From: Alfred BloomTo: Willis ElliottSent: Wednesday, January 28, 2009 1:53 AMSubject: Re: Re: Theophany, Shekhinah: God's PRESENCE - response to a pastor's request - response to a responseDear Willis:Thank you for your posts. You never cease to amaze me with your acumen and verve and the information you have at your disposal.I am sorry not to respond sooner, but I am now engaged in an exercise regime that cuts into my time and also trying to catch up on a book I am supposed to put together. Somehow there are not enough hours in the day and I m getting slower to boot.However, I guess I am a reprobate Buddhist. Your support for theism is understandable in the light of your history and experience, but that alone does not justify the ease with which you assume it. When theism is left as a general term, the problems with it are not readily visible. However when you begin to unpack it, it has as many problems as any other religious or theological formulation.The usual idea is that theism means belief in a personal God. What is a personal God or a god who is a person? Whenever this question has been raised, the assertion is that God's personality is not like our personality with its limitations as persona. If God is said to make choices and exert will, still his will is not like human will with all its vagaries and anthropomorphic features, like being humanly emotional, and angry, though we are told of God's wrath and anger. What can that mean? So whatever God is he is like something in human beings but without the limitations of humans. What is that, except to say we really do not know what a personal God is, because it is beyond our experience of being persons. It is different. Humans are not made more valuable or significant by claiming that they were made by a God or even is his image. The image has not been defined either.I would prefer to leave the issue of God open and speak of reality as inconceivable and indefinable. It may be the source of what is but we can only deal with what comes within our sphere of knowledge; all else is.We are here, however, we got here. The question is more how do we live and relate in the world and life where we are? To clutter it up wih dogma and speculation only leads to interminable argument between opposing views--like the five blind men and the elephant. story.The founding fathers in mentioning a creator God were more deists than theists. God set the world going and then left it alone. It was more a deus ex machina and certainly not the theistic savior-god of modern evangelicalism or fundamentalism. I recently read an article on the Jefferson bible which probably was nothing like what you would want to agree with. He left all the things that were rationally objectionable out. Everybody seems want to use the founding fathers to support their pet notion.As far as intelligent design is concerned, a cause need only be suffient to the effect and does not imply other qualities beyond the simply aspect of rationality, if that is what it is. It is a question whether the world is created by intelligence or is ordered or whether our minds find order in it because of the way our minds have evolved. I think Kant with his categories and antinomies had the idea of our minds imposing order. Hume also indicated that we cannot know the cause because it only happened once and and therefore we do not have sufficient instances to know the nature of the cause.Intelligent design sounds like the ancient arguments from for the existence of God that come from the medieval period and have been discredited because they are circular because it already presumes what it claims to prove. God by definition is rational; order in the world is rational; therefore the world is created by God. However, it does not deal with surd aspects, like earthquakes, tidal waves and other irregular features of the universe.Thomas accepted the world as eternal and not requiring a theistic God. He derived that notion from Revelation which then becomes the focus of the problem. It became Reason and Revelation.Even if there should be a creator-theistic God as you assert, what does it add to our understanding of human nature, the nature of the world and the problems we have dealing with natural environment or human aberrations? How do you make a jump from the concept of God sufficient to create a world and the basis of salvation in the particular form which Christianity has posed it? Of course, you accept revelation as given in the Bible, but does that really solve the problem without raising other questions concerning the nature of revelation?I guess that one of our unresolvable issues between us is the theory of Culture Clash which you profess to see between Islam and Christianity. However, that idea ignores the wide areas where Muslims and Christians have been living at peace. What about our so-called Muslim allies that we depend on? The area of conflict, largely created by ourselves, is in a particular region with its own special history of colonialism and imperialism. It also discounts the 6 million Muslims who live in the US quite peacefully and in harmony with western values. In some cases they wish to keep their customs such as the habit-scarf, "kosher" and prayers just as the Jewish hasids keep their ways, whom no one considers a threat or cystic and unacceptable in our culture. I frankly think, despite my Jewish ethnicity, that Netanyahu and Israel may be more a threat to everyone in the long run. What about the culture clash with Likud and the settlements? Advocating a culture clash can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. However, I think we have been over this ground previously. I think holding that idea is on the wrong side of history.Thank you for your thoughts which are stimulating, even though they do not necessarily lead to agreement.I hope you are not having too severe winter weather and that you keep healthy.Best wishes,AlohaAl
From: GabeSent: Thursday, January 29, 2009 4:15 PM
Dear Book Readers, I finished the book. I am not sure what it means. I do know what I think it means to me. I think MR was teaching us that we have no lasting home here and we are restless until we rest in God. But since I am rambling my first comment is on judgment.
