Righteousness, Only Righteousness

How should Bible believing Christians, committed to the way of Jesus, respond to the serious ethical challenges facing us today?  In this extended reflection, 'Righteousness, Only Righteousness',  three essential ingredients are proposed for that process.

'Righteousness, Only Righteousness', by Jim Purves, is freely available in the 'Resources' section of the Baptist Union of Scotland's website or alternatively can be obtained, in a Kindle version, from the Amazon online store.

A Bighearted Weekend

Spent a meaningful weekend with evangelist, Chris Duffett. I have come to greatly respect this man and his careful thinking and generous spirit. He encourages Christians to find courage in reaching out to others, in ways that gives them confidence in communicating Jesus and that are simple and effective.

It really hit me that we live in a society where people are, generally, shy and a bit scared of other folk. This is true for all categories of people, Christian or not. But people are lovely and precious. Chris' method of helping Christians to cross over that fear barrier, in order to communicate and express the love of God for people, is inspiring.

It leaves me with much to ponder and also implement. Expressing the Good News to others, that they might become disciples: it can never stop at 'theory level'. It is something to act upon for every one of us. 

Ethics as Worship

We have to see worship as being more than the act of praise, in song and in dance.

Worship needs to be understood as our participation in the Mission of God; our honouring God in expressing the practices that arise from communion with Him. We see this call to this active participation in the character of God in Scripture. It is at the heart of the Law (Deuteronomy 11.22), the Prophets (Isaiah 58) and the  Writings (Psalm 146). It is in the practice of expressing Transforming Presence, Embodied Instruction and Constructive Community through pursuing personal Integrity of Being, Doing and Proclaiming the Character and Mission of God.

To understand the essence of worship being the way we walk in our lives, we need to turn both to the teachings of Jesus and also the Mosaic Law: where the location of worship and the regulations guiding us are expressly laid out for the practices of daily living.

In the life and teachings of Jesus; his undertaking of healing and acts of ministry on the Sabbath, as well as eating the grains in the field, we see the outworking of worship and Sabbatical rest in His ongoing communion with God and the ministry that issues out of that. Indeed, we see Jesus reorientate an understanding of Temple, and worship 'at the place of God's choosing', in terms of His teaching to the disciples that reorientates them to see His body as the temple that God will raise on the third day. Participation in His body, in His life, becomes the central act of worship. An understanding of self, redefined by the Transforming Presence, Embodied Instruction and Constructive Community that is in Jesus Christ Himself.

The Knowable God

It is occasionally heard that God is, ultimately, unknowable. I disagree. I hear in the Gospel and see in the Scripture quite a different story.

There, we meet the declaration that God is knowable when we recognise Him in the life, ministry and victory of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the εικον of God. Looking at Jesus is to look at God. Listening to Jesus is listening to God.

Isn't God Trinity? Yes. But the reason our forefathers developed a doctrine of Trinity was because they recognised and confessed the Divinity of Jesus. Best to get the order the right way round, eh?

So, knowing God is knowing Jesus. Now the next question: 'how well do you and I know Jesus; and what do we need to do in order to get to know Him better?' Now, that's something to work on.

Discipleship

Discipleship. It begins with this and ends with this. Our worship: our Christian life; our ethics; our Evangelism: all are based on this and grow out of this.

Belonging to Jesus and becoming like Jesus in what we are and do and say.  It all boils down to this. Anything else is at best a distraction and at worst an irrelevancy.

Condoning & Condemning

But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are an aroma that brings death; to the other, an aroma that brings life. And who is equal to such a task? (2 Corinthians 2:14-16 NIV)

A refusal to condone is not the same as an insistence to condemn. The Christian life, from the first moments of repentance and initial steps of faith, is a story of change. This journey leads us through a path where there is transformation and the developing of virtues which, through our death to self and resurrection with Christ, are exercised and improved upon in our lives.

But there has to be an intentionality in this. There has to be a self- conscious humbling of self towards service and obedience to our heavenly Father. It does not take place automatically. It has to be deliberate and determined.

This is why Christians, while not condemning those involved in same-sex relationships, should not condone same-sex relationships. As much as addiction to drink or drugs, or gluttony that leads  to obesity, it is not a healthy activity. We are not to lead others into sin, or encourage sin in their lives.

All of us are called on the journey or transformation and change. All of us are called to repent and be renewed. We are not to place others under condemnation. But neither are we to condone that which is patently named as wrong in the sight of God.

Abandonment and decline

Once the narratives of Scripture are abandoned, and the ways of the Covenant Community departed from, there is only death and decline. But where the testimony of Scripture is held to and the way of  Christ pursued, there is life through the path of death to self and resurrection power in the Holy Spirit.

Sunday last was Pentecost. The power of holiness, consecration and revelation of the power of the Age to Come is here now, for those who would receive it and walk with it. But it does not belong to those who accomodate themselves to the decline, decadence and dissolution that sadly marks our society today.

There is a time to rejoice. And there is a time to mourn and sing the song of lament. Today.

Marcion Revisited and Abominations Entertained: Theological Ingredients of a toxic cocktail within the Scottish context

Marcion, a second century bishop, was excommunicated by the Roman See in the second century AD. He could not reconcile his reading of the 'loving' God of the New Testament with his reading of the God of the Old Testament. Was Marcion right?

Introduction

What we have here is of something of a prequel to the discussion on ‘same-sex marriage’. What follows in this paper is built on a simple supposition; yet one that, in my estimation, is often lost sight of when Christians turn to discussing ethics. That supposition is that our God is a living, self-revealing God. He approaches us in and through Jesus Christ. And in approaching us He would transform us, expose and expunge sin, deal with unholiness and rebellion; and realise for us and in us salvation, holiness and righteousness. Furthermore, in coming to us, He comes to us in the situations, circumstances, cultures and contexts in which we are placed. Fundamentally, this paper seeks to build on what it means to meet with this living God, to be changed by Him and to live for Him. We look at what this might imply in reconstructing a basis for Christian ethics that might begin to help us engage with the challenge that is before us.

