13 July 2009
at
2:10 PM
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This post begins a multi-series book review, or, rather, walkthrough of Jason J. Stellman's Dual Citizens: Worship and Life Between the Already and Not Yet. I jotted this down as I was reading the pre-publication manuscript (note therefore that my page numbering may be off) and was thinking I'd cull together some of it for an actual review to be of use somewhere, but the "conflict of interest" factor proved too great. So I'll be posting my thoughts here alone. Again, this is more of a walkthrough, and as such, my personal opinions will be kept to a minimum, except where it provoked a more visceral reaction. Please note that I had nothing to do with this manuscript's acceptance, development, etc.; I have no official role in Reformation Trust. Here goes:
The last thing we need is another book analyzing the problems facing the Western church or how “Christ” relates to “culture,” right? (In fact, once I read Rodney Clapp’s Peculiar People and then Craig Gay’s The Way of the (Modern) World, not to mention Hauerwas' and Willimon's Resident Aliens, I considered this genre officially closed.) Well, I guess we wouldn’t need another one if the majority of them were more concerned with fidelity to the charter (i.e., Scripture) given to the church by Jesus and his apostles than with “transforming” or improving culture—often through questionable, cultural (and thus ultimately subjective and relative) tactics.  One of the many reasons, it seems, that Christians drift toward this latter tendency is their forgetfulness. What do they forget? The stated central thesis of Stellman’s book: “…the new covenant situates us in a tension between ‘the already’ on the one hand and the ‘not yet’ on the other” (xiii). This tension arises out of the fact that God’s Messiah has already come and inaugurated his Father’s kingdom, while leaving some aspects of it not yet enacted. “God’s delay in ushering in the kingdom in its glorious and final form means that we live in the intersection of the present and the futures as exiles and pilgrims in the divinely ordained overlap of the ages” (xiv). Sound like a bore? Maybe, if you already have this stuff figured out. But the actions, concerns, and emphases of the majority of American Christians betrays otherwise. Thus the need for yet another book on this subject. In short, what we’ve got here in Dual Citizens appears to be young, restless, and, with apologies to Mr. Hansen, thoroughly Reformed. The book itself is split in two: part one looks at worship and part two deals with life. Both are discussed under the rubric of living as pilgrims in these times between the times.
Expecting the reader to scratch his head in response to the subtitle, “Worship and Life Between the Already and Not Yet,” Stellman begins by taking to task what is often taken for granted in the Western church. Thus his introduction begins by tearing asunder what many Christians think God hath joined together: worship and life. “Characteristic of this position,” Stellman writes, “is Reformed theologian John Frame, who insists that ‘there is no real difference between worship and the rest of life…[for] it is very difficult, in general, to separate “life” from “worship” in a biblical framework’” (xviii). Contrarily, Stellman argues that God’s Word maintains this distinction, and he spends the remainder of his introduction attempting to prove just that (it is this particular point that distinguishes Stellman’s attempt from so many of the others. Most, in my experience, collapse this distinction, and, indeed, decry it).
The main reason he finds the distinction valid is due to the place Christ’s church now occupies: “The people of God under the new covenant are in a situation more like that of the patriarchs under the Abrahamic covenant than that of Israel under the Mosaic covenant” (xxv). That is to say, the church is not a “triumphant theocratic nation dwelling in an earthly holy land, but a band of dispossessed pilgrims whose true country—of which Eden and Canaan were types and shadows—is not to be found ‘under the sun’ but beyond it, in heaven itself” (Ibid.). Note his connection of the nation of Israel—the ‘cult’ (a religious realm as distinct from the secular realm, see fn. 2, xxviii)—to their land.
