Really, Zondervan? Really?

I can’t believe I’m so riled up about translations of Scripture, but Zondervan’s recent decision to discontinue the Today’s New International Version (TNIV) has me in a bit of a mini-fit.

The 2005 translation received attention and scrutiny mostly focused around its transition to gender-inclusive language. The gender language was broadened in cases in which the meaning is “all people” or “humankind.” Gender changes made up only roughly 30% of the edits made to its predecessor, the NIV (1984). Other improvements within the TNIV include specification between “Jews” and “Jewish leaders” when encountering the phrase hai Ioudaioi, which is invaluable in bringing education to the majority of the Evangelical community who still suffers from Luther’s misunderstanding of Judaism and its Law, and clarification of the word hagios when it is intended to mean all true Christ-followers (and not a select canonized few).

While all of these changes are obvious improvements — more faithful to the text’s meaning and combatting potential misunderstandings of Scripture for readers new and old — Zondervan seems to be catering to Evangelicalism’s patriarchal members and dismissing the TNIV as a mistake.

According to the Christianity Today article, the publishing company is discontinuing the translation in part because of how it “divided the Christian [E]vangelical community.” I understand that they need to sell a product, but does Zondervan abide by any standards higher than consumer reviews? Where does faithfulness to the text and meaning of Scripture fit into this decision?

Zondervan reps insist that a lot of the decisions behind the 2011 NIV translation have yet to be made. Still, I remain skeptical that many of the TNIV’s strengths will carry over to the new translation. The English Standard Version (ESV) has sold well within more deterministic and patriarchal circles (which says less about the accuracy of that translations and its readers’ theology and more about a militant sect rallying around a product that supports its agenda). I have to believe that Zondervan, with partners Biblica and the Committee on Bible Translation, is ultimately going to cater to the masses and make decisions that cut into the ESV’s market — even at the expense of faithfulness to Scripture.

Which then leads me to wonder, where is the Bible for the rest of us, those of us who aren’t caught up in patriarchy, replacement theology, antinomianism, hyper-monergy, and determinism? What are our options if we want to read a translation that is faithful to vintage Christianity? Two possibilities are the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) and the Contemporary English Version (CEV). The NRSV adopts gender-inclusive language in appropriate instances and is generally the standard within academic biblical studies. The CEV has much more conversational language, is gender-inclusive, and rightly steers hai Ioudaioi away from grave misinterpretation.

Or, if you’re interested, you can voice your concern about the new NIV translation at NIVBible2011.com, asking them not to drop the ball more than they already have. Feel free to make your voice heard, but I have to admit that I think the decision has already been made, and the new NIV will leave much to be desired.

Non-conflicting absolutes

You can read Julie’s recent seminary paper regarding non-conflicting absolutes for her Old Testament Ethics course. While the subject matter is dry, Julie takes the paper in an interesting and necessary direction — examining how dualism and a misconfiguration of original sin (a paradigm of judicial guilt rather than systemic brokenness) within more Augustinian theological strands has led to some sketchy presumptions in the study of biblical or Christian ethics.

Interacting with Justification by N.T. Wright – Chapter Three

Wright’s third chapter in Justification, “First-Century Judaism: Covenant, Law and Lawcourt,” is an attempt to explain that first-century Jews (the main characters and audiences of the New Testament) were more concerned with experiencing deliverance from exile (an exile the Jewish people had been experiencing even after returning to their land, as they were still under Roman occupation) by way of David’s promised son. While first-century Judaism was not ignorant to ideas of transcendence and afterlife, those issues were being overshadowed by more pressing physical, political concerns. In other words, first-century Jews, unlike many Christians today, were not simply trying to find their ticket to heaven. They expected God to move within history, within their world.

Wright notes that first-century literature illumines us to the fact that Judaism was not a monolithic religion before, during, or after the time of Christ. He speaks of Variegated Nomism – the multiplicity of ways in which first-century Jews were interpreting Israel’s law, constructing theologies of grace, resurrection etc. 

I find this much clear: first-century Judaism was far different from the works-not-grace caricature of Judaism that Martin Luther so unfortunately concocted in order to read the biblical text into his own sixteenth-century world. There is a cost when we use the biblical text so liberally as to form the biblical narrative and characters in our own image, so that they are living out our story rather than us living continuing their story faithfully in our day. Disregard for historical context, authorial intent and the like can lead us in directions as dangerous as the Lutheranism-gone-awry that was experienced in the Holocaust in the early-to-mid-twentieth century – a mere sixty years ago.

Within the “Judaisms” of the first century, there were some who aimed to calculate the moment when God would deliver Israel from exile. Wright notes many of them leaned heavily on Daniel 9 – a prophecy of the end of exile in which an angel tells the main character that exile would not be for the simple seventy years he read about in Jeremiah, but seventy weeks of years (70 X 7). (pgs 57-59)

This, Wright says, is the social milieu into which Paul writes – a group of people who felt that they were living a continued biblical narrative, still in exile but hoping for the end of exile as described in Daniel 9. Yes, these Jews were back in their land, out from captivity in Babylon. Jews were “enslaved” to pagan cultures and customs.

