David de Silva has reconstructed the Christian doctrine of salvation, understood far too often as an ordo of justification and then (if possible) sanctification but surely in the end glorification, into a Christian doctrine of transformation. He does this in his new book Transformation: The Heart of Paul’s Gospel. This book is steady, simply organized, and biblically based.

What David does is give the doctrine of salvation a teleology that transcends a far too common doctrine of salvation that seems not to have to go somewhere. That is, for some to get saved is the point, and to get saved means to be justified, and the rest is an exhortation but unnecessary. David will have none of this and he exhorts us to see salvation as having a divine purpose and a divine direction: transformation.

Transformation deserves to be on every pastor’s shelf and to be incorporated into every theological textbook. An emphasis on transformation is not works righteousness but instead belief in the power of God at work among us today. Too many are settling for far too little in their doctrine of salvation.

David trumps it all because he envisions a holistic transformation — not just of individuals but of all creation as well.

This is what a doctrine of transformation looks like — and he conceptualizes “salvation” as “being set free”:

Personally
Ecclesially
Cosmically

What happens when “salvation” is seen as rescue from and unto? This is what it looks like:

1. Personally: You Are Free to Become a New Person in Christ

You Were Freed for a Fresh Start with God
You Were Freed from Being Who You Were to Become Holy and Just in God’s Sight
You Were Freed to Live a Life of Doing Good
Transformation Means a Putting Off and a Putting On
God Makes This Transformation Possible through the Gift of the Holy Spirit
You Are Free from the Fear of Death

2 Ecclesially: You Are Free to Relate to One Another in New Ways

The Transformation of Strangers into Family, Many Bodies into One Body
Paul’s Guidance for Living as a Transformed and Transforming Community
Restorative Intervention
Prioritizing Reconciliation
Sharing Like Family
Investing in and Encouraging One Another
Moving from Self-Centered Rights to Other-Centered Restraint
Breaking through Ethnic Barriers, Classes, Castes, and Gender Lines
No Room for Partisanship Christian Families within the Christian Family

3. Cosmically: You Are Free from the World’s Rules to Witness to God’s Rule

The “World” as Problem
The Transformation of Our Relationship to the Kosmos
The Transformation of Creation Itself

“Grace is something you can never get but only be given. The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you.” -Frederick Buechner 

Lance stands 6’1”. He’s built like a door frame. His head is a giant muscle. Even when he smiles he scowls. In this scene, Lance is leaning against the entrance to his grandfather’s hospital room. Everyone in the family is gathered. Cousins, aunts, uncles, siblings, nieces, nephews–the whole crew is assembled for the first time in forever. 

Standing in the doorway isn’t an accident. It’s the perfect metaphor for his perceived place in the family. One foot on the inside. One foot on the outside. Never really sure if he’s moving toward or away. Lance likes it this way. It’s most comfortable. 

This is the hour of blessing. That is, his grandfather is dying, in a generic hospital room, and the spiritual leader of the family asked everyone to gather so he can speak a word of blessing over all of the grandchildren and children. This is about legacy. 

The declining patriarch starts his blessing round with the grand kids. Lance is almost certain that his grandfather will forget to call him in the litany of summoned family members. One by one, grandchildren walk cautiously towards the bed. For most of them, this is the first time they’ve looked death in the face. 

Just as Lance anticipates the awkwardness of a family member having to remind his grandfather that Lance hadn’t yet been summoned to the bed-side, his grand-father says, with great clarity, “Come see me, my boy, come see me Lance.”

A lump grows in Lance’s throat. His feet feel like they are in cement. A chill runs down his spine. 

He approaches his grandfather only to have him grab the back of his head, thrust Lance’s face into his chest, whispering words Lance had waited his entire life to hear. Words that had been spoken previously by many, but, for whatever reason, Lance simply couldn’t hear . . . until now. 

The weight of blessing first comes into the soul-consciousness of young Jewish and Christian children in the story of Jacob and Essau. Jacob, the domesticated huckster (trickster = “supplanter” or “grabber of heal”), desires the blessing that rightfully belongs to his manly-man brother, Essau.

