Discuss Theology

N.T. Wright discusses walking by the Spirit in the following fashion;

“This brings us to Galatians 5, where the point of the passage about the Spirit and the flesh is by no means to be reduced to a set of rules for Christian observance. Paul constantly gives us signs that that is the wrong way to read what he is saying. His main point, rather, is that if you are walking by the Spirit you are clearly already part of God’s new age and his renewed people, part of that inaugurated-eschatological family who have been delivered from the present evil age – and, as such, you are ‘not under the Torah’. The Torah has nothing more to say about you. As he says later, having just described all kinds of character traits which the Spirit produces, there is no Torah against such behavior”. Paul in Fresh Perspective, pg. 146-147.

The margin footnotes in my bible, at the start of Galatians 5, declare this passage to mean, “Call to freedom from the bondage of the Law”. Is it really a call to freedom from the Law, or is it a call to freedom in the Spirit? Certainly one should argue that the fruit of the Spirit is the central theme in this chapter, and not the deeds of the flesh. It is not that the Law was evil, but rather ‘the new covenant work of the Spirit, transforming the heart so as to enable it to keep the commandment of the Torah’ (pg. 146 above cited passage). Our heart is being changed into something new and the Spirit of God is doing it, not by commandments.

Every time I consider the works/grace discussion, I am reminded that Jesus declared the essence of the Law to be two fold. Love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself. And John says in 1 John 3.23-24, “And this is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us. And the one who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. And we know by this that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us”.

The main point is that we not free from the Law so much as we are free to, or in, the Spirit. It is not the Law at work in us to do good, but it is the Spirit of God who is transforming us. We are being transformed to love the Lord our God and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Our life must reflect this aspect of the Law, but it is not done by our works so much as His sanctification. This is the new age that the Spirit of God is at work in.

Today is a day of remembrance and a day of thanks. A time of recognition for the sacrifice of those who have fought to secure our culture from tyranny. And moment in time to think about that great host of fighters who thought, and fought, for others, both present and future.

My family has resided in America since the 1600’s and has fought in every war excepting World War I and Korea. They fought as the soldiers of Britain, the Colonials, Indians, Southerners, Northerners and Americans. Few have been left dead upon the field of combat, but many have bled in defense of their beliefs.

An uncle lies below the battlefield of Cedar Creek, during the Shenandoah Campaign of 1864. As a young Confederate lieutenant, he left Georgia and marched, under Lee, to the drums of war. In the fall of 1864, after a brutal campaign stretching across Virginia, he left his two brothers, one wounded and the other captured in a northern prison, to follow General John B. Gordon to the Shenandoah Valley. During Gordon’s great surprise attack, my uncle lost his life, one among many lost lives.

Why did they do it? We will not know the full reasons. Maybe they were drafted, and did not believe it honorable to shirk their responsibility. Or like my father-in-law, who left his Quaker family, who felt it his duty to serve because of the underhanded attack perpetrated by the Japanese nation. He would serve on Guadalcanal and see many of his fellow soldiers die from bullets and sickness.

Yet, I think the real reason most men went was due to a Christian character. It is appointed to men the responsibility of laying down their life for family, friends and their beliefs. Few of will die for a nation, but we will lay down our life the man in foxhole with us. As scared as I may become, I will not leave my wounded friend. I will not run when I must fight.

As a Deputy Sheriff for 14 years, I am amazed when I think of the call that would come from another officer requesting assistance due to shots fired. It would seem to me the prudent thing to do was get away from the shots being fired. But that is not what we would to. We jumped in our cruisers and stepped on the gas. Our cars hurtled down the road at 130 MPH aimed at a man shooting at police officers. The one thought was toward the officer on the scene and a prayer for safety would go up to Him who could save and protect him. Our safety was never an issue. We would not leave one of our own in harms way for long, even if we had to take a round in the process.

Heroic? Maybe, but we never thought so. We couldn’t do anything but put ourselves in danger.

Jesus’ life displayed and proclaimed His words, “Greater love hath no man, than he lay down his life for a friend”. Take some time today to reflect on those who have given their life for you on the battlefields of honor. Consider the Spanish Crusaders, or Charles Martel, who fought or laid down their lives to protect Europe from Islam, or those who are currently sacrificing themselves in Iraq, or Afghanistan, for the future of the Church. And remember Him who gave His life for our salvation. “Greater love hath no man….”.

“…then comes the end, when He delivers up the kingdom to the God and Father, when He has abolished all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be abolished is death. For HE HAS PUT ALL THINGS IN SUBJECTION UNDER HIS FEET. But when he says, “All things are put in subjection,” it is evident that He is excepted who put all things in subjection to Him. And when all things are subjected to Him, then the Son Himself also will be subjected to the One who subjected all things to Him, that God may be all in all. And when all things are subjected to Him, then the Son Himself also will be subjected to the One who subjected all things to Him, that God may be all in all.” I Corinthians 15. 25-28

“…it is now God’s intention both to reconcile all things to, through and for him and to sum up all things in the Messiah, he is standing firmly against all kinds of dualism which would envisage a final state in which the present created order was abandoned as worthless. Just as at the end of Revelation the new heavens and the new earth are joined together, so in Paul’s thought the triumphant goal of eschatology is that there should be one future for the one world made and loved by the one God. For God to be all in all, as in 1 Corinthians 15.28, it is necessary that, through the Messiah’s victory over death itself, the ultimate corruption of the present world and its inhabitants, creation can be set free from its bondage to decay and share the freedom of the glory of God’s children. Thus the picture is complete: Paul has reimagined every single aspect of the first-century Jewish eschatology around the Jesus the Messiah and his death and resurrection”. Paul in Fresh Perspective, N.T. Wright, pg. 144.

