The question is What is God like in the Bible? Let’s ask John Goldingay, whose new book Biblical Theology: The God of the Christian Scriptures, presents a “biblical” theology. The topics of his book are all shaped first by God, hence:

God’s person,
God’s insight,
God’s creation,
God’s reign,
God’s anointed,
God’s children,
God’s expectations, and
God’s triumph.

We could take far more “story” or “narrative” to Goldingay’s biblical theology for, as it is, the book is a topical exposition that is not driven by a narrative arc. But his expertise in the Old Testament, his wit (if not at times a little naughty), and his courageous “I tell it as I see it” approach give to this book a singularity worthy of a reading (though few will be able to digest it quickly as it is too dense in information). I like to read Goldingay; I always learn from him; he’s almost never an easy read, however.

He begins with God, and not just God, but God’s Person, and here are few of the highlights of the opening chapter, which is organized around the following four topics: God’s character, One God, God’s Spirit, wind and fire, and God’s mind and message.

One of his big themes is God’s sovereignty and John does not seem to take sides, though he does (and every Calvinist hears it and so does every Arminian, and the open theists are also listening in on his way of saying things):

It is as Yahweh that God is the one who created the cosmos, is ultimately sovereign over everything in the heavens and on the earth, has been revealingly, persistently and self-sacrificially involved with Israel in a way that embodies love but also toughness, is committed to bringing Israel and the world to their destiny in the acknowledgment of him, has embodied himself in Jesus, makes himself known in the Holy Spirit and will be God to eternity as he was God from eternity. 19-20

One of his sub topics is the flexibility of God, and I like that term and category for describing the Bible, which comes clean in the next two clips from his book:

It means God is reliably faithful—loving, compassionate and gracious. Gods life does not change, God’s character does not change, God’s truth does not change, God’s ways do not change, God’s purpose does not change and God’s Son does not change. But precisely in order to maintain that consistent integrity, God does sometimes say one thing but then do another as a result of the response his declarations receive. 31

Sometimes, then, God simply says what is going to happen and it happens. Sometimes God acts in interaction with human decisions. Sometimes the sequence is broken without any indication that anyone repented. Yahweh declares that Nebuchadnezzar will destroy Tyre but later notes that Nebuchadnezzar has been unable to do so, and therefore tells him he can have Egypt instead (Ezek 26-28; 29:17-20). There have been occasions when Yahweh could use Assyria, Babylon and Persia as his agent in bringing trouble or deliverance to Judah, but in Isaiah 63:1-6 he laments the fact that lately there has been no one available, so he is being driven to act himself. And further, within the time period to which the book of Isaiah belongs there was no subsequent action that could count as the implementation of that undertaking. There were even occasions when God wrestled with Jacob and Jacob won (Gen 32:25-31) and when God tried to kill Moses and didn’t succeed (Ex 4:24). 31

Not a new God, but something fresh — the ambivalence is clear:

It is thus possible both to declare that the New Testament simply reaffirms the understanding of God that emerges from the First Testament and reveals nothing new about God, and also that it radically redefines God. 35

Christians ended up believing in the complicated, mysterious and apparently illogical doctrine of the Trinity because for all its disadvantages, it was the best way of making sense of the account of God in the Scriptures. 37

He touches on next to everything, including God and gender:

To say that God is Father is not to say that God is male rather than female. Fatherhood is a metaphor, and metaphor involves overlap, not identity between one thing and another. We have to let other metaphors guide us in seeing how far a metaphor can be taken. The First Testament gives God more or less all body parts, but not genitals, though it does attribute to God breasts and a womb. Describing God as Father and giving God motherly characteristics ascribe to God some important characteristics of both forms of parenthood. Calling God “he” designates God as a person, not a thing; it does not designate God as male rather than female. Of course in a particular cultural context (e.g., that of the West in the twenty-first century) such descriptions may have other resonances, and we may need to be careful about how we use them in order to avoid giving the wrong impression. 39

Back to the sovereignty question, and this time with the issue of change:

In what sense do the Scriptures suggest that God is all-powerful or omnipotent or sovereign? 42

When challenged, Yahweh responds by ‘ saying. “Sorry (except that he doesn’t say ‘Sorry’), but the world doesn’t revolve around you. You just have to live with what’s happened in light of the evidence that on the whole I’m not doing too bad a job of running the world” (Job 38-41). At the same time, for people who love God, he “makes all things work together for good” (Rom 8:28).84 The test of God’s sovereignty lies not in things that happen but in what he does with things after they happen. 43

God’s sovereignty means that God alone initiated the project that brought the world into existence and that God alone will bring it to its consummation. 43

God does not operate like the pilot of a drone. So God’s acts may precede or follow human acts, or may mysteriously work along with them. 45

God’s sovereignty involves a self-denying willingness for people to disobey. The all-powerful nature of God means that God can make things happen and can stop things happening; he could have stopped Eve taking the fruit from the tree, but he didn’t do so. God had the capacity to send legions of angels to rescue Jesus (Mt 26:53), but he didn’t do so. 48

What about God as Spirit?

The notion of the spirit as a force field conveys effectively the spirit’s nonpersonal nature, though not the spirit’s personal nature. The spirit also teaches and guides (Neh 9:20; Jn 14:25-26), meets opposition (Is 63:10; Acts 7:51), inspires prayer, praise and prophecy (Joel 2:28; Acts 2:17-18; Eph 6:18), appoints overseers (Acts 20:28), speaks (Acts 28:25), testifies (Rom 8:16), intercedes (Rom 8:26-27), investigates, knows and teaches (1 Cor 2:10-13), and can be lied to and grieved (Is 63:10; Acts 5:3; Eph 4:30). The spirit’s presence needs to be a personal one if there is to be some equivalence between saying “I am with you” and saying “my spirit is with you.” 67

And the embodiment of the Son in the incarnation?

God had always been the kind of person who would eventually become incarnate and would give himself to die for the world. In a sense there is nothing new about the gospel message. It goes back to the very Beginning. 69

Back to sovereignty and providence:

The Scriptures do not picture all the events in the world as working out in accordance with a master plan of God’s (it would have to have been a very odd plan). They do speak of God making plans from time to time and implementing them, though they portray God doing so in interaction with the human beings who are crucial to the plan. 71

Christology comes into view here:

Jesus is the very embodiment of that rational principle that underlies the universe, the very embodiment of insight. He is also the very embodiment of the message. The New Testament’s message is not merely about some truths or even merely about a person. The message is a person; the person is the message. This message/messenger has always lived close to God, lived in close communication with God, channeled God’s grace and power. Indeed he shares in God’s being. When you meet him, you may eventually realize you have met God. He channels God in person. The messenger-message is divine (this translation may convey better John’s point than the translation “he is God,” which would imply he is the Father). 72

Christian Smith, in his must-read and challenging book, Bible Made Impossible, The: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture, contends that what many of us (evangelicals) affirm is impossible to hold with intellectual integrity.  The fundamental problem that undercuts biblicism as a sufficient basis for articulating the Christian faith is interpretive pluralism. That’s the problem.

Smith contends a simple point in this chp, but it’s one that biblicists are incapable of accepting, unless they are willing to change how they read the Bible. His point: let the Bible be the Bible, and read the Bible for what it is, not for what we’d like it to be. You may want the Bible to be a handbook on dating or economic theory or on modern free enterprise, and if you want it to be, you can find Bible verses to support your view, but just because you find stuff that supports your view doesn’t mean you’ve probed the biblical view. Often, or at least sometimes, you’ve colonized the Bible into your own view. Strong words, but biblicism and the christotelic approach are at odds with one another. We must choose.

Biblicists, Smith argues, want a Bible that God didn’t actually give us. (He quotes Peter Enns and Gordon Fee.) Smith then probes briefly into the doctrine of accommodation, that is, that God accommodated himself to humans. (I wrote about this in these terms: God spoke in Moses’ day in Moses’ way. See The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible.)

Put simply there are ambiguities in the Bible, and pretending there aren’t won’t make them go away. Biblicism believes the Bible is clear on everything, accessible on everything, understandable on everything, coherent on everything, and complete on everything — but it isn’t. The so-called “perspicuity” of the Bible is not about every passage and every line but about the big idea of the Bible, the regula fidei, the story that leads us to Jesus Christ.

So Smith suggests, with Roger Olson, that we have to distinguish between dogma (what is nonnegotiable, important, central, clear, etc) and doctrine (which isn’t as clear but in which there is diversity) and opinion. We have a tendency to equate our opinions with doctrine and then, under pressure, to raise doctrines to dogmas.

The Nicene and Reformed doctrine of the Trinity.

(A paper given by Kevin Giles at the plenary forum on the Trinity at the Evangelical Theological Society annual conference, 15^th November, 2016 at San Antonia. The other speakers were Dr Bruce Ware, Dr Millard Erickson and Dr Wayne Grudem; Dr Sam Storms presided.)

Kevin Giles

Thank you, Dr Storms, for your welcome. It is a huge honor to be invited to give the introductory address at this ETS plenary forum on the Trinity.

In putting my case this afternoon I am going to speak very forthrightly and unambiguously, as from past experience I am sure Dr Grudem and Dr Ware will do.[1] Dr Erickson who stands with me in opposing Dr Grudem and Dr Ware’s teaching on the Trinity I am sure will be the clearest in what he says and the most gracious. I speak bluntly because the issues we are discussing are of monumental importance for the evangelical community. I believe what Dr Grudem and Dr Ware teach on the Trinity, and now very large numbers of evangelicals believe, contradicts what the Nicene creed, the Reformation and post-Reformation Protestant confessions and the ETS doctrinal statement teach.

To begin my presentation, I make three matters perfectly clear. First, I have no distinctive doctrine of the Trinity. My exposition of the Trinity which follows is simply an outline of what I consider to be the historic, orthodox doctrine of the Trinity as spelt out in the Nicene Creed. I know absolutely nothing about a so-called “evangelical egalitarian doctrine of the Trinity”

What this means is that I have basically the same understanding of the Trinity as the many complementarian confessional Reformed theologians who have “come out” in opposition to Dr Grudem and Dr Ware’s teaching on the Trinity.[2] What this immediately reveals is that the divide on the Trinity is not between evangelical egalitarians and complementarians but between creedal and confessional evangelicals and non-creedal and confessional evangelicals.

