Mike King

Easter Day Reversal

Jesus Christ, who was born in some kind of stable, most likely a cave; who was an itinerant  teacher without a permanent home; who had enemies who sought to end his life; who was arrested and charged with treason and blasphemy; who was tortured, ridiculed, crucified, died, buried and descended to the dead; is now Jesus Christ resurrected.  The resurrection puts an exclamation on the reality that Jesus Christ is God Incarnate.

"If confidence in the resurrection tends to modify the deadliness of Calvary, likewise it is only those who have first looked into the mouth of hell and seen the world abandoned to its godless fate who then can truly see the meaning of the Easter Day reversal.  For reversal is precisely what the empty tomb announces: the inversion of everything which the death and burying of Christ implied."  Alan Lewis, Between Cross and Resurrection, page 88.

God in the Grave?

So the issue I have been pondering all morning is that the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, his death, his burial, his descending unto the dead is not only a human experience.  Sure, the resurrection of Jesus insures that Jesus crucifixion is something more than Stephen being stoned to death or William Tyndale being strangled and burned at the stake.  Jesus' death involves God's work of redemption.  If God works through Jesus Christ to bring about reconciliation between God and human beings (really all creation) doesn't this involve the Triune God in the suffering?

I know this brings up the issue of the impassability of God.  The purpose of my post is not to plumb the depths of this classical theological issue but to enter into this day - Holy Saturday - and the experience of the seemingly hopelessness of the day for Jesus' disciples.  Even though we know the narrative and that Jesus' resurrection is coming, we cannot ignore the implications and realities of Jesus Christ, Son of God, dying, buried and descending to the dead.

"In the hour of Jesus’ deepest need, he could not feel the presence of God, because there  were no redemptive possibilities that God could provide, no aims which could vouchsafe to him the infinite resourcefulness of the divine life in clothing his actions with resplendent meaning, sending him forth with renewed courage. For Jesus, there was only the cross and death. In his cross the weakness of God is revealed, as he stood by powerless to comfort his beloved. The worst of it was that God intimately experienced Jesus’ awareness that this sustaining grace had suddenly been taken from him. God did not abandon Jesus, but he knew this abandonment, as Jesus knew it, in the depths of his being." Lewis Ford.

Reading this quote, which I found this morning, creates tension within me - "weakness of God is revealed."  But is also stirs up passionate love that "God did not abandon Jesus, but he knew this abandonment, as Jesus knew it, in the depths of his being."  God, the Triune God has entered into our suffering.  What amazing love.  I think that this is one of the reasons why so many people are moved by a book like The Shack because they see God not as above and beyond our pain and suffering, someone who could control evil but chooses not to, but a God who does understand - a Crucified God. 

Alan Lewis, in the book Between Cross and Resurrection: A Theology of Holy Saturday which I'm reading this week, asks, "Was the Word ever truly immanent in flesh  and time, has the immortal truly promised new life to mortal bodies (Rom. 8:11), if God is not 'Immanuel: God with us' in the grave, where we are most emphatially temporal, and mortal flesh and blood?"

God is with us in our pain and suffering - with us!  God understands and enters into the reality of our lives with the hope of reconciliation and restoration of all things.  God has not recused Godself from humanity at its most desperate and lonely place - death and the grave.  God is among us in our brokenness working to redeem and restore.  Our God and King of the Universe is a crucified Lamb.

"Joseph took the body, wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and placed it in his own new tomb that he had cut out of the rock. He rolled a big stone in front of the entrance to the tomb and went away." Matthew 27:59, 60

Hmmm...

I had an interesting discussion yesterday on the issues of "works-righteousness" and the "righteousness of Christ through faith."  This issue has been around for 2,000 years and will continue to be until we get beyond - "for we see now through a mirror obscurely, and then face to face; now I know in part, and then I shall fully know, as also I was known; (I Corinthians 13:12, Young's Literal Translation)."

