I saw this a little while back in last month’s Christianity Today issue and thought it was worth sharing.  Though the rest of the article moves on to be critical of Bell for other reasons, I’m grateful for editor Mark Gali’s generosity and fairness here.  This is the kind of attitude and careful attention I wish more conservative evangelicals would take toward Bell, as I believe it is a Christ-like one:

 

The former pastor of Mars Hill Church believes God exists and can be experienced and yet cannot be contained by rational explanations. He affirms the divinity and humanity of Christ, as well as the Resurrection. He believes the Spirit is active in our lives and in the world. He believes the Bible is authoritative at some level—that is, he always tries to understand his life in light of his reading of the Bible. He is indignant about self-righteousness and injustice, and contrary to popular opinion, he actually believes in a judgment: He says people who abuse and exploit others and creation will not participate in the glorious restoration of heaven on earth. Yes, he holds out hope that perhaps everyone will someday be saved, but in one sense, so do many evangelicals. Even God is said to wish that no one should perish.

So unlike some of my other fellow believers, I cannot say, “Farewell, Rob Bell.” Instead, I think of him as my brother in Christ.

The rest of the article can be found online here.

rahner begegnen (Photo credit: mimax)

“The topic, “humanity as a being threatened radically by guilt,” is undoubtedly burdened today with a special difficulty: we cannot say that people today are bothered in a very immediate way and at a clear and tangible level of their consciousness by the question whether and how as sinners in their individual histories of salvation and its opposite they find a merciful God, or how they are justified by God and before God.  The normal person today does not fear God in this sense, and the question of his or her individual justification, which was, once with Augustine and then again at the time of the Reformation, the question on which the church was to survive or perish, this question does not bother people today very much or maybe even not at all . . . It might be the case, of course, that in the depths of an individual’s conscience and a really decisive points in someone’s person history it is a very different matter.  But judging by first impressions, in everyday life people today have no clear consciousness that they stand before God burdened by guilt and blame which cannot be shifted and as people deserving condemnation, but who nevertheless are saved by the incalculable miracle of God’s pardon, by God’s grace alone, and are accepted by God (Luther, Pascal, etc.) . . . A person today, then, is more likely to have the impression that God has to justify the unhappy condition of the world before human beings, that they are the sacrifice and not the cause of the condition of the world and of human history.”

– Karl Rahner, Foundations of the Christian Faith

Rahner goes on to make several other compelling observations.  First, regardless of the above, human beings do have a sense of the moral and what they “must” do in their lives.  We experience all of our finitude, fragility and ambiguity in the area of moral norms, he says.  Rahner understands this morality in terms of both our freedom and responsibility.  His notion of freedom is not about the ability to make arbitrary decisions one way or the other, however;  rather, Rahner sees humanity’s freedom as a totality of the direction of one’s existence expressed in the form of either a “yes” or “no” to God.

But this “yes” and “no” are not mere parallels choices.  Nor are they in any way the mere some of our good and evil acts.   A “no” to God can only be understood in light of the possibility and God’s intention for our “yes.”  Similarly, guilt can really only be grasped in a dialectical relationship with forgiveness.  In a way then, Rahner is saying we must be “Hearers of the Word” before we can truly know our radical dependence on God and need for the forgiveness that is offered in the coming of God to humanity through Christ.

What has always interested me about Rahner though is the extent to which he refuses to put up boundaries that demarcate access or status for anyone’s existential relationship before God.  As he rightly argues, the warnings in Scripture about judgement are just that — warnings — and they pertain to life here and now.  Eschatological accounts or mentionings of “hell” are not predictions for any individuals per se.  What these sayings do tell us, however, is that the possibility of a life decision against God is real, has final consequences, and should be taken very seriously.

Rahner tells us not to worry about the end so much or who and who’s not going to make it, but to focus on the way that leads there.  In other words, in many respects the decision is “hidden” — even though the way is made known and fruit will be shown.

My question in light of all this is, how do Christians convey this existential need and guilt before God — particularly given the difficulties set forth by Rahner’s above outline of the contemporary attitude?  I find his description of people today to be very accurate, and it probably describes me too from time to time!  Is this really bad?

