Or screenwriters
Chesterton writes:
though St. John the Evangelist saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators. (Orthodoxy, ch. 2)
Neighbors
In the performed story that is Christian worship, we are related to others as neighbors rather than as an “audience.” (James K. A. Smith, Imagining the Kingdom, 150)
Idol
A marriage which does not constantly crucify its own selfishness and self-sufficiency, which does not “die to itself” that it may point beyond itself, is not a Christian marriage. The real sin of marriage today is not adultery or lack of “adjustment” or “mental cruelty.” It is the idolization of the family itself, the refusal to understand marriage as directed toward the Kingdom of God. This is expressed in the sentiment that one would “do anything” for his family, even steal. The family has here ceased to be for the glory of God; it has ceased to be a sacramental entrance into His presence. It is not the lack of respect for the family, it is the idolization of the family that breaks the modern family so easily, making divorce its almost natural shadow. It is the identification of marriage with happiness and the refusal to accept the cross in it. In a Christian marriage, in fact, three are married; and the united loyalty of the two toward the third, who is God, keeps the two in an active unity with each other as well as with God. Yet it is the presence of God which is the death of the marriage as something only “natural.” It is the cross of Christ that brings the self-sufficiency of nature to its end. But “by the cross joy [and not ‘happiness!’] entered the whole world.” Its presence is thus the real joy of marriage. It is the joyful certitude that the marriage vow, in the perspective of the eternal Kingdom, is not taken “until death parts,” but until death unites us completely. (Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World, 90-91)
Icon
In movies and magazines the “icon” of marriage is always a youthful couple. But once, in the light and warmth of an autumn afternoon, this writer saw on the bench of a public square, in a poor Parisian suburb, an old and poor couple. They were sitting hand in hand, in silence, enjoying the pale light, the last warmth of the season. In silence: all words had been said, all passion exhausted, all storms at peace. The whole life was behind—yet all of it was now present, in this silence, in this light, in this warmth, in this silent unity of hands. Present—and ready for eternity, ripe for joy. This to me remains the vision of marriage, of its heavenly beauty. (Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World, 90)
Chiasm and creation in John
Hajime Murai has proposed a deep chiasm running the entire length of the book of John. I’ve been following along off and on in our church’s readings in John, and some of the parallels are striking; for example, John 4 paired with John 19, or Nicodemus questioning and later burying Jesus.
Murai includes the so-called pericope adulterae, John 7:53-8:11, in his outline. This is a disputed passage that almost certainly was not part of John’s original manuscript. However, I think that the chiastic parallels are actually stronger if this passage is omitted. Murai suggests that 7:53-8:11 parallels 10:1-21, and links the Pharisees’ lack of understanding. I suggest the following arrangement, starting with Murai’s pairing of living water with the raising of Lazarus:
7:37-39 Living water
7:40-44 Division and seeking to arrest
7:45-52 The shepherds of Israel
8:12-30 Light of the world
8:31-59 I AM
9:1-41 A man born blind healed; the blindness of the Pharisees
10:1-18 The great shepherd
10:19-39 Division and seeking to arrest
10:40-11:54 Crossing the Jordan and the healing of Lazarus
This serves as a small and secondary confirmation the disputed passage is not original to John.
The fact that the center of John involves a discussion of light and seeing and what is “above” is also striking, especially following a discussion of water. This suggests to me that Murai’s overall chiasm could be bracketed into seven sections that track the days of creation (central day four being the heavenly lights, following day three’s separation of land and waters).
History
Romans 11:17-24 reads:
But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant toward the branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you. Then you will say, “Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.” That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off. And even they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again. For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree. (ESV)
This has a significant implication for the history recorded into the Old Testament. It is possible both to be adopted into that history, and also to be disowned from that history. Thus, whatever its cultural make-up, Jesus’s church can claim the Old Testament as its own history: we were rescued from Egypt, we hung our harps on the willows, and we were preserved by Yahweh in exile.
It is also, of course, a sobering warning. It is possible for people and churches and cultures to live for centuries, even millennia, preoccupied with a history that is glorious but which has ceased to be your own.
Dragons and Leprosy
We watched the 1959 movie Ben Hur recently as a family and enjoyed it.
Contra the movie, I am not convinced that modern-day Hansen’s disease is linked with Biblical leprosy. They are very commonly confused, so I was not at all surprised. However, it did surprise and at first disappoint me to see leprosy healed just as soon as Jesus died; that seemed like a cheesy storytelling shortcut.
