reclaimingatonement-blog

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Anxiety as Premature Lament

Every prudent person does not lament in advance, but he waits for whatever the Lord will send him. And what the Lord sends - whether good or bad - he accepts with joy and strives to endure according to his strength. But if he cannot endure - he repents for his faintheartedness. 

But we become fainthearted beforehand; while still not seeing any misfortune or sorrow, we grieve before the sorrow ever comes. 

Christian, live in a Christian manner!

-    Anatoly of Optina

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Domestic Violence… Biblically Speaking

The decline of marital union touches us all. Reading Jonathan Grant’s Divine Sex, while simultaneously rereading Andrew Cornes’ Divorce and Remarriage, Paul Miller’s A Loving Life and Wesley Hill’s Spiritual Friendship has been incredibly humbling and delightfully edifying. It is forcing us to rethink what it means to be a disciple of Christ especially in regard to companionship. Lots of room for growth and tons of concrete-relational opportunities for applying what they put forward as the Christian vision for relationships. 

The church is finally waking up to the realities of shame. It is, albeit far too little and long overdue, finally engaging the issues of sexual and other forms of abuse. It is trying to defend the innocent and help its survivors. And all that we support and applaud. Good stuff, take up and read, buy multiple copies as giveaways. All of this is worthy of our support. 

Yet, and it's a big yet (font 42, bold, all caps!) the body of Christ is dropping the ball with marital unions.

It stands on the sidelines while the church passes the world in divorce statistics. It allows divorce for any number of reasons, such as irreconcilable differences (as if there could be such a thing amongst Christians who are Christians only because of Christ’s [and their] ministry of restoration and reconciliation). Every once and awhile, someone might speak up, but few actually engage in a meaningful manner. Few take risks. And risk is right. And of course, they are passive in the divorce itself. The union happens in the church, before God and witnesses but the divorce happens under Caesar’s roof, before an overworked judge. 

When was the last time you heard of an ecclesiastical divorce?!

Anyway, all this to say, while reading tonight, we stumbled across what we believe to be the best ‘simple summary’ of what divorce actually is in Chris Wright’s Old Testament Ethics for the People of God.

Divorce was tolerated, but eventually with explicit disapproval. Divorce hardly features in Old Testament law at all… unlike modern Western custom, neither marriage nor divorce was a matter for civil law in biblical Israel... Those laws that do refer to divorce are concerned with circumstances where divorce was either [explicitly] prohibited or with regulating relationships after the divorce had already happened… Divorce was tolerated… but… there is the the uncompromising attack of Malachi, culminating in the blunt denunciation, “I hate divorce,” says the LORD God of Israel. Nothing as sharply absolute as this… divorce is the severing destruction of marriage... Divorce is ‘covering oneself with violence’, as Malachi puts it. ...divorce destroys the relationship altogether. (pp. 331,332)

Not an exact quote, but the wording and verbiage is largely his, we condensed it here for brevity sake. Second set of italics not in original.

How is this not the ultimate form of domestic ‘abuse’?!

Why do we so passively aqueous to this act explicitly identified as something God hates. Christ himself says it was permitted only because of hardness of heart - i.e. man’s unwillingness to forgive and reconcile. Man’s unwillingness to see the image of God in his neighbor. Divorce is violent. It is after all, putting your spouse, with whom oneness was shared to death. Not only is it relational death, but it is also a form of suicide if the oneness, established by God mind you, is even remotely real.

So we challenge you, stand up for what is right. Engage your friends, participate in their lives, and stand steadfastly with them. Show them love without an exit strategy! Don’t take the sides of the individual, there no longer is an individual. Take the ‘side’ of the marriage, the new man, the one that they are now, not as a result of what they did, but what God did toward them in his joining them together. It’ll be messy and painful to be sure - but what do you have to lose? In short, nothing. 