Here the Bishop lets out some of his frustration with Piper and his “ordinary folk”:

“. . . for many, perhaps most, contemporary Western readers of the New Testament (John Piper’s ‘ordinary folk,’ perhaps), the effort required to think into a worldview where people were thinking to themselves, When is God going to do what he’s promised? is all too much, and they shake their heads and settle back into the comfort of a non-historical soteriology the long and short of which is ‘my relationship with God’ rather than ‘what God is going to do to sort out his world and his people.’ Or, alternatively, the question, when will God do what he’s promised? splurges back onto the theological scene in the form of lurid speculations about the Rapture: drive eschatology out the front door, and it will break in through the back window. And with all of these strategies we thereby put ourselves in the position of musicians who, finding the score of a Beethoven symphony, reckon that because the only instruments they possess are guitars and mouth-organs, that must be what Beethoven had in mind. Or, if you like, that because the only music they know is a collection of songs none of which last longer than four minutes, that must be what Beethoven actually intended.” (pg 61)

Can you tell he’s had it with Piper and his “ordinary folk,” and their commitment to make ordinary what should be a very inordinate use of Scripture?

One of the ways in which Wright’s view of justification succeeds is in its incorporation of the New Exodus motif woven throughout the entirety of Scripture. In Chapter Three Wright exegetes Daniel 9 (remember, this is a text that first-century Jews were leaning into for a variety of reasons), and two things become very clear: “righteousness” in this passage is interchangeable with covenant faithfulness, and God’s covenant faithfulness allows Him to stand as “right” (faithful) when His covenant people are not (allowing the curse of exile as promised in the covenant) as well as to declare “right” (lawcourt language) an unfaithful people (allowing exodus) – on the basis of God’s own covenant faithfulness, not the people’s.

That doesn’t sound much like Luther’s caricature of works-righteousness, does it? No, this is about a God who is covenantally faithful to the extent that He allows consequences of the covenant (exile) but ultimately restores the covenant on the basis of His own covenant-keeping (allowing exodus). This is the hope of first-century Judaism, and the center of Paul’s writing, that God would declare His people right – an act that, to them, was connected to the political ramification of exodus and the ongoing of narrative of human history.

Wright proceeds to shed light on Piper’s big motif for understanding righteousness and justification, God’s concern for God’s own glory. Here’s one part of Wright’s review of Piper that I found to be particularly funny (and refreshing):

“there is a huge mass of scholarly literature on the meaning of God’s righteousness, and Piper simply ignores it. I am not aware of any other scholar, old perspective, new perspective, Catholic, Reformed, Evangelical, anyone, who thinks that tsedaqah elohim in Hebrew or dikaiosyne theou in Greek actually means ‘God’s concern for God’s own glory. . . . Piper’s attempt to show that there must be a ‘righteousness’ behind God’s ‘covenant faithfulness’ is simply unconvincing. It begins to look as though Piper has simply not understood what covenant faithfulness means, and its enormous significance throughout Scripture.” (pgs 64-65)

Also to my amusement, Wright notes that even J.I. Packer – a notoriously Reformed scholar – slips into the New Perspective when he notes, “The reason why [Isaiah and Psalms] call God’s vindication of his oppressed people his ‘righteousness’ is that it is an act of faithfulness to his covenant promise with them.” (pg 64)

The Bishop proceeds to discuss the role of Israel in God’s plan to put the world to rights. God does not give up on Israel. God does not replace Israel. It is precisely through Israel that God will put the world to rights. Wright notes Piper’s decision to not engage Romans 3 and 4 (chapters centered on Abraham and God’s still-applicable commitment to bless the world through his people). This is consistent with Piper’s evasion of Deuteronomy 27-30, Daniel 9, and the whole of Genesis 15. Piper is not engaging the texts that best clarify that God’s righteousness is His covenant faithfulness.

And it is at this point that I, as a reader, become frustrated on Wright’s behalf. Piper and others within the old perspective have accused Wright of proposing a “complicated” gospel. The danger of that accusation is the implicit notion that Wright is weaving complexities into the biblical narrative. The reality, it seems, is quite the opposite. Wright is merely guilty of engaging more of the biblical narrative in his exegesis and theology. We would do better to call Wright and his gospel “hard-working”or “supremely literate.”

The chapter proceeds with Wright discussing Piper’s construction of a theology of God’s righteousness for God’s own glory. Wright acknowledges that such theology portrays God as Divine Narcissist. In reality God is not a self-absorbed being concerned with making sure that His creation lauds Him; He is an outward-focused giver of love whose tsedaqah elohim is His generous faithfulness to undeserving people who have not been anywhere near as faithful to Him.

The role of Israel and Torah in God’s saving plan is the final theme of the chapter. Wright notes the similarities between E.P. Sanders’ covenantal nomism and Calvinism’s emphasis on covenant and “being in Christ.” Wright esteems the Reformed view for agreeing with Sanders’ take far more than Lutheran exegetes and their construction of Judaism as a religion of works-righteousness.

While often falling in the Reformed camp on many issues, Piper’s handling of Israel is fairly Lutheran; he and his “ordinary folk” may find it easier to create a caricature of Judaism to fit their purposes rather than to study the variety of beliefs within Second Temple Judaism (it seems that Piper is suspicious as to whether much reliable knowledge can be gained from that wealth of material). 

Here Wright chops away at both the old perspective’s antinomianism with which I am so amused and the replacement theology over which I completely fume:

“According to the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said that he had not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. A Calvinist will find that much easier to grasp than a Lutheran – though it would be interesting to hear an old perspective expositor explain how Jesus’ brisk commands in that great sermon are to be obeyed by his followers without any sense of moral effort, synergism and so on.”

