak of the church. Paul, in particular does this in two key places. In his classic statement about salvation he says,

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).

Then, just three verses later, Paul sets this salvation in explicitly political terms.

“Remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world” (vs. 12).

But, because of what Christ has done to break down the wall of separation through his death on the cross, he declares, “you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household” (vs. 19).

Here Paul mixes two familiar metaphors for the ekklesia – the polis and the family. He makes a simple argument: before you were aliens and outsiders, now you are included. In the political metaphor the means of going from being an alien to being a citizen is immigration and naturalization. In the familial metaphor, the means is adoption. These are two different ways of talking about baptism. Either way, it is a rite of passage into a new social reality that we call the church.

To stay with the political metaphor (because it is more provocative and therefore more helpful, I feel, at getting at the heart of the issue), what exactly does naturalization mean?

Run, don't walk, over to Ryan's blog and read the rest and comment.

Bloggin' the 28: The Holy Spirit

Continuing our summer Bloggin' the 28 project, Tompaul Wheeler applies the Seventh-day Adventist doctrine of the Holy Spirit to contemporary life.

Nearly every summer the past 15 years I've been privileged to participate in a teen mission trip--first as a participant, then the second year and ever after as a reporter--called the Ultimate Workout. Since 1991 some two thousand teens and staff have built schools and churches throughout Latin America. This July more than 200 people divided into 5 groups in Ecuador, each building a church for a community that had waited years for its own structure. But while it's impressive to watch unskilled teenagers build a church in a matter of days, what's really striking is watching the Holy Spirit transform people--drop by drop, block by block, muscle by muscle, as attitudes shift and people discover the life God intended for them.

In one of the groups this summer, though, a few repeat staff felt that things just weren't the same this time as before. They didn't "feel Jesus" like they had in the past.  Translation: The group wasn't as tightly knit, so they weren�t feeling the same "All for one and one for all" vibe. The reality was that this year the group worked in a gorgeous, wide open banana plantation, surrounded by lush countryside. Most of the time, Ultimate Workout groups find themselves squeezed into small locations in towns or cities, with everyone practically tripping over each other. In this spacious environment, the group naturally became a little more segmented than it would have been.

Read and comment here.

Bloggin' the 28: The Experience of Salvation

Experiencing Salvation, Practicing Grace

By Sharon Fujimoto-Johnson

The Experience of Salvation:
In infinite love and mercy God made Christ, who knew no sin, to be sin for us, so that in Him we might be made the righteousness of God. Led by the Holy Spirit we sense our need, acknowledge our sinfulness, repent of our transgressions, and exercise faith in Jesus as Lord and Christ, as Substitute and Example. This faith which receives salvation comes through the divine power of the Word and is the gift of God's grace. Through Christ we are justified, adopted as God's sons and daughters, and delivered from the lordship of sin. Through the Spirit we are born again and sanctified; the Spirit renews our minds, writes God's law of love in our hearts, and we are given the power to live a holy life. Abiding in Him we become partakers of the divine nature and have the assurance of salvation now and in the judgment. (2 Cor. 5:17-21; John 3:16; Gal. 1:4; 4:4-7; Titus 3:3-7; John 16:8; Gal. 3:13, 14; 1 Peter 2:21, 22; Rom. 10:17; Luke 17:5; Mark 9:23, 24; Eph. 2:5-10; Rom. 3:21-26; Col. 1:13, 14; Rom. 8:14-17; Gal. 3:26; John 3:3-8; 1 Peter 1:23; Rom. 12:2; Heb. 8:7-12; Eze. 36:25-27; 2 Peter 1:3, 4; Rom. 8:1-4; 5:6-10.)

Hypothesis: Adventism has largely forgotten that the gift of grace assures our salvation. Remembering this central truth liberates us to practice a here-and-now human kind of salvation of others.

1. The forgotten truth: Salvation is the gift of God’s grace.

My Sabbath School class recently studied Stuart Tyner’s excellent book, Searching for the God of Grace. I owe much of this article to Tyner, because through that book I discovered for the first time that grace is central to our Adventist belief system. You’d think I would have known. I’ve been in the Adventist community all my life, after all. I took my first breaths at an Adventist Hospital, and I’ve been through the mill—Angwin, Loma Linda, the mission field, Home Study International, boarding academy, Pacific Union College, and even a self-supporting institution somewhere along the way. And yet I had never before understood grace, that essential core of our doctrine of salvation.

It’s not because I haven’t been listening all these years. I have been listening, but grace hasn’t been talked about much. What I heard was something else—something less reassuring, more complicated, and ultimately discouraging. What it sounded like was, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” or “In order to receive salvation, we must…” For a generation or two, whether by negligence, distraction, or carelessness, Adventism lost its focus on grace. That nucleus, that fundamental center of our faith slipped out of its place, and some of us grew up without it, without understanding that grace is what transforms the rituals and laws of our religion into a vibrant faith. Grace is as essential to our faith as water or light to life, and some of us have never experienced it.

It’s not that grace isn’t in our doctrines. It’s right there, sewn delicately into each of our fundamental beliefs. Much to my surprise, it’s even in our official doctrinal statement on salvation: “This faith which receives salvation comes through the divine power of the Word and is the gift of God's grace.” Even Ellen G. White herself—who, for many of us, is the patron saint of salvation by works—asserted the significance of grace in statements such as this: “We cannot purchase anything from God. It is only by grace, the free gift of God in Christ, that we are saved” (That I May Know Him, by Ellen G. White, p. 83).

Furthermore, according to Tyner, Ellen White distinguished between justifying grace (the grace that saves us) and sanctifying grace (the grace that transforms us). The grace that saves us is the gift of God, no strings attached. The grace that moves us to strive to be like Christ and requires something of us does not save us, and ought not be confused with justifying grace.

The equation is not salvation = grace + x, but rather, it is simply salvation = grace. Severing that mental link between what we do and how we’re saved changes the entire landscape of our faith. We struggle with this, obviously. We look often and hard for a loophole in this divine gift, for the small print that will tell us that salvation isn’t really free. But it is. Though Adventism has perhaps failed to emphasize this, it is.

“When the kindness and love of God appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we have done but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.” (Titus 3:4-7, NIV) That’s the truth that has been lost, at times, in the debate about distinctive beliefs that are in fact animated only by grace itself. Adventism must remember this forgotten truth, prize it, and restore it to its central place in its faith practices, or it will have lost one of its most fundamental beliefs.

2. The comforting truth: Because of grace, our salvation is assured.

This is what I heard the future of Adventism—a group of teenagers—say of salvation:

“We must strive for perfection so that God will save us.”

“God has a boiling point, after which he will no longer work with us to save us.”

“The phrase ‘shall be saved’ means that salvation is in the future. We are not yet saved. Being saved is an ongoing process for eternity.”

“It’s only through repentance that we’ll get into heaven.”

“God will be there for you—if you’re there for him.”

Right now, these teenagers are in that somewhat self-conscious, impressionable, searching age during which the groundwork for individual faith is being laid, but soon, they will be Sabbath School teachers, church board members, conference and union leaders, parents, pastors, and evangelists. They will be the ones passing on the Adventist faith to the following generation—if in ten or twenty years they haven’t left the church altogether, of course. What is the nature of the faith we have communicated to these young Adventists? How did we fail to pass on the assurance of our salvation? Somehow the beliefs we nurtured in these particular young Adventists didn’t include an understanding of grace. Somehow we gave them instead a tenuous salvation experience in which God’s grace is conditional, uncertain. Already, there’s a hint of weariness and anxiety about their faith.

In our homes, our churches, our schools, and our communities—from the pulpit, in Bible classes, through our faith lives—we are passing on a spiritual inheritance. If we fail to pass on the assurance of salvation by grace, we pass on a cycle of continual striving and failure. Religion rewinds to a practice of sin and penance without hope, and we’re back with Martin Luther climbing that uneven stone staircase on our hands and knees.

“Abiding in Him we become partakers of the divine nature and have the assurance of salvation now and in the judgment,” our official doctrine states (emphasis mine). Grace must reenter our lexicon and inhabit our faith so that the spiritual inheritance we pass on is more than the empty laws of the Pharisees or the cultural habits of a peculiar people. Why? Grace transforms the methodical, formulaic life of faith into one of joy and active participation in human affairs, and that is the spiritual inheritance we ought to be passing on.

3. The liberating truth: The assurance of salvation liberates us to share God’s grace with others for their eternal salvation and also to practice the here-and-now deliverance of others.

We have sometimes experienced our salvation as though we were on an airplane flight facing an impending crash, as if we knew that at some unspecified future point, the engines would fail and the plane would nosedive to the ground. We don’t know when, but we’ve studied the charts and timelines, and we have clues. Each time the plane hits a pocket of turbulence, we’re certain the end is finally upon us. We’ve memorized the in-flight safety instructions, especially that tidbit: “In the event of an emergency, oxygen masks will be deployed. Secure your own mask before assisting children or other passengers.” We’re concerned primarily about securing our own deliverance.

Grace liberates us from this scenario. Through grace, we know we’re survivors. We are emancipated from the spiritual slavery of fear and futility, and we’re given, instead, sanctuary. In the sanctuary of grace, the locus of our existence moves outside our self-centeredness to include those around us. Our circle of awareness widens. We awaken to the world around us and recognize the faces of defeat, isolation, want, pain, weariness, and suffering. We become concerned with the salvation of others—not only spiritual salvation, but also a physical, immediate, human kind of deliverance.

“Through the Spirit we are born again and sanctified; the Spirit renews our minds, writes God's law of love in our hearts, and we are given the power to live a holy life,” our official doctrine reads. I’d like to propose that a holy life is not primarily a life of refraining, fasting, self-preservation, or indifference to our world. The holy life is, instead, a life of doing—not in pursuit of salvation but in sharing salvation. Remember, the link between what we do and how we’re saved has already been severed, and this separation allows us to both rest in the assurance of our salvation and fully encounter our earthly community. Elie Wiesel says, “The opposite of love is not hate; it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness; it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy; it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death; it's indifference.” Divine grace shatters the shell. Divine grace toward us invalidates our apathy and compels us to engage in human affairs. Grace expands our experience of salvation vertically to connect securely to our assured divine inheritance and horizontally to meet humanity on this earth. We are no longer “neither here nor there,” no longer suspended for a human lifetime between heaven and earth, but are instead firmly rooted in both. It moves us from what Martin Buber described as the objectifying, detached encounter of an “I-It” relationship to the actualizing, alive “I and Thou” relationship in which our encounter with each human You actualizes our encounter with the divine (I and Thou, New York: Touchstone, 1996).

Grace asks us, first, to reestablish the liberating truth about salvation in its central place within our faith community so as to restore the quality of the spiritual inheritance we pass on. Secondly, grace asks us to practice an immediate human kind of salvation—the deliverance of living beings from suffering. Barbara Brown Taylor says it much better than I ever could: “In the Bible, human beings experience God’s salvation when peace ends war, when food follows famine, when health supplants sickness and freedom trumps oppression. Salvation is a word for the divine spaciousness that comes to human beings in all the tight places where their lives are at risk, regardless of how they got there or whether they know God’s name” (Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith by Barbara Brown Taylor, New York: Harper Collins, 2006)

What is the shape of salvation? Is it the rectangle of textbooks in inner city schools, the halo of mosquito nets in a Thai village, the circle of a bowl filled with hot food, the long line of a road to safety? What is the sound of salvation? Is it the silence of war in the Middle East, the click of cameras for children in a Calcutta ghetto, a long-lost family member’s voice, a choir of orphans? What is the taste of salvation? Is it the starchy flavor of steaming rice in a Cambodian village, the bitter liquid of AIDS drugs in sub-Saharan Africa, the taste of potable well water in a Peruvian community? What is the touch of salvation? Is it the cool, sleek cover of a $100 laptop for every child, the crisp sheets of a clean bed in a shelter, the rough woven patterns of a basket business built on a micro-loan in Bangladesh?

Salvation—the kind grace asks us to practice—is all this. It is rest from violence, preservation of life, educational opportunity, human rights, religious freedom, health care, financial and moral responsibility. It’s as large as peace, and it’s also much smaller than that—the size of a word or a coin. It’s global, and it’s local. Salvation is awareness, forgiveness, kindness, justice, restoration. Salvation is beauty, poetry, music. Against human suffering, the practice of salvation takes the shape of our faces, the sound of our voices, the taste of our tears and sweat, the touch of our hands, and it is our moral obligation to live out salvation from the corners of our homes to the war zones of Sudan, AIDS-racked Sub-Saharan Africa, flood-ravaged Southeast Asia, and the violent streets of Afghanistan and Iraq. Salvation—the kind grace asks us to practice—is creating light where there is darkness.

I leave you with the voice of poet Wendell Berry (from Timbered Choir, New York: Counterpoint, 1998)

But remember:
when a man of war becomes a man of peace,
he gives a light, divine

though it is also human.
When a man of peace is killed
by a man of war, he gives a light.

You do not have to walk in darkness.
If you will have the courage for love,
you may walk in light.

(Read full poem here.)

Bloggin' the 28 - The Church: Witnessing to the Reign of God

Continuing our summer Bloggin' the 28 project, pastor Ryan Bell applies the Seventh-day Adventist doctrine of The Church to contemporary life.