Following Meredith Kline (in Kingdom Prologue), Stellman argues that God’s rule over both pre-fallen man and Israel included a realm, namely the garden of Eden and the Promised Land. For both Adam and Israel, God provided “for his covenant people a distinct land in which they are to serve Him as His loyal subjects…[where] cult and culture, church and world, temple and palace, are one” (xix–xx). But under Abraham, as under the new covenant, the situation can be characterized as “pilgrim politics, a term that highlights [the patriarch’s—and the church’s] status not as a triumphant theocratic army but as ‘resident aliens’ and ‘tolerated sojourners’ whose inheritance was not yet a reality” (xxi, emphases original throughout, unless otherwise indicated). Indeed, precisely because of the church’s lack of a distinct country, “we exist in a cultural realm that is distinct from that of the cultic. We are, like the patriarchs religiously particular but culturally indistinct. For the new covenant church, cult is distinct from culture, church is distinct from world, and the sacred is distinct from the secular” (xxvi).
Has your hair begun to bristle? So keen are we Christians to transform or improve culture in the name of Christ that such notions of seeming withdrawal produce reflexive scorn. But Stellman doesn’t back down (nor does he intend for the church to “withdraw,” as we shall see). He sees himself comfortably couched not just in the Reformation principle of Christians simultaneously living in two kingdoms but in the Pauline notion that culture has its own legitimacy apart from cult (again, understood as a secular realm distinct from the religious realm). The American nation is decidedly a “non-theocratic context” and thus we Christians, like the Christians of the first century, are to submit to the governing authorities, as well as participate in them (ibid.). Both the secular and sacred are under the reign of God, and thus distinguishing between life and worship, as the subtitle of his book suggests, Stellman argues is “a necessary consequence of careful Bible study” and life under the new covenant (xvii).
I suppose I could just leave the whole discussion here, since this series is filled with spoilers…
29 June 2009
at
11:35 AM
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Who or what is God? One of the most common answers today is, “God is love,” evoking images of a grandfatherly, cuddly type. The problem here is not the phrase itself but the meaning we attach to the word love. According to at least one apostle, “love” cannot be understood apart from “light,” and given our culture’s warped view of love, this comes as a healthy corrective.
Every Christian generally understands that the character of God has implications for everyday life. That is to say, whoever God is and however God acts is for us the perfect picture of what we are supposed to be. It is no wonder, then, that a good many believers practice a spineless “tolerance” simply because love, to them, is equivalent to uncritical acceptance. Thus, God is love, or, put differently, God is he who uncritically accepts everyone and everything they believe and practice.
The apostle John (or could it have been Lazarus?), however, had a different understanding of what it means to say, “God is love.” We can get at what he meant by that by looking at what he wrote about God four chapters before the love passage (1 John 4:7ff.).
“This is the message we have heard from [Jesus] and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1:5). This one verse sets up the central message of the entire epistle: God’s character demands that we live a certain way. If we want to develop our Christian character, then it would behoove us to look at this “God is light” a little closer.
While “light” is deeply rooted in the Old Testament (which we shall visit shortly), Saint John is writing to claim back, as it were, the pagan slogan that “god is light.”
 The Roman pantheon has many examples of this slogan. Sol, the son of Jupiter and Latona, was the sun-god, while his twin, Diana, was the goddess of the moon. Both were hailed as gods of light. Not least, the emperor of Rome himself was deemed a god and worshiped as the presence of divine light on earth. Gnostics (early Christian heretics who denied the goodness of creation) got in on the fun too, constantly referring to the human soul as light, that it came from light, and that it must return to the light. All of these mistook the created—the light—for God, and so they worshiped it instead of him. The apostle, however, asserted that the person, God, is light, and he knew full well the challenge couched in that simple phrase, “[The God of Israel] is light.”
Even though many ancient religions long before Rome worshiped gods of light, the people of Israel had their own, distinct tradition with respect to the God who is light. At its core, Saint John’s thinking (in 1:5) is latent with Old Testament symbolism. Light was a common symbol for Yahweh, chosen by God himself. On various occasions, God revealed himself in fire and light. His clothes were light and glory (Ps. 104:2; see also Hab. 3:3–4 and 1 Tim. 6:16). Also, God is light in two ways: in revelation (Ps. 27:1; 36:9; Isa. 49:6) and in holiness. The light is transcendent glory; thus its antithesis, darkness, is sin and impurity (see Isa. 5:20). Light symbolizes the absolute perfection of God, as well as the revealed truth of God (Prov. 6:23; Ps. 119:30). Darkness, therefore, is the absence of revelation.