I learned, at an early age, that blessing was more than simply paternal affirmation, for blessing in the Bible was a cultural tradition involving property and leadership in the family. It was about sustaining the blood line, animals, children, security, and land. Blessing was all encompassing; it covered survival and power.

Many contemporary parents subliminally send the message to children that “as long as you perform to the best of your ability to be moral and good, you will be loved.” That’s not blessing. That’s a contract. Scripture offers a different sensibility of blessing.

Blessing is that moment a father is holding his newborn daughter and says to her in the early hours of her first night on Planet Earth, “I am with you. I am for you. I am for you forever.” That’s the blessing I’m talking about. 

Some psychologists call this “lost childhood message” we are all seeking to recover.

A technical spiritual definition of blessing might sound something like this: One person intentionally speaking words of life into another person about said person’s identity in Christ and the unfolding future.

It’s the friend, when in a moment of total self-doubt, looks you in the eyes and says, “You absolutely were made for this moment. Take a risk. I’m in this thing with you.”

It’s the parent who welcomes you back into your childhood home after your humiliating divorce and says, “We will navigate this river together.”

I am with you. I am for you. I am with you and for you for a long period of time.

God blessed Jesus immediately following his baptism (Luke 3:21:22). Many theologians point out that this is a rare Biblical moment in which Father, Son, and Spirit are present (i.e. the Trinity). But these same theologians fail to point out that Jesus receives God’s definitive approval and affirmation. This is my guy. This is the one. This is my son. 

And it’s because Jesus is blessed that he becomes a profound blessing for the world. 

Here’s the thing about Jesus. It’s not that Jesus wanted to be around sinful and sick people that keeps me up at night . . . it’s that the sinful and sick desperately wanted to be around Jesus. 

Are you with me?

The reason is this: There’s something about Jesus spoke to people’s deep desire to be affirmed, to be blessed.  “This guy will bless you. Just being around him will bless you, enlarge your spirit.” Jesus is a walking talking blessing . . . a living, breathing affirmation of one’s very existence.

Another word for blessing is benediction. Benediction means “well” (bene) “to speak” (dicere from diction). It means to intentionally use words to lift up the countenance of another human. 

And yet, we are blessing-deprived in our everyday life in America.

Partly because we are so isolated. Partly because we are so competitive. Partly because we are so insecure.

Barbara Brown Taylor invites us to to reclaim the necessity of blessing. “All I am saying is that anyone can do this. Anyone can ask and anyone can bless, whether anyone has authorized you to do it or not. All I am saying is that the world needs you to do this, because there is a real shortage of people willing to kneel wherever they are and recognize the holiness holding its sometimes bony, often tender, always life-giving hand above their heads. That we are able to bless one another at all is evidence that we have been blessed, whether we can remember when or not. That we are willing to bless one another is miracle enough to stagger the very stars.” 

Remember Lance being embraced by his grandfather. 

There isn’t a day now that goes by in which Lance doesn’t think about the words spoken to him by his grandfather. Words that caused those crocodile tears to flow so freely all those years ago. It changed the entire trajectory of his life. He’s 45 now. But that day, on the 124th day of his 19th year . . . that day is seared into Lance’s memory. 

“You are loved completely. You belong. You’ve always belonged. Now go live your life.” Those simple words spoken by a grandfather to a grandson created a new space, a new possibility. Words that unlocked more courage, confidence, love, and joy in an anxious young man than anyone could have imagined. 

You are loved completely. 
You belong.
You’ve always belonged. 
Now go live your life. 

Josh Graves is the teaching minister for Otter Creek Church in Nashville. His most recent book is How Not to Kill a Muslim. You can follow him on twitter HERE: @joshgraves.

Silence Is Not Always Golden: Jesus and Arguments from Silence (by Allan Bevere)

Anyone who is scholarly inclined knows how problematic arguments from silence are, and yet people continue to use them. As a scholar (at least I think I am. Some might question that) and as a Christian (at least I think I am. Some might question that), I find it particularly perplexing when I read Christians of various political stripes using arguments from silence in an attempt to force Jesus into being a poster boy for their agendas.We all know how the argument goes– “Well, Jesus never mentioned (insert issue) so it must not have been important to him. The biggest problem with arguments from silence is that they tell us nothing, only what we wish for them to tell us. I’m going to list the problems with arguments from silence in particular reference to Jesus because it’s just one more way we continue to manipulate Jesus making him after our image. In this post I will not be taking positions on any issues nor evaluating them because if I do so, the thrust of this post will be lost because most people are only concerned with the conclusion of the position itself, not the argument that brings one to the conclusion, which I find unfortunate. The argument one makes is just as important, if not more so, then the conclusion itself.