Second, I want to state clearly and unambiguously that I think the doctrine of the Trinity has absolutely nothing to say about the relationship of the sexes. I personally do not ground my gender egalitarian commitments on the Trinity and virtually no evangelical egalitarian does. I have been publishing on women in the Bible since 1975 and I have never appealed to the Trinity to support the substantial equality of the two sexes.

The gender complementarian, Fred Sanders, who is giving the lecture on the Trinity after this forum confirms what I say. On his blog and in a personal email to me he says, “I have not been able to find one sentence where Kevin Giles works to secure his own [gender] egalitarian position by appeal to the Trinity.”

I do not appeal to the doctrine of the Trinity because I believe the doctrine of the Trinity is our distinctive Christian doctrine of God, not our social agenda, but why and how the doctrine of the Trinity might inform our doctrine of the sexes, whatever that may be, completely escapes me. The Trinity is three divine persons, all analogically spoken of in male terms. Why and how we must ask, can a threefold analogically all “male” relationship inform a twofold male-female relationship on earth? No analogical correlation is possible. The argument just does not make sense. The logic of this argument is that threesomes are the ideal, or male-male relationships are the ideal!! None of us I image would affirm these deductions!

The impossibility of correlation is made clear by Dr Grudem in his Systematic Theology. On page 257 in an attempt to make a connection, he likens the Trinity to dad, mum and their one child. In doing so he feminizes the Son – the Son becomes an analogue of the woman. Worse still, this family picture of God has nothing to do with the revealed doctrine of the Trinity. It sounds more like Greek mythology.

This observation takes us right to the heart of what I believe is the fundamental and inherent error in Dr Grudem and Dr Ware’s doctrine of the Trinity; depicting God in human terms, instead of how he is revealed in Scripture.

My consistent argument for nearly twenty years has been that that if we evangelicals want to get right our doctrine of the Trinity, the primary and foundational doctrine of the Christian faith, we must sharply and completely separate out doctrine of the Trinity and our doctrine of the sexes. They are in no way connected and when they are connected both doctrines are corrupted.

I have not time to discuss1 Corinthians 11:3 in any detail but I am sure this one text does not justify connecting the doctrine of the Trinity and our doctrine of the sexes. This is not a trinitarian text; the Spirit is not mentioned, and it would seem that the Greek word kephale (Eng. “head”) almost certainly carries the metaphorical meaning of “source”. Woman comes from man (Adam) (1 Cor 11:8, 12) and the Son comes “from” the Father.

Now my third point by way of introduction. In my presentation, this afternoon I am arguing that what Dr Grudem and Dr Ware teach on the Trinity is a sharp and clear breach with historic orthodoxy as spelt out in the Nicene Creed.

There can be no denying that we have starkly opposing doctrines of the Trinity. Dr Grudem and Dr Ware argue on the basis of creaturely analogies for a hierarchically ordered Trinity where the Father rules over the Son, claiming this is historical orthodoxy; what the church has believed since 325 AD. I argue just the opposite. On the basis of scripture, I argue that the Father and the Son are coequal God, the Father does not rule over the Son. This is what the church has believed since 325 AD. You could not have two more opposing positions. There is no middle ground.

When it comes to the doctrine of the Trinity we are not discussing a theological question where one side can assert something and the other side the opposite and resolution is not possible. In this case, there is absolutely no uncertainty as to what constitutes trinitarian orthodoxy. No other doctrine has been more clearly articulated by the great theologians of the church across the centuries and none more clearly and consistently spelt out in the creeds and confessions of the church.

The Nicene Creed is the definitive account of the doctrine of the Trinity for more than two billion Christians. It is binding on all Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran, Presbyterian and Reformed Christians. These 2 billion believers agree that anyone who denies what is taught in the Nicene Creed stands outside the catholic faith, and any community of Christians that rejects what the Nicene Creed teaches is by definition a sect of Christianity. On this basis, we do not accept Jehovah’s Witnesses as orthodox Christians because they cannot confess this creed, even though like us evangelicals they uphold the inerrancy of Scripture.

Be assured, I do not place this creed or any other creed or confession above Scripture in authority or on an equal basis with Scripture. For me, and for 2 billion Christians, this creed expresses what the church has agreed is the teaching of Scripture. I believe every single statement in this creed reflects what the Bible says or implies. In my view, we have in this creed the most authoritative interpretation of what Scripture teaches on the Father-Son relationship.

The Nicene Creed of 381.

In this creed, the Son is communally confessed in these words. Note the “we” – we Christians:

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only (monogenēs) Son of God, eternally begotten (gennaō) of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten (gennaō) not made, of one being (homoousios) with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us and our salvation he came down from heaven, by the power of the Spirit he was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man.

Let me now highlight seven things this creed says clearly and unambiguously about the Son of God.

1. First, “We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ.” These words reflect exactly 1 Corinthians 8:6. In this verse as you all know, Paul makes the Jewish Shema (Deut 6:4), which is a confession that God is one, a confession that the one God is God the Father and God the Son. Again, as you all know Lord/ Kurios is the name of God in the Greek OT. In this confession, we are therefore saying we believe the “one Lord”, identified as Jesus Christ, is God without any caveats, yet not a second God. In other words, we are confessing Jesus Christ to be Yahweh, omnipotent God.

In the New Testament Jesus Christ is confessed as “Lord” over 600 times. The title Lord excludes the thought that Jesus Christ is eternally subordinate or submissive God.

This first clause in the Nicene Creed immediately draws to our attention the logical impossibility of confessing Jesus as Lord and at the same time arguing he is set under God the Father and must obey him. If the Father and the Son are both rightly confessed as Lord, the supreme co-rulers over all, then they are not differentiated in authority. They are one in dominion, rule, power and authority.

Let me illustrate the point I have just made. After hearing an Anglican complementarian theologian in Australia put the case that the Son must obey the Father, I asked him how he could confess Jesus as Lord on Sundays in church and then during the week teach that the Son is eternally subordinated to the Father and must obey him? He replied, “ I see no contradiction, the Son is just a little bit less Lord than the Father.”

In arguing unambiguously and repeatedly that the Father and the Son are essentially and eternally differentiated in authority, Dr Grudem and Ware contradict the first clause of the Christological confession in the Nicene Creed

2. Second, the Nicene Creed says, “We [Christians] believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only (monogenēs) Son of God, …. Again, we all know that the word monogenēs means “only” in the sense of “unique”; “one of a kind”. The Greek church fathers of course as Greek speakers also knew it meant “only” in the sense of “unique”; “one of a kind”. None of them thought it meant “only begotten”. What is more, none of them appealed to this word or the texts in which it is found as the basis for their doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son.

John uses the word monogenēs of Jesus Christ five times (Jn 1:14, 18, 3:16, 18, 1 Jn 4:9). This designation of the Son was deliberately included in the creed because it explicitly excludes the disastrous error made by all the Arians of various brands, namely that human sonship defines divine sonship. All the Arians argued that because Jesus Christ is called the Son of God he is like a human son, he is subordinate to and must obey his father.

What this clause in the creed is saying is that Jesus’ sonship is not like human sonship. There is something about his sonship that is absolutely different to creaturely sonship.

In saying Jesus’ sonship is not like human sonship I am not saying anything novel. The best of theologians across the ages with one voice have insisted that human relationship and human language cannot define God. Our creaturely language is adequate to speak of other creatures but inadequate to speak of the Creator. The fourth Lateran council (1215 AD) made this point very starkly, “For between Creator and creature, no similarity can be expressed without implying greater dissimilarity”. What this means is that human language used of God is not to be taken literally, “univocally”, but analogically.

To argue that human language can define God is possibly the most serious theological error any one can make. It leads to idolatry; making God in our own image. We evangelicals should not define divine fatherhood and divine sonship by appeal to human experience as liberal theologians are wont to do. We should define divine fathership and sonship in the light of scriptural revelation.

In the New Testament Jesus Christ is called the Son/Son of God to speak of his kingly status, not his subordination. The Reformed theologian and “complementarian”, John Frame, says,

There is a considerable overlap between the concepts of Lord and Son. … Both [titles] indicate Jesus’ powers and prerogatives as God, especially over God’s people: in other words, [the title Son speaks of his] divine control, authority, and presence. [3]

I agree completely with Dr Frame. I believe the NT calls Jesus Christ “the Son of God” to speak of his kingly status NOT his subordinate status.

Dr Grudem and Dr Ware again in stark contrast to the Nicene Creed’s confession that Jesus is the Son in a unique way, constantly and consistently argue that Jesus Christ is to be understood like any human son and as such is subordinate and necessarily obedient to his father. Note very carefully their theological methodology; they define God in creaturely terms, not by what is revealed in Scripture.

In absolutely rejecting Dr Grudem and Dr Ware’s theological methodology I follow the gender complementarian, Dr Robert Letham. He roundly condemns Drs Grudem and Ware in One God in Three Persons, for predicating their understanding of the Son of God on fallen human relationships. He says, this is an Arian argument that must be categorically rejected. He writes,

“The Arian argument that human sons are subordinate to their fathers led to their contention that the Son is subordinate to the Father. The church rejected the conclusion as heretical and opposed the premise as mistaken. Rather, [it taught], the Son is equal with the Father in status, power and glory”.[4]

Let me say it very clearly; to confess Jesus Christ as the monogenēs, the unique Son, is to say I believe he is not like any human son. He is more dissimilar than similar to all human sons.

3. Third, the Nicene Creed says, We [Christians] believe …the unique Son of God, is “eternally begotten (gennaō) of the Father.”

Now we come to what is called “the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son”, what I and most other orthodox theologians believe is the foundational element in the doctrine of the Trinity. You can see how important it was to the Bishops who drew up this creed because they have us confessing twice the generation of the Son, once at the beginning and once at the end of the christological clause. This doctrine is like two book ends. I have put the words in bold in my Power Point. Remove these words from the creed and there is nothing to support what stands in the middle.

The doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son is affirmed in the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds and by all the Reformation and post-Reformation confessions of Faith and by virtually every significant theologian over the last 1800 years.

The doctrines of the eternal generation of the Son and the eternal procession of the Spirit seek to explain threefold eternal self-differentiation in the life of the one God. It does this by noting that the Bible speaks of the “begetting” of the Son “from” the Father, and the “procession” of the Spirt” “from” the Father. It is a doctrine arising out of Scripture that explains so much in Scripture. It is an eloquent doctrine. It has very solid biblical support. To argue that the greatest theologians across the centuries have taught a doctrine for which there is no biblical warrant is mind boggling. It is implausible.

For the authors of the Nicene Creed, and virtually all orthodox theologians, the primary basis for distinguishing and differentiating the Father and the Son is that the Father eternally begets the Son, and the Son is begotten of the Father. This is the ONLY difference between the Father and the Son the Nicene Creed mentions and allows, and this difference is essential to the doctrine of the Trinity.

Both Dr Grudem and Dr Ware openly reject the doctrine of eternal generation. Dr Grudem says it would be best if the words about the begetting of the Son were deleted from the Nicene Creed and from all “modern theological formulations”’ of the doctrine of the Trinity.[5] Dr Ware says, this “doctrine is highly speculative and not grounded in biblical teaching”.[6] At this point there is no ambiguity; both Dr Grudem and Dr Ware undeniably say they reject the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son as it has been understood for 1800 years and thus deny what indelibly and eternally differentiates the Father and the Son.

4. Fourth, we note that immediately after the confession of the eternal begetting of the Son the Nicene Creed says the Son is, “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God”. What these words assert is that on the basis of his eternal generation the Son is everything the Father is but he is not the Father but the Son. Derivation does not imply any diminution of the Son in any way, or any division or separation between the Father and the Son. These words are in the creed to say emphatically that while the Son is “begotten of the Father”, and “from” the Father he is no way less than, inferior to, eternally subordinated to or submissive to the Father in any way.

To argue that the Nicene Creed speaks of the eternal begetting of the Son to teach the eternal subordination of the Son, as Dr Grudem and Ware do,[7] is to put it very bluntly perverse. For the bishops who promulgated this creed and all orthodox theologians across the centuries the eternal generation of the Son teaches that the Son is “God from God, light from light, True God from True God.” The doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son rather than teaching the eternal subordination of the Son teaches the eternal co-equality of God the Father and God the Son.

5. Then fifth, follows the knockout blow. We believe the Son is “one being/homoousios with the Father”. This is not a word the Bible uses of the Son. It is an implication drawn from the confession that the Son is “God from God”. Let me explain the force of the Greek word homoousios.

All of us share the same human being but we are not one in being. The Father and the Son uniquely are one in being. They are both God in all might, majesty and glory without any caveats whatsoever.

If the Father and the Son are one in being this means that they cannot have three wills; they cannot be separated in what they do, the one God cannot be divided into the Father who rules and a Son who obeys, and their glory is one. The word homoousios allows for no dividing or separating of the divine persons. It excludes absolutely any possibility that the Son can be eternally subordinated to the Father and thus other than the Father in might, majesty, dominion, authority and glory.

None of the various schools of Arian thought in the fourth century could endorse the word, because as fourth century men living in a Greek culture they understood that to confess that the Father and the Son are one in being meant the Father and the Son cannot be divided or separated in any way. Modern day evangelicals who separate and divide the Father and the Son, setting the Father above the Son, accept the term because they do not understand its force. They think it means simply that they have the same divine being.

Both Dr Grudem and Dr Ware say that they affirm that the Father and the Son are one in being but at the same time they sharply separate and divide the one God into the Father who rules and the Son obeys, implying two wills in God, and thus in reality deny that the Father and the Son are one being.

6. Six, the Nicene Creed says, of the Son that, “Through him all things were made”. These words reflect exactly the words of scripture (1 Cor 8:6, Jn 1:3, Heb 1:2, cf Col 1:16). For the Nicene fathers the most fundamental division in the whole universe is between the creator and what he creates. These words are thus included in the creed to make the point emphatically that the Son is the omnipotent co-creator, yet as in all things, he and the Father contribute to this work distinctively as the Father and the Son. In this instance, the Father creates through or in the Son (Col 1:16).

In contrast, Dr Grudem says, the Son in creation is simply “the active agent in carry out the plans and directions of the Father”[8] – which is exactly what Arius taught. Dr Ware, says the Son “creates under the authority of the Father”.[9] I definitely see no support for these assertions in the Nicene Creed and indeed I think the wording of the scriptures and the creed exclude the idea that the Son is the subordinate creator. Scripture speaks of him as the co-creator.

Before moving on I must digress for a moment. Because orthodox theologians seek to take into account everything Scripture says on the divine three persons they affirm “order” in divine life and actions. They agree that nothing is random or arbitrary in God. Scripture speaks of patterned ways God acts. One example that we have just noted is that he creates “through” or “in” the Son and not in any other way. More importantly from Scripture we learn that the Father begets the Son and sends him into the world. Such patterning differentiates the divine persons, not subordinates any one of them. Orthodoxy accepts order in divine life and actions but not hierarchical ordering. This conclusion is confirmed by noting that in the roughly 70 times where the New Testament writers associate together the three divine persons, sometimes the Father is mentioned first (Matt 28:19); sometimes the Son (2 Cor 13:13) and sometimes the Spirit (1 Cor 12:4-6).[10]

7. Seventh, the Nicene Creed says, We [Christians] believe that “For us and our salvation he [the Son] came down from heaven, by the power of the Spirit he was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man”.

In this phrase the creed reflects Philippians 2:4-11. Jesus Christ, God the Son, had “equality with God [the Father] yet he “emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form he humbled himself, and became obedient to the point of death.”

What Philippians 2 teaches is the willing and self-chosen subordination and subjection of the Son for our salvation. On this basis, orthodox theologians with one voice insist that the subordination and obedience of the Son seen in the incarnation should not be read back into the eternal life of God. To do so is huge mistake.

In the incarnate Son, we meet in the Gospels we see kenotic-God, self-emptied God; the Son of God who came down from heaven. To read back into the eternal life of God any of the human limitations of the kenotic Son, or his obedience to God the Father as the second Adam, is just bad theology.

With Athanasius, Augustine, Aquinas, and Calvin, I believe to interpret Scripture rightly we must recognize that in Scripture there is “a double account of the savior”, one in “the form of God” and one “in the form of a servant” and the two should not be confused. What these great theologians concluded is that the kenotic Son does not reveal fully the exalted Son. I agree.

The Arians of the fourth century read the Son’s incarnational self-subordination, obedience to the Father as the second Adam and his human limitations back into the eternal life of God. Dr Grudem and Dr Ware do exactly the same and thus sharply break once again with the Nicene Faith and virtually every major theologian who has written on the Trinity since 325 AD.

I leave the Nicene Creed at this point. Before concluding I need to comment specifically on Dr Grudem’s claim in his Systematic Theology, page 251, that the eternal role subordination of the Son has been the church’s doctrine at least since the council of Nicaea in 325.[11] This is simply not true.

“Role subordination” is definitely not found in the 325 or 381 versions of the Nicene Creed as we can see from the quotation on our screen. The word “role” does not appear, nor any synonym, nor the idea.

The very first person in history to speak of the role subordination of the Son was George Knight 111 in his 1977 seminal book, The New Testament Teaching on the Role relationship of Men and Women.[12] It was he who first introduced the concept of the Son’s “role subordination” into Evangelical theological circles. It was not known before this time. Many theologians across the centuries have spoken of the “subordination of the Son” but none have spoken of the “role subordination of the Son or the Spirit” before Knight. To have done so before late nineteenth century is impossible because the French word “role” appeared first in English in 1875 to speak of the part an actor plays, and first in the sociological sense to refer to characteristic behavior in 1913.[13]

The more general claim that the eternal subordination of the Son has been the teaching of the church since 325 is likewise objectively false. We have just seen, the Nicene Creed seeks to exclude the eternal subordination of the Son in a number of ways: relationally, the Father and the Son rule as the one Lord; temporally, the Son is eternally generated by the Father and as such is “true God from true God”, and ontologically, the Son is one in being with the Father. The Athanasian Creed is even more explicit. I wish I had time to outline what it teaches. This is summed up when it declares that the three divine persons are “co-equal” God.

Then we have all the Reformation and Post-Reformation confessions of faith that likewise seek to exclude the eternal subordination of the Son in a number of ways. With one voice they affirm that the three divine persons are “eternal” and importantly “one in being and power”. It is not just temporal and ontological subordination they reject but also relational subordination; the Son is less in power than the Father. The Belgic Confession of 1561 is the most specific, adding that the Son is neither “subordinate nor subservient.”

The words “power” and “authority” often overlap in meaning in English like the words house and home but in both cases the words are not exact synonyms. However, when it comes to divine life the words “power” and “authority” in English and in Greek may be taken as synonyms. If the Son has all power then he has all authority and if he has all authority he has all power. Both terms speak of divine attributes shared identically by the divine persons. What is more, Paul insists that the Son who reigns over all has “all authority (exousia), power (dunamis) and dominion” (cf. Eph 1:21).

“Equality” in being and power, we should also note, is affirmed by the Evangelical Theological Society doctrinal statement to which we have all subscribed. We ETS members all confess the Father, the Son and the Spirit to be “one in essence/being and equal in power and glory”. To confess that the Father, Son and Spirit are equal in power of course means that one does not rule over the other in any way. The Father and the Son are God almighty, omnipotent God.