This is where the New Exodus motif within the Pauline corpus becomes so important: it is the blood of the Lamb over our doorposts that spares us and declares us “right” (initial justification), yet we still need to follow God on the path of liberation and deliverance, the Way that brings us from a former identity (Egypt, Eden) to a new humanity (Promised Land, New Jerusalem/complete Kingdom of God). This is covenantal nomism! Following the law (whether it be Torah or that which the Spirit writes on our hearts) is not what makes it possible for us to be part of God’s people, but it is the guideline for how to get from Egypt to the Promised Land, from a humanity that lives to propagate systemic sin and death to a humanity that lives to participate in the systemic faithfulness and life. This is synergy! And compared to it, monergy is shown to be nothing more than an inferior half-gospel that leaves everyone standing under a blood-covered doorpost, but never leaving their house for the Promised Land!

As Wright is making abundantly clear, there is no such thing as a soteriology that is divorced from eschatology – God is not rescuing people from the unfolding history of His creation; He is acting within the grand narrative of His creation to save it. Wright says it well when he talks about God’s single plan to save the world through Israel, and when he acknowledges Jesus as the uncompromised “Yes!” to God’s covenant with Israel. Jesus is every bit as much the Son of David as he is the Son of God, and until we come to terms with that Israel and Torah will be a source of confusion in our theology of escapist eschatology. But if we can come to terms with our favorite first-century Jewish carpenter, then we can see what it means that Gentiles join Jewish followers of God in their mission to bless the world.

That mission requires obedience and synergy, covenantal nomism. Jesus paid it all, and now we walk in his Way.

Good things happening at Seattle Pacific

OK, so I’m a little biased in favor of Seattle Pacific University considering Julie is both a full-time employee and full-time student there (then again, it isn’t vested interested creating opinion so much as SPU’s characteristics giving us a reason to associate with the University and develop bias – we moved to Seattle last year because these things were already true of SPU and we believe in what God is doing there – and since then our positive view of SPU has only been reinforced), but nonetheless I wanted to link over to the blog of SPU’s president, Philip Eaton.

In a time when many Christian colleges and seminaries are more interested in politically appeasing their denomination, directors, and trustees than worshiping God intellectually by following through on advances in biblical studies, Eaton seems to be bucking the trend. In the past few years his office has been responsible for bringing in biblical scholars such as Richard Hays, Jurgen Moltmann, and Nicholas Woltersdorf. You can jump over to Eaton’s blog and read some his positive thoughts regarding N.T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope. In other words, Eaton and other decision-makers at SPU are locating the University in the radical center – not pandering to the sometimes anti-intellectual hyperbole of Evangelicalism’s most conservative fringe or dissolving into the cowardice of Seattle Christianity’s more liberal wing.

All of this is being done in Seattle’s tumultuous climate for Christianity. The city’s most influential church gains its notoriety by espousing a mix of Augustinian determinism and neo-Fundamentalist suppression of all-things-gender-related concerning the boundary-breaking work of Christ. One of the city’s other major theological schools seems to be (in my opinion) lagging – training pastors in the language and conversations of Evangelicalism’s yesteryear – while another (very unintentionally, I’d say) seems to be turning out too many students who operate out of a deterministic controlling meta-narrative of soft science within which “the fall” is essentially what your parents did to you, soteriology rests in the redemptive work of your therapist, and following Christ (and any of the normative expectations connected with following Christ) is a tangential hobby.

In other words, while there are some good things happening in the city (sometimes even within those places I’ve criticized, I should add) Seattle is in need of leaders who can approach theology with wisdom (not wobbly liberalism or nut-job conservatism) and help navigate the Church through the uncertainty that is post-Christendom and the Electronic Age (both with the potential to be very, very good things). While it’s difficult to make monolithic endorsements of institutions that are as diverse as their many contributing voices, I feel good about saying that SPU is suited to be that voice in Seattle.

I feel good about Seattle being pastored by, among others, the wise voices emerging from within SPU.

And I feel good about recommending SPU to any college-age person who would enjoy learning from truly-orthodox voices (people whose teachings are consistent with Christ and the Early Church, and not simply Augustinian modifications) in a city where it is anything but simple or convenient to be a Christian.

Reviewing Wright’s Justification: Chapter Two

In the second chapter of Justification, “Rules of Engagement,” Wright sets out by saying that if we allow books like Ephesians and Colossians equal place to Romans and Galatians – letting each of these canonical texts inform the others on a basis of full mutuality – we arrive at “nothing short of a (very Jewish) cosmic soteriology.” Within Christ the world finds its summation, and now one family of Jews and Gentiles becomes “Christ’s body for the world.” (pgs 43-44)

Wright isn’t calling readers to prioritize Ephesians and Colossians over Romans and Galatians, but rather to hear Romans and Galatians outside of the old perspective by which our interpretation has been conditioned. Because Ephesians and Colossians have never fit nearly into the old perspective (Wright notes the Lutheran suspicion toward Ephesians, in particular), if we use them as a starting point we find that Romans and Galatians don’t actually fit into the old perspective either.

Immediately following that point regarding canonical conversation, Wright begins this top-notch tangent:

Supposing that had been the vision that gripped the imagination of the Reformers in the sixteenth century; supposing they had had, engraved on their hearts, that close and intimate combination of (a) saving grace accomplishing redemption in the once-and-for-all death of the Messiah and putting it into operation through faith, without works and (b) the proleptic unity of all humankind in Christ as the sign of God’s coming reign over the whole world; and supposing they had then, and only then, gone back to Romans and Galatians – the entire history of the Western church, and with it the world, might have been different. No split between Romans 3:28 and Romans 3:29. No marginalization of Romans 9-11. No scrunching of the subtle and important arguments about Jew-plus-Gentile unity in Galatians 3 onto the Procrustean bed of an abstract antithesis between faith and works. No insisting, in either letter, that ‘the law’ was just a ’system’ that applied to everyone, and that ‘works of the law’ were the moral requirements that encouraged people to earn their own salvation by moral effort. In short, the new perspective might have begun [at the Reformation]. Or perhaps we should say the new perspective did begin – when Ephesians was written. No wonder Lutheran scholars have been so suspicious of it. But why should that apply to conservative readers for whom it is every bit as much Holy Writ as Romans or Galatians?

