Anselm Reconsidered

Jason Micheli will be posting reflections on Fleming Rutledge’s new book, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ, through Lent. Jason is a United Methodist pastor in DC who blogs at www.tamedcynic.org

Every year during Advent we let our confirmation students loose through the building to take an informal poll.

The question we give the confirmands is the same every year:

Why did Jesus come?

About 15% always respond that Jesus comes to teach us how to love one another and help the needy. I suppose those are the liberals.

Without fail, a reliable 85%, in so many words, reply that Jesus comes to die for our sins. That Jesus is born to die.

For us.

Instead of us.

In our place.

Every year the question is the same and, remarkably, every year so is the answer. The needle doesn’t move at all. More than 3/4 answer, year in and year out, that Jesus comes in order to die for us. As our substitute, suffering the death we deserve.

And, every year, more than a few of the confirmands bring those answers back to the confirmation class with a few questions of their own:

How does that work?

How come?

Why does God need someone to die in order to forgive us our sins?

The common and popular construal’s of the Church’s language for sin and substitution, as the confirmation students rightly inuit, are not without their problems. Indeed some presentations of the necessity of Christ’s death seem to raise problems bigger than the ones they’re meant to assuage.

Too often our translation of substitutionary atonement suggests that the incarnation is determined by us and our predicament.

It makes the incarnation contingent on us: on our sin, on the Fall, on Adam and Eve’s disobedience.

Instead of something that flows from God’s triune abundance, the incarnation is something compelled by our corruption. Instead of a gift God gives eternally out of perichoretic joy, the incarnation sounds like the outworking of God’s frustration and disappointment in us.

Incarnation and Salvation become something God has to do to rescue us from Sin. But to picture it that way is to presume that Jesus would not have come if we hadn’t sinned. That if there’d been no exit from Eden there’d have been no journey to Bethlehem.

To suggest that Jesus might not have come is to say that the incarnation is something less than an eternal, unchanging decision of God’s, and if the incarnation is not an eternal decision of God’s, if the incarnation is not something God was always going to do irrespective of a Fall, then at some point in time God changed his mind about us, towards us. Such a change in God, who is immutable, represents a seismic departure from the claims of the Church Fathers.

Less broadly, (sub)versions of substitutionary atonement frequently mute any sense of the saving significance of the resurrection while also treating the incarnation as a prelude to the primary narrative, lacking in any salvific dimension in its own right. Lost oftentimes in presentations of substitutionary atonement is the superabundance of God’s mercy, for it depicts God as demanding blood as the necessary recompense for our redemption, and, in doing so, can reduce the mystery of our salvation to a rigid schema of legalistic, mechanical steps of logic.

All of these criticisms with (sub)versions of substitutionary atonement are valid, but, as Fleming Rutledge argues in her book, The Crucifixion:

         the solution to the abuse of the tradition’s atonement language is not to jettison it.

She judges both conservatives, who reduce the bible’s substitutionary language to a rational ‘Romans Road’ schema, and liberals, who dismiss it by asking ‘How does that work?’ as being ‘overly literal, unimaginative, and tendentious.’ Both those who make their version of substitutionary atonement the gospel and those who disavow substitutionary atonement as antithetical to the gospel forget, chides Rutledge, that the Bible is art and so theology too must be a kind of art, expressing what cannot, by its very nature, be delimited to expression.

It risks little exaggeration to say that much atonement theology today has more to do with Anselm than it does with Jesus. So it comes as a surprise, perhaps, that Rutledge contends that Anselm, in Cur Deus Homo, should be read as what most take him to be the opposite of: an artist, attempting to illumine what will always necessarily remain ineffable.

She begins her appraisal of Anselm by asserting the legitimacy of substitutionary atonement’s overarching concerns:

Something is terribly wrong in the world and needs to be set right.

         God’s justice demands that sin not go unheeded.  

         Compassion alone will not make right what is wrong. Rectification requires the action of God from beyond our sphere.

The popular impressions of Anselm’s God as petty and capricious, easily offended and demanding a tribute of blood in order to forgive us, are so wildly off the mark Fleming Rutledge wonders if Anselm’s many critics have actually read Cur Deus Homo or, if they’ve paused to consider the title of it: ‘Why the God-Man?’ The title itself indicates that Anselm does not commit the misstep of which he’s commonly accused; namely, he does not pit the Father and Son against one another nor does he posit Christ’s humanity as the sole agent of our salvation, another frequent charge against him. As the title makes clear, from the front cover forward, Anselm sees salvation as a fully Trinitarian work enfolding incarnation and unfolding from it.

Given the unexamined caricatures about Anselm’s theology, a reader of Cur Deus Homo, for example, might be surprised to discover that nowhere does he speak of the penal suffering of Christ’s death.

         What’s critical for Anselm about Christ’s suffering and death is Christ’s innocence.

Even the logical steps Anselm takes with his interlocutor, Boso, which so many decry as coldly rationalistic, proceed from a primary question different from what his critics imagine. Rather than pondering how the Son’s blood persuades the angry Father to forgive us, as it is popularly supposed, Anselm reflects on why death’s defeat comes as it does, on the cross, if the devil has no rights over humanity. Already this latter question itself shows how off the mark are those who dismiss Anselm as injecting a new and altogether different understanding of the atonement in to the theology received from the Church Fathers.

To her side, Fleming Rutledge marshals David Bentley Hart, my former teacher and an Eastern Orthodox theologian who, one might anticipate, would have little appreciation for Anselm, the standard-bearer for Western atonement theology. Citing Hart’s essay, A Gift Exceeding Every Debt, Rutledge advances the unconventional argument that Anselm relies upon the very same story of the atonement as the ancient Church Fathers, a story told within the broad motifs of recapitulation and victory wherein the Second Adam re-narrates the human story, living obediently the life God intended originally for the First Adam and, in doing so even unto death on a cross, Christ tramples Death by death thereby restoring us to the Father.

What Anselm offers is not a different story of our salvation or a new theory of the atonement but a ‘change of accent.’

