Sermon on Ephesians 1:3-14

Yesterday I gave a sermon on the opening blessing in Ephesians. You can download it or listen to it in your browser by clicking on this link; or, to download it, right click and select 'Save As': http://www.allsouls.com/downloads/DavidWestfall7.15.12.mp3

Thoughts On "Justification" by Markus Barth

Justification by Markus Barth

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Markus Barth's book, though originally written in 1968 (and translated into English in 1971), comes across as new, fresh, and profoundly relevant. I would highly recommend it to all - not only those who are interested in the present debate on justification in Paul, but to anyone who would understand the doctrine better and its relationship to the whole of Christian faith. The book is well-written in an unconventional 'dramatic' format that can be read quickly (it is under a hundred pages) and, for that matter, devotionally.

One thing that this book demonstrates is that the so-called 'New Perspective on Paul,' is really not so new, nor is it an alternative to many of the traditionally-held views of protestants. Well before Dunn and Sanders, Barth is writing about justification as the supremely ecclesiological doctrine, focused on the unification of Jews & Gentiles (and by extension, men, women, and people of other races and different social strata) in the one Messiah who has given his life for all and incorporated all alike, by faith, into his righteousness. Coupled with this ecclesiological focus (at no point treated as an alternative to soteriology, as some recent treatments oddly seem to suggest), Barth also brings in a very robust pneumatology, stressing that the verdict given in Christ is then carried out in the transformation of human lives through a Spirit-led participation in and reflection of the righteousness of Christ.

The following are, I think, the best key insights offered by Barth in this little book:

1) Justification as Christological - My general impression has been that, in many protestant tellings, justification is all about the verdict given to the individual sinner, who is declared righteous in spite of his being a sinner (simul iustus et peccator). What happens in this courtroom setting is that Jesus steps in as a mediator, saying in effect, 'Judge, please pretend I did all those things that make this person guilty, and pretend he did all those things that make me righteous.' The merits and demerits are swapped, and the Christian is thus enabled to stand righteous before God, despite not being so empirically.

Barth gives us a different picture, one that I think is more fundamentally in line with the apostle Paul's teaching. Justification is a verdict rendered, first of all, not for the individual sinner, but for Christ, and rendered in the form of an event - namely, his resurrection from the dead, following his faithful death. In vindicating Jesus on Easter, God pronounced him to be "the righteous one," the one who was faithful and obedient where the rest of humanity was not. From the perspective of the sinner who is justified by faith, the verdict is not so much rendered 'anew' or 'separately,' as it is enjoyed "in Christ" as already having been given; if you are in Christ, his already-rendered verdict ("risen!"; "righteous!") is yours too. As a consequence, the Spirit that raised Christ from the dead and in so doing 'justified' him (Rom. 4:23-25; 8:11; 1 Cor. 6:11; 1 Tim. 3:16) now dwells within and does the same for the sinner, fashioning for him or her a new self, "created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness" which is to be "put on" for the remainder of one's life (Eph. 4:20-24).

Thus, as so many Reformed thinkers back to Calvin have stressed, justification is experienced only in Christ and the righteousness in which we share is his - it is in this sense 'alien' - but not in the legally fictive way that some protestant interpretations have implied. The verdict is matched with an ontological reality, namely the receipt of the Holy Spirit, invading our sinful state with a new identity that replaces the old and puts the old to death. The 'alien righteousness' of Christ indeed does not become 'intrinsic' to the believer (at least not this side of the eschaton), but nonetheless comes to reside in the believer; the transfer of identity from the old to new, the old being crucified with Christ and the new raised to walk in newness of life with Christ, means a righteousness that is not simply pronounced, but applied. (Barth follows the forensic metaphor in his division of the justifying act into the 'giving of the verdict' and the 'carrying out of the sentence.')