I think it is . . . and it isn’t.  People just don’t believe as easily anymore that God is out to smite them.  Frankly, I’m kind of glad.  At the same time, I recognize that there are lots of potential problems with this.  The damage of individualism cuts both ways, in Christian and non-Christian circles.  Individualism can have a kind of positive expression, in which we isolate ourselves before God in the Kierkegaardian sense, but individualism today in the Western context looks more like ignoring responsibility for social ills and personal piety.  This is related to Rahner’s characterization of humanity ontological condition of freedom and responsibility.  It makes me think of the situation of globalization today very much and the lack of awareness and concern for the humanity’s heightened interdependence and the contingency of society and the planet itself.  We do not appreciate these realities, and yet they may be making the best case possible for the truth about sin and guilt.

Maybe this is a clue into a new way of talking about sin at the popular level.  The problem is not as much that any one person’s “no” is so condemnable — though in a sense it is! — but more so  that our collective “no” is.  The pain, betrayal, lust, hate and violence caused by human beings trying to run their own show and revolve the world around themselves is inexpressibly dire.  Everybody knows this if they’re honest, and we all see some of it even in ourselves.  We participate in it, and we should all take part of the blame.  According to Rahner, we know it too because of our openness to the “beyondness” (transcendence) and mystery of God that is historically mediated to every person’s experience of reality.  This openness is what raises our awareness of guilt before God despite our varying degrees of “righteousness” before each other.

Maybe the conversation can start with that.

Related articles

• Karl Rahner: Mystic of Everyday Life (prodigal.typepad.com)
• Of two men who come to mind … while it is raining, my daughter is playing with her little next-door friend (dailylight.wordpress.com)
• Richard Rohr Re The Profane (literarylew.wordpress.com)
• Can Buddhism Inform the Christian Understanding of God? ~ John Ankele & Anne Macksoud {Interview} (elephantjournal.com)

I’ve written before about how I think the most distinct characteristic of Christianity is the doctrine of God’s incarnation in Christ, rather than the Reformation’s adage of salvation by grace alone and faith alone.  Some people might want to say, why not both? While I certainly agree that forgiveness and grace are always unearned gifts, I would push back on “both/and” just because I think the preoccupation with salvation in the first place is the oversight of the Reformers.  Of course they probably had this focus largely because of their late Medieval Catholic context.  But fortunately for us, we’ve moved beyond that – well beyond it, I hope.  As Tripp Fuller recently commented in a Homebrewed Christianity podcast, “Calvin’s Institutes were awesome like five hundred years ago, but [some people] are still repeating it today, and it just keeps getting worse.”

Last week Richard Rohr wrote the following in his daily meditations:

This is Christianity’s only completely unique message. Full incarnation is what distinguishes us from all other religions. This is our only real trump card, and for the most part, we have not yet played it. History, the planet—and other religions—have only suffered as a result. Incarnationalism does not put you in competition with any other religions but, in fact, allows you to see God in all things, including them! It mandates that you love and respect all others.

In other words, God bridges the divine-human gap – not primarily because of a theory of atonement, but because of Emmanuel itself, “God with us.”  Obviously this doesn’t mean atonement has no place, but the atonement can only be understood appropriately in light of the incarnation.  This is especially true for making any sense of suffering and the reason for which Jesus also suffered.  I’ve written about this before as well, but I think it’s worth repeating often.

The second lesson from incarnation according to Rohr has more to do with the truth of Christianity itself and its relationship to other faiths.  It should be very clear I think that Rohr is not insinuating that all religions are equally true, that they’re all saying pretty much the same thing, etc.  In fact I doubt Rohr would have any problem admitting that he finds the Christian faith to be most compelling in a universal way.  But the point is, he doesn’t really need to say that, because the gospel was never supposed to start a competition for truth to begin with.  All truth is God’s truth, and we shouldn’t be surprised when it shows up in unexpected places.  Hopefully it can be revealed anywhere and everywhere!  As Christians, however, we simply maintain that the Christ-form is the normative example of this – historically, cosmologically, anthropologically, and theologically.

The form of Christ in all its diversity and depth is always trying to get itself known and shown.  Who would ever want to limit that?  Certainly not God, right?  Only a narrow, un-universalized reading of the creeds and the great church tradition could warrant a restrictivist or exclusivist view of salvation.  This is the big mistake made by popular preachers and authors like David Platt and Francis Chan (see this video, for example), I believe, who, despite their welcomed challenge for American Christians to embrace the call of discipleship more seriously, have really thrown the baby out with the bath water when it comes to their understanding of the meaning of salvation and how non-Christians might receive it.  It would really help Christian leaders like Platt, Chan and others if they would recognize a distinction between the historical Jesus on the one hand and the cosmic Christ, or second person of the Trinity, on the other.  Instead though, theirs remains a black and white, individualist understanding of the good news reverting back to early stages of faith development, and I think that, despite the admirable and genuine zeal and fervor, they’re stuck in a form of therapeutic Christianity.  