Behind his hyper focus on the necessity of the cross if the devil has no rights over us, and behind his exercise in logic that proceeds from it, Anselm, in fact, sees salvation as a unified victory of the Trinity against Sin and Death, or the devil. Christ’s sacrifice is not an external exchange of death and desert- a transaction. It is not, contrary to rumor, an expiation to a god abounding in steadfast wrath. Rather, says David Hart, Christ’s sacrifice owes to the internal relation of the divine will. As much as in the Church Fathers, God, in Cur Deus Homo, is the chief actor in the salvation story. The guilt of humanity’s sin, which is the rejection of the God who is Life, had placed humanity in bondage to Death. Christ’s self-offering in obedience sets aside our guilt, an act of pure grace, while his death defeats Death.

In this vein Anselm sounds little different than Gustav Aulen, whose ‘Christus Victor’ motif of the atonement is often held out as the opposite of Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo. Indeed Aulen himself drew the contrast. Nonetheless, says Hart in his essay:

      ‘The closer the attention one pays to Anselm’s argument, the harder it becomes to locate a point at which he actually breaks from patristic orthodoxy. The divine action follows the same course as in the ‘classic’ model: sin having disrupted the order of God’s good creation, and humanity having been handed over to death and the devil, God enters into a condition of estrangement and slavery to set                 humanity free…[In Christ] humanity was placed between God and the devil to vanquish the latter for the honor of the former.’

         Its cliche, for those in mainline and progressive circles to say they favor the Church Fathers’ emphasis on the incarnation rather than the modern, Western emphasis upon the cross.

Such a position however, as both Rutledge and Hart point out, ignores how, in the Church Fathers especially, God’s conquest of Sin and Death is the only way we’re incorporated into an incarnate new humanity and that this new humanity is a present, social reality nowhere else but in the community that preaches Christ crucified and baptizes its members into his death and resurrection.

If Rutledge and Hart are correct and Anselm is well within the stream of patristic theology, bringing to focus what was latent and assumed in earlier writings, then what do we with the most troubling and caricatured of Anselm’s atonement analogies? As rookie theology students learn in too cursory a manner, Anselm likens our sin before God to a medieval lord whose ‘honor’ has been offended by his vassals and must be restored, satisfied. In The Crucifixion, Rutledge glosses over this piece from Hart’s A Gift Exceeding Every Debt, and it’s an omission that leads them to two, dissonant conclusions and reveals their underlying theological commitments.

Hart translates ‘honor’ as goodness, arguing that in Anselm’s day a lord’s honor was shorthand for the social order to which he was bound and responsible.

Put biblically, God’s ‘social order’ is creation itself and God’s honor is God’s Goodness to which the good creation corresponds. God’s goodness (honor) requires God to act for his good creation. God cannot not intervene to rectify a creation distorted by Sin and Death.

So then, contrary to the abundant caricatures, Anselm’s God is not an infinitely offended god who demands blood sacrifice, even his own, in order to rectify our relationship with him. Anselm’s is an infinitely merciful triune God who, in order to fulfill his creative intent, says Hart:

         ‘…recapitulates humanity by passing through all the violences of sin and death, rendering to God the obedience that is his due, and so transforms the event of his death into an occasion of infinite blessings…Christ’s death does not even effect a change in God’s attitude towards humanity; God’s attitude never alters: he desires the salvation of his creatures, and will not abandon them even to their own cruelties.’

Atonement in Anselm then is quite the opposite of what many take it be. It is not an economic exchange our corruption compelled God to transact. It is the motion of triune perichoretic love, the Father offering the Son to and for us in our estrangement, the Son offering his life in obedience to the Father even though that obedience leads to a cross, and the Father vindicating the Son’s loving obedience by raising him from the dead, a motion where there is no distinction between God’s justice and God’s mercy for Easter shows God’s utmost Law to be steadfast love to his creatures.

In The Crucifixion, Fleming Rutledge judges that those who resist substitutionary language disregard the extent to which the claim Christ’s death is ‘for sin’ is found all over the New Testament. It simply overwhelms any other manner of speaking of the cross. Rutledge helpfully corrects the misunderstanding behind much of the resistance to substitution that ‘sin’ here refers to our individual sins. The substitutionary death of Christ is instead a death for our collective sin, she argues with the long record of the prophets as her evidence. A theology of the cross is deficient if it neglects an account of the corporate and systemic nature of sin. As Rutledge distinguishes, Sin is an alien power to which we’re in bondage, but sin is also a kind of contagion of our nature, for, in our bondage, we become active agents of Sin. We require, therefore, two modes of deliverance. We need God to remove our guilt but also to liberate us from the Power of Sin.

While I believe Fleming Rutledge offers a fuller account of the Sin for which Christ dies, her reliance upon David Hart’s retrieval of Anselm neglects the way Hart emphasizes the necessarily nonviolent mode of the atonement as its understood in the Fathers and- Hart contends- Anselm.

Rutledge avoids the common problems with substitutionary atonement. She makes clear it is not merely our individual sin (read: moral impurity) for which Jesus dies. She insists we must not divide the Father’s and Son’s wills against one another, that the cross in no way effects a change in God, and that God’s wrath is poured out on the cross not against his creatures but against the Sin that enslaves them. Still, Rutledge sees the cross as an act of ‘disruptive grace.’ It is an apocalyptic battle waged by God.

In other words-

         Even after Rutledge resolves the popular problems with substitution, a  graver problem remains:         

         God chooses violence to be the means by which we’re delivered.

Whether or not the fact of God endorsing and using such violence is ameliorated by the fact that God suffers it in our stead is a matter of debate.

         To my mind, a more urgent question becomes whether or not a community of perichoretic love, the Trinity, whose very nature is peace, could ever employ violence to good ends?

Is not such an act contrary to God’s nature?

In his retrieval of Cur Deus Homo, David Hart argues that Anselm, in harmony with the Fathers before him, does not view God as using the violence of the cross as the means to remit sin. Quite the opposite, the violence of the cross is our violence, our choice. The cross is a product of the system of Sin to which we’re bound, says Hart, ‘the violence that befalls Christ belongs to our order of justice, an order overcome by his sacrifice, which is one of peace.’

Hart argues that the same boundless gift God gives in creation the Son gives back in his obedient life offered to God even unto the cross and that such a superabundant gift ‘draws creation back into the eternal motion of divine love for which it was fashioned.’ Thus, Hart concludes, Christ subverts the very logic of substitution and sacrifice from within by subsuming it into the trinitarian motion of love.

