“The heavens are the Lord’s heavens, but the earth he has given to human beings” (Psalm 115:16). This jibes with my theodicy.

And yet part of the ambiguity surrounding the human experience of creatures’ diversity is bound up with the fact that the multiplication of creatures is coupled with (and from a purely biological perspective, needed to compensate for) their regular destruction; rather than persisting in the capacious environments that God provides, living creatures, whether considered as individuals or as classes, die, so that, for example, only a small fraction of the terrestrial species that have existed in the half-billion years since the emergence of multicellular life survive today. Yet this fact in itself need not be viewed as inconsistent with creation’s goodness. Although death has most often been viewed in Christian tradition as a punishment for Adam’s transgression, Genesis 3:19, 22 (cf. 6:3) may also be read as teaching that humans (and by extension, other earth creatures) naturally return to the dust from which they were taken unless some other factor intervenes (see Gen. 2:7, 17 Ps. 103:13-16; Eccl. 3:19-20). Certainly there is nothing inconsistent with the goodness of creation that the “place” occupied by every creature should have temporal as well as spatial boundaries, entailing a limited life span no less than limited bodily dimensions; indeed, such temporal limits actually enhance the capaciousness of creation, since two creatures can occupy the same space if they do so at different times. Death can certainly be experienced as a violation of life and so as a curse, but Scripture also can speak of a kind of death that is a life’s natural conclusion, in which an individual dies “old and full of days’ (Gen. 35;29; 1Chr. 29:28: Job 42;17; cf. gen. 25;8; Isa. 65:20). Insofar as extinction of a species is the analogue to the death of an individual creature, one might equally conceive of classes of creatures—trilobites or dinosaurs, say, both of which thrived for tens of millions of years before becoming extinct—as having experience this sort of death. In this way we can understand death as temporal finitude, as a means by which the fullness of creation is arranged along a temporal axis as well as within contemporary physical spaces….

— Ian MacFarland, From Nothing: A Theology of Creation

Ethan told me yesterday morning that a group of African protesters known as NO WHITE SAVIORS has been making waves among Adventures in Missions folks and making many points about short-term mission trips with which Ethan agrees. He indicated he wished to talk about it the next time we chat.

I was at the top of Balmoral Way today, and I asked You about it, and my thoughts poured out naturally: There is no answer to whether “short-term missions” are a good idea generally. There is only the question of whether a a given person being on a short-term mission trip is good, i.e., does his or her presence there produce love, unexploitative joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, or wisdom? If it does, then keep doing it; if it doesn’t, then stop.

I appear to have inadvertently discarded most of my skimpy annotations from Fleming Rutledge’s The Crucifixion under the false understanding that there was no limit to the size of the notes field on Goodreads. Ah, well.

All I’m left with at the moment is the following Barth quotation:

What took place on the Cross of Golgotha is the last word of an old history and the first word of a new (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV).

This dovetails nicely with the idea that has matured in me in recent months and about which I taught at church a few weeks ago: The primary thrust of Jesus’ earthly mission was to fulfill both sides of the Levitical & Deuteronomic covenant with Israel.

Beyond the above quotation, the thing I am most impressed with about Rutledge’s points is her insistence that impunity is a very unjust thing.

I have asked You, Lord, for answers to the following questions, which are really the same:

• Why was it Your plan that Jesus be crucified?
• What, objectively, happened at the Crucifixion other than the obvious? Where, other than in the minds of humans, does the Crucifixion accomplish anything?

Tonight, I believe I received two more pieces to the answer in the form of questions put to me:

1. “What, objectively, happens when you spank a child or put him or her in timeout?” The answer is nothing. What happens is all in minds: the mind of the child, the mind of the parents, and the minds of observers.
2. “If Carla ignored you for a year, would it be OK to simply forgive her and let bygones be bygones, and pretend nothing happened?” The answer is no—for her sake and for mine, no.

That latter point is related to Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo.

I never before noticed the “perplexed but not despairing” line in 2 Corinthians 4:8. That would’ve been a good thread to hang onto through doubt.

I enjoyed today how although I was worried that I wasn’t going to be able to bring anything to church, at the last minute as we approached our taking of the wine and bread, I thought of “What A Friend I’ve Found” by Delirious?, which I had just run through with Carla, the Rookes, and Ben last weekend on a whim. I need to remember not to worry so much. Just follow my whim. Especially with music making. I ought not make music simply because I have a voice for it. I ought to make music when it is in the service of love only. Is love the post hoc pretext that covers a selfish ambition for praise or usefulness? Or is love the actual, prompting reason I’m doing the singing? Let it always be the latter.

I exist to serve.

“God speaks to us. Our answers are our prayers.”