Wright mentions a little earlier that its not that Jesus is coming, but the curtain between the physical and spiritual world will be rolled back for all the see the reality of the Kingdom of God. The creation will continue, but be changed. In other words, we understand, currently, very little of the created order and Christ’s rule.

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Check the site out and enjoy the lectures. While you are there check out the seminary website. Steve

Harriet Tubman led hundreds of slaves in the 1800′s to freedom on the underground railroad.  She also preached the gospel to them.  I suspect that she really thought nothing about whether men gave her authority to do what she was doing. Harriet Tubman, Emancipator, probably not a complementarian

One last, I think, quote from N.T. Wright on eschatology.

“Through his (Paul’s – scj) extraordinary interpretation of Jesus’ crucifixion as the divine victory over the powers of evil, the great battle has come and gone (emphasis mine), and the pagan powers have been decisively defeated. This is perhaps the first and most important thing to say about Paul’s reworking of eschatology: that the complex event for which Israel had hoped had already happened in the events of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus’ resurrection indicated not just that something extraordinary had come to pass, but what that extraordinary thing was: the anticipation, breaking in to the scene of ongoing history, of the ultimate End. Inaugurated eschatology, framed, explained and given depth by the reworking of monotheism and election, is one of the most central and characteristic notes of Paul’s whole theology. The still-future events of which he frequently speaks are themselves reworking of the same Jewish expectations. And the creative tension between the two, between what has already happened in the Messiah and what is still to happen at the ultimate end, is where we must locate some of his most characteristic themes (justification, the body of Christ, and so on).” Paul in Fresh Perspective, N.T. Wright, pg. 135-136.

If you are not from the United States, you may wonder why I have chosen this passage, or even think it is important. Let me state that the small book, “Late Great Planet Earth”, by Hal Lindsey, has so permeated our understanding of scripture that we are no long able to grasp the victory of the cross. We see a victory in a Hollywood style future, and we, as American’s in general, down play the violent victory of the cross. We look forward, as the progressives we are, to a future victory where American Christians storm the beaches of hell and overcome the armies of evil, no matter where they reside. We storm out not with the victory of the cross, but rather with a watered down interpretation of the bible and our constitutional democracy.

Yet this is not how the early Church thought. It was clear to them that they were walking in victory. Were there battles to be fought? Of course, and we still must fight on, in a sort of mopping up action. But the main battle is over. The Messiah was victorious, and is and is to come.

Why is this important? Instead of looking to a future where every thing is getting worse, and pessimistic outlook, we must see the victory that surrounds us, and optimistic outlook, and take the power of the gospel to the world. The great commission would not be so great if it was a promise of defeat to defeat, instead of from victory to victory. Who would sign up for that? Clearly our outlook on life helps mold our level of commitment. We are not looking to be defeated; we are looking to our victorious King.

A new reading of scripture, as Wright suggests, at least in this area, will work wonders in our understanding of Paul’s theology specifically, but also St. John’s eschatology. Additionally, it helps us to understand the continuity between the Old Testament prophets and the revelation of the New Testament.

Celebrate with us.  We just went over a million successful requests for pages on our analog counter.

Scot McKnight writes in Embracing Grace, [p.34] “Perichoresis goes back the Gospel of John and was later explained more completely by one of the first theologians of Asia Minor, Gregory of Nyssa.  John tells us in chapter 10 that Jesus said, “The Father is in me and I am in the Father.”  The doctrine of the perichoresis teaches that God exists as an interpenetrating and mutual indwelling of the personos of the Trinity.  In other words, God’s eternal reality is the love between Father, Son and Holy Spirit”.  Now that is great picture of Trinitarian love. Perichoresis, Scot McKnight, Gregory of Nyssa, Trinitarian theology, The Trinity

In a previous post I mentioned an Eschatology of the Resurrection. I came across N.T. Wright’s description of the centrality of the cross. Here is the quote:

“I skip to three verses almost at the end of the letter (Galatians – scj). In 6.14—16, Paul returns to what he has said in 2.11-21; the crucifixion of the Messiah means that everything has been turned inside out, not simply his own self, not simply Israel, but the entire cosmos. ‘The world is crucified to me, and I to the world.’ He thereby locates himself on the larger map of the purposes of God, which always stretched out through Israel to the restoration of the whole creation: ‘what matters is neither circumcision nor un-circumcision but new creation’. From here there is a straight line both to 2 Corinthians 5 and, more especially, to Romans 8: Paul is not just speaking of the individual Christian as a new creation, though of course that is true as well, but of the entire renewal of the cosmos in which the Christian is invited to be a participant, in the sense both of beneficiary and of agent.” Paul in Fresh Perspective, N.T. Wright, pg 114.

These are powerful words to modern evangelical libertarians/anarchists. Unfortunately I find myself in this category much too often. It was precisely the crucifixion which brought me back to wholeness within the restored, and being restored, creation. I have been made a man again, by God’s own redeeming work. Not a man of the world, but a man of the new creation. I have become, once again, one with creation (I know what that sounds like), but more importantly, restored to the image of God. And I am now a member of the Church Universal (one holy Catholic Church), not through circumcision, speaking in tongues, subscribing to a confession, evangelizing the lost, or registering as a Republican, but through the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.

We would declare we are saved by faith, and grace (I know they are different). Yet it’s not so much that I am a man of faith, but rather He is faithful to His covenant and covenant people. It is He who has been faithful to save His creation.

I am sitting on the Dnieper River in Kiev, Ukraine today reading about St. Patrick.  Scot McKnight mentions that many women were liberated and became believers under his preaching in Ireland.  Many of them also became missionaries.  Were they complementarian?  My gut tells me “no”. St. Patrick and women, complementarian?