There is moral tension between "works-righteousness" and "righteousness of Christ through faith."  Alan Lewis asks, "Do we rely on 'natural' human understanding and knowledge, or on that which is gifted to us in God's own self-revelation in Christ?"  I embrace Faith seeking Understanding but the conversation seems to turn to how much "information," "knowledge," etc. do we have to "get right" to be orthodox or to be saved? 

Last night, as I was thinking about these issues, I came across some writing by Reformed Theologian Thomas Torrance.  Torrance, who died two years ago, is (in my opinion) one of the greatest Theologians of the 20th Century.  I have been a fan of Torrance since my Dogmatics Professor in Seminary Dr. T.A. Noble (he did his PhD. under Torrance in Edinburgh) turned me on to him.  Torrance' book The Mediation of Christ had a significant impact on me. 

Here is Torrance weighing in on an aspect of this issue, "He who boasts of orthodoxy thus sins against Justification by Christ alone, for he justifies himself by appeal to his own beliefs, or his own formulation of belief, and thereby does despite to the truth and grace of Christ.  Once a Church begins to boast of its 'orthodoxy' it begins to fall from grace. (Theology in Reconstruction)"

I would add that once we (I) boast of my "orthodoxy" we (I) begin to fall from grace.  Thank God, that I am saved not through my certainty in a particular ordo salutis but I am saved through the faithfulness of Christ Jesus.

Seminaries in Trouble

Wow, think about the ramifications - both opportunities and challenges - of this.

Ressourcement Theology, Aggiornamento,and the Hermeneutics of Tradition

My good friend Dana Nearmyer sent me an article about the Ressourcement Theological movement.  He said that much of what he read reminded him of me. 

I’ve been influenced by the early writers of Christian Theology through my studies at Nazarene Theological Seminary and my emphasis on Christian History and Thought.  NTS is committed to exposing their students to Source Documents of the early church.  At the same time my passion to think creatively about theology, ecclesiology and Christian Formation has led me to consider these texts and the whole genre of Patristics in an imaginative, hopefully, innovative manner as I move forward to embrace a practical theology for today and tomorrow.    

The Ressourcement Theological movement has sought to return to the writings of the early church and the works and ideas of the early Fathers of Christianity.  This move toward consideration of the past is for the purpose of invigorating our current Theological thinking and practice.

In this Theological construct Christian tradition is viewed as “a vital and dynamic force that is not retrograde, but progressive.”

Here are some excerpts from the article that I thought were helpful in understanding the importance of Ressourcement Theology.

“… theologians since the seventeenth century had been overly fascinated with closed, clear systems. This excessive preoccupation with clarity and systematization had impoverished Western theology and had seriously diminished its sense of mystery.
The loss of a sense of God's transcendent mystery by a rationalistic theology was the very thing, noted Daniélou, that Kierkegaard had reacted against. Theology in his day had made God an object, so he affirmed the mystery of a personal God, accessible only through love. In so doing, he recalled the theologian to the attitude of reverence with which the mystery ought to be approached. "We find here one of the characteristic traits of theological renewal, this sense of the mystery of God which gives negative theology its place."  This zeal for the transcendence and unfathomable mystery of God will prove to be one of the hallmarks of the theology of ressourcement. For Daniélou, de Lubac, and others, the existential ethos of the mid-twentieth century helps spark a rediscovery of the Church's traditional teaching that God is the Supreme Subject, the Person par excellence, whose self-revelation in Scripture is intelligible but never fully comprehensible.

What Thomas and the Fathers had done was to distill the essence of the tradition for their respective generations. In their organic conception of the unity of theology and life as well as in their hermeneutical effort to re-articulate traditional doctrine in the language of their contemporaries, these classical theologians offer today's Church a paradigm of authentic theological method. It would, then, be entirely unfaithful to the character of their thought merely to parrot their material categories. Instead, it is necessary to emulate their great achievements in the hermeneutics of tradition. In the words of Balthasar:

In order to remain faithful to herself and to her mission, the latter [the Church] must continually make the effort of creative invention. Before the Gentiles who came to enter a Church which was an heir to the Synagogue, Paul was obliged to invent. The Greek Fathers had to do the same in the face of Hellenistic culture and Saint Thomas in the face of arabic science and philosophy. We must do nothing less before the problems of our own day.