Apologies to those who might have expected a paper on Judges 21, as first intimated. For a copy of that paper, first delivered at a conference at IBTS in Prague in 2011, please refer online to http://audiosermonupdate.blogspot.co.uk/ 

We will engage with this challenge in three stages.

In the first instance, we will reflect on what it means to be embraced by God. We identify three components that might be looked for in forming and shaping a Biblically Christian approach to ethics. We will argue that an adequate and practical Christian ethic for today's church needs to recognise and re-engage with all three of these components.

Secondly, in acknowledging that God comes to us in the situations, circumstances, cultures and contexts in which we are placed, we will identify some problems that occur in the Scottish context. We will see how these parochial problems have militated against the development of a Christian ethic that adequately synchronises the three essential components, laid out in our first stage of argument, within Scottish ecclesial theology.

I here distinguish ecclesial theology from academic theology. Scottish academic theology, undertaken in a University or further educational setting, has and continues to make significant contribution to developments in theological understanding. Until recently it became, through the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, significantly detached from the ordinary practice of Scottish, ecclesial life. Ecclesial theology is what is engaged in at a congregational level; for wherever God is spoken of, theology is being discussed.

Thirdly, in acknowledging how deficient and limiting theological considerations have affected our use of language and concepts, and how our use of language should properly acknowledge how it is that God chooses to embrace us, we will offer some working definitions of language that might help us in our approach to the present debate.

Part 1.   EMBRACED BY GOD

It is our contention that an adequate Christian ethic in the Scottish context needs to be shaped afresh by God's Transforming Presence, informed by a Christ-centred understanding of Embodied Instruction and be rooted in the context of Constructive Community.

1.1  Transforming Presence

The Holy Scriptures anchor an understanding of Christian devotion, and the ethic that arises from it, in a meeting with the transforming presence of God. It is there in the theophany of Sinai (Exodus 33-34), where Moses is captured by the glory and goodness of God: a seminal meeting for understanding the transforming, irradiating effect of an experimental meeting with God.

The Sinai theophany of Exodus 33.6-7 is hugely significant in showing the transitive, active nature of God's Being as revealed to us: the reality of the Economic Trinity expressed in Oneness and integrity of action. Meeting God is not a spectator sport. It is to enter the transformative power of His presence. Moses is unable to bear confrontation with the full glory of God, but is confronted instead with the revelation of God's goodness. Here, God describes Himself all in 'doing' words: 'compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in merciful love and faithfulness, showing His love to a thousand generations and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin'. It is the kinetic power of the self-revelation of this God of Love that is astounding. Every attribute of God is identifiable as something that can be replicated in and through humanity, made in the Image and likeness of God.

This significance of this experimental meeting with God is taken up in the writings of both the Apostle Peter (2 Peter 1.3-4) and the Apostle Paul (2 Corinthians 3.17-18). The importance of meeting with God in a way that is transformative is thereafter regularly rehearsed in Christian tradition, from the writings of the Church Fathers such as Gregory of Nyssa, through to post Reformation times and the writings of John Wesley; all of which have helped shape the development of contemporary evangelicalism, the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements and post-modern, experimental spirituality.

What is important to note, for the purposes of this essay, is that this experimental meeting with God is authenticated by its transforming effect. Those who are truly met with by God are impacted by and through meeting with Him. Meeting with the living God cannot but be transformative. It is, whilst being an existential experience, possessed of both formation and command. God meets with us in His own Being, exposing us and confronting us with His own missional identity.  God would reshape and remould us afresh in His likeness through embracing us, in our humanity, in and through Jesus Christ. It is this eliciting of a confession of Jesus Christ as 'Lord' that marks the purposeful presence of the Holy Spirit, distinguishing the Holy Spirit from other ecstatic or spiritual experiences.

Pastorally and personally, it is my observation that existential awareness of, or a conviction regarding the existence or love of God towards us, is not the same as meeting with God in a way that personally transforms us. We can engage in 'God talk' without being affected by a God who would embrace us. Nor is this distinction between meeting with God in a way that personally transforms us and engaging in ‘God talk’ something that is consistent or constant through the Christian life. Just as it is possible to be met with by God in a transforming way after having been previously persuaded or convinced of His existence and of any number of doctrines, it is also possible to have been met with God and then, thereafter, to move away and retreat from ongoing communion with Him. Why? Because the real embrace of God is transforming. It challenges and can even traumatise us in our deepest parts. Sometimes we start with being existentially religious then become real with God. Sometimes we start with being real with God and then become reduced to being simply religious, in form and words. Transformation is not comfortable.

This recognition, that a true meeting with God can be nothing other than transformative, is embodied in the 2nd Declaration of Principle of our Baptist Union of Scotland. There it states that the administration of Believers' Baptism is for 'those who have professed repentance towards God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ'. Repentance and faith are not simply actions in a sequence of choice. They are together a response evoked from meeting with the Living, Holy God. Subscribing to the supposition that there is a God, or that you are forgiven or loved by God, is not to be confused with faith. Faith, as the action of recognising and consciously embracing participation in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, arises out of being confronted with the reality of Jesus Christ. A faith that is not accompanied by recognition of God's call to repentance is no faith at all.

1.2  Embodied Instruction

The development of ethics in Western culture has been largely founded on an idealised or cultic systems of virtues or values born out of both Greek and Roman pagan traditions. But what we are presented with in the Hebrew system of the Covenant people of God is something quite different. That is, the character of the instruction given to God's people is reflective of the very character of God himself. The redemptive actions of God seek to lead His people into a separate and distinctive identity, marking them out from other peoples: I am the Lord, who brought you up out of Egypt to be your God; therefore be holy, because I am holy. (Leviticus 11:45 NIVUK). It is when we read the Mosaic Laws in this light that we can begin to make sense of them. They are not buillt on a philosophical system. They express the very character of God to a people within a culture and context. They are the indicatives of embodied instruction, to be pursued in the particularities of every day life.

While distinguishing and preferring a Biblical base from an Aristotelian foundation to ethics, we are indebted to the significant contributions in developing convictional ethics of Alastair McIntyre, who in 1981 first published 'After Virtue', emphasising the importance of Aristotle's grasp of virtue ethics formed and developed within human society; and the work of baptistic theologian James McClendon, whose methodology is especially useful in mapping the convictions associated with practices formed through living in contact and community with others. 