But upon reflection, it is true that Jesus brings us many great gifts apart from our deserving or even asking for them. A similar unasked-for miracle is recorded on that very day (Matt 27:52-54). And it is particularly striking that the kinds of leprosy described in Leviticus are nowhere quite exactly to be found today: just as today we no longer see the great dragons whose bones can still be found (e.g., Job 41, Isa. 27, 51), there is today no more leprosy of that kind. The last great leprous house was dismantled in AD 70 (Lev. 14:45, Matt. 24:2), so that we can say the death of Jesus truly did inaugurate the end of leprosy!
The great storyteller has seen fit to tie these transitions to the new covenant in Jesus. The great dragons are defeated, and there is now one washing that grants permanent access to the very throne of God, so that you could even say that it is now life rather than death that is contagious. This the movie portrayed well.
Baptized
2 Samuel 19 tells of the return of David to Jerusalem after the defeat of Absalom. Interestingly, it is said that Judah brings David back over the Jordan river, and a number of individuals who cross over to meet David are explicitly named. To properly show their repentance and receive David back, Judah first had to repudiate their rebellion and identify with David in his exile. These river crossings are very obviously a kind of baptism, a union with David in his exile and therefore his restoration.
A wise Benjaminite (Phil. 3:5) might have preached in Gilgal that day:
Men of Judah, do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into David were baptized into his exile? We were separated therefore with him by baptism into exile, in order that, just as David was revived from the pit by the glory of Yahweh, we too might walk in newness of life.
For if we have been united with him in an exile like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a restoration like his. We know that our old self was exiled with him in order that the rebellious nation might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer belong to rebellion. For one who has been exiled has been set free from rebellion. Now if we have been exiled with David, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that David, being revived from the pit, will never be exiled again; exile no longer has dominion over him. For the separation he endured he endured to rebellion, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to rebellion and alive to Yahweh in David.
Let not rebellion therefore reign in this nation, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to rebellion as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from exile to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For rebellion will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
As it happened, the more foolish Benjaminites Sheba and Shimei did not heed this warning.
Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. (Heb. 13:13)
Totus Christus
I recently finished reading Sinclair Ferguson’s new book The Whole Christ, and appreciated it much. I had previously listened to his lectures on the Marrow controversy, and this book fleshes out his thoughts on the controversy and related issues at greater length.
In the introduction, Tim Keller summarizes one of Ferguson’s key ideas:
. . . the root of both legalism and antinomianism is the same. . . . It is a fatal pastoral mistake to think of legalism and antinomianism as complete opposites. Sinclair says that, rather, they are “nonidentical twins from the same womb.” He traces both of them back to the “lie of Satan” in the garden of Eden, namely, that you can’t trust the goodness of God or his commitment to our happiness and well-being and that, therefore, if we obey God fully, we’ll miss out and be miserable.
Because both mind-sets refuse to believe in the love and graciousness of God, they assume that any commands given to us are evidence that he is unwilling to bless us. They both fail to see obedience as the way to give the gracious God delight as well as the way to become our true selves, the people we were created to be. They participate in the same incomprehension of the joy of obedience—they see obedience as something imposed on us by a God whose love is conditional and who is unwilling to give us blessing unless we do quite a lot of work. The only difference is that the legalist wearily assumes the burden, while the antinomian refuses it and casts it off by insisting that if God is really loving, he wouldn’t ask for it. In order to salvage an idea of a gracious God, antinomians find ways to argue that God doesn’t require obedience.
Neither legalism nor antinomianism can account for the sentiments of Psalm 119, which are godly, Christian sentiments. Neither the legalist nor the antinomian can agree with Calvin’s statement that the third use of the law is its “principal use, and more closely connected with its proper end.”
Ferguson captures the Christian attitude well in a footnote where he makes analogy between God’s law and the laws of golf:
. . . the Rules of Golf, authoritatively issued by the United States Golf Association and The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, are never regarded as “legalistic” by those who play golf. And to be an “antinomian” golfer and ignore the rules leads to disqualification. Fascinatingly, the governing bodies of golf publish a surprisingly large book giving guidance on the details of the application of the rules to every conceivable situation on a golf course—and to some that are virtually inconceivable! The rules, and their detailed application, are intended to enhance the enjoyment of the game. My edition (2010-2011) extends to 578 pages with a further 131 pages of index. The person who loves the game of golf finds great interest and pleasure, even delight, in browsing through these applications of the Rules of Golf. It should therefore not greatly stretch the imagination that the Old Testament believer took far greater pleasure at a higher level in meditating on and walking in the ways of God’s law. It is passing strange that there should be so often among Christians a sense of heart irritation against the idea that God’s law should remain our delight. Our forefathers from Luther onward grasped this principle, and, as a result, through the generations those who made use of the standard catechisms learned how to apply God’s Word and law to the daily details of life. It is a mysterious paradox that Christians who are so fascinated by rules and principles that are necessary or required in their professions or avocations respond to God’s ten basic principles with a testy spirit. Better, surely, to say, “Oh how I love your law!” It should be no surprise that there appears to be a correlation between the demise of the law of God in evangelicalism and the rise of a plethora of mystical ways of pursuing guidance, detaching the knowledge of God’s will from knowledge of and obedience to God’s Word.