For these guys, salvation still mostly means something like “heaven (instead of hell) when we die” because of a “payment” (see my post on this here), even if we’re also called to discipleship in the meantime as an expression of our gratitude.  This isn’t the “biblical” picture of salvation though.  Salvation is about “heaven coming to earth.” It’s about being healed and extending healing in this life, to everyone – not just Christians – even if it costs us the certainty and security of “heaven when we die” as a fall back.  We can still have faith and courage in the face of fear, faith that God will preserve and redeem everything of value that has ever existed – particularly that which seems to be perishing, including the planet.  I actually think this is essential.  But so far as we know, there’s no escape plan.  There’s just faith and hope in an “already/not yet” story.  The stage of the drama is right here and now, and it’s an unfinished one that we get to have a hand in writing.

This story by Carl Medearis makes a similar argument, and I like the way he gets there:

Medearis makes some other interesting remarks in this other video as well about how he doesn’t think belief in universalism (or not) should change the way we live.  It makes me think of the following quote from Calvin himself: “Even if there was no hell, because [a Christian] loves and revers God as [Creator and Caretaker] and honors and obeys [God as Lord], he [or she] would spurn the very idea of [God].”

I’m not one to downplay God’s judgement of sin — at all! — but I do think we’ve missed the point if we think salvation is primarily about avoiding that judgement.  I think the world is ready to hear a better gospel — one that is principally about repentance and forgiveness, yes — we need this — but equally about fidelity to the vision and mission of a making a more just, peaceful and grace-filled world.

Related articles

• Ask a Priest – Can Atheists Go to Heaven? (reflectionsofalaycatholic.com)
• An Incarnational Gospel: A Review of Prodigal Christianity’s Sixth Signpost (abnormalanabaptist.wordpress.com)
• Images of Salvation (XV) (frted.wordpress.com)
• Who Limits the Atonement? (abrahamsseed.wordpress.com)
• Evangel-lies #2 (mobiusfaith.wordpress.com)
• Images of Salvation (III) (frted.wordpress.com)
• Jesus Christ as Mediator (thechristiangazette.wordpress.com)
• Immortal Diamond – Take Eight! Probably the most controversial section of Rohr’s book (yliapu.typepad.com)
• Even The Demons Believe (thehallowedpath.wordpress.com)

Below I’ve included some keypoints from the introduction to a chapter entitled “Confessing Christ in Context” in Daniel MiGloire’s Theology textbook, Faith Seeking Understanding.  It seems to me that, much as Paul Tillich perhaps pointed out best with his theology of correlation, Christians are constantly struggling here and usually erring on the side of either universality or particuarlity with regard to “gospel proclamation.”  This is no new philosophical quandry, but I can’t help but still suspect that the state of things is especially polarized today, at least in North American Christianity, between naïve and ideological conservative-exclusivist universalists on the one hand, and reactionary, progressive-inclusivist particularists on the other (not that the former can’t be reactionary or the latter naïve and ideological — this is just the tendency I notice).

By “universalists”, here I mean those who trust in the applicability of “the gospel” for all times, people and places.  Conversely, particularists are for my purposes here roughly those who either refuse or hesitate to say much about whether “the gospel” is for everyone in light of pluralist, postmodern, postcolonial, and other political, contextual, and epistemological concerns — many of which are valid in my view.  I know there are others somewhere in between, but they seem so much less known, noticeable and/or appreciated.  I do not think, however, that the solution in this case is a mere balancing act of moderation.  Rather, I believe that when the universal and particular are worked out concretely and through praxis, there can be a transformation into a qualitatively new kind of community that is at once robust in its Christian identity and radically inclusive.  This is what Brian McLaren writes about in his latest book.

Here are MiGloire’s simple but very helpful assertions on this front:

All theology is contextual.  Historical and cultural context is a factor in all Christian life, witness and theology.

Many Christians in Asia, Africa and Latin America are convinced that their theological reflection must attend to their own distinctive non-Western cultures and forms of thought.

Just as God’s decisive self-communication is through incarnation in a particular human life, so the transmission of the gospel message by the church makes use of concrete and diverse languages, experiences, philosophical conceptualities, and cultural practices.

For example, we have not one but four Gospels, each of which proclaims Christ in a  distinctive way that is shaped by its particular context.

