Perceptions from a Pewboy

Her name is Emily. She is a college student; a gifted singer/songwriter; a joyful and winsome participant in the pilgrimage; and a faithful follower of Jesus. She is also my friend.

Recently, Emily e-mailed me for the purpose of picking my brain (and sharing her own thoughts) on the issues of predestination, God’s sovereignty, and human free will. (You know, the kind of light stuff about which people chat while enjoying a latte.)

We came to the conclusion that our back-and-forth e-mail conversation might make for the kind of interesting (albeit lengthy) blog post that might resonate with those of you who are at all intrigued by the longstanding theological effort to speak meaningfully about how it is that predestination and free will relate to God’s sovereignty.

What follows is a composite of my e-mail dialogue with Emily, shared completely with her knowledge and permission. I greatly appreciated, not only the theological territory that we explored, but also the spirit in which differing viewpoints were accommodated.

Emily: Hello Eric Park!

Eric: Why, hello Emily!

Emily: I wanted to reach out to you because your most recent Facebook post about “freed will” (as opposed to “free will”) was really relevant to the heavy theological concepts that I’ve been hashing out lately. I really just want to share and discuss my journey with you and hear your thoughts.

Eric: Ah, the plot thickens. Good!

Emily: So, up until recently, I never gave the concept of predestination any significant thought; this is most likely due to the fact that the idea scared me and didn’t really align with what I felt I knew about God. So I just brushed it off as a controversial topic which I chose not to believe in.

Eric: I think I see where this is headed.

Emily: I have been dating a great guy for the past three months. So about two months ago, we were having a discussion in which he mentioned that he believed in predestination. It took me off guard, and when I asked him why, he replied, “because it’s biblical.” We didn’t discuss it any further, but his words planted a seed in me that has been growing like a weed ever since.

Eric: Looking for some theological weed control, eh? OK. I’m game. Go get the beverage of your choice, put on your jammies, and get comfortable. This is probably going to take a while.

Emily: I’ve been approaching these questions from what I believe is a healthy perspective: one of reliance on God’s righteousness (something on which we’ve been focusing heavily in my Bible study, which has been helpful) and my human inability to comprehend Him and His ways.

Eric: This is a good place to start—by acknowledging that we will never be able fully to comprehend the mind and methodology of God. Therefore, a conversation about God’s providence must always begin with humility and an earnest recognition that, irrespective of our particular interpretation of the pertinent biblical texts, we will not be able to fit God’s providence into a theological equation.

In my experience, both staunch predestinarians and staunch “free-willians” are often guilty of saying more than God has clearly revealed. I will attempt to avoid this pitfall in our conversation, although I will most likely be unsuccessful at points.

Allow me to give you a bit of my personal history related to the theological issue at hand. I first began to struggle with the predestination/free will debate when I was 15. A Presbyterian friend said to me in the school cafeteria, “Do you believe that God predestines people to heaven and hell?” That single question opened the door to a time of theological discernment that, in many ways, has continued for over thirty years. I talked to my Dad about it, which, for me, was always an awesome place to start. Dad, in a language that I could comprehend, helped me to understand the different ways in which Christ-followers have approached the issue over the centuries. Dad also helped me to understand that we, as United Methodists, have historically aligned ourselves with the Arminian viewpoint while not separating from those who see the issue differently. I read everything that I could get my hands on. I plowed through Calvin’s Institutes and the works of Arminius and Wesley (arrogantly believing that I could fathom the profundity of their theology as a 15 or 16-year-old!). While I did not come to any firm conclusions, I had a pretty clear understanding of the significance and the expansiveness of the issue by the time I was 17.

During my college years, I had a number of both pleasant and unpleasant interactions with students and faculty who had been schooled and trained in Reformed Theology. The pleasant interactions were pleasant because the person with whom I was speaking saw his/her viewpoint as one approach among several approaches that could be accommodated by Christian orthodoxy. The unpleasant interactions, by contrast, were unpleasant because the person with whom I was speaking had become, in my opinion, rigidly dogmatic to the point of idolatry. In fact, I remember being told by a fellow student once that, if I did not fully embrace the doctrine of double predestination, I was guilty of perpetuating a truncated understanding of God’s sovereignty, which would place my salvation in jeopardy. When I responded that I must have missed the verse in Scripture that makes one’s stance on predestination a soteriological litmus test, the conversation pretty much came to an end.

All of this is to say that I am no stranger to this conversation, Emily. The responses that I offer below may help you to understand how one humble pewboy has navigated his way through the deep theological forest.

Emily: I have been very motivated to seek more knowledge and understanding. I found in my own studying that my boyfriend was accurate in his assertion that predestination is explicitly pointed to throughout scripture, and many unsettling questions were raised: How can I believe in an all-loving God when that same God creates people only to use them on Earth for His will and then condemn them to damnation? Where is this supposedly all-sufficient grace for those who are not chosen?

Eric: Okay, this is where it gets interesting. You have articulated a hermeneutical position that demands a clarification of terms. Specifically, you have asserted that “predestination is explicitly pointed to throughout Scripture…” The question is, what kind of predestination does Scripture describe? If you will permit me to focus on the 3 segments of Scripture upon which predestinarians have historically built their case, it may help us to cut to the proverbial chase. Those three segments are as follows:
1. God’s hardening of Pharaoh’s heart in Exodus;
2. a clear reference to predestination in Ephesians 1; and,
3. the frequently-debated Romans 8 and 9.

First, concerning the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, while it is most certainly true that, ten different times, the book of Exodus speaks of God’s hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, it is also critical to realize that, five different times in Scripture, we are told that Pharaoh “hardened HIS OWN HEART” (Exodus 5:2; Exodus 8:15; Exodus 8:32; Exodus 9:34; and 1 Samuel 6:6). If we are going to be thorough in our interpretation of Pharaoh’s hardened heart (and Paul’s reference to it in Romans 9), we must resist the temptation to read into Scripture the idea that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart in a manner that was against what Pharaoh had already decided to do. In my opinion, a far more holistic reading of Scripture is to see God’s hardening of Pharaoh’s heart as God’s effort to utilize redemptively a rebellion that Pharaoh had already decided to wage. In other words, God hardened this particular heart, not against its owner’s will, but in concert with what Pharaoh had already decided to do. God raised up for destruction, not a random and expendable “vessel,” but a vessel that had already made a firm decision to set itself violently against the purposes of God. The hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, then, can hardly be seen as a biblical foundation for a rigid doctrine of predestination.

Second, turn with me to Ephesians 1, where we find these words:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined (or predestined) us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. (Ephesians 1:3-6)

Here Scripture makes clear that a doctrine of predestination is absolutely necessary if we are going to interpret Scripture faithfully. We are told in no uncertain terms that God “chose us before the foundation of the world” and “predestined us for adoption.”

So, the critical question for me is not “Do I believe in predestination?” (Yes, I do—because Scripture reveals it.) Rather, the critical question for me is “What kind of predestination is it that Scripture reveals?” This is a different question altogether.

