We begin our journey through the ABCs of (modified) Theology with A is for Atonement.
Here is the PDF: A is for Atonement (modified)
We touch on:
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5 min Good Friday reflection
See the sermon notes below on Has Von Balthasar
I grew up without much pageantry around Holy Week. We were holiness evangelicals and we kept things pretty simple and minimal.
I have grown to like some of the liturgical elements of Easter week. The palms of Sunday, the meal of Maundy, Good Friday’s Tenebrae and of course the anthems and colors of Easter Day.
I still never knew what to do with Silent Saturday. The creeds say that Jesus descended into hell. The Bible says that Jesus preached liberty to the captives – I have also heard this translated that he proclaimed victory over the evil powers. In church history it often gets called ‘the harrowing of hell’ which sounds more like something from the shire in the Lord of The Rings.
Then a couple of years ago I found this catholic theologian named Hans Von Balthasar.
[ Book: Dare We hope that all shall be saved (side note: turn toward ‘beauty – and away from self)
The vision of suffering love and its power is Christ on the cross]
He talks about suffering love and the power that is seen in the moments when Christ is on the cross. This is the beginning of a theology of Holy Saturday : The day when Christ is dead – that is to say the day when God is dead. The eternal 2nd person of the trinity is a dead man.
Von Balthasar says that we get the death of Christ wrong when see him as a conqueror descending into hell victorious. We have over-emphasized the aspect of his ‘rescuing’ the Jewish patriarchs
And we need to really embrace that his dead among the dead.
Think about that: the is a victim, scapegoated and railroaded, beaten and battered. Humiliated and made into a spectacle to intimidate future rebels. Hung up like a warning sign on the outskirts of town to alert everyone as to who was in charge. There was not just one cross that day – there were at least three. There would have been dozens that lined the road into the city. Rome crucified hundreds of conquered rebels and would be revolutionaries. He hung between to bandits that day (thieves is too mild a translation).
He was dead among the dead.
He felt abandoned by God – separated from his source of life, identity, and direction.
[von Balthasar thinks that christ descended into Sheol (not the place of punishment called Gehenna) and after his resurrection when he brought so many with him, that what was left was Gehenna. Sheol would have been the Jewish understanding that Jesus had at the time. Also translated ‘the pit’- not a place of punishment, not the afterlife, there is nothing there but being dead. ]
He went to the place of the dead. Sank to the depths of death. He enters into the pit.
More dead than anyone. More dead than any sinner. As the author of life, he was the most kind of dead.
This was thought to be good news of a sort. Every person who dies descends into this place – goes down in to the pit – and finds Christ already there.
Christ awaits you in death. More dead than you are. More forsaken than anyone ever. More abandoned than you. More separated from God that anyone has ever experienced.
It is in the separation from God that every human is embraced. Into that vacuum the dead are held in Christ.
We find a brother in death. We are not alone in the pit. We have a advocate in the midst of our suffering.
The author of life died a death and became the most dead – now doubly dead, lives to advocated for us – our great high priest – whose name is love – suffered death to the depth of despair.
I want to share this with you during this difficult time of isolation and distancing because the teaching on Holy Saturday says that you will never experience greater suffering, separation, or despair than the one who died and is ahead of us in death. You will never be more dead, more abandoned, more forsaken, more despised or rejected than one who goes ahead of you.
You are never alone and there is always one who can sympathize. Christ has gone ahead of you and lives to interceded on our behalf.
This has been the most interesting Advent I have ever participated in.
Between the High Gravity class following the lectionary texts and the Loft LA delving deep into the season, I have learned and experienced a lot of things that are heavy on my mind as we head into the final week of Advent.
Far As The Curse Is Found
The hymn ‘Joy To The World‘ has some amazing lines in it:
Joy to the world, the Lord is come!
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare Him room,
And Heaven and nature sing,
And Heaven and nature sing,
And Heaven, and Heaven, and nature sing.Joy to the earth, the Savior reigns!