Paul declares that he has become “all things to all people” that he might “by all means” save some (1 Cor. 9:22).  This does not mean, of course, tailoring the gospel so that it no longer offends anyone.  It does mean, however, that the labor of interpretation is necessary if gospel is to be proclaimed clearly to different people in different cultural settings.

The true scandal of the Gospel must be distinguished from false scandals created by the assumption that only one language and one culture can be vehicles of the gospel message.

On the one hand, if we seek to emphasize the universality of the gospel by generalizing its message and stripping it of all historical contingency, we lose sight of the gospel’s own particularity and its power to receive and transform human life in all its historical particularity and diversity.

On the other hand, if we emphasize one particular expression of the gospel to the exclusion of all others, we lose sight of its universal power.

Robert Schreiter states the problem the way: “In the midst of the tremendous vitality that today’s Christians are showing, one set of problems emerges over and over again: how to be faithful both to the contemporary experience of the gospel and to the tradition of Christian life that has been received.”

This past Palm Sunday at First Baptist Austin, pastor Roger Paynter confessed his confusion and discomfort with the penal substitution theory of the atonement.  In attempt to nonetheless make sense of what God was doing through Christ’s willingness to suffer, however, and after making illustrative reference to the witness of Archbishop Oscar Romero’s death thirty years ago, Paynter suggested that, “only as goodness is willing to involve itself with evil is there any hope of evil being turned around.”

This got my attention.  I’ve written about atonement before (here and here) and what I’ve learned about the importance of seeing it not just as forgiveness for sin but as the protest of oppression, God’s solidarity with the victims of history, and the overcoming of unjust death.  This year for Holy Week though, I’m wondering once again about atonement as forgiveness.

I think I’ve slowly come to believe that death as a result of unconditional, unselfish love is something different from death for the purpose of appeasing God’s wrath.  The Prodigal Son parable is perhaps the best illustration of this (see the post below).  This is obviously not to deny that God is depicted as wrathful in the Bible or that God’s anger is justified against humanity’s sin.  Nor is it to downplay the significance of warning about judgment or the language and metaphor of sacrifice.  But whereas the appeasement of wrath is a transaction intended to satisfy the requirements of a strict accounting of what is due, unconditional love is a donation of abundant generosity and giving rather than of necessity. The idea of a “wrath absorbing sacrifice,” as I’ve heard many preachers call it, still answers to the law rather than to grace and mercy.  The cost is still “covered”, not forgiven — even if someone else more suitable makes the payment.

In this way then, the death of Jesus is not so much sacrifice of or violence against himself but the consequence of living self-exhaustively for the sake of others. As Ingolf Dalferth expresses it, Jesus’s death is a life lived

so unrestricted that even [his] own self-preservation does not present itself as an obstacle or limit to this love . . . [Christ’s] death is neither the end nor a means of what [he] does, but is rather taken as an unavoidable collateral damage, so to speak, in abiding under all circumstances by the love of neighbor (from the International Journal of Philosophy of Religion, 2010, 68:77-94: “Self-sacrifice: From the Act of Violence to the Passion of Love”).

In his book Economy of Desire, Daniel Bell argues that

God needs nothing and no necessity compels God to act as God does in redeeming us from sin.  Already the standard interpretation of the cross is in trouble, insofar as it asserts that some necessity compels God to exact compensatory suffering as the penalty for sin . . . Indeed as Anselm argues, in the work of atonement God in Christ both dismisses every debt and gives a gift that far exceeds any settling of accounts, since in Christ we are renewed even more wonderfully than we were created (p. 149).

In other words, yes, sin is an offense to God’s honor and holiness, but only in the particular sense that it is not fitting that God’s will or intention for humanity be thwarted, Bell says.  Put another way, Christ is less our offering to God and more of God’s offering to us (Romans 5:8) – despite humanity’s frequent rejection of it.  In Christ God reconciled the world (2 Cor. 5:18) by refusing to render to humanity what it has brought upon itself.  Instead God graciously endures humanity’s rejection and violence, ever extending to a guilty human race the redemption and reconciliation of Jesus (Romans 3:25).  Bell explains that Paul makes the same argument by referring to Jesus as the justice or righteousness of God, as the incarnation of God’s faithfulness to the redemptive promise made to Abraham for the sake of the Jew and Gentile alike.