When Ephesians tells us that God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, who is the “us” that is being described? A staunch predestinarian would most likely say that the “us” refers to each individual soul—meaning that God “chooses” who is saved and who is damned. In a more Arminian hermeneutic, however, the “us” is a corporate and collective reference to all of those who have CHOSEN the way of Christ—which against the backdrop of the entirety of Scripture, makes much more sense to me. God chooses us how? IN CHRIST, says Ephesians—implying that God chooses those who have chosen well. God chooses those who have chosen to be in Christ.

When Ephesians tells us that God predestined us for adoption, what is it that is being predestined? Is it our individual choice? A predestinarian sister or brother might say yes. I believe that it is far more consistent with the entire narrative of Scripture, however, to come to the conclusion that it is not our individual choice that has been predestined, but rather the methodology of our salvation. How is it that we have been adopted? AS HIS CHILDREN THROUGH JESUS CHRIST, says Ephesians—implying that God predestined a Christological and salvific adoption FOR THOSE WHO HAVE CHOSEN TO ALIGN THEMSELVES WITH CHRIST.

Quite frankly, Emily, this nuanced and corporate understanding of predestination is the only interpretation that enables me to make sense of 1 Timothy 2:3-4 and 2 Peter 3:9, both of which affirm that the desire of God’s heart is for all—ALL—to be saved. There are no qualifiers present in those scriptures that would lead us to believe that ALL is a reference to a pre-selected assembly. Rather, the clear teaching is that God desires for ALL to be part of the elect. God desires that ALL would come to a knowledge of God’s predestined Way—Jesus Christ.

Emily: I found over the course of all of this that I admittedly felt something of a confused hardness toward God and his decision not to rescue everyone, as my understanding of the Calvinistic doctrine would suggest. Thank you for directing me to scriptural evidence that suggests otherwise.

Eric: Finally, come with me to Romans 8 and 9. I have already addressed the issue of Pharaoh, which covers a good portion of Romans 9. I would simply add that, for me, a key reference in Paul’s teaching is found in Romans 9:22: “What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, HAS ENDURED WITH MUCH PATIENCE, the vessels of wrath made for destruction?” I highlight this verse for the purpose of raising a question: Would divine patience and endurance be required on the part of God if God were simply dealing with people whose choices and behavior were divinely predestined? In other words, why would it test God’s patience to endure the behavior of a “vessel” whose behavior God had already predetermined? I assume you get my point. It is thoroughly possible (and perhaps advisable) to believe that God raised up Pharaoh for destruction, not in the sense of predetermining Pharaoh’s decisions, but in the sense of giving Pharaoh over to an evil course of action that Pharaoh had already chosen. If this were not the case—if Pharaoh were not responsible for his immoral choices—than Paul’s reference to God’s patience and endurance would make no theological sense whatsoever.

And what about Romans 8:29-30? “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined…and those whom he predestined he also called…and those whom he called he also justified”

Again, one of our predestinarian friends may cite these verses as proof positive of God’s isolated predestination of individual souls, some to eternal salvation and others to eternal damnation. However, I would ask you to read the text carefully. Raise the same questions that I raised concerning Ephesians 1. What is predestined in this moment of Scripture? Is it individual acceptance or rejection of Christ? To say “yes” to that would be to bring us into tension with God’s clearly-revealed desire for ALL to be saved. Rather, as was the case in Ephesians 1, what God predestines is not our individual choice, but the consequence of our choice: “to be conformed to the image of his Son.”

To put it another way, when Romans 8 tells us that we have been predestined to be conformed to the image of Jesus, we are not being told that our CHOICE was forcefully predetermined. Instead, we are being told that, if we love God and respond to God’s call and God’s purposes (which, by the implication of Romans 8:28 is the result of our God-graced decision-making), then God has predestined us to be justified. Did you get that? God predestines for justification those who have utilized their God-graced ability to respond to God with love and obedience.

Emily: The suggestion that our predestination is not of our salvation but rather our justification is one that I had not considered, and find myself very attracted to. It liberates the entire issue of free will to be a separate conversation. Furthermore, it affirms the kind of deep, dynamic, intimate, nuanced and intrinsically REAL nature of a two-way RELATIONSHIP with our creator, one which I feel I have been experiencing and growing in for the better part of my life, but which my recent thoughts have called into question.

Eric: Excellent points. I should make clear at this point that, based upon what I have written thus far, some of my Reformed sisters and brothers would be quick to cry “foul.” Over the years, I have been accused of manipulating semantics for the purpose of making Scripture say what I want it to say. Perhaps my critics are right in that regard (although I hope not). The bottom line for me is that I see nothing in the biblical texts I have referenced that necessitates and justifies a rigid and ungracious doctrine of double predestination. Can a doctrine of double predestination find a place under the large umbrella of Christian orthodoxy? Absolutely. But is the doctrine necessary? Absolutely not. In fact, based upon my interpretation of Scripture, I would argue that embracing a doctrine of double predestination is not even the best and most holistic reading of the biblical texts. If, however, a sister or brother in Christ chooses to espouse such a doctrine, that is a difference of theology that the body of Christ can accommodate.

Emily: I wonder, how does God’s grace relate to free will in our acceptance of God? And does an emphasis upon God’s perfect sovereignty imply that we do not have free will in any aspect of our lives, or is there a gray area in which God occasionally chooses to intervene and take control?

Eric: Hmmmm. Well, I am a Wesleyan in my theological approach. A Wesleyan understanding of prevenient grace would have us to believe, not in an intrinsically FREE will (since our fallenness has corrupted and distorted our will in this regard), but rather a FREED will—a will that has been sufficiently graced by God to make it possible for “all to be saved” (1 Timothy 2:4). It would make no sense for God to want all to be saved if there were not a prevenient grace sufficient to make a salvific choice possible. So, in answer to your question, I believe that God’s perfect sovereignty is manifested, not in the form of a micromanagement of human decision, but rather in a prevenient equipping that makes it possible for us to choose or reject.

Emily: I spoke to my pastor today, and he helped shed a lot of light on all of my concerns. I have arrived at these inconclusive conclusions:

Eric: OK. Good. First, I am very glad that you spoke to your pastor. And, second, “inconclusive conclusions” are precisely the right way to approach theological mysteries!

Emily: Here are my inconclusive conclusions: God’s grace is offered to and is sufficient for all people. God loves all of us and desires for all of us to love him in return. However, we are thoroughly incapable of choosing God on our own. We are granted free will, but in our slavery to sin we are only ever able to use that will to reject Him. Therefore, God’s wrath falls upon us, and we are given our just consequence, death. This is hard to accept, but God is wholly righteous in doing so, and it brings Him glory. But in God’s mercy and compassion, he has chosen some of us to rescue from our own, freely willed decision to reject Him—the “elect”—for which Jesus’s death goes beyond sufficiency and into efficiency. We do not know how God chooses his elect, but we do know it is for nothing we have done, so that truly, we can boast in NOTHING but Christ.