Let men their songs employ;
While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat, repeat, the sounding joy.No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found,
Far as, far as, the curse is found.He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders, wonders, of His love.
Far as the curse is found is one of the most poignant lines in any hymn ever. Think about it … Romans 5 is about the same theme:
12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned—
18 Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. 19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.
Unfortunately, many have been taught to read the Bible in a way that makes Adam way more powerful than Jesus. Ouch.
Far as the curse is found means that God is interested in redeeming the whole damned thing.
There is no other way to say it.
In fact, this past weekend we tackled the genealogy of Jesus from Matthew’s gospel and I was struck again with how shocking and scandalous Jesus’ family tree is. It’s not just the unorthodox inclusion of those with dubious reputations and questionable qualifications – and that’s not even including that women! It is the fact that God is involved in the whole damned thing.
It all belongs. God is active in redeeming the whole thing.
It’s not just that Jesus leaves behind his family tree or simply overcomes his heritage to become an exalted figure … he is both the outcome of God’s activity IN his family and the result OF his heritage.
Speaking of which: here is an amazing rendition of Jesus’ genealogy sung to the tune of R.E.M.’s ‘its the end of the world as we know it’ by Brad Hooks
Genealogy of Jesus (and I feel fine) from Bo Sanders on Vimeo.
Lyrics:
That’s great it starts with the birthday
Of the very first man, yeah his name was Adam
Skip a couple thousand years, there was a dude
Who was looking for the Promise Land,call him Father Abraham, Abraham had a kid, Isaac had a kid
Judah had a kid, Perez he did too
No I’m not talking Perez Hilton
But the one who had a son named HezronRam, Amminadab, Nashon, Salmon,
Boaz, Obed, Jesse, David, right, right
Don’t forget Solomon, He was a wise man,
Who had a son named RehoboamAbijah, Asa, Jehoshaphat, Joram
Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, more then
That brings us to Hezekiah, Hezekiah
Manasseh, Amon, Josiah
Here is the good news and the bad:
Good – God is interested in redeeming your family tree, heritage, history and the entire road that has led up to this point in your story!
Bad – God loves them too … the things you regret, the people you would distant yourself from, the choices you would change …. the whole damn thing.
There is no ‘us/them’. It is a facade – an illusion. We are all us. We are all in this together. The slave is our brother – we are all God’s family.
The hard truth is that our apparent divisions are but an illusion. God is in the process of redeeming the whole damned thing.
On last week’s TNT I introduced a thought experiment: take the cross out of the Jesus story and see what you can still do.
This thought experiment appeals to me for two reasons:
I have started to get some great responses to my assertion that one could still come up with over 90% of Christianity without the cross.
I thought it would be good to give it more form here and open it up for conversation.
Keep in mind what I’m saying and what I am not saying:
Those are some of my thoughts about the variable of the cross.
My final point is not included in the same manner as those above, but to be honest: once the Roman Empire co-opted christianity (the Constantinian Compromise) the cross has mostly been a hood-ornament on the machine of empire. Except for a few places on the periphery and during a few periods of severe oppression and domination … the powerful church has been better, as Tripp says, at building crosses than bearing them.
This point does not prove the thought-experiment, so I don’t want it to distract the conversation, but in the end … I’m not sure how much the cross really does for us.
This is one of the many reasons that I promote being an Incarnational Christian. That is where the power is – incarnation and resurrection!
I would go as far as to say what the cross was meant to expose – the scapegoating and victimization mechanism – is still firmly in place and actually still employed by those who sing ‘The wonderful cross’ and ‘on a hill far away’ on Sundays.
There ya go! I have tried to make a case with this thought experiment – I would love your feedback, concerns, and questions!
Let’s have some fun with this.
Today we begin a Summer Series on the A B C’s of Theology.