. . .The central task of the church is “witness” – or in the Greek, marturia. Part of being witnesses is to demonstrate, in our communal life, what the kingdom is like. The body of Christ is called to be a demonstration – an embodied witness – of the loving reign of God. This leads many theologians, like Stanley Hauerwas, to assert that the number one thing the church can do to give witness to the gospel of the kingdom is to be the church. When the church is focused on being the church – and not trying to be a corporation or an amusement park or something else – the world is able to see what God has in mind of the whole world. In this way, the church is a foretaste of the coming kingdom.

What kind of embodied witness does scripture call for? The New Testament is loaded with these narratives and mandates. The church witnesses to the forgiveness of God by being a reconciling community; a community that knows how to receive and extend God’s forgiveness. The church witnesses to the grace and hospitality of God by receiving strangers and extending God’s hospitality to ‘the other.’ The church embodies God’s future reign of peace and justice by being agents of peace and justice in the world today. The church gives demonstrable witness to God’s intention to heal all creation by being agents of healing and wholeness in our communities, caring for the environment and bringing God’s healing to the point of the world’s greatest pain.

We are also called to give witness in ways that are even more “alternative” and counter to the prevailing culture. It is not enough for the church to witness to God’s kingdom by the things it embraces. We are also called to the more difficult task of bearing witness through resistance.

There are some things that are just inconsistent with the gospel of the kingdom. For example – and here again, Adventists are uniquely positioned to be this embodied witness – followers of the Way of Jesus cannot embrace our world’s way of violence. Jesus was a person of uncompromising peace. He was a pacifist. Our Adventist forebears understood this. And so we are called to give witness to God’s reign of peace by resisting war and other forms of violence and exploitation.

Go, read the whole rip-roaring essay and comment here.

Bloggin' the 28: Growing in Christ

Continuing our summer Bloggin' the 28 project, pastor Trevan Osborn applies the Seventh-day Adventist doctrine of Growing in Christ to contemporary life.

Admit it, you have no idea what the newest fundamental belief really teaches. I’ll confess that the main reason I decided to blog on this belief was to get motivated enough to buy the new fundamental beliefs book and read it for myself. Out with the classic creme hardcover and in with a paperback version which just doesn’t feel the same but surely will in about ten years.

The purpose of the Bloggin the 28 series is to focus on the practical, social implications of each belief which inherently provides the critique that the fundamental beliefs as currently written have some great theology but little practical, social emphasis. The newest fundamental belief is part of the church’s attempt to address the critique inherent in this bloggin the 28 series. The new belief is very well written and in many ways reads like a sermon. The reader is urged to accept Christ’s sacrifice which means that they will die to self daily and live a life of spiritual growth which they outline the hallmarks of.

I found it very interesting that the belief places a huge emphasis on the death of Jesus while barely referencing how he lived his life.

Read and comment here.

Bloggin' the 28: Escape or energiser

Continuing our summer Bloggin' the 28 project, Signs of the Times Australia / New Zealand editor Nathan Brown applies the Seventh-day Adventist doctrine of The Second Coming to contemporary life.

“Lianne struggled with the idea of God,” Don DeLillo’s narrator says of one of the characters in his recent novel, Falling Man. “She was taught to believe that religion makes people compliant. This is the purpose of religion, to return people to a childlike state. . . . We want to transcend, we want to pass beyond the limits of safe understanding, and what better way to do it than through make-believe.”

It’s a contemporary restatement of an oft-repeated criticism of religion—and perhaps of Christianity in particular. There is a perceived tendency for this kind of faith to draw believers away from life here and now toward a longing for some better life in the hereafter, however that may be defined. The criticism is that the focus on another realm of life becomes a form of sanctified escapism and renders the believer of less benefit to the world and society in which they now live. In this line of thinking, the promise of the “sweet bye and bye”—to borrow from the traditional hymn—tends to dull the believer’s sensibilities to the joys and sorrows of living now, perhaps most famously critiqued by Karl Marx in his religion-as-“the opium of the people” comment.

Often believers have left themselves open to such criticism, even at times cultivating, preaching and practising these kinds of attitudes. There are many stories of sincere believers, who have been overwhelmed by the quest for holiness or the imminent end or the world and withdrawn themselves from all active life to ensure their perfection or readiness.

Perhaps Christianity is most open to such disparagement because of the Bible’s strong focus on and articulation of the promise of the second coming of Jesus and the hope of eternity in a perfectly recreated world. And, it must be said, there is an important element of escape in these formulations.

In this worldview, our world is a fallen, broken and tragic place—and it would be absurd not to have some longing for a world made new. As one Bible writer put it, “All creation anticipates the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. . . . And even we Christians, although we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, also groan to be released from pain and suffering” (Romans 8:21, 23). So an element of what might be described as escapism seems appropriate for those who embrace these promises. There is nothing wrong or misplaced in longing for the time when God will set the world right, will bring an end to injustice, pain and sorrow, and will replace the current fear-filled disorder with His glorious and righteous kingdom.

In His sermon on the end of the world, Jesus spent the first half of his discourse—as we have it recorded in Matthew 24 and 25—detailing the need for escape, even getting to the point of saying that “unless that time of calamity is shortened, the entire human race will be destroyed” (Matthew 24:22). But this is more in the nature of an introduction to His explanation of the significance of these promises of God. To focus solely—or even primarily—on the “escape” aspect of the Christian hope for the future is incomplete for both the Christian and the critic.

Even in Matthew 24, Jesus repeats the injunction to live alertly in light of the promise of His return and He expands this in the second half of the sermon in Matthew 25, with three stories focused on how the believer should live while “waiting” for Jesus. It quickly becomes clear that this waiting is not passive or escapist; rather it demands active engagement with life, others and the world around us.

The first story is that of the ten bridesmaids or the wise and foolish virgins (see Matthew 25:1-13). This parable focuses on the need to build spiritual resources and resilience in our lives today, fitting us for life now and ultimately to be ready to celebrate and live with God when the world is recreated. But the focus is on the present duty in light of the potential delay of the return of the “bridegroom.”

Jesus’ second story is the parable of the three servants, otherwise known as the parable of the talents (see Matthew 25:14-30). Three men are given different sums of money—representing the material resources and opportunities we are all given in different measures—and left to work with those on behalf of their master until he returns. Upon his return, they are to account for the use they have made of what they were given. Two of the servants do well, but the other is too afraid to make use of his gift, leaving him open to the rebuke of his master and his being cast out of the household. Again the focus of the story is the time between the master leaving and his return, making the best use of the resources and opportunities we have.

The third story is commonly referred to as the parable of the sheep and the goats but has nothing to do with sorting or counting livestock (see Matthew 25:31-46). In short, this parable urges that how we live now, how we treat each other and how we treat the less fortunate among us is important. This is the climax of Jesus’ sermon. At the beginning of Matthew 24, Jesus’ followers asked Him, “How will we know when the world is about to end and that You will return as promised?”—to which Jesus ultimately replies, “What matters most is how you live and how you treat people in the meantime.”

Rather than being tempted to self-centred escapism, the promise of the Second Coming and a recreated world must be a call to a different way of living, serving and relating to those around us. One Australian Christian leader put it this way—Jesus’ promises “fill the present with hope and this with energy. Because the future fills the present with meaning and purpose, we give ourselves to the needs of others, even to the reshaping of society. The Christian hope has vast social consequences. . . . We look back to see what the promises were; we look forward to see them fulfilled; we act now in the light of what is yet to be” (Dr Peter Jensen, The Future of Jesus).

The reality is that what we believe about the future has important implications for how we live now. Belying the caricature of the otherworldly believer focused only on a vague eternal bliss to come, a healthy reliance on the promises of God about His future for our world should be the catalyst for energetic engagement, the spark for a life that is rich and deep and makes a difference to others.

And this impulse is undeniably practical. Theologian Walter Brueggemann, using disproportion as shorthand for all kinds of injustice, oppression and inequality in the world, explains it this way: “Because God will rule, the disproportion in which we live will sooner or later come to an end, because this God will countenance no continuing disproportion. God’s intent for justice and peace in creation cannot finally be resisted. . . . God’s rule is endlessly destabilising for us” (Finally Comes the Poet).

Because we believe God’s righteous intention will eventually become the ultimate reality for humanity, it makes sense for us to practise this way of living now and order our lives in such a way as to try to give reality to it. It is also something God’s people will choose to do as those who desire to live in the ways of God now.

Knowing that what happens to “the least of these” (Matthew 25:40, 45) matters to God, means it matters to those who are His people. And because we know that the political, economic, cultural and social power structures that perpetuate injustice in all its forms will be overthrown, we are empowered to speak and act against the evil in our world. We know these forces—and our participation in and benefit from them—are only ever temporary and thus they are always destabilised.

Undeniably, there is an element of escape in Jesus’ promises to come again. In a world with so much pain and sadness, it is appropriate to look forward to a better place and a better way. According to the promises of God, that will come—but it is yet to come.

More importantly today, these promises change how we see today and energise how we respond. The promises of God call us to engagement with our world, doing what we can to confront the wrongs we see around us, heal the hurts in our human brothers and sisters, care for the world, celebrate the goodness we discover and share the hope that these promises give us.

As faltering and small as our efforts might be, we work with God to begin to recreate the world as—one day—He will ultimately and gloriously recreate it. When Jesus said, “I am going away, but I will come back to you again” (John 14:28), He was also saying to His followers, “Live like it is true today—and that will make a difference.”

“Nothing less than life in the steps of Christ is adequate to the humans soul or the needs of the world. Any other offer fails to do justice to the drama of human redemption, deprives the hearer of life’s greatest opportunity, and abandons this present life to the evil powers of the age” (Dallas Willard, The Great Omission).

“A spiritual leaning used to mean total inactivity in the world,” reflects Vandana Shiva, Indian activist and writer, “while activism tended to be associated with violence. But suddenly the only people who seem to have the courage to act are the deeply spiritual—because it’s only those who know there is another world, another dimension, who are not intimidated by the world of organised power.”

Dear children, let us stop just saying we love each other; let us really show it by our actions. It is by our actions that we know we are living in the truth, so we will be confident when we stand before the Lord, even if our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. (1 John 3:18-20)

Bloggin' the 28: Restoring Sabbath as the Way of Life

Continuing our summer Bloggin' the 28 project, Jubilee USA national grassroots organizer Brian Swarts applies the Seventh-day Adventist doctrine of The Sabbath to contemporary life.

What was missing from Israel’s understanding and practice of Sabbath?  Why was it so challenging to get it right and why does it continue to challenge us today?  We have tried to make Sabbath conform to our way of life, rather than to conform our way of life to the “Way of Life.”  Like all the creative and redemptive acts of God, the Way of Life encompasses creation itself and all of human activity.

I want to highlight three fundamental but ignored aspects of Sabbath practice that can help guide us toward an understanding of the Way of Life that has the power to transform all aspects of our lives. These are the 1) ecological, 2) economic and 3) political practices of Sabbath.

Read the whole essay and comment here on his blog: fools' Gospel.

For some early reactions to this piece, see Blog the Debt.

Bloggin' the 28: Domestic Violence and Spirit-Body Unity

Continuing our summer Bloggin' the 28 project, elder, Vanderbilt seminarian and technologist Sherman Haywood Cox II applies the Seventh-day Adventist doctrine of The Nature of Man to contemporary life.

Juanita Bynum is shown on the news. We see a prominent, strong, black woman beaten by her husband in public no less. I have known about domestic violence, I knew it was a problem, but before doing this research, I did not know how big of a problem. Approximately 1/3 of American women report that a close partner has physically or sexually abused them during their lives.   “It is estimated that 503,485 women are stalked by an intimate partner each year in the US.” “Family violence costs between 5 billion and 10 billion dollars annually in medical expenses, police and court costs, shelters and foster care, sick leave, absenteeism, an non-productivity.” These numbers particularly become ominous when we take into account that domestic violence is often unreported.    This is certainly an epidemic.  Because of the relative silence in this society, it is a quiet epidemic.

Read and comment here.

Bloggin' the 28: The New Earth

Continuing our summer Bloggin' the 28 project, pastor, community organizer and creative ministry guru Monte Sahlin applies the Seventh-day Adventist doctrine of The New Earth to contemporary life.

Much of conservative Protestant/Evangelical theology focuses almost entirely on the individual’s personal relationship with God and the hereafter. The most important thing in this approach to Christian faith is to be “saved,” meaning to be with God in some ethereal sense in the hereafter. The risk, to quote my dad, is a religion that “is so heavenly-minded as to be no earthly good.” It revolves around a profound disconnect between the known and knowable world and the world in which God lives. The spiritual sphere is separated from the real world we all experience.

This paradigm has been dominate in Christendom since the triumph of Constantinian values over the Jewish heritage of the Jesus movement. It is the source of much theological and ethical mischief, including dualism, the most monumental failure to “connect the dots.”

Adventist faith is different from this dominant theology in a very significant way. Adventist faith takes seriously Revelation 20-21, which suggests that the ultimate destiny of humanity is with God on this Earth, not with God in some insubstantial and wholly other place. The end of the story for Adventists is here on this Earth in a society in which God reigns fully and all suffering, disease, disaster, poverty and injustice is gone.