Eric: I agree with parts of this conclusion, but disagree with other parts. I agree that “we are thoroughly incapable of choosing God on our own” because of our enslavement to sin. However, another orthodox understanding of grace maintains that God has made it possible for all people to make a liberated (freed) individual choice either for sin or for righteousness; for alienation or for reconciliation; for Christ or for rejection of Christ. Indeed, this choice is not ours IN WHICH TO BOAST, since it is entirely dependent upon the prevenient grace of God that makes the choice possible. However, it is still a choice. And, as I see it, acknowledging the urgent need for our liberated, freed, individual response is the only way to make sense of the entire biblical narrative’s emphasis upon choice: “Choose THIS DAY whom you will serve.” (Joshua 24:15). To take away the possibility of a grace-enabled individual acceptance or rejection is to ignore a major thrust of the biblical witness and to force a doctrine into the text that the text itself does not support.

Emily: Once we are chosen, God fulfills that salvation completely, giving us a new identity that is no longer enslaved to sin. We are then capable of choosing to do good and follow God, but He is still sovereign. And our new nature which gives us the inclination to do good is still a gift from God, so even in our free will post salvation, we cannot boast in our good deeds.

Eric: For me it is not “once we ARE chosen,” but rather “once we HAVE chosen,” i.e., once we have utilized the grace-created capacity to choose, we are able to experience the justification and sanctification that God has predestined for us.

Emily: As for an approach to ministry, we do not know whom God has chosen, but he uses us as the media through which He brings his chosen people to Himself. What an honor this is, regardless of whether it is done of our own choice, to be used by God in such a way! But in his predestination of our souls, he has taken all of the pressure off. He has called us not to make the Gospel attractive, but to simply preach the truth. It is not our responsibility to convince someone of the Gospel- for then we would be in a way in control of their fate, which of course we are not. It is merely up to God to allow them to understand. Once we have done His bidding and presented them with the word, our work is complete.

Eric: In my own personal theology, as I have probably already made clear, I am not comfortable using “chosen” in the manner that you are employing here. For me, the chosen are those who have by grace chosen well. The elect are those who have by grace elected to respond to God’s gracious initiative. However, practically speaking, our approach to ministry would be the same. Where you have said “we do not know who God has chosen,” I would say, “we do not know who might respond to God’s saving work.” In either case, we cannot afford to pick and choose who it is to whom we minister.

Emily: Yes, we are put on this Earth to fulfill the will of God. Does that mean we are merely puppets on a string? I don’t believe so, but even if we are, there is no one more perfect and loving that I would want operating them.

Eric: There is nothing at all in Scripture—in either testament—that would lead us to the conclusion that we are puppets on a string. All of Scripture bears witness to a much more creative and dynamic relationship than this between Creator and Creature.

Emily: I guess I’ve been in a transitional period in my understanding of God and the world’s purpose.

Eric: I sense that.

Emily: Up until now, my central idea has been love. Love is the inherent definition of God, the world was created so that God could love and be loved, and everything on Earth, good or bad, is an expression of that love. I am now coming to understand that the Earth’s purpose is not to display God’s love, although it certainly does, but rather to bring Him GLORY. Because of God’s perfect, omnipotent nature, He simply MUST be glorified in everything, and nothing else is deserving of glory but Him. All of these questions and answers point to that; for if we had chosen God on our own, we would have cause to boast and receive glory- and that is unacceptable, because it detracts from God’s glory.

Eric: I would suggest that you resist unnecessary dichotomies in your transition, Emily. To believe that our purpose is to bring God glory does not in any way necessitate an abandoning of a commitment to bear consistent witness to God’s radical and relentless love. In fact, if 1 John 4:8 is to be believed—that God IS love—then the only way to bring God glory is to reflect God’s very nature. That nature, according to Scripture, is love.

I disagree with your conclusion that “If we had chosen God on our own, we would have cause to receive glory.” First of all, the phrase “on our own” does not apply in a doctrine of prevenient grace (freed will). Second, to say that we would have cause to boast in our God-enabled decision would be like saying that the drowning man had a right to boast in his decision to accept the embrace of the person risking life and limb to save him.

Emily: My response to all of this is: I am severely humbled and incomprehensibly grateful. I now understand the concept of fearing God.

Eric: Irrespective of one’s theology of predestination, humility, gratitude, and holy fear are the only appropriate responses to God’s saving grace.

Emily: I could continue on this for a great many more paragraphs, but I will end it here. Thank you so much for taking the time to read through this. I am grateful for your perspectives.

Eric: Well, I guess I have indeed offered my perspectives, haven’t I?! Please know that I offer them with a humble heart and an ecumenical appreciation. I pray that I have done so respectfully. Please forgive me if, at any point, I was inappropriately dismissive or cavalier.

It is most certainly not my desire to be pitted against another pastor or another individual. But I did want you to hear from one of your former pastors who speaks from the Arminian portion of Christian orthodoxy.

It sounds to me, Emily, like you have found your way into a Reformed church. If the church proclaims Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and offers a comprehensive and Christ-honoring ministry, then I celebrate your connection there. Be attentive to the fact, however, that even the most discerning among us tend to acclimate to the theological priorities and language of the people with whom we are worshiping and fellowshipping on a regular basis. If this acclimation (and resulting discernment) leads you into a Reformed understanding of Christianity, please know that you will remain my precious and beloved friend and sister in Christ, even though we may wind up differing on some particular doctrines.

I would simply ask you to be careful not to become idolatrous about a doctrine that Scripture simply does not insist upon. More specifically, resist the temptation to allow a rigid doctrine of double predestination to become the litmus test by which you judge all understandings of God’s sovereignty. Also, recognize that Christian orthodoxy is expansive enough to enable us to treat the matter of predestination as an in-house debate, not a thing worth dividing over.

Emily: I want you to know that the viewpoints that I’ve described to you are in no way fully formulated or firmly grounded in my mind. Remember that this entire epiphany (for lack of a better term) took place, really, in less than 24 hours. I certainly am not so confident in my ability to discern and understand God’s providence so as to think that I should rigidly hold to this interpretation (hence my use of the phrase “inconclusive conclusions”). Really I just wanted to give you an idea of where I landed. I am no less than delighted to hear that you disagree with some of what I said.

I am very hesitant to strictly define my faith by a set of beliefs named after an old theologian. I stubbornly refuse to allow myself to place God in that kind of box, or become so arrogant as to believe I fully understand much at all about God’s methodology. With whatever knowledge I have gained on subjects like these, I just pray that in my conversations I can lovingly continue to acknowledge the credibility of several interpretations- so long as they are not glaringly in contrast with what scripture teaches. Thank you for helping to bring me to that place.

Eric: I, too, am grateful, Emily. Your good thoughts and insightful comments have forced me to spend more time thinking about God’s sovereignty than I have spent in a long time. You are helping us both to move more deeply into holy mysteries.

Emily: The cry of my heart is only to know the truth of God’s own word. I want to be careful not to overly dissect the language of scripture in an effort to project my own constructed belief system onto it. The Bible is, and always will be, the final determinant in what I believe- so I definitely am trying to study it more. As a matter of fact, prayers for diligence, patience, discernment and humility in that task would be very appreciated.