As opposed to a violent, apocalyptic defeat of Sin through the cross, Christ’s obedience is simply, as Anselm puts it, ‘a gift that exceeds our every debt.’

How that works exactly, Anselm doesn’t explain. He was after all, despite his rationalistic appearances, an artist. 

Tim Challies wrote a review of Ruth Tucker’s new book, Black and White Bible, Black and Blue Wife. I have opened this space to Ruth to respond to Tim’s review. Here it is:

First of all, Thank you, Tim, for the review. Your last sentence, however, is disappointing: “I am glad I read it but cannot give it my recommendation.” As a seminary professor, I very often assigned readings that offered positions I didn’t agree with—books that required the student’s assessment, books that helped to sharpen their own critical skills. I wish that this book could have been one such book for you.

Here is my response to a few matters you raise:

“The first weakness is related to the fact that to some degree Tucker defines an entire theological understanding out of her own experience. She understands her ex-husband to be a complementarian and in that way an exemplar of this theology as it takes root and advances to its logical conclusions. Her understanding of complementarianism is inextricably bound up with her own experience, yet I found her marriage unrecognizable as a truly complementarian union.”

I’m wondering why you would twice reference “her own experience” in this short paragraph in relation to my “entire theological understanding” of complementarianism. I did know, however, that by the title and content of the book I was setting myself up for this type of criticism.

I might take this as a gender put-down, but I’ll try not to. Neither will I suggest that the one who speaks against egalitarianism does so out of “his own experience.” Nor do I think that I am more guilty of emotionalism than, let’s say, someone like John Piper. You state: “In fact, the proof she offers for her position is often emotional rather than biblical.”

Of course, I’m “emotional” when it comes to a wife raped by a husband—when a woman is beaten black and blue. Yes, I get a little emotional—even in print.

You say you don’t recognize the story of my marriage as a “truly complementarian union,” but have you actually counseled or listened to the stories of abused Christian women? (Or are such women too afraid to speak out, as I was for decades?) Are you aware of the inflammatory rhetoric by fellow complementarians? Do you condemn slurs against women such as Mark Driscoll’s “pussified nation”? And what about Doug Wilson? He has written: In other words, however we try, the sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party. A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts. This is of course offensive to all egalitarians. . . .” Conquering man, good; pleasuring sex, bad. And then there are those who say there is no such thing as marital rape.

What is your response (and the response of other prominent complementarians on such language?) If you all have condemned it, good. But you all need to shout out on such matters.

You state that I offer “no compelling engagement with the complementarian understanding of many key biblical texts.” I have heard for decades compelling engagements from both sides of the debate, and I say in the first chapter where I discuss the Piper-Tucker debate at Wheaton College in 1995, that I now think we ought to set aside for a time the debates and talk about real life, which I do in the book. But I also make several points (for which you do not give me credit) that speak to the biblical issues. For example, I call for more attention to biblical narratives—from Genesis to narratives in the Gospels, Acts and Paul’s letters. I likewise focus on biblical interpretation and how some, for example, focus only on portions of what is written in 1 Tim. 2 (related to women teaching and having authority) while entirely ignoring Paul’s lengthier passage in 1 Tim. 5 on widows. (Even the male-headship claims for the 1 Tim. 2 passage are by no means slam-dunks.) I do engage the biblical text, but this was not the place to offer a rehash of the whole debate.

You take strong issue with one particular “emotional” statement I make in the book: “Imagine saying that African Americans are fully equal to whites before God, but they are not permitted to hold church office and must be subject to Caucasians. The claim would be ludicrous. And so it is regarding gender.” You go on to say: “But unless race and gender are the same category, this is an invalid means to advance her argument. It succeeds emotionally but fails biblically.” Well, gee, thanks, Tim, for saying it succeeds emotionally. And if you would say that women are fully equal, it would also succeed emotionally.

My point here in the passage in the book, as elsewhere, was to challenge the straightforward meaning of the word equality. It’s simply wrong to argue that inequality is equality. The most honest statement a complementarian could make is: “The Bible does not teach equality for women, and as politically incorrect as that is, I stand by the Bible.” I would greatly respect such an admission. That would be straight talk. Egalitarians say the Bible teaches equality for women; complementarians say it doesn’t. We would then start out the discussion in plain English (or whatever language is being used).

Another weakness you cite relates to divorce. I won’t get into that here except to say it is incorrect when you use the phrase “her case for divorcing her ex-husband.” I did not divorce him; he divorced me some years after I had gone to court and been granted “separate maintenance” and full custody of our son. [Tim has just emailed saying he would correct this.]

Your final critique of the book is that I give many examples of good marriages, some of which you say are complementarian. I think you are right, though I didn’t check out their headship views before I wrote about them. A good marriage is a good marriage, whether based on egalitarian or complementarian positions. I celebrate all good marriages. Do you?

Ruth, how do you think “complementarianism” is connected to abuse in marriages?

The most obvious way, I believe, is its silence on domestic violence in relation to its own persona. Rather than denying there is any connection between the two, those who hold the doctrine of male headship should be out in front speaking out against abuse of women. Although my book was released less than a week ago, there have been many positive responses—responses that make me fear I’m simply preaching to the choir. Where are those from the complementarian crowd who ought to man up and say, yes we have a problem? Who say Tucker’s book is not the only evidence out there that ties male headship in marriage to violence against a wife. Who say we as complementarians are going to be the loudest voice against all forms of abuse and we will never try to cover it up.

[Ruth is right. I’ve heard nothing but crickets from the complementarian crowd in response to her book’s publication. Why the crickets? Is it the fear of affirming her point of view that complementarianism has a problem or that in calling attention to the necessity of not abusing women they have to admit a flaw in the system? Why the crickets?]

Another way this movement is connected to abuse in marriage is the counseling done by prominent preachers. In one instance a wife is told that if her husband is ordering her to do something terribly sinful (such and participating in group sex), she should respond: “Honey, I want so much to follow you as my leader.  I think God calls me to do that, and I would love to do that.  It would be sweet to me if I could enjoy your leadership.”  And so – then she would say – “But if you would ask me to do this, require this of me, then I can’t – I can’t go there.” Such counsel sucks the self-confidence right out of a woman. How can any woman who says those words be assertive enough to stand up to a violent husband and call in the law?