Perhaps the greatest lesson we can draw from the ressourcement theologians is that there is no contradiction between fidelity to tradition and creative freedom. Quite to the contrary, they show us that the latter is actually a product of the former. This is because, as they learned from Péguy and Blondel, the Christian tradition is a vital and dynamic force that is not retrograde, but progressive. In recent years Jaroslav Pelikan has confirmed the most basic insight of ressourcement theology: throughout two thousand years of Christian history, the most creative thinkers have been at the same time the most traditional.” Ressourcement Theology, Aggiornamento, and the Hermeneutics of Tradition

I wrote a section in my book Presence Centered Youth Ministry about Tradition.  I quote Pelikan... "Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living, but Tradition is the living faith of the dead."  The Pelikan reference in the above excerpt is the money quote, "In recent years Jaroslav Pelikan has confirmed the most basic insight of ressourcement theology: throughout two thousand years of Christian history, the most creative thinkers have been at the same time the most traditional.”  Agree or disagree?

Reclaiming Paul - Michael Gorman

It was really good to work with Michael Gorman in putting together Reclaiming Paul.  Gorman gave a wonderful overview of his book Reading Paul at the conference.  He made the following statement that emphasized one of the issues that I think was really important about the Reclaiming Paul conference.

"We must move from a narrow theory of atonement to a broad theology of atonement."

Reclaiming Paul - Kathy Grieb

We are in a discussion initiated by Ross Wagner on Paul and Reconciliation.  Kathy Grieb, one of the panelist responding to Ross, just quoted Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai.

From the place where we are right
    Flowers will never grow
    In the spring.

    The place where we are right
    Is hard and trampled
    Like a yard.

    But doubts and loves
    Dig up the world
    Like a mole, a plow.

    And a whisper will be heard in the place
    Where the ruined
    House once stood.

Reclaiming Paul - Stephen Fowl

  I'm listening to Stephen Fowl speak right now on the subject of Paul and Narrative.   Stephen Fowl is Chair of the Department of Theology of Loyola College of Maryland.  Fowl's latest book is a commentary on Philippians.  Fowl made a comment that Philippians 1:27 speaks of the call to the Philippian believers to "order their common life."  Fowl stated that this communal effort to order their common life is the whole basis of the letter to the Philippians.  Look at some comments from his book on this point here.

This led to a lively discussion on spiritual formation in the church that has been more based on a consumptive narrative instead of a communal narrative that embraced a pedagogy of apprenticeship.

Speaking of the importance of Paul and Narrative, narrative to the churches he wrote to, requires a follower of Jesus Christ to be more of an apprentice than a student.  The narrative that we live in in our churches is everything.

It seems that the narrative that dominates the Church in North America today is more of a consumptive narrative.  We come together to consume information.  Fowl gave an example of asking “who taught you to read?”  Although you may not remember the name of the teachers who taught you to read, you do remember the practice and experience and people who taught you to read.  This is because it is a process of being an apprentice.  On the other hand Fowl asked, “Who taught you to watch TV?”  Of course, no one taught us to watch TV, or to consume. 

What do you think?  Is the spiritual formation in our churches today more consumptive, more like learning to watch TV instead of being apprenticed, learning to be a follower of Jesus in a way that is more like learning to read?

Speaking of N. T. Wright

Since I quoted N.T. Wright in my last post, I thought I would mention a couple of other things about the world's leading New Testament Scholar.

First - Bishop N.T. Wright appeared on The Colbert Report, Thursday June 19th to discuss his new book Surprised by Hope. 

Second - Don Garlington reviewed John Piper's book The Future of Jusitification: A Response to N.T. Wright.   