1. I was very judgmental of Jack and Glory and the Revs early in the reading. I found others expressing this same in patience and judgment. For me MR was playing to our American culture. We expect people to “pick themselves up, dust themselves off and reinvent their lives.” This is how our president defines us. Get to the AA meeting and move on, find another lover and get a life, come out of prison like Chuck Carlson. So we have little patience with an un American Jack who “has an impressive history of failure”p.301 and who is “A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and as one from whom men hid their face, Ah Jack.” -.318 We are American, we believe in the American Idol. God helps those who help themselves. So we judge failures and yet in relation to
God we are all failures. “All have sinned and come short.” Rom. Maybe MR is trying to get us to see the difference between being American and Being Christian.
\
2. I think she is trying to get us to distrust our idols. She really does a wonderful job of exposing our idols and one of our chief idols is HOME> Think of the idols in Gloria’s life She is conned not so much by the fake lover but by the idols. “It was for the children and the sunlit house…that she had to give up mere money.” P.307
Rev. B know he has been coned by idols that he felt he could hold onto. Jack, his church, his family, his town, his HOME. He says, “Why did I think I could hold on to anything. I lost my church. I lost my wife. They “call it home, but nobody stays..” p.296
3. Death is the finally power that destroys idols. And MR does a great job in holding our noise to dying. The 1950-60’s may have been the last generation that cared for the dying. Death and dying is now in the hands of professionals, Hospice, nursing home. Death has lost it sting for us. We don’t bath the fragial body of the old. We don’t fed them, or carry their limp body from chair to bed. We don’t dress them They are dropped off at the rest HOME
4. Jack is the one person in the book with the fewest idols. He knows HOME can’t save him. Maybe he is trying to tell Gloria that home can’t save her.
5. I will finish my comments on what I found to be language that is so powerful in this novel that it made me weary and I think it is the language that we often use in our communion. More to come. Peace, Herb
Dear Confessors:
The following note was forwarded to me from Herman Waetjen, New Testament Professor emeritus at San Francisco Theological Seminary. It was composed by Dr. Frank Miller, one of Browne Barr’s many friends from Sonoma County—where Browne lived in retirement and organized, for over a decade, a cooperative venture to collect food from local farmers and to deliver it to a shelter in San Francisco.
<<<
Browne died last evening in Santa Rosa at a Hospital. He had contracted pneumonia, had a Heart attack and Kidney failure. What a long and sad ordeal that dear Man had to go through. I remember clearly, when we were at the Grape blessing at Fieldstone Winery and Brown was on oxygen and in the process of deciding on going through surgery to close up the hole in his heart, he said: if I do this, I am afraid I will lose my mind after the many hours of anesthesia !!
>>>
After serving as minister of South Church, Congregational, in Middletown, Connecticut, Browne Barr became professor of homiletics at Yale Divinity School during the 1950s. In the early 1960s he returned to the pastorate at First Congregational Church in Berkeley, California. Browne served that church faithfully—through the revolution of the 1960s—for over two decades, during which time he authored, among other books, EAST BAY AND EDEN. He also served on the editorial board of The Christian Century into the 1990s. In the late 1970s, Browne became professor of homiletics and later dean of the faculty at San Francisco Theological Seminary, a seminary of the Presbyterian Church. In the ecumenical spirit of the era, Browne’s presence drew a number of UCC ministerial candidates to SFTS (including me). At SFTS, Browne wrote his book HIGH FLYING GEESE. He moved from San Anselmo to Calistoga with his wife Leigh after his retirement from the deanship in 1983. He wrote the book NEVER TOO LATE TO BE LOVED: HOW ONE COUPLE UNDER STRESS DISCOVERED JOY AND INTIMACY about their marriage in the aftermath of her death. Browne Barr served for several years on the Steering Committee of Confessing Christ. He was a great preacher, teacher, and friend.
O blest communion, fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
Yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Ted Trost
-----Original Message-----
From: Confessi...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:Confessi...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Gabe
Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2009 4:15 PM
To: Confessing Christ Open Forum
Ted and Others,
It is a sad day for us and a Glorious one for the saints on high. A faithful and passionate witness has left us. Gone from us is a great bridge-builder, a passionate and thoughtful preacher, a focused and generous teacher, a sharp wit and a faithful follower of Christ. Were it not for Browne, I am not certain how the Word would have been planted and taken root within me. Here are a few words of his which seem appropriate to the moment:
“To be surprised to have our illusions of reality broken by the Word of God, is not to be destroyed, but to be saved. If we expect from the Bible the setting forth in clear terms of the absolute nature of reality, a final truth, then we shall be disappointed. The Word that comes is not a detailed description of a completed, final absolute. Rather it is a Living Word and it allows no such final word.