2) God's Righteousness/Justice - The justifying act, Barth stresses, is the activity of God himself, in Christ, of reconciling the world to himself. It is not so much the execution of 'justice' in the sense of meting out punishment where it is due (thought this notion may well be contained in God's righteousness), but refers primarily to God's saving justice, God's righteousness in the sense found most strongly in the Psalms and in Isaiah - including, crucially, the idea of God's faithfulness, particularly to the covenant. God's righteousness is his saving activity, in fidelity to his own promises to Israel, of 'rectifying' his people, and with them the whole created order. Barth's presentation of the theme accomplishes what more recent interpreters (especially N.T. Wright) have wished to capture in the Pauline texts, without absolutizing a single aspect of this righteousness (as Wright seems to do with 'covenant faithfulness'). Also, Barth takes note of the importance of God's righteousness to theodicy, to the vindication of God himself in the light of his creation's rebellion. ('Will the creator let it all go to ruin? Will he simply immolate all of it in the fires of judgment? No! His saving righteousness has now been unveiled through the faithful death of Jesus of Nazareth for the whole world, through which he is reconciling all things to himself in heaven and on earth!')

3) Jesus' Faithfulness - Crucial to this scheme is the idea of Jesus' faithfulness to the will of God his Father, which obtains the verdict we enjoy in him. The righteousness and faithfulness of the creator God is met with the faithfulness and consequent righteousness of the Son of God, who sums up in himself both the faithfulness that was sought (and not found) from the creation, and the faithfulness of God to the creation. I am not quite certain as to whether or not Barth had a definite answer to the pistis Christou question in Paul's letters (to be translated as "faith in Christ" or "the faith/faithfulness of Christ"), but either way, his stress on the faithfulness of Jesus and its relationship to our justifying righteousness is 'faithful' to the Pauline texts. Beyond this, it is of immense personal importance to justified sinners such as myself (which is of course part of the reason Paul is writing about it to begin with!) - my standing before God is not grounded upon my own goodness or obedience, nor even for that matter on my own faith or faithfulness! Rather, it is the faithfulness of the Messiah, in whose faithfulness I participate by the Spirit. "Nevertheless I live; but not I - the Messiah lives in me! And the life I live now in the flesh I live in the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" (my translation; not to suggest this would be Barth's rendering).

These are just a few of the issues to which Markus Barth's book speaks, and more could be said. But to anyone interested in the doctrine of justification - particularly to those who need a breath of fresh air in an area often characterized by repetitive voices simply talking past each other - Justification should be a very welcome and edifying presentation.

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N.T. Wright, "How God Became King: Why We've All Misunderstood the Gospels"

N.T. Wright's lecture based on his book, How God Became King at Calvin College's 2012 January Series.

Review of "The Trinity and the Kingdom" by Jürgen Moltmann

The Trinity and the Kingdom by Jürgen Moltmann

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Moltmann's engagement with Trinitarian theology is highly thought-provoking. One thing I greatly appreciated was his insistence that, following the biblical writers, we must begin by talking about the threeness of God and then move toward oneness. In line with this, I think he successfully demonstrated the inadequacy of some western formulations of the trinity that consider it sufficient to say that the different persons all share the same 'divine substance,' as though this were all that mattered. (In my mind, this can tend toward tri-theism even more than Moltmann's 'social' model of the Trinity, since it doesn't lay enough stress on the mutual indwelling of the persons in one another - they are simply three beings that hold a certain attribute in common.) Perhaps the most engaging portion of the book is in its discussion of 'the passion of God,' i.e. the question of how the triune God of Christian confession relates to the problem of evil and suffering in the world. In keeping with his strong theology of the cross (best exemplified in his masterpiece, "The Crucified God"), Moltmann insists that we regard suffering love as intrinsic to the very identity of God, such that a creation in which the Son did not offer himself up to death would be inconceivable.

