More on God’s immutability

I’m preaching this evening on God’s immutability, or as Barth puts it, his constancy. I’ve been helped in thinking about this by a bunch of posts by Bek which you can see here. Thanks Chris for putting me onto this. Here’s a taste:

“God’s gotta be so unchanging that he can become man and still be himself. God’s immutability needs to include Jesus if we’re to be faithful to him. We can’t define immutability in a way that makes Jesus impossible.”

Bek suggests the way forward is with a concept of immutability that doesn’t focus on God’s substance, but his personhood. God is not an unchanging essence but an unchanging personal reality. I agree; and I think this is what is great about the Barth quote below. Barth associates God’s constancy with relational concepts such as God’s self-assurance that enables him to love without losing himself. I think this sense of God’s constancy is what gives rise to one of the pastoral sharp edges of this doctrine: God’s dependability. Though Bek has a bit of a go at this here (I think), I reckon this is precisely where passages like James 1:17 lead you.

Romans 4:25 – “For” or “because of” our justification?

Romans 4:25 is the climax of Paul’s argument throughout the proceeding chapter; and quite a climax it is. Paul says that righteousness will “be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was put to death for our trespasses and raised for our justification (ὃς παρεδόθη διὰ τὰ παραπτώματα ἡμῶν καὶ ἠγέρθη διὰ τὴν δικαίωσιν ἡμῶν). “

What’s really interesting here (as I’ve commented on before), is the connection of justification with Jesus’ resurrection. Paul seems to be saying that our justification is achieved by Christ’s resurrection.This is interesting because our normal way of speaking is of our justification being a function of Christ’s death (which has obvious biblical support, e.g. Romans 5:9).

However, at this point some query the translation of Romans 4:25; and at the risk of alienating my few readers, I want to enter into this a little, because I think it’s important. The argument goes that the normal translation of dia plus the accusative is not “for” but “because of”. Thus, Romans 4:25 should read that Christ was handed over to death because of our sins and raised because of our justification (so NASB). This is then explained to mean that Christ’s resurrection demonstrated the effectiveness of his death: he was raised because his death had done it’s work.

Now, I do not wish to deny that dia plus accusative normally means “because of” in a causative sense. But it does not have to mean this. In fact, dia plus accusative can also mean “because of” in the sense of “for the sake of” or “in order to effect”. A good example of this is the clause in the Greek Nicene Creed “for us and for our salvation he came down from heaven” (δι’ ἡμᾶς τοὺς ἀνθρώπους καὶ διὰ τὴν ἡμετέραν σωτηρίαν κατελθόντα ἐκ τῶν οὐρανῶν). In both cases the English “for” translates a dia plus accusative and means something like “for the sake of”. Many commentators also support the traditional translation “for” in Romans 4:25  (e.g. Douglas Moo, Michael Bird), and it is clearly grammatically possible.

In favour of this kind of translation in Romans 4:25 are also the potentially problematic theological implications of “because of”. Do we really want to say that Christ was raised because we were justified? Doesn’t this make Christ’s fate subject to our fate, rather than the other way around?

Accepting the traditional translation, however, does mean being willing to explore Paul’s linking of justification with resurrection. As I’ve suggested before, I think this is a very helpful approach, and one that makes a lot of sense of of some other NT passages (2 Tim. 3:16; John 16:8-10).

I believe that in Romans 4:25 Paul is indeed teaching that our justification is completed through Christ’s resurrection. To translate a little more fluidly: Christ was handed over to death to deal with our sins and raised in order to effect our justification.

The salvation of your souls?

1 Peter 1:9 speaks of the joy of obtaining the salvation of your souls (psychôn). But what does “soul” mean here? Is this a throwback to good old Platonism? We should note, though, that in chapter 4 verse 19 Peter exhorts his readers who are suffering to “entrust their souls to a faithful creator, while continuing to do good”. This suggests to me that reading this with a platonic soul-body distinction is not going to win the day. Indeed, the NRSV translates this bit simply as “entrust themselves“. I reckon this is on the right track. I think when we read “soul” we should more readily see something like “life” or “self”. My soul is who I am. As such, my soul is not the same thing as my body—I am indeed more than my body. Yet my soul is not some separate substance to my body that means my body doesn’t matter. My soul is who I am, and though who I am is not the same thing as my body, who I am finds expression in embodiment. My body is the shape my soul most properly takes. Here’s N. T. Wright on this:

[Psyche] is in any case… a multivalent term in the Judaism of the period, and within early Christianity. It cannot be pressed for a Platonic meaning… The most we might say is that it here (i.e. in 1 Peter 1:9) serves to denote, not indeed an immortal element which all human beings automatically possess, a ’soul’ which looks forward to the great day when it will be freed from physicality, but that aspect of the human being, renewed secretly and inwardly, which carries the promise that is to be worked out in the entire human person. (The Resurrection of the Son of God, 466).

