RSSIn Defense of a Theology of Cross and Glory: Part 2
Obedience and Exaltation
What is a theology of cross and glory? We all know what a “theology of the cross†is: since our Lord suffered, his followers must as well (John 15:18-21). Oppression and suffering provide the context in which hatred of God is revealed for what it is, in which the perseverance of the saints is proven, and in which sanctity increases in the lives of the saints. We also know what a “theology of glory†is: the servant receives better treatment than his master; victory and exaltation are achieved without passing through the testing of fiery trials.
Theologians of the cross are humble men who place no hope in this world because of its irremediable corruption by sin and Christ’s absence from it. Theirs is a sober “not yet†assessment regarding the presence of the future kingdom. Theologians of glory are proud men who downplay human limitation and act as if Christ were come already. Theirs is an obnoxious triumphalist insistence on the “already†presence of the kingdom. So, on one hand, there is a theology of cross without glory, and on the other, a theology of glory without suffering.
This cross/glory bifurcation is calculated to buttress anabaptist secularism and malign theocracy. However, overweening ambition is not the provincial characteristic of any of the major eschatological options. There are plenty of arrogant amillennialists and not a few humble postmillennialists. Amills can be just as adept at finding comfortable accommodation with the reigning spirit of the age as were the liberal postmillennialists and social gospellers of yore, perhaps more so. Furthermore, history shows that the Church has both suffered and enjoyed outward prosperity. This variance of disproportionate experience cannot be attributed to the attitude, piety, or eschatology of any church.
Suffering cannot be manufactured like pre-washed faded jeans. Lacking the outward circumstances of oppression, Western amills who wax eloquent about pilgrim suffering can no more conjure up the perseverance, character & hope such experience shapes than can theocrats cultivate qualities of wise statesmanship, all their plans for world domination notwithstanding. The Lord decides who to exalt to high office and when to chasten his people under tribulation. Faithful martyrs and good leaders become such, not through breeding or schooling, but essentially through the trials they have been chosen to pass through. In life, it is a general rule that every genuine accomplishment comes after a period of testing in which commitment is proven.
Not all such testing is governed by the Covenant of Works (CoW). While the works principle (“Do this and liveâ€) is operative for all who remain outside of Christ and under Adam’s headship, it is not operative for the elect. The believer has “died to the law†in this sense (Rom. 7:1-6). He has been covered by the robe of Christ’s righteousness and freed to a new obedience, without condemnation, through the “law of the Spirit of life†(Rom. 8:1-2). Under the economy of grace a role remains for trials of obedience: “To him who overcomes and does my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations…just as I have received authority from my Father. I will also give him the morning star…To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne†(Rev. 2:26,28; 3:21). It should be evident that all Christians must endure testing of trials throughout their lives whether they face any actual oppression or not. Any victory—any reward—they “achieve†as a result, is fundamentally based not on their own merit, but on Christ’s, who fulfilled the CoW for them.
I have no desire to get embroiled in a controversy over legal merit and the “Federal Vision.†Men on both sides of the debate should be able to agree that whatever merit is, it is not operative in the “economy of testing” that Christians endure. With some qualification, James Jordan’s insights regarding “covenant maturity†should be generally acceptable touching this point.
“When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited…But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all your fellow guests. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted†(Luke 14:8,10-11).
It is not pious to prefer the lowest station over others that are higher. To love the “lowest seat†for its own sake is unbalanced piety, or, pharisaical piosity. It is the sort of piety on display in Spielberg’s Last Crusade, when Indiana Jones discovers the Holy Grail, a simple wooden cup, hidden among hundreds of gold and silver chalices.
It makes no sense to praise the virtues of poverty, folly, and weakness. The whole point of choosing (not desiring) the lowest place is to faithfully endure testing and wait on the appropriate occasion to be exalted. It is unseemly to grasp for greater glory before the proper time. In this, Christ is our model (Phil. 2:3ff.). In passing, I’ll pointed out that there is no evidence here of an incommensurability between natural and Christian ethics. Pagans are just as capable of seeing the wisdom in Christ’s illustration as are Christians.