McIntyre, in the Preface of the 3rd edition of 'After Virtue' [2007], acknowledges that ethical systems are further shaped and influenced by biological factors. Ethical systems are complicated because life is complicated. This insight, that any ethical system is formed through the interaction of a number of different levels of enquiry, is further developed by the baptist ethicist, Glen Stassen, in his recent publication, 'A Thicker Jesus: Incarnational Discipleship in a Secular Age'. Stassen notes the complexity of systems and how biological, preferential, ideological and communitarian factors all contribute to the developing of ethical and moral systems, adding, 'This interaction of God's continuous, living interaction with the basic building blocks of creation suggests something more like God's interactive persuasion than total domination' [A Thicker Jesus’, Kindle Edition, 2012, Loc 2228].

Just as Peter expresses this redemptive, covenantal emphasis in his thinking (1 Peter 1.15), so too Paul sees the embodiment of the Mosaic Law coming to full expression in the life of Jesus Himself. The Law, like a tutor, leads us to Christ (Galatians 3.24). In this we glimpse how, for Peter and Paul as for the Gospel writers, the identity of God expounded in a redemptive pattern among humankind is only fully realised in Jesus Christ. In Jesus Christ we meet with an ethic rooted in human, volitional behaviour that willingly and worshipfully longs to conform to God. In Him, it is embodied instruction: an ethic presented in and patterned by Jesus Christ Himself.

It is easy to miss the emphasis conveyed in Philippian Hymn in the repeated assertion that it is the humanity of Jesus that we are here dealing with: taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself (Philippians 2:7b-8a NIVUK) The kenotic action, however else it is to be interpreted, must also include this humbling and willingness of Jesus in His humanity to serve: submission to the will and way of God expressed in and through humanity, patterned for all humanity.

God's transforming presence constrains and calls. It is doing more than persuading or producing principles, values or virtues. The Being of God come to us produces a reaction. The transforming presence of this God constrains us, carrying us forward in communion with the mission of God Himself, caught up in His Being. Where these drivers of God's transforming presence confront and call us towards the image and likeness of God, these same drivers find their greatest fruitfulness in the place where God fully embraces and conjoins Himself to our humanity: in His Word embodied among us, in the person of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. It is here that we see the heart of embodied instruction. It lies in knowing love, entering participation in Christ; and finds full expression in the pursuit of service through self-sacrifical submission to God's will and way.

It is this pursuit of service of God and of service towards others in Jesus' name, submitting to the revealed will and way of God, that constitutes the pursuit of Biblically defined justice: where Old Testament understandings of justice and righteousness can, because of Jesus Christ, be telescoped together into one New Testament Greek word, 'justice / righteousness', δικαιοσυνη. It is hard to improve upon Old Testament theologian Walter Brueggemann's definition of righteousness as, 'Yahweh's ready capacity to be present in situations of trouble and to intervene powerfully and decisively in the interest of rehabilitation, restoration and well being' [‘Theology of the Old Testament’, Fortress Press, 1997, p 130]. We would contend that 'justice / righteousness' within the Old Testament carries a wider connotation, beyond a simply forensic sense, which would connote one or more of (1) establishing God's embodied instruction now; (2) our pursuing God's embodied instruction now; (3) future judgment as to whether God's embodied instruction has been expressed or pursued.

God does not communicate to us through a series of propositions. He communicates through the story of a people, Israel; a person, Jesus Christ; and the body of that person, the Church. God's truth is found in embodied instruction, purposefully present and empowered by the Holy Spirit for a people that pursue God's justice and righteousness as patterned and expressed in the person of Jesus Christ. Here is embodied instruction found, as it is found also in His body; that is, the Constructive Community of those living by faith in Jesus Christ: a people purposefully participating in the life, ministry and victory of Jesus Christ.

1.3  Constructive Community

Community stands at the very heart of the Gospel. It is in and through what is shared with us, interpersonally, that we discover what love is and how it transforms relationships. We might speak of communities as being either thick or thin. Communities that are thicker tend to have a clearer perception and readier enactment of shared values and ethics which are character forming, in ways that can and do change people. Thinner communities, while they may share aspirational values or virtues, are less likely to really change people. They share ideas and common language; perhaps sing the same songs; and possibly share little else. They are more likely to 'talk the talk' than 'walk the walk'. Thin communities are more likely to be atomised or fragmented communities with poorer communal lives.

The distinction of 'thick and thin' in ethics is found in the work of political philosopher Michael Walzer [‘Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at home and abroad’, Notre Dame, 1994] and developed in relation to the constructive ethics of community by Parush Parushev. Here, we further adapt and develop the use of 'thick and thin' to differentiate between congregational communities that are, through prioritising intentional relationality, thick; and those that are thin: sharing certain values or virtues, emphasising common confessional or ideological affirmations. One of the characteristics of church life is that it is possible to have a congregation that shares a strong, ideological position or is highly attractional in its missional policy but that is, in terms of intentional relationality between members, quite weak: this would properly be called a thin community. Thickness or thinness have little to do with the size of a church.

What we see, within the continuity of Old and New Testaments, is God's commitment to Embodied Instruction finding expression within Constructive Communities that have to be, for that purpose, thick communities. We see this in the Decalogue's emphasis on marrying worship of the Living God to how we live out community relationships, accompanied with concrete practices spelt out in the Mosaic Law at large. The call of God in the Old Testament is towards the constructing and developing of thick communities that own Embodied Instruction.

Old Testament scholar Daniel Block helpfully likens the Decalogue to a 'Bill of Rights', not a set of juridical decrees. The Decalogue helps both to define and develop constructive community. He adds, 'However, unlike modern bills of right, the document does not protect ones own rights but the rights of the next person' [‘NIV Life Application Commentary on Deuteronomy’, 2012, Kindle Edition, p161].