Expectations will be shattered to make room for the possibility of the experience of that mystery and for the invasion of that peace which passes all. . . understanding. The Word overflows all categories of the intellect because it is in absolute alliance with that God who in Christ shattered our one certainty, death, and has thus made possible all the eternal possibilities of him in whom is every beginning, every ending and no ending at all.”
AMEN
God’s Peace in Christ,
Matt Crebbin
From:
Confessi...@googlegroups.com [mailto:Confessi...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Trost, Theodore
Sent: Monday, February 02, 2009
3:05 PM
To:
Confessi...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Browne Barr
Rest eternal grant to him, O Lord, and may light perpetual shine upon him.
May he and all the Faithful Departed, through the mercy of God, + rest in peace.
+Richard
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----- Original Message -----From: Gabe
Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 2009 1:22 PMSubject: Re: Rambling Comments on HOME
-----Original Message-----
From: Confessi...@googlegroups.com [mailto:Confessi...@googlegroups.com]On Behalf Of herb.davis
Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2009 1:41 PM
To: Confessi...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: Browne BarrMatt. Thanks for tht quote from Barr. [herb.davis] He was a wonderful gift to us in Confessing Christ. Always hopeful, wise and strong. Herb
----- Original Message -----From: GabeSent: Sunday, February 08, 2009 12:51 PMSubject: Re: Rambling Comments on HOME
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----- Original Message -----From: herb.davis
She loves her brother so much and she longs for him to have what she has but she knows she can not rescue him. She simple turns him over to God and waits like the Father does in the prodical story. Jack is not ready to recieve. She waits in pain.
Yes, Roger,SHE (Glory) is HE (the waiting father of L.15).Glory would like to refurbish the liviingroom, but knows that Jack (next time he shows up) wants to see it unchanged....Your reference to the Cross reminds me of Gabe's telling MR that our CC comments imply, where they do not state, Cross & Resurrection, & are not "worldly."Grace and peace--Willis
----- Original Message -----From: Willis Elliott
----- Original Message -----From: Wanda Lester
----- Original Message -----From: Gabe
Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2009 10:58 AMSubject: Re: Comments on some comments of the author of "HOME"
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----- Original Message -----From: herb.davis
----- Original Message -----From: Gabe
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----- Original Message -----From: jeasleasland
Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2009 8:35 AMSubject: Re: Comments on some comments of the author of "HOME"Willis: I don't think MR feminizes God, if my speculation was some where near on. Does your note imply that she does? I think that there are some missing links in the book. The sense of journey and wilderness is there but the "transformations" along the way don't seem to quite happen. It is like maybe no one makes it all the way to the cross and is surprised by the Incarnation, how it comes and when it comes. Blessings Roger
----- Original Message -----From: Willis ElliottSent: Tuesday, February 10, 2009 9:25 PMSubject: Re: Comments on some comments of the author of "HOME"Roger says (of Glory & Jack),She loves her brother so much and she longs for him to have what she has but she knows she can not rescue him. She simple turns him over to God and waits like the Father does in the prodical story. Jack is not ready to recieve. She waits in pain.Yes, Roger,SHE (Glory) is HE (the waiting father of L.15).Glory would like to refurbish the liviingroom, but knows that Jack (next time he shows up) wants to see it unchanged....Your reference to the Cross reminds me of Gabe's telling MR that our CC comments imply, where they do not state, Cross & Resurrection, & are not "worldly."Grace and peace--Willis
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The focus of the text is Jesus and the disciples. The focus on Jesus is
"Son of God." We often see Mark's understanding of Jesus as "Son of Man"
but the "Son of Man" should not hide Jesus as the "Son of God." The mystery
is Jesus as both "Son of God" and "Son of Man" is the Gospel paradox of
divine power and weakness, lowliness and majesty, servant and Lord. To
emphasis one is to solve the mystery. Mark Keeps the full Jesus before us.