Lightness and darkness were frequently associated with good and evil in ancient times. During the inter-testamental period, a Jewish sect by the Dead Sea exhorted its members to love all the sons of light and hate all the sons of darkness. More importantly for us, however, are the writings of Saint Paul in this regard (Rom. 13:11–13; 1 Cor. 4:5; 2 Cor. 4:6; Eph. 5:8–14; 1 Thess. 5:4–8). One gets the impression that the Apostle to the Gentiles understood this imagery well. Notice, too, that in 1 John 1:5 the writer quickly adds for emphasis after the statement “God is light” that “in him there is no darkness.” In other words, God is revelation, salvation, and holiness, and in him there is no befuddlement, cloudiness, impurity, or abandonment. The point is that living in the darkness is incompatible with claiming to be in fellowship with the God of light (1:6). As was typical, we see that lightness and darkness are given an ethical emphasis, which leads us to see that the apostle is unpacking a moral test that he expects every one of his readers to pass.
This test, this message, is not to be taken as the whole doctrine of salvation (as if he's pushing us on toward moralism). Rather, the apostle John simply argues that if we desire to partake in the blessings of Christ and be in union with God, it is required of us to be conformed to God in a life of holiness. John Calvin quotes from the letter to Titus (2:11–12) at this point in his commentary on 1 John: “Appeared has the saving grace of God to all, that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we may live soberly and righteously and holy in this world.” We need to understand that Saint John is saying the same thing as Saint Paul, just in metaphor: walk in the light, because God is light.
Learning about God, then, is to learn how to live. So if we are to love, because God is love, then we must first understand that he is a blazing glory. Far from being a huggable old fellow, our Lord is a glaring light, devouring flame, burning bush, pillar of fire.
{This originally appeared in Tabletalk 29.4 (April 2005): 44–45}
Posted by
Chris Donato
Labels:
God,
light,
love,
Tabletalk
12 June 2009
at
10:12 AM
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This second round (see the first round) takes us to not just a place but a person. John Calvin is of course being discussed all over these days (what with this year being the 500th anniversary of his birth), so instead of adding to the talk, how about I offer something visual? All shots were taken on a Canon AE-1 with Kodak E100VS (slide film). Click on an image to get a closer look.  It stands on the site of the Collège de Montaigu where Calvin studied in preparation for the priesthood.
Originally a simple security valve at the Coulouvrenière hydraulic factory, this water fountain (jet d'eau) has, over the years, grown to be the symbol of Geneva.
It really is quite high, and one can see it from just about anywhere in the city.
 Calvin and his buddy Farel, who apparently called upon God to curse Calvin's desire
to study in peace if he did not stay in Geneva and support the cause of reformation.
.jpg) Calvin's adopted home church
 I happened upon this taking place, thanks to the sun and a stained-glass window.
The chair in the corner was supposedly Calvin's own, which is suitably austere and practical.
Posted by
Chris Donato
Labels:
photography
{Since this Lord's Day we celebrate Pentecost, I figured I could squeeze in one last contemplation on the resurrection.}
 Many Christians seem content to leave Jesus on the cross, while the resurrection often suffers from neglect. That the cross receives so much attention, however, is not without warrant. After all, the event was the “one act of righteousness” that led “to justification and life for all men” (Rom. 5:18). That is to say, the one Man’s act of righteousness is the climactic act of Jesus’ life-long fidelity to his Father’s will and purpose, when he offered up his life. Taking it one-step further, many of us are inclined to say that we will live under the public disgrace and outrage of the cross until Christ’s return, that it defines the age in which we now live. Since we live in a suffering world, as the thinking goes, the crucifixion provides the perfect revelation of God’s empathy with his creation. Yet the whole reason that the one act remains pivotal is precisely because Scripture deems it the decisive victory by the one who hung dead upon it. But what kind of victory would have Christ hanging upon it still? Wherein lies the triumph in the story of a disillusioned Galilean who could not get God to establish his kingdom on earth? There is none. Without the resurrection, the cross is foolish indeed.