When Jesus enjoins humility he in no way implies that impotence, poverty and hunger are preferable to power, wealth, and prosperity. These good things are not to be refused when offered. In terms of Christ’s illustration, it would be unseemly to refuse the banquet host’s beneficence out of some morbid preference for dishonor. Throughout the course of a Christian life there are numerous occasions for such honors. Of course, at the end of a life faithfully lived, the greatest glories will be bestowed.
It is the anabaptist-leftist error to suppose that the Sermon on the Mount extols outward poverty. The “poverty of spirit†Jesus blesses (Matt. 5:3ff.) has to do with an inward disposition of the heart instead of outward circumstances. Certainly, Jesus has outward lowliness in view, but only because spiritual humility befits a low estate. We are not to invert the priority of genuine inward humility over bodily condition. Not that outward circumstances are unimportant–they are–but the essential thing is a matter of the spirit.
Darryl Hart manifests this interpretive distortion when he writes, “Maybe the apostle Paul will help. He wrote: ‘God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God’ (1 Cor. 1:27ff). If the Bible, nay God, is our model, why would we choose the wise, the strong, and the high and reputable (say Christendom) for our cultural model if God chooses to use the opposite in his work?â€
The ante-Nicene Church followed the exact same model as St. Paul: the Lord Jesus Christ. After accomplishing his course of obedience unto death, our Lord was resurrected and glorified to sit at the Father’s right hand. The pattern is first suffering, then glory. After two centuries of often fierce persecution, the Roman emperor was moved to convert and raise the Church to high prominence. It is only by means of an invalid differentiation between Christ’s providential and redemptive rule that such a momentous event can be conceived as a sort of fall from the original grace of impoverishment. Such is Anabaptist, not Reformed, historiography.
There is no contradiction between the ultimate glorification of the Church and its various lesser “glorifications†in history. Did Jesus refuse the crowd’s acclaim on Palm Sunday? No, it was an appropriate time for him to receive their praise. Should Christians refuse cultural responsibility in this life because they have a better inheritance in the next? Of course not.
In the same passage Darryl cites, we read the following: “Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth†(1 Cor. 1:26). The apostle did not say, “None of you were wise, etc.†The Church honors great reformers (Gregory the Great, Martin Luther) and thinkers (St. Augustine, John Calvin) in her memory. Such men and women (e.g., St. Joan d’Arc) are rightly regarded as great persons. But the wonderful thing about Christianity is that it holds up the exemplars of great humility in the highest place (e.g., Moses, Mary, Jesus).
Yes, God chooses the low and humble things to shame the proud and mighty. This is how he works and continues to work. But we do not do this. Again, suffering cannot be manufactured: God alone creates the unique circumstances of each individual’s testing. The theology of cross and glory I am proposing is able to account for tests of commitment (of whatever kind) along with the legitimate temporal blessings Christians and the Church at large have had and continue to experience. To promote a theology of cross without glory is an obvious ploy to disparage Christendom’s true and proper glory in light of the supposed genuine piety of separatist enthusiasm. It is anabaptist piosity.
More to come…
stevez
June 28th, 2007 at 9:53 am
Andrew,
To give you a lot of credit, I must admit I cannot applaud enough your overall discerning view that “suffering cannot be manufactured.†Fabricated, self-flagellating piety is just as obnoxious as its opposite as both seem to employ them to garner a cosmic pat of the head and simply reveal an impious works-righteousness. Very nicely said indeed, regardless of how it cannot comport with your need to maintain the theologies of both the Cross and glory. (I’d like to know where you get your pastries, having your cake and eating it, too. I have a brutish sweet-tooth and love cake.)
That said, I would playfully invoke the Reformed hermeneutic of the regula fidei on our friend Darryl, which is to say, you need to broaden your Hartian canon beyond quips on a blog.