Thicker, constructive community is not easily sustained. It is personally costly, requiring self-sacrifice, demanding humility, calling us to service, forcing us to look and think beyond ourselves with concern for the good of others. Conversely, in present culture we are increasingly witnessing the 'thinning' of Christian communities. The context of owning the shared convictions and practices that build constructive community is weakened, as people know and mix with one another less and less. The antidote is to grasp the need for and pursue afresh the necessary, constructive role of developing thicker communities.

Within our Baptist Union of Scotland, we speak of moving forward in terms of being Intentionally Relational, Unashamedly Missional and Creatively Rooted. As the congregations in our Union continue to journey together, we are committed to developing thicker, constructive community. We emphasise this because it is what the Bible emphasises. We seek to do it this way because this is what we see Jesus doing. It is this context that allows for the development of disciples who, in learning to be intentionally relational, are prepared for being unashamedly missional, reaching out to others from constructive community in acts and words of Christlike service, heralds of the Good News of Jesus Christ, demonstrators and declarers that the breaking in of the Kingdom of God to this present, darkened Age has begun.

It is in the narrative of constructive community, where lives are engaged in being intentionally relational, that we see Embodied Instruction have its intended and proper effect.  It is in the context of constructive community that we can come to understand the significance and meaning of words properly formed by their meaning shaped by culture and context, worked out in shared convictions and practices. Words, within the context of constructive community where the Transforming Presence of God is sought and the Embodied Instruction of the Scriptures is worked out in Jesus' name, are given godly substance and meaning. Words outwith the context of constructive community are susceptible to misappropriation, misuse and even abuse.

Part 2.   Parochial Problems

We can identify problems that are particularly evident in our context under three headings: inherited perspectives; misconstruing Law and Grace; abandoning personhood and affirming individualism.

 2.1  Inherited Perspectives

Looking to the Transforming Presence of the Living God, developing theology through narratives where words and their definition find their fuller meaning in the context of the story of intentionally related lives, would not be primary feature of post-Reformation theology in Scotland. An Aristotelian methodology, categorising theological truths as propositions possessed of universal meaning, quickly became the traditional focus of post-Reformation Scottish, theological enquiry.  Rationalising tendencies within medieval, Western Christendom continued through to find expression in nascent Protestant theologies, as in ‘The Westminster Confession of Faith’. Thomistic, neo-scholasticism, which characterised the development of Reformed theology in Geneva from Beza onwards and which was also present among the British Puritans, did not sit easily with a theological method built on Scriptures speaking of a God who meets us experimentally, in His glory and goodness. A tragic effect of this rationalistic reduction of Biblical Revelation, as it found expression in the Scottish context, was the confusion of God's sovereignty with determinism, as given expression in the logic of double predestination and the logical syllogism, as expressed in ‘The Sum of Saving Knowledge’.

The doctrine of double predestination leads to the fatalistic conclusion that, whether you are destined to heaven or hell, there is nothing you can do about it. It is integral to the thinking of ‘The Westminster Confession of Faith’, which still serves as the subsidiary standard of faith of the main Scottish, Presbyterian denomination, the Church of Scotland. The doctrine finds full expression in the work of the Puritan, William Perkins, 'The Golden Chain'. In 1650 the ‘Westminster Confession of Faith’ was published bound together with another Puritan piece, 'The Sum of Saving Knowledge', which calls upon us to examine our lives to see if the fruit of true of faith are present therein. Contrast this with a pre-Bezan, more Christ-focused Calvinism of the earlier ‘Scots Confession’. A fuller treatment of these important themes in the development of Scottish theology from the Reformation through to the twentieth century is beyond the scope of this paper, but can be found in my earlier works, ‘The Triune God and the Charismatic Movement’, Paternoster, 2004; and ‘How Theology Became Nonsense’, Kindle Edition, 2012.

The quest to substitute theological formulae for the irreducible immediacy of the God whose transforming presence is a consuming fire, quickening awe, fear, love and loathing would, of course, invite reaction. Some reacted by seeking to deconstruct the complexity of such formulaic theologies by searching for conceptual, universal principles or indicators. But to do so they would have to turn away from the Hebraic reality of Biblical revelation, where Transforming Presence and Embodied Instruction find proper expression within Constructive Community.

Marcion appears to have embraced the importance of love not just as a necessary practice of Constructive Community, but sought to establish it as a universalising principle of life. In removing his understanding of love from the context of Constructive Community witnessed to in the Old Testament, reflecting the disruptive reality of pursuing Transforming Presence through Embodied Instruction, Marcion robbed ‘love’ of its proper context and culture and divorced it from the God who gives it meaning, rooted in His redemptive actions. Marcion detached love’ from the God who gives ‘love’ meaning in the midst of humanity, rebellious in sin and raw from the suffering that it brings. He lost sight of the God who had to die on the Cross because He lost sight of the continuity of character of the God revealed both in the Old Testament through to the Old Testament. Marcion looked for a universal principle. But full bodied, Biblical Christianity can offer no principles or doctrines detached from Transforming Presence, Embodied Instruction and Constructive Community, as revealed in both the Old and New Testaments together.

A compelling reason for rejecting confessional statements as an adequate means of communicating truth lies in the testimony of Scripture itself. Firstly, that God Himself has chosen to communicate with us through the fullness of truth embodied in a human person, Jesus Christ. Truth comes to us embodied in a person and, as a preparation to that, in a community constructed for that purpose: Israel. Secondly, when language is detached from the narratives of culture and context it is, in large measure, deprived of meaning. As modern language theorists have well demonstrated, words find their meaning within the context in which they are given expression.

When we take Embodied Instruction seriously, through pursuing the path of being Intentionally Relational, we understand that Biblical words such as 'justice', 'faith' and 'love' can only be given expression and meaning in the pursuit of Embodied Instruction that finds expression in Constructive Community. For without grasping the necessity of weaving together Transforming Presence, Embodied Instruction and Constructive Community, there is no common context in which to use and give expression to these words, as the Bible uses them.

2.2  Misconstruing Law and Grace

Two additional effects of schematising theology need to be considered, as they significantly effect how ecclesial theology has developed in the Scottish context. The first relates to a reading of Paul through Luther and others. The second to the significant influence of JN Derby.