All of this to say that the cross itself is entirely inseparable from God’s other redemptive acts through Jesus in history—his life, death, resurrection, ascension, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost—all of these form a unified front upon which the age of sin and death met its match. And never was the defeat of those two horrors more boldly proclaimed than on Easter morning. The resurrection stands as the single, most powerful declaration by God that this truly human Jesus “delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God,” was also “the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness” (Acts 2:23; Rom. 1:4). Jesus and his mighty works were vindicated when God raised him from the dead, exalting him as “both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36), no longer lowly and limited, now Messiah of his people and Ruler of the entire world.
If the resurrection did not happen, then we followers of Jesus, along with Saint Paul, “are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Cor. 15:19). In other words, if Christ has not been raised we are the most wretched, unhappy, sorry lot the world has ever seen, because we have believed the cruelest deceit—the hope of a glorious salvation when all we are truly left with is sin, weeds, and death. But happen it did, and it is believed, for Jesus himself said, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29). This was, of course, the very reason the apostle John wrote the gospel: “These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (v. 31). The resurrection is part and parcel of that gospel message of life in Jesus’ name. It is non-negotiable. One cannot consider himself or herself in line with “apostolic Christianity” without affirming the bodily resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. This is the clear testimony of the New Testament writings, captured most succinctly in Romans 10:9: “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Those who would deny it, while being treated with “gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:16), must not be countenanced at the table of fellowship; their professed “Christianity” should not be acknowledged.
The question that faces us, however, is not about its evidence; rather, it is about its meaning. What significance does the resurrection of Jesus have in God’s redemptive plan?
In simplest terms, the resurrection overturned the curses of the fall (sin, weeds, and death). But it didn't do it on its own, however, for included in that event is that which led up to it: both the obedience of Jesus to his Father’s will (sometimes called “active” obedience) and his obedience unto death (“passive” obedience). In the former, Jesus’ role as the second Adam is clearly displayed. This Messiah sent from God defeated the sin of Adam’s disobedience with his own perfect obedience to what Israel had collectively failed to do, namely, keep the covenant.
When Adam disobeyed the divine command, God sent Abraham and the nation of Israel after him to usher in the light of the gospel of God’s salvation (see Isa. 41:8–9; 49:3–6). Failing this, Jesus came as Israel’s representative; he could do this because he was sent as the Christ (“anointed one”). In Israel, the anointed one, or king, was both the representative of the nation to God, as well as God’s chosen representative to the nation (for example, 2 Sam. 19:43; 20:1). As such, like Israel (see Isa. 63:16), the king was God’s son: “I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son” (2 Sam. 7:14; also Ps. 2:6–7). The king of Israel, of course, was not deified like the pharaohs of Egypt (unlike Jesus, who is the God-man). Thus for Jesus, being the Christ meant that he so closely identified with his people that whatever can be said of him can, at least in principle, be said of them.
For Christians (both Jews and Gentiles, see Rom. 9:4–8), then, this means that they participate in God’s covenant, becoming by faith heirs of his promises, faithful to his will and purpose, precisely because Jesus already was. The apostle Paul meant nothing less when he wrote that we have been “baptized into Christ Jesus” (see Rom. 6:1–14). Finally, the gift that flows from this perfect fidelity on Jesus’ part is the gift of life itself (“the last Adam became a life-giving spirit,” 1 Cor. 15:45), and brings us back to what Saint Paul described as the “righteousness [that] leads to justification and life” (Rom. 5:18).
It is in Jesus’ obedience unto death that the contrast between the first and second Adam amplifies. “The free gift is not like the trespass” (Rom. 5:15). Indeed, it is far greater; the abundant grace of God completely overshadows the trespass of Adam. But how would that grace come? The charge from God to Israel, as stated above, was to live in covenant with him as a means for them to defy the curse and destruction of Adam’s fall. But in this matter the apostle said, “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing” (Rom. 7:19). That is, “the good” keeping of the Law always gave way to “the evil” breaking of the Law as long as Adam remained Israel’s representative. And so they failed. Still, the necessity of the Servant’s work remained if sin was to be conquered and the old Adamic man redeemed (see Isa. 53:11). Who has delivered us from this body of death? The answer? “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Rom. 7:25). Jesus came and perfectly fulfilled the will of God, even unto death. In so doing, he reversed the faithlessness of Adam, starting in his resurrected life a new family of God that would bear his characteristics instead, and turned a fallen, corruptible world on its path toward renewal (see Rom. 8:21–22).