This text can be seen in the light of the three affirmations of Jesus as
"Son of God in Mark. We hear the voice from heaven at his baptism, "You are
my Son, the Beloved." At the end of the Gospel we hear the confession of
the might Roman army officer, "Truly this man is the Son of God." Here on
the mount, in the midst of Elijah and Moses the disciple hear a voice from
the clould, "This is my Son, the beloved, listen to him." v.7 Mark wants us
to cling to the mystery "Son of God" - "Son of Man" in one person.
The focus on the disciple is also a focus on all who follow Jesus. To those
who have had an epiphany experience the result is often confusing. For
those of us who have only the text the same confusion can exist. The
confusion is expressed in longing to resolve the mystery, in grasping one
clear image. What a dumb response by the disciples. They want to hold on
to the monet, to build booths to celebration the gathering of Elijah, Moses
and Jesus. So like us to remember that special moment or to see Jesus in a
special ways as a "spiritual person" or "a man of sorrows" or "as the
radical rebel" or "the divine healer". Mark seems to be saying we cannot
hold the fullness of Jesus together until after the resurrection. Don't
make foolish statement disciple until we can say with Thomas to the risen
Jesus, "My Lord and My God."
Preachers are not called to give snappy moral lessons but to invite all to
the mount, to see the transfiguration and to hear, "This is my beloved Son,
listen to Him." My we listen to Jesus.
Any additions or correction? Any liturgical resources? Peace, Herb
-->
From: Gabe
Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2009 7:48 AMSubject: Re: God's Blood
From: George DemetrionSent: Thursday, February 12, 2009 1:52 PMSubject: RE: God's BloodThanks Gabe,
if this does become a focused discussion topic I'd like to put Packer's classic essay, What Does the Cross Achieve.
http://thirdmill.org/newfiles/ji_packer/Packer.crossachieve.html
Alaistaire McGrath, a big fan of Packer's views this as one of his most important essays.
Best,
George
/09 11:13:00
----- Original Message -----From: Willis Elliott
Sent: Friday, February 13, 2009 5:06 PMSubject: Re: God's Blood
----- Original Message -----From: Willis ElliottSent: Friday, February 13, 2009 5:06 PM
Subject: Re: God's Blood
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an attempt to make Bell's god likeable to our modern culture which is so full of violence.
Grace and peace--Willis
It is not we who offer sacrifice, it is God, in the second person of the Trinity, who is the sacrifice. It is not God who requires blood, it is God who give blood."
In Christ, we see God the pierced one, the God whose mercy and love drove him to endure being torn by the very ones he loved. That is the good news. The cross itself is the "fountain of cleansing" that God has appointed. It is the place of facing ourselves and the enemies that we have become towards our own creator. It is the place at which God has chosen to meet us, and to release for us God's great power for repentance and reconciliation—not just reconciliation to God, but also to one another (Eph. 2:11-22). John says this:
God is love. This is how God showed God's love among us: God sent God's only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that God loved us and sent God's Son to be the reconciling sacrifice for our sins. (1 John 4:8-10)
The thing that is worth noticing about this passage and all similar passages in the New Testament, is that Jesus is offered by God to us as a reconciling sacrifice ("propitiation"), and does not offer himself to God as a reconciling sacrifice. Various writers say that Jesus offered himself to God (e.g. Hebrews), but they say it in such a way that it is clearly not as someone who offers to undergo vicarious punishment or rejection from the hands of God. Hebrews says he underwent vicarious purification and refinement through suffering, to flesh out and to complete his identification with our need, and his flawlessly loving and forgiving nature as High Priest (Heb. 5:8-10). There is not a word in Hebrews about Jesus vicariously experiencing anger or condemning punishment (except from us—read Heb. 12:2-3). The New Testament writers agree that in his dying Jesus offered up the very life of his body, all of himself as a person, in love to God (as we are also commanded to do, Rom. 12:1). And God was infinitely pleased with that offering (see Eph. 5:2: "Christ loved us, and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God").