Read and comment here.

Bloggin' the 28: Spiritual Gifts and Ministries

Continuing our summer Bloggin' the 28 project, blogger Marcel Schwantes applies the Seventh-day Adventist doctrine of Spiritual Gifts and Ministries to contemporary life.

Today's church is going through a crisis in leadership. Leaders of the old guard often resist change in fear of loss of status or position. Moreover, leadership practice is changing. Hierarchical models are disappearing in favor of egalitarian and holistic models. This crisis is opening up the door for new leaders to rediscover the nature and calling of the church as an authentic community, a missional people in a hostile land. Out with the leadership cults, in with the leadership cultures. This shifting is led by Holy spirit-fueled, compassionate and emotionally-intelligent leaders gifted for creating individual, group and systemic change.

Today, this gift is best exemplified in leaders who can demonstrate a heart attitude that shows they are lovers of God and lovers of people. As leaders prove their sincerity and commitment to honest community, seculars and postmoderns will take the risk of trusting them enough to be a part of that community of faith. This takes stepping out of comfortable molds, forsaking political posturing and inviting the breaking of bread with those who do not share the same (Adventist) customs, doctrines or look or talk the way we do. It is a gift enveloped in love, or it is no gift at all:

Read the whole post and comment here.

Bloggin' the 28: God the Son, truly human

Continuing our summer Bloggin' the 28 project, writer Trudy Morgan-Cole applies the Seventh-day Adventist doctrine of God the Son to contemporary life.

I am fairly sure that my Sabbath School and church school teachers did not intend to transmit the heresy of Docetism; they were simply so anxious to underline the divinity of Christ in a world that mocked it, that they unintentionally backpedaled and downplayed His humanity.

It wasn’t till I began reading the works of more liberal Christian writers on the historical Jesus – authors like John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg – that I began to seriously examine my perception of the humanity of Jesus. While I couldn’t believe, as they did, that Jesus was merely human, I realized when I explored my inner picture of Jesus that the Jesus I’d been worshipping and following all these years wasn’t even truly human. He was God dressed up as a human, like Superman wearing those ridiculous Clark Kent glasses that apparently made it impossible for anyone to recognize his true identity.

But it wasn’t only the works of liberal Christians that forced me to confront the humanity of Jesus. It was Scripture itself — passages like the story of Jesus’ temptation by Satan in the wilderness (Matthew 4; Luke 4). When Satan tempted Jesus, he threw down the challenge: “If you are the Son of God….” If Jesus was incapable of self-doubt, if He knew He was divine the same way I know I am a woman, then how was this a temptation? He wouldn’t have been tempted, even for a moment, to prove Himself if there had been no possibility of doubt.

Catch the idea and comment here.

UPDATED:Sorry folks, I forgot to turn off the commenting. Before people self-lacerate on the comparison between God and mammon, visit Trudy's site and join the conversation there.
 

Bloggin' the 28: The Heavenly Sanctuary

Just when you thought that with homosexuality and a non-gendered God, the Adventist blogosphere couldn't get more conventional and boring. . .now it's time for bloggin' The Heavenly Sanctuary. Here's a very practical take on the topic, by two pastors -- Marty Thurber and David Hamstra over at Just Pastors -- who imagine a conversation with God and include a second part which has probing point:

"When Paul Rusesabagina, the innkeeper in Rwanda offered sanctuary in his hotel, he was building God a sanctuary. When the pastor Elizaphan Ntakirutimana and his son offered the illusion of sanctuary, really offering only death and slaughter, they were yielding to the darkness which wishes to exist in all of us. The light of God’s sanctuary is seven branched, unwilling to be walled in, hid under a basket as it were. This light intends to go to every country and every home and every hotel and every heart."

Amen!
Read and comment here.

Bloggin' the 28: Marriage, family, homosexuality, children

Continuing our summer Bloggin' the 28 project, we have two -- from a man and a woman -- applications of the Seventh-day Adventist doctrine of Marriage and the Family to contemporary life.

“Marriage was divinely established in Eden and affirmed by Jesus to be a lifelong union between a man and a woman in loving companionship. For the Christian a marriage commitment is to God as well as to the spouse, and should be entered into only between partners who share a common faith. Mutual love, honor, respect, and responsibility are the fabric of this relationship, which is to reflect the love, sanctity, closeness, and permanence of the relationship between Christ and His church. Regarding divorce, Jesus taught that the person who divorces a spouse, except for fornication, and marries another, commits adultery. Although some family relationships may fall short of the ideal, marriage partners who fully commit themselves to each other in Christ may achieve loving unity through the guidance of the Spirit and the nurture of the church. God blesses the family and intends that its members shall assist each other toward complete maturity. Parents are to bring up their children to love and obey the Lord. By their example and their words they are to teach them that Christ is a loving disciplinarian, ever tender and caring, who wants them to become members of His body, the family of God. Increasing family closeness is one of the earmarks of the final gospel message.”

Between Heaven and Earth: A Reflection on Marriage and Family
Siroj Sorajjakool

I personally believe that there is an ontological drive toward Transcendence in all of us and this drive expresses itself in various dimensions of life.  This fundamental belief about marriage and family grows out of this inner reach for Transcendence and Divinity within human relationships.  While it may be practical to capture this within the belief system, Transcendence always transcends any attempt to capture it, especially in doctrinal form. 

There is an inner longing in us for that ideal family where love, respect, honor, and responsibility form the core values.  Where our inner needs are fulfilled.  Where there is harmony.  Where family members constantly support and nurture one another.  Where everyone is fully committed to standby in misery and happiness.  Where there exists complete acceptance and love.  Where family members take the time to really listen.  These are the yearnings of the soul for the Divine within the boundary of human relationships.  These yearnings and longings are a part of us from creation.  They are the essence to which we were created for.  They are the stuff of the soul that needs to be recognized and honored. 

At the very same time there needs to be the recognition that as human beings, we are always standing in-between, between the heaven and the earth, Divinity and humanity.  We are children of both realities.  And “family” is very much a part of these two realities.  We stand in-between.  The earth represents the possibility for conflicts, tensions, human weaknesses, the basic primal aspects of our humanity.  The earth symbolizes the messiness of life, of the reality that love is a difficult path to follow, that respect requires a great sense of maturity, that honor does not come easy, that responsibility comes with growth.  On earth one realizes that the desire to love is compromised by the reality of our humanity, of the possibility of our weaknesses, insecurity, and jealousy. 

To stand in-between is to come to an awareness of the deep yearning for the Divine within the boundary of marriage and family and the reality of our humanity. It is to create the distinction between the yearnings and the reality of there fulfillments.  To stand in-between is to allow our souls to savor the romance of Divine agape while extending our love tarnished by our very own humanity in the best possible way.  I personally think that if we do not place our marriage and family between heaven and earth, we may be living in a home without a soul, or having a soul that has no home.

I do have many suggestions about raising children in relation to the concept of standing in-between.  But when you have your own children and you have lived through their teenage years, what is there left to say about raising children except that may the grace of God be upon all of us parents.  As my wife once remarked to me, “When you have children, you are never the same.  They change you.”  While raising my teenage son, I was forced to grow emotionally.  I can’t say that I’m fully emotionally  mature, but I have certainly grown.  If you are not growing while helping your child to grow, you have to wonder what growth is all about.  A part of parenting is about a corrective that a child places on us in the way we come to experience Transcendence.
______________________

Marriage is a School; Churches are Families
Carrol Grady

In addition to procreation (“Be fruitful and multiply”), companionship (“It is not good for man to be alone; I will make a helper suitable for him.”) and a reflection of the Trinity’s relationship (“Let us make man in our image.”), in our fallen world I believe marriage serves as a school where we can learn to understand God’s love for us and model His love to each other and to our children.

Marriage, at its best, draws us out of our self-centeredness; becoming one-flesh, we learn that our partner’s needs and desires are as important as our own. If we stick with our marriage through difficult times, God uses them to teach us many lessons and mold our characters. Becoming parents, we learn to forego sleep, surrender personal plans, and expend financial resources for the sake of a helpless, squalling mite of humanity we helped create.

The love we experience for our children gives us a small glimpse of God’s love for us. We discover that discipline is necessary for their long-term good, even though they don’t appreciate it, and this helps us discern God’s loving hand when our cherished plans go awry. Our deep love is strong enough to encompass our children even when they are flawed, make mistakes, or misbehave, just as God loved us while we were still sinners. (Romans 5:8).

Children don’t realize their parents are just people. For a few years, in their little world, their parents are God for them. One of our most important tasks as parents is modeling God’s constant, unconditional love. If we fail at this, it may take our children a lifetime to believe God really loves them.

From my experience, some of the most profound, most difficult lessons we learn as parents come as our children near or reach maturity, when their decisions may be life-changing. For me, such a lesson began 20 years ago when we learned our youngest son is gay.

Not once did the possibility of shunning or withholding my love from him enter my mind. The first thing I had to do was confront my ignorance and prejudice. After the first shock, I realized that my pre-conceived ideas about homosexuality needed some revising. I’ve spent the years since learning as much as I can and reaching out to hundreds of other families going through this experience.

God has taught me many lessons. I learned the meaning of unconditional love on a deeper level. As I came to understand homosexuality better and to realize what my son had gone through, I learned tolerance for those who are different from me. I learned not to be judgmental, because I can’t know others’ circumstances. In sharing my experience, I learned that transparency and vulnerability allow others to drop their masks of perfection. I learned the relief of humility. Through it all, we have kept a close, loving relationship with our son.

I believe church families, just like individual families, have an important responsibility to model God’s overwhelming, persistent, mighty, unconditional love to everyone who seeks their fellowship. Our job is to love everyone and pray for them. We can leave the rest to God and the Holy Spirit.

Just one final, thoughtful question: Do our gay and lesbian sons and daughters also need the growth and learning provided by the school of marriage or a committed relationship?

Bloggin' the 28: Expanding the Scope of Stewardship

Continuing our summer Bloggin' the 28 project, La Sierra University M.Div. student Jared Wright applies the Seventh-day Adventist doctrine of Stewardship to contemporary life.

He writes:

During my first year as a Theology major in college, my professor, Lloyd Willis, the Australian dean of the religion department, shared with us his conception of what he called God’s “economy of miracles.” I’ve forgotten exactly how Dr. Willis put it, but in essence, he stated that God will not act supernaturally to accomplish what people can (and perhaps should) do naturally.

A few years later, toward the end of my college days, a friend of mine, Kevin, an older man and atheist, expressed to me a common atheistic sentiment toward God. He said that if there were a God, he would have a lot to answer for. How, for example, could a God characterized by love simply sit by and watch as millions of people on earth starve to death in famine-stricken parts of Africa or India? If a human parent behaved in that way, he said, at the very least, they would be accused of gross negligence!

Both of those thoughts impressed me, and over time, they have woven themselves together to form a backdrop for my concept of stewardship: In brief, God does not seem to intervene miraculously to accomplish what human beings can and should be accomplishing on their own, and secondly, (contrary to what my friend suggested), human tragedies like genocide, famine, global warming, and war are not indicative of the absence of God, but rather, they are indicative of human failure to live up to the God-given charge to be stewards of what God has made.

Read the rest and share your ideas here.

       

Bloggin' the 28: In Medias Res, the Preamble

Leaving no doctrinal gem unturned in our summer Bloggin' the 28 project, Loma Linda University professor and blogger, Julius Nam, glosses the famous preamble to the Fundamental Beliefs.

He presents truth:

This preamble—in what it says and does not say—is pregnant with the potential to lead Adventism further into becoming an incredibly open, dynamic, diverse yet mutually engaged community. The genius of this statement is that it makes the bold claim that there is no creed but the Bible, yet it does not tell you how you should read it—and then it prevents the 28 from encroaching upon the absolute place of Scripture by relativizing those statements and making them vulnerable to changes. Thus, to be an Adventist, you only need to accord Scripture a creedal place in your belief system—and then commit to engaging with the rest of the community in seeking a fuller meaning and application of Scripture. Your Adventism is not to be judged by the 28 (which are descriptive statements of the dominant, consensus views, but not normative), by any statement made by a traditional authority (such as Ellen White, Joseph Bates, or Uriah Smith), or by positions propounded by representatives of any administrative structures or major church institutions (such as Andrews Seminary, Biblical Research Institute, or Loma Linda University). This may seem like an unrealistic expectation, but it’s the very vision that is implicit in the preamble. It is a statement of hope for a community that is patient and kind with each other because no one has the final word on the truth.

Read the whole essay and join the already active commentators here.

Bloggin' the 28: Re-presenting God

By Alexander Carpenter

Seventh-day Adventists Believe. . .

God the Father
God the Eternal Father is the Creator, Source, Sustainer, and Sovereign of all creation. He is just and holy, merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. The qualities and powers exhibited in the Son and the Holy Spirit are also revelations of the Father. --Fundamental Belief 3

Here's my premise: Fathers are not inherently more Godly than husbands, grandfathers, brothers, sisters, mothers or wives. What we call God should not be some lingo-football tossed around in the socio-political game of the sex-wars. Rather, God is the ultimate definition of Being, and who God is tells us who and how we ought to Be.