— Eugene Peterson

Let it be true that my prayers are always answers to God’s speaking. But when I first read the quotation, which I found in a Krista Tippett interview, I read it as: “The answers we seek from God are the prayers we pray,” as if He is the one providing the food for prayer.

“We cannot be too careful about the words we use. We start out using them, and they end up using us.”

– Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places

Instead of God taking responsibility for creating, what would happen if we view God as taking responsibility for being created? That is, in Christ, God the human being fulfills humanity’s responsibility before God to present itself humbly, obedient and trusting in the face of all the vicissitudes inherent in that nature, and fulfills human nature’s calling and purpose. In this case Jesus’ death fulfills created nature, loving and trusting God within the constraints of created finitude. Christ, the God-Man, represents creation to God, takes responsibility for being creatED (not for creatING), unites creation to God, and in so doing reconciles the world to God, not God to the world.

— Tom Belt, “God takes responsibility for sin – or not.”

Now there’s a thought.

I feel a certain reorientation in my reading life these past two days, and it has to do with love. If I am to do everything in love, then I am to:

• choose what to read in love, that is, in thanksgiving that there are so many good books from which to choose,
• choose what to read for love, that is, thinking of the books’ relative capacity to facilitate or express my love for God and love for others—by which I mean specific others around me, not just books that will answer questions raised by what other people on the Internet are thinking about,
• read savoringly, because to do so any other way is a waste of time that benefits no one, including myself, unless I’m reading purely for information, and is therefore unloving. Reading for understanding, entertainment, or aesthetics doesn’t even happen if I don’t read savoringly.
• read only at times when I can read savoringly, a constraint which will have the added benefit of making my responsiveness to the actual world around me much better and thus my actual total quantity and quality of love in any given day.

Also, when I switch to reading articles, I should be selective enough with my Instapaper queue that I find it easy to pay close attention to each article I do read and I get through it all in a timely manner. Basically a miniature version of the above rules.

With movies, it is easier:

• I love God while watching movies because I watch them in thanksgiving.
• I love Carla while watching movies because she wanted time to watch movies together to be a part of our life. We wouldn’t be watching movies together if I didn’t like her.
• Movies are shared activities, if passive ones. They are much easier therefore to meet the “to the enjoyment of relationship with” portion of my definition of love.

love noun 1 fondness and esteem that leads one to act toward the good of and the enjoyment of relationship with

I cannot pretend to know what’s best from a legal standpoint regarding the issues in Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. Nine of our brightest legal minds are working on it right now, and they’ll probably be split 5–4. I tend to favor allowing such anti-discrimination laws like what Colorado has because the I don’t see the cakebaker as endorsing any harm. But regardless, the way of Jesus is clear: Bake the cake. To understand why, read Matthew 5:38-48, especially vv. 39–41.

“I no longer spend most of my time with college professors like myself. I’ve traded in the PhDs for Kristi and my friends at Highland.”

— Richard Beck

Perhaps we could call secular Christmas “Wintercheer.”

I seek a metaphor to illustrate a possible metaphysics of my claims that “only our good works will be saved” and that the “line between sheep and goat runs right through me.” How do I survive but my unrighteous deeds do not? How is it so unpleasant as to be called Gehenna?

friend:

Can you help me answer a few of these questions:

1. If we affirm Homosexuals because they are “born that way” when clearly it is at the least not the natural ideal, then what would keep us from affirming someone who is born with a propensity to steal, or lie, or fornicate, or any other thing? A huge component to following the narrow way of Christ is denying our “natural” selves.
2. Along those lines, what would you do if a leader in your ministry said they don’t think the passages about sex outside of marriage apply to today, and they will be sleeping with whoever they want. They point out that it’s really just a few passages that mention this. If I’m open to accepting a different opinion on this issue, why not any and every issue?

What is the pandora’s box of sin we would be opening if we allowed this?

me:

Glad to help. I do see a risk of opening Pandora’s box if we allow same-sex marriage in the Church without a clear articulation of why we no longer call it sin. Thankfully, you yourself have already furnished your world such an articulation: It’s the rule of love.

No one can engage a propensity to steal without being unloving. The same goes for a predisposition to lie.

We all have a leaning toward premarital sex, it seems, which may account for why it’s a little more complex to explain how it’s necessarily unloving. Nevertheless, such explications can be made. The rule of love keeps us from affirming such behavior.

The same cannot be said against same-sex marriage. You and I discovered this in conversation thirteen years ago, as I recall, in the car while traveling for a bachelor party. I’ll go so far as to turn things around and say that it’s unloving for us to deny the great good of marriage of those same-sex Christian couples who need it and have clear consciences about it.