Garlington writes, "As much as anything, the book is flawed by its near phobia of anything that smacks of newness and freshness, which, for Piper, must be suspect by definition. This is why we are exhorted to be suspicious of "our love of novelty" (neophilia) and eager to test the biblical interpretations by "the wisdom of the centuries" (38). Agreed, but surely "the wisdom of the centuries" included our own century. Wright is precisely correct: we are "to think new thoughts arising from the text and to dare to try them out in word and deed" (quoted on 37. emphasis added). Piper would do well to recall Matt. 13:52: "And he said to them, Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure things new and old.'" I would say the appropriate response to matters "new" and "fresh" is not skepticism but the Berean spirit of searching the Scriptures to see if these things are so (Acts 17:11)."

Mike DeVries comments on this issue here.

Reclaiming Paul

This week we had another organizational meeting for the Reclaiming Paul: The Apostle in the Emerging World conference.  The conference is going to be seminal.  The conference will be in Kansas City and the dates are October 22 - 24.  The registrations will be limited to around 300 and we are well on the way with the registrations that have come in so far.  Here is why I am excited about this conference.  I believe that there is a significant correction taking place in North America concerning ecclesiology.  A surfacing generation of church planters and leaders having been exploring what it means to be missional in our culture and set forth a biblical and robustly spiritual proclamation (both verbally and non-verbally) of the Great Good News.  I believe that Jesus and the Gospels have largely guided this movement and that an engagement with Paul has been mostly ignored.  I am passionate about the conversation moving theologically in a broader context with the serious embrace of the Pauline corpus.    I am excited that more followers of Jesus Christ will see Paul through more biblical lenses and get a glimpse of the amazing narrative that Paul sets forth in the New Testament.  This has huge ramifications for church, culture, youth ministry, spiritual formation, creation and narrative theology, soteriology, Kingdom of God, missio dei, and on and on...  The other cool thing about this conference is that it will not be the typical academic conference where the scholars come in and read a scholarly paper.  The scholars will be giving short presentations and then interacting with the practitioners and conference attendees.  It really is a different conference format that should impact the academic and practical ministry worlds.

The line-up of scholars is stellar.
 
    "Reclaiming Paul:  An Invitation"
    Michael J. Gorman, Professor of Sacred Scripture
    Ecumenical Institute of Theology
    St. Mary's Seminary and University (Baltimore, MD)

 "Paul & Narrative (Story)"
    Stephen E. Fowl, Professor of Theology
    Loyola College (Baltimore, MD)






   "Paul & Salvation (God's Story)"
    A. Katherine Grieb, Associate Professor of New Testament
    Virginia Theological Seminary (Alexandria, VA)








  "Paul & the Church (Our Story & Stories)"
   J. Ross Wagner, Associate Professor of New Testament
   Princeton Theological Seminary (Princeton, NJ)






Conversation Moderators &/or Workshop Leaders:
David B. Capes
Interim Dean of the Honors College
Houston Baptist University
(Houston, TX)
Senior Theological Review Director
The Voice Bible Project

Daniel Kirk
Assistant Professor of New Testament
Fuller Theological Seminary (Pasadena, CA)

John Franke
Professor of Theology
Biblical Seminary (Hatfield, PA)

Brent Laytham
Associate Professor of Theology & Ethics
North Park Theological Seminary (Chicago, IL)

Andy Johnson
Professor of New Testament
Nazarene Theological Seminary
(Kansas City, MO)   

Kara Lyons Pardue
Ph.D. student in New Testament
Princeton Theological Seminary (Princeton, NJ)

Tony Jones
National Coordinator
Emergent Village (Edina, MN)

Doug Pagitt
Pastor
Solomon’s Porch (Minneapolis, MN)

Tim Keel
Pastor
Jacob’s Well Church (Kansas City, MO)   

Danielle Shroyer
Pastor
Journey Church (Dallas, TX)       

Mike King
President
Youthfront (Westwood, KS)

More information on the conference focus and content

Registration information

Conference itinerary