If you conclude that the view Hart seeks to promote is the implied answer to the rhetorical question, “Should Christians refuse cultural responsibility in this life because they have a better inheritance in the next?†then you haven’t read the sub-section called “Learning from Liturgicals†from his Mainstream Protestantism, “Conservative” Religion, and Civil Society. I am quoting him at length here so bear with it. Suffice it to say that nobody can write what he does below and be interpreted as some kind of pietist who sees no value in creational/cultural/social/political life, an interpretation around here that needs some chain jerking. A Hartian perspective, if I might, has no tolerance for world-flight and simply zigs where the pietist-fundies zag. Let’s put this myopic read of his presuppositions to bed once and for all, shall we? Tracking, now, with what he calls the “Liturgicals,â€
“If Protestant liturgicals actually represent a viable way for conservative believers to participate in public life, they may also provide an escape from the impasse that has bedeviled recent discussions about the relationship between religion and civil society. 60 Ever since 1980 when the religious right emerged as factor in electoral politics, the typical approach to religion and public life assumed a bipolar perspective. Either the public square welcomes or excludes religion; either religious convictions are private or they legitimately inform the aspirations that guide public life. 61 In other words, no middle ground exists. If evangelicals are going to participate meaningfully in public life, the wall between church and state has to come down. Or, at least, some gates have to be added to allow for passage back and forth. In this way of looking at the problem, the religious right and secularists are made for each other. As much as evangelicals try to say all areas of life belong to God and so religion should not be excluded from public affairs, secularists see that such divine possession can likely end up dispossessing those who do not believe in the deity of evangelical Protestantism. 62 Of course, this is not the first time such an impasse has arisen. The bipolar character of most discussions about religion and public life is [End Page 36] the legacy of Anglo-American Protestantism’s political philosophy. Ever since the heady days of the American republic’s birth, when the United States tried to live without the older authorities of monarchy and established church, evangelicals have operated according to a simple political formula–if it is divine it is trustworthy, if it is human it is suspect. 63 Though responsibilities as presidents, chemists, parents and umpires have forced evangelicals to modify this formula, it still lurks within the evangelical soul and plays havoc with Protestant efforts to relate their religious convictions to non-religious walks of life. 64
Liturgical Protestantism offers a way around this impasse. A different way of putting it is to say that liturgical Protestantism represents a way for Protestant believers to support the wall between church and state. By looking for religious significance not in this world but in the world to come, liturgical Protestantism lowers the stakes for public life while still affirming politics’ divinely ordained purpose. The public square loses some of its importance but retains its dignity. It is neither ultimately good nor inherently evil; politics becomes merely a divinely appointed means for restraining evil while the church as an institution goes about its holy calling. 65 For some evangelicals, the liturgical Protestant approach to public life is not a solution but rather a sell out. 66 Religious convictions demand unswerving allegiance in all spheres. In fact, the moral absolutes of Christianity require the same kind of conduct at home and city hall. To admit otherwise is inconsistent and leads inevitably to moral relativism. But if Daniel Bell is right about the nature of modern society, liturgical Protestantism may very well be the best approach for Protestants. In his 1978 foreword to The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, Bell described himself as a socialist in economics, a liberal in politics, and a conservative in culture. “Many persons might find this statement puzzling,” he explained, “assuming that if a person is radical in one realm, he is a radical in all others; and, conversely, if he is a conservative in one realm, then he must be conservative in the others as well.” But modern capitalistic society does not permit such ideological consistency. According to Bell, “[S]uch an assumption misreads, both sociologically and morally, the nature of these realms.” 67