I also note that Dr Ware stands in opposition to the ETS doctrinal statement in that he rejects “equality in glory”. He says, the Father has “the ultimate supremacy and highest glory”.[14] For him, the Son is less in glory and for this reason must give “ultimate and highest glory to his Father”.[15] In saying this he not only denies the ETS doctrinal statement but also the teaching of scripture where the Father and the Son are alike glorified (1 Cor 2:8, Gal 1:3-5, Eph 1:3-5, Heb 1:3, Rev 5:12-13, 7:9-12, etc) and again the Nicene Creed which says the divine three persons “together” [are to be] “worshipped and glorified”.

To be faithful to our doctrinal statement we ETS members we must reject what Dr Grudem and Dr Ware teach on the Trinity.

Some of you may be tempted to dismiss what I have argued for one reason or another but please note that on my side now stand dozens of highly respected theologians, some gender complementarians some gender egalitarians, some evangelicals some not.

Kyle Claunch from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, speaking specifically of Dr Bruce Ware and Dr Wayne Grudem’s doctrine of the Trinity, agrees completely with me that what they teach is not historic orthodoxy. He says their doctrine of the Trinity entails a commitment “to three distinct wills in the immanent Trinity”, [16] an idea proscribed by orthodox theologians. And he adds more significantly that,

[Their] “way of understanding the immanent Trinity does run counter to the pro-Nicene tradition, as well as the medieval, Reformation, and Post-Reformation Reformed traditions that grew from it.” [17]

What could be clearer? Clyde Claunch, says explicitly that what Dr Grudem and Dr Ware teach on the Trinity “runs counter” to the Nicene Faith and the Reformation confessions.  This is exactly what I have argued. He and I agree absolutely.

I conclude: In the Nicene Creed seven wonderful affirmations about Jesus Christ, the Son of God, are made. I unequivocally endorse them all. I love them. These seven affirmations give content to my faith. I have written in the past and have spoken today to encourage us all to confess Jesus Christ as Lord in these words because this is the faith of the church; what the vast majority of Christians past and present believe is the teaching of scripture.

Postscript.

After I sat down Dr Ware spoke. He began by saying, “I have now changed my mind.” He then went on to tell the several hundred evangelical theologians present that he now endorses the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son because he now recognizes it has good biblical support. It is foundational to the doctrine of the Trinity!!! It was as if the air had been sucked out of the room. He did not mention me but as I am the only evangelical who has written a book on the doctrine of the eternal generation I take it he was saying I had convinced him that he had been in error and needed to say sorry to the evangelical community for leading it reject the foundational element in the doctrine of the Trinity.

After Dr Erickson had spoken, Dr Grudem spoke. He too began by saying that he now believed the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son and that he would be correcting his Systematic Theology when he revised it!!! I thought to myself, how long will it be before these two hugely influential evangelical theologians will confess that teaching the three divine persons are hierarchically ordered is also mistaken and a threat to the historic faith.

On the matter just mentioned, the eternal subordination of the Son, Dr Grudem and Dr Ware stood firm. They argued that “in eternity past”, in his incarnation, and in “eternity future” the Son was necessarily obedient to the Father. This they claimed was what the Bible taught.

Professor Erickson spoke after Dr Ware. He made three points. He first argued that if the Son’s subordination in “role” or “relations” was necessary and eternal then it was ontological. Second, that many of the things Dr Grudem and Dr Ware argued were logically inconsistent. And third, that Dr Grudem and Dr Ware’s appeal to the Bible was all too often illegitimate. The texts to which they appealed to support their views did not say what they claimed.

In the very brief time at the end of the forum for exchange between the four speakers Dr Ware took me to task on two matters; Dr Grudem did not address me. It was as if I had not spoken. Dr Ware first said that unlike me he made a clear distinction between the words “power” and “authority”. He accepted that the Son was “equal in power”, as the ETS doctrinal statement ruled, but not in “authority”. In the minute I had to reply I asked him could he say that men and women were “equal in power” since basic to his position was the Father-Son relationship (for him not me) prescribes the man-woman relationship? He made no answer.

Second, he accused me, as he had in his talk, for making an invalid distinction between the Son as he is revealed in history (his incarnation) and as he is in eternity. He said this implied that what was revealed in scripture was not a true revelation of the Father-Son relationship for all time. For him, he said, “everything” we learn of the Father-Son relationship in the Gospels speaks of what is true in eternity. In reply I asked him did he believe the Son in heaven got tired, was ignorant of certain things, went to the bathroom and could die? He replied, “Of course there must be some differences”. What this means is that we simply disagree on what in the revelation of the Son in history eternally true and what is not. I follow what is said in Philippians 2:4-1; in eternity the Son is “equal” to the Father in all things, in becoming man he took the “form of a servant” and became obedient to the Father to win our salvation. In eternity he is not a servant/slave. He rules as Lord and King.

[1] In my public presentation, I omitted this paragraph and the one on what Dr Fred Sanders wrote to me because of time constraints.

[2] Such as Robert Letham, Carl Trueman, Fred Sanders, Liam Goligher, Aimee Bird, Keith E Johnson, Stefan Linbad, Todd Pruitt, Michael Horton and Rachel Miller.

[3] John M. Frame, The Doctrine of God, Phillipsburg: P&R, 2002, 658. Italics added.

[4] “Eternal Generation”, in, One God, 122.

[5] Systematic Theology, 1234.

[6] Father, Son and Holy Spirit, 162.

[7] Systematic Theology, 251-252, 1234, Countering the Claims, 239-240, Evangelical Feminism, 210-213;

[8] Systematic Theology, 266.

[9] “Equal in Essence, Distinct Roles: Eternal Functional Authority and Submission among the Essentially Equals Divine Persons of the Godhead”, JBMW, 2008, 13.2, 49.

[10] See the very full account of this phenomenon by the complementarian theologian, Roderick Durst, Reordering the Trinity: Six Movements of God in the New Testament, Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2015.

[11] Systematic Theology, 251-252.

[12] Grand Rapids; Baker, 1977.

[13] www.dictionary.com/browse/role.

[14] Father, Son and Holy Spirit, 50, 65. In this book time and time again Dr Ware speaks of the “supremacy” of the Father and often of his “priority” and “preeminence” in the Godhead. For him the divine persons are not “co-equal’ as orthodoxy with one voice asserts.

[15] Ibid., 6755

[16] “God the Head of Christ”, in One God, 88.

[17] Ibid.

By Aaron Visser

In the sign-off of his special on election night on Showtime, amidst the jocularity and satire, Stephen Colbert said some pretty thoughtful and sobering things about this most recent election. At one point, he compared politics to things like poison and gambling: too much of either, and you end up regretting it. If you haven’t seen the video, I encourage you to go find in on Youtube.

His comments caused me to contemplate further. I began to think of politics as a medicine we are required to take. If we wholly ignore it, refusing to take our pills, we will nsuffer the ill effects, and we end up sick and weak, sometimes even succumbing to death. An uninformed, apathetic people will eventually give up their rights in exchange to “not be bothered” by the difficulties of governing and managing such a large and diverse group of people.

But it we take too much, we end up overdosing, and the results can be equally as disastrous.

Honestly, I think we overdosed this time. I know I did. It was too in your face, and, may I dare say it, mattered too much? I can’t even count how many articles I read, Facebook posts I glanced at, and campaign commercials I ignored. It was 15 months of hatred, fear, arrogance, attack, and mockery. And it was right there, sprawled before us the entire time to be consumed at an almost pornographic level.

Yes, the issues concerned were and are incredibly important: There is a racial divide in this county that needs to be addressed much more effectively than it has. The growing disparity between the wealthy and the poor is very problematic. The effects of global warming on our earth is nothing short of alarming. All these issues, along with others, are important and need to be addressed. But is politics really the only option?

When discussing this, my wife reminded me of the famous quotation by Gandhi: Be the change you wish to see in the world. So simple, yet so profound.

Over the past four years or so, I felt a pressure, and I’m not sure from where, to be more politically involved. I thought that to truly live into my duty as a citizen and a human, I had to really care about the political process. Now it is only too late that I realized that I overdosed.

Thankfully, I have not succumbed. But I am still recovering.

I still want change. Desperately. But I am not going to put politics on a pedestal. I’m not going to judge my contribution as a citizen on my level of political savvy. From now on, I want to take responsibility for my actions rather than delegating that responsibility to others, and I want to try to be the change I want to see in the world. I am going to focus more of my efforts not in who or what I vote for; or what causes or party I align myself with; but rather if I can truly and simply be the change I want to see in the world.

I can’t help but think of Jesus and the political climate of his day, which was more volatile than anything we have seen in this country since the Civil War. In scripture, we see a Jesus who is aware of the political situation. But Jesus himself remains separate, distinct from the all the different political leanings of the times.

He was zealous, but he was no Zealot.

He respected the Law, but he was no Pharisee.

He cooperated with Rome, but he was no Sadducee.

He lived counter-culturally, but he was no Essene.

He is Jesus, King of kings and Lord of lords. And his is a Kingdom that operates outside and above all others. If anyone became the change he desired to see in the world, it was Jesus. So much so that he gave his life for the change he desired.

It is to this Kingdom, and this Kingdom alone, that my allegiance lies. It is a Kingdom built on a foundation of love and sacrifice, not military might or economic security. And it is in this Kingdom alone where I find the grace, mercy, love, and peace I so desperately desire for this world.

So yes, I will still be informed about politics and continue to take the pill of democracy as needed. But I will never again overdose.

Aaron Visser is Associate Pastor of Jacob’s Well Church Community in Evergreen Park, IL.

Ben Pickett is the Discipleship Minister at the Highland Church of Christ in Abilene Texas.

I entered full-time ministry later in life after a career in business and discovered quickly the importance of training and education. Fact is, I’m still learning. I’m finding that with each new ministry context I learn more about myself, my calling, and my relationship with God.

My role in ministry is called “Discipleship Ministry,” but it could just as easily be called a “2^nd Chair” role. Because I’m in a support role, I don’t carry the same kind of weekly burden that my ministry friends in the pulpit carry. It’s different. People who serve in a similar role to mine tend to find themselves serving behind the scenes. They are the education or small group ministers, the pastoral care or outreach ministers. They work with, and minister to, adults.