Eric: I am indeed praying for you, Emily—even as I type these words. You know, the conversation that we have had here may prove to be helpful to others who are struggling to find their way through some of these issues. Please pray about whether or not you would be willing to allow me to share this conversation as a blog post. If you are uncomfortable with that, I completely understand and will abide by your wishes. However, I think that we have probed some depths here (in a conversational way) that would prove helpful to some of our sisters and brothers.

Emily: I would be honored if you used any part of our conversations in your blog! You just go for it. But let me know so that I make sure not to miss it!

Eric: Super. I will keep you informed.

Emily: I love and miss you, friend. I hope you’re having a good week! Love Always, Emily

Eric: I love and miss you too, Emily. Thank you for allowing me to stand with you upon the sacred ground of prayerful discernment and theological dialogue. Your friend, Eric

A pastoral colleague of mine made this comment recently:

I think that the institutional church is on the way out…How can it not be? The institution has become more interested in self-preservation than it is in the ministry of Jesus Christ.

Another colleague put it this way:

The United Methodist system often gets in the way of authentic ministry. When administrative processes become more important than reaching souls, we wind up becoming idolatrous about our denomination’s way of doing things.

Still another colleague offered these thoughts:

Our [United Methodist] general boards and agencies have become painfully out of touch with the ministry of our annual conferences. Our annual conferences have become painfully out of touch with the ministry of our local churches. And our local churches have become painfully out of touch with what’s going on in their communities. It’s time for us to let go of the institutional church and get back to the life-changing, heart-to-heart ministry that Jesus initiated.

I share these comments with you because of the way that they shed light upon an ecclesiastical trend that is at once both revelatory and troubling. The trend of which I speak can best be described as an eagerness to demonize the institutional.

I will acknowledge at the outset that, as a District Superintendent in the United Methodist tradition, the office that I occupy, in the eyes of many, is a primary cog in the institutional machinery that is in question. I am not blind to the complexity of this, nor am I naïve about the possibility of sounding unnecessarily defensive or self-preserving in a blog post like this one. Believe me, the institutional nature of my current ministry has become frighteningly clear to me over the last year.

First, allow me to offer a word of affirmation concerning the anti-institutional trend that I have described. At its best, this trend is a desperately-needed prophetic critique of structures, leadership, and administrative processes that must consistently be held accountable for their function. This is where the postmodern skepticism concerning anything that smells “institutional” serves the Body of Christ quite well. It is a skepticism that prevents us from bowing at the altar of any denomination’s polity.

Likewise, the anti-institutional trend helps the church to remember that the heart of ministry is not to be found in parliamentary procedure or in an elaborate meeting agenda or even in the successful completion of the year-end statistical reports (cue the whining!). Rather, as the anti-institutional trend makes clear, the heart of ministry is to be found in ever-deepening relationships; in feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and caring for the marginalized; and in helping the lost to find their way home to Jesus Christ. If institutional components become stumbling blocks in the way of such ministry, then the anti-institutional trend is right on target: It’s time to dismantle the institution for the purpose of recovering the church’s true mission.

But, to be fair, allow me to point the critique in the other direction for a moment. Here is what troubles me about some of the manifestations of the anti-institutional trend:

First, in my experience (which is my only perspective concerning the issue), the critique of the institution is often voiced most loudly and most angrily by those who have become resentful of the way in which the institution has attempted to hold them accountable. Granted, there are certainly times in which institutional accountability feels like little more than jumping through vapid administrative hoops. On the other hand, institutional accountability, at its best, can become a communal means by which to keep people in proper alignment with the covenants by which they live.

Therefore, when offering a critique of the institutional church, it is imperative for the agent of the critique to be very attentive to his/her motives. A critique that emerges from clear and level-headed discernment can become a prophetic corrective. But a critique that emerges from resentment often ends up sounding more like an agenda-laden venting of one’s spleen.

Second, the anti-institutional trend is often much heavier on the critique than it is on meaningful solutions. If the United Methodist institution were to go away, for example, I would have to go and find a real job, to be sure. (Is anyone hiring, by the way?! Are there any comic book stores that need an extra employee?!) But what would remain in the absence of the existing ecclesiastical institution? How would the work of UMCOR continue in Haiti? How would people be encouraged and equipped to respond to a call to ministry? How would we support missions, local church food pantries and clothes closets, and the formation of meaningful curriculum? How would pastors be trained, sent, and appointed? Would we leave this all to individual inspiration and the formation of “house churches?” If so, what would be the institutional mechanism to connect individuals with ministries that would help them to invest in something that is bigger than their particular corner of the world?

In the current anti-institutional trend, quite frankly, I hear far more random criticism than I do helpful answers to these questions.

Third, the demonization of the institution often overlooks the fact that the concept of “institution,” in and of itself, is neither inherently evil nor necessarily contradictory to the ministry of Jesus Christ. The word “institution,” after all, is a derivative of the Latin “instituere” which means simply “to set up.” Setting up is a discipline that Jesus saw fit to embrace. In a sense, he “set up” (instituted) the disciples and their tasks. He set up (instituted) the Lord’s Supper. He set up (instituted) Peter as the “rock” upon which the church would be built.

And what about the church in the book of Acts? Many of the issues of the early church were issues of “setup”—institutional issues revolving around things like the relationship between Jews and Gentiles; the relationship between circumcision and uncircumcision; the relationship between staying put and being on the move. In order for the church to have been able to address these issues in Acts, it had to take itself seriously as an institutional reality. Which brings me to this point:

Realistically, I see no way to avoid the realities of administration, polity, and structure in the ministry of the church. They are inevitable portions of good stewardship of time and resources.

Let’s say that, in a fit of institutional angst, I am inspired to leave it all behind. “Hey United Methodist Church! I’m tired of your heavyhanded institutionalism! I’m going to blaze my own trail. I’m going to start a church in my living room, and I’m going to keep it small and focused and biblical and real. That is what God is calling me to do.”

How long do you think it would be before my living room church became an institution? How long would it be before the ten or fifteen people in my living room felt the need to become more efficiently organized in order to accomplish the ministry that God was calling them to accomplish?

My point is this: institutional church is an inevitable reality. It always has been. In fact, good ministry DEMANDS good institution (good setup). Therefore, in many ways, the anti-institutional trend is a protest against a reality that MUST exist, in one form or another. The real issue, then, is not whether we will have an institutional church. Of course we will. The real issue is whether or not the institution will be strategic and nimble enough to assist the church in accomplishing the ministry to which it is called. That is a different question altogether.

As I suggested earlier, some will no doubt dismiss this post as little more than the feeble rambling of a church bureaucrat defending the institution that he represents (towing the party line, if you will). I understand that. In that regard, I have no choice but to bear the symbols of the office that I am honored to occupy. But I’d like to think that I’m onto something here—something more than an undue fondness for the institution that pays my salary. I’d like to think that the United Methodist institution can still become a conduit through which the Holy Spirit makes its way into the nooks and crannies of the world to which the church has been called to minister.