2.2.1  Atonement and the problem of Luther

Where Eastern Christendom has focussed more on the Resurrection and a doctrine of Sanctification, Western Christendom has concentrated more on the Crucifixion and a doctrine of Justification: this would be true of the Western Catholic tradition prior to the Reformation and of both Roman and Protestant traditions thereafter. There is a consequent danger in Western theology that, while an appreciation of the Crucifixion is essential to any Christian theology, an exclusive focus on penal substitution and satisfaction theory obscure our appreciation of other aspects of what transpired with Christ upon the Cross.

I do not dispute the validity of both penal substitution and satisfaction theory and do not here make reference to the debate over imputed righteousness, featuring the prominent New Testament scholars Tom Wright and John Piper. For a fair analysis of that debate, Michael Bird provides an excellent mediating analysis [‘The Saving Righteousness of God’, Paternoster, 2006]. That there are both forensic and substitutionary aspects to a full understanding of Atonement is not here in question.

Basic to a Biblical appreciation of Christ's death and resurrection is that disciples of Jesus Christ are called to participation in Christ's death and resurrection. This is what was symbolised in the early baptistic rituals of the primitive church and so powerfully enacted in our practice of believers' baptism by full immersion. Not only do we confess that Christ died for us, we acknowledge too that we are called to active ownership of and participation in this life of Christ.

Whilst an exposition of the fuller implications of Christ's atoning death and our participation in it are outwith the scope of this paper, these themes are explored and developed at length in the excellent work of New Testament theologian Michael Gorman [‘Cruciformity: Paul's Narrative Spirituality of the Cross’, Eerdmans, 2001; ‘Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification and Theosis in Paul's Narrative Soteriology’, Kindle Edition, 2009].

While this aspect of what Jesus Christ has done for us may be clear to us, there is a huge danger if we allow ourselves to stress the adequacy of Christ’s penal death on the Cross without holding clearly onto what Reformed and Holiness Theologies have traditionally described as a doctrine of Mortification: a willingness to seek the putting to death of fleshliness and sinful propensities within our own lives. Of course, we are fully dependent upon the present power of the Holy Spirit to so do; but unless we pursue this, we can end up by detracting from the power of what transpired on the Cross of Christ. This danger is heightened by an aspect of Martin Luther's theology, which drives a greater wedge between the power of grace and the place of conforming to God's Law than is present in the Reformed tradition. There is a danger with Luther, that Sola Gratia becomes so all encompassing a doctrine that the needful place of our dying to self and living for Christ is lost sight of.

This point is reinforced from an Old Testament perspective by Daniel Block who has recently stressed the importance of the Mosaic Law being understood, Biblically, as a means of grace [‘How I Love Your Torah, O Lord’, Wipf and Stock, 2011, pp 1-20].  Block further explains, 'Of the Reformers Luther tended to read Deuteronomy through the lenses of Paul's rhetorical seemingly antinomian statements. His own debilitating experience of works-righteousness within the Roman Catholic Church contributed significantly to his view of a radical contrast between the law (which kills) and the gospel (which gives life). His emphasis on the dual function of law (civic - to maintain external order on earth; theological - to convict people of sin and drive them to Christ) completely missed the point of Deuteronomy, which presents the law as a gift of grace to the redeemed to guide them in the way of righteousness and lead to life' [‘NIV Life Application Commentary on Deuteronomy’, Kindle Edition, 2012, p 27].

2.2.2  The disrupting effect of Darbyism

If there is a danger that a Lutheran filter can cause us to have a diminished respect for the Old Testament and cause us to be distracted from reading and applying the gracious precepts of the Old Testament Law, this can only  be reinforced under the influence of the early nineteenth century, Irish Anglican clergman, J N Darby.  Derby's idiosyncratic interpretations of the Scriptures gained widespead influence in the early Brethren Movement, being popularised further through vast swathes of North American evangelicalism by the use of the widely distributed Schofield Reference Bible.

The effect of Darby's theology spread far beyond Brethren circles and, through the newly published Schofield Bible, became endemic in emergent Pentecostalism and through other parts of American Evangelicalism from the early twentieth century onwards. A full exploration of both the content and effect of this is to be found in the work of Pentecostal scholar, Matthew Thomson, 'Kingdom Come: Restoring Pentecostal Eschatology' [Deo Publishing, 2010]. Two innovative ideas of Darby that permeated much of North American Evangelicalism were his division of the whole of human history into seven periods, or dispensations; and the notion of the gathering of Christians saints up to God prior to the advent of an Age of Tribulation: the 'rapture' of true believers up into heaven.

The popularity of Darby's teaching beyond his death can largely be attributed to the simple scheme of what became known as Dispensationalism. It allowed the believer to feel secure amidst threatening political, social and economic conditions. Significant to this doctrine was the polarising of Law and Grace, in a manner previously unknown among advocates of Reformed Theology.

Darby stressed the place of Sola Gratia standing in contrast to the need for works of the Law - which were seen as the divine criterion for salvation both during the Mosaic Covenant's dispensation (from Moses to Christ) as well as in the the period between the rapture of the saints of God and the future commencement of the millennium. Darby concluded that the people of Israel are to be the recipients of the earthly Kingdom during the millenium, an era that would see the fulfilment of the prophecies in the Old Testament - as yet unrealised - for the people of Israel. Consequently, the expectation of the saints saved by grace is not a New Heavens and Earth, but an entirely heavenly habitation.

For Darby, there was no mixing of Grace and Works. The teaching of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount was irrelevant for Christians during the dispensation of grace. All that was required was true faith. And anyway, there was no expectation of the saints participating in a renewed creation, here on earth. The saints on earth would be gathered up in the rapture to heaven. The earth would belong to Israel.

2.3  Abandoning Personhood and Affirming Individualism

The third strand of a parochial problem that finds expression in the Scottish context and which would militate against the development of a Christian ethic that adequately synchronises a proper appreciation of Transforming Presence, Embodied Instruction and Constructive Community is the rise of individualism over against a proper appreciation of personhood.