Now here's my point: How we define God often leads to how we treat each other and it's no small coincidence that a church that defines God as a father continues to officially subordinate its female members.

And I respect all my family members too much to define my God by one role.   

As has been pointed out hundreds of times -- I think very well in Jack Miles' God: A Biography -- the Bible uses both paternal and maternal metaphors for the divine, as well as God being at times a creator or destroyer, an angry, mistaken, implacable executioner as well as a lover.

Clearly the Jewish experience with the divine is quite eclectic and stretches beyond our current comfort zone of just father. If we name all the traits we do in our current doctrinal articulation of God as father we then imply that fatherhood includes these characteristics. Which is fine, but then we should at least somewhere articulate the other gender side of the human/divine relationship. And this lack of attention to articulating what a God-like mother might be, just also might be keeping our global church from ordaining the Godly in women too.

Some might argue that another approach would be to just stop anthropomorphizing GOD, which includes the pronouns. I see that our bloggin' linguist goes Jewish and leaves out the vowels. I respect his respect.

Since I don't want to get into a Foucauldian discussion of how our rhetoric -- our chains of sentences -- work to control us, I'll move on, but let's not just slip into the false comfort of tradition. In fact, our Protestant tradition, and even more the religious dissidents from the Anabaptists to the Quakers and certainly the early Adventists really worked hard to make their language conform to their principles of equality before God. They called each other brother and sister, and the Puritan use of "Thou" for God was actually the informal second person singular. Christians creating present truth always pay attention to language. So it seems both reasonable and morally fair that we either stop using any anthropomorphic terms for God or we articulate more fully the divine relationship to both men and women.

But the point of this summer Bloggin' the 28 project is not to merely redescribe theology, but to think creatively about what it means to apply our beliefs today.

On Friday night I attended Kinship Kampmeeting, held in San Francisco this year. As I sat in the Sheraton conference room packed with GLBT Adventists and their straight friends, I listened to people already making my blogging job easy.

Throughout the evening of foot washing, memorial for a Kinship member who died last week of AIDS, and shared communion, several of the pray-ers addressed God as mother and father. Did it move me greatly? Not especially; but it made me think about what our public definitions of God cause us to be and do. Here are people who experience deeply the fluidity of human gender and bare deep, terrible scars from the first-stones-cast by their community members. Whether one thinks that God hates sinning fags, just wants them to stay celibate or wants them to have really good gay sex, there should be little doubt that gender and God is a lot more complicated than our current paterfamilias definition implies.

But beyond the fact that we'll always fall short, on Friday, in the context of a strong, loving community, it was clear to me again that our experiences with other humans always, already affect our conception of God. And this makes me want to broaden my public witness about God in words, but also in deeds -- because the better we understand ourselves and our brothers and sisters, the better we'll understand our God. For the God of the spectrum of human shapes and colors also is the God of the spectrum of gender.

We believe that God is Creator, Source, Sovereign, Sustainer and it seems unbalanced to only associate -- fundamentally -- those characteristics with fatherhood. It seems like lesbian husbands and gay wives, single mothers, child-raising grandparents all embody to various degrees of these Godly traits as well.

Our belief is that God is "Creator, Source, Sustainer, and Sovereign of all creation." Jared Wright (Adventist Environmental Advocacy) has already pointed out the moral call to environmental care for creation; instead I want to draw attention to the action verb element of what God means. Creation is not a dominion to God, but an on-going experience in which God plays an active role by continuing to create through us, giving teleological meaning, caring about sustainable human practices, and giving healthy models for being in and relating to authority.

The bottom line is that if God is like that, so should we be as well. And if I can take a second to nudge those Adventists who make the Second Coming contingent on the character of God being reproduced in every believer -- I say, let's really talk about what that character is. According to Adventist beliefs, it looks to me that God cares about the environment, and as I read through our doctrine it seems that to be God-like means to care about justice and holiness, to be merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. And everything we saw in Jesus and revealed by God's Spirit today is also a quality of the DIVINE.

Let's relate God to each other, beyond just the relationship of father -- which will broaden our understanding of the divine character. Namely, an action verb experience that unfolds in relationships, because there's no such thing as being perfectly slow to anger, or perfectly merciful, or perfectly just. Those are always contingent on a context. And thus to me, dear brothers and sisters, living out the personhood of God seems to be more than a state of being or a fundamental statement of Being -- instead we're called to Be-come through Being.

Next up in Bloggin' the 28

July 31: In Medius Res: Julius Nam
Aug 03: Stewardship: Jared Wright 
Aug 07: Marriage and the Family: Carrol Grady/Siroj Sorajjakool
Aug 10: The Gift of Prophecy: Alexander Carpenter 
Aug 14: Christ's Ministry in the Heavenly Sanctuary: Marty Thurber/ David Hamstra
Aug 17: God the Son: Trudy Morgan-Cole
Aug 21: Death and Resurrection: David Larson
Aug 24: Spiritual Gifts and Ministries: Marcel Schwantes
Aug 28: Law of God: Nathan Blake
Aug 31: Nature of Man: Sherman Cox II
Sep 04: Sabbath: Brian Swarts
Sep 07: Second Coming of Christ: Nathan Brown
Sep 11: Growing in Christ: Trevan Osborn
Sep 14: Church: Ryan Bell
Sep 16: Holy Spirit: Tompaul Wheeler
Sep 18: Experience of Salvation: Sharon Fujimoto-Johnson
Sep 21: Christian Behavior: Chris Blake
Sep 25: Baptism: Ryan Bell
Sep 28: New Earth: Monte Sahlin

Bloggin' the 28: Lord's Supper

Continuing our summer Bloggin' the 28 project, Houston International church pastor Bill Cork applies fundamental belief number 16: Lord's Supper to contemporary Adventist life.

He quotes:

In washing the feet of His disciples, Christ gave evidence that He would do any service, however humble, that would make them heirs with Him of the eternal wealth of heaven’s treasure. His disciples, in performing the same rite, pledge themselves in like manner to serve their brethren. Whenever this ordinance is rightly celebrated, the children of God are brought into a holy relationship, to help and bless each other. They covenant that the life shall be given to unselfish ministry. And this, not only for one another. Their field of labor is as wide as their Master’s was. The world is full of those who need our ministry. The poor, the helpless, the ignorant, are on every hand. Those who have communed with Christ in the upper chamber will go forth to minister as He did. (Ellen G. White, Desire of Ages, p. 651)

And adds:

Early Adventists had a fervent hope in the soon return of Christ, but didn’t neglect engagement with the world. They were involved in various movements of social reform: abolitionism, health reform, temperance. They reached out in missions to the frontiers and corners of America and to the South Pacific. I think our outward vision will become more clear as we lower our eyes to wash the feet of our brothers and sisters, and as we open our arms–and our hearts–to all who hunger and thirst.

Read and comment here.

Bloggin' the 28: Gender Inequality Is a Barrier to Unity in the Body of Christ

Continuing our summer Bloggin' the 28 project, Claremont Graduate School of Theology doctoral student and Adventist Gender Justice blogger Trisha Famisaran applies fundamental belief number 14: Unity in the Body of Christ to contemporary Adventist life.

By Trisha Famisaran

. . .the issue of gender inequality creates ecclesiological problems for the idea that the body of Christ really “demonstrates the reality of God’s eternal kingdom;” albeit affirming the “now and not yet” character of redemption and the restoration of fragile relationships. H. Richard Niebuhr suggests that one of the most powerful aspects of the redemptive work of Jesus is his historical record of and exhortation to metanoia, a change in consciousness that leads to ethical action. Leonardo Boff, a liberation theologian from Brazil, notes the character of communal learning and adjustment to social circumstances that are (should be?) descriptive of the church and demonstrate the lasting influence of the Holy Spirit to encourage “ecclesial consciousness.” With that understanding, I am convinced that the “consciousness” of the church includes intentional sensitivity to social concerns that were once considered beyond the scope of orthodox theological agendas and institutional responsibility. Sexism, racism, economic inequality, and violent political division certainly effect unity in the body of Christ and foster disregard for the radical acts of Jesus that the gospels attest to. Scripture does not necessarily address each specific issue, but the spirit of communal love that acts beyond social divisions and minister to the needs of the disadvantaged is clearly present.

Read and comment on the whole post here.

Bloggin' the 28: Millennium And The End of Sin : New Creations As Agents of the Kingdom

By Alexander Carpenter

Claremont doctoral candidate Ed Guzman writes:

No more pain,suffering, death; things made new (REv. 21:5)
I find great comfort in the Adventist’s church historic mission to ‘make [hu]man whole.’ Imperfect, finite, and as flawed by the mistakes of a modernist genesis, the church has proven an unflinching commitment to bringing about the alleviation of pain, suffering and death. This is evidenced in our worldwide health network, international relief projects, and strong educational system. The Pauline new creation instantiates the promises of the future kingdom in their daily actions as a citizen of this world. And in this respect, the church has forged ahead as a exemplar of God’s kingdom in the now.

Our church has traditionally shied away from involvement in the worldly power structures that effect all peoples. Perhaps the Pauline exception to power structures has biblical merit. Yet, as new creations that instantiate the kingdom the reticence of institutional (Adventist) activism in this world does not preempt involvement at a grass-roots level. After all, isn’t the kingdom boundless, unfettered by the parameters of institutional interests

Read it all at his blog, Substance and Shadows. And comment there too.

Bloggin' the 28: Let’s Fix Our Scripture Problem -- UPDATED

Taking advantage of this publishing medium, Chuck has added a couple of lines. Hey, if one believes in progressive revelation, perhaps one can update ones ideas about revelation too. . . . Updates in bold.

By Charles Scriven, president of Kettering College of Medical Arts and chairman of Adventist Forum.

The preamble to the church’s official non-creed, the “Statement of 28 Fundamental Beliefs,” declares that, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, revision of these beliefs “may be expected.”

As a reading of John 16:12-15 suggests, this is in full accord with the spirit of Christian Scripture.      

The preamble’s relevance is nowhere clearer than in the very first of the 28 fundamental beliefs, where the topic is the Adventist theory of the Bible.   In a way that is in part helpful, but on the whole misleading and dangerous. Belief number one declares:

The Holy Scriptures, Old and New Testaments, are the written Word of God, given by divine inspiration through holy men of God who spoke and wrote as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. In this Word, God has committed to man the knowledge necessary for salvation. The Holy Scriptures are the infallible revelation of His will. They are the standard of character, the test of experience, the authoritative revealer of doctrines, and the trustworthy record of God's acts in history. (2 Peter 1:20, 21; 2 Tim. 3:16, 17; Ps. 119:105; Prov. 30:5, 6; Isa. 8:20; John 17:17; 1 Thess. 2:13; Heb. 4:12.)

Within the Bible itself you find the firm conviction that Scripture does reflect the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.  But you nowhere find that God’s inspiration of human authors entails that the Bible is “infallible,” or that (all) the written words constitute—themselves—the “standard of character” or the “test of experience.” 

If you embraced the current statement on Scripture, you could be excused for supposing that genocide may be acceptable to God, or the satisfactions that accompany revenge, or the policy of keeping women silent in church.  You can appeal to words in the Christian Bible, after all, to support all these things.  But you can also appeal to the Bible to contend against them.

So if the Bible is infallible—all its bits and pieces God’s timeless truth—you have to pretend some parts are not really there, or dream up rationalizations to explain what is there, or suppose that God is divided.  But this latter flies in the face of the conviction, expressed in Hebrews 13:8, that Jesus Christ, God’s self-revelation, “is the same yesterday and today and forever.”

Based on internal evidence, then, it’s clear that the Bible is not an anthology of divinely perfect sentences.  And this internal evidence includes, too, what Bible writers say about their own understanding.  The author of Isaiah 55:8 declares, without a pinch of equivocation, that God’s thoughts are “higher” than ours.  In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul writes, “Now I know only in part.”  So to say Scripture is “infallible” is to deny Scripture’s own testimony. 

When you pay attention to the book, instead of accepting assumptions from elsewhere, you see that the Bible is a story about Israel and its impact on the wider world.  As the author of 2 Timothy 3:16 declares, the whole story is “inspired” and “useful.”   It is a God-aided interpretation of one small, critically important slice of human experience. That interpretation plants a vision of what we can be, and what our society can be; it engenders hope and passion so we can shoulder the responsibilities the vision sets before us. It helps us be the best that we can be.  But no one—no one inside the Bible—believes everything said there is perfect.

The author of Hebrews 1:1-3 says what needs to be said: God “spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son”; this Son is the “exact imprint of God’s very being.”

Think about these remarks.  They take for granted the idea of Scripture as a story; and they remind us that the story goes somewhere: it takes us to Christ, who, unlike anyone else, puts God’s will and way—finally—into perfect focus.

So to be a competent reader of the Bible you have to follow a story.  You look for what is going on (warts and all), and notice the direction the story is taking.  Then you interpret the whole story in light of its goal.