In answer to your second set of questions, no two issues are the same, and interpretive tradition doesn’t lose its weight simply because “times have changed.” If a leader in my ministry organization wished to cast off the scriptural restraints regarding premarital sex, reciting the chestnut that the pertinent Bible passages don’t apply to today, perhaps because of the advent of contraception or today’s admittedly unfortunate concurrence of an increase in the average age of marriage and a decrease in the average age of puberty, I might simply make as strong a case as I could that premarital sex remains an unloving thing to do. I might also challenge him to produce a positive scriptural argument for it motivated by Christian love, which I believe has been done for same-sex marriage, rather a purely negatory one motivated by libido.

But I might also take the opportunity to revitalize the Christian sexual ethic more generally: At its core, the world’s sexual ethic boils down to a single maxim: Get consent. Christians could agree that that’s a good maxim. And obviously, it is possible for premarital sex to tick that checkbox. A slightly more sophisticated worldly sexual ethic might add a second maxim: Do no harm. For the sake of argument, let’s temporarily and reluctantly grant that premarital sex might possibly fulfill this criterion as well. Now, let’s ask: Leaving aside individual scriptural proscriptions about specific behaviors, if we were able to abstract from the Bible a general, Christian sexual ethic, would it be coterminous with the sexual ethic of the world? In other words, are the above two maxims that comprise the world’s sexual ethic also all there is to a Christian sexual ethic?

The answer is no. If we Christians take Jesus and Paul seriously, we ought to recognize a third sexual maxim: Don’t be distracted from the Lord’s work. In the New Testament, the importance of being undistracted is what prompts both the holding up of celibacy as the ideal and and the concession of marriage as an alternative.

This principle of undistraction is a stalwart defense of the Kingdom against all manner of sexual innovation, and a strong, argument for loving, exclusive monogamy as the only acceptable erotic outlet for a Christian. I have run polygamy, polyamory, open marriages, and premarital sex against it in simulations in my head. I have yet to encounter in my imagination a realistic scenario in which they create less, or even equal, distraction from God’s main plan than the ideal (celibacy) or its attendant concession (marriage).

Thanks for the opportunity to write this stuff out.

Much love, Scott

P.S. I will caution in my trumpeting the cause of Christian celibacy that such a station must be accompanied by robust social support. By this I’m not suggesting that celibacy leads to sexual deviance. (In the case Catholic priests, I have read in non-Catholic sources that rates of pedophilia among priests are no higher than they are in the population at large.) I am merely saying that celibates need deep friendships just like, and perhaps more acutely, than the rest of us. I’ll add that I think they’ll need a knowledgeable, wise plan for managing their sexuality.

P.P.S. Please remember that it is possible, albeit difficult, and beautiful to build an organization that affirms both Side A and Side B gay Christians in the dictates of their consciences.

Apparently, it’s “deliver us from the evil one” (NRSV, NIV, NLT, HCSB) and not “deliver us from evil” (NAS, KJV, ESV) That makes more sense. Gets God closer to batting 1.000 for the prayer His son instructed us to pray.

“I’m not Atlas, on any conceivable level.”

— Tom Belt, in a pithy, poetic expression of our dependency of God and others

“It’s almost as if sex is not just a meaningless commodity traded between the consenting but, in fact, is an act so deeply powerful that we should consider wrapping it in an institution of personal commitment and public accountability.”

— Matt Popovits

friend:

In the next chapter Jesus seems to switch from Salvation by “what they do” to belief in Him. In chapter 5 he indicates that he’ll raise people who did good deeds up to life and those who did bad deeds to judgement, and then in Chapter 6 it’s those who behold and believe in him that he’ll raise up….

A bit conflicting…How do I get raised up to life!?

Also while I was in the US, one of our leaders here gave a passionate talk about the evils of homosexuality and how the bible “clearly” states this is sin. So that is causing some waves…

Fun fun.

me:

Hi Ethan –

I find my eleventh-grade math-class logic lessons useful here. First of all, there is no p → q statement in John 6:40. It does not say, “If you see the Son and believe in him, then you will have eternal life and I will raise you up on the last day.” So no need to worry about that one. But, you’ll say, at least two other verses in the chapter can be formulated as such:

1. “[W]hoever believes has eternal life” (v. 47) becomes “If you believe, then you have eternal life” and
2. “[T]he one who eats this bread will live forever” (v. 58) becomes “If you eat this bread, then you will live forever.”

So, the point is granted. But neither of these statements are “if and only if” statements. The only other thing you can say for sure from these statements is their contrapositives ('q → 'p):

1. If you don’t have eternal life, then you don’t believe.
2. If you aren’t living forever, than you haven’t eaten this bread.

