The Wall is Breached!

Breachers face the greatest threat in warfare. These are the first wave, the one who first make it over or through the walls, who storm the fortress. Jesus called John the Baptist such a breacher.

The breach in the great wall of Christianity has already happened, it will just take a while for it to filter down into the churches. Pauline studies, Johannine and Lukan studies, studies in the early church, as well as many other disciplines and sub-disciplines and debates all testify to the extraordinary grace and compassion of God to the whole of creation and all of humanity as the biblical metanarrative. Add to this the shift in theology, especially post-Holocaust, with its concern for the victims of history, and learning to hear and read the Bible from their perspective and there is an other powerful stream that breaches walls of exclusion and the Fortress of the Violent God. Finally and most significantly add to this already heady mix, the surge of incredible Trinitarian thinking that has been occurring in the twentieth century (and not since the early fourth century has there been this much chatter), the central role that ‘the historical’ Jesus plays in doctrines of God, the virtual acclamation of Luther’s ‘theology of the cross’ hermeneutic, the mimetic theory of Rene Girard and the critique of sacrifice, all of this and more add up and we have been watching the walls of the Fortress of the Violent God come tumbling down.

Almost all people no longer need or want a god that is violent. Everybody wants a god of love.

The only question is, how far does love go. Those who have dwelt in the Fortress of the violent God have never been able to see outside those tall and mighty doctrinal walls. Now that the wall has been breached by the finest of scholars, thinkers and theologians of all countries, in scores of disciplines, those trapped inside are peeking out at an oasis, and there is coming a flood of refugees who are looking for a loving God and a community that really exists for the other.

To my young friends who are {self-styled? so-called?} grace preachers: Let the scholars do their work. Cite their work, don’t be afraid to footnote.  Read broadly but don’t allow your much reading to lull into being a ‘weak expert.’ We are all students; the best of teachers still practice being the best of students.

I know a lot of you and I am very pleased to be your friend. You are our future. Some of us have spent our lives looking for what is happening now. It is yeast in dough, it is as small as a mustard seed. That leaven, that seed is Jesus and he is changing the path of Christianity.

An inclusive God? Check. A gracious God? Check. A God that is not Janus-faced but is Jesus -like? Double check.

Now a warning: there is a battle coming for the heart and soul of Christianity. We are that generation that will be called to be as the early church. We will be set upon. They will act like the satan, digging up dirt, spreading lies and some will give their life. The armies that are now in retreat are not in the business of taking prisoners. Those who proclaim God’s grace and mercy and peace in Jesus Christ will be shouted down, local churches (otherwise known as franchises of the Fortress of the Violent God) will excoriate you and trash you. And they will do this all in the name of Jesus, of God, of truth. When the nonviolent Logos enters the a world structured on violence, it is expelled.

All of this to say, when I look at the times from a more academic angle, I really do see serious theological and exegetical support for trans-fashioning theology, liturgy, and life in beautiful testimony to Jesus: Lover of the Poor, Healer of the Sick, Life-Giver to the dead, Victor to the Entangled, perfect likeness of the Abba, Forgiving Victim.