----- Original Message -----From: Willis ElliottSent: Sunday, February 15, 2009 10:17 PMSubject: Re: God's Blood - the doctrine of the ATONEMENT in light of Daniel.L.Bell Jr's "God does not demand blood" (Christian Century 2.10.09)
----- Original Message -----From: jeasleasland
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----- Original Message -----From: Ryan Dowell Baum
Sent: Tuesday, February 17, 2009 3:40 PMSubject: Re: God's Blood
----- Original Message -----From: jeasleasland
----- Original Message -----From: Richard FloydSent: Wednesday, February 18, 2009 10:36 AMSubject: Re: God's Blood - the doctrine of the ATONEMENT in light of Daniel.L.Bell Jr's "God does not demand blood" (Christian Century 2.10.09)
Atonement talkers,Gabe has prodded me to get into this conversation, so here goes. Asking me about the atonement is a bit like asking Nero Wolfe about orchids; you may not want to know that much about it.I think Herb and Willis' analyses of the Bell article are right. To give Bell credit, he seems to be addressing the hatred many liberal mainline Christians have for the cross, and at least he wants to affirm it in some way. Roger's anecdote about the UCC ordination candidate who spurned the cross is not imaginary. Such stories abound. I witnessed some of this animus last summer at the Craigville colloquy in the reaction of a few to my paper: The Cross and Violence: Is the Word of the Cross Good News or is it Bad News? which I attach because it deals with many of the issues in this conversation:
I also want to affirm Herb and Wanda's insight that the atonement is not so much what God requires of us, but what God does for us, doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves.Bell's essay lacks a proper Trinitarian frame to understand the atonement in a manner that does justice to the riches of scripture on the subject.As I have written many times, if your starting place is a deity who then sacrifices the human Jesus, it is morally reprehensible. But this unitarian god is not the Christian God, and such characterizations are straw men.In George Lindbeck's now iconic book The Nature of Doctrine, he describes one of his ideal types as liberal/expressivist, Paul Tillich being the model. This approach says what we are describing here could be described any number of other ways. I think this theological approach predominates in the UCC and it is a disaster because it can't grasp the particularity of the Christian story. I think some of the need to apologize for the cross comes from the fact that it is still a scandal, because it doesn't fit the other modern and postmodern meta-narratives that people live by.So people don't like the cross because it's icky. They condemn it because it fosters violence, or masochism, or sadism, or other things that right-thinking people don't like. Apart from asking whether any of these indictments are true (is it true, for example, as Bell writes, that “the logic of blood sacrifice often shapes the way Christians act.”?) can you have a cross-less Christianity? Bell, at least, wants to say no.So we have a cross at the center of our faith, the actuality of atonement, as Colin Gunton's great book is called. What do we do with this fact?Foremost is to abandon liberal/expressivist attempts to say what the cross means some other way( ie. as the apotheosis of human sacrifice) and to attend closely to scripture, to the rich, thick intertextuality of the record. Richard Baukham's God Crucified argues that there was never a Christology that didn't understand Jesus' death as a sacrifice, that our Gospels preserve a pre-Markan kerygma that understood it that way from the outset. The temple associations with sacrifice are obvious, but even before Jesus time, sacrifice had taken on a metaphorical character as in “The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit.”Willis rightly points to the importance of God's reputation in both testaments. P.T. Forsyth speaks of God the Holy Father, and describes God's holiness as the antithesis of sin. There is no way sinful humanity can reconcile itself to the holy God. But God can, and does, in an act of divine love from God's side that is a sacrifice, a sacrifice of God as much as to God.One can say that Jesus' blood sacrifice is the end of blood sacrifice. Here is a new temple and a new priesthood; here the saving victim is both priest and sacrifice. Freely offering his life to the Father in the Spirit, the man Jesus reconciles (which is what the Greek word translated as atonement also means) sinful, dying humanity with the Holy Father in a trinitarian act of the Godhead. Sin and death are defeated and the veil of the temple is torn in two. The old has passed away, the new has come. This once and for all character of the cross means blood sacrifice is no longer required. So the cross answers our question: God does not demand blood.Rick FloydPittsfield, MARichard Floyd
to go with the Christian Century article, what of Scripture would we have to black out? For starters: Is.53 (representative [substitutionary!] suffering), the Lord's Supper texts,much in Paul (e.g., 2Cor.5.21, Gal.3.13). Many texts not mentioning blood in sacrifice imply it; e.g., the scapegoat alone in the wilderness will be eaten.
I also want to affirm Herb and Wanda's insight that the atonement is
not so much what God requires of us, but what God does for us, doing
for us what we cannot do for ourselves.
Bell's essay lacks a proper Trinitarian frame to understand the
atonement in a manner that does justice to the riches of scripture on
the subject.
As I have written many times, if your starting place is a deity who
then sacrifices the human Jesus, it is morally reprehensible. But
this unitarian god is not the Christian God, and such
characterizations are straw men.