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Entering the Bridal Chamber is More Than a Thought Experiment

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy has fried my brain more than once. His writings, when one can grasp what he is saying, are more oft than not deeply profound. In a more popular passage, he helps us situate the Faith, the Church and the Sacraments, Christ Himself, quite profoundly,

As soon as the Gospels were written, speech without experience began to dabble with the new facts proposed by the existence of the church… People tried to think the new life without being touched by it first on some form of call, listening, passion or change of heart”. (The Fruit of Lips, p. 85)

This quote, out of context, can be used for evil no  doubt, but we intend it for good, to carry forward the intent in which it was written - beckoning man to experience God and not to just think about him as if that were enough or as if that was experience of some kind of perverted relationship.

H.R. Mackintosh hits this point quite nicely, when discussing the importance of doctrine comporting with everyday reality, stating that, we cannot truly know without participation, without an encounter, without first-hand experience, “we should find it barely impossible to say anything.” (Christian Experience of Forgiveness, p. xi)

If this is true, and it is, why is that that the church continues to pursue cognitive discipleship? Leithart observes, 

“... Protestants generally adopt only one physical posture in worship—sitting to listen to a sermon—and therefore we are trained in only one spiritual posture. We are trained to accept as a matter of course that it is possible to think our way through life, all of life”. (Against Christianity, p. 92)

The church serves her own and the world through her embodiment of corporate worship.  In the church, amongst other things like non-punitive discipline for the purpose of reconciliation and restoration, the church - together, as one body - prays, proclaims God’s special revelation (while explaining it too, but more proclaiming than explaining) and celebrates the life-giving family meal of communion with her King.

Prayer, Reading of God’s Word and the Lord’s Table.  All three acts , when executed as fully human, engage the whole of man. In prayer for example, Arch Bp Paul from Finland states, “... we are by no means [only] spirits but walk in our bodies in this material world. Therefore, prayer has to do with man’s whole being, including his body and the environment in which he lives”. (The Faith We Hold, p. 75). Its the whole person, in all of who he is, including his body that engages the Triune God who lives and offers himself to us in the God-man Jesus.

We are creatures created with a plethora of means for engaging God through his created world. The relationship we have is as real and full sensory as any other relationship and should be as intimate and as full sensory as we would engage our betrothed. Why then would we relegate our engagement of God (or the lion’s share of that time anyway) sitting, perhaps taking notes, etc. as if we were merely sitting in a class, through mere cognition - when God bids us to come, enter the bridal chamber(!), with all of our senses, to taste and see that he is good?

[reclaimingatonement-blog]

Gospel Antithesis

Self-emptying Love - v - Self-preservation

Covenant Faithfulness - v -  Betrayal, Infidelity and various Idolatries

Image Bearing and Recognition - v - Dehumanizing and Villainizing

Truth Telling - v - Deception, False Witness, Gossip and Slander   (also truth in love - v - truth as power and means of control)

Communal Embrace - v - Exclusion, Isolation and Relational Indiference

Gratitude (and Contentment) - v- Grumbling Complaint and Gnashing of Teeth

In short:   Theonomy - v - Autonomy

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Something Borrowed?

God in Christ is generous. Man, regardless of being in Adam or in Christ has a propensity toward greed. Lust of and the struggle for power, Christianity teaches, is a direct result of the fall. 

Christ claims in that in conquering sin and death he has all authority on heaven and earth. During his earthly ministry Christ gives Caesar his earthly due, but he qualifies it when confronted by Pilot. The apostles do likewise. All authority proceeds from Him.

What we see is that all authority, all if it, is derivative. That is, it belongs to and proceeds from another. The every trusting Godhead has bestowed authority (in herculean quantities) on man. He has established for example, the authority of man over animals, plants, the institutions (in various forms) of government, the church as the exerciser of his ministry of reconciliation with the ability to ‘bind and loose’. Parents overseeing the nurture of children. Masters over their subjects, bosses oversight of their employees. All of this authority is established by and derivative of God himself, more particularly the God-man Jesus.

If we took this seriously, if we felt its full weight, how would this impact our exercising of power?

It has become en vogue to approach relationships by ‘making friends and influencing people” - read here, manipulate and control. Too, the establishment, pursuit and absolute demand of the ‘self’ and its happiness now reign supreme over against all else, even the relationships that God has also established as means of our salvation. 

Yet, in all relationships we are called to yield to God established authority - instead of stealing or hijacking it at every chance we get (for the sake of pragmatism or hubristic notion that the rules apply in general, but not to our situation).