With reference to the title, Moltmann's book is 'heavy' on trinity and 'light' - extremely light - on kingdom. He doesn't even attempt sufficiently to ground his ideas within the ancient biblical concept of the kingdom of God; he simply uses the term as though it manifestly means what he thinks it does (which it manifestly doesn't, at least not if he intends to mean by it something like what the biblical writers of the second temple period meant by it). His general inattentiveness to the biblical text and ancient historical context at this point (as at others) is hampered further by his modern allergy to any hint of hierarchy whatsoever, which in my mind yields a skewed conception of the kingdom of God that demands we sweep large portions of the biblical text - both in the gospels and in the epistles, as well as vast swathes of the Old Testament - under the rug. In tracing the connections between a monarchical monotheism and human systems of oppression, he throws the baby out with the bathwater, assuming that the problem is with the notion of power and authority per se and not in our human perversion of them in disobedience to the good authority of a loving God. The great hope of the biblical writers seems to be that God would be acknowledged as king on earth as in heaven, and that his will would be done and the knowledge of him would be perfected; only the Reign of God, on earth as in heaven, could yield true creaturely freedom. (This latter point, in fairness, is something Moltmann recognizes - he acknowledges that true 'freedom' entails not only an openness of decision but specifically a willingness for the Good.)

Moltmann's ideal, however, leaves us with a God who is not a king but a friend (as though the two were mutually exclusive!). His argument depends on a softening of the biblical concepts of fatherhood and sonship, as well as a total ignoring of the idea of headship, such that he emerges with a totally egalitarian reading of the Trinity that seems to leave little room for Paul's affirmation, precisely on the point of authority and submission, that "the head of Christ is God" (1 Cor 11:3) and that the Son to whom all things have been subjected will himself be subjected to the Father in the age to come such that the God to whom all is subjected will at last be "all in all" (1 Cor 15:27-28). Where God's status as "all in all" for Moltmann entails something like Christian panentheism, for Paul it clearly means exactly what Moltmann, despite using his phrase, does not want it to mean - namely, that the entire created order is, at last, fully in unmediated submission to its Creator King. In the final analysis, Moltmann emerges with a picture of the age to come that, while interesting and certainly appealing to modern western liberal democrats, does not appear to resemble clearly the biblical picture of God become king in Jesus of Nazareth, and implementing his rule through the Holy Spirit.

Moltmann thus escapes a heterodox subordinationism, but ends up denying any form of hierarchy whatsoever within the Godhead in the process. The biblical witness speaks strongly otherwise; this needn't equate to hierarchical systems within the church as he fears, moreover, since 'monarchical monotheism' (as Moltmann calls it) is precisely the thing that is meant to keep hierarchical relationships in check (as with slaves and masters) because both slave and master, both husband and wife, both parent and child, and both Jew as the gospel's first recipient and Gentile as equal second are in every case equally answerable to the very same Lord and God over all. Slaves and masters alike have a Master in heaven; husbands and wives are all alike under the headship of the same Bridegroom; parents and children, Jews and Gentiles, are all alike the children of one heavenly Father. When God is all in all, there can be no oppression because this is not how he rules the world; domination between God's creatures suggests a lack of subjection to God the king, not a genuine recognition of him as such.

At this point, though, I've strayed more into philosophical differences with Moltmann than with anything wrong with the book. Apart from the imbalance between his discussion of the Trinity and of the Kingdom (with a particular dearth of textual engagement when it comes to the latter), this book is an excellent, engaging inquiry into perhaps the greatest mystery of the Christian faith, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the topic. If you are looking to delve into Moltmann for the first time, however, a better place to start would be "The Crucified God."

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An Account of Early Church Worship

On the day called Sunday all who live in the cities or in the country gather at one place and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read as long as time permits. When the reader has finished, the one who is presiding instructs us in a brief discourse and exhorts us to imitate these noble things. Then we all stand up together and offer prayers.... When we have finished the prayer, bread is brought forth, and wine and water, and the presiding minister offers up prayers and thanksgiving to the best of his ability, and the people assent, saying the Amen; after this the consecrated elements are distributed and received by each one. Then a deacon brings a portion to those who are absent. Those who prosper, and who so wish, contribute what each thinks fit. What is collected is deposited with the presiding minister who takes care of the orphans and widows, and those who are in need because of sickness or some other reason, and those who are imprisoned, and the strangers and sojourners among us.

From Justin Martyr's First Apology, quoted on pp. 28-29 of Wilken, Robert Louis. The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God. Newhaven: Yale University Press, 2003.