After separating from my violent ex-husband I agreed to have joint marriage counseling with a Bible Church minister who I quickly discovered held strongly to the doctrine of male headship. He said that for my part, I was to commit to being a submissive wife. At one point I said that I had been too submissive because I had not reported to authorities my ex-husband’s sexual abuse of a teenage girl (nor had I reported his violence toward me). I told the minister about the incidents and how guilty I felt about my complicity. He emphasized that my place was to be submissive to my husband who represents Christ as the head, and thus there ought to be no guilt on my part. This is an example of the kind of counseling that is out there.

Why do you say that the term complementarian is simply a politically correct term for patriarchalism?  Should we see patriarchy only in negative terms?

The term, though claimed to be “coined” by those holding to the doctrine of male headship, was actually used by egalitarians long before. Paul Jewett, Mary Evans and Elaine Storkey, widely published authors, had all used the term, and rightly so. (See Scot’s discussion on March 2, 2015, featuring Kevin Giles.)

Egalitarians believe in complementarity between male and female which actually strengthens the argument for equality. I tell in my book how the addition of women elders broadened the ministry of the consistory of Fifth Reformed Church (and surely not because those women wanted power). The same is true for any ministry and for marriage. We need both male and female. We need complementarity. So to use that term for what is actually male hierarchy in ministry and marriage is disingenuous. But terms like hierarchy and patriarchy are not politically correct, so they use the term complementarian and frost the cake of inequality with the claim of equality. Now, don’t get me started on that.

As to patriarchy, it’s a biblical term and a good term if used in the right way. We need strong fathers in our families. My ex-husband abandoned his thirteen-year-old son. He demanded male headship in the family but then walked away from his own son. It’s mind-boggling.

Why do you question the value of marriage counseling for domestic violence?

I wish I had known at the time my son and I escaped the violent marriage that agreeing to marriage counseling was an entirely flawed concept. When a father sexually abuses a child, do you go to family counseling? Maybe some do, but it’s wrong—dead wrong. Crimes should be handled by the courts. My ex-husband’s violence against me and his sexual abuse of our foster daughter were crimes—not problems to be counseled away.

Some people may wonder why you would stay in such an abusive marriage for 19 years. How would you respond?

Most battered wives would know instinctively that there is no easy answer to that question. For me fear and humiliation sum up my response. I first of all feared that my ex-husband could charm a judge into granting him joint custody of our son. So I waited until he turned thirteen and was allowed to testify. After hearing his horror stories of what had happened behind closed doors, the judge granted full custody. I also feared for my life. When I threatened him on one occasion that if he ever beat me again I would call the police, he viciously hissed: “That would be fatal.”

But shame and humiliation were also a big factor. This was back in the mid 1980s. I had read too many stories of how the woman is blamed in such cases. Sure, he beat her, but she was contentious. She provoked him. She deserved it.

What is the cover supposed to say to those who see it?

As most people know, writers do not have a lot of say when it comes to book covers. In most cases publishers reign supreme. I was convinced I had the most incredible idea for a book cover ever submitted. The committee unanimously turned it down. They offered two options that a cover artist had designed. One I though was mildly pathetic. The other was this one. My first reaction was huuh? The artist should have turned the chair upside down, put the picture askew, and made a great big hole in the wall. But within seconds, I said YES, that’s it! That is the perfect picture of violence in the home. I’ve been there, done that—picked up furniture, put the Bible back in place, straightened the picture on the wall and pretended that everything was all right. I would re-plaster and paint the wall tomorrow.

From Phil Payne, Philip Barton Payne, author of Man and Woman, One in Christ, (PhD, Cambridge) has served with his wife Nancy for the Evangelical Free Church Mission in Japan for seven years. He has taught New Testament studies at Cambridge, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Gordon-Conwell, Bethel, and Fuller, and is known for his studies on textual criticism, the parables of Jesus, and Paul’s teachings on women. He blogs at www.philipbpayne.com.

As its title implies, Kevin DeYoung’s article, “Our Pro-Woman, Complementarian Jesus,” makes two main assertions. First, Jesus was pro-woman. In support, Kevin DeYoung cites thirty passages from the Gospels. Virtually all scholars agree that Jesus was pro-woman. Second, Jesus was complementarian. DeYoung does not reference a single passage in support of this from the Gospels except, “Jesus never rejected biblical teaching from the Old Testament (Matt. 5:17).” This verse, however, does not even mention women or anything about being “complementarian,” nor does its immediate context, Matthew 5:1-26.

DeYoung acknowledges that the foundation of his argument is his understanding that God’s original design was for gender-based role distinction in leadership and authority: “Jesus’s revolutionary treatment of women was, nevertheless, consistent with God’s original design for role distinctions. The most obvious example is his selection of an all-male apostolic leadership. Granted, that Jesus chose only men to be apostles doesn’t prove conclusively he was a ‘complementarian,’ but it does indicate that his revolutionary attitude toward women stopped short of including them in all forms of leadership.”

Although adducing no other evidence from Jesus’s life and teaching that might change his earlier acknowledgement that this “doesn’t prove conclusively he was a ‘complementarian,’” DeYoung’s conclusion asserts that Jesus was “unequivocally complementarian.”

DeYoung explains what he means by complementarian: “only men” may be in “positions of leadership and authority.” He does not, however, cite a single passage of the Bible that teaches this or clearly implies it. I have argued in Man and Woman, One in Christ (Zondervan), referred to hereafter as MW, that there is no such passage anywhere in the Bible.

DeYoung assumes that “God’s original design [is] for [male/female leadership] role distinctions.” This, however, is nowhere taught in the account of creation in Genesis. Quite to the contrary, Genesis teaches that God created man as male and female in his image without distinction and assigned “dominion” over the earth, plants, and animals to man and woman without distinction (Genesis 1:26-28). As MW (41-54) argues, nothing in the Genesis account of creation grants man priority in status or authority over woman. To the contrary, it emphasizes their equality.