In the end, the most important lesson the religious right could learn from liturgical Protestantism is not how to negotiate public life but how to prevent a legitimate concern for politics from distorting the faith. Here the religious right could well take a page from one of their neglected heros, J. Gresham Machen. A Presbyterian fundamentalist, Machen almost single-handedly fought liberalism within the northern Presbyterian Church during the 1920s until he was suspended from the ministry and started a new Presbyterian denomination. 68 What is more, he was particularly [End Page 37] active in fighting legislation that undermined, in his view, family life and the legitimate authority of parents. In other words, Machen would appear to meet the religious right’s theological and political litmus tests. But he was keenly aware that religious liberty in the United States prohibited Christianity from providing the norms for public life. In fact, Machen ridiculed the hypocrisy of liberal Protestant churches that took pride in theological diversity while also supporting legislation aimed at achieving Anglo-American cultural homogeneity. Mainline Protestants were guilty of such duplicity precisely when they argued that religion was beneficial for community or public life. For example, Machen wrote, “there is the problem of the immigrants; great populations have found a place in our country; they do not speak our language or know our customs; and we do not know what to do with them.” So religion is “called in to help.” It is “thought to be necessary for a healthy community.” And in the process, Protestants “proceed against the immigrants now with a Bible in one hand and a club in the other offering them the blessings of liberty,” or what some called “Christian Americanization.” 69 For Machen, the norms of America and the churches were necessarily distinct and to conflate them violated religious liberty.
But Machen was even more concerned about what politicizing religion did to Christianity. In order to make religion relevant to public life, he argued, Protestants had turned to the Bible only for its ethics while ignoring almost completely its ultimate message about sin and grace. This was one of the reasons for Machen’s opposition to prayer and Bible reading in public schools. Aside from questions surrounding the separation of church and state, even more alarming was what this practice did to the gospel. “What could be more terrible,” he asked, “from the Christian point of view, than the reading of the Lord’s Prayer to non-Christian children as though they could use it without becoming Christians?” In effect, a politicized Christianity ends up being little more than moralism. “When any hope is held out to lost humanity from the so-called ethical portions of the Bible apart from its great redemptive core,” then, Machen concluded, “the Bible is represented as saying the direct opposite of what it really says.” 70 Curiously enough, H. L Mencken, who admired Machen while abhorring the fundamentalist’s Presbyterian colleague, William Jennings Bryan, the leader of the 1920s religious right, agreed with Machen’s assessment. Mencken wrote:
It is my belief, as a friendly neutral in all such high and ghostly matters, that the body of doctrine known as Modernism is completely incompatible, not only with anything rationally describable as Christianity, [End Page 38] but also with anything deserving to pass as religion in general. Religion, if it is to retain any genuine significance, can never be reduced to a series of sweet attitudes, possible to anyone not actually in jail for felony. . . . That, it seems to me, is what the Modernists have done, no doubt with the best intentions in the world. They have tried to get rid of all the logical difficulties of religion, and yet, preserve a generally pious cast of mind. It is a vain enterprise. 71
Mencken did not think one needed to be a partisan to see what politics was doing to the Christian religion. For him, as for Machen, the logic was simple. Anytime religion is forced to perform a function it cannot do, it necessarily becomes something different.