Atonement is one of those rare words that actually works in English: people often utilize the at-one-ment memory device.
At its most basic, atonement simply means the re-pair of something that was broken or separated. Specifically here, we are saying that something had come between humanity and God – this is usually called ‘sin’ ( or separation). ?Something was wrong. Whether you talk about humanity having lost its way, or being lost, falling into sin, or under a curse … atonement is that work of God in Christ that changed-fixed-repaired-healed-forgave the problem. 
This is where it gets more complicated. Neither the Bible nor the early churches’ creeds state or take a stance on an atonement theory. For as important a topic as atonement is, it is significant that no definitive stance is required.
The above situation has led to two historical developments:
1) Many varieties of atonement theories have emerged, and subsequently evolved, throughout church history.
The theories all use different word pictures. Depending on what you paint the problem as, the work of God in Christ will take on different metaphors. Some use a courtroom, some a battlefield, others a dungeon (prison) and still others an exemplar motif.
The earliest theories are labeled ‘Ransom Theories’. My favorite is the ‘Fish Hook’ where God lures Satan – who has captured humanity – by offering the human Jesus as ‘bait’. The devil takes the bait and Jesus is killed … but the devil is surprised that inside the ‘worm’ of Jesus’ humanity is the ‘hook’ of Christ’s divinity and the devil is caught! Easter morning is thus the undoing of both Satan and death itself.
This kind of motif can also be in C.S. Lewis’ the Lion, the Witch and Wardrobe.
Later generations (and European ones) did not like that God would have to ‘trick’ or bargain with the devil. This lead to a developing of some other theories that had been around. Christus Victor and Substitutionary theories are two examples that remain popular to this day.
Substitionary models are a particularly interesting example because in the second millennia of church history you can see a profound evolution of different models which line up (and are born out of) out of. You can watch the Feudal (honor) era change with the rise of legal, economic, and civil developments during the Enlightenment and Protestant Reformation.
The past century has seen the rise of two alternative (and very different) theories. One is called Moral Influence theory. Jesus models for us (exemplar) and life lived for others and to God. Moral Influence has the added attraction (to many) of not being so bloody. It is the favorite theory of many within the liberal or mainline branches of the church for this reason.
My favorite group of theories are the Anti-Violence branch. Jesus is killed unjustly and willingly submits to this fate in order to unmask the ‘powers the be’ and expose the fraudulent structures of sacrifice and scape-goating that both nations/empires and religions utilize in order to preserve their position of power. Recent books like ‘Saved from Sacrifice’ and ‘The NonViolent Atonement’ have helped make a new generation aware of alternatives to those that make God seem like a weakling or which paint God as a child-abusing monster with split-personality disorder.
2) Some groups have become so fond of one theory over another that they begin to say that theory is the the only adequate way to understand the work of Christ. Some ‘Reformed’ camps have done this with the Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA) theory. This has led to some evangelical camps claiming that PSA is THE gospel.
The above points are why we need to introduce another ‘A’ word: adiaphora.
Adiaphora is a very old concept (ancient Greeks) that came center stage during the Reformation. Initially it meant ‘non-essentials’ and refers to practices that are neither forbidden NOR commanded in Scripture. Now it more generally refers to topics that are not specified in scripture.
I would put ‘Atonement Theories’ in this category. Admitedly that is a difficult and odd thing to do! One would think that the Cross of Christ and the implications of Easter – which are so central to the Christian faith – would cause it to matter deeply what one believed about its structure and effectiveness.
Unfortunately, as much a folks are willing (and eager) to argue about different theories (I am one of them), neither the Bible nor Creeds specify a particular theory and with the historical evolution of so many elaborate options … it looks like this will continue to be a lively conversation for a long time to come.
Further Resources:
Changing Signs of Truth by Crystal Downing ($10 on Kindle)
The Jesus Driven Life by Michael Hardin ($9 on Kindle)
A Better Atonement (e-book) by Tony Jones ($3 on Kindle)
You can also listen to my interview with Michael Hardin from this past Easter.