Ministers in these roles, are as essential to the life of the church as any other. Too often, I think, churches fail to take the role as seriously as it deserves because the tasks (at least on the surface) may seem simple and manageable. At times, leadership doesn’t see its importance either and will hire inexperienced or untrained people to take on the ministry. I call this the Holiday Inn Syndrome. Do you remember those commercials? “I’m not a surgeon (insert whatever profession), but I did stay at a Holiday Inn last night.” This happens in churches all the time. While this “priesthood of all believers” inspired impulse to hire someone without training may be well-meaning, the outcome produces all kinds of problems – which leads me to the focus of this brief article.

One of the best and most lasting works on the posture of the Christian minister is Henri Nouwen’s work, The Wounded Healer. Published in 1972, the book was meant to speak to ministers in the 70’s coming out of a tumultuous time in American history and written in a very different time than ours – on the surface. I’m struck by the way Nouwen describes the culture and find similarities to ours now 45 years later. In his description of the generation in his day and the challenge of leadership, he writes:

“Christian leadership must be shaped by at least three of the characteristics that the descendants of the lonely crowd share: inwardness, fatherlessness, and convulsiveness. The new minister must take a very serious look at these characteristics and consider them carefully…”

And later..

“In a study of college students, published in Oct. 1969, J.K. Hadden suggested that the best phrase with which to characterize those young men and women was the “inward generation.” It was the generation that gave absolute priority to the personal and that tended, in a remarkable way, to withdraw into the self.” (p. 31)

Now contrast his thoughts here with this more recent reflection on the postmodern mindset from Sandra Schneiders:

“Postmodernity is characterized by fragmentation of thought and experience which focuses attention on the present moment, on immediate satisfaction, on what works for me rather than on historical continuity, social consensus, or shared hopes for a common future. In this foundationless, relativistic, and alienated context there is, nevertheless, often a powerfully experienced need for some focus of meaning, some source of direction and value. The intense interest in spirituality today is no doubt partially an expression of this need.”

In a time when Americans are talking more and more about loneliness, with some calling it a new “age of loneliness,” Christian ministers find themselves in a similar spiritual role as Nouwen called ministers to in his day. The culture is turning in on itself and, in an attempt to find purpose and meaning in the self rather than in Christ, is losing its way.

For ministers to be effective in this culture, particularly as ministers to adults, we need to be a non-anxious presence that, as Nouwen puts it, seeks to “clarify the immense confusion that can arise when people enter this internal world [of the self-bp].” What I’m suggesting is not new, but I think needs a renewed emphasis.

Our first task then, when entering a new context, or re-dedicating ourselves in our current context, is to focus on our relationship with God and our relationship with people. In other words, for ministers to be effective, we must embrace and love our churches before we ask them to join us in the work of the church. The church is a volunteer environment. Every member attends by choice and for all kinds of reasons. Like the gospel, our appeals for new ministry efforts are also by invitation. If the church discovers our love for God, they will be more likely to trust us when we ask them to risk something new for God whether it be in their personal relationship or in the practice of ministry.

Over the years, I think all of us in congregational ministry develop a list of “do’s and don’ts” for ministry that we acquire in various ways. We look back and remember those times in ministry where all seemed right in the world, when God seemed near and our dream for ministry was materializing right before our eyes. You feel like anything is possible and like every ministry “lever” you pull works. It’s as if all the effort and hard work aligns perfectly and you watch as your church courageously practices their faith in new ways.

Then there are other times in ministry where we find out the hard way that our dreams for ministry prove more difficult to realize. Sometimes, like when we were kids and found out from mom the hard way that stealing was a bad idea, we learn from our mistakes. Maybe it was that ambitious small group ministry re-structuring program that didn’t quite take off, the hospital visit with the awkward ending, or that special Sunday event when you forgot to order the catering (Recalling that great quote from “Parks and Recreation”: “Let me just say, from the bottom of my heart, my bad.”).

These experiences are important, but they lose their meaning if we, as ministers, fail to nurture our relationship with God and with our church. Only then can we help adults see again the beautiful alternative for joy, peace, and fulfillment in Christ our culture simply cannot offer.

By Michelle Van Loon who can be read at www.MomentsAndDays.org and followed at www.MichelleVanLoon.com

According to a 2011 Pew Forum survey, there are twice as many Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians in the world as there are Evangelicals. An earlier Barna survey notes that in the U.S., as many as a quarter of U.S. Christians identify as Pentecostal or Charismatic.

There is a wide range of practice among these brothers and sister. Some attend Assemblies of God congregations or unaffiliated independent Charismatic churches; others belong to Evangelical, mainline Protestant or Catholic churches but keep their Pentecostal fires burning by attending Charismatic conferences or prayer meetings “on the side”.

Though it’s been years since my husband and I were a part of Vineyard and other Third Wave Charismatic congregations, we still have a number of friends who are actively involved in the Charismatic world. They are evenly divided between those who attend Pentecostal or Charismatic churches and those who attend non-denomination or mainline churches and “supplement” their spiritual diets with conferences, seminars, and books with the offerings of ministries like the Mike Bickel-helmed International House of Prayer or Bill Johnson’s Bethel Church.

During and after the recent Presidential election, the polls I read didn’t measure Pentecostals and Charismatic voters as separate groups. They were counted via the banner of the church affiliation (Evangelical, Mainline, Catholic). It’s probably a fair statement to say Charismatic and Pentecostal believers were a sizeable number of the 81% of self-identified Evangelicals who voted for Trump.

Early in the election cycle, many of my Charismatic and Pentecostal friends supported conservative Tea Party candidates like Ted Cruz, but it wasn’t long before the support of many teachers and those offering prophetic “Thus saith the Lord” imprimateur. These words from Jeremiah Johnson from July, 2015 capture the flavor of many of the pre-election messages given by those recognized as prophets within this stream of the church:

“Trump shall become My trumpet to the American people, for he possesses qualities that are even hard to find in My people these days. Trump does not fear man nor will he allow deception and lies to go unnoticed. I am going to use him to expose darkness and perversion in America like never before, but you must understand that he is like a bull in a china closet. Many will want to throw him away because he will disturb their sense of peace and tranquility, but you must listen through the bantering to discover the truth that I will speak through him. I will use the wealth that I have given him to expose and launch investigations searching for the truth. Just as I raised up Cyrus to fulfill My purposes and plans, so have I raised up Trump to fulfill my purposes and plans prior to the 2016 election. You must listen to the trumpet very closely for he will sound the alarm and many will be blessed because of his compassion and mercy. Though many see the outward pride and arrogance, I have given him the tender heart of a father that wants to lend a helping hand to the poor and the needy, to the foreigner and the stranger.”

These words were among the first directed at this community, but were far from the last, especially in the days leading up to the election. Certainly these prophetic words may be viewed as a subset of the “vote Trump” messages many conservative Evangelical leaders like Franklin Graham, Wayne Grudem, and Jerry Falwell, Jr. were sharing that encouraged their followers to beat back moral darkness and progressive politics. But some of the leaders in the Pentecostal and Charismatic community emphasized that this election was the front lines of spiritual warfare taking place for the soul of this country and the world.

Many of my old friends spoke or shared messages from these leaders that were basically a form of functional dualism. It was God versus Satan, almost as though they were two equally-armed cowboys about to have a shoot-out at the OK Corral. The way in which this drama was often presented to the Charismatic and Pentecostal community, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton became the stand-ins for God and Satan. The prayers and voting habits of “on-fire” Charismatic/Pentecostal Christians would ensure that heaven might come to earth via the presidency (and Supreme Court selections) of Mr. Trump. His immorality was routinely excused with language similar to Jeremiah Johnson’s words (above), or claims that he was simply a “baby Christian”.

I believe there is spiritual warfare surrounding issues like abortion, euthanasia, and religious liberty – just as there is surrounding systemic racism, misogyny, and xenophobia. I also believe that we humans are not hapless victims at the OK Corral.

I know prayer effects change in this world as we submit ourselves to God. And sometimes, he intervenes in supernatural ways, because he loves the world far more than we ever could.

I’ll confess to confusion about what I’ve heard from my Pentecostal and Charismatic brothers and sisters during this election cycle. It is difficult to argue with a sentence that begins “Thus saith the Lord”, and I have no desire to do so. But this is a space where readers from many traditions interact, so I’ll throw out my question to those of you who attend or lead Charismatic or Pentecostal congregations (or congregations with those who are involved in the Charismatic world “on the side”): Did the many words of prophetic approval for Donald Trump encourage or worry you? Have you seen functional dualism at work in the way in which spiritual warfare is spoken of in your congregation?

By Kevin Maney, who received his PhD from the University of Toledo in Curriculum and Instruction, majoring in educational technology and minoring in educational leadership. He completed his studies for a Diploma in Anglican Studies at Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, PA, and did his coursework almost entirely online. He was ordained as a transitional deacon in the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA) on February 9, 2008 and as a priest in CANA on May 1, 2008. He is now the rector of St. Augustine’s Anglican Church in Westerville, OH, a suburb of Columbus. St. Augustine’s is part of the Anglican Diocese of the Great Lakes (ADGL) and the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA).

Sermon delivered on the second Sunday before Advent C, November 13, 2016, at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Westerville, OH.

If you prefer to listen to the audio podcast of today’s sermon, usually somewhat different from the text below, click here.

Lectionary texts: Isaiah 65.17-25; 2 Thessalonians 3.6-13; Luke 21.5-19.

In the name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

This morning we have our quarterly healing service and so I must keep my remarks short. Hopefully I will leave you wanting more rather than wondering why I preached so long. What do our lessons have to say about healing and what can we learn from them? This is what I want us to look at this morning.