So, one major point of all this today is that, being baptized into Christ Jesus, we too share in his victory and exaltation (Rom. 6:1ff.). Not only was sin defeated by the perfect obedience (right through to the resurrection) of Jesus, death was destroyed as well. For death received its sting from sin. It is as if death had the rug pulled right out from under its feet, subsequently powerless to keep him in the grave. Along with this came the guarantee that those who die once, if they are in union with Christ, will never die again. The pre-eminent resurrection, in other words, was the “first fruits” of the great resurrection to come (see 1 Cor. 15:12–33; 51–57). In this way, the ransomed Christian partakes of Christ’s exaltation, being put right with God and his law, reckoned righteous before the holy Judge.
Thus the third day, Easter morning, witnessed the dawn of a new day. Yet it was not just a new day unlike any other preceding it; rather, it was a day that carried within it the very future to which it pointed. The old war-analogy comes to mind: victory has been proclaimed, the war is nearing its end, though sin and death have yet to hear the news, and we battle them still. But they are not to be feared; we are their slaves no longer. The victor, Jesus, has destroyed the yoke of sin and death, having had that burden laid upon him. The story of Jesus’ literally empty grave not only confirms the hope to which we cling, it simultaneously offers even now the future resurrection life to each person found in Christ. The uncertainties and chaos of this world, while at times oppressive, must not give us constant despair. There is no room for that in the life of the one who believes in God’s victory through the exalted Christ Jesus. As hard as it is, amid the mourning and empathy of tragedy, we are to thank God in light of the promise: the new creation, heaven on earth. Thus we routinely proclaim the faith each Lord’s Day: “Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again.” There will come a day when the weeds will be choked-out by the sweet grape vine, true justice will reign, and once-wretched sinners will do naught but live resurrected, perfectly and humbly in the presence of the Almighty.
{This originally appeared in Tabletalk 29.3 (March 2005): 8–11}
Posted by
Chris Donato
Labels:
resurrection,
Tabletalk
12 May 2009
at
11:56 AM
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** This is the final post of a three-part review of Craig Gay's Way of the (Modern) World; or, Why It's Tempting to Live As If God Doesn't Exist.
In the second part of this review, I outlined Gay's approach to four American institutions that have been given a platform in the church. Many Christians, Gay argues, take these institutions for granted everyday; as such, they've been allowed the luxury of moving freely within the community of Christ (much to the detriment of the body).
I've also mentioned that this isn't a book of prescriptions; some readers might not like that—pointing out several problems without offering several solutions. But to do so would be improper anyway, for his project itself would potentially fall into the same trap he derides throughout—programmatic applications, which stifle creative responses to the various challenges we face by offering too many abstract prescriptions and, potentiallly, subsequent proscriptions (i.e., not thinking "outside the box"). He can (and does), however, provide tools with which we, the church, ought to use to combat the practical atheism among us. I alluded to one tool particularly in the first part of the review, namely, a theology of personhood. That is, to approach all of our relationships (with the world, people, and most importantly, God) in terms of “I–Thou” (as opposed to “I–it”). And, again, the only way there (Gay argues), is through the recapturing and reapplying of historic Trinitarian orthodoxy (see pp. 284–296).
So, what follows is an attempt to apply this theology of personhood, just for fun. I reiterate, this is my attempt. Disagree at your leisure.