So why are arguments from silence in reference to Jesus and the Gospels a problem:

First, arguments from silence can be used to draw contradictory conclusions. For example, one can say that Jesus never mentions homosexuality or abortion, the environment, or capital punishment for murder so those issues must not have been important to him. That is one conclusion, to be sure. But someone can also conclude from silence that because Jesus never mentions the issues he must have simply agreed with the Judaism of his day that homosexual practice was immoral and abortion was, in most cases (with some exceptions), prohibited, stewardship of creation was assumed as a duty in Judaism as well as execution for murder. So which one is it, and how can your argument from silence demonstrate which one it is?

Second, arguments from silence preference our current context and force Jesus and the Gospel writers to speak to our issues in the way we want them to speak, which usually is an affirmation of our views and not a rejection of them. Thus, we stand in judgment over Jesus instead of putting ourselves under his judgment. Arguments from silence almost treat the gospel writers as if they were speaking directly to us when they were writing. We completely ignore the fact that not only in the Gospels do we have Jesus addressing his contemporaries, but the Gospel writers are using Jesus to address theirs. Neither Jesus nor the Gospel writers had us in mind when they spoke and wrote (a little humbling, isn’t it?). Each Gospel writer is telling the story of Jesus in order to speak to the concerns of the communities to which they write. Anyone remotely familiar with scholarship on the Gospels knows this to be true. The image I like to use is that the Gospels are study Bibles with the commentary in the text. Yes, that is rather simplistic, but it makes the point that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were telling the story of Jesus in order to directly address specific concerns of particular communities. Could it be that there are some issues never mentioned in the Gospels because those issues are not of central interest at the time of their writing in their specific circumstances. We all know that pressing concerns can force other important issues into the background, not because those issues are of lesser concern, but because in that moment in time other matters are more pressing. And it would be a mistake to conclude that certain issues not of pressing character to only four Christian communities throughout the Roman world means that those issues didn’t matter at all to the early Christians. That conclusion would also be problematic because that too would be an argument from silence.

Third– and related to the second– arguments from silence assume that everything Jesus said in the four Gospels is all he ever said. At the end of the Fourth Gospel, the writer states, “But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (John 21:25). An intended exaggeration on John’s part, to be sure, but the point is well made. During Jesus’ three year ministry he said lots of stuff that didn’t make it into print. So when someone says Jesus never mentioned something, that is quite a sweeping conclusion. Yes, Jesus never mentioned certain issues of our concern in the Gospels, but that does not mean Jesus never spoke about those issues, We just don’t have it in print.

Fourth, Jesus failed to mention more than a few issues. Should we conclude that if Jesus didn’t mention it, he didn’t care about it? Jesus never says anything about human trafficking which unfortunately was a problem in his day too. But since he never speaks about it in the Gospels should we conclude that it was no big deal to him? What about gambling? Alcoholism? Drug abuse? These were problems in the first century world too.

Fifth, someone might respond to all of this saying, “Fair enough. But there are plenty of issues Jesus did mention. Shouldn’t we focus on them more than what he failed to address?” Well, yes we should attend to those matters Jesus addressed. Jesus was quite concerned about the poor, and therefore Christians dare not neglect them. The problem, however, is that other moral issues we face today are no less important because Jesus did not address them directly. We must not ignore them. To do so is to ignore real people whom God loves and for whom Jesus died.

Sixth, arguments that focus exclusively on what Jesus alone said reduces him to a talking head. There are all kinds of things happening in the Gospels that speak to all kinds of things which include Jesus’ actions. Some Christians of late treat Jesus as nothing more than a political pundit who has an evening cable news show on Fox News or MSNBC. Jesus must be taken as a whole package– not just what he said or didn’t say.