A number of recent theologies of Social Trinity have rehearsed and revisited an understanding of personhood. This, hopefully, will serve to remind us again and again of another Biblical perspective: that persons exist in and through their interpenetrating relationships. Persons belong to plurality. This insight and emphasis stands in stark contrast to a tectonic drift towards individualism and an emphasising of individual rights, stressing the ascendency of liberal democracy and eclipsing a more plural, socially aware system of social democracy.

Glen Stassen explores these issues more fully in looking at the relation between Democracy and Human Rights, with specific reference to the recent history of North America [A Thicker Jesus, Chapter 5]. And the phrase, 'There is no such thing as Society', has been much quoted (or misquoted) in the British context on the recent death of a prominent politician.

To the growth of individualism, we must also add the emergence of Decisionism: by which I mean the act of identifying salvation with the momentary response of an individual. Decisionism in the nineteenth century, finding expression in an evangelistic method popularised by Finney and Moody, effectively ignited afresh in the post-War period in the 1955-56 Scottish Crusade of Billy Graham, powerfully called people to faith by making a decision to believe in Jesus Christ. For many, however, the responsibility of the individual to make a decision for and respond to the message of the Gospel, whether by means of ‘the Sinner’s Prayer’ or by some other indication of decision, would become the ‘default setting’ of what both the Gospel and eternal salvation is truly about, eclipsing crucial criteria such as ‘repentance’ and ‘fruitfulness’.

Ally this to a growing emphasis within Church Growth theory from around the same period, evaluating success in multiplied numbers present in gatherings, whether in thick or the thinnest of communities, and it would become so much easier to lose sight of Transforming Presence, Embodied Instruction and Constructive Community.

2.4  A Toxic Cocktail

What are some of the indicators of an ecclesial theology unintentionally creating a toxic cocktail? We might suggest some of the ingredients are as follows:

• Confessions of personal transformation and repentance diminish; testimonies of individual satisfaction and personal decision increase.
• Old Testament Law as a gift of grace lost sight of; salvation ‘by faith alone’ misunderstood and misrepresented.
• Superficial thin community replacing onerous thick community.
• Truth recast as proposition and ethics recast as theory.
• Prophecy interpreted more as future-telling, and less as exhortation to faithful witness marked by self-sacrifice and service.

 Before we can begin to develop constructive community, we need acknowledge that the community is first constituted by bringing Transforming Presence and Embodied Instruction among people. To help change others, I must first be changed and in a vital, spiritual relationship with God. I am continually turning to Father, asking Him to irradiate me in the presence of His Being, rooting me in the humanity of His Son and enabling me, by the infusing power of the Holy Spirit, to become more like Jesus.

This was true of both the Old Testament experience of Israel and that of the disciples, shaped and changed by Jesus. A developmental journey, painfully learning the implications of having God with us. A journey where the Transforming Presence produces transformed people. A journey involving blessing, rebellion, discipline, wrath, repentance and renewal. And always covered by the intense, covenant love of the God who is a consuming fire.

We meet God fully in Jesus Christ. God does not give us values or principles, divorced from the specificity of culture and context. The Incarnation and the expression of all truth and grace in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, a 1st Century Jew, is adequate demonstration of this fact. As is the specificity of command in the Mosaic Law, which we also recognise as a gift of God’s grace to His people, God demonstrating His grace in creating, commanding and constructing a community of people characterised by Embodied Instruction.

What we see, through the continuity of Old Testament and New Testament witness, is Transforming Presence leading to Embodied Instruction, expressed in explicit practices designed to form and build community in a positive and constructive manner. Both Jesus and Paul’s repudiation of certain cultic or ceremonial practices originally contained in Mosaic Law was in the context of building and affirming the essential characteristics of Constructive Community: reaffirming the drivers of grace, compassion, love and faithfulness, mercy and forgiveness. But these are always concretised in a way that builds community in a way that is healthy and functional, where God’s rule is found in the synchronised expression of righteousness and justice. Nowhere in the teachings of Jesus or the New Testament Apostles are sexual practices commended or amended from those prescribed under Mosaic Law. For sexual practices lie at the heart of our human identity as social beings, building Constructive Community. What are the sexual practices and relations that best build a Constructive Community, where God has been met with in His Transforming Presence; and where a continuity of Embodied Instruction is recognised and affirmed? This is the critical question that we need to engage with afresh.

Part 3.  RESHAPING A CHRISTIAN ETHIC: RECLAIMING KINGDOM LANGUAGE IN THE DISCUSSION OVER MARRIAGE AND HOMOSEXUALITY

The meaning of language is an important factor in this whole conversation. Our thesis is that the context in which this language and vocabulary is expressed needs be redeveloped, recognising the essential ingredients of God’s Transforming Presence, the Embodied Instruction of His Word and the Constructive Community wherein and through God reveals Himself to the world.

Part of the difficulty in discussions to date over ‘same-sex marriage’ is that much of the language that has been in use, often formulated in contemporary cultures and contexts that are foreign and possibly hostile to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, has been appropriated and applied as if were properly normative for all: possibly a revised or corrupted form of Aristotelian method. We need to disassociate ourselves from abstract, non-sense talk of individual 'rights'. What we as Christians begin with is the Transforming Presence of God: we cannot 'do' Christian ethics without consciously seeking to have humble, repentant hearts. We need to look afresh at Scripture and take seriously what God commands, not excusing fleshliness under a misconstrued notion of grace. We need to realise that Christian ethics is more to do with our seeking to serve a healthy, functional community that practices sex righteously, than with personal preferences and the satisfaction of libido and appetites.

To conclude this prequel, I offer the following working definitions of key words often used in the discussion relating to ‘same-sex marriage’ issues, reappropriating vocabulary to be shaped by the threefold emphasis on Transforming Presence, Embodied Instruction and Constructive Community.

3.1    Virtue

A Christian virtue is formed through the human response of willing conformity to God, expressed in the convictions and practices of the community of God, in accordance to the Law of the Spirit in Christ Jesus. A Christian virtue is conceived out of the Transforming Presence of God, given birth through the Embodied Instruction of God’s Word and nurtured within Constructive Community.