Moreover, God does not merely forgive us as though we were guiltless, leaving us left otherwise unchanged (this is what penal substitution seems to say).  A purely negative pardon would mean that humanity remains unable to enjoy blessedness.  But this is of course not the case.  Instead, we are invited into transformation and restored relationship with God and others as demonstrated with the unconditional love of God in Christ.  Christ’s death and resurrection is the grand impetus for this, which is what we are really celebrating during Easter.

As Bell concludes, “Christ’s substitutionary sacrifice is an instantiation of the divine plenitude and superabundance that creates, sustains and now enables us to return to our source to get to participate in the divine life – in the reciprocity that is the triune circle of love, and that is our true purpose in and for which we were created” (p. 152).

What is salvation?  What does Jesus accomplish on the Cross and in the Resurrection?

For me, salvation is fully accomplished in the work of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  It was God in the hands of angry sinners – that’s the phrase that I would use.  I’m not a penal substitutionary guy.  But I am a substitutionary guy.  But I don’t see the Father pouring out his wrath on the Son.  I see the human race pouring out their wrath on the Son.  So I see the only hope for the entire cosmos is what the Son chooses to accept, crawling up on the instrument of our greatest wrath.  He met us at the deepest, darkest place.

That still gives every single person an eternal and ongoing right to reject this affection.  But I don’t think it changes the relentless affection.  God’s pursuit of me is eternal in nature.  That’s what Romans 8:38-39 is talking about.  Read the list of things that cannot separate you from God’s love, and you’re going to run smack into this: nothing [can separate us].

But the Bible is replete with language of divine wrath, not just the Old Testament but the New as well.  What do you make of that?

I am not opposed to wrath at all, but what’s changed for me is this: I grew up inside a paradigm that said wrath was punitive and retributive in nature.  I now see it as restorative.  And part of that is affective.

Having children changed a lot for me.  If my son was an amphetamine addict, I would like to be a fire and burn that out of my son’s life.  If I had a daughter who believed a lie about her value, I would want to be a consuming fire – absolutely.  I’d want to get inside of that and burn it out.

So to me, fire is something everybody has to deal with, because we all have crap.  It needs to be dealt with, and it’s going to be.  To some degree we’re dealing with it in this world, but we’re going to deal with it at some point.  But it’s because of love, not because we fail to live up to expectations.

So do you believe in the Last Judgment — with emphasis on last?

Yeah, probably.  If you read C.S. Lewis‘s introduction to The Great Divorce, in a beautiful way he acknowledges that he and George MacDonald and other writers are dealing in speculation.  The only certainty I have come to with regard to any of this is that I’m now way more certain about the kindness and the goodness of God, even if it’s also a fire.  I’m certain of his goodness.  But I don’t know how it all works out.

One question I get, of course, is, “Are you a universalist?”  I’m not, because I don’t think you can make that step doctrinally.  I don’t think Scripture is that obvious.  There is this respect for the human creation’s ability to say no.  God will not force love.  And we still have to choose to be reconciled.  But Colossians says that’s what we are to be praying for, that everything gets reconciled back to him.

Taken from the interview by Mark Galli in Christianity Today, March 2013 Issue

I recently got to discuss this passage with the students in the “introduction to theology” class that I’m teaching.  Terrence Tilley, the author, explains how parables are stories that “upset worlds.”  According to Tilley, the parable of the prodigal son is doing just this, and perhaps in more ways than we might expect.

Jesus calls God abba.  We translate this Aramaic word as “father,” although it suggests the intimacy of “papa” or “dad.” Although Jesus not unique in addressing God this way, it is surely a distinctive and central piece of Jesus’ prayer.

The question becomes what sort of “father” is God?

[This] parable is often taken by critics as being a response of Jesus to those who criticize him for consorting with the wicked.  Yet that doesn’t seem to get to the point of the story.  Others treat it as exemplifying the forgiveness of sins or as a typical “reversing-our-expectations” parable.  Yet this is the only parable in the New Testament in which the chief protagonist is the father.  Although we have called it by another title, consider this story of a father who had two sons.  Read the parable here.

This longest and richest of Jesus’ parables is surely open to many interpretations.  Not only do we hear many ideas in it, but the first hearers likely did, too.  I think that it is indubitable that this parable makes allusions not only to the people whom Jesus consorted with, but also to the free forgiveness of sins.  It also reverses one’s expectations in that the father freely forgives the son who was lost and bestows on him gifts to celebrate with joy his return.  But let’s look at what the father does.