For Lent this year I did an interesting experiment. I did not give up anything but instead added an exercise as a discipline. My goal was to engage both the earliest days of the church’s past and stretch myself to imagine the church’s future. I did this by engaging two things:
This has been a profoundly enriching experience and I am left with several observations as this season comes to an end.
1) I have never been more impressed or moved by the passion of the early centuries. What they were attempting to do was so formidable and expansive that a great deal of respect must be paid to them by anyone attempting to engage in a theological endeavor. From figuring out how a concept of Trinity could work with monotheism, to the incarnation within greek metaphysics – from eternal begotten-ness to the double procession of the Filioque clause controversy … one has to respectfully give a nod to what they were up against the overwhelming effort that was exerted. This is the first time that I have revisited either the patristic or the Middle Ages since I took on as conversation partners Process thought, Post-Colonial concerns or Critical Theory. This is the sixth time I have cycled around to the early church studies in the 20 years since I trained for ministry. It has been, by far, the most enlightening.
2) I have never been more convinced of both the situated and contextual nature of the church’s theology and practice. It is not just that those saints of the past lived in a different time, a different place and spoke a different language than we do – they were dealing with entirely different sets of concerns and with totally different sets of data. From Augustine, to Abelard – from Anselm to Aquinas, once you enter into the intricacies and nuanced argumentation of these doctrinal concerns, you can’t escape the fact that they were a product of their time. All theology is contextual and an honest examination of any doctrine or teaching reveals that their situated nature and specific location (time and place) played as much of a role in their development as any formulation that might have come out of them. The pre-Moderns were not only asking different questions than we are, they were working with different material than we are. Their philosophical assumptions, their metaphysical frameworks, their limitations of language and their pre-scientific world-views all have to be taken into account when evaluating their writing and thought.
3) I have never been more aware of our contemporary situation and how modernity has completely changed the game. To contrast the examination of the early centuries I have been reading the work of Gordon Kaufman, and more importantly, those who attempt to answer the questions that he raises. Kaufman is famous for his ‘Theology for a Nuclear Age’ but I am far more impressed with those who responded to him in ‘Theology at the End of Modernity’. Sheila Greeve Davaney, Sallie McFague, Linell E. Cady, Wayne Proudfoot, Francis Schussler Fiorenza, John Cobb and Mark C. Taylor have been rocking me.
Kaufman says that we live in an unprecedented time after a) the Holocaust b) Hiroshima and c) global environmental degradation. Human’s capacity to destroy life and wipe out humanity means that we are in a different epoch (era) that comes with unique concerns and an unequaled intensity. I agree with him.
We have to be concerned with things that Origen and Augustine simply never had to consider. We also have access to information that Aquinas and Calvin would have had no reference point for. We live in a new day. We have different concerns. We deal with levels of consequence they never had to consider. This is a new epoch – where the threat isn’t from the heavens or a realm beyond (super-natural). It is all too present and in the natural.
This admission leads to/calls for some significant adjustments to ones approach to life, thinking, theology and practice. We can’t go on just saying the same things (parroting / repetition) without variation. At some point it becomes unfaithful.
Take the foot-washing ceremony that often accompanies Maundy Thursday services. The unique element of the Biblical accounts is that Jesus shocked his followers by doing something that they would have been very familiar with. The novelty was who did the foot-washing. We live in an era where the novelty is the foot-washing itself. It has also changed from an everyday and practical occurrence to ceremonial and liturgical one.
“So even when we do the same thing that they did we are not doing the same thing they did.”
We live in a different time and in a different culture, which asks us a different set of questions, so that even when we give the same answers we are not saying the same thing.