Seventh, to focus so exclusively on Jesus is to neglect the whole canon of Scripture where issues are addressed that Jesus never mentioned. As a Christian I certainly embrace the central authority of Jesus and my hermeneutic does indeed start with the Gospels. But the church has given an entire canon of books that are authoritative. The Old Testament was Jesus’ Bible and he quoted from it, and we have no authority to reject what Jesus embraced. And the epistles of the New Testament are in many ways extended commentary on the Gospels, and we have no authority to dismiss them when we do not like what they say. I agree with John Wesley who said that Christians must take into account “the whole tenor of Scripture.” I know that is not an easy task. It is complex and sometimes really frustrating dealing with the different voices in the canon. We are right to put Jesus at the head and center of our hermeneutic (by the way it is not always clear in what way Jesus is at the center), but the whole of Scripture assists us as we seek to address the moral issues of our time. We dare not neglect it.

Let me say that there is nothing wrong in asking why the silence is there. The problem is when we believe the silence speaks to something that simply isn’t there.

By the way, if your going to use Jesus in support of your argument from silence, I would simply note that Jesus himself never used such an argument in the Gospels. If he did elsewhere, we don’t have it in writing.

I think Jesus knew that silence was not always golden.

Luke Timothy Johnson, in his new theology of embodied experience (The Revelatory Body), begins what he calls “The Way Not Taken: A Disembodied Theology of the Body.” He does by taking on the late John Paul II. His aim is to show that if embodied experience is revelatory and part of theology, then the late pope’s theology of the body and sexuality proves to be source for this discussion. Johnson, as will become clear in this book, thinks revelation continues into the present through the Spirit and the church’s discernment.

Here is Johnson’s opening:

Among the many books available that in one way or another call themselves theologies of the body, perhaps the most notable is the collection of conferences delivered at papal audiences by the late (and now Saint) John Paul II, published as Theology of the Body: Human Love in the Divine Plan. Appearing with such a title, under the name of the (then) sitting leader of Christianity’s largest denomination, the book was bound to attract attention, and it did, especially among conservative Roman Catholics, who have greeted all papal teaching on sexuality with extravagant praise (21).

He points his finger at Charles J. Chaput, Janet Smith, Jennifer Popiel and especially at George Weigel. Johnson’s assessment?

Indeed, I regard the pope’s effort as exemplifying precisely the wrong kind of approach to the mystery of human embodiedness. … But his effort in this book falls far short of adequate theological thinking on the subject of the human body as the arena of God’s self-disclosure. The pope’s book is inadequate, not in the obvious way that all theology is inadequate to speak of God (and should therefore exhibit intellectual modesty), but in the sense that it simply does not engage what ought most to be engaged in a theology of the body. Because of its theological weakness, the pope’s teaching does not really respond to the anxieties of those who, seeking a Christian understanding of the body and of human sexuality, look for practical guidance for their lives as sexually active adults  (23).

Johnson thinks JP2 focused love too much on sex and body too much on sexual love to be a theology of the body. In fact, “The topic of human love in all its dimensions has been wonderfully explored by the world’s literature, but none of its grandeur or giddiness appears in these talks, which remain at a level of abstraction far removed from novels and newspapers that carry stories of love among people who look and act like us” (24). He denounces him even more forcefully:

In the pope’s formulations, though, human sexuality is observed by telescope from a distant planet. Solemn pronouncements are made on the basis of scriptural exegesis rather than living experience. The effect is something like that of a sunset painted by the unsighted (24-25).

Johnson thinks JP2’s scripture exegesis flat and uncritical and incomplete. E.g., he should have looked more at Song of Songs, more at Tobit, more at 1 Cor 7 as well as at the texts of terror in the Bible. His exegesis of Gen 1 and 2 led JP2 to an overfocus on males and an underfocus on women, who are also sexual beings. If the former pope wants to approach things with phenomenology, as JP2 says, then he needs at least to deal with same sex orientation and homosexuality (27). He reduces, too, to transmission of life — love is sex and sex is for reproduction. [Interestingly enough, I find a similar lack of comprehensive biblical theology in many conservative evangelicalsm — I’m thinking of both Piper’s and the Kellers’ books, who also should have looked more at Song of Songs, etc..]