In George Lindbeck's now iconic book The Nature of Doctrine, he
describes one of his ideal types as liberal/expressivist, Paul Tillich
being the model. This approach says what we are describing here could
be described any number of other ways. I think this theological
approach predominates in the UCC and it is a disaster because it can't
grasp the particularity of the Christian story. I think some of the
need to apologize for the cross comes from the fact that it is still a
scandal, because it doesn't fit the other modern and postmodern meta-
narratives that people live by.
So people don't like the cross because it's icky. They condemn it
because it fosters violence, or masochism, or sadism, or other things
that right-thinking people don't like. Apart from asking whether any
of these indictments are true (is it true, for example, as Bell
writes, that “the logic of blood sacrifice often shapes the way
Christians act.”?) can you have a cross-less Christianity? Bell, at
least, wants to say no.
So we have a cross at the center of our faith, the actuality of
atonement, as Colin Gunton's great book is called. What do we do with
this fact?
Foremost is to abandon liberal/expressivist attempts to say what the
cross means some other way( ie. as the apotheosis of human sacrifice)
and to attend closely to scripture, to the rich, thick intertextuality
of the record. Richard Baukham's God Crucified argues that there was
never a Christology that didn't understand Jesus' death as a
sacrifice, that our Gospels preserve a pre-Markan kerygma that
understood it that way from the outset. The temple associations with
sacrifice are obvious, but even before Jesus time, sacrifice had taken
on a metaphorical character as in “The sacrifice acceptable to God is
a broken spirit.”
Willis rightly points to the importance of God's reputation in both
testaments. P.T. Forsyth speaks of God the Holy Father, and describes
God's holiness as the antithesis of sin. There is no way sinful
humanity can reconcile itself to the holy God. But God can, and does,
in an act of divine love from God's side that is a sacrifice, a
sacrifice of God as much as to God.
One can say that Jesus' blood sacrifice is the end of blood
sacrifice. Here is a new temple and a new priesthood; here the saving
victim is both priest and sacrifice. Freely offering his life to the
Father in the Spirit, the man Jesus reconciles (which is what the
Greek word translated as atonement also means) sinful, dying humanity
with the Holy Father in a trinitarian act of the Godhead. Sin and
death are defeated and the veil of the temple is torn in two. The old
has passed away, the new has come. This once and for all character of
the cross means blood sacrifice is no longer required. So the cross
answers our question: God does not demand blood.
Rick Floyd
Pittsfield, MA
Richard Floyd
rfl...@berkshire.rr.com
> From: elli...@charter.net
> To: Confessi...@googlegroups.com
> Subject: Re: God's Blood
> Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2009 17:06:25 -0600
>
>
> Thanks, George.
>
> First, I read Packer's endnotes & found them masterful.
> 1
> During WW2, I got numerous letters with censor-blacked-out words/
> phrases/sentences. Packer's article brought this WW2 experience to
> mind:
> to go with the Christian Century article, what of Scripture would we
> have to black out? For starters: Is.53 (representative
> [substitutionary!] suffering), the Lord's Supper texts,much in Paul
> No virus found in this incoming message.
> Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
> Version: 8.0.237 / Virus Database: 270.10.23/1953 - Release Date:
> 02/14/09 18:01:00
>
>
> >
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----- Original Message -----From: Richard FloydSent: Wednesday, February 18, 2009 10:36 AM
Subject: Re: God's Blood - the doctrine of the ATONEMENT in light of Daniel.L.Bell Jr's "God does not demand blood" (Christian Century 2.10.09)
Atonement talkers,Gabe has prodded me to get into this conversation, so here goes. Asking me about the atonement is a bit like asking Nero Wolfe about orchids; you may not want to know that much about it.I think Herb and Willis' analyses of the Bell article are right. To give Bell credit, he seems to be addressing the hatred many liberal mainline Christians have for the cross, and at least he wants to affirm it in some way. Roger's anecdote about the UCC ordination candidate who spurned the cross is not imaginary. Such stories abound. I witnessed some of this animus last summer at the Craigville colloquy in the reaction of a few to my paper: The Cross and Violence: Is the Word of the Cross Good News or is it Bad News? which I attach because it deals with many of the issues in this conversation:
I also want to affirm Herb and Wanda's insight that the atonement is not so much what God requires of us, but what God does for us, doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves.Bell's essay lacks a proper Trinitarian frame to understand the atonement in a manner that does justice to the riches of scripture on the subject.As I have written many times, if your starting place is a deity who then sacrifices the human Jesus, it is morally reprehensible. But this unitarian god is not the Christian God, and such characterizations are straw men.In George Lindbeck's now iconic book The Nature of Doctrine, he describes one of his ideal types as liberal/expressivist, Paul Tillich being the model. This approach says what we are describing here could be described any number of other ways. I think this theological approach predominates in the UCC and it is a disaster because it can't grasp the particularity of the Christian story. I think some of the need to apologize for the cross comes from the fact that it is still a scandal, because it doesn't fit the other modern and postmodern meta-narratives that people live by.So people don't like the cross because it's icky. They condemn it because it fosters violence, or masochism, or sadism, or other things that right-thinking people don't like. Apart from asking whether any of these indictments are true (is it true, for example, as Bell writes, that “the logic of blood sacrifice often shapes the way Christians act.”?) can you have a cross-less Christianity? Bell, at least, wants to say no.So we have a cross at the center of our faith, the actuality of atonement, as Colin Gunton's great book is called. What do we do with this fact?Foremost is to abandon liberal/expressivist attempts to say what the cross means some other way( ie. as the apotheosis of human sacrifice) and to attend closely to scripture, to the rich, thick intertextuality of the record. Richard Baukham's God Crucified argues that there was never a Christology that didn't understand Jesus' death as a sacrifice, that our Gospels preserve a pre-Markan kerygma that understood it that way from the outset. The temple associations with sacrifice are obvious, but even before Jesus time, sacrifice had taken on a metaphorical character as in “The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit.”Willis rightly points to the importance of God's reputation in both testaments. P.T. Forsyth speaks of God the Holy Father, and describes God's holiness as the antithesis of sin. There is no way sinful humanity can reconcile itself to the holy God. But God can, and does, in an act of divine love from God's side that is a sacrifice, a sacrifice of God as much as to God.One can say that Jesus' blood sacrifice is the end of blood sacrifice. Here is a new temple and a new priesthood; here the saving victim is both priest and sacrifice. Freely offering his life to the Father in the Spirit, the man Jesus reconciles (which is what the Greek word translated as atonement also means) sinful, dying humanity with the Holy Father in a trinitarian act of the Godhead. Sin and death are defeated and the veil of the temple is torn in two. The old has passed away, the new has come. This once and for all character of the cross means blood sacrifice is no longer required. So the cross answers our question: God does not demand blood.Rick FloydPittsfield, MARichard Floyd
On Feb 17, 2009, at 5:13 PM, jeasleasland wrote:
to go with the Christian Century article, what of Scripture would we have to black out? For starters: Is.53 (representative [substitutionary!] suffering), the Lord's Supper texts,much in Paul (e.g., 2Cor.5.21, Gal.3.13). Many texts not mentioning blood in sacrifice imply it; e.g., the scapegoat alone in the wilderness will be eaten.
> From: elli...@charter.net
> To: Confessi...@googlegroups.com
> Subject: Re: God's Blood
> Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2009 17:06:25 -0600
>
>
> Thanks, George.
>
> First, I read Packer's endnotes & found them masterful.
> 1
> During WW2, I got numerous letters with censor-blacked-out words/
> phrases/sentences. Packer's article brought this WW2 experience to
> mind:
> to go with the Christian Century article, what of Scripture would we
> have to black out? For starters: Is.53 (representative
> [substitutionary!] suffering), the Lord's Supper texts,much in Paul
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> 02/14/09 18:01:00
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Thank you Ryan.
I had a portion of this message written and lost it in cyberspace. I'll try to do quick catch up.
Efforts to articulate the unfathomable depths and mystery of the faith can only be paltry at best, but we try. In this respect, Packer's emphasis on models, mystery, drama, imaginative construction, and kergygmatic focus when speaking of the suffering of Christ are well taken. Second, post NT theology often uses words, phrases, and articulated concepts not explicitly in the Bible, but at its best reflective of the deepest intent. One things of the emergence of formal Trinitarian doctrine as a theological necessity in light of pressing historical challenges acting upon the faith once for all delivered to the saints.
On substitution, Packer takes a broad approach and even a broad approach to "penal substitution" in the trajectory from substitution and retribution to substitution and divine love and various points in between.
Okay, I think I'm caught up with what lost; so let's slow the pace down a bit.