“In particular, what Scripture actually says must be brought into creative dialogue with tradition. This is standard fare in beginner-level doctrine courses, and ‘conservative’ churches within the Protestant tradition have always insisted that they are ‘biblical,’ whereas other churches down the road are in thrall to human traditions of this or that kind. But here is the problem, which I hinted at in the opening chapter. Again and again, when faced with both new perspective and some of the other features of more recent Pauline scholarship, ‘conservative’ churches have reached not for Scripture but for tradition, as with Piper’s complaint that I am sweeping away fifteen hundred years of the church’s understanding. Of course, Piper himself wants to sweep away most of the same fifteen hundred years, especially anything from medieval Catholicism, and to rely instead on the narrow strand which comes through Calvin and the Westminster Confession. But whichever way you look at it, the objection is odd.” (pgs 44-45)

Wright then has at it with Piper’s selective ignorance of first-century Judaism. Piper claims that study of the first century context can “distort and silence what the New Testament writers intended to say,” an alarming claim he tries to support by saying that first-century extra-biblical literature has not been studied to the same extent as the New Testament, and so we lack the contextual awareness we bring to the Scriptures. (pg 48)

I can feel my mind going numb thinking about that. So the reason we can’t understand the extra-biblical literature is because we haven’t studied it enough – and that’s why we are wasting our time to study and emphasize it? Seriously? Meanwhile we do have a contextual awareness of the Bible – we just can’t muddy that by studying… its context. Piper goes as far to say that, in terms of word studies, we cannot know “how words were used in that world” outside of their biblical use. Wright responds by noting that Piper’s mindset, “seems to me dramatically to overstate the case.” (pg 49)

Conversely, Wright’s response might be an exercise in dramatic understatement. Even someone who disagrees with Piper about some or many things should be able to acknowledge that he’s likely above-average in terms of intelligence (it’s difficult to lead – directly and indirectly – as many people as Piper does without being a sharp person). Still, Piper’s attitude regarding the Bible’s first-century context is intellectually insulting, and comes across as hiding the facts for the sake of posturing an argument. It demonstrates a desperation that one would expect from a person who is trying to defend ground in a losing battle. Which then begs the question: is Piper really ready to die on the hill of his own Calvinism, or is his life and ministry about something bigger and better, the very topic of Paul’s obsession. (A witty person might ask Piper to not waste his life…) To hide or diminish the facts we can glean from first-century context to defend a philosophy of sixteenth-century origin is not the marker of a truth-seeker. If Piper is in the business of truth-seeking, he had better re-examine his mentality and motives toward the contextual setting of Scripture.

Wright devotes several pages of his second full chapter bemoaning Piper’s shirking off of first-century context in favor of a Protestant-originated interpretation of Paul, and Piper’s attitude that his is the “ordinary” interpretation, held by his oft-cited “ordinary folk.” The Bishop demonstrates his concern:

“It is worrying to find Piper encouraging readers to go back, not to the first century, but to ‘the Christian renewal movements of sixteenth-century Europe.’ To describe that period as offering the ‘historic roots’ of evangelicalism is profoundly disturbing. Proper evangelicals are rooted in Scripture, and above all in Jesus Christ to whom Scripture witnesses, and nowhere else.” (pg 51)

Reviewing Wright’s Justification: Introduction and Chapter One

Justification, N.T. Wright’s latest book, is the Bishop’s seemingly irritated response to John Piper, pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minn., and a figurehead of the “neo-Reformed” sect of Christianity. Wright clarifies that, already balancing a full schedule of pastoral and academic assignments, writing a rebuttal to Piper (who himself wrote The Future of Justification: A Response to N.T. Wright after Wright’s Paul: In Fresh Perspective) is necessary because of the subject matter and its implications. 

This isn’t back-and-forth for the sake of getting petty or something about which Christians should “agree to disagree.” To Wright, there’s simply too much riding on justification.

“. . . the question is about the nature and scope of salvation. Many Christians in the Western world, for many centuries now, have seen ’salvation’ as meaning ‘going to heaven when you die.’. . . In the Bible, salvation is not God’s rescue of people from the world but the rescue of the world itself. . .  Some Christians have used terms like justification and salvation as though they were almost interchangeable, but this is clearly untrue to Scripture itself.” (pgs 10-11)

Wright cites Piper’s theology of justification ignoring Paul is four main areas: the work of Jesus as Israel’s Messiah, its covenant nature (bringing about the end of exile), the lawcourt metaphor (in which God finds Himself “in favor” of those who follow Jesus; not merely allowing Jesus to transpose his moral achievement to his followers), and eschatology (a full narrative understanding of what God is doing in the entire world). (pgs 11-12)

“What’s All This About, and Why Does it Matter?” is the first full chapter of Justification, Wright comes out of the gate with frustration that Piper and similar theologians demonstrate a concern for “God’s glory” while espousing an eisogeted theology of justification that is centered on individuals finding their ticket of escape from the world. Wright does not discount the value of personal salvation but scoffs at a concocted theology that places mankind at the center of the universe (with no regard for a more universal eschatological plan). (pg 23) 

“. . . the real point is, I believe, that the salvation of human beings, though of course extremely important for those human beings, is part of a larger purpose. God is rescuing us from the shipwreck of the world, not so that we can sit back and put our feet up in his company, but so that we can be part of his plan to remake the world.” (pg 24)

This is no petty argument or nit-picking theological tangent. The nature and scope of salvation have been misstated, leading people to a Westernized individualistic construction in which the “sinner’s prayer” is an end-all-be-all ticket to otherworldliness, with little or no place give to participation in God’s great exilic work in the universe. Of the overall aim for Justification, Wright says, “I hope that the next generation, without preexisting reputations to lose and positions to maintain, will get the message.”