“He will rule over you” (Genesis 3:16) is a direct result of the fall. Piper and Grudem agree that this “is not a prescription of what should be” in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (409). Contrary to their view that this refers to only bad or abusive rule, however, both major Hebrew dictionaries, Koehler-Baumgartner (2:647-48) and Brown-Driver-Briggs (605), analyze every Old Testament instance of “rule” and list no negative meaning for it. “Rule” in Genesis 3:16 is not distinguished as either bad or good, but is simply “rule.”

Since man’s ruling over woman is a result of the fall, man must not have ruled over woman before the fall. Man’s rule over woman is part of the fall that Christ, the promised seed of the woman, overcame (Genesis 3:15).

Nor does the Old Testament ever teach that leadership is limited to males. Quite to the contrary, it describes women in leadership with God’s blessing and no hint that their being women should disqualify them.

God sent the prophetess Miriam “to lead” Israel (Micah 6:4; cf. Exodus 15:20-21). Deborah is one of the judges whom “the Lord raised up” and who “saved Israel from the hands of their enemies” (Judges 2:16, 18; 4:14; 5:1-31), a prophetess and the highest leader in all of Israel in her day (4:4-6, 14). Queen Esther, along with Mordecai, “wrote with full authority…. Esther’s decree confirmed these regulations” (9:29-32). The king, the elders, the prophets, and the people accepted the prophetess Huldah’s word as divinely revealed (2 Kings 22:14-23:3; 2 Chronicles 34:22-32), and their obedience to her word sparked possibly the greatest revival in the history of Israel (2 Kings 22:14-23:25; 2 Chronicles 34:29-35:19). Scripture praises Abigail for her initiative over men, and especially over her husband. God blessed her, and her prophesies came true (1 Samuel 25:14-42). Ephraim’s granddaughter Sheerah “built Lower and Upper Beth Horon as well as Uzzen Sheerah” (1 Chronicles 8:24).

Although Athaliah and Jezebel (1 Kings 18:4), like most of Israel’s kings, were wicked, neither they nor any other woman leader of Israel is criticized in Scripture for being in authority on the grounds that this is an inappropriate position for a woman. Psalm 68:11 (68:12 Masoretic Text) reads, “The Lord announced the word; the women proclaiming [feminine plural] it are a great company.”

God even used women to communicate key portions of inspired authoritative Scripture, including the song of the prophetess Miriam (Exodus 15:21), the song of Deborah (Judges 5:2-31), the prayer of Hannah (1 Samuel 2:1-10), the prophetic words of Elizabeth (Luke 1:25, 42-45), and the Magnificat of Mary (Luke 1:46-55).

Nor does the New Testament ever clearly teach that leadership is limited to males, as MW argues in detail.l. As the Old Testament scholar Gordon Hugenberger has shown in his JETS 35 article “Women in Church Office: Hermeneutics or Exegesis? A Survey of Approaches to 1 Timothy 2:8-15” (360), and Jesus’ interpretation of Deuteronomy 24 in Mark 10:12 confirms, it is common throughout the Bible for prohibitions addressing men also to apply to women. For example, “Do not covet your neighbor’s wife” also implicitly prohibits coveting your neighbor’s husband.

The New Testament does not teach what DeYoung alleges. Instead, it repeatedly affirms women in church leadership. Paul’s longest list of greetings commends by name ten of his co-workers in the gospel. Seven of them are women.

First is Phoebe, “deacon of the church of Cenchrea” (Romans 16:1) and “leader of many, including myself” (Romans 16:2). Although some versions translate, “for she has been a helper of many,” “help” is the verb combining “along side” and “stand,” whereas “leader” is not the noun for helper (one who “stands alongside”) but the noun combining “in rank before” and “stand,” the same combination Paul used for leaders in Romans 12:8; 1 Thessalonians 5:12; 1 Timothy 3:4-5, 12; and 5:17. Indeed, the only person the New Testament identifies by name as having a local church office is not a man, but a woman, Phoebe, “deacon of the church of Cenchrea.” Paul calls Junia “outstanding among the apostles” (Romans 16:7), Prisca, “my fellow worker in Christ Jesus” (Romans 16:3; Philippians 4:3; Acts 18:26 “explained to him [Apollos] the way of God more accurately”), and Mary, Tryphaena, Tryphosa, and Persis “worked hard in the Lord” (Romans 16:6, 12).

One problem with DeYoung’s allegation is that Jesus never hints, let alone states, that the reason he chose twelve free Jewish men to be his intimate companions was that women should not have leadership or authority over men.

Another problem is that Jesus does at times assign positions of leadership and authority to women. For example, he does this after his resurrection by appearing first to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary and instructing them to tell the others (Matthew 28:1-10; John 20:14-18). DeYoung does not mention either that Jesus commissioned them or that they fulfilled this crucial commission, or Mark 16:14’s almost certainly later-added report that Jesus “upbraided them [the eleven] for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen.”

Nor does Jesus ever subordinate women to men or restrict their role as DeYoung’s thesis implies. Consider the ways in which Jesus affirmed the equal standing of man and woman, contrary to his culture. Jesus’s affirmation of the Queen of the South (Matthew 12:42) would be inappropriate if he believed women were prohibited from leadership or authority over men. He affirms a woman for the first time, seventy years before its first rabbinic use (Strack-Billerbeck 2:200), as a “daughter of Abraham” (Luke 13:16). DeYoung notes that Jesus was “placing them on the same spiritual plane as men,” but the context does not limit their equal standing to the spiritual realm. Rather, it emphasizes the transformation of her physical status.

When Mary, contrary to Jewish custom, entered an area being used to teach men, “sat at the Lord’s feet [the posture of a disciple], and listened to his teaching” (Luke 10:39), Jesus affirmed, “Mary has chosen what is better and it will not be taken away from her” (10:42). The Babylonian Talmud, Qiddushin 29a-b states, “whoever is commanded to study is commanded to teach,” and Hebrews 5:12 states, “by this time you ought to be teachers.” Thus, this and all the many other instances where Jesus teaches women should be seen in light of the principle that learning ought to result in teaching.

Jesus even implies women’s equal status with men under the law by referring to women initiating divorce (Mark 10:12). DeYoung states, “Affirming true God-designed complementarity has almost always challenged the status quo,” but in Jesus’s day it was the status quo to exclude women from leadership and authority, as DeYoung does.