You can’t say the original statements’ converses:

1. If you don’t believe, then you don’t have eternal life.
2. If you don’t eat this bread, you won’t live forever.

So nothing Jesus says here contradicts his earlier statement. Given this subset of verses, at least, there may be other ways to eternal life—indeed, as you’ve noted, in the earlier, John-5 statement, Jesus says so explicitly, insofar as “the resurrection of life” (ch. 5) and “eternal life” or “living forever” (ch. 6) are synonymous: He says, in effect, that if you do good, then you will come out of your grave to the resurrection of life.

So, assuming being raised up to life is synonymous with having eternal life, how do you get raised up to life? We have two ways that Jesus gives us here: Believe (eat this bread), and do good. Both appear to “work.”

All of the logical analysis above may be moot, however, if we observe that faith without works is dead and that it does no good to call Jesus Lord but not do what He says. Given those two additional data, it may be best to simply conflate the concepts of “believing” and “doing good." In other words, John, like many places in the New Testament, may be a great place to translate pisteuo as “to give allegiance.” Mere belief is no good.

Also, I’m sorry to hear about the waves! I hope your one gal there is OK. Hopefully your leader guy at least made a distinction between same-sex attraction and same-sex sexual activity.

Much love.

friend:

If we’re to take 1 Corinthians 15:22 as making any sense at all, and if we agree that all have sinned/died (in Adam), how can we not end in Universalism?

To not end there is to make Adam more powerful than Christ.

In reply, I wrote:

me:

I suppose one might interpret “made alive” in a very literal sense, affirming that everyone will be resurrected, but allowing that some of those resurrected will be wholly condemned.

But yes, I agree with your take below. Romans 5:18 is very similar.

Have you read “Universalism and the Bible” by Yale philosopher Keith DeRose? Reading it was probably the last straw for me.

friend:

As I read the words of Jesus as he talks about the afterlife or the “judgement day”, I do not think he got the memo of “Saved by Grace”. In the classical gospel representation, if you confess with your mouth, and believe in your heart that Jesus is lord, you will be saved. That “saved” is most often interpreted as “from the judgement”. All through the new testament it talks about having our sins washed away by the blood of Jesus, etc.

But Jesus in John 5:28 talks explicitly about those with good deeds being raised to life, and those with evil deeds to judgement. Matthew 25 gives the same criteria - how you lived, not what you believed. I would say that if you just read Jesus' words, you would never come away with a “his blood covers all my sins and makes me alright with God”. But I readily admit that the new testament authors did strongly imply this relationship - 1 John 1:7, Hebrews 9, Romans 10.

So what do we do with our assurances from John, Peter, and Paul that our sins are washed clean, but our message from Christ that “not so fast, your deeds will be judged”.

Honestly, the only way this makes sense to me is if “Salvation” is for right now and I have assurance that I can connect my heart and life to God NOW, having my conscience clean, starting over. But, at the final judgement, my works will be judged and everything I did not do for love will be consumed, but I myself will enter through His love.

Anyway - Romans man…why did Paul write Romans. I really think everything would be different without that book and it’s “Plan for sharing the good news of salvation by belief” . Of course the point of what Paul was saying was not saved by belief, but rather your lineage as a Jew was not the criteria, but your allegiance to Christ.

self:

In case we don’t get to it when you get here, I think you’re onto something.

I put it this way: We’re not saved by our good works, but only our good works will be saved.

Now, what it means that that which “I did not do for love will be consumed, but [that] I myself will enter through His love,” as you put it, is currently inconceivable for me. But just because I can’t imagine it doesn’t mean it can’t be true.

As for the plentiful talk in the New Testament about our being forgiven or washed of our sins, it is certainly true that He doesn’t count our sins against us. Maybe that’s another way of saying that we ourselves with enter through His love, and perhaps it’s through this idea that we can begin to conceive of how it can be true that our evildoing will be annihilated but we ourselves will not.

(In order for any of this to jibe with the New Testament talk of fire, the annihilation of our evildoing would have to terribly unpleasant.)

And at least in the minds of ancient Jews and, I think, Greco-Romans, blood sacrifice was required to elicit such favor from the gods. Hence all that talk.

As for Paul’s letter to the Romans, you are right about Paul’s point in the book as a whole. But moreover, read the second chapter of and tell me you don’t come away with the same impression as you do when you read Jesus: that everyone will be judged.

We inherit a “soterian” gospel from the Reformers that has, on balance, not been a good thing to have as Gospel.

love verb 1 to esteem someone or something as to be gladly willing to donate of one’s self (e.g., attention, energy, time, material resources, money) for the their good 2 to esteem someone or something as to prioritize their needs