First, he split up the property with his younger son.  Since Jewish law provided for inheritanec rights only to the older son, this was not an unexpected procedure.  Apparently many families did this to provide the younger son with some capital.  Nothing exceptional here.

Second, he saw his prodigal son returning and was moved to tears.  This father has a heart. But, then, that is not unusual.  Most fathers would rejoice at the return of a son who had wandered.  Most fathers would see him coming down the road, be overjoyed with the return, and sit and wait for the son to apologize and then forgive the one who has asked forgiveness.

It is the third action that is unexpected here and was likely unexpected then.  Instead of sitting and waiting, the father ran to him, embraced him and received him before he said anything.  Then, when the son tries to recite his prepared apologetic request, the father interrupts him and gets ready to throw a party! . . .

The final thing the father does is also crucial.  The elder brother is outside, complaining and moaning as the story notes (imagine a hard-working brother getting home from the graveyard shift about five in the morning doing the same thing).  Again the father gets up and goes out to him.  He does not leave him in the cold.  He does not demand that the elder brother enter.  He not only doesn’t issue commands from his chair, but also goes out and pleads with him, too, explains the situation, and tries to draw him in.  The father also performs an unexpected gracious action for the elder brother as well.  Again an unexpected action.

It would be allegorization — reading the parable as if it were an allegory — to say that the father in this story stands for the Father of All.  Yet this is the only parable of Jesus which presents a father interacting with his children.  Jesus’ disciples may have heard this parable as revealing the actions of Jesus’ Father.  If this sort of hearing reveals the distinctiveness of the parable and fits the parable as well as other interpretations, then it is one legitimate way to hear it.  And then, may a Christian at least hope that this is the way a heavenly Father will act, too?

taken from Story Theology by Terrence Tilley

I’m going to attempt to make a few blog posts over the next few weeks that address the subject of theology and politics, which I take to be timely right now especially as the election season is upon us.  In doing so, I will try to outline in a fairly systematic way the theological justification for my positions on what are in my opinion the most important issues that have to be dealt with in the U.S. from a Christian and ecclesial perspective.

I take as my starting point an excerpt from Dietrich Bonhoeffer‘s later work.  Obviously, there are those who would probably like to object to my beginning here instead of, say, with Scripture on the one hand or with the words of a more contemporary theologian who isn’t German, male, etc. on the other.  In response to such objections, I would just say that I consider Bonhoeffer’s statement below to still be inspired by Scripture and very relevant to many contemporary political and theological concerns that extend beyond U.S.-eurocentrism.  He is also someone that is well known and revered in a diverse range of Christian circles, and as such provides a broadly common ground from which to launch the conversation.

God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross. He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us.  Matt. 8.17 makes it quite clear that Christ helps us, not by virtue of omnipotence, but by virtue of his weakness and suffering.[1]

Here is the decisive difference between Christianity and all religions. Man’s religiosity makes him look in his distress to the power of God in the world: God is the deus ex machina. The Bible directs man to God’s powerlessness and suffering; only the suffering God can help. To that extent we may say that the development towards the world’s coming of age outlined above, which has done away with a false conception of God, opens up a way of seeing the God of the Bible, who wins power and space in the world by his weakness. This will probably be the starting-point for our ‘secular interpretation’.  – Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison (p. 359-361)

For much of my life I’ve heard conventional apologists and preachers argue that what distinguishes Christianity from other religions is the Protestant emphasis on justification by grace through faith, not works.  This is because all other religions are assumed to be primarily characterized by human effort to somehow reach or work toward God, or to earn God’s approval.

There are obvious problems with this, not the least of which is the sweeping generalization of the nature of all other world religions, which are quite diverse in and among themselves, just like Christianity — not to mention that the adherents in each are seeking very different soteriological ends (different views on what salvation is in the first place).  Moreover, the so-called world religions have very divergent conceptions of what it means to be human and what the basic impediment is to abundant life.  This has to be taken into account before we can speak so broadly about the Christian difference.  Leaving that issue aside for now, however, the even bigger oversight of this perspective seems to be to the focus on salvation in the first place, which, when described in the way that was mentioned above (salvation by grace through faith), tends to focus entirely on what we get from God as opposed to who God is and what God expects from us as a result of what God has done.

More specifically, it overlooks what is in my view a most fundamental distinction that can more safely be made between Christian confessions and those of other faiths — namely, the belief that God was uniquely and fully present in Jesus of Nazareth.  That is to say, whereas some traditions rightly stress God’s transcendence or otherness on the one hand, while others tend to speak more of an immanence or pantheistic nature of God on the other — if they speak theistically at all — the Christian tradition has always talked a lot about both, and it is because of the doctrine of God’s incarnation in Christ that we can do this.