 If there is one thing that lends itself to promoting practical, or “functional,” atheism in our churches today, it is running a church like a business—with its (the administration’s) maintaining control the ultimate objective. This fails to treat people as real individuals, instead of members whose everyday needs are secondary to the status quo of the organization. This has the unintended consequence of relegating the living God to an afterthought, thus breeding a dead faith that shares no identity, no union with the person of Christ, and no reliance upon the empowering, and sometimes spontaneous, work of the Holy Spirit. Maybe this happens among classical Protestants because we have warped the doctrine of common grace so much so that it has become disassociated from the active, loving hand of God, and turned it into a wholly transcendent winding of the clock. When a church assumes control of its mission, and attempts to define itself in worldly terms (to get the ‘seekers’ there or whatever), it effectively eradicates the radical immanence of the Creator’s touch.
How can a church reverse or resist this plague? Churches need to revitalize the parish mentality, and that has ramifications as to how large it can become. If a good number of parishioners travel from the same area to a church many miles away, why not plant a fledgling congregation in their own neighborhood? Churches must recapture their confessions. It allows them to play within the grand playground of Christian orthodoxy, and confess as the bride of Christ that he is her head and that she serves him first in all things—and that means (among other things) loving neighbors unconditionally and actively outside of our cultic gatherings. Churches need to boldly proclaim the exclusivity of the gospel. Today, the self is worshiped coram Deo. But there is no other god before the Almighty. A much-needed re-assessment of natural human capabilities escapes the pulpit. Far too much trust is placed in our own work week after week in self-centered sermons.
Toward the end of the book Gay provides four suggestions that provide a good starting point in resisting worldliness within the community (pp. 260ff): First, when the gospel falls on deaf ears, do not presumptuously think that the method of delivery should change. Rather, expect the challenge, since the modern world has become inoculated by the immanentization of Christian truth. Gay makes the important point that today does not parallel classical antiquity, and so we should not expect (or necessarily want!) to re-duplicate the church’s transformation of that particular culture (i.e., the holy Roman Empire). Second, we cannot and should not expect to resist the inherent atheism of modernity and culture through mere withdrawal. Third, our protests against modernity should be leveled against therapeutic sensibilities and the modern will-to-self definition (i.e., understood as Nietzsche's "will-to-power" in the worst sense). Fourth, our criticism and resistance to (post)modernity must be genuinely theological, quite possibly by returning again, as in those times throughout history when certain churchmen and women were set on reforming, to the careful study and respectful following of the central tradition of classical (Patristic) Christian exegesis. That is, we must make use of explicit Trinitarian theology.
For example, as I wrote in the comments section of the previous post, as Christians, we contemplate the biblical theology—not philosophy—of the Trinity and how the Three interact socially as the One and are informed, nay, enjoined to live a certain way on this earth—no matter what the personal cost. This reconciliatory way of life is itself a direct outflow of the reconciliation that God in Christ through his Spirit has affected for the entire cosmos—and we sinners who confess Jesus as the resurrected Lord along with it.
At the root of these suggestions comes a remedy that only arrives by the grace of God, the ultimate resistance fighter against functional atheism. In Gay’s own words, we “need a fundamentally new disposition of heart, a disposition able to direct our otherwise ‘natural’ abilities toward the works of love and holiness” (p. 270). But we cannot manage this renewal all by ourselves. “We must begin by confessing that we [are called] into a personal relation with each other and with God by God himself, and that our response to this call—which is itself a gift of grace—must be to surrender ourselves to God and to our neighbor in love” (p. 303). We further need to constantly remind ourselves that we need not look for more effective techniques, better education (though in some circles this might be an improvement), more information, or better theoretical constructions (p. 269). And finally, we must admit “that we are simply not able to work this change within our own hearts. …For our cultural prognosis to be truly Christian, then, top priority must always be given to the conversion of souls. There is simply no other way of overcoming our natural inabilities and of arriving at a true assessment of our situation before God” (p. 270). We have lost heart, no longer really believing that “God is willing, and perhaps even that he is able, to deliver us” (p. 313). Until we get our hearts back after thoughtlessly giving them away to the world, Christian hope is but an empty aspiration leaning on a lifeless arm.