4) It has never been more obvious that we can not go back. By looking at both the first 12 centuries and the last 30 years at the same time, it has deftly illustrated how extreme the gap is. What rests in the gap is modernity. It has become so clear why some want to go back to primitive or ancient expression of the Christian faith. I get the impulse to reclaim Augustine or Aquinas. I get the notion of converting to Greek Orthodox or Catholic. I feel the pull of retreating into insulated or isolated language games like the Post-Liberal or privileging an antiquated notion polis or habitus like the Radical Orthodoxy camp.
I get why that is desirable – It’s just that it is impossible. Like foot-washing on Maundy Thursday, even when you are doing the same thing you are not doing the same thing. It only appears that way.
This is Modern Christianity’s problem (the title of this post).
“ While science gained as the model for truth and the traditional arguments for God’s existence were eclipsed, theologians increasingly turned to the depths of human subjectivity as the source of religious experience and belief.”
Thus the attraction of reverting to former notions of tradition, revelation or isolation.
In “an autonomous and protected location in a modern world where science reigned and religious claims had lost their rational force … by positing that religious experience was a unique dimension of experience, differentiated by its unmediated and nonlinguistically interpreted character and hence not accountable to the canons of scientific inquiry and explanation. Thus religious and theological spheres, without legitimacy or security … appeared to have found a new and unassailable place in the modern world.”*
I am not saying there is only one way forward. I am saying that there are hundreds of ways forward – it’s just that there is no way back.
In part 2 I will address the new need. In part 3 I will cover the two most obvious and wrong responses.
* Devaney in the introduction
I have received lots of feedback via email, FaceBook and text on Blood: Easter, the Cross and that quote about Liberals.
It seems that most people get the main thrust of the article but have one doubt/hesitation they can’t shake/make sense of. I was asked to write a response at a non-grad school level (which I love to do).
I have two requests:
So let’s get started!
There are several problems here.
First, there was more than one cross. There were three just in our Easter story (but not in most of our pictures – like the one to the right). So you can’t say ‘the’ cross. You can say ‘that’ cross. It is vital to get just how many crosses there were. Roman use of crosses was systemic. Jesus’ cross was not an exception in that way.
Second, you are using ‘the cross’ as a shorthand for the whole story. The incarnation, crucifixion, empty grave and pentecost provide a much better snapshot. To try and sum them up in ‘the cross’ is too limited.
Third, we are people of the resurrection. That does not mean that ‘the cross’ is a good thing. What happened there was unjust. That God redeemed it and brought something good out of it … does not change that it was tragic.
It seems like most of the things that we say about the cross are the first half of what should be a longer sentence.
“We preach the cross and Christ crucified” … yes but what do we preach about the cross? That is was unjust? That ‘it is finished’ (the sacrificial system)?
“Jesus died our sins” … yes but also because of our sin? And to what end? To move us away from the scapegoating impulse? To expose and unmask our unjust propensity toward violence?
Here is the problem: if we are not careful, we miss the radical reversal that Jesus’ cross is supposed to provide and we end up simply absorbing it into the system that it was meant to expose. This is a tragedy that ends up normalizing the violence Jesus unmasks and continues the cycle of victimization Jesus was trying to break.
Because of the way talk about the cross in half-sentences and short-hand phrases, we end up siding with the Romans’ use of power and violence and miss the fact that on Good Friday, God was not on the side of the Romans but that God was with Jesus on that cross.
I will withhold my real answer (that it was contextual and historically located) and will instead present what I think is a more helpful response!
We see a trajectory in our canon. God moves Abraham from human sacrifice to animal & grain … later God moves on from that system ( you see this in passages like Psalm 40:6 “sacrifice and offering you did not desire” and Hosea 6:6 “For I desire mercy, not sacrifice”)
People will often quote Hebrews 9:22 “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins”. The half they leave out is that it actually says “under the law …”
You see what has happened? By not saying the first half (under the law) and only saying the second half, we actually miss the entire point of Jesus’ sacrifice and end up reinforcing the system Jesus came to move us on from! We live and think as if we are still under the law!