Looking again at Jesus

Over on Nothing New Under the Sun, Byron has just finished a great series of posts reflecting on John 1:1–14. Here is a taster:

God surprises us by speaking a word that is far less alien than we might have expected. And yet its very familiarity – its human face, ten fingers and forty-six chromosomes – makes it quite possible to disregard. The light of the world shines in our darkness and we – overlook it. The Word became flesh and moved into our neighbourhood and we – treat it like any other neighbour: with polite inattention. I don’t know about you, but what usually happens when someone new moves into our building is you each nod and smile, maybe introduce yourself, and then proceed to ignore each other as much as possible. If we let you get on with your life, you’ll let us get on with ours. Is this how we treat Jesus? Have we learned to not be too inquisitive, to limit our hospitality to the surface so all we see is our own lives mirrored back? Perhaps we are so easily bored with ourselves that when one comes who is flesh like us, we assume he too is boring. We are content with superficial relationships and so look superficially and do not see anything but the ordinary.

The final post, with links to the whole series, is here. Check it out.

The obedience of faith

I have been thinking a lot about obedience lately, and its relation to salvation. So I thought I would post two fascinating quotes. The first is from Douglas J. Moo, commenting on James 2:12. The second is from Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

“[T]he idea that Christians will be judged on the basis of conformity to the will of God expressed in Christ’s teaching is found in many places in the NT… God’s gracious acceptance of us does not end our obligation to obey him; it sets it on a new footing. No longer is God’s law a threatening, confining burden. For the will of God now confronts us as a law of liberty—an obligation we discharge in the joyful knowledge that God has both “liberated” us from the penalty of sin and given us, in his Spirit, the power to obey his will. To use James’s own description, this law is an “implanted word”, “written on the heart”, that has the power to save us (Js. 1:21).” (Douglas J. Moo, The Letter of James, Pillar NTC, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000, 117)

“When the Bible speaks of following Jesus, it is proclaiming a discipleship which will liberate mankind from all man-made dogmas, from every burden and oppression, from every anxiety and torture which afflicts the conscience. If they follow Jesus, men escape from the hard yoke of their own laws, and submit to the kindly yoke of Jesus Christ. But does this mean that we ignore the seriousness of his commands? Far from it. We can only achieve perfect liberty and enjoy fellowship with Jesus when his command, his call to absolute discipleship, is appreciated in its entirety. Only the man who follows the command of Jesus single-mindedly, and unresistingly lets his yoke rest upon him, finds his burden easy, and under its gentle pressure receives the power to persevere in the right way.”

(Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, xxxii).

I think what I most appreciate about these quotes is that they emphasize the changed character of Christian obedience. God’s commandments are no longer a source of anxiety and failure; but of freedom and delight:

“Your decrees are my heritage forever; they are the joy of my heart.” (Psalm 119:111)

Love is a feeling

“Love is a verb”. It’s a common enough line; and it seems to make all the commands in the Bible about love—perhaps especially, “husbands love your wives”—a bit more do-able. Love is not a feeling that we can’t control; it’s about action, decision, doing stuff…

Oliver O’Donovan writes:

Love… carries no direct implication of action. Christians heedful of St John remember, of course, that love is attested by action: “let us not love in word or speech but in deed and truth.” Inactive or idle love is illusory. But love is not the same thing as act, as will is. Love, rather, is an attitudinal disposition which gives rise to various actions without being wholly accounted for by any of them. The object of love is not an act of our own, but simply—to use an Augustinian phrase again—the “enjoyment” of its object; and “enjoyment” is not the same thing as something we do, but of a relation in which we stand. In enjoyment, the object is simply “there for us”, which is what makes the difference between enjoyment and “use”, where the object is put to the service of some project. Love, whatever actions it gives rise to, is contemplative in itself, rejoicing in the fact that its object is there, not wanting to do anything “with” it. And so love can be described in passive terms, as in Augustine’s famous metaphor: “My weight is my love, by which I am drawn in whatever direction I go…” (Common Objects of Love, 16)

I wonder what you make of this. It seems to me that this is a truer description of love. Love for God does not simply mean doing things for him; it encompasses words like “adoration” and “delight”. Perhaps this makes a command like “Love the Lord your God” or “Love your wife” a little less easy to feel like we’ve got on top of. Perhaps this is a good thing.

Justification — A little more

Thanks to those who have made comments about this last post, both in person and on the blog.

I thought I should mention a book which I had known of but had not looked at until today: Michael F. Bird’s The Saving Righteousness of God (Paternoster, 2007). Bird (an Australian!) argues in detail and at length, and far more clearly than I did, that justification is linked to Christ’s resurrection, and that we are reckoned righteous by participating in Christ’s righteousness.

I look forward to thinking and talking more about these issues in the future. But for now, let us all be very thankful for our Lord Jesus Christ, “who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification” (Rom. 4:25).