Would that the full weight of borrowed authority be pressed on the heart of man. If a boss and employee both took that authority stewardship seriously it would chance the social culture at Work. If a husband and wife continually saw each other as image bearers and their authorities as derivative stewardship from God, then marriages might be more prone to heal than disintegrate. Unilateral actions such as suites for divorce would be truly scandalous, especially in instances of ‘irreconcilable differences’ (as if such a thing can exist among the people of God). If a pastor or congregant member felt this weight perhaps abuse of power and schism might be properly addressed. The same goes for parent child relationships, relationships with the government, etc. 

Would that the reality of this truth would humble us as cause us to reevaluate how we treat our neighbor.

[reclaimingatonement-blog]

The Danger of Abstraction is Non-participation and Faux Discipleship

Most (not all) atonement models, since Anselm have had a propensity toward the abstract. This all has led to a hands off approach to approach to discipleship and relationship, relegating them to ‘cognitive’ disciplines. We sit in church and in bible study, we cross our legs and take notes as the primary expression of Jesus following. And we try to convert others to this as well.

We need to stand against any sense of objectifying or abstracting the atonement. Let us explain, before you dismiss. Reconciliation through the God-man cannot be relegated to an act external to Who God is. Atonement is more than an instrument used to impute righteousness. 

In the past, we have argued for the use of the term incarnational, to be a legitimate word to describe legitimate ministry, perhaps even the preferred term. This is only in light of the bigger picture though - framed by the atonement.

By affirming and living out the incarnation, we embrace and lean into the utter seriousness of God becoming man and assuming all that we are. You see, atonement takes place on the inside, it is rooted in and executed within the incarnation, and at that in real space and time. Christ’s full deity and vicarious humanity is of vital importance.

It is more than God looking forward or back to cosmic justice and its demands for paperwork or bloodletting.  It is rather a concrete-relational act. It is filial and in that also rooted in history (real space and real time). It is ontological (rooted in his very being) rather than juridical, external or merely instrumental by way of means to a greater end. Atonement is incarnation and not a snippet of it.

If we moved away from a abstract cognitive theory of salvation, perhaps a non-cognitive form of discipleship may follow. After all, being a christian is more than getting the answers all right to a quiz this side of death.

[reclaimingatonement-blog]

Still Pocking Around, Feeling our Way... Learning by Doing?

Having no ‘formal’ doctrine is not the same as saying no inherent understanding or no comprehensive realization.

The church has always been about reconciliation. It has relished in the at-one-ment established by the God-man.  And early on especially, leaned heavily into it  and got a lot done with that as their framing for reality in this world.

So, what were they leaning into?

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Groping our Way with Dimly Lit Glasses

The scholastic enterprise of systematizing God and his work in this world by its very nature cannot speak adequately of God. A manageable, predictable, god-in-a-box deity is a finite, deficient deity. The pomo-gewy, Baskin-Robbins approach of eclectic, a non-committal approach, a little of that, but with no real commitment to the tradition that these now isolated truths developed in is ultimately a schizophrenic self serving faith with a deity made in our image.  

The both speak to a reality that is true. God is knowable. God is unknowable. Yet, these approaches neglect the reality of a consistent witness of the people of God since their being called out to be his and the active role of the Spirit in revelation and in the lives of his people. That is they divorce reality from experience.

As we said earlier, the early church has no formal doctrine of the atonement beyond this:

God came and pitched a tent with man. He assumed our full humanity (including gender). He healed those he ministered to. He scandalously fought for reconciliation in all contexts. He suffered, died, rose again and ascended to his father where he presently is exercising his dominion over sin and death. In short he was the faithful Adam, and as such the last Adam, not just in regards to the law, but in the sense of created purpose. Shalom with God, our neighbor and creation is made possible (even in the now) through him. We can now experience a genuine perichoretic relationship with the Godhead.

None of this is Penal in nature. It is more than mere cosmic paperwork, or the shuffling there of. It's more than Exemplary. But he is who we are called to emulate. It's not a ransom, per se, at least not in the sense that the Satan had genuine controlling power that God had to make payment to. While Girard was brilliant, it is more than any number of Scapegoat models, including his.

