Got a sin to confess? Do it online.

Are you kidding me?

Now some of you might recoil at one aspect of this idea, and some of you might recoil at another. The first group hears the word "confession" and immediately thinks "Catholic." Of course! Only Catholics do confession, right? And if Catholics do it, it's gotta be wrong, right? WRONG. In fact, I would like to say that at least Catholics do something in regards to confession! I mean, the Protestant version of confession is nothing more than to whisper a quick "sorry" to God (if anything at all) and trust that we've been forgiven. That's stupid.

I think I fit with the second group, the one that hears "online" and is horrified. The World Wide Web is a glorious thing. I love it. I spend hours and hours on it. I have even become somewhat dependent on it (for news, keeping in touch with distant friends, entertainment, etc.). But there is one aspect of the Web that scares the living be-daylights out of me -- virtual life.

It started with chat rooms. Then it moved to IM, blogs (like the incredible one you're visiting right now), message boards, etc. -- anywhere that you can "interact" with other people under a virtual name. Now we're seeing the introduction of what's called "Web 3.0" - a 3D virtual world where you can be someone totally different than who you really are.

Take Second Life, for instance. The name says it all. You can live a completely other life than what is real. It is mass escapism to the extreme!

What does this have to do with online confessions? Simply this: The Web is not reality. It can never, and I repeat NEVER, be the real world. Online confessions? How depersonalizing is that? So what if the world reads it? What bearing does that have on you personally? The truth is, it doesn't. You cannot fully be a person on the Internet.

The world wants to know what it means to be a person. Is the church answering this fundamental question, or is the Web?

Your thoughts?

The so-called "prosperity gospel" (PG) is sweeping the world. It's mass appeal is obviously due to the fact that, when presented to an impoverished world, it's absolute promises of health and wealth appeal to the basic needs of every human, not to mention basic carnal desires. Take this line from the website of one of my favorite PG gurus, Creflo Dollar:

As a Christian, you have the right to prosper or succeed in every area of life-financially, emotionally, socially, mentally and physically. That's total life prosperity! (link)

Dollar's website is saturated with this mentality, that believers have a right to be wealthy and healthy. In fact, poverty to him is nothing short of inherently evil. Take this line for example:

From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible proves that poverty goes against everything God desires for believers. Poverty is a spirit designed to keep believers in financial bondage. The devil uses this spirit to hinder Christians from prospering and ultimately fulfilling their destiny of being a blessing to the entire world (Genesis 12:2-3). (link)

What strikes me as most amazing about Dollar's "biblical" defense of the PG is two-fold: 1. How frequently Bible verses are taken out of context, misinterpreted, or stretched to mean far more than they ever could, and 2. How infrequently tough passages are mentioned that fundamentally oppose his worldview. In fact, they're never mentioned.

Now I'm not going to spend much time elaborating on all the problems with the PG. The only reason why I am even mentioning this topic is because of a text from II Corinthians 4 that I have been dealing with recently for my Greek class. I thought you might be interested in what it has to say.

II Corinthians 4:7 in several translations:

ESV - But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.
NRSV - But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.
NIV - But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.

But check out the NASB: But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves.

(Emphasis mine in all texts.)

I'm not primarily interested in the fact that Paul talks about "jars of clay" (earthen vessels) here. I'm more concerned with what immediately follows. You'll notice that the first three translations all say something to the effect that having the treasure in jars of clay is "to show" or "to make clear" that the surpassing power belongs to God. But the NASB has it correct here in its more literal translation. The Greek word that follows "jars of clay" is ἵνα (in order that, so that), pronounced "hina," which denotes purpose or intent. What is the difference between saying "we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that the power belongs to God" verses "we have this treasure in clay jars in order that the power belongs to God"?

Nowhere does this text really say that the jars of clay are to "show" or to "make clear" anything. Instead, Paul is saying something much more difficult, that without the treasure -- which is the glorious transforming Gospel in the face of Jesus -- being in an jar of clay, i.e. weak, frail, afflicted, impoverished, servant humanity (read the entire epistle leading up to this point) the power of God won't be there. Paul's service as a minister of the Gospel means to have an afflicted, suffering life that bears the power of God. Weakness is not just one way to "show" power, it is the means of it.

I have a hard time reconciling this fact with the promises of the PG. Actually, I have a hard time reconciling the entire Bible, the testimony of 2,000 years of Christianity, all my theology and all my experience with the promises of the PG. While I would never suggest that financial poverty is necessary for righteousness, I will say that financial prosperity is by no means any believer's right. I think Paul would have a coronary if he heard the message of Creflo Dollar and the PG.