I've been doing some research for a paper on Christology in the early Church, and came across this description of early Christian worship. It isn't directly related to my topic, but it captured my attention nonetheless and I thought I'd share it with you. This description of Christian worship comes to us out of the mid-second century (i.e., the 100s AD) from the hand of Justin Martyr, one of the first great Christian Apologists. (He was a philosopher, and continued wearing his scholarly garb after he converted to Christianity as a statement of his intent to articulate the gospel in a rationally coherent way in the presence of its skeptics and detractors.) I just wanted you to notice a few things about what he says:

1. First, notice the way in which the scriptures are handled: "and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets [in other words, the New Testament or Old Testament writings] are read as long as time permits." The reading of scripture, in line with 1 Timothy 4:13, took on a central importance, and in the congregation of which Justin was a member at least, there was no definite limit on how long scripture might be read at a given worship service. We are probably talking about longer readings rather than shorter ones here, and this raises a worthwhile question: why don't we do this in the church today? Why do we so often read only what will be discussed in the sermon? (This can be especially catastrophic in some parts of the protestant tradition, where the sermon may for better or worse focus on only a couple of verses at a time.) Why not give people more rather than less, so that the diversity of situations out of which church attendees come can be addressed by many things from scripture, and not just the one topic a pastor wants to talk about?

2. Second, notice the twofold pattern of the preaching: instruction and exhortation. This is widely recognized in the church today, but it is helpful to point out the value of this simple approach to sermons. The sermon is intended to address listeners with the word of God, both informing them of and clarifying its meaning (or acknowledging obscurity and uncertainty where it exists), and applying it to them in such a way that the word will take root, grow, and bear fruit in their lives in whatever context or calling they find themselves in. A focus on instruction and exhortation in sermons will in the long run yield communities of Christian disciples who both understand and do the word of God.

3. Third, notice the importance of prayer. It is corporate, something done together, and comes in sequence after the reading of scripture and the sermon. This means that as the church is first addressed by the word of God, it is being prepared to respond with words of its own, based on its own needs that have been put in proper perspective by God's revelation of himself in the gospel. What does corporate prayer look like in your churches? Speaking for my own Anglican tradition, I've come to appreciate lately the value in allowing a significant amount of time for people to pray in the midst of the assembly as they feel led, so that a whole range of the church's needs gets addressed by the church herself. (The pitfall in my tradition is to omit this in the liturgical form of the prayers, so that corporate prayer ends up sounding much more like another segment of the announcements than it does the sweet, rising incense of petition, praise, and thanksgiving from a people to their God.)

4. Fourth, notice the centrality of the Eucharist (i.e., the Lord's Supper). As in the New Testament (cf. Acts 2:42-47; 1 Cor. 11:17-34), the celebration of the meal Jesus gave us was an absolutely indispensable part of Christian worship - one could say, it was the edible word that stood alongside the audible word, the sermon. For a multitude of historical reasons there isn't time to discuss right now, this practice has often been pushed to the margins in protestant worship especially (despite the insistence of reformers like John Calvin on its centrality to Christian worship). A church that is 'all pulpit and no table' is in a precarious position (as of course is a church that is 'all table and no pulpit'), in danger of forgetting the importance of experiencing and enjoying the life of the kingdom in intimate personal communion with Christ and with his body the church. This need challenges us, beyond the mere question of how often our churches 'do communion,' to ask ourselves whether our churches are places where life is truly being lived 'together' in a meaningful sense.

5. Fifth and finally, notice how giving in the church is closely connected with providing for the needs of its members, especially people who are poor or in bad health. This is an area in which many churches have gotten a bad reputation, as impersonal organizations that are more intent upon self-perpetuation and on getting fancier facilities or gadgets than they are on engaging in holistic ministry that seeks to address the practical everyday needs of its family members. I won't pretend to have any experience with the ordinary concerns of church budgeting, but what would it look like for the first item on the budgetary concerns of a church to be "orphans and widows, or those who are in need because of sickness or some other reason"? (The last phrase is deliberately vague - in other words, "fill in the blank!") Might churches actually find that, far from limiting resources for ministry and outreach, this kind of prioritization of financial resources might in the long run actually further the work of ministry, by turning a church into a tight-knit community that loves and cares for its members in a way that is utterly foreign to this world? It is better to have people attracted to churches, not because of the funds that those churches were able to sink into state of the art facilities or media, but because of the Christlike generosity of people whose love for one another was such that they didn't regard anything they had as their own, but only as a gift from God with which to serve others and the world. That's the kingdom springing up in the midst of the present evil age, and Christian generosity of every sort serves as one of the most vivid signposts of the reign of God that has been inaugurated in the world through Jesus Christ, who was generous to the point of giving us his very self, of becoming poor so that we through his poverty might become rich.

