Advent Is Coming

Frederick Buechner describes the Incarnation as "a kind of vast joke whereby the creator of the ends of the earth comes among us in diapers." He concludes, "Until we too have taken the idea of he God-man seriously enough to be scandalized by it, we have not taken it as seriously as it demans to be taken."

-quoted in God is in the Manger (Bonheoeffer on Advent), p.53, notes.

 

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The Imputation of Righteousness

Among the doctrines of many Evangelicals is that of "imputed righteousness" . This doctrine takes different forms. At its simplest it is the idea that the righteousness of Mashiach has been "imputed" or ascribed to those united with him by emunah/faith- that God the Father regards believers as possessing the righteousness of Yeshua himself.

There are degrees of this. Some believe that it means that believers possess, in every way, the concrete and personal righteousness of Yeshua. Some hold that it means that believers possess not Yeshua's personal righteousness but simply the quality of righteousness, which has been imputed to them as a result of their faith. Some believe that although all believers are thus "saints" and acquitted as righteous, God still sees their sin and rebukes and purifies them. Some believe, more extremely, that God does not see them any longer as sinners or as sinning in any sense at all. I have long been cautious and skeptical about this doctrine, but recently it has suddenly begun to make sense to me. I think the scriptural view is that God justifies the faithful, which does indeed, in both Greek and Hebrew (most clearly in the latter), signify declare, or regard as, righteous. 

The fundamental meaning of "righteousness" is to be in right relationship to God, though there are definite implications here that that will mean an increase in right relationship to other humans as well. To be declared righteous is to be regarded as someone fundamentally in right relationship with God, no doubt with the expectation that that rightness will increase. Those in Mashiach are free of condemnation, given the spirit, regarded by God as righteous, and welcomed in friendship with God now and eternal life after bodily death. These are all the possessions of the character classically (and still to this day) known in Judaism as a tzaddik (righteous one).

Paul is very clear that the righteousness we possess is through faith, not our own actions or religious behaviour. The implication of scripture is indeed that we are united to Christ by faith and are thus regarded as sons, ie. as children in good standing, or as righteous. 

Does this mean that God does not see our sin? The answer came to me when thinking about how I regard my son. My son has flaws and will do things I disapprove of. Does that mean that at any time I regard him as a sinner, ie. as separate from me and outside of my love? No. Do I stop loving him then? Not if at that moment I myself am free of sin as God is always. The fact is that although I see my son's misdeeds and character flaws, he does not cease to be my son at that moment- I still regard him as beloved, as beautiful- as righteous. 

What if my son were to stop listening to me, move out of my house, and not answer my calls or letters? What if he were then to begin acting against his best interests, distorting his true beauty and becoming more and more miserable and neurotic, while also behaving selfishly and finally unethically and destructively. What would I do?Would I stop trying to reach him? No, I would certainly keep sending messages. But as long as he remained turned inward and away from me, neither listening to me or living according to the values I tried to teach him, could I honestly be said to love him? 

In a certain sense, the answer is yes. I would still think of him and try to reach him. In another sense, though, the answer is no. He would not feel like my son. I could not regard him as beautiful, and certainly not as righteous. I would not force him to come home and tie him to a chair while I pleaded with him (which would be unlikely to work in any case) and in that sense would, as scripture says, "abandon him to his wretched desires" (Romans 1:24). 

The messages that I send to my errant son are known by some Christian theologians as "prevenient grace", God's attempt to get through to those not in relationship with Him. If one of my messages gets through there will still be a lot of work to do. Trust and communication will have to be re-established. Something has to be done to make amends for my son's behaviour, and he will need support and love. He will need to have faith in himself, and in me. 

In Christianity the life and death of Yeshua Mashiach accomplishes all of this. God incarnates in the flesh and in his crucifixion takes upon Himself our sin and its effects, making amends and swallowing our debt. As well as justly making amends (albeit in a spectacular way) this demonstrates the depth of his love so as to generate love and trust in his errant children. When we read the letter from home that is Mashiach and believe it, our lives change. Living faith is not, of course, merely believing the letter, it is repentance, teshuva, metanoia, changing our lives around. If my son believes that all is forgiven, that I love him, that I am good, and trusts me again, than I will again regard him as righteous and love him fully, showering him with everything that I have to give him- even if he still has faults, still stumbles, still makes mistakes or doesn't listen to me on occasion.

My answer then is that God does see the sin of those with faith in Mashiach, but does not see us as sinners. We are the righteous, the saints who will sit at the messianic banquet at the end of time partaking of the love that dances inside the trinitarian God, even if as good children we still nevertheless sin. It is in that sense that we are simultaneously justus et peccator (just and sinners/ tzaddikim and resha'im). 