30 April 2009
at
4:29 PM
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In the first four chapters, Gay outlines and analyzes a few modern American institutions that are, in the worst sense, worldly (i.e., that push us toward a practical atheism), and offers glimpses of a “theology of personhood” (mentioned in the first part of this review) at the end of each section before focusing on it directly in the last chapter of the book (he considers this theology, based as it is on social trinitarianism, to be a major antidote to the ills he describes throughout the book). Regarding these four American institutions, we must:- place human aspirations (protecting and preserving lives) over and against those of immanent political-social change. Over the course of the last one hundred years, countless human lives have been sacrificed on the alter of abstract ideals (like “progress,” “social justice,” and “freedom”). In light of this, Christian hope ought to be a political virtue (pp. 73ff). Why? Such hope gives us a healthy skepticism toward an earthly kingdom when it grasps at lordship; it relativizes large-scale political-social aspirations and exposes their hollowness and precariousness. Christian hope frees Christians up to act hopefully in the world. “It enables us to act humbly and patiently, tackling visible injustices in the world around us” Gay writes, “without needing to be assured that our skill and our effort will somehow rid the world of injustice altogether” (p. 77).
- with respect to technology and science, “give an account of nature that does not deny the v
 alidity of scientific inquiry, and yet does not so stress the autonomy of the created order that it tempts us to believe that science can reveal the meaning of nature and of our own lives” (p. 126). We Christians must neither wholly disdain rational and empirical inquiry, nor must we assume that science can be used in an unbiased way. The paradox of “contingency” must be affirmed and proudly maintained in the face of rational-technical determinism. Creation is both independent of (contra pantheism) and utterly dependent on God (pp. 124–129; see also pp. 272–281). God is sure; all else is subject to change.
- reject the logic of the modern economy, which reduces all things to objects of monetary value, and rediscover the Protestant work ethic of vocation as “calling.” That is, whatsoever we do, do heartily, as to the Lord and not to man (Col. 3:23). It means acting “ethically and substantively within the system no matter how impractical we may occasionally appear in doing so” (p. 175). This is, in a sense, an invitation to take seriously the vocation to suffer—theologia crucis in action.
- in combating narcissism, or the “worldly self” (p. 181), leave-off the notion of ever being fully satisfied with both consumption and therapy (or any earthly kingdom/institution for that matter), and be filled with a Christian self-consciousness in which “love for God and neighbor is progressively realized and deepened” (p. 232). The need to rediscover the self before God (coram Deo) as opposed to the self simply submerged in mass society and culture has never been greater. Therapeutic consumption, like any other drug, requires more of us every time we use it, until our ravenous gluttony results in self-satisfaction at any cost. Instead of finding our identity in the glory of the lordship of Christ (ironically, through the shame of the cross), we settle for defining the self in terms of individual rights and needs.
The hope in summarizing Gay’s book up to this point has been to help inform us where practical atheism threatens the church and what must be done to resist it. This is not a book of prescriptive solutions; it is a book that provides (I believe) explicitly Christian tools with which we can resist the inherent atheism of (post)modernity. In the next and final part of this review, I'll briefly attempt to apply these tools.
27 April 2009
at
9:57 AM
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 "The Truth" by Painter Michael D'Antuono, which will be unveiled on President Obama's 100th Day in Office at NYC's Union Square
Geez, this is enough to make a premillennial dispensationalist out of you (but, on the other hand, I find secular science fiction to be far more interesting). All things considered, I largely appreciate the public image of our president, despite the fact that my libertarian ideals recoil from many of his policies. I would like to think that if he caught wind of this endeavor by D'Antuono, that he'd distance himself entirely from it. I'm reminded of St. Paul and his careful intention to speak of Jesus, the true Messiah, as a direct confrontation to any and all imperial cults—ancient or modern. Here's to hoping this painting makes Mr. Obama profoundly uncomfortable.
**Update: Apparently, D'Antuono has cancelled the unveiling set for this Wednesday. The real sad thing in all this is how the painting encapsulates all too well much of what passes for Christian art these days—sentimental, trite, and just plain bad execution. For a taste of something quite the opposite—indeed, uncomfortably so—consider the following (by Guido Rocha, a Brazilian sculptor who himself had experienced torture):
Makes the above look ridiculous, doesn't it?
Posted by
Chris Donato
Labels:
Messiah,
Obama
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