Anyway, just some thoughts. Hopefully you find Justin's account compelling!

A God-Summary, Summarized

In him we have deliverance through his blood—the forgiveness of trespasses—based on the great riches of his grace, which he’s made to overflow abundantly to us in the form of every kind of wisdom and insight, just as he has made the mystery of his will known to us, based on his purpose that he publicly displayed in Christ. This was a divine plan for the fullness of the times, to ‘sum up’ all things in Christ—things in the heavens and things on the earth, in him.

Ephesians 1:7-10

I was reading Ephesians and felt the need to share my sense of wonder. Paul says that in Christ, God “publicly displayed his purpose” (Eph. 1:9). This mirrors similar language in Romans 3, where Paul tells us that God “publicly displayed” Christ as “an atoning sacrifice accessible by faith, in order to display God’s righteousness” (v. 25). And what is this purpose? It is “a divine plan for the fullness of the times, to ‘sum up’ all things in Christ—things in the heavens and things on the earth, in him” (Eph. 1:10). Moreover, this purpose was specially displayed to us, to sinners who have received the gospel. His abounding grace, Paul says, has overflowed to us not least in the fact that he’s revealed to us this mystery of his will for the world in Christ. So my question is, do you in fact look at the world around you as it is “in Christ”? If God’s purpose is to “sum up” everything in this universe in Jesus Christ (anakephalaiosasthai—literally, to ‘put under the heading of’), are we endeavoring to regard it in the light of that purpose?

This claim is astonishing enough already, without much further comment. A human being, in whose identity the whole creation is supposed to be somehow contained? What sort of a person is this?! The truth is, this man is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation (Col. 1:10), the one whom the whole fullness of deity inhabits bodily (2:9). He is the true son of God where Adam failed to be—true because he is not simply son of God, but God the Son, utterly obedient to the will of his Father where all else have gone astray. The universe was made for his lordship, his headship.

And look at how he exercises that lordship, that headship. How and where do we find all things summed up in Christ, revealed most truly for what they are in him? We come to a cross, to a bloody instrument of torture, to which this man has been affixed—by the very creatures whom God made through him and commanded to represent him in the creation! What sort of a God is this, who accepts crucifixion from the hands of his creatures? What sort of a man is this, who perishes under the weight of evil, the only words on his lips “Father, forgive them…” and “My God, my God, why have your forsaken me?” This is the identity of our God, most truly displayed! This is God joining us in our god-forsakenness, our godlessness, being for the world that which you and I have refused to be—God's image, God's glory, God's loving presence.

At the cross, we find the prolepsis of what Paul is talking about in Ephesians 1:10, the Son of God bearing all things within himself: all the world’s evil, all the world’s shame, all the world’s guilt, and all the world’s violence—and emerging victorious from the empty tomb, drawing with him all those who have faith in God into newness of his life, and all those who do not into the eternal judgment of death, the final fruition of their tireless efforts to be god for themselves. Thus the cross is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world, the place where God’s judgment against the world is unveiled and carried out. Yet by bearing it in himself, Jesus made this self-sacrificial act the most fundamental expression of God’s identity to the creation. (Truly, he is the image of the invisible God!) God has said to the world, in the crucified and risen Messiah, ‘I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE, over and against all of your violence and blasphemy, your efforts to make yourselves god and to usurp my creation to suit your own ends; yet I will give you the same life I intend to offer the whole creation, if you will turn from your rebellion and share in my suffering.’

That is our God, friends. I don’t really have any comment of my own on to add on the matter, just an irrepressible need to share my astonishment.

Sermon on Romans 11

I promised audio a while back for the sermon I gave in August - Here it is! http://www.allsouls.com/downloads/DavidWestfall8.14.11.mp3