Where the institution is outdated, out of touch, or out of whack, my prayer is that we will have the courage to recognize and name that—not because of a destructive eagerness to demonize, but because of a desire for the church to be at its best and its most faithful. Where the institution has caused harm to precious souls (shot its wounded, so to speak), my prayer is that the church will be sensitive enough to recognize and confess those moments of spiritual violence, so that the collective heart of the church will be deepened and softened.

In short, my prayer is that the church’s people will treat the church’s institutional nature, not as an enemy to be demonized, but as a portion of the church’s order that falls within the boundaries of God’s redemptive grace. If that happens, we might be inclined to see the institutional church as yet another segment of the “groaning and travailing creation” (Romans 8:22) that is yearning for the redemption into which God is leading it.

Perhaps this is naïve on my part. I hope not.

Then Jesus looked up at his disciples and said: ‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.’ (Luke 6:20-26)

This is a portion of Jesus’ teaching that has come to be called “the Beatitudes.” The word “beatitude” is a derivative of a Latin word that means “blessing,” or, more specifically, “extreme and abundant blessing.” The word “beatitude” became connected to this scripture because, in it, Jesus utilizes the vocabulary of blessing: “BLESSED are you who are poor…”

Of course, what makes this portion of Scripture so unsettling and even scandalous is who it is that Jesus describes as being blessed.

I suspect that the world in which Jesus lived was similar to our world in the matter of defining blessedness. Our ideas of blessedness tend to be formed and driven by a network of presuppositions emerging from what might be called our common sense. Common sense, for example, tells us that it is unpleasant to be poor. Therefore, we quickly arrive at the common sense conclusion that being blessed means a enjoying a condition of wealth and privilege.

Common sense tells us that it is unpleasant to be hungry. Therefore, we quickly formulate the common sense idea that being blessed means having every one of our appetites satisfied the moment they demand to be satisfied.

Common sense tells us that it is unpleasant to weep, or to be hated or reviled because of our faith. Therefore, we quickly manufacture the conviction that blessedness must mean the opposite of such unpleasant realities.

The result of such thinking, of course, is a popular definition of blessedness that I would suspect was the same in Jesus’ day as it is in ours. Blessedness equals wealth and privilege. Blessedness equals a condition that is comfortable and happy and unchallenged.

It is precisely these notions that Jesus challenges in the Beatitudes, and he does so by shattering the people’s presuppositions concerning who is truly blessed in the kingdom of God. Is it the wealthy folks who are blessed in the kingdom of God? “No,” Jesus says. “In fact, woe to you who are wealthy, but blessed are the poor.”

“What?! Wait a minute, Jesus! That goes against what we know to be the economics of blessedness!”

Is it the well-fed who are blessed in the kingdom of God? “No,” Jesus says. “In fact , woe to you whose stomachs are full now, but blessed are the hungry.”

“What?! Back up, Jesus! You had us, then you lost us!”

Is it the happy and the laughing who are blessed in the kingdom of God? “No,” Jesus says. “In fact, woe to you who are laughing now, but blessed are those who weep.”

“OK, now you’ve gone too far!”

Is it the comfortable and the safe and the well-protected who are blessed in the kingdom of God? “No,” Jesus says. “In fact, woe to you who are well-treated now, but blessed are those who are hated and reviled for my sake.”

“Jesus, you’re turning everything upside down!”

Therein, I suppose, is the nature of the Kingdom that God inaugurated through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. It is a Kingdom in which everything is turned upside down (or, more appropriately, right side up). The kingdom of God, to put it another way, is Jesus Christ, shaking up the world and transfiguring the way things are done and conceptualized, in such a way that the world begins to reflect more vibrantly the heart of the One who created it.

If the Beatitudes tell us anything, they tell us that it is impossible to live in the kingdom of God without being reborn into a new way of living and a new way of looking at the world. In the kingdom of the world, the poor, the hungry, and the persecuted are ignored or, at best, pitied. But in the kingdom of God, they are the blessed ones.

Please do not misunderstand the nature of Jesus’ teaching in the Beatitudes. He is not glorifying poverty or human brokenness. He understands, far better than we do, the pain and the heartbreak of these conditions. But perhaps Jesus’ point is that, in the kingdom of God, the poor, the disenfranchised, and the broken are blessed in a very particular sense precisely because they know how desperate and needy they are.

Many of us, after all, live in the illusion of being in control. By contrast, the poor, the disenfranchised, and the broken understand daily their need for salvation and deliverance. Many of us live in the illusion of self-reliance, believing that we have no need for a savior. By contrast, the poor, the disenfranchised and the broken are often fully and eagerly prepared to receive the salvation and wholeness that the kingdom of God makes possible. Many of us have become so dull and desensitized in our places of privilege that we might not even recognize the kingdom when it is right in front of us. By contrast, a desperate, persecuted, and needy soul is often far more attentive and available to the nuances of God’s grace.

After all is said that can be said about the Beatitudes, perhaps Jesus is telling us that the poor and broken have something on us. They have the potential to be more receptive to God’s transformational power than we are, because, quite simply, God is all that they have. For many of us, God is nothing more than a weekend hobby that we accommodate whenever it fits into our busy schedule. In that sense, the poor and the broken may very well be more abundantly blessed than we are simply because they have a greater potential for living in the abundant joy and hope that always accompany a heartfelt reliance on God.

It is most certainly true that we tend to sentimentalize the Beatitudes in our contemporary churches. We tend to put them on church banners. “Isn’t that nice? Jesus is saying something sweet about poor and weeping people.” But the Beatitudes are not to be sentimentalized. Quite the contrary, in fact. We would do well to tremble a bit as we read them. They announce nothing less than the world-altering reality of the Kingdom of God. And none of the other radical teachings of Jesus (like the urgency of loving our enemies and taking up our cross) will make any sense to us unless we first embrace the foundational truth that the Beatitudes make clear—the truth that Jesus is ushering in a new world order.

I have a very dear friend who is suffering right now. In fact, he is fighting for his life against all odds. His family, as one might imagine, is suffering along with him.

The suffering of this family has driven me to my knees many times in recent days. The essence of my prayer has been this: “Bring healing, O God. Bring miracles. Bring something redemptive to this condition of suffering.” Along with the prayer, of course, have come the seemingly inevitable “why” questions: “Why do good people hurt? Why is there so much pain? God, why do you allow your people to suffer?”

There is nothing new about those questions. The Psalmist wrestled with them long ago.

Have you ever known people who looked upon their suffering as a punishment from God?

A man who had recently been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer once whispered these words to me through his tears as he sat in a hospital bed: “What have I ever done to deserve this?”

A woman who had just lost her 23-year-old son in an automobile accident pulled me aside in the funeral home and said to me, “How could God be so cruel as to take my only child away from me like this?” She expected some kind of an answer.

A man who had just lost his job after 27 years with the same company stopped by my church office in order to articulate this viewpoint: “I must not be doing something right in God’s eyes,” he said, “because my prayers aren’t working.”

A 49-year-old woman whose husband had left her for his 28-year-old secretary and who had just been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis stood up in the middle of a divorce recovery workshop that I was facilitating and gave expression to this desperate sentiment: “I feel like God is out to get me for something and I don’t even know what I did.”