The lesson for the religious right should be obvious. The effort to bring religious values to bear on public life is similar to what Protestant modernists did seventy years ago when they advocated prayer and Bible reading in public schools, Prohibition, and a rating system for Hollywood’s movies. And like the Protestant establishment during the middle decades of the twentieth century, today’s advocates of public religion could presumably add greater dignity and decency to American society. But at what cost? What will happen to the non-evangelical citizens of the United States if they do not comply with evangelicalism’s moral code? Even more important, what will happen to faith once delivered to the saints that evangelicals are so eager to share? As difficult as it may be to find a common ethical platform for public life without the foundation of revealed religion, the difficulties on the other side are just as great, if not greater. To be sure, the desire to make Christianity relevant for public life does not automatically force someone to deny the virgin birth or the resurrection of Christ. Neither is it immediately obvious, however, what these articles of belief have to do with limited government, free markets, or family values. And so, a comprehensive biblical program for American society and politics turns out to be little more than the second table of the Ten Commandments, the ones having to do with love of neighbor. Loving neighbors is a good thing. But historic Christianity involves much more. The irony is that by reducing Christianity to its ethical teaching the religious right and its defenders could be making one of the greatest concessions to modern secular life imaginable. For that reason it may be better to scrap altogether the project of public or civil religion. 72 In the case of Anglo-American Protestantism, such efforts have not worked out well either for the republic or for the churches.â€
zrim
Andrew Matthews
June 30th, 2007 at 2:38 pm
Thanks for this quotation, Steve, it is helpful. I am well aware Darryl allows Christian individuals to have social responsibility in a secular capacity. However, this responsibility is based on the mistaken notion (derived from Kline) that the fall modified the cultural mandate, orienting it (on the social level) to the concerns of this life only. A Christian may perform his cultural tasks “secularly” intending to render “spiritual” service to God, but society has no obligation to intelligently honor God by its culture. (The very possibility of Christian culture is obtusely denied.) Furthermore, the Church is conceived as a private liturgy club and not as a social body that has privileges within and responsibilities toward larger society. The macro level of social responsibility is denied.
In subsequent posts, I will be arguing at greater length that neither the original theocracy nor the original cultural mandate were “refracted” in the way Kline proposed. If I am right, this just means that republican government of the classical liberal variety is incompatible with Christianity. Big deal.
D Hart
July 1st, 2007 at 8:44 am
Andrew, I cannot think of a better way of stating the W2K position when you wrote: “Yes, God chooses the low and humble things to shame the proud and mighty. This is how he works and continues to work. But we do not do this.”
You are exactly right. When someone hits my wife, I do not ask her to turn the other cheek but I haul off and whale on the guy (or at least I talk tough on the Internet). I do not try to be poor because they are blessed but I try to acquire enough wealth to provide for my wife and me. And I don’t first cite pastors in my historical work but try to marshal the best sources and interact with the leading authorities.
So if God acts differently than the way we do, in what sense is the great and mighty and glorious Christendom actually Christian? It didn’t get that way by asking what Jesus would do, because what he did leads in a different direction. For this reason, I’ve arguing we need to give up the idea of Christian civilization or society. It doesn’t make sense.
Phil
July 1st, 2007 at 2:16 pm
Christendom, in my corner of the world, is merely my attempt to be holy as He is holy. I fail miserably, so I come before the One who reigns victoriously. Then, in gratitude, I get up again and beg His mercy to live holy.
This is why it makes perfect sense: it’s holiness in my corner of the world, by faith alone. It’s lowly, because it’s just my corner of the world. One of the ways it starts is by loving God with everything I have, and demonstrating that love by talking about His Word regarding every context before my children. But loving God with all I have is keeping at least the First Table of the Law, which I cannot do. Yet by sanctification, God enables.
Giving up on Christendom is giving up on living holy in every context of life where God leads us.
Andrew Matthews
July 2nd, 2007 at 9:13 pm
In the latest issue of Touchstone, S.M. Hutchens has some thoughts about how Christianity often deserves Nietzsche’s opprobrium for an unhealthy fixation on meanness and weakness.
Hutchens writes: “There has been something very wrong about how the gospel is so often interpreted among us—wrong because it is not the will of God that we should be the weak and passive things, the welcomers of shame and of death and of inferiority and imperfection that we so frequently are, the excuse being that we are put into the world to decrease and die. There is a lie hidden in the way that the call to die is all too frequently understood, the lie being a Christological heresy having to do with the denial of Christ the perfect and the perfected man, and our duty to live as those who are “in him.â€
“For whilst it is true that we are here to die, we are put here first to live.â€
(S. M. Hutchens, “Fully Living Sacrifices,†Touchstone, (The Fellowship of St. James: Chicago, IL) July/August 2007, p. 4.