Ferguson’s other key idea is that we must not separate the benefits of our salvation from the savior himself:
The benefits of the gospel (justification, reconciliation, redemption, adoption) were [in that day] being separated from Christ, who is himself the gospel. The benefits of the gospel are in Christ. They do not exist apart from him. They are ours only in him. They cannot be abstracted from him as if we ourselves could possess them independently of him.
. . . A major indication that such a separation has taken place is that one of the most prominent emphases in the New Testament becomes marginalized, namely, union with Christ. . . . If [being in Christ] is not the overwhelmingly dominant way in which we think about ourselves . . . it is highly likely that we will have a tendency to separate Christ from his benefits and abstract those benefits from him (in whom alone they are to be found) as though we possessed them in ourselves.
While I greatly appreciated the book, there are a few very minor areas where I felt it could have been improved.
First, Ferguson makes an interesting side remark about the so-called “covenant of redemption,” suggesting that Boston was concerned the notion would lead people to the wrong conclusion that the Father was less enthusiastic than the Son in pursuing our salvation. But this remark is so brief that it feels like a play to the cheap seats in recent controversies in the reformed world. Boston’s concerns as briefly stated by Ferguson could apply equally to traditional penal substitutionary atonement (PSA) theory, and Ferguson makes no immediate effort either to recognize that there are possible ways to address Boston’s concerns among those who hold to a covenant of redemption, or to show how PSA theory can adequately guard against this accusation (which I fully believe that it can).
Similarly, Ferguson treats the new perspective on Paul (NPP) with an overly broad brush. While I haven’t read primary sources, the folks I have read who are cautiously appreciative of the NPP would agree fully with Ferguson’s positive assertions, and yet he does not leave room for a kind of cautious reading of the NPP that might learn something new and helpful. I do not get the sense, contra Ferguson, that many are trying to vindicate either the first-century Pharisees or the Tridentine Catholic church; only trying to better understand the nature of their very real and obvious falls from grace. In other words, most on all sides would agree that the Pharisees were guilty of a kind of deadly spiritual pride (c.f., Rom. 11). The question is only whether the species of that pride was merit legalism or something subtly different. But that is not at all to deny that merit legalism is a genuine species of spiritual pride, only to recognize that such pride comes in many subtle forms, including both legalism and antinomianism, but extending beyond them as well. It is even possible to take sinful pride in possessing the true doctrine of grace.
I find it interesting that Ferguson does not treat another area of recent controversy, namely the imputation of the active obedience of Christ (IAOC). This is particularly surprising given that he is treating on both the topics of union with Jesus and legalism. As I understand it, those who differ with the language of IAOC do so precisely because (1) they believe that the language of union with Jesus much more comprehensively expresses what we positively receive from Jesus in our justification and how this takes place, and (2) they believe that IAOC can tend to a subtle erosion of the positive place of the law because it views it primarily as a measure of merit rather than a rule of life. Ferguson missed a great opportunity both to express appreciation and agreement with these concerns, but also to positively defend IAOC in light of them. Certainly Ferguson does argue forcefully both that righteousness and merit are not “things” that we possess apart from Jesus, and that the law is not intended as a source or measure of merit even as we approach it in Jesus: “Neither the Old Testament believer nor the Savior severed the law of God from his gracious person. It was not legalism for Jesus to do everything his Father commanded him. Nor is it for us.”
Finally, I have a couple of reflections on practical ways this might impact the ordinary life of the church. First, it seems to me that incorporating corporate confession and absolution into the church’s liturgy would serve as a strong defense against both the errors of legalism and antinomianism: it would both affirm the ongoing validity of the law for the believer, while at the same time utterly denying its power to conduct a ministry of death to those who are alive in Jesus; it would regularly arm and re-arm the church with a kind of “gutsy guilt.” Second, it seems to me that requiring our children to produce intellectual expressions of faith before their participation in baptism or the Lord’s supper is sending a subtly legalistic message about the nature of the gospel, in just the same way that the Auchterarder creed and Marrow were trying to guard against. Jesus does not require our children to get either their moral or intellectual ducks in a row before they may appear before him. The same goes for those who are mentally handicapped.
I gotta have my orange juice. 