The church councils and earliest confessions did not feel the need to fight over the nature of at-one-ment. It just was - and it was - because of Christ. All of Christ, not just his passion. Why is that? We would argue that this was because the atonement is rooted in a proper understanding of the Trinity and Christology. 

If you understand who God is, if you understand who his son is, their actions in space and time toward man, while still beyond our grasp, start to become more understandable - and are bound up in the Who. The what, the action(s), etc. cannot be separated from the Who.

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Beyond Cognitive Discipleship

Step one, admit you have a problem:

“We conclude that gaining knowledge is collecting information - and we are done - educated, trained, expert, certain

... It has a lot of appeal, because it is quantifiable, measurable, assessable, and commodifiable. It offers control and power. But... the knowledge-as-information vision is actually defective and damaging. It distorts reality and humanness, and it gets in the way of good knowing.”

Esther Meek, A Little Manual for Knowing 

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How do you endure in love?

At the heart of love is incarnation that leads to death. Death is at the center of love. [...] the life of love is not just a state, but a path of righteousness, a direction. [...] Everything we are doing is creating the persons we are becoming. Our life is a trajectory. [And yet we willingly remain] enmeshed in a listless and commitment-phobic spirit... where breaking covenants - not enduring love - is the new norm.  (Adapted from A Loving Life, Paul Miller, ‘Introduction’.)

Judgement without reserve, lackadaisical empathy toward guarding our hearts and our respectable or private sins is on tap - but love without an exit strategy? 

Why is it that emulated God in holy indignation but struggle so much to emulate him in the God-man Jesus, the very one we are claiming to emulate when we take the name Christian?

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The Cruci-Defiled

Over at Blog&Mablog Doug makes some good observations on naming sin, taking a few hits in the process all the while keeping Christ’s self-emptying active love towards us as the framing element. The whole post is good... some highlights that we enjoyed:

Steward your controversies; invest the accusations against you... don’t waste your incoming slanders.

One writer recently pointed out that if you don’t like someone, you call what they did “abuse,” but if you like him you call it “brokenness.”

In controversies over abuse, victims, brokenness, and so on, this is why appeals to justice (i.e. let’s find out what actually happened) so often fall on deaf ears. They don’t care about executing the right prisoner.

We have done this with a peculiar sort of ferocity. It is the kind of ferocity shown when a wicked people are trying to convince you of their shining righteousness.

And so here we now are, in the presence of our three-headed Amer-idol — orgasm, blood, and mammon... confusions have led us to the point where we can make all sorts of things at the same time. We now make love, make war, and make money. We make babies, we kill babies, we sell babies.   

... and we denounce those who resist us as sociopathic monsters.

As Christians, our task is not to find a place in the shadow of this ghoulish idol, some place where we can carve out a space where we can live peacefully. No, our assigned task is to topple the idol, and never to make our peace with it.

Think of this mission as a coal train, half a mile long, steadily approaching its destination. Think of the shrill opposition as someone organizing a coalition of about a hundred dogs to bark at the train. Or, rather, about ten of the dogs bark, and the rest of them give their barking quite a number of Facebook licks.

David was attacked with his sins, but he was not attacked because of them.

When some of your friends are foolish enough to believe the flurry of lies, rejoice and be glad...  When you have a great testimony, Jesus says that you ought to be careful. You are probably doing something wrong. You should at least check.

So no, there is nothing to fix. No, not at all. This is what we are called to. Jesus died outside the camp, and He died in a contemptible place. We are not told to bring that cross of His inside the city limits, silverplate it, and start leaving baskets of fruit in front of it. We are not told to bring that gibbet in so that we might make it fully respectable. We are told, expressly told, to go outside the camp to join Him there. “Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach” (Heb. 13:13). Having to bear His reproach is not the sign of a broken play. This is God’s play.

The world loves pointing a finger, loves creating victims, loves picking at the brokenness, and loves shouting at all the despicable sociopaths. Far easier than what the cross invites them to. 