What does justification mean?

There is a lot of talk these days about the Christian doctrine of justification. For what it’s worth, here is what I think (at least, this is my best shot).

Our justification has do with our being included in Jesus Christ’s exaltation. To be justified is to share in God’s judgment on Jesus in the resurrection and ascension. Jesus Christ has been exalted to the right hand of God—”vindicated” (edikaiôthê, 1 Tim. 3:16)—and because we are in Him, we are justified. This is why Saint Paul says that Christ “was handed over to death for our sins and raised for our justification” (Romans 4:25). To be justified is to share in God’s justification of Jesus.

We must be clear that this happens only through Christ’s death. It is only by His dying our death, dying in our place, that we can be made right with God: “we have been justified by his blood” (Romans 5:9). This is how our justification is achieved; but what it is to be justified is to be exalted with Christ. We may express it this way: Christ died our death, so that we could share in his life. Christ suffered our condemnation so that we could enjoy his exaltation, his right standing with God and life (justification).

This understanding allows a number of fruitful connections between theological ideas. For one thing, it links the doctrine of justification with Paul’s deep theology about being in Christ. Our justification is in Christ in the sense that we are lifted up and exalted in Him. This also clarifies what we mean by language of “Christ’s righteousness”. Talk of “Christ’s righteousness” can sound a bit funny when it’s like a quality He has which we get some of. Yet, we can sensibly speak of receiving Christ’s righteousness, because we are included, by grace, in God’s judgment on him as righteous. To be justified is to share in Christ’s righteousness.

I think this understanding of justification also frees us to better understand the questions of how and when we are justified. Because we are justified in Christ, we have been justified already, in his resurrection and exaltation—it is primarily a past event, something that has happened already and so we can be confident in; and yet, we are also waiting for this reality to be revealed, which will happen on the last day—there is a future element to our vindication in Christ (the final judgment).

And finally, we are justified through being united to Christ; and we are united to Christ by faith. Yet there is no way to be in Christ without being transformed in Him, without, that is, being made righteous, just as He is.

Peterson on the soul

In his book Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, Eugene Peterson makes the following interesting comments:

“Soul”… is the most personal term we have for who we are. The term “soul” is an assertion of wholeness, the totality of what it means to be a human being. “Soul” is a barrier against reduction, against human life reduced to biology and genitals, culture and utility, race and ethnicity. It signals an interiority that permeates all exteriority, an invisibility that everywhere inhabits visibility. “Soul” carries with it resonances of God-created, God-sustained, and God-blessed. It is our most comprehensive term for designating the core being of men and women. (p.36)

Then, in a note, Peterson remarks:

It is unfortunate that the word “soul” has deteriorated in popular speech to convey a kind of “spiritual” abstraction from real life, an ethereal otherworldly something-or-other that is remote from everyday stuff. But it is too good a word to abandon to the barbarians. The rich associations that have accumulated among us from centuries of Scripture reading and Christian conversation need to be preserved. (p.344)

I am inclined to agree with Peterson on the whole here. I think the word “soul” gives us something we can’t really get elsewhere, and enriches our ministry to people. But I wonder if the word is too far gone. What do you think of Petersons claim? Do we need this word? Do we lose something without it?

The danger of caring a lot about little things

What would you say are the real dangers for those Christians (and I count myself in this number) who would describe themselves as evangelicals? If Jesus were to come amongst us, what aspects of our faith and culture might be in danger of coming under his rebuke?

The more I think about it, the more I feel that the answer is something along the following lines: in our good desire to be faithful, and in particular, to hold onto right doctrine, we may end up caring far more about theological minutia than the things that really matter.

We may, that is, become Pharisees. One of Jesus’ most cutting criticisms of the Pharisees and scribes went like this:

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!” (Matt. 23:23-24 || Lk. 11:42)

The mistake the Pharisees made, that is, was to focus so much on the intricacies of obedience that the whole shape of their devotion was distorted. In seeking after the periphery, they lost the centre.

We are in no danger of being distracted by herbs. But perhaps we are in danger of losing our centre — justice, mercy, faith, the love of God — for the sake of theological intricacies: perhaps perfectly precise use of language for atonement theology, or the correct idea of “worship”, or, perhaps most of all, women’s ministry. I believe it is possible to be so concerned with the theological rights and wrongs of these issues that we neglect, perhaps simply through inattention, the core of what it is to be Christians. Let us not be fooled: this is a great danger. Woe to us if we strain out our doctrinal gnats, but end up ignoring camel-sized conspicuous absences in our faith.

We should also note that Jesus does not say these specific things don’t matter. He just says they’re not the main game. They don’t come first. And if we care more about them than anything else, or even if we just think about them more than everything else, then we’re in trouble.

May our Lord keep us from this hypocrisy of claiming to be deeply faithful, but actually being pathetically hollow.