Andrew Matthews
July 2nd, 2007 at 10:03 pm
Darryl, you write: “When someone hits my wife, I do not ask her to turn the other cheek but I haul off and whale on the guy (or at least I talk tough on the Internet).”
In other words, you say that you act according to the principles of the city of man when threatened. I have a question, then: In what contexts do you follow our Lord’s commands to “not resist an evil person,” “turn the other cheek,” and “give your tunic to the man who wants to sue you”? It seems like there is never a time in the real world to exercise this selfless obedience to Christ.
My own way I’ve dealt with these “hard” sayings has been to understand that the freer one is from worldly commitments (i.e., spouse, children, subjects), the freer one is to lay down one’s life in following the Lord’s example (Cf. 1 Cor. 7:7,32-35). There is self-sacrifice and humility that is appropriate to kings, another appropriate to parents, another appropriate to husbands, and another appropriate to single unattached people.
Additionally, it takes spiritual discernment to know how to respond best in any given situation & often special grace is given at crucial moments.
Finally, I understand these commands by the Lord as not mere law but transcending law: “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me” (Matt. 19:21). “For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother’s womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it” (Matt. 19:12).
I recognize that most of the time people are not able to follow Jesus’ radical demands to their fullest extent. (The few that do are usually beatified as RC saints.) However, his love will be manifest in their lives: There will be moments of truth when a true disciple will imitate Christ in his life.
It should be clear by now that just as Christians are not prohibited from entering into Christian marriage, so they are not prohibited from seeking a Christian state. Both arrangements are proper to this present age that is passing away, but both are necessary now.
The power of the sword is necessary for maintaining order in the present age. Just as Christians are not absolutely prohibited from using force to defend themselves and are (usually) positively obligated to in defense of others, so a Christian state is not prohibited but obligated to use force to maintain order & protect its people.
I’m interested to read your reaction in regard to these thoughts.
D Hart
July 3rd, 2007 at 5:56 am
Andrew, I’d be glad to answer these reflections if I weren’t already asking for you to answer them. You said above that God uses the weak and the foolish to shame the strong and the wise but you added that we do not work this way. So it seems that you also concede that Christians resort to the city of man. Why is this only a problem that I have to solve when you yourself admit that you do not pursue a life of weakness, folly or poverty, at least when you’re thinking about culture and politics.
Phil
July 3rd, 2007 at 8:58 am
Concerning the W2K position and the statement, “Yes, God chooses the low and humble things to shame the proud and mighty.â€
This statement is not balanced. He chose Paul, for instance, possibly an unsightly fellow but an intellectual whiz. He chose Isaac, whom the Philistines begged to leave them because he was too powerful for them. And on and on.
The above statement is too conflicted. Here’s a better statement concerning this era:
Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. (Mark 10:29-30)
Sounds like we should expect “persecutions†right along with better stuff “in this time.†Statistically you might experience far more of one than the other, but apparently both are to be the lot of God’s people.
stevez
July 3rd, 2007 at 3:36 pm
“In other words, you say that you act according to the principles of the city of man when threatened. I have a question, then: In what contexts do you follow our Lord’s commands to “not resist an evil person,†“turn the other cheek,†and “give your tunic to the man who wants to sue youâ€? It seems like there is never a time in the real world to exercise this selfless obedience to Christ.”