 There is another element of our righteous standing though that I have not brought out but is essential. As well as our trusting acceptance of Yeshua's sacrificial death on our behalf there is our loving union with Him as the Son of God, the one who makes God known, the embodiment of Torah, wisdom incarnate. Through baptism and loving faith we are spiritually united to Yeshua- we are in him and of him and His life is our life. Thus when the Father looks at Mashiach He sees us, and when he looks at us he sees Mashiach. It is Mashiach and humanity's election in Him that makes possible, in grace, our adoption. When we accept this in faith and are reborn in Yeshua then we take on Mashiach's status of the beloved. 

This is not two things, of course, but one mystery described in two aspects. In Mashiach we are God's beloved children, no matter how we stumble, as long as we persist in faith. Although God does see our sins and works to sanctify us and make us all that we were meant to be, God simultaneously sees us as righteous, as in His Son, and holds us in the omnipresent strength of His warm hands.

  

   

From Laudato Sii (The Encylical on Climate Change and Inequality)

Living our vocation to be protectors of God's handiwork is essential to a life of virtue; it is not an optional or secondary aspect of our Christian experience (218)

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Interesting: found at Sojourners. The Radical Christianity of the New Civil Rights Movement

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/radical-black-christians-new-civil-rights-movement-n417871

Article Posted on Redemption Church Blog

What Is Our Daily Bread?

http://www.redemptionchurch.ca/blog/2015/8/26/what-is-our-daily-bread

On Hell: A Jewish View

What is the Biblical view? The earlier parts of the Bible, and those most strongly based in Jewish experience, are unclear. The dead seem to go to "sheol", some kind of deathly limbo, but it is unclear whether this is doctrine or simply a middle eastern cultural accrescence or a poetic figure of speech. Later in the Bible there are frequent references to a type of "annihilation", "death" or destruction". This is said, for example, to be the fate of the wicked in the first Psalm, as opposed to the fate of the righteous, who are given life through intimacy with God. This understanding seems more truly Jewish, as it is just (why would all souls be sent to a dreary limbo by a loving God of justice?) and resonates with the central idea of God as the God of life- the creator of the good, of the orderly, of the beautiful- and the defeater of chaos, entropy and death (this theme is prominent in Genesis, Job and the Psalms). 

The later assumption of Christian theology (based partially on some New Testament texts we will discuss below) is that some souls will live forever in blessed and blissful proximity to God and some will be consigned to everlasting torment- a kind of eternal dungeon or prison filled with torture and horrors. Where does this model come from? Not from the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible). Eternal life is hinted at in several places, with a vague idea of celestial bliss, but eternal tortures are not. The text seems to imply, as said previously, either annihilation or (in its earliest layers) or some kind of shadowy half-existence. 

We can learn something, perhaps, by the justice system actually instantiated by God in the Hebrew Bible. What is the nature of punishment there? Well, an examination yields two possibilities: 1) making amends through paying a fine; 2) death.  One must also offer a sacrifice to God, though this is not a juridical matter. 

This matches the Biblical picture of God's justice. When we must either make amends, if possible, or if not (because our sin is too heinous) we will be destroyed. It is noteable that the two possibilities of Eden also match this: sin leads to death, whereas obedience would have lead to eating of the tree of immortal life. 

Notice that Biblical justice does not include prisons, torture, or dungeons. Where did these ideas come from? Rome. The Roman justice system sent people to dungeons to be tortured and kept people in prisons for long periods of time. Most often this was while awaiting trial or execution (even Roman justice didn't imprison people forever!) but still the Roman dungeon/prisons, which were horrific places, are likely the source of the idea of a "divine dungeon" that arises in late second Temple Judaism and early Christianity. Add to this Graeco-Roman mythology: here we find the idea of Tartarus, or Hades. As endorsed by Plato, unrighteous souls find their destiny here where they are tortured for eternity with "just desserts". The tortures of Hades match the crime with a horrible poetic justice, and there is no salvation from this relentless, eternal justice. 

This horrific vision seems to have influenced Judaism to some extent, and massively influenced Christianity. 

Later Midrashic literature (whether halachic like the Talmud or agaddic) contains the idea of gehennom, a firy place of suffering possibly modelled after the burning rubbage heaps outside of Jerusalem. Although some Rabbis seemed to have thought gehennom eternal the mainstream view was that it's punishment was purgatory and temporary. The destiny of most was olam haba (the world to come) though many would need to be refined in gehennom before going there. The mainstream view that developed over time was that of a spectrum: the average sinner would go to gehennom and than to olam haba; the very righteous would go right to olam haba. The very wicked would be annihilated. In this way the rabbis seem to have remained true to the Biblical witness while incorporating a modified hades/tartarus who purpose was both punitive and pedagogical, or just and reformative.