Piper, as well as some early reviews of this book, have accused Wright of constructing a “confusing gospel.” Wright responds to such a mentality toward him and the New Perspective:

“Sometimes, faced with a jigsaw puzzle, one is tempted to make it apparently easier by ignoring half the pieces. Put them back into the box! I can’t cope with that many! The result is of course that the puzzle is made harder, not easier. However, one can imagine someone, having made this initial disastrous move, trying to remedy the situation by brute force, joining together pieces that don’t quite fit in order to create some sort of picture anyway.” (pg 31)

The old perspective on Paul tossed out critical “pieces” of Paul’s theology: “Abraham and the promises God made to him, incorporation into Christ, resurrection and new creation, resurrection and new creation, the coming together of Jews and Gentiles, eschatology in the sense of God’s purpose-driven plan through history, and, not least, the Holy Spirit and the formation of Christian character.” (pgs 31-32)

Wright calls out Piper for completely sidelining passage such as Romans 2.25-29 and Romans 10.6-9 in his treatment of Paul and for picking out Paul’s Genesis 15 reference without consideration for the meaning of the full text toward which Paul was directing his readers. “When Paul quotes Scripture, he regularly intends to refer, not simply to the actual words quoted, but to the whole passage.” (pgs 32-33)

Of the impact of a narrative, covenantal approach to Scripture, the Bishop says:

“God had a single plan all along through which he intended to rescue the world and the human race, and that this single plan was centered upon the call of Israel, a call which Paul saw coming to fruition in Israel’s representative, the Messiah. Read Paul like this, and you can keep all the jigsaw pieces on the table.” (pg 35, italics his)

McKnight’s endorsement of Wright’s Justification

As if I needed any help getting excited about reading Justification, this back-cover endorsement from Scot McKnight pretty much knocked me off my chair:

“Tom Wright has out-Reformed America’s newest religious zealots – the neo-Reformed – by taking them back to Scripture and to its meaning in its historical context. Wright reveals that the neo-Reformed are more committed to tradition than to the sacred text. The irony is palpable on every page of this judicious, hard-hitting, respectful study.”

What I’ve read of Justification so far has not let me down. Julie is also reading the book, and she pointed out to me last night (and I think I agree) that Wright writes far more lucidity when he’s annoyed. Thanks, John Piper, for prodding out what might be the strongest overview of the New Perspective to date.

Re-examining justification

Ben Witherington III has a review of N.T. Wright’s new book that I am absolutely begging you (whether you’re a close friend or a total stranger) to read. In my opinion, BW3’s review sums up Wright’s theology in language that is far easier to understand than Wright’s own voice, but these are theological advances that could help us emerge from a Reformed framework of salvation (while Wright is considered Reformed, by “Reformed framework” I’m referring to the conclusions of American Evangelical Reformed “gatekeepers” like Don Carson and John Piper), back to the justification viewpoint held by the Apostle Paul and many of the Early Church leaders.

To put it ever-bluntly: If Wright is correct – and I wholeheartedly believe his theology of justification is an improvement on the typical Reformed view – then many Christians have been misguided and misrepresenting the gospel when answering the question, “Who are the people of God?” 

Please take time to read the entire review.

The Resurrection, fatalism, and the problem with the Church calendar

Good words from N.T. Wright:

“To preach the Resurrection is to announce the fact that the world is a different place, and that we have to live in that ‘different-ness.’ The Resurrection is not just God doing a wacky miracle at one time. We have to preach it in a way that says this was the turning point in world history.”

Amen and Amen.

Lately I’ve been thinking about the difference between a linear Hebraic approach to history and time over-against the circular mindset that Israel’s pagan neighbors and the Hellenistic philosophers demonstrated toward history, and how these preconceptions influence the way we celebrate holidays – the ways we remember our story. 

Biblical Israel celebrated their feasts with devotion, partly because God commanded them to remember the situation from which they arose (particularly in the case of Passover as remembrance of their emergence out of Egypt). But it was in the context of a people who understood that history is linear, that they weren’t designed to return to that from which they were freed. It is abundantly clear, in the instances when Israel does forget their story and re-enters bondage, that this is not God’s plan for them. The purpose of remembering the story was not to re-live its highs and lows in a circular way, but to remember all the reasons why they should continue going forward in the ways of God.

Remember captivity – don’t re-enter captivity – so that you can walk in freedom. 

Fast-forward to Christianity, which suffers still today from the Early Church’s concessions to Hellenistic philosophy and pagan ideas regarding fatalism and circular history (the gods are going to do what the gods are going to do, and everything comes around…). How does a circular view of history shape the way people remember their story?

Many churches today celebrate a “Church calendar” that includes Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, Easter, and Pentecost. By no means is there anything wrong with observing these moments within Christian history. It’s great that people want to be well-versed in each and every phase of their faith history (though they don’t even do that really; most Gentile Christians disregard any and all traditions and celebrations carried over from Judaism, which is a sorry disregard for our rich inheritance as those adopted into Israel). What I really want to call into question is the role a circular, fatalistic view of history plays in our approach to holidays.