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Aside from God himself,

"...the duty and happiness of every other being is placed in being derivative, in reflecting like a mirror. ... it leaves no room for “creativeness” even in a modified or metaphorical sense. Our whole destiny seems to lie in the opposite direction, in being as little as possible ourselves, in acquiring a fragrance that is not our own but borrowed, in becoming clean mirrors filled with the image of a face that is not ours. . . . The highest good of a creature must be creaturely—that is, derivative or reflective...”. (C.S. Lewis, ‘Christianity and Literature’ in Christian Reflections, ed. Hooper 1967, p.6) 

as quoted by Jonathan Grant in Divine Sex: A Compelling Vision for Christian Relationships in a Hyper-Sexualized Age, Brazo Press, 2015, p.51)

[reclaimingatonement-blog]

The Hole in the Tchividjian Gospel

A Russian brother from Optina (Leo) once said that, “The action of grace never leads anyone to despair, but grants the gift of tenderness, joy, long-suffering and spiritual peace.” 

It remains odd to us that an organization named GRACE  that claims to be rooted in God’s grace (Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment) is so unwilling to recognize genuine grace being shown to or deeply and restoratively experienced by those who need it most.

The more the Tchividjians act out on social media, pointing their fingers at everyone else, the more convoluted and silly things seem to become for the rest of us sheep. Why is that?

[reclaimingatonement-blog]

For Everyone Except the CHOMOs...

Douglas Wilson hit his stride and is showing no signs of fatigue. Today’s post, The Only Kind of Gospel There Is, is pointed but still worthy of note. In fact, we would say that the last five posts (including this one) are some of the best that we have ever seen from Doug. We encourage you to pause now, click on the hyperlink above and read it, soak it in and go and do likewise.

Toby Sumpter has weighed in on Lynch Mobs. His post is brilliant also. Fantastic! Typical Toby, measured and thorough, yet soaked in pastoral expediency, as are his other reflections that you can read here and here (in chronological order for your benefit).

Why does all this matter?

First:  Social justice is more than soup kitchens, agrarian missions, radical tithing and simplistic living. Social justice is loving the sick, the genuinely sick and helping them lean into the Gospel in all of life, even the awkward less savory parts.

Second:  It speaks to the lunacy of our culture in general and the American church in particular to execute trial by internet and the propensity to judge without having all the facts first.

Lastly:  it addresses, squarely the dual standard of what a victim is and how pseudo-gospels give birth to further victimization, perpetuate a victim mindset and prevent genuine Gospel growth and healing.

Read, reflect, read again and share… then, if necessary, change… and live out the Gospel to all who need healing, redemption and restoration. What Doug and Toby are saying is the real deal. It's all or nothing.

Christ did not come to minister to the healthy - but the sick. And as much as we might not like it, the church is the body of Christ, the context (the hospital) in which he administers his healing. Apart from the church there is no salvation, no healing, no means of grace. Why would we exclude anyone from it?

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Life by Death

"Jesus has swallowed up death, and one day—as Paul says—we will be swallowed up by life." - Jonathan Grant

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Beyond Platitudes and Wordsmithing: Standing Up for the Gospel and a True Ministry of Mercy

Over the years we have taken issue with Doug Wilson on a number of occasions. Ironically, not for the reasons that most have. We have taken significant issues on his stance of remarriage, etc (we do not subscribed to the WCF). That said, we firmly believe that Doug is the lion’s share of the time, an outstanding godly man, full of wisdom and grace - a godly example to be emulated, whose books should be bought, read, studied and distributed widely. A lot of what this man has to say is right on. Odd as it may sound, this applies especially his books on marriage. Doug is a man who lives what he writes.

Lately Doug has been hitting some key points - and he is spot on!

Take a few minutes and read at least these three posts

An Open Letter...

High Mountain Air...

Clean Rain

In the words of Doug, “Amen and Amen!”

Doug, we stand with you and affirm you in your unwavering commitment to TRUE mercy ministry.

[reclaimingatonement-blog]

Unending Repentance

“When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, “Repent,” he intended that the entire life of believers should be [that of] repentance.”

- Martin Luther (First Thesis of the famed 95 Theses)

“Repentance has no end on earth,  because the end of repentance would mean that we had become like Christ in everything.   The least difference between Christ and ourselves requires of us deep repentance.” - Sophrony Sakharov (Words of Life)