On September 13, 2001, two days after the terrorist attack on our country, the late Jerry Falwell gave his explanation for the tragedy by utilizing words that were something like these: “The feminists and the gays and the lesbians and the ACLU and the abortionists who have killed 40 million innocent babies have angered God, and God will not be mocked.”

Each one of those expressions emerges from the theological presupposition that all experiences of human suffering and hardship are manifestations of God’s judgment and God’s desire to present a tangible punishment for human wrongdoing. Such a theological presupposition implies something troubling about the very nature of God, doesn’t it? Specifically, it implies that the Creator of heaven and earth, is, at his heart, a rather malicious, perhaps even malevolent, deity whose methodology is to generate human suffering and then assign that suffering to particular people as a means of punishment for sins of which they may or may not be aware.

That theological idea, by the way, is not new. In fact, in the 9th chapter of John’s gospel, when Jesus and the disciples come upon a blind man who had been blind from birth, the disciples say something to Jesus that demands serious reflection: “Rabbi,” they say, “who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

Do you sense the implications of their question? These disciples were harboring a worldview in which that man’s blindness could only be interpreted as a punishment from God, either for a sin that the blind man had committed, or a sin that his parents had committed for which he was being held accountable. In the disciples’ worldview, in other words, the man’s blindness was not simply the result of malfunctioning eyes. It was rather a form of suffering assigned by God to a sinner.

In what I think is one of the most important and revelatory teachings in the entire Bible, Jesus responds to the disciples’ question by telling them that their worldview is faulty. “Fellas,” he says, “neither this man nor his parents sinned. Rather, he was born blind so that God’s work might be revealed in him.” Which is to say, “disciples, your worldview is faulty and it’s time for a theological realignment. This man’s blindness is not a punishment for sin. It is simply a physical ailment that gives to God a significant opportunity to accomplish great things, even in the midst of this man’s blindness.”

Jesus heals the blind man in dramatic fashion, bringing him sight and thereby revealing the power of Almighty God. And yet, as dramatic as the blind man’s healing is, I do not believe it to be the most important healing in this story. Rather, I believe that the most important healing in this story is Jesus’ healing of the disciples’ broken worldview.

The disciples were absolutely convinced that the man’s blindness was a punishment for some sin. But Jesus incarnates a new worldview in their very presence—a worldview in which blindness and other forms of human suffering are looked upon, not as a punishment from God, but as an occasion for God to accomplish even greater things; a worldview in which human suffering is interpreted, not a curse, but as an opportunity for God to become more intimately connected with broken souls; a worldview in which God is prayed to, not as a malevolent deity who is eager to punish, but as a miraculous Parent who is eager to bring about miracles in the midst of the suffering of his children.

The implications of this new worldview that we find in Christ are enormous. When we find ourselves suffering and broken, when we find ourselves struggling with cancer or divorce or the loss of a loved one, the new worldview that Jesus liberates those experiences from the idea of punishment and illuminates them instead as divine opportunities for the miraculous. Sometimes God’s miracle will manifest itself as a dramatic fixing of the problem, as it did for the blind man in John 9. Other times, God’s miracle will manifest itself, not as an elimination of the suffering, but as a new way of living WITH or IN the suffering, so that the suffering no longer holds dominion over human souls.

Even as I type these words, I am praying for my friend who is suffering and his family. And I am wondering what the miracle will look like for them.

Did any of you preacher types preach on the text from John last weekend (John 9:1-41)?

I did. It was quite an experience for me personally, simply because of the significance of what Jesus reveals in the text itself.

When Jesus and the disciples come upon that unsuspecting blind man who had been blind from birth, the disciples’ initial question is, to say the least, troubling. “Rabbi,” they say, “who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Do you sense the unsettling implications of their question? These disciples were harboring a worldview in which that man’s blindness could only be interpreted as a punishment from God, either for a sin that the blind man had committed, or a sin that his parents had committed for which he was being held accountable. In the disciples’ worldview, in other words, the man’s blindness was not simply the result of malfunctioning eyes. It was rather a form of suffering assigned by God to a sinner.

The disciples, it would seem, were caught up in a deuteronomic system of thought in which people received God’s rewards and punishments in some very tangible ways: health and prosperity, according to this worldview, were manifestations of divine blessing, while illness and tragedy were manifestations of divine wrath. It was as “simple” as that!

In what I consider to be one of the most important and revelatory teachings in the entire Bible, Jesus responds to the disciples question by telling them, in essence, that their worldview was faulty. “Fellas,” Jesus says, “neither this man nor his parents sinned. Rather, he was born blind so that God’s work might be revealed in him.” Which is to say, “disciples, your worldview is broken, and it’s time for you to embrace a new one!” According to Jesus, this man’s blindness was not a punishment for sin. It was simply a physical ailment that provided for God a significant opportunity to accomplish transformational things.

With that, Jesus spits onto the ground, dampening the soil enough to make it into a healing balm. (Maybe I should have entitled the sermon “Spit Happens!”) Then Jesus places the balm on the blind man’s eyes. “Go,” Jesus says to the man, Go and wash yourself in the Pool of Siloam,” which was an actual pool in which many people of faith cleansed themselves before entering the temple.

And, by the way, that may have been why Jesus chose this particularly muddy method of healing. Perhaps Jesus was communicating to all who were daring to pay attention that this man was about to be washed and cleansed in a whole new way.

When the man washes his eyes in the Pool of Siloam, all of a sudden, he is blind no longer. All of a sudden, the malfunctioning eyes with which he had been born become fully functional, and he is brought into a condition of sight, thereby revealing the healing power of our Lord.

And yet, as dramatic as the blind man’s healing is, I do not believe it to be the most important healing in this story. Rather, I believe that the most important healing in this story is Jesus’ healing of the disciples’ broken worldview.

The disciples were absolutely convinced that the man’s blindness was a punishment for some sin. But Jesus incarnates a new worldview in their very presence—a worldview in which blindness and other forms of human hardship, need not be looked upon as a punishment from God, but as an opportunity for God to accomplish even greater things; a worldview in which human suffering is not a curse but an opportunity for God to become more intimately connected with broken souls; a worldview in which the Creator of heaven and earth is not a malevolent deity eager to punish, but a miraculous God eager to bring about miracles in the midst of human suffering.

The implications of this new worldview that we find in Christ are enormous, aren’t they? When we find ourselves suffering and broken (which we will periodically), when we find ourselves struggling with cancer or divorce or the loss of a loved one, the new worldview that Jesus inaugurates enables us to conceptualize those experiences, not as divine punishments, but as divine opportunities for the miraculous. Sometimes God’s miracle will manifest itself as a dramatic fixing of the problem, as it did for the blind man in the Scripture. But other times, God’s miracle will manifest itself, not as a fixing of the problem, but as a new way of living WITH the problem, so that the problem no longer holds dominion over human souls. In either case, the suffering is not a manifestation of God’s wrath, but a condition rich with unique potential in which God might do what God does best: bring wholeness out of brokenness and life out of death.