One of Packer's main points is that neither "penal" nor "substitution" encompasses everything there is about the Atonement, which needs to be grasped to the extent that it can be through the prisms of the Cross and the Resurrection (e.g, Phil 2:5-11). Another broad point is that by the most reasonable implication substitution includes (but is not limited by) Christ's substitution for humankind's sin against God which in some fundamental sense needed to be requited by the requirements of God's justice and holiness. In this sense the propitiation is for humankind's sin against God. What else are we going to make of such passages as Romans 5:6-10; esp 9-10, "Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood (by his blood, sir), much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life." As I read this, Christ's death justified us sinners to the wrath of God as a result of our self-imposed disobedience and alienation from the living God. I know this is tough language and does not resonate much in contemporary culture, but I think part of the discipline of faith is imaginatively allowing ourselves to be refashioned through such discourse, particularly when such merited "wrath" is only one, but a very important aspect of a fully embodied living faith. I don't see how this is not so. However, mistakes can be made when we take a singular theological strand and presuppose that as a total biblical theology.
In terms of Christ taking on the wrath of God: "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us--for it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree--so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith (Gal 3:13). Isn't this, in many respects succinct shorthand from the journey from Gethsemane to Golgotha? Then, "For our sake he [God] made him to be made sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" 2 Cor 5;21. Thus, the great transfer—our sin for his righteousness and through that reconciliation with God. I don't know how once can but get to such an interpretation if one takes this passage and the others as core theological datum on their own terms. That does not mean that there doesn't need to be substantial apologetic, hermeneutic, and expositional work, but on the grounds of exegesis and core dogma these Scripture speak pretty much for themselves. On that respect I don't even need any theology of "penal substitution" in that i prefer to let the language of Scripture speak in its own idiom, which of course needs exposition as well as exegesis.
Back to Romans 5:12-21, what do we make of the Old and New Adam metaphor other than that the New Adam became the source and embodiment of righteousness that the Old Adam had lost, which sounds like another exchange in which, God did demand the sacrifice; that is, the blood of Christ for the propitiation of humankind’s sin, which the son, with much anguish, freely gave.
In this respect, I think we need to read Hebrews in light of Leviticus in which our greater Melchezidek who became both high priest and sacrificial lamb was "smitten by God, and afflicted..., wounded for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace and by his stripes we are healed. [Thus] we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid upon him the iniquity of us all." (Isa 53:4-6).
I think this core sacrificial transfer which was needed in some way to reconcile God's unfathomable love and his need for holiness in which 'the wages of sin are death," yet within the mystery given to us, "the free gift of God [becomes] Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom 6:23).
I think this is more than simply Jesus suffered the consequences of collective human sin, though it certainly was that; for if that were it he could serve as mediator of the New Covenant in showing us the way. Yet the deeper revelatory truth is that Jesus was not merely the Jewish messiah, which if that were the case only, would be of some passing interest to student of ancient history, but the way, the truth, and the life himself as God incarnate in human flesh in which New Adam paid in full the price of Old Adam's disobedience in which through his stripes we are healed.
As I interpret the faith once for all delivered to the saints, seeking to go all the way with Christ means (among other things) accepting all of this in the most profound kerygmatic, liturgical, and dogmatic sense so that it can speak as well in the most compelling fashion to our existential sense between the mediation of lived reality and the small still voice of the Holy Spirit.
I think it was something along these lines that Packer was getting at in "What did the Cross Achieve?"
George Demetrion
I don't have time to get into this wonderful discussion but I think this Kierkegaard quote fits quite well:
"Woe to the person who could comprehend the mystery of the atonement without detecting anything of the possibility of offence; woe again to him because he thought thereby to make God and Christinity something for study and cultivation." (The Humor of Kierrkegaard ed. Thomas Oden, 104)
Chris Anderson
----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard Floyd" <rfl...@berkshire.rr.com>
To: Confessi...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, February 18, 2009 11:36:40 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Re: God's Blood - the doctrine of the ATONEMENT in light of Daniel.L.Bell Jr's "God does not demand blood" (Christian Century 2.10.09)
Atonement talkers,
Subject: Re: God's Blood
In another epistle Paul pictures Christ's victory over the curses—the retributive consequences—of the Law in this way:
And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God has made alive together with Jesus, having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And God has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Having disarmed principalities and powers, God made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it (Col. 2:13-15).You can see from this passage that God (or God's wrath) is not the enemy that the cross defeats. On one hand it is true that the Law lays out just retribution for wrongdoing: "the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us." On the other hand, there is not one word in the Law or one principle in God's nature that says God cannot sovereignly determine to forgive instead of imposing the last letter of condemnation. Jesus suffers not to procure God's mercy, but to express it, by silencing every accuser that would argue against God's mercy.
----- Original Message -----From: Ryan Dowell Baum
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----- Original Message -----From: Gabe
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 7:07 AMSubject: Re: God's Blood
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