Would the answer possibly be quite narrow, i.e., when being persecuted for the sake of the Gospel? I would assume Mrs. Hart’s being smacked has nothing to do with the Gospel but because she may have sent back her soup. In which case, her husband’s choice of response is up to him. I would hope he’d show a tad more restraint than getting into a brawl. But there is nothing wrong with invoking the principle’s of the city of man in such a situation, including the physical protection of another. I hear pacifism coming down thr rails. Are we to take the other cheek commandment to promote pacifism? And, if so, what do we make of your positive appeals to “just war” theories coming out of Christendom? There are charges of anabaptism for this side of the table; but are they not the pacifists? If there was an interest in pacifism, why does Darryl have no bones about “whaling on the guy”? (Though I am myself no rabid anti-abortionists who thinks the ills of the world will be solved by its demise yet is still anti-abortion [not pro-life]), shall we turn the other cheek when it comes to the abortionist, telling the unborn that we owed their enemies our tunics? Much as some want to lend the politics of something like abortion divine weight and sanction, it still has absolutely nothing to do with the Gospel. Neither getting cracked on the head protesting it nor marching on Selma has one iota to do with the Gospel, no matter how heavy laden the religio-language attending it. It all falls into the city of man and folks may choose their sides. You can’t apply KoG principles to the KoM. Simply turning the other cheek does not a believer make. Don’t plenty of Buddhist monks willingly get cracked on the skull by their own government? It seems to me that when you collapse the kingdoms you make Christian behavioral commands more descriptive than prescriptive, so that anyone who performs these things can claim Christian-hood. But while Christinaity has resident within it a way of life, it most certainly is not a way of life.
We resist, then, those who oppose the Gospel narrowly.
“Finally, I understand these commands by the Lord as not mere law but transcending law: “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me†(Matt. 19:21). “For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother’s womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it†(Matt. 19:12)…I recognize that most of the time people are not able to follow Jesus’ radical demands to their fullest extent. (The few that do are usually beatified as RC saints.) However, his love will be manifest in their lives: There will be moments of truth when a true disciple will imitate Christ in his life.”
Wait. Are you saying that not only is it possible to “live up to the radical demands of the law to their fullest extent” but that some actually have? How in the world does this square with conventional Protestant theology?
Steve
Andrew Matthews
July 5th, 2007 at 6:35 pm
Steve writes, “Would the answer possibly be quite narrow, i.e., when being persecuted for the sake of the Gospel?”
No. Read your Bible.
Steve writes, “Are you saying that not only is it possible to ‘live up to the radical demands of the law to their fullest extent’ but that some actually have? How in the world does this square with conventional Protestant theology?”
I don’t believe that Christ’s commands are law in the sense that you imagine. They transcend the law (pure justice) and enter into doing good to others beyond what they deserve. This is grace. I’m not going to defend it here at length, but I believe there have been and are now people living who are completely filled with Christ’s love for others. Their lives are completely sacrificial. This does not mean they do everything perfectly however (though God sees it so in Christ).
stevez
July 6th, 2007 at 10:55 am
I do. And it seems to suggest that turning the other cheek is what is done, not when one is attacked for any wide host of common things, but when one is attacked for Christ’s sake.
Are there any examples of when one wouldn’t turn the other cheek, or is your point that simply by being a Christian believer we are inherently and always to be non-aggressors? And if so, I guess I am still confused as to how the stuff of, say, the “just war†theory coming out of Christendom can be pointed to as a good thing. Everything so far I have heard you say seems to be quite positive about the “Christian take over of culture,†yet by saying “It seems like there is never a time in the real world to exercise this selfless obedience [meaning turn the other cheek and hand the man your tunic] to Christ†you then also seem to imply we ought not act so aggressively. So which is it? This seems like an inherent conundrum when the kingdoms are so conflated. Instead of trying to be comfortable with the weirdness of being at once a citizen of two kingdoms, one has to go through these strained contortions to make his existence in the one kingdom work. So just tell me, can I lop off the centurion’s ear or should I sheath my sword? When I actually do read the Bible, this question is answered quite clearly and doesn’t demand I bend every which way.
Steve
Andrew Matthews
July 6th, 2007 at 2:38 pm
This idea that we are to love our enemies (and act accordingly) only in cases when we are being explicitly persecuted for Christ’s sake is patently false. I can’t believe any biblically literate person would put forth such an argument.
“Do not repay anyone evil for evil… as much as lies within you, live peacably with all men… Do not take revenge… ‘If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give hime drink’… Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Rom. 12:17-21).
We’re only supposed to feed our enemy when he’s persecuting us? Absurd.