The New Testament

The New Testament's witness, it must be said, is not entirely clear. Jesus warns of "the outer darkness", "the relentless fire" and "eternal punishment". Jesus also warns against "hades/tartarus" and "gehennom". He seems, then, to be making use of the terminology and ideas of Hellenized Judaism in order to warn of types of suffering and death that await the unrighteous after death. One type seems to be a type of painful alienation from God pictured as "the outer darkness" outside of a place of warmth and light (the messianic banquet?). There there is "weeping and gnashing of teeth", which sounds like grief and regret. The time period they will be there, and whether there is any escape, is not spoken of, and this is a very vague and poetic metaphor which doesn't lend itself to picayune analysis. As George Macdonald pointed out, it may be that the purpose of the expulsion into the outer darkness is to provoke the grief and regret which will lead to repentance and restoration. We don't know.     

The "eternal punishment" mentioned is also not clear- the Biblical use of "eternal" is often hyperbolic and vague. It cannot confidently be interpreted as an eternal experience of punishment- it may refer to an unchangeable punishment, or one with eternal ramifications, which might refer to annihilation not eternal torture as in the Greek Hades. The "relentless fire" requires careful interpretation because we automatically imagine the eternal hellfire of later Christian imagination. This phrase must be balanced though with Jesus' warning that we should not fear humans but rather God, who can "destroy both body and soul in the fire of gehennom". The fire, then, does what fires normally do- it burns until it consumes its fuel completely, ie. it destroys. Even the soul is here pictured as annihilated. This fire is relentless because it will consume until the soul is annihilated. 

When understood this way Jesus' warnings are harmonized with the rest of Biblical witness and the general thrust of Jewish thought (surely a more congenial home than Graeco-Roman thought). To summarize: after death there are three options: eternal life with God; some type of purificatory/punitive/purgatorial experience; or annihilation. 

What is "the flesh"?

I was reading Romans 8 today and pondering that question. The understanding I have come to, and I'm not sure from who or where, is that "flesh" refers to the conditioned body- the entropy aspect of our physical selves which embeds habit, trauma, prejudice and addiction. It is also the aspect of ourselves which lives blindly for ourselves alone- what is called, in Jewish thought, the nefesh behema- the animal soul (eg. Tanya 1, R'Shneur Zalman of Liadi). This is not to disparage animals, who live beautifully within God's plan as innocent aspects of the image of His glory (Catechism of the Catholic Church). Human beings, however, are not intended to serve God's plan by blindly following the dictates of our physical conditioning. Having had a divine soul blown into us (Genesis 2:6) we reflect the image of God in a special way (Genesis 1:27). It is our choice to be continually open to this Spirit which was, is, and may be blown in to us, moving where it wills (John 3:8) and opening our eyes to ever new things. 

In Romans 8 Paul says that "those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires, but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires (8:5)". The flesh desires the increase of itself, which is all that cells, neurons and ATP know how to do. In Chinese folklore this aspect of the self is called the "po", or "physical soul" and is said to die with the body. Thus Paul says that "if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live (8:13)". The misdeeds of the body are living for what dies and in the momentum of the flesh instead of the ever new light of the Spirit, which brings life.

What is living? It is growth, vitality, vividness, wisdom, consciousness, expansion. When we live to the Spirit we are truly alive, and life is a bracing, challenging, heartbreaking and heart expanding way of never ending growth, or reaching forward into the future in a God-ruled becoming: "And if the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised the Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of the Spirit who lives in you (8:11)." This is a spirit which conquers death, entropy, and the dead end. To return to Chinese folklore, this is the yang of new life, not the yin of stagnancy and finality (David Gelernter, Judaism: A Way of Being). It is not a return to primordial simplicity but an expansion into greater, more versatile complexity. As Spinoza said, the more complex our ability to feel and respond, the greater our perfection (Ethics p. 4, Appendix:27). Entropy and habituation limit our ability to feel, act and think for ourselves and thus in Spinoza's thought make us slaves of our passions and of the external world, or in other words, of the flesh. The way of the Spirit is a paradoxical way where the more we surrender to God and the gift of the Spirit within the more individuated and powerful we become, filled with a life that is simultaneously not our life but that gives us our life , as Jesus said (Matthew 10:39): "Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." We "lose our lives" by continually dying to the flesh and living towards the Spirit.