In our OT lesson, we see God speaking through his prophet to lay out a bold and comprehensive promise to God’s people. God promises to heal all that is wrong in his sin-sick and evil-ravaged world, to bring about new creation, the new heavens and earth. Notice carefully what God is promising. God is not going to destroy his good corrupted creation and creatures. No, God is going to recreate and restore his creation to its original goodness. When God does this, notice what will happen. The haunting, hurting memories we all carry with us, and that diminish us, will be healed. We will simply not remember all the hurt and darkness in our personal and corporate lives and history. Peace will be restored. Chaos that was part of the old creation in Genesis will be done away with. Harmony and prosperity will reign. God will live directly with his people, and evil will be banished forever, even while the agents of evil mysteriously remain (the snake still is with us, but is consigned to powerlessness). It is a breathtaking vision and it reminds us in no uncertain terms that creation is important to God and God remains faithful to his created order, us included. Do you have that kind of comprehensive hope?

The language of new heavens and earth has no parallel in the OT. We must look to the NT to find a parallel vision that is as bold and comprehensive:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea [forces of chaos] was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away” (Rev 21.1-4).

It is no coincidence that the Christian bible begins with creation in Genesis and ends with God’s good but corrupted creation being restored and healed in Revelation. This is what the entire biblical narrative in general, and the gospel specifically, are all about—the healing of the nations and with them all of creation (cf. Romans 8.19-23). Only God can bring about this transformation with its attendant and necessary healing, and this reminds us that we are not to put our ultimate hope and trust in human solutions to fully transform God’s world into a better place. It is simply not in our power to do so. This is not to say that we are to withdraw from the world and become irresponsible abusers of creation and its creatures while we wait to go to heaven. This would be not only thoroughly unbiblical but also the ultimate act of idolatry and rebellion on our part. Why? Because God created us in his image to be his wise stewards over his good creation and to reflect God’s glory and goodness out into creation while receiving creation’s praise and glory and reflecting it back to its Creator. Simply put, we were made to be actively and totally involved in God’s world as his image-bearers, but we are to do so on God’s terms, not ours.

And of course the promise of new creation is made possible by the love of God acting in and through Christ to defeat the power of evil and reconcile us to himself so that we canserve once again as God’s faithful image-bearers (cf. Ephesians 6.12; Colossians 2.13-15). God did this through the death and resurrection of Jesus and by blessing us with the gift of his Spirit who lives in us and who heals and transforms us into new creations (cf. 2 Corinthians 5.17). This promise will not be consummated until Christ returns to finish the work he started.

So what do we do in the interim? Why have a healing service if it is only God who can thoroughly heal and transform us? Because this is what we are called to do as God’s faithful people and this is where our epistle and gospel lessons can help speak to us. The promise of new heavens and earth, of complete and transformative healing and new creation, reminds us that God is at work in us through Jesus in the power of the Spirit to heal and transform his world hijacked by human sin and the dark powers and principalities. Or to put it another way, as the NT writers unanimously proclaim, Jesus is Lord. Jesus is Lord, not the dark powers, not the rulers of the nations or the nations themselves. Jesus is Lord. It is one of the earliest Christian confessions of faith, and it is essential to our healing. Do you believe this? Do you really believe that Jesus is Lord and not Caesar (or Barack or Donald or [name your favorite leader])? If we are honest with ourselves, I suspect many of us pay lip service to this proclamation but don’t really believe it because of the brokenness and evil we see in our lives and God’s world.

And this is where we need to pay attention to Jesus and Paul. Our Lord reminds us that while he is removed from our sight, we will be faced with all kinds of difficulties and challenges: wars and rumors of wars. Persecution and division, et al. But we are not to fear. Why? Jesus doesn’t tell us here but in John’s gospel he does. He is risen and ascended and rules over God’s creation as Lord, and he is really present to us in the power of the Spirit who lives in us. So we are not to fear. Instead (and astonishingly enough), we are to see the difficulties in our lives as opportunities to witness to our faith that Jesus is Lord!

Likewise, Paul reminds that we are never to tire of doing good. Why? Because we are a resurrection people who worship and follow the crucified, risen, and ascended Lord and therefore we are called to live our lives in ways that witness to the truth that Jesus is Lord to an unbelieving and hostile world. So, for example, in the context of living life together as part of Christ’s family here at St. Augustine’s, we do our fair share as members of one family so as not to place undue and/or unfair burdens on other family members. We are to resist the temptation to let others do the work to make God’s love known to the world or to support this little parish. Doing so betrays a selfishness and an unbelieving attitude that Jesus really isn’t Lord. We are.

In closing, let me give you a specific example of how we can live our lives in ways that are consistent with the spirit of our epistle and gospel lessons so that we witness to the world that we are a resurrection (new creation) people who really believe Jesus is Lord and others are not. It seems to me that in the wake of Tuesday’s election there is great need of healing in this country. But what does the world do? It engages in acrimony, recrimination, and lawlessness. How can healing possibly occur in that environment? Not so with us here at St. Augustine’s. In the spirit of our NT lessons, and with the promise of new heavens and earth always in front of us, we are to remember first and foremost that Jesus is Lord and we are his people whom he has called to bring his healing to each other. That means we are to take the time to see if other family members are in need of healing. If we are Trump supporters, this means we don’t gloat or rub Clinton supporters’ noses in Trump’s victory. It means we listen to their complaints patiently and don’t attempt to debate them or tell them why they are wrong. Instead, we acknowledge their pain and offer them sympathy, just like we would want them to do for us if we were on the losing side. If we are Clinton supporters, we don’t run down Trump supporters and trash their candidate, or tell them why they’re wrong. We give Trump a chance to lead and we are gracious in defeat. But the critical point is that we check on each other and love and support each other and build each other up. We don’t let our differences become our lord and allow them to separate us. And just as importantly, we don’t trash our family members with whom we disagree to others, either inside or outside our parish family, running them down behind their backs. What kind of witness is that? If we conduct ourselves in ways that are patterned after Jesus, we proclaim to the world that Jesus is Lord and in the process, we find healing, both for ourselves and others. This, in a nutshell and in this particular context, my beloved, is one way we can proclaim the Good News and in the process find real healing, now and for all eternity. Why? Because in doing so we open ourselves up to the loving power of Jesus our Lord who rules and lives in and among us, and who alone has the power to heal. To him be honor, praise, and glory forever and ever.

In the name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

By Patrick Mitchel, a sketch of a public lecture by John Barclay, author of Paul and the Gift. Patrick Mitchel is at Irish Bible Institute in Dublin.

John Barclay , Lightfoot Professor of Divinity, Durham University was speaking in St Patrick’s College, Maynooth this evening on ‘Grace as Free Gift: Freedom from What?’ This was the opening keynote address of the Irish Theological Association Annual Conference.

His 2015 book Paul and the Gift is one of those very big books a top scholar writes at the peak of his / her career. I don’t mean in big in size (although at over 600 pages it ain’t small) but in significance. It is the fruit of many years of research and has caused a substantial amount of reaction and debate, most to my knowledge very positive.

If you are keen you can read two substantial reviews at Books & Culture by Scot McKnight and Wesley Hill  Others of a more Reformed persuasion can be found here  (Thomas Schreiner) and Alistair Roberts here. Ben Witherington (as he is wont to do) did a mammoth blogging review in dialogue with John Barclay – like a mini-book in itself.

And if you are really keen you can always buy and read the book – I’ve a copy (here’s a pic) and plan to read it over Christmas if all goes well.

All to say is that this post isn’t yet another review (which would be a bit difficult since I’ve only glanced through it as yet and have read reviews). But it is some observations and thoughts on tonight’s lecture.

First, Barclay developed his argument with clarity, brevity and good humour in four sections.

1. GRACE IS IN THE FIELD OF GIFT

This is talking about grace in general. Remember when someone gave a you a nice gift? Or invited you to dinner? What is going on? The act of grace you have experienced is a free, voluntary act. You are not legally obligated to respond! Neither (I hope) are you eating the dinner and working out a budget of what it cost your host in terms of time and money so that you know exactly how much to ‘pay back’ when you invite them around in return – the gift is non-calcuable. But note the sense of obligation to reciprocate often created by a gift. But the main thing a gift is doing is building relationship – they are personal. They are also ‘discriminatory’ in the sense that you have received that invitation because the person likes you – they haven’t invited a total stranger or someone they don’t like.  Barclay gave the example of a will – you leave money to people and causes you have affinity with. You might not leave money to the local dog shelter because you believe that your money is better spend helping humans .. this is discriminatory grace.

In the ancient world, the expectation was that the gods gave favour in this sort of discriminatory fashion – to people of value and worth. So the qualifying factors – perhaps your ethnic identity, gender (usually male preference), your moral superiority etc – determined the giving of grace. For God / gods to do otherwise would be to cause upheaval and social chaos – where is justice and social order if grace is indiscriminate?

2. GRACE AS FREEDOM FROM PRIOR CONDITIONS OF WORTH  (the incongruity of grace)

This is where Christian grace becomes revolutionary and truly shocking. God’s grace is given without regard to ethnic, moral, gender or any other conditions. In fact ‘Christ died for the ungodly’. Repeatedly in the NT  (but also foreshadowed in the OT – I think more could have been said here on texts like Deut 10:14-22, Isaiah 58:6-7, Job 29:12-17 which make clear that God’s impartial love and grace is intrinsic to the OT and simply carried on a climax in the NT) it is stressed that God’s grace is unconditioned – Jesus and the Prodigal Son, Paul telling the Corinthians that it was exactly that they were NOT rich, wise, clever and powerful that they were chosen by God – it was in this choice that God was demonstrating his ‘foolishness’ (Paul is not into building false self-esteem here!).

This is Barclay’s important notion of the ‘incongruity’ of grace – it does not make logical sense – it is a misfit between the gift and the worth of the recipient.

This radical notion of grace has been central to all Western forms of theology – Catholic and Protestant. But there are struggles and differences in how the incongruity works out in the life of a Christian.

Famously, for Luther is it ‘simil iustus et peccator‘ – simultaneously justified and a sinner. This does NOT mean that Luther is thinking introspectively that he in himself is both a sinner and righteous person. He means that he is a 100% a sinner and that he is 100% righteous only because he is united with Christ and his righteousness. In other words, for Luther, grace was permanently incongruous.