I tend to agree with N.T. Wright’s opinion (referenced in my last post) that, all too frequently, the Church’s people have been guilty of truncation in their theology of heaven and afterlife. We have often made heaven into little more than an eschatological happy ending—a place in which the disembodied dead are eternally comfortable while shooting the proverbial breeze with friends and relatives who have, uh, “passed on” (sort of like Sheol but with a happier spirit and better lighting).

Such a reduction of the biblical portrait of life beyond the grave, while completely forgivable and even understandable, nevertheless minimizes what Scripture teaches about the resurrection of the body and the eschatological impact of Jesus’ return.

Personally, I have come to believe that part of our problem is our penchant for thinking geographically and architecturally. When we speak of heaven, we tend to conceptualize it as a place more than a condition of being, thereby leading ourselves into a mode of thought in which we become so heavenly minded that we are of no earthly good! In other words, we become so focused on the “there and then” that we lose sight of the eternity’s connectedness with the “here and now.”

Perhaps we would be better off, biblically speaking, if we placed our focus on the “eternal life” described in John 3:16. Eternal life, as a concept, is far more fluid and much less fixed than “heaven.” I am not suggesting, of course, that we treat “heaven” as a dirty word. I am simply making the point that “eternal life” enables us to cover a great deal of important theological territory—territory that is often overlooked in some of our more static heavenly conceptualizations. Eternal life implies continued progression, growth, and transformation. Eternal life also implies a variety of “life seasons:” the season of initial “paradise” promised by Jesus to the thief on the cross; the season of restful, rejuvenating, and cognizant sleep described by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:18; and the season of the “resurrected body” that Paul describes later in the same chapter (1 Corinthians 15:35-58).

“Eternal life,” in other words, is holistic enough as a conceptualization to encompass all of the different biblical proclamations concerning life beyond the grave while at the same time avoiding the tendency to fit it all into an “afterlife equation.” Best of all is the fact that eternal life begins RIGHT NOW, as soon as we are reborn through Jesus Christ. We don’t have to wait until physical death to experience it. Upon our physical death, the eternal life in Jesus Christ that we have already entered simply moves into a new condition or series of conditions.

I suppose that, in the long run, it all comes down to Paul’s proclamation in Romans 8 that NOTHING (not even death) will separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. That, as I see it, is the best imagery to embrace in understanding eternal life. It is a biblical promise that, in Jesus Christ, we will never again be separated from the sustaining grace and mind-boggling love of God, no matter how the specific seasons of eternal life may be organized.

My wife Tara’s dad, Tony, a man of strong faith who died of cancer in 2001, enjoyed watching movies and Steeler football (which means that we got along smashingly!). Tony was a good man who loved God, who loved people, and who always made me feel as though I were a welcome part of his family. One Sunday afternoon, about a year into his cancer journey, Tony and I found ourselves watching a Steeler game, just the two of us. During half time, I remember asking Tony how he was feeling. He responded by telling me that he felt tired. He was tired of the chemotherapy. He was tired of the pain and the doctor’s appointments. He was tired of the cancer. “What I really want,” Tony said to me that day, “is a new body that doesn’t have any cancer in it.” His words made their way into both my heart and my journal.

Perhaps without realizing it, Tony was giving expression to his desire for the kind of condition to which eternal life in Jesus Christ eventually leads—a condition of the resurrected body in which cancer is no more; in which those with Alzheimer’s Disease think more clearly than they have ever thought before; in which those with multiple sclerosis find themselves liberated from their debilitation; and in which those enslaved by depression are set free to experience the complete joy that God longs for them to experience.

Please understand, I am not a pie-in-the-sky kind of pastor. I am not someone who encourages a faith that is so heavenly minded that it is of no earthly good. Life in this world, after all, is rich with joy and meaning and blessing. You know that. But there is also suffering in the human pilgrimage. There is brokenness and weeping. What Scripture consistently reveals is that our eternal life in Jesus Christ (in which we are already participating) is leading us into a joyful eternity with Christ. It is an eternity in which our suffering and pain (not to mention our often-broken bodies) are redeemed in such a way that we begin to discern with completeness why it is that the suffering is worth it and how it is that even the pain finds a place in God’s redemptive and eternal plan.

N.T. Wright has written a new book entitled “Surprised By Hope.” In the book, Wright addresses what he perceives to be some of the thoroughly unbiblical portraits of heaven that the church has often painted.

I have not read the book yet. However, I was very much intrigued by this interview in which Wright discusses his new book and his theology of “life after life after death.”

I find myself having to think about this issue a bit more. How about you?

I recently read a compelling and disturbing article written by William Schweiker entitled “Baptism by Torture.” The entire article can be found here.

In the article, Schweiker sheds important light on the torture technique known as “waterboarding.” Waterboarding might be defined as simulated drowning forced upon a person for the purpose of obtaining information. In waterboarding, an individual is immobilized on his or her back while water is poured over his or her face, thereby causing the inhalation of water into the lungs. Schweiker is particularly interested in the intersection between baptismal theology and water torture throughout the history of the church:

Roman Catholics and Protestants alike persecuted the Anabaptists or ‘re-baptizers’ since these people denied infant baptism in favor of adult baptism. The use of torture and physical abuse was meant to stem the movement and also to bring salvation to heretics. It had been held—at least since St. Augustine—that punishment, even lethal in form, could be an act of mercy meant to keep a sinner from continuing in sin, either by repentance of heresy or by death. King Ferdinand declared that drowning—called the third baptism—was a suitable response to Anabaptists. Water as a form of torture was an inversion of the waters of baptism under the (grotesque) belief that it could deliver the heretic from his or her sins.

When I reflect upon the kind of theological misapplication that would lead people of faith to assign an almost sacramental identity to a particular form of torture, it becomes tempting for me to believe that the shared acumen of contemporary disciples would prevent them from ever accommodating such a primitive sacramentological distortion. After all, these days we are far too theologically advanced to mistreat and misapply the sacred.

Aren’t we?

How many times have I nurtured a secret prayer in my heart—”Lord, remove this negative and trouble-making parishioner from MY church”"—thereby reducing the sacred mystery of prayer to a spiritual hit-list?

How many times have I sat in worship with a critical spirit—”I would have preached that text from a much more creative angle!”—thereby reducing the sacred environment of worship to a reinforcement of my own proclivities and preconceived notions?

How many times have I smugly complained about various blog conversations—”Oh no! Not another discourse on the merits or dangers of contemporary worship!”—thereby reducing a potentially sacred dialogue between Christian brothers and sisters to an occasion for cynicism.

How many times have I had something other than the love of Christ in my heart as I shared the bread and cup with my people, thereby reducing Eucharist to a crass remembrance of who my “favorites” are?

If I ponder these questions honestly, I can come to only one conclusion: The impulse that once led the church to link the baptismal water with the water of torture is still at work within me. It is the impulse to distort the sacred for the purpose of justifying our own behavior and our own presuppositions. If left unchecked, this impulse can still lead to horrific theological reductions and heartbreaking patterns of behavior.

Forgive me if this post seems too personal and too confessional. But, then again, it is Advent. Repentance, I suppose, is somewhere very close to the heart of this holy season.