Why did Jesus choose only free Jewish men for the twelve disciples? He does not give any reason for this, but the symbolism of the “new Israel” is arguably the most likely. Practical issues related to the “supremely personal union” (Theological Dictionary of the New Testament [TNDT] 4:442) of Jesus and his disciples adequately explain why he did not choose women to be in his most intimate circle for three years, including time in the wilderness and late night meetings such as at the Garden of Gethsemane. Moral suspicions would undoubtedly be raised not only about Jesus, but also about his apostles.

It no more logically follows from Jesus’s choice of twelve able-bodied Jewish men that all women should be excluded from church leadership than that all Gentiles, anyone from another ethnicity, and anyone with a disability should be excluded from church leadership.

Join us next week for Part 2.

This is the last of a series of posts on Richard Middleton’s book A New Heaven and a New Earth.  His argument thus far has been that Scripture teaches a holistic redemption of creation. The biblical Christian hope is not for some disembodied heavenly hereafter but for a material existence in a redeemed and consummated creation. This Christian hope has consequences for the gospel message and for the now and future kingdom of God. To develop the ethic of the kingdom of God, Middleton turns to the Gospel of Luke (with references to other NT passages included as well).

Jesus opens his ministry in Nazareth reading a passage from the book of Isaiah, actually sections of a couple of passages, 61:1-2 and 58:6. (Luke 4:16-22)

He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked.

This is an important inaugural passage; it sets the stage for Jesus earthly mission. Middleton notes “it has been the tendency of Christian interpreters through the ages … to assume that this text in Luke 4:18-19 is referring primarily, if not exclusively, to so-called spiritual matters.” But this is not the context of Isaiah or of the Gospels. An other-worldly dualism “prevents many who read this text from taking Jesus’s claims with the full force with which they were intended.” (p. 251)  This really is good news for the poor, the captive, the oppressed. The year of Jubilee (the Lord’s favor) is come.

Middleton digs into the context of Isaiah, and of first century Judea to understand the intent of Jesus in this quotation.  A similar hope for rescue and restoration is expressed in the Dead Sea Scrolls, esp. the Messianic Apocalypse. “This is not to say that Jesus (or Luke) is explicitly citing the Messianic Apocalypse. Rather these ideas were simply a part of the messianic expectation of the time.” (p. 260) This context is also apparent in other passages. In Luke 7:11-15, for example, Jesus raises a man from the dead and restores him to his mother. In awe the people exclaim that “God has come to help his people.”  The people can see that the kingdom of God is at hand.

The people of Nazareth ate up his words in this part of the message and responded favorably. This is truly good news – for them and for us.

The good news is that the coming of God’s kingdom impacts the entirety of our lives – our bodies, our work, our families, all our social relationships, even our relationship to the earth itself. The good news of the kingdom is nothing less than the healing (literally the establishing) of the world (tikkûm ‘ôlām), in which we are all invited to participate. (p. 262)

But the passage – and indeed the good news – doesn’t end on this high note.

The Challenge of the Kingdom. Immediately after filling us in on the positive response of the crowd, Luke continues the story (v. 23-30):

Jesus said to them, “Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ And you will tell me, ‘Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’”

“Truly I tell you,” he continued, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.”

All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff. But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.

The impact of this was great – often passes over our heads today. Neither the widow nor Naaman were Jews. The year of the Lord’s favor is for all.  Middleton summarizes:

By these examples, Jesus clearly intends to have his listeners understand that the kingdom of God breaks down the opposition between Jew and gentile that had been hardening among many first-century Jews into an unbridgeable gulf. And since his two examples involve a poor woman and a powerful man, Jesus effectively dismantles the male/female hierarchy and the distinction between rich and poor or privileged and marginal. All people, of whatever ethnicity, gender, or social status, can be recipients of God’s grace. God plays no favorites. (p. 265)

A receptive attitude is the only requirement.

Middleton also considers the passage with John the Baptist. While in prison he sends his disciples to Jesus:

When the men came to Jesus, they said, “John the Baptist sent us to you to ask, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?’”

At that very time Jesus cured many who had diseases, sicknesses and evil spirits, and gave sight to many who were blind. So he replied to the messengers, “Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.”

John died in prison (not to mention the many martyred Christians in the early church). Middleton points out that this should caution us against a health, wealth, and prosperity gospel. Nonetheless, the kingdom of God brings real healing.

The coming of the kingdom meant (and means) nothing less than the restoration of our earthly life to the fullness of God’s original intentions for blessing, shalom, and justice in the earth (and that certainly includes the liberation of those unjustly imprisoned). What John did not understand was that the kingdom does not come all at once. John was in danger of stumbling over Jesus on this point. He expected too much too quickly.

Historically, however, many Christians have had the opposite problem. We have not expected enough. And what we have expected, we have often delayed until “heaven” and the return of Christ. We have not really believed that God  cares about this world of real people in their actual historical situations, which are often characterized by oppression and suffering. Our understanding of salvation has been characterized by an unbiblical otherworldliness. So our expectations of the future have often not reflected the full-robed good news that Jesus proclaimed at Nazareth. (p. 271)

No favorites. The ethical implication is clear, if God plays no favorites neither should we.  If the year of the Lord’s favor includes healing, release, provision, and protection, we too should care for healing, release, and provision for all.

Middleton puts it this way: “the kingdom of God is not coterminous with the church or with any nation or any set of cultural ideals; rather it refers to God’s restorative rule over the entire earth.” (p. 273)  He makes the point that the good news should be for all, and that the church should take up the challenge to mediate the this-worldly blessing of God to all. We could quibble with the way Middleton expresses this. Scot has argued that the kingdom is the people of God, and thus is the church.  But on a practical level the end result is the same for the most part, as long as we don’t use the kingdom as the church to exclude others and limit the good to those who are on the insider, or use the kingdom as restorative rule to minimize the importance of the church as God’s people.  For God’s people there is no separation of secular and sacred; we only do God’s work as God’s people. (Or at least this is my reading.)

In North America today, rather than a Sidonian widow and a Syrian man, Jesus might note that God came to the immigrant, the refugee, the welfare recipient.