What say you?

This quiz is pretty lame, but fun and quick to take nonetheless. Below are my results. What are yours?

You’re Origen!

You do nothing by half-measures. If you’re going to read the Bible, you want to read it in the original languages. If you’re going to teach, you’re going to reach as many souls as possible, through a proliferation of lectures and books. If you’re a guy and you’re going to fight for purity … well, you’d better hide the kitchen shears.

I've been reading the news reports just like you have over the last several days. I have been horrified at what happened on the campus of Virginia Tech. It's too early to start drawing conclusions about what transpired and why. In my opinion, that's not what really matters at this point. We simply need to be praying for the families, friends, and all those involved at VT.

I do, however, have one observation that I would like to make. I was reading an article from Breitbart.com, and over and over again it was mentioned that the young man who went on this shooting rampage was an isolationist. Said those who knew the man, "He was a loner," and "He was very quiet, always by himself," and then "He didn't reach out to anyone. He never talked."

Then I read this:

Some classmates said that on the first day of a British literature class last year, the 30 or so students went around and introduced themselves. When it was Cho's turn, he didn't speak.

On the sign-in sheet where everyone else had written their names, Cho had written a question mark. "Is your name, 'Question mark?'" classmate Julie Poole recalled the professor asking. The young man offered little response.

I find it very intriguing, and not at all surprising, that one who had isolated himself from all others would identify himself with a question mark.

My theological education here at Wesley Biblical Seminary has instilled in me the idea that one can only be a person in the context of a loving relationship to another. That, by definition, is what a person is. In Dennis Kinlaw's book, Preaching in the Spirit, he writes, "The very word person entered our language from the Trinitarian discussions of the early church...No person can be understood in isolation. Persons are not created that way. Even divine persons do not live that way." (76) The great challenge of the 21st century is going to be whether or not the church can answer the great question of postmodernity, "Who am I?"

Hollywood isn't going to give the right answers to this question. Consider the concept of personhood that comes from such a blockbuster hit as American Psycho (2000). This plot line from IMDB: "A wealthy New York investment banking executive hides his alternate psychopathic ego from his co-workers and friends as he escalates deeper into his illogical, gratuitous fantasies." Everything in the life of the lead character (played by Christian Bale) is perfect. Yet, in his mind, "To be is to consume." The message portrayed is that if "I don’t want to be consumed, I must consume." So he becomes a serial killing cannibal.

How are we going to change the minds of the folks in our churches, as well as our whole culture, that personhood is not equivalent to individualism? When will we begin to realize that the answer to the question of our personal identity is not found in autonomy? Individualism only leads to depersonalization and destruction. In my estimation, the answers to these questions can only be found in the social Trinity. But what exactly that means is another discussion for another day. In the meantime, let's pray for God's comfort and healing in such a difficult time.

Labels: church, personhood

A rather astute and insightful reader of this blog sent me a message earlier this afternoon making a great point. He said something to the effect of, "Now that we know why Jesus had to die (see the post below), perhaps now can turn to the question of why he chose to die the way he did, i.e. on the cross." I won't pretend for even the slightest moment to have a definitive answer to this question, but over the last several months I have been accumulating various thoughts on this topic from an array of different sources. Below I am providing a summary of some of what I have found...

Pope John Paul II, in Crossing the Threshold of Hope, writes,

God is not someone who remains only outside of the world, content to be in Himself all-knowing and omnipotent. His wisdom and omnipotence are placed, by free choice, at the service of creation. If suffering is present in the history of humanity, one understands why His omnipotence was manifested in the omnipotence of humiliation on the Cross. The scandal of the Cross remains the key to the interpretation of the great mystery of suffering, which is so much a part of the history of mankind. The crucified Christ is proof of God's solidarity with man in his suffering. God places Himself on the side of man. (emphasis added)

Romans 6:23 declares, "For the wages of sin is death." Yet God promised He would send a sinless Sacrifice to take the punishment sinful man deserved (Genesis 3:15). "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD has laid on Him [Jesus] the iniquity of us all." (Isaiah 53:6) His sacrifice was substitutionary and vicarious.

Heidelberg Larger Catechism: "Is there something more in his being crucified than if he had died some other death?" – "Yes…he took on himself the curse which lay upon me, because the death of the cross was cursed by God."