Thanks for being there.

What have been the moments in your life in which it has become powerfully and transformationally clear to you that life is all about Jesus? What have been those occasions for you that have brought to your consciousness a life-altering discernment of the reality of who Jesus is and what Jesus brings to the human pilgrimage?

As a seminarian, I was deeply impacted by the christology of Karl Barth. In Barth, I found a remarkable nexus of scholarship and piety, of intellectual pursuit and heartfelt devotion. During my first year-and-a-half of seminary, as I adjusted to the rigorous challenges of theological study and the intimidating demands of a student appointment in rural North Carolina, the writings of Karl Barth became a source of affirmation and encouragement for me, a regular reminder that Jesus is Lord and that his Lordship holds perfect authority, even over the realm of speculative theology.

This last week, I re-read some of Barth’s “Church Dogmatics.” I encountered “Dogmatics” for the first time in 1989, and I have kept it close by ever since. Yesterday, I found a passage in “Dogmatics” that I had highlighted back in 1989. In the margin beside the highlighted paragraph, I had written these words: “Read this once a month, and remember why you do what you do.”

The highlighted paragraph was this:

The subject-matter, origin, and content of the message received and proclaimed by the Christian community is, at its heart, the free act of the faithfulness of God in which He takes the lost cause of humankind, who has denied Him as Creator and in so doing ruined himself as creature, and makes it His own in Jesus Christ, carrying it through to its goal and in that way…Between God and humankind there stands the person of Jesus Christ…In Jesus Christ, God’s plan for humankind is disclosed, God’s judgment on humankind fulfilled, God’s redemption of humankind accomplished, God’s gift to humankind present in fullness, God’s claim and promise to humankind declared. It is by Him, Jesus Christ, and for Him, and to Him, that the universe is created as a theatre for God’s dealings with humankind and humankind’s dealings with God…He is the Word of God in whose truth everything is disclosed and whose truth cannot be over-reached or conditioned by any other word. He is the decree of God behind and above which there can be no earlier or higher decree and beside which there can be no other, since all others serve only the fulfillment of this decree. He is the election of God before which and without which God cannot make any other choices…He, Jesus Christ, has become the inconceivable Yet, Nevertheless…and Therefore. (Karl Barth, “Church Dogmatics: A Selection,” copyright T. & T. Clark, 1961, p. 111-112)

It was on my heart to share that paragraph with you today because of the way in which it illuminates the character and nature of the One who redeems us, calls us, equips us, sends us, and sustains us. Perhaps you’ve heard of him. His name is Jesus. And he’s the Savior of the world.

My blogging brother Randy Roda (superhero name: THE RODANATOR), in his response to my last post, wisely asked for a description of narrative theology. This is important, I think, given the fact that the narrative theological approach finds frequent expression, not only in our blog conversations, but also in much of contemporary theological discourse.

So, here goes.

Perhaps narrative theology can best be described as a 20th century reaction to Protestant liberalism’s individualism and its individualistic deconstruction of the biblical story. The narrative theological framework relies heavily upon the theological work of Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer (especially in their high christology, their emphasis upon orthodoxy, and their strong advocacy of a communal approach to both biblical interpretation and the life of discipleship). Also essential in the development of narrative theology was the philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre (whose concept of “virtue ethics” placed the focus of moral development upon the habits, patterns, and virtues of communities and the people they produce) and Clifford Geertz (whose “symbolic anthropology” took very seriously the matter of a community’s symbols and practices in the matter of framing reality).

If you are looking for some other contemporary theological voices that resonate with the tones of narrative theology, I would encourage you to explore the work of Peter Berger, Hans Frei, and Stanley Hauerwas (whose tutelage had quite an impact on me when I was at Duke).

Narrative theology, as I see it, revolves around the following foundational tenets:

1. Biblical interpretation must treat Scripture as a narrative if its truth is to be holistically and rightly discerned (as opposed to treating Scripture as a series independent revelations that can be prooftexted for the purpose of buttressing a particular theological argument). This doesn’t mean, of course, that narrative theologians cannot isolate certain biblical passages in our theological discourse. But narrative theology itself is, in many ways, a reaction against both liberalism’s and fundamentalism’s efforts to subordinate the entirety of Scripture to certain favorite texts.

2. According to the narrative approach, systematic theology misses the mark when it reduces theological conversation to a series of abstract theological propositions that have no real bearing upon our ethics and communal development. For the narrative theologian, systematic theology must treat theology itself as a narrative—the story of how the Creator relates to the Creation, followed by the story of how the “created” relate to one another.

3. Perhaps most importantly, narrative theology demands the presence of a strong communal ethic, since a community is needed if a narrative is to be formed, articulated, incarnated, and passed on to future generations. As a result, the Christian faith, for the narrative theologian, is not simply a matter of intellectual assent. It is more a matter of embracing (and being embraced by) a christocentric community’s distinctive practices, habits, and traditions, all of which enable a person to participate in the story (narrative) of God’s redemption. For the proponent of narrative theology, in other words, rugged individualism in the life of faith makes little sense. Faith must be discerned and lived out in an authentic and alternative community—a community that Hauerwas and Willimon describe as a “Christian colony of resident aliens.” These “aliens” love and engage the world and its people, but they are alien to its ethical frameworks because of their transformation by Christ in the context of a radically Christ-centered community of believers.

4. For the narrative theologian, the primary purpose of the church is to BE the church. The church, in other words, does not exist primarily as an American political instrument or as watchdog for American culture. Rather, according to narrative theology, the church exists to incarnate the kind of biblical and redemptive community that is unlike anything else that the world has to offer—a community that functions by a counter-cultural collection of ethics and behavioral patterns, thereby illuminating the new kingdom inaugurated by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Needless to say, narrative theology has been instrumental in the development of other post-liberal movements, such as radical orthodoxy (or paleo-orthodoxy), neo-evangelicalism, and, of course, the emerging church movement.

I came across the following quote recently on an interesting website: opensourcetheology.net. The quote, made by a “poster” named Andrew, sheds important light on the issue of narrative theology:

A narrative theology encourages us to draw meaning from larger structures. We are still prone to taking arbitrary proof texts out of context and building a predetermined case around them. Larger narrative structures are much more resistant to being bent to fit some reductive and rationalizing theological schema; narrative naturally allows for a diversity of perspectives without having to arbitrate between them…A narrative theology is informed not by a post-biblical belief system but by a community, which has to act and interpret its actions in the light of its theological tradition and experience.

If you wish to read more in the area of narrative theology, I would recommend the following works:

-The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative : A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics (by Hans Frei);
-The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (by George Lindbeck);
-A Community of Character (by Stanley Hauerwas);
-Why Narrative? Readings in Narrative Theology (edited by Stanley Hauerwas & L. Gregory Jones);
-Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony (by Stanley Hauerwas & William Willimon);
-The Story of God: Wesleyan Theology and Biblical Narrative (by Michael Lodahl);
-The Promise of Narrative Theology: Recovering the Gospel in the Church (by George W. Stroup)

I hope that this helps.