Suppose Jesus said to an American congregation in a state bordering Mexico “There were many middle-class American citizens living in California who lost their homes due to the housing crisis and the stock market crash, but God was pleased to provide an illegal Mexican worker in Santa Fe with housing and health care for his family.” (p. 280)

This is the impact of the statement Jesus made in Nazareth. And the lesson is for us today as well.  (Perhaps we could expand it to Syrian refugees this year.)  It raised the ire of the people of Nazareth as it raises the ire of so many today. The gospel upends social hierarchy, it demolished the barriers between us and them (whoever “us” and “them” are). There is no Jew or Greek, no male or female, no slave or free. Mutual submission, servant leadership, and care for all is to be the way of God’s kingdom on earth. Now and in the age to come.

This is good news for all.

How does our understanding of Christian hope for the future influence our life and choices today?

Does Middleton’s view of a holistic reconciliation and its impact on Christian ethics make sense?

Does Middleton’s rephrasing of Luke 4:25-27 in terms of a Mexican immigrant change your view of this passage?

If you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net.

If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.

Amazing Dis-Grace

Jason Micheli will be posting reflections on Fleming Rutledge’s new book, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ, through Lent. Jason is a United Methodist pastor in DC who blogs at www.tamedcynic.org 

I remember a sermon I heard preached in Miller Chapel when I was a student at Princeton Theological Seminary. In an artful, show-don’t-tell way, the preacher for the day drew an unnerving parallel between Jesus’ death upon the cross and Matthew Shepard’s death, beaten and tied to a barbed wire fence in the Wyoming winter. Shepard, one observer noted, was abandoned and left dangling on the fence ‘like an animal.’

The season for that sermon was Lent I believe. I can’t recall the specific text nor can I recall the thrust of the preacher’s argument, but I do remember, vividly so, the consequent chatter the preacher’s juxtaposition provoked. On the one hand, my more conservative classmates bristled at an ‘unreligious’ story being equated with the passion story. The parallel with Matthew Shepard, they felt, mitigated Christ’s singularity and the peculiar pain entailed by crucifixion. ‘Christ was without sin and Matthew Shepard was…a sinner’ I remember someone at a lunch table being brave enough to say aloud what others, no doubt, were thinking.

On the other hand, my liberal colleagues, who typically had less use for the cross, applauded the sermon, seeing the mere mention of a gay person from the pulpit as an important social justice witness. They saw both Matthew Shepard and Jesus Christ as victims of oppression against which we’re called to minister. Where conservatives saw Christ’s cross as unique, they saw it as symbolic of the unjust sacrifices humanity repeats endlessly.

Both groups of hearers received the day’s message according to the reified political and theological lines we had brought to chapel that morning and, in doing so, we unwittingly underscored Paul’s insistence in his Corinthian correspondence that the message of the cross is deeply offensive to the religious and ill-fitting to the assumptions of the secular. The religious will forever conspire to mute the cross’ offense, and the secular will always prefer more palatable notions of justice, not to mention more charitable appraisals of humanity.

Only now, having read Fleming Rutledge’s new book, The Crucifixion, am I able to grasp the word the preacher was likely attempting to proclaim that day in  Miller Chapel.

The preacher was not announcing that Christ died a martyr’s death, a victim of injustice in solidarity with other persecuted victims. Nor was the preacher suggesting Christ’s death was of a type endlessly repeated rather than absolutely singular.

The preacher was focusing not on the fact of Christ’s death but on the manner of it. The manner of Christ’s death, the impunity of it, is what proved to be a stumbling block to us students every bit as much as the Corinthians.

Like Matthew Shepard, Christ’s death was primarily one of shame and degradation.

I’ve long been a fan of Athanasius’ catch-phrase ‘God became human so that we might become God.’ I’ve relished the precision with it captures the plot of the scripture story; however, reading The Crucifixion, I’m now convicted the summation is too cute by half because, of course, God didn’t simply become human in any generic or benign sense.

God became the human who became less than human, subhuman even, before he was raised so that we might join God.

Athanasius’ quote, if unexamined, bypasses the peculiarly godawful mode of death by which we are incorporated mysteriously into God’s own life. To say, as Athanasius does, that Jesus’ death was just a part of the incarnation, that his death was merely a consequence of his taking on life, does not take seriously the nature of that death.

In her initial chapter, Fleming Rutledge makes an assertion so traditional as to sound counter-cultural and subversive in a mainline denomination like hers or own. She argues that the cross is the unique feature by which everything else in Christian faith is given its true significance. Without the cross, incarnation simply sacralizes the world as it is instead of as it ought to be. Without the cross, the resurrection risks being reduced to sentimentality rather than the resounding vindication of Christ’s self-emptying life and his victory over Sin and Death.

Having established the primacy of the cross, Fleming Rutledge moves on in chapter 2 to insist that serious students of the cross must contend with the manner of Christ’s death not merely the fact of it.

 As Rutledge points out, the common way of interrogating the atonement    ‘Why did Jesus have to die?’ is the wrong question.

            The better question to ask, Rutledge counters, is ‘Why was Jesus crucified?’

The merit of any atonement theology must be measured against the degree to which it grapples with the fact that God chose not any death, not just a painful death or an insurrectionist’s death, but an accursed death.

Often critics of substitutionary atonement will cite the four evangelists’ own reticence in describing crucifixion as evidence that the cross is not as significant as claimed. Fleming Rutledge cites the evangelists’ same spare narration of the crucifixion to argue the very opposite point: little is said in the gospels about the cross because little needed to be said in the ancient world. It was self-evident to the gospels’ first hearers that the cross was foremost a repugnant scandal, outrageous and obscene, an image every bit as irreligious as Matthew Shepard hanging like a scarecrow on a barbed wire fence.

The one certainty the disciples don’t need to puzzle out on their walk to Emmaus is the scandalous nature of Jesus’ end. Consider the way Paul consistently modulates his rhetoric to emphasize the shameful manner of Jesus’ death: ‘…even death on a cross’ or ‘…and him crucified.’ The reason Christ’s disciples flee in the end isn’t because they believe his messianic mission ended in failure; they flee because they believe his mission ended in godforsakenness.

            The disciples abandon Jesus because they believe God had abandoned  him.

            They flee not only Jesus but the curse they believe God had put on him.