This of course requires that, despite whatever we might want to say christological formulations, some kind of normative authority is maintained regarding the person and work of Jesus Christ, which is what distinguishes this view from many other more liberal or less orthodox positions that have arisen over the centuries.  I am not particularly concerned about how exactly people use language to get at this incredibly mysterious and paradoxical notion of God dwelling with us as a human being — as long as the theological significance of the idea is preserved.  Furthermore, it’s not that I’m trying to necessary defend the truth of the orthodox position as such either.  Rather, I’m simply trying to convey this doctrine’s indispensability to the Christian faith and identity for the preservation of its uniqueness.

This significance for me consists in least two very basic faith statements, which, getting back to the question of the Christian difference, are essential for understanding what makes the Christian identity special.  First, there is the belief that, as Bonhoeffer says in analogous terms, God has solidarity (read shared nature and experience) with the human situation through Jesus; and secondly, that this solidarity is constituted by non-coercion and suffering for a redemptive purpose that gives hope and power in the face of sin and death.  As a result of the witness in Scripture to these two aspects of divine action, the character God is revealed, and revealed in such a way that communicates God’s love for the world.  Whether and to what extent God is sovereign in the world and is providential in all of history, more than merely present, sustaining and persuasive, is another interesting and important question, but the lesson I’m driving at that can be appreciated from both sides of the spectrum on this — from classical theism (God’s essence as self-sufficient existence) all the way to process theology (God’s dipolar, consequent and primordial nature) — is that God cares and is involved.

Some Application: Toward the Relevance of the Christian Difference for Faith in the Public Sphere

The final sentence of Bonhoeffer’s quote above makes reference to a “secular interpretation,” and this is the direction I’d like to go in next.  Sin and salvation are rightly understood to a limited extent as pertaining to the individual and to life-everlasting, but more appropriately for our time and place as pertaining to the community and (secular) life in the present.  This, I believe, is because our cultural context in North America is plagued by rampant individualism both in and outside of the church.  In other words, from a Christian standpoint, we might say there are mostly two kinds of people in our society: Christians and non-Christians — and both groups are individualists.  One way to understand the reason for this, as I see it, is simple: most people who claim to be Christian are more “American” than they are Christian.  I will do my best to unpack what I mean by this in the next few posts.

Cover of Letters and Papers from Prison

There’s a great resource for Bonhoeffer quotes from his Letters and Papers that can be found here.  I’m returning to Bonhoeffer right now somewhat in part because I’m teaching Christian Ethics, and he had a lot to say about this — about what it is and isn’t — but also because some friends of mine are reading through The Cost of Discipleship, and I’ve recently joined them to re-read it.  Of course the tension between Bonhoeffer’s earlier and later work is somewhat glaring at moments, as can be seen below.  The importance for me of these two particular quotes though is not so much that the words themselves have shaped me, but that some major elements of my on faith development and view of church, as a result of my experience and educational journey over the past few years, are reflected in them so well.

Hasn’t the individualistic question about personal salvation almost completely left us all? Aren’t we really under the impression that there are more important things than that question (perhaps not more important than the matter itself, but more important than the question!)? I know it sounds pretty monstrous to say that. But, fundamentally, isn’t this in fact biblical? Does the question about saving one’s soul appear in the Old Testament at all? Aren’t righteousness and the Kingdom of God on earth the focus of everything, and isn’t it true that Rom. 3.24ff. is not an individualistic doctrine of salvation, but the culmination of the view that God alone is righteous? It is not with the beyond that we are concerned, but with this world as created and preserved, subjected to laws, reconciled, and restored.What is above this world is, in the gospel, intended to exist for this world; I mean that, not in the anthropocentric sense of liberal, mystic pietistic, ethical theology, but in the biblical sense of creation and of the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer – Letters and Papers from Prison

Our church, which has been fighting in these years only for its self-preservation, as though that were an end in itself, is incapable of taking the word of reconciliation and redemption to mankind and the world. Our earlier words are therefore bound to lose their force and cease, and our being Christians today will be limited to two things; prayer and righteous action among men. All Christian thinking, speaking, and organizing must be born anew out of this prayer and action…It is not for us to prophesy the day (although the day will come) when men will once more be called so to utter the word of God that the world will be changed and renewed by it. It will be a new language, perhaps quite non-religious, but liberating and redeeming – as was Jesus’ language; it will shock people and yet overcome them by its power; it will be the language of a new righteousness and truth, proclaiming God’s peace with men and the coming of his kingdom…Till then the Christian cause will be a silent and hidden affair, but there will be those who pray and do right and wait for God’s own time.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer – Letters and Papers from Prison