The way talk and think about the cross of Christ actually undoes the very thing that Jesus came to do.
The rest of Hebrews 9 says that Jesus died once of all. So we don’t need to kill ‘them’ – they are ‘us’. We are all them – the all. Jesus died once for all so that we could stop this us-them thinking and stop victimizing and scapegoating. We miss this and then absorb ‘the cross of Christ‘ into the very system of power and violence that Jesus came to destroy.
Jesus forgave sins before the crucifixion. Part of the problem with saying ‘the cross’ as a form of shorthand for the whole story is that we skip both the life and teaching of Jesus. Jesus got in trouble for forgiving sins. How could he do that if what you are saying is true?
See? God forgives sin. How can God do that? Well if the debt that is owed is to God … then God can forgive them. The problem with they way we have been taught to think and talk about ‘the cross’ is that God is not free to forgive. God has to play by some external rules and ‘with out the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness’. But remember that the law is that way. God is not. Jesus, and this true wether you think Jesus was a messenger of God or God incarnate, forgave sins before the shedding of blood. How did he do that if they way were taught is true?
God forgives sins. Thank God! And we need to repent. We have made God into something Jesus was meant to destroy. We have placed God on the side of the powers and violence that God was trying to combat. We have returned to the very thing God was attempting to redeem us from and release us from. We have absorbed Jesus’ cross into the very system Jesus was attempting to unmask and expose. We have missed the very lesson that Easter is supposed to teach us.
I will contend that God was with Jesus on that cross and that the empty grave is the vindication of the victim so that we might be freed from the cycle of violence and victimization … once for all.
I look forward to your ongoing feedback and I will try to respond throughout the day to any honest questions that come up.
It is almost Easter – my most conflicted time of year as a pastor.
I am smitten with the empty grave. In fact, I am almost as excited about the Easter imagery as I am horrified by N. American Protestant’s fascination with the cross.
I have written and talked about this disturbing trend in the past so I won’t take the time to elaborate on it here.
This whole subject has been intensified for me this year. I have been leading a discussion at my church through Lent about historic atonement theories. The hope in doing so has been twofold.
We have been working through this in conversation with several resources: Saved From Sacrifice, The Non-Violent Atonement and the work of Michael Hardin.
It has been a powerful excersise and I have learned a great deal in the process. It is the week before Palm Sunday and I have two things in the back of my mind:
His famous jab at ‘liberal’ christianity:
“A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”
This quote gets under my skin so much. Here are 3 reasons why:
1) It is so true. I suspected it when I migrated out West and it is has only been confirmed as I have emerged from an charismatic/evangelical context to a more mainline one. I can not tell you how many people would be covered by Niehbuhr’s concern.
2) We live in a sanitized and sterilized culture (to paraphrase Cornell West) where most people have no connection to the meat on their table. They pick it up at the grocery store in plastic wrapped styrofoam containers. I say this as an avid hunter descended from farmers. We live in a horrifically violent culture (both domestic and military) but so few of us are familiar with blood. We outsource our violence.
This is why a penal substitutionary view of the cross is so attractive /acceptable for so many. The vicarious nature of god pouring out ‘his’ wrath on Jesus results in a pornographic delight that can be seen in depictions like that famous scene in The Passion and in many of our contemporary worship songs.
3) That Niehbuhr quote is thrown around too easily whenever someone wants to reexamine or revisit underlying assumptions about what happened (or how we understand) Easter.
Let me be clear about what I am saying and what I am not saying:
I am not saying that there was no cross and that there was no blood. I get both, I accept both and I proclaim both.
I am saying that something perverse has seeped into our understanding and our imagery.
My concern is that we have misunderstood both how it changed and why it changed.
Let me end the critique there and wrap up with a constructive proposal.
When Jesus takes the bread and cup and forever changes their meaning he is saying “what they will do to me – don’t you, as my followers, do to anyone else”.