When we approach holidays with a fatalistic understanding of history, we don’t merely recognize each season of Christ’s journey or our own history as a point along a line, something out of which we emerge, but rather as an endless cycle in which we are trapped. In this cycle there is no differentiation among the holidays. We aren’t living in Easter or Pentecost any more than we are living in Lent. Our celebrations become continuous dramatizations of the same cycle (a treadmill and not a trajectory). It’s different than to say that we live in a point of tension between two seasons along the linear model of progressive time (the already-but-not-yet of the New Testament and the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God); no, this is truly the antithesis of eschatology – there is no expectation for change within ourselves or within our world.

We just go round and round. Bound to the cycles of history. Pushed around by the gods.

Again, this is in clear contrast with the Hebraic understanding of linear time. Again, there’s a difference between remembering you were set free from captivity in Egypt and trying to simulate that captivity. Going further, there is a danger in simulating that captivity: you could very easily begin to define yourself presently in the images and terms of that captivity. 

This is what happens to the Church calendar when approached from a circular, fatalistic lens. It’s no wonder that a Hellenistic, fatalistic, circular view of history leads to a diminished expectation toward Christ’s impact on humankind (am I making up a term to say “Christoanthropology”?), such as that which was held by Augustine, who was certainly trapped in a circular view of history.

A person’s view of history seems to, by necessity, correlate with his/her thoughts on the potential for humanity (not the necessary trajectory of humanity but the possibilities for humanity’s trajectory).

Let me put it differently: say a person undergoes a three-month period of real darkness in his life – maybe extreme substance abuse or something along those lines – but breaks away from that darkness and is now staying clean. It’s possible that, in stopping his abuse, a lot about his lifestyle changed – the clothes he wears, the music he listens to, his sleep schedule, etc. It might be a good idea for him to set aside a concrete time when he can give recognition to the fact that he came out of hardship (maybe he’d celebrate the yearly anniversary of cutting off the substance abuse and living clean).

But wouldn’t it be weird as hell for that person to devote a three-month period of his year to commemorating his emergence from his old life by going back to his old clothes, music, sleep schedule, etc.? None of us would think that was a good idea. What if he went around telling people he is, in present time, an addict? What if he actually went back to the drugs? None of us think that’s a healthy way to “remember,” do we? There is a huge risk in self-definition if he goes through with any of these bad ideas, and we’d all agree that it’s overkill.

Where I’m going with this is that we are, as Christians, Easter people. And we’re invited to be Pentecost people. These are things that are true of us and our reality in real time. A lot of things are valuably true about our past, but these things are intended by God to be part of our present-tense lives.

In real time, we aren’t waiting for a Messiah. In real time, he came.

In real time, we’re not merely Incarnation people. In real time, we’re people who incarnate the beginning of realized Easter hope. And we are meant to have the tools of Pentecost at our disposal as we live incarnationally in real time. 

Now I’m all about giving our history due diligence. As a matter of fact, maybe the most widely read thing I’ve ever written is an article about not reading Easter into the Christmas story, but celebrating Incarnation for Incarnation’s sake. So I’m not being a hater here. It’s just that it seems we get into trouble when we can’t celebrate the past without understanding that history (and, by result, our self-definition as Christians) is to be understood in potentially-progressive linear terms.

Otherwise the Church calendar only fuels our spiritual impotence. We become people who neglect the faculties and possibilities of Easter and Pentecost because we are too busy playing fatalist dress-up.

The resurrection stops being central to our story because, in needing to define ourselves in the terms of Advent, we center our story around the hope of a returning Messiah (rather than taking up the invitation of an already-here Messiah to build his Kingdom).

Rather than seeing Lent as a season out of which we’ve emerged, we define our present lives in its language. So when trouble hits, we muster up some motivational speech about finding solidarity in a Suffering Servant while giving no attention to the idea that Pentecost provided us a Helper to overcome at least some types of suffering. I’m not saying that we never suffer, or that solidarity with Christ is entirely unimportant. But thank God we have more than solidarity with a dead, decomposed Suffering Servant. 

But isn’t that where a lot of people are in terms of self-definition? The hope of Easter and the strength of Pentecost are matched, if not outweighed, by a whiny emo gospel in which we have no victory over sin and death, just a heroic martyr to identify with as we celebrate our frailty.

Even within missional-emergent circles there is a reluctance to really live in the real-time events. I’ll prod and maybe make enemies by going ahead and saying that I think the reason for this failure is due, in large part, to low pneumatology and connected fear of looking more ecstatic than hip. It’s as much of a control game as anything we saw in modern (as opposed to post-modern) forms of church.

In a culture that loves self-promotion and dreads embarrassment, maybe emergent Christians don’t want to risk the diminished mystique of fully abandoning themselves to the work of the Spirit. It goes against our culturally-conditioned obsession with all things moderate and mild-mannered. 

There’s safety in going round and round in a cyclical calendar with our fatalistic assumptions. We don’t have to be torn away from that which used to define us (we’re like the passed-over Israelite who decides to return to Egypt, or the recovering addict who goes back to his old habits to give recognition to that chapter of life).

And no one will mistake us for being radicals. Our persona is in-tact.

I’ll come back to my opening quote from Wright:

“To preach the Resurrection is to announce the fact that the world is a different place, and that we have to live in that ‘different-ness.’ The Resurrection is not just God doing a wacky miracle at one time. We have to preach it in a way that says this was the turning point in world history.”