Recently Christian Piatt made a couple of provocative posts on the Sojourners “God’s Politics” blog concerning Christian cliches that should not be used.  Here’s one of them that’s a little tricky though:

The cliche was: “The Bible clearly says…”  And here’s why Piatt said we should drop it:

First, unless you’re a Biblical scholar who knows the historical and cultural contexts of the scriptures and can read them in their original languages, the Bible isn’t “clear” about much. Yes, we can pick and choose verses that say one thing or another, but by whom was it originally said, and to whom? Cherry-picking scripture to make a point is called proof-texting, and it’s a theological no-no. Second, the Bible can be used to make nearly any point we care to (anyone want to justify slavery?), so let’s not use it as a billy club against each other.

I think this is a good point, but he kinda leaves us wondering what the heck we’re supposed to do if we’re not biblical scholars… which I’m not, so we may need more instruction on how to approach reading the Bible and truly beginning to understand its applicability for our present situations.  And obviously, the degree of interpretative difficulty varies from passage to passage — as does perhaps the usefulness and even the authority of different passages for contemporary contexts — but here Peter C. Phan explains what the well-known Brazilian-Catholic theologian Clodovis Boff has said on this front.  I’ve copied part of his explanation below.  It might seem a little bit technical at first, but I believe its worth reading through:

Clodovis Boff’s Correspondence of Relationship Model for Interpretation of Scripture

As to the process of correlating the Scripture to our social location, Clodovis Boff warns us against two unacceptable common practices which he terms the “gospel/politics model” and the “correspondence of terms model.” The “gospel/politics model” sees the gospel as a code of norms to be directly applied to the present situation. Such application is carried out in a mechanical, automatic, and nondialectical manner; it completely ignores the differences in the historical contexts of each of the two terms of the relationship.

The “correspondence of terms model” sets up two ratios which it regards as mutually equivalent and transfers the sense of the first ratio to the second by a sort of hermeneutical switch. For instance, an attempt is made to establish an equivalency (the equal sign) between the ratio of the first part of terms and that of the second pair of terms: Scripture: its political context; theology of the political: our political context; exodus: enslavement of the Hebrews; liberation: oppression of the poor; Babylon: Israel; captivity: people of Latin America; Jesus: his political context; Christian community: its current political context.  Although better than the “gospel/politics model” in so far as it takes into account the historical context of each situation, the “correspondence of terms model” is still unacceptable because it assumes a perfect parallel between the first ratio and the second.

In contrast to these two models, Clodovis Boff proposes what he calls the “correspondence of relationships model” which he claims is in conformity with the practice of the early Church and the Christian communities in general. In schematic form this model looks as follows: Jesus of Nazareth: his context; Christ and Church: context of Church; Church tradition: historical context;  ourselves: our context. In reduced form, it looks as follows: Scripture: its context; ourselves: our context.

In this model the Christian communities (represented by the Church, church tradition, and ourselves) seek to apply the gospel to their particular situations. But contrary to the other two models, this model takes both the Bible and the situation to which the Bible is applied in their respective autonomy. It does not identify Jesus with the Church, church tradition, and ourselves on the one hand, nor does it identify Jesus’ context with the context of the Church, the historical context of church tradition, and our context on the other. The equal sign (:) does not refer to the equivalency among the terms of the hermeneutical equation but to the equality among the respective relationships between the pairs of terms. As Boff puts it, “The equal sign refers neither to the oral, nor the textual, nor to the transmitted words of the message, nor even to the situations that correspond to them. It refers to the relationship between them. We are dealing with a relationship of relationships. An identity of senses, then, is not to be sought on the level of context, nor, consequently, on the level of the message as such—but rather on the level of the relationship between context and message on each side [Scripture and ourselves in the reduced schema] respectively.” This focus on the relationship between the terms of each pair and the equivalency among these relationships rather than on a particular text of the Scripture to be applied allows both creative freedom in biblical interpretation (not “hermeneutic positivism”) and basic continuity with the meaning of the Bible (not “improvisation ad libitum”): “The Christian writings offer us not a what, but a how—a manner, a style, a spirit.”