Hanging on a tree was purposefully intended to expose the corpse to ultimate disgrace (Deut. 21:22-23).

Calvin: "By his arraignment as a criminal we know that as one innocent he voluntarily took the role of a guilty man."

Gregory of Nyssa: The cross' distinctive shape – four arms converging in the middle - reveals that Christ is the "the one who binds all things to himself and makes them one."

"Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: 'Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree'" (Gal. 1:13, quot. Deut. 21:23; cf. Rom. 8:3-4 – "For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.").

Thomas C. Oden, in the second volume of his 3-part systematic, The Living Word, writes,

The atoning blood of the victim covers the guilt of all the penitent. The metaphor of blood in the NT implies life being taken away violently, life offered in sacrifice. Wherever there is blood, there is life. Life is in blood. Sacrifice implies death that enables life for another. Blood symbolizes the dedication of a life wherein one offered life substituted for the indebted life of another. (p. 366)

Hebrews 9:22 – "Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness." The atoning virtue, or power to cover sins, was assumed to reside in the shed blood. No blood less than that of the Son of God would have been sufficient to enable a declaration that the sins of all humanity have been forgiven. No one but the God-man could be at once just and Justifier.

My take?

Stanley Grenz, in his book Rediscovering the Triune God: The Trinity in Contemporary Theology, quotes T.F. Torrance* as saying,

Jesus Christ is...not a mere symbol, some representation of God detached from God, but God in his own Being and Act come among us, expressing in our human form the Word which he is eternally in himself, so that in our relations with Jesus Christ we have to do directly with the ultimate Reality of God. (p. 208)

The person Jesus Christ reveals to humans in our own language and categories who God is internally. The fact of his death reveals the heart of God as fundamentally self-giving, but the means by which he died reveals the all-encompassing nature of his sacrifice, the extent to which he is willing to go to identify with and stand in place of man's guilty and fallen state, his absolute solidarity with man's suffering, the vicarious and transcendental nature of substitutionary sacrifice, and the vastness of his holistic descent into man's fallen, alienated, and disgraced position before God. The irony is that even upon resurrection and glorification he still bears the marks of the cross in his nail-scarred hands and pierced side (John 20:27), and in his ascension he ascended as God-man, effectively drawing the human nature fully into the communion of God's being. He is forever more Jesus Christ, theanthropos, and it is in his fleshly body through death (Col. 1:21) alone that God and man are reconciled.

That is why I love him, worship him, and live for him.

*Torrance, Ground and Grammar of Theology, 160.

Labels: theology

The following is a brief (and grossly incomplete) adaption of an excerpt taken from an essay I wrote for my Systematic Theology II class entitled, "The Relationship of the Incarnation to the Atonement." It seeks to try to answer the question of why Jesus had to die, i.e. why death was the chosen means by which atonement was accomplished.

Question number 1 of the Westminster Larger Catechism asks, "What is the chief and highest end of man?" to which it replies, "Man's chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him forever."

It is true that God has created us to glorify and enjoy Him. Mankind enjoyed a wholeness and purity of relationship with the Triune God in the Garden, and yet, tragically, sin entered into the human equation. Man’s perfect knowledge of God that came from an unbroken fellowship with Him was lost. He became perverted and his heart became curved in upon itself. The life-giving fellowship God has always desired for man was been traded by man for self-interest and death. Death is not necessarily some arbitrary judgment of God for sin; it is the natural result of man’s self-severing of life-giving fellowship with God. What will it take to bring God and man back together in perfect fellowship now that the history and inherited nature of sin is factored into the equation? Nothing other than the selfless act of sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary.

But this begs the question, “why did Jesus have to die?” Could God not have secured the redemption of man with a simple pronouncement of forgiveness? Could He not simply have dictated a message from heaven declaring mankind free from the penalties of his rebellion? The answer, simply put, is no.

At this point, a typical Western Protestant like me naturally wants to turn to the penal-substitution theory to answer the questions stated above. But I cannot help but think that if we appeal to this theory of atonement alone we might be grossly in error. If this theory alone could explain what is taking place on the cross, I am convinced that it would radically devalue the work that was done there as well as the person accomplishing it. For starters, this theory is amazingly impersonal, plus it does not adequately answer the question of why Jesus had to die. If God is sovereign, could He not reserve the right to just cancel the debt altogether without the needless suffering of Jesus? The classic appeal is always to the satisfaction of God's holiness. But is that all that's taking place on the cross? Retribution? Satisfaction? Appeasement? Or is there something more? If so, then I ask again, why did Jesus have to die?