Chastity and the avoidance of adultery, fornication, homosexual practice and prohibited degrees of heterosexual marriage are normative virtues and practiced convictions within Constructive Christian Community, illumined by God’s Transforming Presence and expressed in the Embodied Instruction of God’s Word.

3.2    Love

Love of God and awe / fear of God are integrally related: they invite repentance and engagement with the Embodied Instruction of God that leads to thicker, Constructive Community; community irradiated in God’s Transforming Presence. In such a community the practices of love are discovered and developed. Love of God and humanity is demonstrated in no way other than in obeying His Embodied Instruction contained in Scripture and manifestly fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

3.3    Justice

Biblical narratives speak of the rule of God as synonymous to justice. It is the absence of the rule of God that leads to injustice. The Biblical words denoting ‘Justice’, both in Hebrew and Greek, bring together private morality and public ethics where God’s Transforming Presence is sought by people in community. Justice is the pursuit of Constructive Community constrained by the Embodied Instructions of God’s Word, enabled in the light of His Transforming Presence.

3.4    Freedom

In the Biblical narratives, Freedom is deliverance from bondage: from sin and social structures that degrade and destroy the image and likeness of God within our humanity. Freedom is found through becoming captive to life in Christ. It is the antithesis of individual, self-determination. Freedom is not the same as personal anarchy. Freedom is rooted in conformity to the Embodied Instructions of God’s Word, enabled in the light of His Transforming Presence and found in a community constructed under the rule of God.

3.5    Inclusion

In the narrative of God’s saving acts, God reaches to people in saving grace in a way that precedes His calling of people into His community. God reaches to us with the reality of His transforming presence and then draws us to Himself. He reaches out and, through our willing participation in dying to self and entering the resurrected life of Christ, as symbolised in believer’s baptism, draws us to acknowledge the Embodied Instruction expressed through Constructive Community.

Authentication

God does not communicates truth to us through a propositional statement. He communicated truth to us through a dynamic expression of praxis and purposeful participation in and with humanity, in Jesus Christ.

To grasp this is liberating, releasing us from a preoccupation with terms and definitions. Words and concepts only find expression and definition through the context they are expressed within. Through the reality of persons in community.

When we are authentically embraced and filled by the Holy Spirit,  it is the powerful presence of God that brings about transformation in us. When we are confronted with God's Being, it is the imperative that moves us towards conformity to His Being. This drawing close to God realises in us the the Ontic drivers that affect and shape us into being effective heralds of His Purpose, instruments of His power, harbingers of the presence of His Kingdom.

And it is through our being shaped, through the Holy Spirit and with a humbling towards Christlike service, that we realise that true instruction is always embodied instruction. 

This, always leading to constructive community.  For it is the establishing of authentic, thick communities that mission is all about.

John 20.19-31

19-21     The impartation of 'peace' - שלךם - is also about establishing a place of rest: the gift of יהךה to His people. The bringing of the people to the place of 'peace' is the outcome of the Covenants of God. Getting to the place where God wants us to be. The place of fullness of righteousness and justice, healing and deliverance, faith, hope and love.

Here, there is the sense of the deeper, covenantal purposes of God through His people (Genesis 12.1-3), to bring blessing to all people in the world through Abraham.

The specific mention of both 'hands and side' evokes both the imagery of the paschal lamb (John 1.29 - the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world) and also that of the top lintel and doorposts smeared in blood (Exodus 12.1-3).

22-23     The act of 'breathing' the Holy Spirit evokes Deuteronomy 30.6 and especially Ezekiel 36.26-26 & 37.9ff., where the Holy Spirit's powerful presence and impartation brings restorative, reviving, renewing life and empowerment to God's people. 

 v 23 and its reference to forgiveness of sins may seem strange, unless it is taken with the preceding verses. To grasp the full sense of forgiveness we need to realise that forgiveness issues in reconciliation and restoration. We need to root our understanding of forgiveness beyond individualistic perspectives, into a fuller and more holistic OT way of thinking. It speaks of the calling of the people of God to bring God's wholeness and 'peace' to others. That the purposes of the people of God is to bring glory to God, to reflect His character and to exhibit His ways. It is the very ministry of salt and light into a world that is lost in savour and life. It is to be a people who are heralds of hope and harbingers of healing.

Now, this is about a message; but also a lot else besides. It is about who we are. How we behave. How we relate to others. Whether we Are interested in people as people at all.

24-31     A cause to live and die for?

27    -     μη γινου απιστος αλλα πιστος 

The text is clear. The challenge is, 'stop being unbelieving and instead, be believing'

So easily, we have a deficient understanding of the Christian life. Where it is diminished and debased into a philosophy,  a way of thinking, a perspective in understanding life.

But faith in Jesus is far more than an opinion or perspective on life. Faith to enter into a way of Being. It is a commitment to a cause, a response to a rallying call. 

Thomas understood this. he needed to be sure that the resurrection had actually happened. Because He realised how utterly radical and different from normal, religious living the Christian life of following Jesus truly is. There is a huge cost and disruption to normal living in becoming a disciple of Jesus: it is about purposely participating in his life, ministry and victory. And it is not a way that brings security and fulfilment according to the standards of this world.

the aftershock

So, Easter once more passes. And Pentecost beckons.

In what I do, issues of congregational politics, power and people in leadership are never far away. So I find myself reflecting. What qualities, in the light of Easter, are essential in Christian - and therefore, baptistic - leadership?

And I rather fancy the acronym, PHD, as a starting point.

PASSION that reflects the personality of God.
HUMILTY that heralds the heart of Jesus.
DEPENDENCY that relates into life with God with people around us.

None of them are easy. They come at a price. Easter.

A Blessed Easter

May the power of Easter come close to you and fill your whole being. The complete and utter expression of God's passionate love and purpose for humanity and the whole cosmos. It comes in, through and by death and resurrection. It is the key to meaning and the essence of your being.

Because of Easter, you have a hope and a future.

Because of Easter, faith is worthwhile.

It is God's gift to you, through Jesus Christ.

Discover a blessed Easter.

How do we die to self?