Or, to put it differently, we might consider some words from the Apostle Paul (Romans 6.4-11): 

Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

I affirm what the Apostle Paul and N.T. Wright are saying: the resurrection and its ensuing Pentecost are our defining moments. We have a rich history worth acknowledging – filled with important moments of expectation and suffering. But history is not a circular mechanism, nor are we defined equally by all of these events. 

The possibilities, energy, equipment, faculties, and potential of Easter and Pentecost are readily available to all who want to follow Christ out of unnecessary cycles and into a linear trajectory toward something beautiful.

Observations on The New Calvinism

TIME Magazine published its annual “What’s Next” installment for 2009 – 10 ideas that TIME claims will change the world this year – and on it they listed “The New Calvinism.” Here’s a snippet:

Calvinism is back… John Calvin’s 16th century reply to medieval Catholicism’s buy-your-way-out-of-purgatory excesses is Evangelicalism’s latest success story, complete with an utterly sovereign and micromanaging deity, sinful and puny humanity, and the combination’s logical consequence, predestination: the belief that before time’s dawn, God decided whom he would save (or not), unaffected by any subsequent human action or decision.

I read through the TIME piece last night, collected some thoughts and slept on them last night in hopes that I can make some observations that are true to my beliefs while not setting off a wildfire of offense. (I’m even listening to the most chilled out music I can find while I write this so as to dilute my pathos, and spent an extra long time this morning staring at the snowcapped mountains around Seattle, also a source of calm.)

For what it’s worth, my negative observations are about ideas, not people (I’d love to see the people with these ideas find new ideas…) and my last observation is very positive, I think. So here it goes, a few observations on The New Calvinism.

Not all responses to postmodernity are innovative

There are different ways of reacting to modernity in our postmodern climate. I think we’ve all been down this road before, but the prefix post does not infer that something is anti; it could very well be hyper; truly, post should be read as “beyond.” We are certainly living in a postmodern shift, and each of us responds to our situation in unique (and sometimes polar opposite) ways. 

It should come as no real surprise that some people’s reaction to a radically changing world would be to stand behind “Absolute Truth,” a propositional epistemology, and a faith this is “historic.” We crave answers to the big questions, needs, and theodicies of our existence. So when a pastor with a commanding personality can rise up and assure us that TULIP – and make no mistake, The New Calvinism is just as much about TULIP as Calvinism past (I would argue they’re more ready to die on that hill than their predecessors) – explains the complexities of existence, that pastor is bound to find some people who crave clear, crisp answers to detailed, complex questions.

All that to say I don’t know that The New Calvinism is an innovation so much as a regurgitation. In fifty years we might look back on this as TULIP’s final punches (at least for awhile; there may always be a tendency within some to return to that type of thinking). There’s a difference between a new guard and an old guard that is fighting like hell to still be the guard.

I don’t know that TIME is necessarily saying The New Calvinism is positive change so much as something shaking our world today. (How many Christians spend too much of their time doing damage control on a few New Calvinists’ handling of the gospel? Some of this is relating with people outside the faith, but a lot of it is on a discipleship level – healing people of a view of the God who gives us cancer and stirs up Holocausts as part of his deterministic blueprint.) This is not innovation; it’s anything but. It’s the old guard, often dressed in hipster garb, drinking a few beers and hanging out in urban centers – and still preaching individual election and limited atonement, making some people out to be predestined for hell and claiming that the blood of Jesus is not intended for all people. If that’s innovation…

The selling points are unflattering at best

The New Calvinism seems to believe that antinomianism is a selling point. I don’t think it’s something you’d necessarily hear from a New Calvinist pastor so much as a parishioner who has drunk the Kool-Aid and is wearing the t-shirt. Let’s all live like hell cause we’re going to heaven, right? We can play the once-saved-always-saved card (at least until someone pulls a Ted Haggard and we’re suddenly offended by his sin, in which case we distance ourselves from that guy, who wasn’t really part of the Elect anyway). 

I don’t believe that most Calvinists are antinomian, which is why I’m so amused when they posture to be, and so concerned when parishioners join Calvinist churches in order that they might continue to be. 

You know what debunks antinomianism? An awareness of corporate – not individual – election and an awareness of our freedom of will to participate in that corporate entity. That’s Kingdom theology. Sobering up to Scripture’s use of election language prevents us from going off the deep end of antinomianism, while understanding the type of holiness this Kingdom loves will steer us away from rigid legalism.

I think it’s odd that a Christian contingent would advertise its limitation of women in roles of ministry as a selling point, explicitly or implicitly. While Calvinists of previous generations have sheepishly downplayed their approach to women in ministry, The New Calvinism wants you to know they’re all about getting women into the kitchen and away from the pulpit. I am not nearly as offended by the hyper-conservative approach to women in leadership (though I think it finds opposition in the trajectory of the New Testament) as I am with a religious group that, I perceive, prides itself on limiting women and celebrating a view of masculinity that is at odds with Jesus, the Apostle Paul, the better days of Israel’s history, and early Christianity.

Again, I’m not feeling the innovation. 

While the Gladiator mentality on masculinity is not my largest reservation about The New Calvinism, it is such an obvious stray from the biblical narrative that I question whether The New Calvinism can continue to be inextricably linked to the Gladiator mentality and remain located within orthodox Christianity. Maybe this is an area in which the old Calvinists need to drop the hammer on The New Calvinism.

Does The New Calvinism have the keys to the old Calvinism’s castle?