This is not at all like leafing through an anthology of perfect sentences.  On the view I am suggesting, if you have a difficult son, and you put your finger on a random text that says, “If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son…all the men of the town shall stone him to death” (Deuteronomy 21:18-21), you stop before you act.  This was once thought to be God’s will, but the whole story leads to Christ, and now those who embrace the story live their lives, as Paul said in Philippians 1:27, “in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.” This is where the story takes you.  It is why our pioneers embraced non-violence—just what Jesus taught and embodied—even though the stories of some Bible heroes make bloodshed seem like the will of God.  It is why we embrace the ministry of healing—just what Jesus taught and embodied--even though, in 2 Chronicles 16:12, Asa is reproached for seeking “help from physicians.”

The old “key-text approach,” with its assumption of infallibility, is bankrupt.  But when you follow the story, the Bible—Old Testament and New; the whole account—retains its authority.  And it retains its power to transform how we see and feel.

In the spirit of the aforementioned preamble, I propose, therefore, the following revision of belief number one:

"The  Christian Bible is the church’s highest written authority.  For the shaping of the church’s conviction and shared life, the story it tells is wholly inspired and wholly useful, a trustworthy window into how God thinks and what God does.  The story moves from creation through the call of Abraham and the witness of the prophets to Jesus, the zenith of Jewish generosity and, by his death and resurrection, the final revelation of God’s will and way, the wholly sufficient standard of character and test of experience."

My list of supporting Bible passages would include many from the current statement and would add (this is crucial!) Hebrews 1:1-3 and Philippians 1:27. 

See what you think. 

And keep in mind that while there is no single, valid theory of the Bible—mine is just a conversation starter—it does not follow that any theory will do.  I am arguing that this much is irrefutable: the current statement needs revision such as the preamble says we may expect.

Next up in Bloggin' the 28

By Alexander Carpenter

Greetings all. Whew. Just ducking back here to the main page from Bill Cork's comment thread. Yikes! The practicality of peace, the meaning of Sabbath and the truth about human origins -- those topics seem to get the remnant fired up. Good times.

I wanted to update you on our summer Campmeeting 2.0: Bloggin' the 28 project. We done three thus far, and the next five are scheduled and coming down the line. The site in quotes is the blog where the actual post will be, and if you have a blog, feel free to link to it.

July 10: Scripture: Charles Scriven
(The Spectrum Blog)

July 13: Millennium and the End of Sin: Ed Guzman
(Substance and Shadows)

July 17: Unity in the Body of Christ: Trisha Famisaran
(Adventist Gender Justice)

July 20: Lord's Supper: Bill Cork
(Oak Leaves)

July 24: Creation: Jared Wright
(Adventist Environmental Advocacy)

Bloggin' the 28: The Counter-Cultural Prophetic Church

by Alexander Carpenter

The third of 28 posts, today's fundamental belief is "The remnant and its mission".  Our own Johnny A. Ramirez explores contemporary Adventist discussions on the remnant belief and social action with citations from Jack Provonsha to Angel Manuel Rodriguez.

You'll notice that I've closed the comments below so that we can all migrate over and  (link updated 5/10/07) read and talk about it at Johnny's Cache. See you there.

If you have a blog, don't forget to put up a link.

Bloggin' the 28: Applying Trinity to human relationships

By Johnny Ramirez-Johnson

There is one God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a unity of three co-eternal Persons. God is immortal, all-powerful, all-knowing, above all, and ever present. He is infinite and beyond human comprehension, yet known through His self-revelation. He is forever worthy of worship, adoration, and service by the whole creation. (Deut. 6:4; Matt. 28:19; 2 Cor. 13:14; Eph. 4:4-6; 1 Peter 1:2; 1 Tim. 1:17; Rev. 14:7.) (Fundamental Beliefs of Seventh-day Adventists, Belief No. 2, The Trinity

Introduction

The “Statue of the Three Lies”

  Have you ever drawn God? If you were assigned the task of doing so where will you go for inspiration? At Harvard University yard, where the oldest buildings remain, in front of the old water pump, there is a statue that we Harvardites call, “the statue of the three lies.” You see the statue is supposed to be a representation of young John Harvard, but it is not. That is the first lie, the story says that Mr. Daniel Chester French, a sculptor was contracted by the university administration to produce a statue of the greatest benefactor they ever had.

  In fact Rev. John Harvard, an Englishman, was the first person to endow the university with half of his estate (£779) his large library (400 volumes of which only one survives today) all for the purpose of training ministers. In return the university was named after him and a bigger that life statue was to be erected. But when Mr. French, the sculptor, arrived there was no painting or any other drawing of John Harvard. They expected him to do a statue of a dead man with nothing to go by. The solution was to use a student as a model. As a result of this unique assignment “the Statue of the Three Lies” was erected. The nature of the other two lies will not be covered in this presentation, you will have to visit Harvard’s yard and take a tour with a Harvardite.

  No Human Has Ever Seen God
When I selected the assignment to write about the Trinity I felt like Mr. French, the sculptor, I asked myself where can I find an image of the Godhead? Where can I get inspiration to draw with words an accurate description of God? You see there are no pictures, paintings, diagrams, or even internet sites to visit where I can find a reliable photo album of the Godhead family, the Trinity. Therefore I decided to search the Bible. John the beloved apostle who had the privilege to lay his head on the body of Jesus the carpenter from Nazareth and who recognized Jesus as the eternal “logos” makes it plain and clear. 1 John 4:12 “No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”¹ No human has ever seen the Trinity.
The Example of Moses
Once Moses asked God to show him what could not be revealed, the words spoken are self-explanatory. Exodus 33:18-20 “Then Moses said, ‘Now show me your glory.’ And the LORD said, ‘I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But,’ he said, ‘you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.’”
Describing God’s Back and Goodness
On this presentation I will examine methodically some of the biblical attempts to describe who the Trinity is and what does this doctrine or belief has to do with our daily experiences. In doing so I will avoid the task that was clearly declared as impossible when Moses requested seen God. I will not seek to describe God’s face, I will limit myself to God’s back and God’s goodness (Exodus 33:18-23). Like Mr. French, if we try to describe how God looks like we will create a false image, another statue of three lies. We are wise to deal with God’s back and goodness, there is plenty to see from God’s backside!
Brief History of the Doctrine of the Trinity
Since the term Trinity has theological rather than biblical origins I cannot quote a biblical text to discuss its origins. It is in the history of the Christian church that we find its roots. It is in the context of Christian apologetics that we find its inception. Only because some perceived attack was received were the early Fathers of the church interested in defining many of the Christian doctrines, including the Trinity. The Early Fathers of the church had a lot to say about this topic. The church Patriarchs had lots of doctrinal and political struggles of which they left behind numerous written witnesses.
Theophilus of Antioch circa 180 AD
Imitating Luke (see Luke 1:3) Theophilus of Antioch wrote three books to proclaim the risen Savior to his friend Autolycus. The first book deals with God, the second with a Christian interpretation of the Old Testament, and the third book with the superiority of the Christian faith. In his first book we have the first mention of the doctrine of the Trinity (Gonzalez, 1970:117). In describing what he called the Trinity Theophilus took a leap beyond the biblical data and introduced a theological term that from then on defined the Christian God. It was not without many conflicts that this theological view of God was accepted and defined by the Christian community.
Cyril of Alexandria circa 430 AD
The “Seal of the Fathers”, Cyril of Alexandria who died about 444 AD has been credited as “the one who finally fixed the true doctrine of the Trinity” (Krüger, 1977:333). Cyril was instrumental in dealing with Nestorius who rejected the “bearer of God” title applied to Mary, the mother of Jesus. In opposing the title given to Mary, Nestorius of Antioch set himself up against more powerful Patriarchs, Cyril of Alexandria whose parish had a significant amount of financial resources and political influence (more than often these two go together) and Rome. Cyril took it upon himself to destroy Nestorius and so he did. Forcing him to sign a most humiliating document, it was in this letter and the appendix of “Heretical Statements” that we find the declarations defining the doctrine of the Trinity.
Unitarianism and Patripassianism
Nestorius was neither the first nor the most significant opponent of the prevalent Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Many others opposed various aspects of the doctrine, most significantly the divinity of Jesus and the nature of the Holy Spirit. There are many ways of classifying all these controversies. I will limit myself to mentioning two classifications of the Trinity that depart from the prevalent Christian view: Unitarianism and Patripassianism. Unitarianism declares the complete union of the Godhead rejecting the notion that there are three “persons” in the Godhead. Tertulian first used the notion of “persona” to describe the Trinity circa 175 AD. The Unitarian doctrine views the Holy Spirit as an attribute of the Father and views the Son as a created being (see McClintock & Strong, 1970:551-556).
Patripassianism declares that the Father suffered and was given in sacrifice alongside with Jesus (the term literally means ‘the passion of the Father’). Patripassianism as well as Unitarianism and all the other views on the Trinity are based on some passages from the Bible. A detailed discussion of these goes beyond the scope of this paper. The main points to ponder are summarized in three questions: Is God an immutable, far away, all knowing, and all encompassing, far from human frailty God? Is the Trinity a mutable one, each member having a unique opinion and each member learning from each other? Is the Trinity in “need” of companionship and enjoys the pleasures of intimacy with humans and between themselves?
Seven years away from the of the start of the third millennia and many debates, church councils, political maneuvering, and Bible studies after Theophilus and Cyril wrote their theologies I have the task of explaining in a Christ center way the implications of the doctrine of the Trinity today.
Disclaimer
We All Speak From Our Vantage Points
As expressed by our own Adventist Southern Californian theologian Richard Rice, although “theology seeks to express the faith of a religious community, rather than someone’s private opinions, it inevitably reflects the viewpoint of its author” (1985:xvii). Following Rice, I do not view this perspective as a weakness but as strength, how else can we learn about the unseen God if not by the reflections of humans like you and me? This analysis is a personal reflection on the meaning of the doctrine of the Trinity from the perspective of the human need for relationships.
I must say a word or two about who I am. I am a male, middle class mestizo who lives in Colton, California. I am a Harvard educated ordained minister of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. I have lived among very orthodox people who view the Bible as having an answer to every specific question. And I have also lived among those who view the Bible as a book to be interpreted in light of today’s realities. I can feel equally comfortable among both groups. It will be from this perspective that I will talk to you. Like Theophilus, Cyril, and all writers on this internet Campmeeting series who wrote before me and all those who will write after me, we can only reflect and think within the framework of our experience, one perspective at a time.
We Need Each Other
The first point that I wish to make in regards the doctrine in consideration is the fact that our God is a Trinitarian one. Before we make up our minds in regards to what is true we ought to listen to at least three perspectives from three different people, like the Godhead we all can benefit from diversity of perspectives. Diversity of opinions begins with God. I will latter explain myself.
Ellen G. White Advises Silence
Ellen G. White declares that silence is golden when trying to define who the Holy Spirit is, she says.

  It is not essential for us to be able to define just what the Holy Spirit is. Christ tells us that the Spirit is the Comforter, “the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father.” It is plainly declared regarding the Holy Spirit that, in His work of guiding men into all truth, “He shall not speak of Himself.” John 15:26; 16:13. The nature of the Holy Spirit is a mystery. Men cannot explain it, because the Lord has not revealed it to them. Men having fanciful views may bring together passages of scripture and put a human construction on them, but the acceptance of these views will not strengthen the church. Regarding such mysteries, which are too deep for human understanding, silence is golden (White, 1911:51-52).

  Her advice is to study the nature of the work of the Holy Spirit. In this paper I will concentrate on the nature of the relationship of the Trinity with us and what can we learn to help us understand God’s character and love for us humans. Instead of building a statue of the Trinity or the so-called logical attributes thereof, I wish to describe the goodness of God (see Exodus 33:18-20) as it relates to us. I will describe God’s backside--which has been revealed, not God’s face--which has not been seen.
Biblical Accounts
Genesis 1 and 2
Genesis 1:26-27 no uncertain ways that there is an authoritative, legitimate, image of the Trinity on earth. “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” Genesis 1:26-27 was mentioned by all the theologians I read (about twenty), they all discussed it from the standpoint that it declares a plurality in God, therefore the doctrine of the Trinity can be documented with this and many other texts. This is completely and absolutely true. The God of Genesis is plural, the Creator of Genesis consulted in a heavenly council before creating our first parents.
I have no idea of what when on in their dialogue, what I know for certain is that they came up with a design. This design is a reflection of God, the image of God. As presented by our prophetess Ellen G. there is no question about the fact that we humans, male and female, reflect God.

  There is no ground for the supposition that man was evolved by slow degrees of development from the lower forms of animal or vegetable life. . . . Man was to bear God’s image, both in outward resemblance and in character. Christ alone is ‘the express image’ (Hebrews 1:3) of the Father; but man was formed in the likeness of God. His nature was in harmony with the will of God” (White, 1958:45).

Therefore if we look at the best human traits, both in our physical “outward appearance” and psychological ways, “character,” we will find the only authorized image of the Trinity. To accomplish this task we will examine the passage in question with the question: What can we learn about the Trinity from the story of the creation of humans?
Diversity Within The Trinity
The first lesson that we must learn from Genesis 1:26-27 has to do with diversity, “male and female he created them” is what the Bible says. It was not one of them who bore the image of God it is both. When we examine the female body and compare it to the male one we can only wonder what kind of a dialogue the Trinity had when creating humans. ‘Man will have this and that organs in this and that shape, woman will have this and that features shaped in these unique ways.’