Johnson thinks JP2 left out things: the mystery of the human body is unacknowledged and masked by confident knowledge. We are implicated in our bodies but don’t comprehend ourselves well enough. He focuses too much on control, Johnson contends. JP2 doesn’t value embodied pleasure sufficiently. “In papal teaching, sexual passion and pleasure appear primarily as an obstacle to authentic love. But many of us have experienced sexual passion and pleasure as both humbling and liberating, a means through which our bodies know better and more quickly than our minds, choose better and faster than our reluctant wills, even get us to where God apparently wants us in a way our calculating minds never could” (29).

Behind JP2’s Theology of the Body was Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae, an encyclical designed to fight artificial birth control. Johnson goes after Paul VI’s encyclical as well: “a regression in moral reasoning” (31), “sacrifice logic to a rhetorical brinkmanship” (32 [birth control = abortion], “pervasive sexism” (32), “absolute prohibition of artificial birth control becomes increasingly scandalous in the face of massive medical realities” (33), and Humanae Vitae, Johnson argues, should be revisited rather than defended. The document was produced against the discernment of those around Paul VI.

Johnson:

Our reading of Scripture must indeed shape our perceptions of the world, but our understanding of Scripture must, in turn, be reshaped by our experience of God in our mortal bodies, in the fabric of our human freedom and in the cosmic play of God’s freedom. . Theology that takes the self-disclosure of God in human experience — in the bodies of actual women and men — with the same seriousness as it does God’s revelation in Scripture does not turn its back on tradition, but recognizes that tradition must constantly be renewed by the powerful leading of the Holy Spirit if it is not to become a form of idolatry, a falsification of the Living God (34-35).

In his first letter to the Corinthians Paul includes the oft quoted statement “I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.” (9:22) One application of this and the surrounding context is the need to meet people where they are. In order to do meet people where they are it is necessary to make the effort to understand the contexts in which people live and the ways in which they think. There are a multitude of ways this can play out, and it will be different for an inner city church, a rural church, or a suburban church.

As an academic and a scientist in a community dominated by a local University this need to meet people where they are is something I have pondered often. In this environment, a church or a pastor that desires to make an impact beyond undergraduate students could be well advised to understand the academic environment, the way academics think, and the experience of academics in Christian communities.

J. Aaron Simmons put up a pair of posts at Seminarium recently, Seven Things I Wish All Pastors Knew About Academics—Part 1 and Part 2. This isn’t intended as a criticism, or some statement of superiority.  It is a desire for understanding. Aaron’s list focuses particularly on the experience of Christians in Christian communities, but some (especially 3 and 4) are equally important for outreach. Some items on Simmons’ list are not as relevant for scientists as for social scientists or humanists (Simmons is a philosopher), but they are all worth some discussion. You can read Aaron’s posts in their entirety at the links above. I will summarize the list including a few select quotes and add a few comments of my own.

1)  Academics, as academics, are not pastors—and we are not trying to be.

“Often confusion and mistrust result from the suspicion that academics are threatening to the office of the pastor. This is unfortunate and rarely grounded in reality. Academics should be threatening to sloppy thinking, falsehood, unjustified assertions, and resistance to critique, but these are all things that pastors should seek to avoid as well. Indeed, if pastors saw academics as resources in the way that they see coaches, business owners, and civic leaders, then the life of the mind and the life of faith might be more commonly integrated in churches.”

2)  Academics generally understand that disagreement does not imply disunity.

3)  Appeals to “non-negotiables” are often problematic for academics due to a general comfort with ambiguity.

4)  Asking critical questions is a primary way in which academics build relationships.

“Accordingly, asking critical questions is a sign of taking something seriously and, hence, of wanting further engagement with it. Too often pastors assume that asking such questions is a sign of arrogance or unbelief.”

5)  Academics have “gifts” too.

6)  Like most people, academics don’t like being stereotyped.

“Christians often protest against the stereotypical ways in which they are presented in popular culture. Similarly, academics don’t like being stereotyped by Christians as simply being liberal atheists who are dangerous to the spiritual life of those who would be swayed by our influence.”

7)  Many academics realize that the life of the mind and the life of faith are not at odds.