One of the reasons why Calvinism has lasted, I think, is the amount of resources tied up in its institutions. Reformed colleges, seminaries, and parachurch organizations dominate the landscape of American Christendom. There’s old money to keep new generations of future pastors passing through the schools, planting churches, and sniffing the TULIP. (This dynamic is becoming more stronger as Baptists in America become more and more connected to Calvin’s theology. Maybe this new marriage is founded on Calvinists and Baptists responding to the postmodern shift in similar ways?)

While Al Mohler, John Piper, and other Baptists are beginning to passionately endorse Calvinism, I think it would be helpful to orthodox Christianity if America’s “Princeton Reformed” (those who better connect with Karl Barth and NT Wright than with John Piper and Al Mohler) held the “young, restless, Reformed” to greater accountability. It’s one thing for a “Wesleymergentcostal” like myself to critique The New Calvinism, but it really needs to come from within the “Reformed” umbrella (however ambiguous) so that young people who grow up in traditionally Reformed denominations are never convinced that their options are TULIP or hell (which might be where things are heading within Calvinist sects).

I believe that moderate Reformed types who themselves do not hold to TULIP should distance themselves and their resources from teachers of TULIP and especially those sects who create their identity on a backwoods treatment of women. Mature Reformed Christians should take seriously their claim to be always reforming, and should find the courage to reject as false particular teachings that contemporary biblical and theological studies are prepared to dismiss (even if those teachings were delivered by Luther and Calvin and once held by the “historic” Reformed Church). Postmodernism demands of us a robust and nuanced epistemology that The New Calvinism isn’t prepared to offer.

I wonder if the schools and organizations historically connected with the Reformed stream of Christianity will be handed over to The New Calvinists, more widely opened to the whole of orthodox Christianity, or maintain their present position (which is to not really be too Reformed theologically but maintain the name for old time’s sake).

Just another form of monergy and fatalism

Last year, this same “What’s Next” series (the same author, David Van Biema, actually) highlighted “Re-Judaizing Jesus” as an idea that would (and it did) transform the world in 2008. Make no mistake, though – you can’t re-Judaize Jesus and preach Calvin’s gospel. Not with any integrity. Because what happens when you study the context of Jesus’ first-century message is you find Jesus preaching against religious sects that believed they had all of that election business figured out and didn’t have to work out their salvation and bring about the Kingdom of God. 

As a matter of fact, Jesus says we can make all of the right confessions about him, but if we don’t do what his Father wants, then we aren’t connected to him (Matthew 7 if you’re curious). (Hmm, maybe we’re not justified in our belief in the proposition of justification by faith. Hmm.)

We are hard pressed to find Jesus preaching to people about their depravity; rather he invites them to partner with God to bring about the Kingdom; he heals them but asks them to go and sin no more (holiness matters to this Jesus guy). As a matter of fact, with all of this love and holiness business, and all of his crazy esteeming of women, and the whole non-violence, dying-naked-on-a-cross business, I have a feeling Jesus wouldn’t fare well in The New Calvinism.

Come to think of it, I bet The New Calvinism would see the historic Jesus as a “Richard Simmons, hippie, queer Christ… neutered and limp-wristed popular Sky Fairy.” I bet the historic Jesus would come into a church of The New Calvinism, raise some difficult questions, and be asked to hush up or leave. (Maybe I’m wrong. Do you think I’m wrong?)

Not only would Jesus struggle within The New Calvinism, but so would Paul, James, and most of the Early Church Fathers (at least until Augustine). Many of them would get the same bad rap for not having the right kind of masculinity (maybe Peter could get sucked into The New Calvinism because this time he could get away with cutting off Malchus’ ear without some “limp-wristed Sky Fairy” telling him not to).

“Why are we turning plowshares back into swords?!” the Early Church leaders would exclaim.

Not only that, but they’d balk at a fatalist view of predestination, and a monergism eerily similar to their polytheistic pagan neighbors’ view of the Greek gods.

“Since when did we become fatalists and quasi-gnostics?” they would ask.

“Talk to Augustine,” I would reply. Then we would all give Augustine a disappointed stare. But I don’t think he’d notice. He’d be sharing a flask with the inked up New Calvinists, trying not to notice the systematic monster he helped create.

One of the reasons people respond to the postmodern shift by clinging to Calvinism is that they trust its historicity. They see the preservation of Calvinism as necessarily correlating with the preservation of Christ’s message. If biblical scholars and church leaders spent more time studying and explaining the roots of Augustinian predestination, I wonder if New Calvinists would be forced to back off from some of their theological positions. I think all of us would learn important, compelling things by studying the roots of Augustinian fatalism.

I imagine that New Calvinists, like me, don’t want a faith that is established ex nihilo in the fourth or sixteenth centuries, or rooted in systems of thought that are at odds with Christ and his first followers. Each of us wants to participate in something that is truly connected to the first-century message of Christ (and even before Christ, when we rightly locate him in relation to Judaism). I hope we all find exactly that.

There’s plenty of hope in a God who is willing to shape us

As far off as we might be from the advanced Kingdom of God, I think we have much to be excited about. First off, the patience and grace that God shows each of us as we try to understand and live out our identity in light of who He is and what He desires.

Additionally, I’m excited that one of the things that marks The New Calvinism is its tendency to pursue God in music and prayer during their corporate worship in a fashion that is maybe more sincere and less stagnant than previous generations of Calvinists. We would all do well to pursue God in that way, to be transformed by our Helper, the Spirit, into the people (and Church) God desires. 

I’m always going to be optimistic about a group of people who are spending time in pursuit of God. My hope for The New Calvinism is that such pursuit of God, and not doctrines of limited atonement and their treatment of women, would typify their ecclesial behavior and their identity going forward.