  From the biblical record we cannot ascertain whose hands got dirty with mud in the process of creating Adam, what we do know is that humans were created with a hands-on method rather than a voice-command method. Many parts of the creation account declare that God ‘spoke’ things into creation. For humans the method was hands-on, the “LORD God formed” man and woman into creation.

  It is beyond the scope of this paper to determine the nature of God’s gender qualities, though the Bible refers to God mostly with male metaphors, female ones are also used (see Rosado, 1990). It is assume by the author that God indeed has both male and female attributes; though God is neither male nor female per se. Since both males and females carry the image of God; in whatever way(s) they carry God’s image, then God is like them in those same ways (see White, 1958:45--“Man [humanity] was to bear God’s image, both in outward resemblance and in character”).
Appreciation Of Gender Differences (Diversity)

Genesis 2:7 and 2:21-22 explain the creation of the first man and woman. The story unfolds in steps. First man is created, then all animals are brought to him, then his need for companionship is declared. Lastly the woman is created from one of man’s rib and is brought to him. Equality is declared and companionship established.

  Genesis 2:7 “the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” Genesis 2:21-22 “So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.”

  The Hebrew word used in Genesis 2:7 “formed” is also used to describe the action of a potter shaping or forming a clay vessel into existence. God’s hands got as dirty as any potter’s hands when working with clay! What implications does the fact that both men and women represent the image of God have on the doctrine of the Trinity? Historically women have not been led to believe that they carry in their bodies as much the image of God as men do. That is why the Mexican poet Amado Nervo exhorts the female readers of his poem to esteem their bodies. Taking the risk of insulting both the individual capable of reading Amado Nervo in Spanish and those who cannot do so, I will translate a portion of his literary work entitled “Tu Cuerpo” [Your Body] dedicated to the Mexican women.

  Why would you despise your body? It is, in the first place, the marvellous temple of a hidden god. It is, at the same time, a work of art by the eternal Artisan. Study it from all vantage points. Look at its harmonious exterior; analyze its anatomy; enter deeply into the tortuous mystery of its cells; all in it is beauty, is strength, is grace, is an enigma. God personally modeled its shape (Nervo, 1988:171).

  As every female reader examines her body in front of a mirror, as every female reader learns about the marvelous physiology of her beautifully designed body, she learns about God! All female readers are designed in outward appearance in the likeness of God! This Trinitarian statement has tremendous implications for the psychological and social well being of females and males. Although we cannot answer the question if there are differences, similar to the male and female differences, in the outward appearance of the three persons of the Trinity, we do know that the Trinity choose to create us in two likeness, male and female.

  Both male and female carry God’s image and we do well in affirming the goodness of this heavenly designed diversity. Just like the male and female bodies differ in “outward appearance” and physiology, also the Trinitarian nature must reflect a like diversity. The expression of diversity in the creation of man and woman does not end with the physical realities.
Diversity Of Reasoning
Who will question the well-documented fact that women and men think in different ways? One way of understanding these different ways of thinking has to do with moral reasoning. Carol Gilligan and her colleagues have clearly documented two distinct ways of reasoning that males and females exhibit.

  By listening to girls and women resolve serious moral dilemmas in their lives, Gilligan has traced the development of a morality organized around notions of responsibility and care. This conception of morality contrasts sharply with the morality of rights described by Piaget (1965) and Kohlberg (1981, 1984), which is based on the study of the evolution of moral reasoning in boys and men. People operating within a rights morality–more commonly men–evoke the metaphor of “blind justice” and rely on abstract laws and universal principles to adjudicate disputes and conflicts between conflicting claims impersonally, impartially, and fairly. Those operating within a morality of responsibility and care–primarily women–reject the strategy of blindness and impartiality. Instead, they argue for an understanding of the context for moral choice, claiming that the needs of individuals cannot always be deduced from general rules and principles and that moral choice must also be determined inductively from the particular experiences each participant brings to the situation (Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, & Tarule, 1986:8).

  This observable diversity of moral reasoning between males and females enriches our understanding of God. I propose to you that God’s moral reasoning exhibit both patterns of logic. You can not help but to realize that the laws and regulations of the Hebrew Scriptures seem sometimes to be contradicted by the actions of God as presented in the stories of the ways God dealt with humans in those days. A couple of examples, from the many that can be presented, include the stories of Rahab and Ruth. The regulations and laws given by God had specific instructions of whom to exclude from the family of Israel. Prostitutes, Moabites (up to their tenth generation) as well as inhabitants from Jericho were all to be excluded. Prostitutes and people from Jericho were to be killed on the spot, you may read these exclusions in Deuteronomy 23:3-4, 17-18 and Joshua 6:17-19, but the actual treatment received by a prostitute from Jericho and a Moabite widow directly contradict the laws and regulations, you may read Joshua 6:17-19; Ruth 4:1-10; Matthew 1:5; Hebrews 11:31; and James 2:25.

  In order to learn about God’s character we need to examine the stories that deal with the morality of contextualized relationships. If we only look at the laws and the morality of retribution we will, must definitely, miss the true picture of God. Just like between male and female characters there are varied ways of approaching moral reasoning, it seems God’s reasoning follows suit.

  Unity in the Trinity

  Just as true that there is diversity both psychologically and physically between men and women it is also true that there is a lot of unity between them. The Bible declares that our first parents became one, Genesis 2:23-24. “The man said, ‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man.’ For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” The Trinity is also “one flesh.” Theologians have expressed this in so many words. The Bible expresses it with the image of marriage. It is only in the context of unity between a man and a woman in marriage that we can begin to understand the concept of the Trinity. In the logic of God as expressed in Genesis, since man and woman were created from the same essence they ought to become one in marriage. The act of getting married is described in its biological level of sexual relations. But the implications are far from only biological.

  The social implications of getting married are described in clear terms, man and woman need to separate from their parents in order to become one. The exclusive type of relationship that needs to exist within a married couple describes the character of God. God does not welcome sharing us with other gods. In fact, we are told that God is jealous, God is keeping a careful score of all our relationship and what place we give to our relationship with Him/Her. Exodus 20:3, 5 “You shall have no other gods before me. . . for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God” (the same idea is expressed in Exodus 34:14; Deuteronomy 4:24; 5:9; 6:15; Joshua 24:19). The plural God of Genesis exist in a oneness only understood in the relationship of a man and a woman in love.

  Need Of Companionship

  The relationship of man and woman is not only outside of love, it comes out of a basic human need. The only time during the creation story that God declared that the creation act was not good was when Adam was alone. Adam’s creation was declared incomplete without a suitable, equal companion. Humans were created in a social context out of which we are incomplete.

  The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field. But for Adam no suitable helper was found. (Genesis 2:18-20)

  Is it that God needs companionship in order to be complete? Based on what we learn from God’s image on earth and what the Bible says about God’s relationships with us, I believe God needs our companionship in order to be complete.
The Needs Of God
Isaiah 43

  This beautiful poem describes the inner feelings, desires, and logic of God (presented in the context of Israel and their present truth). As we read it together let us try to understand God’s reasoning. The God of these passages has an earnest desire for a close relationship with the people of Israel. Twice it is declared that humans were created and redeemed for God’s personal purposes (Isaiah 43:7, 25). The God of Isaiah 43 declares that the people of Israel were brought into existence for the sole purpose of proclaiming God’s name to all. Isaiah 43:10 “You are my witnesses,” declares the LORD, “and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor will there be one after me.” Isaiah 43:20-21 “The wild animals honor me, the jackals and the owls, because I provide water in the desert and streams in the wasteland, to give drink to my people, my chosen, the people I formed for myself that they may proclaim my praise.”

The Trinitarian God has the desire for praise and companionship. God’s love is expressed through the creative power. And the creation acts are a definition of God’s being, were God is there is life and relationships. “Every manifestation of creative power is an expression of infinite love. The sovereignty of God involves fullness of blessings to all created beings” (White, 1958:33). Praise to God is the act of sharing with God our lives and giving to God the center of our existence.

  The message of Isaiah 43 involves God’s demand for a trial. In this trial God invites all creatures to explain why (43:9) they have separated from God’s presence. God’s witnesses are the wild animals, they have always honor God. But Israel has separated herself from God and God is calling her into judgment. But the purpose is to save her, to redeem her, because God needs her.

  God Needs Israel Like A New Groom Needs His Bride

  It is not far fetched to say that God needs us in the same fashion that two loved ones need each other. We are not talking about a need for survival, we are talking about a need for pleasure and enjoyment of what is good and beautiful. Our nervous terminals and central nervous system are an image of God’s own sensory system. God is capable of joy and pleasure as much as we are capable of joy and pleasure. In fact the greatest joy and pleasure comes from sharing ourselves with our loved ones.

  In the context of a sacred bond and total commitment and trust, the newly weds are to give themselves to each other often for the first time. This giving themselves to each other is a “need” in the sense that it is the greatest usage of our capability to share and give ourselves to others. It is not that marriage is the only way of sharing; on the contrary, there are one thousand and one other ways of sharing ourselves. It is not that those who are single cannot give themselves in totality. It is that in the context of the marital sexual union the potentials for sharing soul and body are best exemplified.

  Separation Is The Greatest Pain
There is plenty of biblical data about how a married couple is supposed to share themselves with one another. We already reviewed the lessons learned from Genesis 2, a married couple needs to divorce themselves from their previously most cherished relationships and devout themselves to each other exclusively. The element of exclusivity cannot be overemphasized (Exodus 20:14, 17). Separation is the greatest enemy of a couple in love--Song of Solomon 5:6-8:

  I opened for my lover, but my lover had left; he was gone. My heart sank at his departure. I looked for him but did not find him. I called him but he did not answer. The watchmen found me as they made their rounds in the city. They beat me, they bruised me; they took away my cloak, those watchmen of the walls! O daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you-- if you find my lover, what will you tell him? Tell him I am faint with love.

  Separation is most painful when it is caused by abandonment of one spouse in favor of a third person. Just like this type of separation is the most painful, the greatest joy in marriage comes from a total commitment to one another.

  Sharing Their Bodies Is The Greatest Pleasure

  Throughout the Songs of Solomon almost all the human anatomy is described in the context of the pleasures derived in sharing with each other. A token of the anatomy of love in the context of marriage include breasts and mouth, Songs of Solomon 7:6-8.

  How beautiful you are and how pleasing, O love, with your delights! Your stature is like that of the palm, and your breasts like clusters of fruit. I said, “I will climb the palm tree; I will take hold of its fruit.” May your breasts be like the clusters of the vine, the fragrance of your breath like apples, and your mouth like the best wine. May the wine go straight to my lover, flowing gently over lips and teeth. I belong to my lover, and his desire is for me.

  According to Paul the sharing of your body in marriage is not only a pleasurable thing, it is a duty. The duty of love is to share and ownership is in the hands of your spouse--1 Corinthians 7:3-5:

  The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife’s body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband’s body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife. Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

  These simple rules are the key to all other relationships. If we are capable of loving our spouses in such a way that we no longer hold ownership of our bodies, then we are capable of loving others as ourselves. In learning to love in this way we learn to relate to God. The God who choose not to own his own body but gave it away for us to be saved!
Jesus And The Trinity
Jesus example of total commitment is our role model of how the Trinity loves us, and of how we ought to love one another--Philippians 2:4-8:

  Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death-- even death on a cross!

  Loving Jesus and loving our closest neighbor, our spouses, go hand in hand. In order to understand the nature of the doctrine of the Trinity and its implications for us today we must do so in the context of relationships. Relationships that come out of the pleasure for companionship, not the discipline of legal requirements. Through the process of marriage I have learned many things about how to foster and how not to foster relationships. I would lie if I was to say that I am the perfect husband or that I fully understand how my wife reasons. I have learned that many times the issue is to learn to enjoy the beauty of reasoning contrary to mine. Not that I many times we argue about our mutual logics, we do so, and even enjoy the process. The point is to submit, not out of logic but out of love for the relationship. The amazing miracle is that the greatest pleasure is associated with this kind of logic!

  The logic of Jesus is the logic of equality in diversity. Treating others as equals even when we cannot always accept their logic. Jesus practiced this discipline all the way to the cross of Calvary! This discipline will bring to Jesus the greatest joy, the joy of saving us from our sins. That is why Jesus is looking forward to our reunion with him. When Jesus will be reunited with his first human creation, Adam. The joy of the reunion brings shivering sparks up and down Jesus’ spinal cord. This promise is extended to all. We all will become the bride to be reunited with the bridegroom in the joy of total union and the pleasures of marital companionship--Isaiah 62:4-5:

  No longer will they call you Deserted, or name your land Desolate. But you will be called Hephzibah, and your land Beulah; for the LORD will take delight in you, and your land will be married. As a young man marries a maiden, so will your sons marry you; as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you.

  God is as eager to share with us and be delighted in us as a groom over his bride. God wants to rejoice in you as much as a bridegroom wants to “rejoice over his bride.” Are we anticipating this joy by practicing on earth the joy of sharing with our spouses and neighbors? Like concentric circles our relationships are to grow, and as they grow we become more willing to submit to one another. Is there room for diversity in your life? Are you willing to submit to those you cannot understand their logic?
Conclusion
If we are to live a wholeness life we need to learn from the Trinity some key behaviors/attitudes.