What is the biggest issue arising in the lives of Christians? It is pride. Wise words read this morning:

"How can I die to self? The death to self is not your work, it is God's work. In Christ you are dead to sin. The life there is in you has gone through the process of death and resurrection; you may be sure you are indeed dead to sin. But the full manifestation of the power of this death in your disposition and conduct depends upon the measure in which the Holy Spirit imparts the power of the death of Christ And here it is that the teaching is needed: if you would enter into full fellowship with Christ in His death, and know the full deliverance from self, humble yourself".

Andrew Murray, 'Humility: The Beauty of Holiness'

Authenticity

Is a demanding exercise. For it requires us to face the reality of who we are, in our dysfunctionality and pathologies. These are real. Sin, like weeds in the earth, quickly rises up in our lives. It is so easy for it to choke out the authentic, christlike movement of the Spirit into bringing us into conformity to Christ; and to  arrest and dampen our hunger and thirst to be more like Jesus.

An atheist friend today mentioned an 'atheist church' meeting. How can people imagine it is possible? Unless they have attended churches where there is but a charade of spirituality; an absence of seeking and meeting with the authentic presence of God.

Shetland

Just back from an inspiring visit among the four baptist churches in these islands, the most northerly extent of the UK. Where the nearest railway station is in Bergen, Norway! Yet quicker, house to house, in flying to there than taking the train to Aberdeen. A strange world we live in.

But as in Orkney, there is a stronger sense of community than in the Central Belt of Scotland. This is reflected in our baptist churches, where incomers - who comprise up to half the population - find a home and a family.

The pictures here are of the abundant wildlife; the traditional peat bricks stacked ready for burning; and a wonderful picture painted on an iphone during a service in Dunrossness, where I was preaching yesterday morning, by artist Paul Bloomer on the sermon theme, 'Uprootedness'.

Thank God for lively and vibrant baptist churches in the Northern Isles of Shetland.

Ambassadors of Reconciliation

Returning from a Conference on Conflict Mediation, I was struck by the wider implications of embracing the role of being Peacemakers. If we truly see ourselves called as ministers of reconciliation, then integral to being Christian is the activity of seeking to be bearers of peace into the world around us.

How significant it would be if Christian communities both modelled and sought to serve in this way. It would mean, firstly, that we understood how vital it is that we together embrace peacemaking within our church communities. A church with conflict that is not being positively managed; or where a pathology has developed out of the conflict, where there is no seeking to address the problems caused by the conflict, is a failed witness to Jesus.

But  a Christian community that is learning to both face and deal positively with conflict, is one that has a real ministry to wounded and hurt people, who need to know salvation.

What sort of community do you belong to?

Conflict

Here, in the great Anglican cathedral in Coventry, attending a conference, with members of the Conflict Resolution team. The speaker at this morning's session emphasised that:

1.     Conflict is normal. What we need to develop in conflict resilience and ways to manage it rather
        than try to flee from or fight it.
2.     Conflict should not define us, however. It is not our goal. But it can be used as a tool for
        development.
3.     Conflict 'has no umpires' - we are all protagonists, to a greater or lesser degree.

Conflict management and training for churches is something we will soon be offering. It will be a useful and important tool for church development of mission and ministry.

One step forward

Keep your servant also from wilful sins;  may they not rule over me.  Then will I be blameless,  innocent of great transgression. (Psalm 19:13 NIVUK)

This is the essence of a key conviction to be held onto by Christians - a healthy one. The possibility of avoiding wilful sin. This is one of the aspects of a full, sanctified life that the Holy Spirit would help us with.

The great Wesleyan doctrine of 'entire Sanctification' is founded in this reality. God does not 'take over' us by His Holy Spirit. As people indwelt by the Holy Spirit, Christians still have to make choices.  The Holy Spirit desires to strengthen and empower us, as well as lead us in, the way of Jesus Christ.

The more we choose to conform to what is right and to resist sin, the more sensitive we will be to the Holy Spirit's leading. Conversely, the more we allow sin to dominate us, then the less sensitive and aware we become of God's leading and presence.

Take a step forward towards holiness and sensitivity to the leading of the Holy Spirit today. Repent and avoid repeating a flagrant sin that is there in your life right now: that is a good place to start.

Relinquishing Power

I am being immensely blessed through reading Glen Stassen's recent work, 'A Thicker Jesus'. Glen is a man of mature years, and Incarnate wisdom, like good wine, often does improve with age.

And I am hugely challenged by Glen's invitation to the disavowment and relinquishing of power. When I look at all social structures, I see people exercise power, in many different ways. In fact, that includes you, my reader. For we learn to survive by managing the power of others and using our own, albeit subversively.

But, as Glen points out, Jesus' counter-intuitive disavowment and relinquishing of power, as a manipulative or controlling force, is central to His exercise of ministry and teaching. Paul grasps this too, as witnessed in Philippians 2.5ff.

Wouldn't it be fitting if we grasped and embraced this the more as well?

ἡμεῖς γὰρ πνεύματι ἐκ πίστεως ἐλπίδα δικαιοσύνης ἀπεκδεχόμεθα. (ΠΡΟΣ ΓΑΛΑΤΑΣ 5:5 SBLG)

For we through the Spirit eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. (Galatians 5:5 NKJV)

If you were to ask me, 'what troubles you most?', the answer would be simple. I am not troubled by the state of the world: it is as I would expect it to be. It is a beautiful world, marred and spoilt by sin. Neither I am troubled by issues of sexuality and perversity. Read the New Testament: nothing new in present trends!

No, what troubles me is when people talk as if 'faith' can be had, or laid hold of, without first having something to hope for. For the Christian life can only begin with God's Promises, manifestly met with in Jesus Christ. Promises that find all their fulfilment in and through what comes to us, embraces us, covers us and fills us because of Jesus Christ.

I have no comprehension of what people mean, when they talk of a 'leap of faith' or 'just believing'. I have met with a God of love, mercy and immeasureable power come to us. A God who fully meets with and embraces us, in the tangible power of His Holy Spirit.

Because such a God would and does meet with us, I have hope. And because of this, I can seek to pursue a life of faith, expressing itself in love.

There is no other way, other than this way which is filled with longing and the pursuit of such hope.