The answer is found once we recover a relational understanding of God, creation, and sin. God is Life. He subsists as Persons relating to each other face to face in holy love. Therefore, there is life in self-death (not suicide, but in a fundamental disposition and activity of selflessness). It is on the cross of Calvary where this truth is revealed most clearly. The work of the God-man on the cross is redemptive in more than that it makes a payment for what is due. The work of the God-man on the cross is redemptive because it reveals the very heart of God Himself, and this knowledge is redeeming. Everything Jesus does is a revelation of reality, therefore his death, his “hour,” reveals something more to me than that God is offended and wants retribution. His life is always Triune life. The Father, Son, and Spirit are always in one another. This Triune life has always been fundamentally self-giving. Only this self-giving life, a life that predates the introduction of the problem of sin, can come and save me. My entire nature as a human being, as well as my very personhood itself, is utterly decimated because I am obsessed with self. The only life that can redeem me is the one that precedes me and is self-giving. He does not save by power, nor by dictation, nor by mere arbitration, because these things alone are impersonal and coercive. He saves by giving himself away. He imparts Triune life through his sacrifice as theanthropos. “He has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death…” (Col. 1:22) Sacrifice entails something incredibly deep and transcendental about reality. Without death we have no full revelation of God’s heart. The penal-substitution theory is simply not enough to account for who God is and what He has done in the atonement. He died in my stead, and in order to understand who it was that died and why and what it all means, we must maintain an inseparable connection of the incarnation to the atonement.

The work on the cross does not have saving power by virtue of the action/function of what is taking place there. The work on the cross has saving power by virtue of the person (persons) who is at work there. The whole life of the Trinity is embodied in Jesus Christ who died in order to impart life. All he touches he redeems, and as God-man he touches all of our humanity. He is Life. He is Resurrection. He offers atonement because he offers himself, for he IS Atonement.

Labels: theology

I have uploaded two new essays to my website:

The Unity of Scripture - A short to medium length essay that shows how the Old and New Testaments find their unity in God's plan of restoration through Jesus Christ. This was written for my Hermeneutics and Biblical Authority class with Dr. Cockerill (January 2007).

The Teleological Argument - A short essay presenting an overview of the contemporary form of the teleological proof for the existence of God. This paper was presented before my Philosophy of the Christian Religion class with President Smith (Spring 2007).

Both essays are in PDF format. You can find them along with all the others I have uploaded on the Interests page of Truth Dialogue.com. Click the Interests link you see above, then click on "Theology."

Who was the first person that Scripture explicitly says was filled with the Holy Spirit?

Abraham? Moses? David? Nope.

If you have as much to learn about Scripture as I still do, you might be as surprised to learn who it was as I was. Contrary to our inclinations to ascribe this sort of honor to one of the biblical giants, the first person Scripture tells us was filled with the Holy Spirit was not a great preacher, king, or prophet. Instead, he was tradesman, a man named Bezalel, who was commissioned to design and construct the tabernacle.

In Exodus 31:2-5 we read:

See, I have called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship, to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver, and bronze, in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, to work in every craft. (emphasis added)

Now the implications of this are obvious. How many Christians throughout the ages have sold themselves short on what God has for them to do with their lives because they weren't pastors, preachers, or missionaries? How many have assumed that God only fills people in formal ministry with His Spirit for a specific purpose? Sadly, I personally know quite a few of these people myself.

The truth is that the example of Bezalel shows us that God can and will use every person to do great things for His purposes. No task is too small or insignificant. Granted, I'm not going to presume that every task is equally important, but each person is. More importantly than for the fulfillment of a specific task, God imparts to us His Spirit in order that we may have intimate, life-sharing fellowship with Him. Believers who receive the Holy Spirit are receiving nothing short of the whole life of the Triune God, for in the Holy Spirit each Person of the Trinity - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - is objectively present. The Holy Spirit dispenses the fullness and totality of God into our lives. He comes and makes holy where He dwells. The byproduct of this is a fruitful life free from sin and free to be and do all that He wants us to be and do for His sake.

So don't sell yourself short. Don't rob yourself from the fullness of joy that comes from having the fullness of Him in you. God saw it fit to fill Bezalel with His Spirit, and through him accomplished great things. The same is no less true for you.