Others, in different ways have wanted to square God’s incongruous grace with the expectation that grace will be transformative – and therefore effective in making the changed sinner more congruent with God’s final justice. Augustine, Aquinas  and Calvin all wrestled with this.

Barclay referred to Therese of Lisieux who, near death, said that if she was to be judged according to works then she would have no works – all she would have were the works of Christ in her (very Lutheran indeed!).

But the Christian tradition as a whole have agreed that God’s grace truly is a wonderful and life-giving freedom from being in some way good enough to be chosen by God. (Again a text like Deuteronomy emphasises similar themes – Israel is specifically told she was chosen exactly NOT because she deserved it).

3. GRACE AS FREEDOM FROM OBLIGATION?

Here we get the crux of popular distortions of grace among a lot of contemporary Christianity – both Catholic and Protestant. These distortions are shaped by a Western notion that grace is not really grace unless it is ‘unconditional’. In other words, there is absolutely no expectation of reciprocity or return.

There is a key difference between ‘unconditioned’ grace and ‘unconditional’ grace. One is the basis on which grace is given, the other is the expectation of return in light of grace.

Barclay mentioned Kant (grace is grace only if there is no obligation) and Derrida here – who said that creating any sense of obligation in the recipient destroyed the sense of gift. It was better to give anonymously. Indeed the best gift would be given when you are dead – then there is no chance of obligation of a return gift! This is typical of the idea of unobliging gift – no strings attached at all.

Yet the Bible has little difficulty in the idea of obligation in light of God’s grace. For Paul, the grace of God is revealed in Christ. That gift places believers under the lordship of Christ (literally slavery to Christ) – Christians are under new ownership and are ‘to live to the Lord’ and ‘live a life worthy’ of the gospel.

But a key qualifier here is that the gift of grace created relationship. There is a new status – beloved son, adopted by the Spirit, abba Father .. out of which the believer is to live a new life in love and thankfulness to God. And this is a social context – worked out in community

It is only because of our radical individualism that we can imagine there is no obligation of a gift of grace given.

4. GRACE AS FREEDOM FROM PRE-CONSTITUTED CRITERIA OF WORTH

Barclay has been forging a path that is between Old and New Perspectives on Paul. In this section he sounded distinctly ‘New Perspective’ in that his concern is that grace too often has been interpreted in narrow individual categories – John Newton’s Amazing Grace captures wonderful truth but is detached from the social implications of unconditioned grace.

Take Galatians (on which Barclay did his PhD): the real issue is not works-righteousness he says, but WORTH. The pagan Galatians were not deemed worthy by the Judaizers until they were circumcised. But says Paul, any pre-conditions of worth are utterly destroyed by God;s grace – so Galatians 3:28

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

In Corinthians, God’s grace subverts human ideas of worth – they are simply not worthy by standards of the ancient world. This is actually God’s point in choosing them. There is an intentionality in God’s grace to turn human ideas of worth on their head. This is why the early church was socially revolutionary (again a New Perspective feel to this, although he did also say that while NP got the social dimensions of justification well, it tended to lose the theological motive for how and why Jews and Gentiles were brought into one new community – that theological basis being God’s grace). Justification by grace alone created new communities formed only by people who were recipients of grace and not on any other criteria at all.

The context for Paul was missional – grace dissolves existing value systems regarding age, education, social status, gender, ethnicity, wealth etc.

APPLICATIONS

Here Prof Barclay was interesting and pastorally very helpful. Note the title of part 4 – it is not guilt or merit but WORTH. Grace tells us that the gospel is for all regardless of their worth.

Two areas of application:

First, chatting to him afterwards, he made a very interesting point about ageing – old age is the hardest time of life: you are losing friends, status, work, health, strength, social mobility, and maybe even your mind. This is where the gospel really impacts at a deep level for it speaks of a worth that is not measured by any of these things – a worth that is only dependent on God’s grace and this gives hope beyond loss of all we hold most dearly and that which currently gives us value and esteem.

Worth asking ourselves a question – how would you cope do you think if all that currently gives you a sense of worth was taken away?

Second, in a ‘sinless’ society with little notion of guilt this is another way of talking about the good news. He commented that numerous students and young people are under enormous pressure to measure up in a social media saturated society – cyber bullying, internet shaming, constant criticism, hierarchies of acceptance, pressure to perform and conform are more intense in a globally connected world.

Here God’s grace remains revolutionary good news – there is life and acceptance and welcome in a new community of brothers and sisters who gather around the Lord’s table solely on the basis of grace – nothing else.

This is why it is so important to work towards churches where there is real diversity – across gender, social, money, culture and ethnic lines. For this is a living breathing community of grace where we are reminded that this is what Christianity is all about – it’s not a narrow culturally specific religious club, it is about God’s unconditioned grace in Jesus Christ.

Robert Royal is the founder and president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. and editor-in-chief of The Catholic Thing (www.thecatholicthing.org). He is the author of numerous books. One in particular, The God That Did Not Fail, is one of my all-time favorites.   Royal’s new book, A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century, framed this interview.

David George Moore conducted this interview. Dave blogs at www.twocities.org and his videos can be seen at www.mooreengaging.com.

Moore: Vatican II had far-reaching implications for the Roman Catholic Church. Do you see the effects of this momentous gathering, at least to this point in human history, as a net positive or net negative?

Royal: That’s a big question and deserves a big answer, which I’m, unfortunately, unable to give. The negative effects are well documented: decline in religious vocations, decline in Sunday Mass attendance, flat and uninspiring liturgies, continuing widespread confusion about what the Church teaches about faith and morals, shrinking Catholic populations in Europe and Latin America, and stagnation in North America. As has been widely reported, the second largest religious group in America consists of ex-Catholics (about 25 million) with only the Catholic Church itself (70 million) larger, and even of those perhaps only one-quarter are Catholic in any real sense.

In the plus column, where the Church is truly present, there’s been considerable renewal. As I tried to make clear in my book A Deeper Vision, in philosophy, theology, Scripture Studies, culture, literature, etc. the Church in the twentieth century was remarkably fertile both before and after the Council (1962-5). Indeed, I would say that the renewal was the result of this ferment, which simultaneously looked back to the Scriptures and early Church Fathers (ressourcement) and looked to present and future (aggiornamento) using the recovery of a deeper Catholic tradition. Catholicism is booming in Asia and Africa (there will be more Catholics, probably over a billion, in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2100 than in the whole world today).

The Council put the question to those of us in advanced democracies of how we are going to live fully Christian lives in our circumstances. The Gospel has the power to answer that question, but it’s explosive. It may take a few decades yet before we come to a better equilibrium.

Moore: Your book makes clear that good theology can’t be done apart from good philosophy. How can Christian scholars better persuade non-experts that knowing both theology and philosophy matter?

Royal: Theology is simply the part of religiosity that thinks about God. That’s something any reflective human being will do, believer or not. The Creator made us capable of reasoning and willing, and those fundamental human powers will inevitably turn to questions such as where did I come from? Where am I going? How should I live? What is there after this life? Classic questions that pure philosophy and theology have always confronted.

It’s always been the case that there are only a few believers capable of formal philosophy and theology. That’s where the Church, formed in both faith and reason, assists the vast majority of believers. Most believers are such because they’ve heard the Word from family, friends, parish, and come to appreciate its value in the midst of all the things that life brings us all.

But to have that confidence in the Church, we also need confidence that there are those within the community who can answer the questions that the world puts to us – or at least show how they fit into a coherent scheme. When I’ve taught philosophy to graduate students, I’ve found that they often fear rational examination of the truths of the faith, as if reason is somehow the enemy of faith. I try to convince them that – even if they don’t remember all the logical arguments we go over – they will at least remember that there are answers to various difficulties. And they should never be intimidated by secular critics who assume (they cannot prove it) that Faith is irrational. All truths are from God, whether we arrive there via reason or revelation. And patiently pursued, they will not contradict one another.

The opening of John’s Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word. . .” etc., shows how the NT writers were already using philosophical ideas like the Logos (“Word”) to reason about revelation. It’s a task that’s never completed, because new questions and situations arise. But it’s crucial for the Church to be present in such debates. For that, you need tools of reason as well as faith.

Moore: Has your candor about problems within the Roman Catholic Church ever gotten you into serious trouble?

Royal: It depends what you mean by trouble. Nothing from Church authorities, ever. But anyone who tries to speak truth in any time and place will run afoul of people in one direction or another.

In my most recent book, for example, among other things I try to see what truth, if any, exists in some figures with whom I find myself in basic disagreement. My model in this is St. Thomas Aquinas who, in the individual articles of the Summa Theologiae, first lines up one set of positions on a given question: “Some have said…” Then, he opposes another group to those views, sometimes multiple voices of varying kinds, “But against that…” Finally, he tries to adjudicate, discerning where those who are partly right are right (and wrong), and trying to reconcile the various truths thus established into a consistent resolution of some disputed point. You don’t read a book like that for the spiritual inspiration you might get, for instance, in The Imitation of Christ. But if you want a patient, logical search for truth, there’s no better example among Christian thinkers.

I wasn’t writing a Summa, so I try to make that kind of story more interesting for readers – the exchanges between Hans Urs von Balthasar and Karl Barth, for example, on the idea of analogy and our knowledge of God are a more living form of what Aquinas did. But I can tell you from experience that when you try to do this, some accuse you of being overly irenic, others of complicating questions to which they have the simple answer.

Life’s unfair, and you don’t realize how unfair until you’ve written a book.

Moore: Much of what you write is readily applicable to us Protestants. You write that an overemphasis on God’s love can lead to “theological drift.” Describe why you have concerns here.