  1. We do not need to be able to understand in order to believe. Just like we do not understand the logic of our spouse’s in order to always love them; we do not need to understand how the Trinity is best described in order to have a relationship with God!

  2. We have been created in God’s image and in order to fully appreciate this image we need to treat male and females as equal. Females carry God’s image as much as males do! We are both the image of God on earth!
3. Just like we have the need for companionship, God has the need for companionship. It is not a favor that God has saved us; it is because God needs us. Out of self-love God saved us!

  4. Since God needs us we can feel as partners, members of the family of God. We are not strangers receiving charity, we can provide God with what She/He needs–companionship!

  5. God will judge us based on our relationship with Her/Him. Our relationship with Her/Him is judged based on our relationship with those closer to us.

  6. God expects us to submit to one another, just like Jesus submitted because he needs us. We also need each other and we ought to submit in order to reflect the Trinity’s ways of companionship.

Are you ready to try?

Dr. Johnny Ramirez Johnson is a tenured professor in Theology, Psychology, and Culture at the School of Religion at Loma Linda University.

Bloggin' the 28: The Life, Death and Resurrection of Christ

By Ron Osborn

Centuries before Jesus’ birth, Jewish apocalyptic writers, struggling to understand the theological meaning of Israel’s exile in Babylon, concluded with paradoxical audacity that pagan oppression was the result not of YHWH’s weakness but of his actual justice and strength: Israel was being punished by the Creator God for its failure to keep the covenant. (28) Things would grow progressively worse, Jewish eschatology predicted, until a final, decisive moment when God would at last send a warrior-prince to restore his Chosen People to their rightful place among the nations. Jewish apocalyptic literature used cosmic and fantastic images to describe this future event, but Jewish hopes were firmly rooted in the realm of concrete, earthly politics. When God’s kingdom arrived, it would be plain for all to see by three material facts: 1) the Davidic monarchy would be restored in Jerusalem with unparalleled justice and prosperity; 2) the Temple would be rebuilt with unsurpassed splendor; and 3) the downtrodden Jews would emerge a triumphant superpower with their pagan enemies humiliated and defeated beneath them.

Jesus shared many of the basic assumptions of this traditional Jewish eschatology. He declared that oppression would increase before finally being  overcome by God’s saving activity (Mark 13.7-13). He urged his disciples to be steadfast and courageous in the face of evil (Matthew 10.16-42). And he taught them to pray not for a “spiritual” kingdom somewhere in the sky but for God’s kingdom to come “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6.10). When Jesus talked about the kingdom, though, he did not talk about it in the future tense. Israel was still suffering under foreign oppression, economic injustice and religious corruption. Jesus talked about the kingdom like it had already arrived. Even more shocking, the Gospel writers record, Jesus talked and acted like the kingdom was happening in him and through him. “But if I cast out demons by the finger of God,” Jesus said, “then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Luke 11.20).

Jesus’ kingdom announcement implied that conventional Jewish eschatology, with its vision of two successive historical ages, was either deeply flawed or had been gravely misread. Hebrew apocalyptic literature had depicted the coming of YHWH’s kingdom as a dramatic, earthshattering event that would radically divide the old aeon from the new. But Jesus declared, against all of the seeming evidence, that the kingdom of God was an already present, in-breaking reality, manifest in his own life and program of miraculous healings, and best grasped through metaphors of secrecy, simplicity and subversion. The kingdom, Jesus said, is not like a conquering army but like a mustard seed that inexorably consumes the garden (Luke 13.19). It is like the yeast or leaven that invisibly causes bread to rise (Matthew 13.38). It is like a pearl of great price hidden in a field so that only the passionate seeker will find it (Matthew 13.46).

In first-century Palestine, anyone talking about “the kingdom” was, by this fact alone, treading on perilous political ground. Caesar Augustus had already staked out Rome’s exclusive claim to kingdom vocabulary, and the cult of the emperor brooked no rivals. Caesar was, according to one public inscription, “the beginning of all things”; “god manifest”; the “savior” of the world who “has fulfilled all the hopes of earlier times”; the one whose birthday “has been for the whole world the beginning of the good news (euangelion)”. (29) We should not be surprised, then, that Jesus encoded his kingdom politics in parables, metaphors, riddles and cryptic sayings that did not explicitly defy Roman rule. But for those who had ears to hear, mustard seeds and pearls of great price were the rhetoric of a revolution. Jesus—the true Savior of the world—was calling for his followers to embody YHWH’s actual kingdom of compassion and justice as over and against Lord Caesar’s blasphemous parody. He was telling them to incarnate God’s reign in history by building a new kind of community—a countercultural “polis on a hill” (Matthew 5.14)—that would stand in nonviolent but subversive opposition to all those forces responsible for grinding down the poor, the weak, the ritually unclean and sinners of every kind. The fact that Jesus calls for his followers to incarnate or embody God’s kingdom as a social reality in the present does not contradict but defines and animates Christian hope in the Parousia as a future event in space-time. According to John Dominic Crossan, Jesus proclaimed a sapiential as opposed to apocalyptic eschatology. Sapientia is the Latin word for “wisdom”, and according to Crossan Jesus offered human beings “the wisdom to discern how, here and now in this world, one can so live that God’s power, rule, and dominion are evidently present…rather than a hope of life for the future” (my emphasis). (30) But the Jesus of the New Testament—the only Jesus we know—offers his disciples both a Way of living that manifests God’s kingdom in the midst of the present reality and a hope for the future that invests this Way with its power and meaning. It is precisely because of their confidence in the Parousia that believers are free to live out the dangerous and demanding politics of the Gospel. Conversely, it is only the social witness of believers that manifests Jesus’ life and lordship over history to a watching world.

Absent such a witness, Martin Luther King Jr. saw, there can be no authentic Advent hope. “Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.”

“The Favorable Year of the Lord”: Economic Justice
In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus’ first action at the start of his public ministry is to enter the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth and read from the prophet Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor…to set free those who are downtrodden, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord” (Luke 4.18-19). Only real debtcancellation would have come as real good news for real poor people, Ched Meyers points out. (33) When Jesus claims the “favorable year of the Lord” as central to his vocation he is therefore not assuming a “spiritual” as opposed to a political messianic role. He is, rather, directly alluding to a powerful vision of social justice contained in the Law of Moses that had been systematically suppressed and evaded by Israel’s ruling elites for hundred of years, an economic ethic that would have come as welcome news indeed to the impoverished and exploited peasant masses of
Galilee and Judea.

The “favorable year of the Lord” in Luke-Isaiah, Andre Trocmé and John Yoder show, is the Sabbath year or year of Jubilee commanded by God in the Hebrew Bible (particularly in Leviticus 25 and Deuteronomy 15). Every seventh year, according to the Covenant, Israel was to enact a program of radical debt forgiveness, and in the fiftieth year land redistribution to benefit the poor. Among God’s people, there was to be a systematic leveling of wealth on a regular basis and dismantling of what we would today describe as oppressive financial and banking institutions designed to maximize profits for creditors. Jesus does not attempt to instate these Jubilee commandments in a rigid or programmatic way, but he does reclaim the basic principles, metaphors and imagery of the Sabbath Jubilee for his followers.  He has more to say in the Gospels about issues of wealth and poverty than any other topic—and his message remains as challenging for those of us who live in affluent countries today as it was for the wealthy Herodians and Sadducees in first-century Palestine.

Against the assumptions of laissez-faire capitalism—which posits a world of unlimited human needs, individualism, and competitive rivalry for scarce resources—Jesus declares that we are stewards rather than owners of property, that God’s creation is abundant and our earthly needs limited, and that God’s liberation of Israel from slavery is normative for how we should treat the poor among us. His warnings against capital accumulation and “Lord Mammon” are unrelentingly severe (Matthew 6.16-24; Mark 10.23-25). He tells his followers to live lives of dangerous generosity, giving and expecting nothing in return (Luke 6.30). He tells them to forgive each other’s debts (Matthew 6.12), to not worry about their own material needs but to live out a lifestyle of trust and simplicity (6.25-34; 10.9-10). And he instructs them to actively pursue justice (23.23). Material care for the poor, the oppressed and the hungry, Jesus declares, is the primary mark of discipleship—and the only question at the final judgment (25.31-40).

Jesus’ radical economic teachings were epitomized among his early followers in the practice of “breaking bread”, which was not originally a rite of sacral liturgy or mystical symbolism but an actual meal embodying Jesus’ ethic of sharing in ordinary day-to-day existence. When the Holy Spirit is poured out at Pentecost in the book of Acts, the practical result is that believers voluntarily redistribute their property. “And all those who believed were together, and had all things in common; and they began selling their property and possessions, and were sharing them with all, as anyone might have need…breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart” (Acts 2.44-46). The Apostle Paul also emphasizes the socio-political nature of the Lord’s meal, delivering a blistering rebuke to those upper-class Corinthians who excluded poor believers from their table fellowship and sated their own stomachs while other members of the community went hungry (1 Corinthians 11.18-22).

“You Are All One in Christ”: Equality in the Body of Believers
We can begin to see, then, why Jesus’ message had such an electrifying effect on the impoverished and socially marginalized peasants of first-century Palestine who flocked to hear him speak—and why he so frightened and angered those guardians of public “order” for whom divisions of wealth and class were a useful rather than an oppressive reality. But Jesus challenged not only structures of economic injustice and inequality in first-century Palestine. He
challenged patterns of social inequality, hierarchy and domination of every kind. In his treatment of women, of children, of Romans, of the ritually unclean and sinners of every stripe, Jesus repeatedly and provocatively overturned deeply ingrained cultural and religious assumptions about who was “first” and “last”, “above” and “below” in the eyes of God.

There is no place in God’s in-breaking kingdom, it turns out, for “great men” or “rulers” who “lord it over” others through the exercise of political or religious authority. Such, Jesus tells his disciples, is the way of the “Gentiles”, i.e., the pagan unbelievers and Romans occupiers. But among his followers, Jesus declares, “whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave” (Matthew 20.25-28; Mark 10.43). Jesus goes so far as to command his followers to avoid using honorific titles of any kind, including the title of “leader”. The only title Jesus permits is an address of familial equality and solidarity: “brother” (Matthew 23.6-10). In the polis of Jesus, the New Testament suggests, there simply are no individuals in positions of status or hierarchical control.

Instead of offices, the earliest Christian communities appear to have been ordered along quasifamilial lines and according to the idea of spiritual gifts, including gifts of teaching, preaching and stewardship. Spiritual gifts are charismatic, functional, provisional and divinely rather than humanly bestowed. They are not restricted to special classes, genders or tribes; for “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ” (Galatians 3.28). The most prominent functionaries in the early church, the “elders” or presbyteroi who helped to preside over the households where the early Christians gathered, were to lead by humble example rather than by “lording it over” the younger believers (1 Peter 5.1-3). The title of “priest” or hiereus (the root from which the English word “hierarchy” derives) is not applied to any Christian in the Gospels or Pauline corpus (although in Romans 15.16 Paul does describe himself by way of metaphor as a minister who works “as a priest” presenting God with “my offering of the Gentiles”).  Jesus is the only person who is described (in the book of Hebrews) as a priest for the church; but he is the final priest who makes all priesthood obsolete—not merely the performance of ritual sacrifice, but the office, pomp and circumstance of priestly authority and hierarchy itself.

“Do Not Resist an Evil Person”: Nonviolent Enemy Love
It was the fatal error of many Latin American liberation theologians to conclude from Jesus’ concern for economic justice and his summons to radical, non-hierarchical community formation that the Way of Jesus may be harmonized with the way of violent revolt against oppressive social, economic and political structures. But Jesus of Nazareth, unlike Judas the Galilean, taught his disciples to turn the other cheek, to put away their swords and to love their enemies as themselves. Perhaps the most important hallmark of the politics of Jesus lies in his teaching and example of nonviolent enemy love.

Jesus’ ethic of nonviolence finds its fullest statement in the Sermon on the Mount, which is presented in Matthew’s Gospel in a programmatic fashion as the new Torah, a definitive moral charter to guide the community of believers. Jesus does not seek to negate or overturn the Law of Moses with his own novel teaching but to reclaim the deepest meaning of the Law by intensifying and internalizing its demands. The Law forbids murder, Jesus forbids even anger. The Law forbids adultery, Jesus forbids even lust. When it comes to the matter of violence, though, Jesus does not simply radicalize or intensify the Torah. On this point, and this point alone, he decisively alters and actually overturns the teaching of the Hebrew Bible: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, do not resist him who is evil; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also…You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies,  and pray for those who persecute you, in order that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5.38-45).