No one, in other words, expected a crucifixion. This is a point, Rutledge suggests, which requires a delicate, artful reading of the Old Testament rather than interpreting it as unambiguously foreshadowing the cross. On this point, in particular, Rutledge provides a helpful caution to substitutionary theology even as she avows the substance of it. The manner of Jesus’ death demands we read Jesus’ scriptures as in no way anticipating such a shameful death.

As she puts it, at best we can say that a text like Isaiah 53 offers ‘a clue of a suggestion of a hint of a prediction.’

God, so far as the disciples could surmise, had actively scorned Christ, leaving Jesus to a death God’s own law proscribes as the ultimate degradation and abandonment:

“When someone is convicted of a crime punishable by death and is executed, and you hang him on a tree, his corpse must not remain all night upon the tree; you shall bury him that same day, for anyone hung on a tree is under God’s curse.”

-Deuteronomy 21.22-23

Paul takes up this law stipulation in Galatians 3.10-14, a passage which, tellingly, the lectionary can find no room for in its 3 year calendar. Only this particular method of death does the torah identify as being godforsaken. On this insight, Rutledge quotes Jurgen Moltmann:

“…someone executed in this way was rejected by his people, cursed among the people of God by the God of the law, and excluded from covenant life.”

Again, it’s not sufficient to ask why Jesus died.

Just as it would be blithely dismissive to say, vaguely, that Matthew Shepard died from exposure, to take seriously Christ’s death is to ask why did God choose a manner of death religiously repugnant to God’s own law, a manner that signaled the ultimate shame before God and marked one out under God as accursed.

Rather than asking ‘Why did Jesus have to die?’ Christians must ponder:

  ‘Why, having taken on humanity, would God choose a mode of death that                denied him any vestige of humanity?’

Looking at the Deuteronomic code in the context of the Galatians text, Rutledge draws these conclusions about the meaning of the manner of Christ’s death:

1. All of humanity is under accursed.

2. Rectification of the curse is impossible by way of the law.

3. Only God rectify and God has done so through Jesus Christ, who actually took the full force of the curse into himself on the tree of the cross.

Jesus’ cry of dereliction, for Rutledge, expresses not merely the existential anguish experienced by him in his human nature, it narrates something objective transpiring upon the cross. God puts God’s self voluntarily into the position of greatest accursedness on our behalf.

This is the implication any atonement theology must wrestle with instead of dismissing out of hand. What does the extremity of such a death reveal about us? What does it say about out condition that it can only be rectified by God choosing godforsakeness? What does it say about our enslavement to Sin that God freely chose the one manner of death singled out in the Old Testament as being degrading to the point of eliminating the sufferer’s humanity?

Paul writes in his powerful baptismal passage in Romans 6 that ‘we have been united in a death like his.’ The Crucifixion compels the reader to turn Rutledge’s modal question (‘Why was Jesus crucified?’) back onto the believer. What does it mean for us  that we are united with Christ not in death, generically, but in a death like his?

Are we, with Christ, put in a position of grave accursedness? And in asking that question we might see ourselves as those attackers who left Matthew Shepard to die a shameful scarecrow’s death.

Or, are we by baptism joined in solidarity, as Christ, to those who suffer, like Matthew Shepard, the shame and degradation we inflict upon one another?

But of course, The Crucifixion leaves no doubt, the answer is both.

By Austin Fischer

Baptism, Eucharist and Why They’re Not “Just” Anything

Just.

It just so happens to be the most crippling word in the English language.

That’s just the way things are.

It was just one night.

He was just a beggar.

It’s all the arrogance and suffocating reductionism of secularism jammed into a single word. It drains the world of mystery and wonder. If ever there were a word to define a secular age, it would be just.

Christians should not say just, because, for a Christian, nothing is just anything. The doctrine of the Incarnation tells us so. If the infinite God came out of a human womb, walked dusty streets, sat under moonlight, ate bread and drank wine, then nothing is just. Everything is teeming with divinity, and since there is no such thing as just divinity, there is no such thing as just.

For example, a star is not just a ball of hydrogen and helium. As Ramandu reminds Eustace in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader: “That is not what a star is but only what it is made of…” No—a star is not just hydrogen and helium but the blazing beauty of God speckled across the boundless canvas of the cosmos.

And more to the point for our purposes here, the two sacramental mysteries at the heart of Christian faith—Baptism and Eucharist—are many, many things, but just is not one of them.

How did we get here—so many Christians compelled to say Baptism is just an outward sign of an inward change; that Eucharist is just a reminder? Nein!

I’ve heard it said that Baptism is just like a wedding ring (nice but not particularly important), but Baptism isn’t like a wedding ring so much as it is like a wedding.[1] It is a communal act of love and commitment. It is the creation and reception of a new family—the church. Who can say when a couple is actually “married” (surely it’s not simply when they are given a piece of paper from the government!), but the wedding is a profound moment in any marriage; a moment wherein the reality of marriage congeals. A wedding is not just a public expression of a private decision. It doesn’t just demonstrate what has already been privately created. It is a communal decision that creates something new. So it is with Baptism.

Then we have Eucharist. I have Protestant friends who take great satisfaction in mocking the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. Such strange things those Catholics believe! Opinions about transubstantiation aside, I like to remind my friends they believe a dead man rose from the dead, ascended into the heavens, and will return to judge the living and the dead. There are times that sounds more than a little strange to me—every bit as strange as transubstantiation.

I have no new definition or explanation or formulation for understanding what happens in the mystery of Eucharist (I’m perfectly content to shut up, eat and drink). My aim is more modest: whatever your definition/explanation/formulation, please don’t use the word just. Because whatever Eucharist is, it isn’t just anything.

A quick read of John 6:41-65 reminds us that when we remove the miraculous scandal at the heart of Eucharist in the name of just, we are doing the exact thing Jesus refused to do: “Let the scandal remain…the most appropriate response to this holy mystery is not an empiricist explanation or an embarrassed backpedaling, but a reverent amen.”[2]

That’s what Brian Zahnd says and I say amen! So whatever you say, just don’t say just. It does not belong to the vocabulary of faith.

[1] Roger Olson observes this as well in “Water Works: Why Baptism Is Essential”, http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/july-august/water-works-why-baptism-is-essential.html?start=3

[2] Brian Zahnd, Water to Wine, 146.