There are some points that Simmons makes that I disagree with, or would argue differently. But this is OK (disagreement doesn’t imply disunity). Sometimes it is simply that my perspective as a scientist in a secular university differs from his perspective as a philosopher of religion. Sometimes though, I wonder if it is because we have a slightly different view of Christian faith. I think that there are some things that are “non-negotiables” in the Christian faith, not because they can’t be questioned or shouldn’t be explored, but because if one moves in certain directions one is no longer a Christian. Of course, the only way one learns what is truly “non-negotiable” is by asking critical questions and digging into the how and why. In the sciences there are certainly things that become “non-negotiables” simply because the arguments are so strong.

There are three specific points I’d like to comment on and then move into discussion.

The first point is critical. Pastoring well is a hard job requiring a skill set that most academics don’t have. I know that I have not the patience, energy, or people skill for it myself.  I’d much rather think and write and teach. The same is true of many colleagues. We shouldn’t be a threat, but sometimes seem to be viewed as threats. I suspect that part of the problem is an implicit hierarchical approach to church. There is an attitude among many (not all) pastors and churches that the pastor is to be the go-to-guy and should be able to supply the answers on issues concerning Bible, theology, and Christian practice. This can spill over into a posture that prevents open discussion with fellow Christians who have expertise in these or related areas. We all need to be able to move between the postures of student and teacher and to cultivate the skill of listening well.

Simmons’ fourth point is where I’ve run into the most trouble. True engagement from an academic will always involve critical and digging questions. We have trained for years to question, to think critically, to read closely, to dig into details, to look at things from a variety of angles. Asking questions rather than accepting pronouncements is part of the culture. I don’t think that I’ve had pastors take this as a sign of arrogance or disbelief, but I have known those who find it threatening. Academics simply don’t take things on authority.  The first impulse is always to question until a level of understanding is obtained or a weakness is exposed.

There is a corollary to this – the aim of education in the academy is to make peers out of students. I have succeeded when my students turn around and start contributing to my education.  It isn’t a threat when they challenge me, but the goal. I expect to have to defend my position. This is how people learn. Shouldn’t pastors and churches have a similar goal … to make peers and disciples out of parishioners? Too often the goal seems to be to accumulate followers and if this means sticking with milk so be it, rather than to produce peers, adult Christians, capable of eating solid food.

The sixth point deserves more comment as well. We all have a tendency to develop an insider mentality. Sitting on the edge of two worlds can be challenging.

Being a Christian in the University can mean being something of an outsider. It isn’t overt hostility (often), but a combination of different priorities and focus and a bit of bemused wonder, being different.  There is, as well, a general assumption in the university that intelligent people know that Christianity can’t be true, a general negative impression of Christians, along with an underlying assumption of secular humanism. I have known several Christian graduate students who have opted away from a career in academics because of this atmosphere.

The Church isn’t really much better.  We’ve been part of a church for many years where a wide range of views are held, some more openly than others.  It is fairly conservative, but not rigid on non-essentials, and with a fairly small list of essentials. We’ve been comfortable here. Many churches in the area would not be as open.  But even here I’ve sat through a number of speakers, some guests, some local, several with my then young children sitting next to me, where the message was to beware of the professors (the “them” down the road) who sought to destroy the faith.  To be fair, this has happened seldom over the last decade. It was more common in the past. But many churches are worse.

On another occasion at a different church a movie was shown, an apologetic defense of the faith, with a humorous scene making fun of the objections of the scientists complete with white lab coats, microscopes, and bubbling test tubes. “They” attack the bible “we” know it’s true. I was uncomfortable, but most in the audience saw nothing wrong with portrayal.

And then there are those who dismiss Christian academics (unless they hold the “right” positions) as having caved to peer pressure and the pursuit of worldly advancement. This is insulting. Most of us are trying hard to find the right road to walk from conviction.  Of course we could be wrong on some issues, but a dismissal questioning motives simply enlarges the gulf between academics and the church.

There is the same implicit assumption at work in many churches as there is in the University. “We” and “they” are separate.

How would you respond to these seven points?

Would you add anything?

Are any of these points off the mark?

Is there a place in the church for critical questions and deep engagement?

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

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