Royal: As everyone knows these days, the very idea of Christianity as something true has all but disappeared from the public square, and even sadly from many churches. When Christ said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” a Christian should probably recognize that he meant what he said. We also have “God is love,” but love – for us humans – takes all sorts of forms, including right and wrong forms, as even pop song make clear. Any faithful reading of the Gospel shows, I believe, a Jesus who is merciful and the very incarnation of a love that transcends all human loves. And at the same time – you can look it up – Jesus repeatedly warns about hell and damnation, the evils that come from the human heart, the failure even of those who claim to be Christians to truly follow Him, that He will say to them at the Last Judgment, “I never knew you.” Different people will have differing judgments about which of the two stances – the forgiving or the admonishing – needs to be applied in a given time and place. There’s no question, however, that without the hard look at sin and evil, indeed determining the truth about which is which, there’s not only “theological drift,” there’s an undermining of Christianity itself. If God is just indulgent and loving and doesn’t demand anything from me, why did he go to all the bother about the Cross and Resurrection? I won’t speak about Protestants – I’ve learned a lot from them over the years. But too many Catholics I know suffer from what we call in technical theological language “presumption.” They presume that God will forgive them and don’t need to examine themselves, their lives, and live differently than the people around them. It’s only one side of the Gospel – and a dangerously self-indulgent one when we’re not sharply aware of the rest.

Moore: To what degree is Marxist ideology still a threat to the Roman Catholic faith, especially in Latin America?

Royal: Well, things have changed quite a bit. Even in the heyday of so-called “Liberation Theology,” very few who embraced it had any idea of what Marxism really is. They thought it prescribed some sorts of revolution that would help the desperately poor, without any clear idea of Communism (which Marx himself regarded as “scientific socialism,” which is to say an ideology with a set of principles like class struggle, dictatorship of the proletariat, and much more). There persists a kind of anti-capitalist – and to be frank, anti-American element in many pockets of the Catholic Church in Latin America. Pope Francis himself, I think it’s fair to say, fits somewhere into that broad view of things. For me, as a Catholic living in America, I think there’s plenty to criticize in the way globalization and American policies have sometimes harmed Latin America. But the solutions we often here from the Latin American church are mere slogans. They don’t really understand global economics or international politics very well, let alone the dynamics in their own countries. So much of what they say is heartfelt about the poor, but not much more than pious wishes beyond that.

Moore: Does the present Pope have major doctrinal differences from the two Popes who preceded him?

Royal: He and many of his supporters would say no, and on perhaps 90 percent of Catholic thought, it’s probably the case. But he’s had this odd tick about Communion for the remarried and divorced – something never accepted in the Latin Church out of fidelity to Our Lord’s words about the indissolubility of marriage. He’s also seems ready to permit intercommunion where there is no communion. For example, Catholics take seriously – sometimes militantly – the splits that opened during the Reformation over whether Communion presents transubstantiation (as we believe), consubstantiation (as the Lutherans came to think), or any of the other – by now many – different views of the Eucharist, which even include regarding it as a “mere symbol.” You may think these are just opinions that mean nothing now, given that Christians face so many challenges from secularism and outright anti-Christian currents. But it matters what we think about those who belong in the Body of Christ, and how, and to what degree. My own view is that we need to reach out to one another and hold furiously to what we have in common in the storm that is now about to strike, but also not to forget that Christianity has a truth dimension that we cannot simply brush past our of some desire for ecumenical fellowship.

Moore: Many believe that the Roman Catholic is a monolith, but that is simply not the case. I’ve asked theologically informed Roman Catholic friends how many Roman Catholics have read the Catechism. The percentage is usually 10-15%. If that is remotely true, what would you propose for Catholics to better know their faith and thus what is non-negotiable if one aligns with this Christian tradition?

Royal: The official Catechism of the Catholic Church is a large book and was not intended to be read straight through. It’s more like an encyclopedia and the intention, when it was written, was to provide a broad jumping off point so that Catholic churches in various nations, or language groups, could develop other catechisms more adapted to their own circumstances. That hasn’t happened, for the most part. But there are many good, shorter guides, several books by now Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington DC, for instance. Bishop Robert Barron, now of Santa Barbara is a brilliant expositor. Then there are the older writers like G. K. Chesterton, Wilfrid Sheed (especially “Theology and Sanity”), wonderful NT Commentaries like Fulton Sheen’s Life of Christ, for the intellectual ambitious Joseph Ratzinger’s Introduction to Christianity or, as Pope Benedict XVI, his three-volume commentary on the NT. In a way, of course, Christianity is a simple message of God to man, but that message has to face many questions and challenges. So our faith should be constantly growing in simplicity and strength and – for those of us so called – also in wisdom and knowledge to meet the complexities of our moment.

Moore: Would your book be helpful for Protestants to read?

Royal: I believe so, because I’ve tried to lay out what the Catholic tradition thought and did in the twentieth century. Protestants, of course, faced some of the same problems during that period. Sometimes our responses have converged, at other times diverged. But if we’re being faithful to the Gospel and trying to see our way forward, we can all learn from one another, even from our failures and the failures of others. God has placed us at a critical moment in the history of the Church and the Western world. We need all the light we can possibly find to respond to it. I tried to illuminate what seem to me several areas where we might look for help moving forward.

One of the most — if not the most — important words in the New Testament for the church is the word fellowship (Greek: koinonia). What is a fellowship? What is happening when you hear someone use the term “fellowship” for what goes on in your church? Why do we call one room in some churches “fellowship hall” and the other a “sanctuary”? Is the sanctuary not fellowship? What is fellowship?

At what size of a church does it cease being a fellowship?

How can a megachurch be a fellowship? Does a come-hear-the-sermon approach break the possibility of a fellowship?

What are the needed elements for a church to become a fellowship? Which is the most decisive?

John Nugent, in his exceptional new study Endangered Gospel examines this term fellowship and opens with a section of quotations of the “one another” passages in the New Testament, and I will list just a few here (but a full citation is at the bottom of this post):

Rom. 12:10 Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves.

Rom. 12:16 Live in harmony with one another.

Rom. 15:14    I myself am convinced, my brothers and sisters, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with knowledge and competent to instruct one another.

2Cor. 13:11    Finally, brothers and sisters, rejoice! Strive for full restoration, encourage one another, be of one mind, live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you.

Eph. 4:2 Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.

Eph. 4:32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

Eph. 5:19 speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord,

Eph. 5:21    Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

1Pet. 4:9 Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling.

Let’s begin with this: fellowship is more than enjoying one another and talking about whatever you like, for as Nugent says it, “… fellowship means more than socializing. It means sharing a life in common” (137). It is about sharing a life. If fellowship is about sharing life then Nugent is also right is saying this:  “The distinguishing feature of the “one another” practices is reciprocity. These are not practices that a few people do on behalf of the whole body. They are how all members relate to one another” (138).

It surely entails hospitality and eating with one another for the meal is the place of welcome and friendship and conversation and fellowship: “Many of the “one another” practices require the genuine intimacy of life together. … It is often said “we are what we eat”; even more so, we are who we eat with” (138).

Furthermore, and this probably needs more emphasis than even Nugent gives it, fellowship is the essence of kingdom flourishing: “These “one another” commands are not simply a matter of first-century or even small church culture. They reflect God’s design for human life and flourishing” (138).

But it must be worked at or an environment must be intentionally created for it to happen as God wants this to happen:

In the early church, many Christians still lived under the authority of unbelieving rulers, employers, and family members. For them, gathering together with the body was the only time they truly experienced the newness of God’s kingdom. They couldn’t wait to get together. They looked forward to serving one another and being served, encouraging one another and being encouraged, teaching others and being taught. The lowly looked forward to being raised up. Women, children, slaves, and ethnic minorities looked forward to being treated with equal dignity (139).

Big issue arising, of course: the size of the church. Can megachurches be a fellowship? Nugent targets this mentality of church being about numerical growth into these very challenging words:

If numerical growth demands a different kind of community and a different kind of leader than Jesus exemplified and authorized, then we have three options:

1. We can leave Jesus’ teaching about community behind and allow sociology to guide us into new forms of church for which Scripture offers little guidance.
2. We can plant new churches whenever we get too large to conform to Jesus’ teaching about community.
3. We can find ways to adapt our life together in such a way that takes sociological constraints seriously while keeping Jesus’ teaching about the kingdom as our authoritative guide (141).

What’s your church? What’s your choice?

Now a final challenge: “If we are not baptizing people into a body like this, then we may be embracing, displaying, and proclaiming a sophisticated “sociological’ substitute for the kingdom of God” (142).

One Another in the NT:

Rom. 12:10 Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves.

Rom. 12:16 Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.

Rom. 13:8    Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law.

Rom. 14:13    Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or sister.

Rom. 15:7    Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.

Rom. 15:14    I myself am convinced, my brothers and sisters, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with knowledge and competent to instruct one another.

Rom. 16:16    Greet one another with a holy kiss.

All the churches of Christ send greetings.

1Cor. 1:10    I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought.

1Cor. 16:20 All the brothers and sisters here send you greetings. Greet one another with a holy kiss.

2Cor. 13:11    Finally, brothers and sisters, rejoice! Strive for full restoration, encourage one another, be of one mind, live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you.

2Cor. 13:12    Greet one another with a holy kiss.

Gal. 5:13    You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love.

Eph. 4:2 Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.

Eph. 4:32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

Eph. 5:19 speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord,

Eph. 5:21    Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Phil. 2:5    In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Col. 3:13 Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.

Col. 3:16 Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts.

1Th. 4:9    Now about your love for one another we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other.

1Th. 4:18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.

1Th. 5:11 Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.

2Th. 1:3    We ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love all of you have for one another is increasing.

Heb. 3:13 But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.

Heb. 10:24 And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, 25 not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

Heb. 13:1    Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters.

James 4:11    Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister or judges them speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it.

James 5:9 Don’t grumble against one another, brothers and sisters, or you will be judged. The Judge is standing at the door!

1Pet. 1:22    Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart.

1Pet. 3:8    Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble.

1Pet. 4:9 Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling.

1Pet. 5:5   In the same way, you who are younger, submit yourselves to your elders. All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because,

  “God opposes the proud

but shows favor to the humble.”

1Pet. 5:14 Greet one another with a kiss of love.

  Peace to all of you who are in Christ.

1John 1:7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.

1John 3:11    For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another.

1John 3:23 And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.

1John 4:7    Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.

1John 4:11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

2John 5 And now, dear lady, I am not writing you a new command but one we have had from the beginning. I ask that we love one another.