When Jesus says “forgive them, they know not what they do”, he is saying that they think they know what (and why) they are doing, but they are wrong.
When Jesus says “it is finished”, he is proclaiming the end of this type of scapegoating and violence by those who think they are doing it on God’s behalf.
2 Corinthians 5:18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 [The one] who had no sin [was made] to be sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.*
We are to be about peace. We are to be a people of reconciliation. In Christ, God absorbed the hatred and violence of the world. The one who knew no sin – an innocent man – was proclaimed guilty and God responds by proclaiming that we who are guilty of doing that are now innocent and our sins are forgiven.
This is the good news of gospel! This is the hope for human-kind. No one needs to be sacrificed any more. No one needs to die because God is angry – Christ’s unjust death is to be the last. In the empty grave we see the vindication of the victim. God took humanity’s wrong judgement of Jesus and now judges us right with God. We who are guilty are proclaimed innocent because the innocent one was found guilty.
Easter is the great reversal and the vindication of the victimized. It is finished. We can’t afford to keep missing this and repeating the mistake. We who follow Jesus must be about peace and reconciliation. Too many have been scapegoated, placed on crosses and victimized by violence … in Jesus’ name.
God forgive us – we know not what we are doing.
Let it be finished.
In Jesus’ name.
* If that final verse reads a little different than you are used to hearing it, you should listen to the podcast with Michael Hardin.
Since John 14:6 is not about other religions … in fact, it doesn’t mention ‘salvation’ either. So if we can not use that verse either about other religions or salvation (since it is relational and a disciples invitation) then what other verse – or other place – would you start at?
Now I want to follow up on that and begin the different direction. In case you missed it, my argument is based on the fact that John 14:6 is in no way about other religions but is a disciples invitation to follow Jesus’ way and relate to God as Jesus related to God.
It is predicated on the fact that:
John 14:6 is in no way about other religions. Having said that, SINCE John 14:6 is off the table … where DO we start in thinking about the question of other religions?
I am interested where you would begin the response if you can’t go to John 14:6 as a trump card. How would you play the hand that you have been dealt?
—— please craft the rough outline of your response before you read mine ——
Here is where I begin : it is a 1-2 punch Scripture and Tradition! First I go to acts Acts 17 (in the positive) for the precedent and then I go downstream and find where things have gotten plugged up and dislodge the block that limiting the flow of God’s Spirit.
In Acts 17 Paul walks into the Areopagus (Mars Hill in Athens, Greece) and he says three interesting things to start:
This should be our model for cross-cultural missions. We honor their religious tradition. We learn their artists and thinkers. We include them in the we.
Unfortunately what has been the predominant modus operandi is a Colonial version of missions that does none of the three. It disparaged previous religious traditions as paganism, witchcraft, sorcery and superstition. It had no interest in indigenous voices and expressions. It was an us/them – in/out approach.
The second thing I would do is historical. I would revisit and reject the Filioque (Latin for “and (from) the Son”) a phrase found in the form of Nicene Creed in use in most of the Western Christian churches. It is not present in the Greek text of the Nicene Creed as originally formulated at the First Council of Constantinople, which says only that the Holy Spirit proceeds “from the Father”.
This later change (about 1,000 years into church history) is a disaster for mission. The application has been that the Holy Spirit does not precede the Gospel (preparing the culture) but follows the preaching of the Gospel. Thus when you showed up in another culture, don’t look for where the Spirit has been at work and join in … until Jesus is proclaimed, God is not at work.
Reject the Filioque and recognize that Holy Spirit has proceeded from the Father – equal to the Gospel – and is not limited to only working in kind of a 3rd tier operation. Holy Spirit is a work in every place and with every people, when we show up there we can humbly look around (as in Acts 17) to find signs of the divine activity. Having recognized it we can learn from it, and participate with it.
That is where I would start.
Bo Sanders: Public Theology 