The lex talionis—an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth—is spelled out in several passages in the Hebrew Bible but particularly in Deuteronomy 19.15-21. If in a criminal trial a witness gives a false testimony, the Law declares, that person must be severely punished in order to preserve the social order. “Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot” (v.21). Political stability is the goal and fear is the mechanism by which it will be achieved. Jesus shatters this strict geometry, however, with a startling injunction: “Do not resist an evil person.” This does not imply passive capitulation to violent people but physical nonretaliation as a dynamic and creative force in human relationships. By exemplifying the courage and forgiveness of the Beatitudes, the believer confounds and shames the aggressor, creating an opportunity for the hostile person to be reconciled with God. By absorbing undeserved suffering and not retaliating in kind, the disciple destroys the evil inherent in the logic of force. Instead of an endless cycle of bloodshed, fear and recrimination, there is shalom, there is peace. There is nothing sentimental, naïve, meek or mild about Jesus’ Way of dealing with  enemies.

When we recall the concrete historical realities of Roman occupation in first-century Palestine, the shocking and scandalous political implications of Jesus’ teaching of nonviolence immediately becomes clear. To grasp the forces now arrayed against Jesus and his fledgling kingdom movement we have only to imagine the fate that would befall a charismatic young man from a rural village in present day Iraq should he travel to Baghdad with a band of followers and begin publicly announcing that God, through him, was about to free the land from the yoke of foreign occupation—and that prominent imams and respected government officials were vipers and hypocrites—and that the insurgents should lay down their weapons and love their enemies as themselves. Subversive? Disturbing? Dangerous? Clearly. Yet this was precisely the path that Jesus followed in his perilous journey from Nazareth to Jerusalem.

Whether Jesus’ Way of nonviolent enemy love leads to an ethic of strict pacifism, as John Yoder convincingly argues, or whether it allows for Christians to engage in what Glen Stassen calls “just peace-making” (preventive or “policing” actions that involve use of force in exceptional cases but remain sociologically and morally distinct from the calculus of war-making), the presumption of the New Testament is therefore overwhelmingly against believers killing their fellow human beings for a “just cause”, whether as social revolutionaries (on the “Left”) or “just warriors” (on the “Right”). There is not one word in the New Testament to support Linda Damico’s claim that Jesus’ concern for the liberation of the poor led him to embrace “the violence of the oppressed”. We must ponder whether disciples can even legitimately serve as military chaplains insofar as chaplains are not allowed to fully proclaim Jesus’ teaching and example to soldiers but must ensure that “all efforts…maximize a positive impact on the military mission” and “enhance operational readiness and combat effectiveness.”

Against the above reading of Jesus’ kingdom announcement—as essentially subversive of  political authority, involving concern for matters of economicjustice and social equality and giving rise to a community of nonviolent nonconformity with power—some scholars have quoted Jesus’ aphorism, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s” (Mark 12.17). According to Geza Vermes, the saying indicates that Jesus was not concerned with the burning political matters of his day but remained a wandering, apolitical sage who only accidentally and somewhat naïvely stumbled into conflict with the Jerusalem authorities.43 Did not Jesus also say “My kingdom is not of this world”? Vermes’s reading  of Jesus as apolitical rustic rabbi fails, however, to account for the historical and narrative contexts for Jesus’ words and actions in the Gospels. When Jesus says his kingdom is not of this world he does not mean that his kingdom has nothing to do with this world; he means that his kingdom does not derive its tactics, platform or goals from any of the competing political movements of his day, and particularly from the zealots: “If my kingdom were of this world my servants would fight…but my kingdom is not from here” (John 18.36 NKJV, emphasis mine). Nor is “Render to Caesar the things that are  Caesar’s” an abstract teaching about the separation of political and religious matters. The aphorism is Jesus’ answer to a specific, historically-inscribed trap devised by a group of Pharisees and Herodians, whose goal is to force Jesus into one of their rival camps. The trap comes in the form of a question that appears to admit only one of two answers: Should Jews pay the poll tax to Caesar? If Jesus says they should pay the tax, he will have compromised with the Roman occupiers and betrayed his people. If he says that it is not right to pay the tax, he will have openly defied Caesar’s authority and be guilty of sedition along the lines of the zealots. But Jesus’ does not take either path in this false dichotomy. Instead, he deftly transcends and subverts the question.44 His reply contains irony, non-cooperation, indifference and even scorn.45 Bring me a denarius, he tells his inquisitors (Mark 12.15), showing that he is not himself in possession of “Lord Mammon” while at the same time forcing his questioners to reveal that they are the compromised bearers of Caesar’s image and divine title. Whose image and inscription is this?, Jesus then asks, as if he did not know. So it is the Pharisees and Herodians, not Jesus, who are forced to bear recognition to Caesar in the story. When told that the image is Caesar’s (v.16), Jesus at last declares that Caesar can keep his idolatrous scraps of metal: “Render to Caesar the things that Caesar’s”. But what are the things that truly belong to Caesar? Does Caesar have the right to wage wars, to impoverish nations and to inflict violence on God’s people? Not at all, Jesus’ listeners would have understood. Lord Caesar has no claim whatsoever on any human being; for human beings, unlike coins, are made in the image of God.

But what about the Apostle Paul’s statement in Romans 13 that God has ordained secular rulers as agents of his will, as “avengers” who do “not bear the sword for nothing” (v.3)? Do Paul’s letters—the oldest texts in the New Testament canon—in some way contradict, invalidate or “balance” Jesus’ seemingly more radical words and actions in the Gospels, which were written some 40 years later? According to Martin Luther, the book of Romans is the New Testament’s definitive statement on Christian politics, and it shows that we must serve God “inwardly” and  the secular authorities “outwardly”. “Therefore, should you see that there is a lack of hangmen,” Luther wrote in 1523, “and find that you are qualified, you should offer your services and seek the place”.46 Protestants have been offering their services ever since. Yet Romans 13, Luther failed to see, is part of the same literary unit as Chapter 12, which ends with these words: “Repay no evil for evil...Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord. Therefore: ‘If your enemy is hungry, feed him; If he is thirsty, give him a drink; For in so doing you will heap coals of fire on his head.’ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12.17-21). Next come the instructions about submitting to earthly authorities. But, lest there be any doubt on the matter, Paul returns to the theme of Christian nonviolence, driving his point home with systematic rigor. First, he instructs believers to render to all their due (13.7). Then he says that believers should owe no one anything except love (13.8). Next he defines what love is: “Love does no harm to a neighbor” (13.10). Read carefully, and in historical context, Paul is telling the early Christians in Rome, in the face of increasing persecution by a brutal and tyrannical pagan regime, to assume a nonviolent, nonrebellious
stance as their reconciling ministry. He is also telling believers to trust in God’s controlling power over history. God can use the secular authorities and their pagan armies for his own redemptive purposes and, ironically, even as instruments of his justice. That is God’s power and prerogative. But there is not one word in Romans—or anywhere else in Paul’s writings—to suggest that believers should volunteer to serve in Assyrian, Egyptian or Roman legions, or that violence is an acceptable tool for followers of the Way. Quite the opposite, Romans 13 makes clear: Christians are called to a different path. And it is precisely the political character of this path that explains the regularity and persistence of both Roman and Jewish persecution of the Jesus movement during the first three centuries of its growth: “Mere belief—acceptance of certain propositional statements—is not enough to elicit such violence. People believe all sorts of odd things and are tolerated. When, however, belief is regarded as an index of subversion, everything changes. The fact of widespread persecution, regarded by both pagans and Christians as the normal state of affairs within a century of the beginnings of Christianity, is powerful evidence of the sort of thing that Christianity was, and was perceived to be.”

Resurrecting the Life of Christ
When we strip away the layers of ritual, culture and abstract theology that have accreted to the Gospels over the past two thousand years, we thus find that although Jesus did not fit into any of the rival political categories or ideologies of his day—although he did not “run with the hares or hunt with the hounds” in Wright’s words—he was nevertheless deeply, in fact centrally, concerned with politics: with questions of power, money, allegiance and violence, and with the liberation of human beings from all forms of oppression, social and political as well as individual. For Jesus, the things that are God’s are not otherworldly things—the heretical, earth-denying claim of the Gnostics—but precisely this-worldly matters—matters of justice, mercy and community. Jesus’ political stance, Jacques Ellul and Vernard Eller convincingly argue, may best be described as that of an anarchist—not anarchist in the popular sense of advocating destruction of property or the violent overthrow of governments (as in Damico’s reading), but in the root sense of the word: an arche: no rulers, no dominion but God’s alone. The anarchist dimension of Christian discipleship does not remove but in many ways heightens the demands of citizenship in a secular polity since service to God cannot be separated from loving service to humanity, and because violent resistance to “Lord Caesar” is no longer an option. Still, “We must be faithful in our own way,” Stanley Hauerwas reminds us, “even if the world understands such faithfulness as disloyalty.” A church that does not stand “against the world” in fundamental ways, Yoder points out, “has nothing worth saying to and for the world.” Followers of Jesus are not called to defend the ramparts of “liberal democracy”, or any other political system or ideology. Nor are they called to create a “Christian nation” in which Christian leaders assume control of the means of violence and power and exercise them for righteous ends. Rather, they are called to incarnate the kingdom of God by modeling an alternative or “remnant” community of economic justice, equality and peace, with Jesus at its center. They are called to bear witness, amid all of the ambiguities and ironies of history, to the “minority report”: the good news that Jesus’ creative weakness is still God’s saving strength.

If true to their calling, followers of Jesus may expect to pay a high price for their political witness and their refusal to play a part in the mechanisms of violence and coercion that lie at the heart of every social order, including the project of American democracy (the imperial “beast” of Revelation 13 marked by its powers of shock and awe—making “fire come down out of heaven to the earth in the presence of men”—and by its control of the global economy—dictating who is “able to buy or to sell”). They will at times be charged with being unpatriotic, ineffective or irrelevant. Like the Anabaptists during the Protestant Reformation, they may face ridicule, social ostracism and even persecution for their nonconformity with power. In some times and places, they will lose their lives as a result of their obedience to their Master. For the Way of Jesus, is ultimately the Way of the Cross. “To accept the cross as his destiny, to move toward it and even to provoke it, when he could well have done otherwise, was Jesus’ constantly reiterated free choice,” writes Yoder. “The cross of Calvary was not a difficult family situation, not a frustration of visions of personal fulfillment, a crushing debt, or a nagging in-law; it was the political, legally-to-be-expected result of a moral clash with the powers ruling his society.”

Because the Way of Jesus is the Way of the Cross, the politics of Jesus only fully make sense to those who see the dilemmas of power in “cosmic perspective”, to those who are living in the light of Jesus’ resurrection as the historical fact upon which the once-hidden meaning of the universe hinges. “As a mundane proverb, ‘Turn the other cheek’ is simply bad advice,” Richard Hays points out. “Such action makes sense only if the God and Father of Jesus Christ actually is the ultimate judge of the world and if his will for his people is definitely revealed in Jesus.” Put another way, because following Jesus—not simply as a matter of individual spirituality but as a matter of concrete community formation—may involve real sacrifice, suffering and even martyrdom, and because there is no guarantee that this suffering will be politically effective as the world measures effectiveness, there is no reason to follow the Way of Jesus unless the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith are one and the same. If Roman brutality left Jesus buried somewhere in the hills of Palestine alongside all the other messianic revolutionaries of his day, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” (1 Corinthians 15.32). But if Jesus is who the New Testament writers say he is—the suffering Savior of the world who has overcome the principalities and powers and has defeated the final tyranny which is death—then let us “be imitators of God” (Ephesians 5.1), bearing a more faithful witness to the Way of Jesus and the political shape of his life.

Ron Osborn is a PhD candidate in political philosophy at the University of Southern California. This article -- with restored footnotes -- will appear in a forthcoming issue of Spectrum.

Campmeeting 2.0: Bloggin' the 28 Adventist beliefs

By Alexander Carpenter

Welcome to a summer series of posts around the Adventist blogosphere exploring the ethical call of Adventist beliefs. Behind this experiment lies the simple question: how does this belief translate into habits or actions today?

The contributers will be post on Tuesday and Friday on their own blog and the rest of the 2.0 Campmeeting participants will link to each post.

Thus far the participants include:

1. Holy Scriptures: Charles Scriven
2. Trinity: Johnny Ramirez-Johnson
3. Father: (pending)
4. Son: (pending) 
5. Holy Spirit: (pending)
6. Creation: Jared Wright
7. Nature of Man: Sherman Cox II
8. Great Controversy: Richard Doss
9. Life, Death, and Resurrection of Christ:  Ron Osborn
10. Experience of Salvation: Sharon Fujimoto-Johnson
11. Growing in Christ: Trevan Osborn
12. Church: Ryan Bell
13. Remnant and Its Mission: Johnny A. Ramirez
14. Unity in the Body of Christ: Trisha Famisaran
15. Baptism: Ryan Bell
16. Lord's Supper: Bill Cork
17. Spiritual Gifts and Ministries: Marcel Schwantes
18. The Gift of Prophecy: Alexander Carpenter
19. Law of God: Nathan Blake
20. Sabbath: Brian Swarts
21. Stewardship: Jared Wright
22. Christian Behavior: Chris Blake
23. Marriage and the Family: Carrol Grady / Siroj Sorajjakool
24. Christ's Ministry in the Heavenly Sanctuary : Marty Thurber / David Hamstra
25. Second Coming of Christ: Nathan Brown
26. Death and Resurrection: David Larson
27. Millennium and the End of Sin: Ed Guzman
28. New Earth: Monte Sahlin